Rpg Maker Developers Group

Greetings,

I work for a non-profit and I am dreaming to build an educational game out of RPG Maker.
I had an idea on the gameplay and I have a huge team of teachers behind me to help me on content.

We want to facilitate the thinking process of kids when they do math word problems.
My example (below) has french words in it but I can provide a full translated version if needed.

I'm trying to find the best way to do these functionality:

1 - Having 4 strings of characters shown on a screen.
2 - Being able to carry them (visually) from one place to the other, in order to build an equation.
3 - Once built, replace the words in the string to (or add somewhere else) predefined number values.
4 - Flip through various operators to see different results.

Example:

Sophie is 14yo.
She wants to buy a bike that costs 100$.
She can save 10$ per weeks.
How many weeks she will need to save to buy her bike?

In the system, it would be separated this way:

1. String: Sophie's Age - Value: 14 - This element is not useful to the equation and needs to be discarded.
2. String: Price of the bike - Value 100$
3. String: Weekly Savings - Value 10$/week
4. String: Number of weeks saving - Value 10 weeks - This is the answer we are looking for.

In this example, you would need to place the elements this way:
Price of the Bike [ ] Weekly Savings = Number of weeks savings

We can then show the values of the elements but ot the answer.
100 [ ] 10 = Number of weeks savings

We can then flip through different operators, which brings different values as a result.
Example:
100 [ X ] 10 = 1 000
100 [ + ] 10 = 110
100 [ - ] 10 = 90
100 [ / ] 10 = 10

Then, you can validate the results to see if it's good or not.
I have another explanation here, with a video, showing this idea but as a JavaScript plugin, which might not be possible...

Since then, I have made many tests and researches...

So far, this is what I have done but I doubt this is the "easy" or "best" way:

• Create chests, which holds items related to the strings. I was not able to show the string as a sprite, so it can be picked up, since it is to big to add to an event. There must be a better way to do this... I'm clearly missing something.
  
  
• A parallel events that determines if you have the item in your inventory, to display an image over the character head as if it was carried. I would need still to change the animation, so the character has hands in the air but that's seems ok... lurked forum for that solution. Images are very small on mobile... is Yanfly Gab text a solution?
  
  
• Drop zones for the words, to build the equations. That seems ok... custom built. You can presently drop, swap but cannot pick up form these spots.

Here's a demo of that.



Now, here the next steps:

• If equation is built show a button/switch. I think I can do that.
• If equation is built show the predefined value of the strings (ss per example above).
  Not sure how to do this without hardcoding it.... might need pointers here.
• Assign operators and see calculated values. Not sure again... Yanfly Eval Text?
• Validation.

I know this is a long post but would appreciate any pointers to these fonctionnalites!

Many thanks...

J-F