tradeoff

A memory game in Processing 3.4 with a NodeJS backend - an exam project for the first semester at Medialogy @ Aalborg Univerity. Watch the video!

About

TRADEOFF is a game where you are asked to remember a sequence of digits of varying difficulty.

• You earn points by correctly assembling the sequence in numerical order, as it was shown to you. The faster you begin assembling, the more points you’ll earn if you’re correct!
• You can fail three times before the game is over and the game is connected to an online scoreboard, allowing you to compare your performance to others.
• Every player who opens the game with an internet connection recieves a unique animal name based on their ip address as a way of anonymously identifying individual players on the leaderboard.

There is also a short built in tutorial to get you familiar with the game concepts.

The game is inspired by a similar game developed by the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, which is used document the short-term memory abilities of Champanzees.
Young champanzees are trained to memorize the location of nine digits, ranging from one to nine, on a screen. These digits were shown on screen for about half a second, but still long enough for the chimps to reassemble them in the correct numerical order once they had been blanked out.
Human short-term memory is not anywhere close to this effective and an idea of why that might be is known as the Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis.

This hypothesis details that the development of advanced language in early humans has supplanted the part of the brain dealing with detailed short-term memory, leading to a lack of ability in this specific area of cognition.
Even though the tradeoff ended up in our favour, one can’t help but wonder what other animals posses cognitive powers that exceed that of the humans mind.

How to play

Official game servers are no longer online, but you can still play the game by downloading Processing 3.4+ and opening the project by clicking on one of the .pde files inside the main folder. In addition to this, you must also download and install the Minim sound library from inside the Processing library manager.

Credits

• Sound effects were sourced from YouTube channel Brand Name Audio.
• League Mono, an open source font by Tyler Finck.
• VG5000, another open source font by Justin Bihan.
• List of animals (only used on the backend).