Sort Tetris is an educational falling-blocks style game designed to provide practice sorting things into categories. It can be adapted to sort any short textual or small visual items into 2-5 categories. Examples include:
- U.S. Presidents: Democrat, Republican
- Instruments: Brass, Percussion, Strings, Woodwind
- Animals: Amphibian, Bird, Fish, Mammal, Reptile
- Bibliographic Entries: Article, Book, Book Chapter
The system allows users from different groups (classrooms, workplaces, etc.) to sign in under the name of their group, and for the teacher or supervisor to observe their progress in a Supervisor dashboard.
Demo and public game play available online at: http://www.sort-tetris.com/play/
The basic functionality of Sort Tetris should work "out of the box" upon moving the files to a suitable server. The leaderboard and supervisor functions, however, require access to MySQL. To set up the leaderboard:
- create a database and authorized user or use an existing MySQL database
- Database user permissions: ALTER, CREATE, DELETE, INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE
- copy the file
global_settings_example.phptoglobal_settings.php - modify the variables in
global_settings.phpto connect to the database - copy the file
supervisor/classes/Config_Sample.class.phptosupervisor/classes/Config.class.php - modify the variables in
Config.class.php; there will be some overlap with step 3.- Future versions will combine the
global_settings.phpandConfig.class.phpfiles, but not yet.
- Future versions will combine the
- Create the database tables by one of two methods:
- Automated: Use a web browser to go to 'install/index.php'
- OR Manual: Use the
tables.sqlfile to create the table in your mysql database
- Allow supervisors to register by altering several settings in
global_settings.php:
- $allow_supervisor_registration - when set to true, supervisors may register
- $display_supervisor_reg_links - when true, links appear to the registration form. (If false, but registration is allowed, registering supervisors would have to know how to find the registration link directly.)
- $display_institution_select - when true, the institutional login link will appear on the game page. If false, an institutional player would have to have a direct link to their an institution URL in order to play as a logged-in user.
-
Allow access to administrative functions using the $allow_admin variable. When true, the ./supervisor URL will function.
-
Turn on the sound! If you server supports playing mp3 audio, set
$audioOK = trueinglobal_settings.php. By default it is set to false because servers without support for this feature may hang significantly if the setting is turned on. -
Use Google Analytics. You may add a Google Analytics ID to the $google_analytics_id variable in
global_settings.phpto track use of the program in Google Analytics. -
Protect your site using Captcha. To limit bogus activity on the Supervisor functions, it is strongly recommended that you use Google's ReCaptcha service. Obtain a ReCaptcha API key pair at: https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/start . Once you have done so, add them to the global_settings.php file and set
$using_captchato true.
The settings/settings_* files define the configuration for the games. By default, the program displays a list of public games configurations, including all of those included with the initial download. Game configurations can be made public or private in individual settings_ files.
Additional settings can be supported by the same installation by creating additional settings files; additional settings files must be named settings_xxx.php where xxx is replaced with an appropriate string. (e.g. settings_animal). As shown in the alternate demo link above, the settings_animal.php file describes the configuration for a game playable at the URL SortTetris?settings=animal.
The two most important variables in the settings files are $buttons and $data_file:
$buttonsarray, which defines the allowable answers (e.g. "book","chapter","article" or "mammal", "fish", "bird")$data_filepoints to a json file such as bibliography.json or animals.json
The prep_files.php file is a command-line tool for generating JSON-formatted data suitable for use with the program. Plain text files of categorized data go in the raw-data/ folder. It contains a subfolder for each knowledge area (bibliography, animals, presidents) and each subfolder contains a plain text file with a list of examples (one item per line). So the "animals" folder contains files for "mammal", "fish", and "bird". (Note that these files are named as singular nouns - these filenames will correspond to the item type displayed during the game.)
Run prep_files.php on the command line, giving the knowledge area corresponding to the folder name as an argument, e.g.:
php prep_files.php animals
This will generate a correctly-formatted JSON file animals.json in the data-files directory. When establishing a new JSON file, you will also need to create a new corresponging settings_FILENAME.php file in the settings/ folder in order to play a game with that data file.
The infopages/ directory contains infomrational or instructional materials to support learning. Links to relevant infopages are defined in the settings for each game. Users are encouraged to develop helpful infopages for any game they create.
The generate_infopage.php script creates very simple infopages most suitable for known-item lists, such as presidents or instruments. The script lists all of the answers by category and links to the relevant Wikipedia page. Note: this is not a "smart" feature -- it speeds up the process of creating such a page, but may link to the "wrong" Wikipedia page (e.g. the "triangle" wikipedia page is about the shape, not about the musical instrument.) It is strongly suggested that you test and edit any infopages generated automatically.
The generate_infopage.php script does not, by default, write a new file (to protect edited infopages from being accidentally overwritten.) To use the script to create a file, use the > directive to write a new file, e.g.
php generate_infopage.php presidents > infopages/presidents_test.html
To sort items alphabetically within their type, use the --sort flag:
php generate_infopage.php --sort animals > infopages/animals.html
Note: you might not want to sort items like presidents because they may have another valid ordering, such as chronological.
Written by Ken Irwin, Wittenberg University
"Atari" font created by Genshichi Yasui with a freeware license: http://www.fontspace.com/genshichi-yasui/atari-font
"Press Start 2P" font by Cody "CodeMan38" Boisclair, used under the Open Font License: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Press+Start+2P?query=press&selection.family=Press+Start+2P
Structure based in part on Tetris with jQuery by Franck Marcia (MIT License): http://fmarcia.info/jquery/tetris/tetris.html
Supervisor & Admin functionality substantially based on code from Dave Hollingworth's excellent Udemy course materials for Login and Registration from Scratch with PHP and MySQL
Animal photos used under the Creative Commons CC0 from https://pixabay.com, or under public domain from Wikimedia Commons.
scores.php makes use of the DynaTable jQuery plugin by Alfa Jango: https://www.dynatable.com
Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License.