How we did it

Introduction

Our Virtual Lake Hill game was based on a game by Kangaroo Ground Primary School in Australia, The Virtual Mansion. Most of the work on our Virtual Lake Hill was done by Mrs. Levere's Grade 4 class. They were given several choices for internet projects, and they chose the hardest but most rewarding option.

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Programs used

All the work was done in the school's computer lab.

We used:

Macintosh computers

Claris Works 3.0 and 4.0 for the pictures

Simple Text for the image mapping

The example pages were created using:

A 486DX PC computer

Paint Shop Pro, version 4.10

Notepad for the image mapping

Netscape composer, version 4.03, for the text pages

Ideally, we would have liked to use:

Paint Shop Pro, version 4.10

Front Page Editor.

Technical Info

The class was originally taught the skill of one-point perspective drawing. They were then given the option of using perspective drawing or freehand.

The first step was to allot rooms, and note how each room joined to every other room. Black and white outlines of the rooms were drawn.

We then had to find the parts of each picture that joined up to other rooms. This process is called Image Mapping.

We then had to write down the co-ordinates of the corners on each image mapped area. This was the hardest part of the project. It was made harder by the fact that we were using Claris Works. Ideally, we would have used Paint Shop Pro or Paint for Win95.

We then needed to note which room joined to each image mapped area.
The rooms were then coloured, and the writing for each room was done.

The HTML code was filled in onto a template by the kids, and entered into the computer by the teachers.