Mandy Advances to Region Science Fair

Our family is very fortunate to get a double play in Science & Engineering Fair goodness this year.

Mandy had so much fun playing with Brennan's Tic-Tac-Toe project last year, that she decided she wanted to create her own game for the Web this year as her Engineering Fair project.

She chose the game of "Dots".  You know, that game you play on paper with other nearby friends during long boring meetings like a middle-school geography class, where you vie to capture more boxes than the other players by connecting dots to make the sides of the boxes.  She opted to name her game "DotMania", paying homage to our favorite video game franchise "ManiaPlanet" by Nadeo.

It was a blast to help her think conceptually about how to teach a computer to allow this game to be played, and even more fun helping her figure out how to make an interactive board with HTML, CSS And JavaScript.

The design she finalized on was to use an HTML table, with dots absolutely positioned in each corner of every cell, then adding "Click Zone" divs along the borders of each cell, handling the event when a player clicks on one of them.  If it's a valid move, it will highlight and check to see if that table cell's square is complete, as well as any adjacent square that shares the same border.

The game also tracks score as it goes.

Whether you're already a fan of the game, or you've never played it before, please give Mandy's "DotMania" project a try, and wish her luck in the Central Utah Science & Engineering Fair in March at BYU!

Play DotMania
It brings happiness.

Congratulations Mandy!  You're "awesomesauce"!