How Would You Build a Connect Four E-Learning Game? #243

Connect Four E-Learning Games #243: Challenge | Recap

Connect Four for Storyline 360 

Recently, community member Russell Killips shared a fantastic example of a Connect Four game he built in Storyline 360.

Connect Four for Storyline 360

View project | Learn more & download | Russell Killips

While this is an advanced project, there are many things newer users can takeaway from deconstructing Russel’s source file.

  • States: To reduce the number of slide objects and motion paths, each object contains both player’s red and black checkers
  • Motion paths: Each column contains six objects each with a motion path. This is where Storyline 360 shines because you can name each motion path to easily target with triggers.
  • Repetition: While this project is incredibly advanced, there’s a lot of repetition in each trigger. This goes to the core authoring philosophy in Storyline: Make it great and duplicate.

Challenge of the Week

This week, your challenge is to build a connect four game or prototype. Since this is a more advanced challenge, don’t feel like you need to build an interaction that mirrors the original board game. 

Try using a 4x4 grid to reduce the overall number of slots. Or mock-up some designs for what a game could look like.

Last Week’s Challenge:

To help you connect the e-learning dots in this week’s challenge, take a few moments to check out the ambient and background music examples your fellow e-learning challengers shared over the past week:

Using Audio and Sound Effects in E-Learning  #242

Using Audio and Sound Effects in E-Learning  #242: Challenge | Recap

Wishing you a connected week, E-Learning Heroes!

New to the E-Learning Challenges?

The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.

94 Comments
Tracy Carroll
Jodi M. Sansone
Devlin Peck
Devlin Peck

Sure thing! I'm adding a link to the .story file in the original post now. I forgot to do so last night...I think the JavaScript ran down my brain power :p Spoiler alert, but this is how the AI opponent works: 1. It checks to see if it has a win condition - if it does, it goes in the winning spot. 2. It checks to see if the player has a win condition - if they do, the computer blocks them from winning. 3. If nobody is about to win, it drops in a random column that isn't already filled up. It was a little tricky because I had to make sure that the computer was only going in a "win condition" spot when there was an open spot beneath it. For example, if it finds that it has 2 in a row diagonally and the 3rd spot is open for the win, it needs to make sure that it has a piece beneath... Expand

Devlin Peck

Haha, no, you can definitely win. The best way to win is to set it up so that you have 2 possible options to win and the computer can only go in one of them (since the computer doesn't predict your future moves, you just need to get lucky when it reverts to the random column). The best way to take advantage of this is to try to get the 2 bottom-center slots filled. If the computer goes on top of your piece instead of next to it, you have a guaranteed win :) ...I was also unsure if this would be beyond my technical capabilities, haha. My original goal was to make it unbeatable, but then I realized that I would need to predict the user's future moves...and that was biting off a little more than I asked for, lol. I also know that if I looked at this a year and a half ago I would be in w... Expand

Jonathan Hill
Jeff Nunamaker

This is my first submission for a challenge and almost did not post the end result... I specifically did not look at the Storyline file as I wanted to try and engineer the interaction from scratch. Which I did... but wow, did it go off the rails. My goal was to use more animation and change up the scene. So of course, cranes. Because why not? Note that the "finished" product does not have a resolution as I have already spent far more time on this than anticipated and other projects call. In other words, no logic built to determine a "win". Project: https://jeffarticulatechallenges.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Connect+4+Challenge/story_html5.html If anyone is curious to see just how off the rails this went, the Storyline file is below. I can honestly say, in the last push to fin... Expand

Steve Morey
Ben McKenna
Angela Anderson