A Math Oriented Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

Created by Kate Swanson and Chris Piech - Spring 09

Goal

Mithril is the unification of MMORPG and educational gaming genres. By taking advantage of the hours of game-play, positive reinforcement leveling system, social interaction and expansive worlds that exist in MMORPGs, Mithril creates an innovative and rewarding learning experience. This game is targeted towards students K-12 and their instructors. Mithril’s main functionality includes integration of a K-12 math curriculum, a modern 3D graphical environment, server based multiplayer networking, and developed game world. Mithril has the potential to revitalize the genre of educational games altogether.

Gameplay

Mithril begins in a lush, magical forest landscape in a small village, complete friendly non-player-characters, moving water and smoke in the chimneys. Players can interact and chat with eachother over the network as they help eachother defeat foes and solve puzzles....(you can even do the Macarena).

The game itself consists of many customizable characters, varying enemy types, interactable NPCs, and magical puzzles. In the process of following Mithril's epic (math based) storyline, players will encounter many challenges including quests, fighting brutal (and sometimes cute) enemies, and solving riddles. Players can collect a variety of magical items from shops and treasure chests; including weapons,spels, and armour.

The World

The world of Mithril is complete with shimmering lakes, great mountains, and magical forests. Various techniques are used to create beautiful flowing fountains, dragons breathing fire, magical spells, and glowing lamps and auras. All characters are fully animated to perform many actions, from casting spells to idle animations such as stretching or dancing.

Educational Aspect

Unlike many attempts at educational games, the mathematical aspect of Mithril does not take away from the RPG gameplay. Instead, math applies to tasks such as replenishing mana, opening treasure chests, or gaining entry to towns or secret chambers. Players have an in-game tutorial on how to solve each different type of math (their "Book of Mithril"). Each spell, monster, or obsticle in the game is associated with a different math type as a function of its level of difficulty. Thus, as players gain higher level spells, the difficulty of the math they need to solve to replenish those spells increases proportionately- so that a basic mastery of the preliminary levels of math is necessary to progress in-game. Math problems are r, so randomly created with a grammer structure, so you may never see the same problem twice!

Creation

Mithril was built by Kate Swanson and Chris Piech in under 7 weeks as a Senior Software Project at Stanford University. Mithril's graphics engine is entirely built from scratch in C++ (and Java for the server side) using OpenGL and Windows SDL. The server has the ability to save and load state for the world and each client player recieves their state upon logging back in. All characters, art and animations have been created by hand for this game. Email mithril.mmorpg@gmail.com with any questions.

Check out our previous game!