FRUIT INVASION: A 2D MOBILE GAME FOR ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY STUDENTS

Masamong, Michael Jr.

Technological Institute of the Philippines 90-F Maningning St. Brgy. Malaya, Quezon City 929-25-58

Alvarez, Carla M.
Technological Institute of the Philippines 10-A St. Vincent St., Brgy. Holy Spirit, Quezon City 0935-1414-858

Enzon, James Arthur

Technological Institute of the Philippines 22B D.Santiago St. Santolan Pasig City 09479551114

Dr. Lorena W. Rabago

Technological Institute of the Philippines (02) 911-0964/ (02) 912-1573

xxviii.michael@gmail.com

cma4493@gmail.com

james_enzon@yahoo.com

1. INTRODUCTION
Tower defense games are trending now on different mobile platforms such as iOS, Android and Symbian. This type of game requires strategy and analogy, which helps to develop the critical thinking and analyzing skills of the user. Such features of game makes it popular on Appstore and Android Market. In this project, we decided to make something new, or something that is trending on mobile gaming industry; the tower offense game -- which is the opposite of tower defense game. This proposed game is not just an ordinary tower offense game, we added stuffs like power ups, time limit and a storyboard for this game. We also added some educational values about fruits and nutrients that will benefit the elementary and secondary students.

princess. The gamer plays as the son of the farmer, his mission is to retake the castle and lift the curse to the villager, animals, castle guards and the royal family. It is a mixture of adventure and strategy game. Player will send fruits that will go through the defenses; the goal is to reach the boss. Each boss requires a certain number and type of fruit that will help to lift the curse. New sets of fruits will be unlocked for every level that the user finishes as well as the opponents. The purpose of the study is to develop an artificial intelligence that is really challenging and will change the gameplay of tower offence games. Another is to create a puzzling at and strategic game with the help of artificial intelligence. The target users are elementary and secondary school students. The game doesnt involve too mature images, blood and violence for the target users are of young age.

2. PROJECT CONTEXT
Most children nowadays dont appreciate the nutrition values of fruits. They tend to stay in front of computers and cellphones instead of doing physical activity. Another fact is about the mobile gaming industry. There are a lot of tower defense game developer out there but only few in tower offense field. Even in famous platforms such as iOS and Android, there are only few tower offense games. So to fill up the gap in mobile gaming industry and the lack of knowledge of children and adults about fruit nutrition, we created this game. The aim of the game is to develop the knowledge of the users about fruits -- their nutritional values and infamous facts about them. The game displays facts about fruits every level that the user cleared.

Objective
To create an Artificial Intelligence bot that is challenging to the user, this is to fill up the small resources of AI on Symbian and MeeGo games. To fill up the gap on tower offence game on Symbian and MeeGo platform. Currently, there are no tower offence games on MeeGo, and there is less than ten tower offence game on Symbian. Another objective is to promote uncommon knowledge about fruits found in the Philippines to the users.

Scope and Limitation

The proposed game supports Symbian and MeeGo platform. The project team will develop an Artificial Intelligence that can manipulate towers and bosses on tower offence and tower defense games. This AI will be implemented on a game called Fruit Invasion. The game is a tower offence game therefore; the user is the one to who will do the attacks. This is a mixture of strategy and adventure game

Background of the Study

Fruit Invasion is a mobile-based tower offense game that revolves around the story of the son-of-a-farmer and a

and the boss gets harder as the game progress. The AI that will be developed will only be effective on tower offense and tower defense games only. Since the game will be programmed using Adobe ActionScript, it is intended to run on any platform that supports Adobe Flash Player.The proposed game is only compatible on selected platforms running on mobile devices. The game is developed for Symbian and MeeGo platform, but it can be deployed on other platforms supporting Flash Player. The proposed game will be very significant for it enables the player to develop their problem-solving skill. It will also enhance the ability of the player to plan out efficiently any problems or challenges that the user might encounter in real life. Facts about certain fruit will be revealed as they play the game, therefore their knowledge about native fruits upgrades.

likely require more thought, as I often experienced. Though this may seem like more work than its worth, there is definitely an accomplished feeling when a difficult part that you have been stuck at is finally completed..[3] The proposed game will require a strategy in order to reach the goal. Its up now to the user on what he will do to finish the current level to enable the player to proceed to succeeding level.

4. GAME DESIGN Game Design Model

The main menu is the first screen of the game when the player starts it. Our main menu consists of one button yet this button consists of four options which are the New Game, Help, and Option and Exit. See Figure 4.1 for illustration. When you click the button of the main menu it will show you the different menus of the game. New game menu will start the game. Option menu will let the user if wants to turn on and off the music and sound. Another menu is the Help menu which shows the instructions on how to play the game. And lastly is the Exit which exits the game.

