Rearranging Equations Game - Introduction (Unity/React/Literate programming)

01 Jul 2021

Here’s a new project I’m spending nights and weekends on, a math learning game that teaches how to solve equations by rearranging them.

I’m doing this with Jyoti, and John Bamberg, a big-time mathematician and Math professor at University of Western Australia. John intends to use this game as part of his course teaching equation solving to students preparing for higher education.

So, what do you do in this game, again?

You isolate an unknown variable to the left-hand side in order to solve the equation, and also to make the socially-anxious character X feel calmer.

The technical details are as interesting as the game itself. It’s built in the React way of top-down unidirectional rendering based on state, with every change to the state represented as an explicit action that affects the state when reduced over.

The frontend world is well acquainted with this state management pattern, introduced by Elm and popularized by Redux, but I haven’t seen any games, established or indie, do this yet.

Another interesting thing about the technical approach is that the entire source code is written as a Literate Programming book, with every feature being its own isolated chapter!

Watch on to find out more:

Watch on Vimeo, if you like that better: vimeo.com/569788466

Playable link to the game: equations.notabot.ai

Link to the literate programming source (in book form): equations.notabot.ai/source

Reach out on Twitter, LinkedIn, or email if you’d like to talk about any of this.