College of Engineering Unit:
The majority of people who learn a new language don’t get the opportunity to practice their language after they are out of the classroom. With this lack of practice comes a natural withering of skills. This simple fact is what spawned the idea for Dialogue Duels.
Dialogue Duels is a unique gamified learning experience designed to help users keep their foreign language skills fresh and do so in a fun way. It provides both single and multiplayer functionality and allows users to test their knowledge of their chosen foreign language in a head to head battle of speed. It was developed in JavaScript, utilizing Vue and Bootstrap, with firebase headlining the back end.
In the game users will have a tower that starts with five blocks of health. If the user wins a round, their opponent's tower will be shot with a cannon. If they lose the round, their tower will be shot. The first player to destroy the opponent’s tower is the winner of the match, and will be granted points towards their rank, while the loser will lose points. A round consists of being given an English word, and having to pick from four choices the correct translation of the word. In single player format you will have a timer, in multiplayer format you are attempting to get the correct answer faster than your opponent.
In the single player version of the game, users will go up against a bot. They will choose their language, their difficulty, and their time control. There are three difficulties, easy, medium, and hard. Easy mode consists of single words, medium consists of simple phrases and questions, and hard puts together full sentences to test the user's language fluency at a more elite level. The time control also has three levels, slow, medium, and fast, and these time controls scale as the difficulty increases. You will lose health if you fail to answer in the allotted time, and you will lose health if you select the incorrect answer.
The multiplayer version of the game utilizes a firebase database to create an asynchronous gameplay experience. Users can either create a game, or find one that already exists. If you create a game, you will take your first turn and your time will be saved. Time will be added for incorrect answers, scaling with each answer that is incorrect in a given round. Similarly, when you find a game, you will also take your first turn, and your time will be compared to the time of the user who created that game. Your times will be compared and a round one winner will be declared. After this, play resumes with the user who created the game in the next round. This pattern will continue until a user has won and which point the match will be considered complete in the database.
Other gamified elements to this application include a global leaderboard for rank, in which you can see how you stack up among other users, and achievements that you are granted based on various criteria that you must meet, such as total number of games played.
Dialogue Duels wishes to make it easier for people to keep their foreign language skills polished in a way that is fun and does not seem burdensome. As we expand the brand we hope that the masses will find this as fun and helpful as it was always intended to be.
Below you will find a link to the project website where you can create an account and try it for yourself!
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