This game is based off a project I had to do for my AP Physics class: We had to build water balloon launchers that could hit my teacher at a number of distances.

Basically, the player is operating a water balloon launcher, and they're trying to ...wait for it... hit a target. Before the balloon is launched, the player can specify both the angle of the launch and the speed of the projectile leaving the launcher. After the first couple targets have been hit, new targets are placed such that it's a little harder to solve the equations.

Prerequisites:
-- Knowledge of /basic/ kinematics

What the user will (hopefully) gain:
-- Practice writing and solving systems of kinematic equations
-- Awareness that launch problems have an infinite number of angle/speed solutions
-- Increased "physics-sense" intuition about projectile motion

Mechanics:
-- 3 incorrect solutions allowed before the game ends
-- Levels system to keep track of how many problems the player solved


Feedback is greatly appreciated!

Update Time!

I'll post some screens here later today, but I thought I'd give you guys some info on what I've done so far.

In order to make the "game" (ha, we make solving physics problems a game) progress in difficulty, I've hardcoded the height displacement of the target for the following levels:

-- Level One: 2 meters below launch height. Here the game suggests shooting the target horizontally so you don't have to worry about the y-component of the initial velocity.
-- Level Two: height displacement of 0. The quadratic equation for y position simplifies to a linear equation that's easily solvable.

All targets after that have a horizontal displacement from 0-5m and a vertical displacement from 8-15m.

That sounds like a reasonable solution, iHack. I look forward to the screenshots that you'll be posting later today! That also reminds me that I need to post news reminding all our contestants that there's a mere week left until the deadline.

Sorry, I didn't quite finish getting the code from my calculator transferred yesterday. Here's the screenshots I took:


I don't know the best way to take .gifs on a Mac, so if anyone could recommend some software I would appreciate it. It looks a lot better animated .

I hope I'm not doing anything too similar to zeldaking's project. I didn't look at all the entries until just now. At any rate, zeldaking's project looks like it's a whole lot better.

I think there is a Mac version of Wabbitemu. I can't tell if it works though, I only tested on Windows.

I think that most of their features are Windows-only. I used their emulator for the screenshots. Oh well, maybe I'll link to a YouTube video or something. *Off topic* Hayleia, your Pokemon clone looks awesome! I'm trying it as soon as I get a transfer cable.

Your best bet is the web based emulator jsTIfied on cemetech. It has screenshotting facilities for static and animated images.

I keep getting errors when I try uploading my program, and if I transfer from SourceCoder, it inserts some garbage code at the beginning of my program. Even if I remove the garbage code my program doesn't run correctly. (See pic)

That's rather odd. What calculator are you using, a TI-83 Plus? Are you using SourceCoder 2 or SourceCoder 3?

I'm using a TI 83. I guess it's not compatible. I was using SourceCoder 2.5 though. I'm submitting this morning though!

And I received your entry! No, SourceCoder is designed to export TI-83+ programs; although the change to export TI-83 programs would be relatively minor, I'm sad to say that very, very few of us still write TI-83 programs, so I worry it would just confuse people.

It probably would Props to you for writing the emulator though. It's pretty awesome. I'll have to read about how you wrote it after I learn assembly.