Doom engine as a learning platform - help

This may come out silly but I'm planning on building a learning platform for natural sciences (chemistry, physics, biology), and as I love playing Doom, why not combine the two together?

So what I would need is a kind of a "riddle property" for Doom that goes like this:

1. You shoot some demons to keep the player's interest on the game and after a while you enter a room. There's a door in the room and it's locked, and the only way to unlock it is to answer the "riddle".
2. There's a wall - or you get an on-screen text - that shows a question (the riddle) that requires calculation (e.g. "How many moles of HCl do you need to neutralize 2.5 moles of NaOH?")
3. After you've calculated the value, you enter the value somewhere (there aren't means to do this in Doom AFAIK), and if it's right, the door unlocks/opens.

If the riddle is written on the wall, I need custom textures and need to make an image file of all the riddles, possibly even multiple images because of the low resolution of the game. But if the riddle can be generated on-screen (like "YOU'VE GOT THE SHOTGUN" text), it'd be easier and the text would wrap nicely in separate lines.

Even better yet if the values of the questions could be made subject to randomization so you couldn't cheat/remember your way to the end while you're playing the second time.

If none of this can be made, I think teleports could be the way to include a simple answer handler: there are four teleports in a room, and on the side of each there is an answer. If you select the wrong answer and go through the teleport, you end up in a dark room with lava and Cyberdemons!

Any suggestions, guys? Are there already source ports that could make this happen? I really want this to happen and help is much appreciated.

This sounds like one of the laziest, most half-assed ways to integrate teaching and games.

I'd definitely check out Extra Credit's playlist of their videos over games in education. They talk about stuff like not doing incredibly patronizing stuff like this, and more about how to critically think about solutions for teaching through gaming.

Check out this thread: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/85344-maths-doom/

(Particularly my idea here, maybe: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1541137)

Honestly, I don't agree to any of that. There, you're just putting homework-like problems on the screen and expecting the student to want to do it instead of it just being an annoying thing in the way.

On the other hand, integrating what you're trying to teach into the actual game mechanics will give the students an engaging reason to learn. For example, one idea I had was an upgrade system based on tokens or cards or whatever. To make use of them, you need to put them into certain slots in a menu or something. However, each slot is paired, and each pair has a numeric value, as do all the tokens. And if you place a token into a slot and the numbers don't match, the upgrade doesn't actually work.

However, you don't need to match the numbers, and in fact most of the time you can't. Instead, if the sum or difference of the values of the tokens in the paired slots equal the value of the paired slots, that'll also get both to work. In fact, the upgrades could be more powerful if they're paired like this.

Bam, suddenly you made an "inventory puzzle" based entirely on basic algebra, without it actually feeling like someone's giving you a math problem straight from a sheet of homework. It's not like the game's suddenly changing genre out of nowhere, after all, it's just how maximizing your upgrades works - most games have ways of making sure you can't just effortlessly apply all your resources, after all, so it doesn't feel strange or out of place.

If you want to make a puzzle about neutralizing acid/base, don't just ask the question and wait for an answer: make a map with a caustic pool and have the player dump the proper number of acid barrels in it to be able to swim through it safely!


Anyway, to answer the question: yes, you can do this kind of stuff with a port that integrates a scripting language. Look at ZDoom for example.

Gentlemen, take it easy! I've never seen such reactions based on mere assumptions!

There are no "students" or "teaching" as some of you have thought.

I'm not here to talk about the effectiveness of the teaching part. I don't care about that one bit. I just want to discuss how to make this.

I'm making this for my own learning purposes. The "students" are me. I'm starting to prep for an entrance exam in January so I have 5 months to read, and I wanted to do the studying like this. Study with Doom. Doom becomes my exercise book. I plan to make it this summer, leave it to wait for January and then fire it up. Otherwise I'd be reading the problems from a book with B&W text. The book doesn't reward you like Doom does. If you don't get this/agree with this/feel a need to whine about how it doesn't help the students, please move on to the next thread to ramble. We're here to discuss about technical issues, like some good chaps here have done.

This is for my eyes only.

scifista42 said:

Check out this thread: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/85344-maths-doom/

(Particularly my idea here, maybe: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1541137)

Gez said:

Anyway, to answer the question: yes, you can do this kind of stuff with a port that integrates a scripting language. Look at ZDoom for example.

Thanks for the suggestions! This is the info I need. Kudos, sirs!