3. RELATED STUDIES
This section pertains to different writings related to our proposed game entitled - Fruit Invasion that will be relevant to the proponents in the development of the game. On an article written by Brett Hlavika, he stated that: "The gameplay will be divided into two parts: the 'planning' stage and the 'execution' stage. In the planning stage, the player will create a path across a grid to guide creatures safely across the screen. To add suspense, they will do so under a time constraint. The objective is to avoid (or overcome) obstacles placed by the AI and reach the opposite side of the grid. The 'execution' stage involves actually sending these creatures, watching them die, and analyzing the effectiveness of the current path. [1]" In accordance with what the author says, the proponents will be adapting such parts of the game play as we go along with the project. The planning stage will be implemented for the creation of path for each level in the game. A given time limit will be given to the player to add suspense and difficulty for our proposed game. An AI will be implemented for the antagonist on the game. Player should try to avoid this else his span of life will decrease. Execution stage will be implemented when the player sends his attackers. On an article written by Tom Notarnicola, he stated that: Over the past few years I've played many tower defense game, ranging from one of the original mods of Warcraft 3 to the newest hitting the shelves on iPad such as Besiegement. There are hundreds of mediocre and decent tower defense games out there, and for one to stand it, it needs to do something a little bit special[2]. Through this article, the proponents come to think of proposing a game which reverses the concept of tower defense. Instead of protecting the tower, why not invade the tower to gain victory. And to make it special and unique to other game, we will imply fruits as the attackers on the proposed game. Facts about fruits will be given also. In the article written by Cameron Morawski dated April 6, 2012, he stated that: Anomaly actually requires a strategy a majority of the time for the player to be able to progress. You may at times make it past a checkpoint with little thought having been put into the strategy used for the part, but an upcoming part will

Figure 4.1 Main Menu On level 1, Players location is in town. The black buttons that you can see below is the place where the fruits placed. The flower like figure is the settings button wherein player can enable or disable the music and sounds of the game. The two line figure is the pause button. This will suddenly stop the play. See Figure 4.2 for illustration.

Figure 4.2 Level 1 Interface Figure 4.4 Level 4 and 5 Interface Players location is now in the center of the town. New opponents will appear in this level. See Figure 4.3 Level 6, 7 and 8 is in front of the castle. See Figure 4.5 for illustration.

Figure 4.3 Level 2 and 3 Interface In these levels, the scenario is in the forest. Boss in this game is an animal unlike the previous levels. See Figure 4.4 for illustration.

Figure 4.5 Level 6,7 and 8 Interface The last two levels are inside the castle. This is the place where the princess has been caught by the Dark Prince. See Figure 4.6 for illustration.

Figure 4.8 The Princess, The Farmer and the Dark Prince

Figure 4.6 Level 9 and 10 Interface

The Characters
Our game provides different set of fruits which will serve as the savior of the princess. See Figure 4.7. These fruits have different skills, defense and speed that can defeat the different boss and opponents in the game. Figure 4.8 shows the princess, the Dark Prince and the farmer. Figure 4.9 shows the different antagonist that the user will encounter.

Figure 4.9 The Antagonist

Game Play and Mechanics

The main objective of the player is to save the princess using only fruits that has supernatural powers that will cure the cursed given by the Dark Prince. Finish every level of the game to unlock new fruits that the player can use for the next level. For each level, the hero needs to send fruits to the boss, the hero must carefully analyze the defenses on the field and send the appropriate fruits for each level, because each boss has different type of fruit that they need to recover from the curse.

Figure 4.7 Hero (fruits)

Story
The story of our game started when the princess fell in love with a farmer. The Dark Prince, who is currently courting the princess, gets jealous of what happened. So one thing

that he did is to organize a party where everybody comes except for the farmer. On that day, the guests are very overwhelmed and amazed on how the party has done. Dinner was served and the guests, except for the princess, ate. Few moments later, the guests started to feel uneasy. Their skin started to get pale, their strengths is draining and finally they lose consciousness. What the guests don't know is that the Dark Prince puts a cursed on the wine they drank. The result is the Dark Prince got the power to manipulate their will, except for the Princess and the farmer. Now, its up to the farmer to save his co-villagers and his beloved princess from the evil hands of the Dark Prince. Using his supernatural fruits, he needs to cure the curse that has been put to the villagers and save his beloved princess.

5. TECHNICAL BACKGROUND
The main development tool that will be used in the game is Adobe Flash Lite. While the designing of the characters and other interface objects of the game will be on Adobe Photoshop. ActionScript is an object-oriented language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (now owned by Adobe Systems). It is a dialect of ECMAScript (meaning it is a superset of the syntax and semantics of the language more widely known as JavaScript), and is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform, used on Web pages in the form of embedded SWF files. The language itself is open-source in that its specification is offered free of charge and both an open source compiler (as part of Adobe Flex) and open source virtual machine (Mozilla Tamarin) are available. [4] Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Photoshop has the ability to read and write raster and vector image formats such as .EPS, .PNG, .GIF, and .JPEG. Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the industry-standard image editing software, used worldwide by professional photographers, serious amateur photographers, and designers who want to perfect their digital images. [5]

REFERENCES
[1] Related Literature Reference http://sites.google.com/site/toweroffense/project-definition [2]http://www.invisioncommunity.co.uk/a-z-backcatalogue/d/663-defenders-of-ardania-review.html [3]http://www.justpushstart.com/2012/04/anomaly-warzoneearth-xbla-review/ [4] Action Script Reference en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript [5] Adobe Photoshop Reference http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/faq.htm