Clue up on coordinates
IN my youth I spent many an hour with pencil and squared paper
playing battleships -trying to find where my brother had deployed
his fleet and to sink them before he destroyed mine.
Chalksoft's Man is a variation on that theme, in which an invisible
man is hidden somewhere in a grid.
You do not need squared paper and you don't need a brother!
As in the game of battleships, the object is to find the man
as quickly as possible.
If your guess is incorrect you are given a hint such as NW or
S.
To increase the challenge you have only a limited amount of
time to locate the man.
Failure to find him is rewarded by: "Do you want another
game?"
Success results in the sort of noise you associate with failure.
The program makes good use of colour and graphics, though a
grid of either lines or dots would have been helpful.
The program gets all the input and does not wait for Return
to be pressed.
The Delete key does not erase the last character input but all
of the current input string.
The hints which flash in a text window at the bottom of the
screen tend to disappear just as I look down.
When tested in the classroom this program did help pupils to
understand coordinates and I would recommend it, though it seems
rather expensive.
John Lord
