Awesome Standalone Educational Games

List of awesome educational games and resources that can be turned into stand alone applications.

Ready to package

These applications or games are already standalone and run off a native system - they just need a healthy dose of Docker package to make them easy to deploy.

• Quite a long list of applications that can be easily shipped on top of a Kivy base and are touch-ready (mostly written for Android / iOS, but run on any Python platform) : https://github.com/kivy/kivy/wiki/List-of-Kivy-Projects

Needs rework

These applications would need a code rework or adaptation to make them work as standalone apps (for instance, a node.js starter wrapper etc...)

Would be nice to have

These applications are not suitable as such, but would be nice to have or support in some way (may need to write a client program, change or adapt the resolution, make them touch-friendly).

• Physics-based games
  • PHET : Physics simulations - e.g. State of matter - Problem : the resolution is fixed and not touch-friendly. Example : https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/states-of-matter-basics/latest/states-of-matter-basics_en.html
• A websockets enabled fridge magnet application - All member of a given community can drag letters or words to compose sentences. Still looking for a free one, it would require peer-to-peer or a central websocket server.
• Hardware accelerated full-screen media player such as Gnome-mplayer comes recommended on the CHIP (Mpv would be nice https://mpv.io/ ); Alternatives are :
  • Another option would be https://vlc-qt.tano.si/ to create a simple full-screen media player
  • HPlayer https://github.com/Hemisphere-Project/HPlayer
  • Or go for an already Dockerized application (to be adapted for armhf though) https://github.com/wernight/docker-mopidy
• Background music player (to play while other apps are running, to trigger alarm actions).

Scratch style programming language

• Snap is a block programming language similar to sratch writtent in javascript, which can easily be downloaded and run locally without connection. The interface is unfortunately not really touch friendly. https://snap.berkeley.edu/. Not tested on the CHIP.
• Scratch 3 : Scratch team started working on scratch 3, which should be written in javascript, with a touch friendly block layout. https://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Scratch_3.0 prototype : http://llk.github.io/scratch-vm/# and https://llk.github.io/scratch-gui/ . The prototypes don't run smoothly on the rbpi, not tested on the CHIP.
• Google Blockly : Web-based alternative to Snap and Scratch - written in Javascript, touch-friendly, include support for code generation and supports Javascript, Python, Dart, PHP and LUA

Random Musings

Google Material Design support across the board

It would be nice to keep a consistent look and feel across apps and UIs. Google Material Design (MD) principles are gaining traction and offer a clean and visually pleasing experience. Some existing MD skins for various UI platforms :

• Kivy : https://gitlab.com/kivymd/KivyMD
• JavaFX : http://www.jfoenix.com/
• Qt QML : https://github.com/papyros/qml-material

Similar solutions

• Android App Inventor (and a plethora of similar solutions) - Generate applications for the Android platform.
• Microsoft TouchDevelop (https://www.touchdevelop.com/platforms) - Targets HTML 5 platforms only (coding using blocks that translate to Javascript) - TouchDevelop can target the BBC Microbit and can be used to make interactive tutorials.
• GoMix (http://gomix.com) - Limited to online apps and node.js at the moment.

Adaptation ideas :

• Run Chromium and Pepper Flash - applications can be simple URLs to existing web resources (implies connectivity) or locally running ones : https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/chromium-on-chip-pepper-flash/2364/3

Supported pre-packaged dependency starting points

The following Github repo provides barebones programming language containers (x86 container unfortunately, but easy to adapt) : https://github.com/nacyot/docker-programming-languages

By order of preference / priority :

Our top 3

• Google Blocky
• PygameZero + Pymunk for physics-based games
• Processing.org
  • Supported p2d and p3d sketches on the CHIP : Setup instructions at https://github.com/processing/processing/wiki/C.H.I.P.
  • Processing Python interpretor (Python Mode) is available (but more of a community effort)
  • Processing.js (but Javascript node.js rendering might be a bit heavier)
  • Educational resources (FR) around Processing created by [David Roche] - teacher in Haute Savoie (https://twitter.com/davR74130) http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/disciplines/informatiquelycee/proc_index.html

Other contenders

* Scratch v2 Project
* There is a native Scratch to HTML5 converter from MIT (phosporus)
* The photron project packages Scratch project into native Linux ARM apps, however it uses the Electron runtime and conversion to HTML5 - which is too heavy for the Pi and the CHIP (as far as I am concerned)
* What other options do we have to package a Scratch project (which are all stored on the Scratch website centrally apparently) into the Squeak VM ?
* Scratch V3 - a merge of scratch and Google Blockly with horizontal block programming support (very touchscreen friendly)

• Snap!

  • Easy to embed / export
  • Runtime ? What is the runtime ? How do you access native ressources ? It was done for the Ergo Jr project, so it must be possible.

• PyQt5 + QML + Multimedia support

• QtWebView + Web application (served locally ?)

• RenPy : Should support Blockly to make Renpy scripts and allow to run them simply.

  • Available on armhf, following instructions at : https://dlksk.tumblr.com/post/107500026059/getting-renpy-to-run-on-the-raspberry-pi
  • Works well but problem with opengl driver (libGL error: unable to load driver: sun4i-drm_dri.so)
    • One can disable the software opengl implementation by moving all /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libGL.so out of the way.

• Cocos2d-X Cocos2d-python

  • Touch ready ?

• Kivy

  • https://kivy.org/#home

• node.js (but is there Framebuffer-based rendering for node ? libraries like pygame or kivy ?)

• JavaFX

  • Diozero : Interesting Java 8 with a CHIP port on the way (https://github.com/mattjlewis/diozero)
  • JavaFX Material Design UI lib : http://www.jfoenix.com/

• Lua / (Pico8 ?)

  • Main api language for interfacing with Minetest
  • Possibility to link between Python -> Lua for Minetest : http://serveur2jeu.info/minetest-installation-de-raspberryjammod-python/

• Chromium + Flash

• Kogics http://www.kogics.net/sf:kojo

• Interactive books and training : https://github.com/RunestoneInteractive/RunestoneServer