Finding the Fun in Folding

[kammueller]

Hey, I just started playing this game less than a week ago, and thought I would chime in on the whole intro puzzle discussion. Before I get to that though, i would like to say this is one of the coolest games I have ever come across. I still don't feel like I know what I am doing most of the time, but just watching this is somehow therapeutic…and frustrating all at the same time.

Might help to start the whole process with a simple video that describes what it is your are trying to do. I know the website has a lot of text devoted to that, but I was not able to transplate the verbage on the site into anything meaningful when first confronted with one of these chains. I am much more a visual person so if you can show me something instead of describing it to me I am much more likely to have it click in my head.

Now I know that the intro puzzles are designed to "show me" how to do this, but it seemed like I lost the context of why I was doing this while doing the intro puzzles.

Then maybe show a somewhat simple protein and make a couple improvements that show how the process works. I know everyone on here probably has their own techniques, but there are still some simple things that can be shown that pretty much everyone does. Nothing fancy, maybe just tweak a protein a couple times, shake it out and rebuild a small section. Then show the before and after so people can see that it has "compacted" into a lower state. People won't necessarily understand the techniques, but it might give them some context when actually doing the intro puzzles.

You also need change the intro puzzles to allow people to play with them even after achieving the needed passing score. Or as some of the others have suggested, make a second puzzle for each intro that is a little harder or have them fit a specific shape.

I guess you could always do them over, but redoing something that may not have made sense the first time might not help the second time either.

There were a couple of intro puzzles where I actually thought I had done something wrong, only to have the program calculate my score and tell me I passed the level. What…Huh…I don't get it, were an all to often comments.

Maybe at the end of the intro puzzles you could take all the individual lessons and wrap them into a simple challenge to get people started. Kind of like the suggestion for an intro video, maybe make a more detailed video, or a simple challenge to let the ideas set in for people.

I know when I finshed the intro puzzles and looked at some of the challenge puzzles out there I was at a loss for even where to begin. I suppose that is all part of the learning curve, but going from the intro stuff to the challenges is quite a leap. You end up going from 3-4 chains to something with 30 or so.

It is amazing to see comments by people who have been playing for months or even years who say that they are not sure exactly what they are doing. So maybe we ARE all in the same boat here.

[LennStar]

"Currently the guide becomes more transparent as you get close to it."
That would explain why I get troubles seeing it when it comes close :D

How much do you want to go to puzzles?
It is no problem to have it shown on the current puzzles, so that the players sees what should be done, but if you want a player to really rebuild after a guide, forget it. I never succeeded in this, and I'm not alone ;)

[axcho]

Thanks for all the suggestions, kammueller!

"Might help to start the whole process with a simple video that describes what it is your are trying to do. I know the website has a lot of text devoted to that, but I was not able to transplate the verbage on the site into anything meaningful when first confronted with one of these chains. I am much more a visual person so if you can show me something instead of describing it to me I am much more likely to have it click in my head."

Yes, we are actually planning on making a short video that will explain the idea behind Foldit, with some short text underneath. This would be linked on the front page instead of the Science Behind Foldit page that is currently linked from the front page.

"Now I know that the intro puzzles are designed to "show me" how to do this, but it seemed like I lost the context of why I was doing this while doing the intro puzzles."

I have also found this to be a problem. I am trying to think of a good way to present each intro puzzle in such a way that the context of Foldit is not lost. I think one thing that could help is using real proteins for each intro puzzle, and explaining a bit about each one on the side or something, making sure to highlight the difference between the intro puzzles and the actual science puzzles.

"You also need change the intro puzzles to allow people to play with them even after achieving the needed passing score."

Definitely. And I'd like to add higher levels of completion that can be achieved by getting past an even higher score.

"There were a couple of intro puzzles where I actually thought I had done something wrong, only to have the program calculate my score and tell me I passed the level. What…Huh…I don't get it, were an all to often comments."

Yep, this is a problem with some of the puzzles. The way we've currently set them up it can be very difficult to really ensure that the player has gotten the correct solution. One thing that may help is to use guide-based requirements, where the goal is to match the guide (and maybe get above a certain score) rather than only to get above a certain score. With guide-based requirements, the level design should also be more robust in the face of changes to the score function or tool settings.

"Maybe at the end of the intro puzzles you could take all the individual lessons and wrap them into a simple challenge to get people started. Kind of like the suggestion for an intro video, maybe make a more detailed video, or a simple challenge to let the ideas set in for people."

Yes. I'd like to do this in an even more integrated way, not just at the very end, but every few levels (or every level). Without such an opportunity to practice all these lessons together, I agree, people will not be able to make use of them effectively when they come to the science puzzles.

LennStar, I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Could you rephrase that?

[LennStar]

I wanted to know how "much" of use of guide you want to make.

There is a puzzle where you have to drag a helix to a position given by a guide - thats OK, you click, drag, finish.
But if you want the user to rebuild a buch of loops after a guide, than that wont work. Its just too hard to do.

A puzzle where you drag around different parts from different angles of view would be useful, I think. As a sort of otional. "You just have dragged a helix. But that was easy. Now you can train a bit. You have different parts frozen. You need to move the puzzle around to see the parts you need to move. Choose one and move it to the postition from the guide. After you have finished, you can unfreeze all, pull the puzzle to all sides and then try again to move it to the correct position. You can always finsih this puzzle if you think you have trained enough by clicking on skip on the right side"
Something like this.

[axcho]

Okay. I'm not sure how much use of a guide would be best - I'll have to try a few possibilities and see how they work.

I think what would probably make things interesting is to have the starting protein be pretty far from the guide, and would take a lot of folding before it gets similar. It might start out simple, like moving helices from different angles, but probably just for very early levels. There's not a lot you can learn if you just move things a little bit and the solution is obvious based on the guide.

[BootsMcGraw]

axcho said:
"I work with guides a lot in the intro puzzles and I would imagine that the reverse would be true.

Would anyone else like to offer an opinion about the guide transparency versus color change?"

I am badly colorblind. Reds, greens, and browns in the puzzles? They all look alike to me. Stick to transparencies. They won't be mistaken for the actual components of a puzzle.

[MellyLam]

The most fun part of folding for me is the competition (and the chat, but that is not unique to folding). This is the type of game that draws people who like to compete at a "battle of wits". That is the element missing for me in the intro puzzles–there is no competition at all, as has been discussed. Obviously reaching a certain score is integral to the intro puzzles, but they are simple enough (once you know what you are doing) that creating rankings isn't very meaningful.

Maybe competition could be arranged around the number of moves it takes to complete the puzzle. There could be a move tracker, kind of like the duels, but counting up. For each puzzle you could provide the minimum number of moves necessary to complete the puzzle, and also the current average number of moves it takes players to complete it (only counting the first time people try it to calculate the average though, or it may be disheartening to new players). That way people can gauge how they are doing both in terms of ultimate goals and in comparison to other players. This provides an opportunity for bragging rights for new players who aren't quite ready to compete in competition puzzles. Plus, I don't think any of the intro puzzles need more than 3 or 4 moves to complete, which sets a good challenge for new players, without being as abstract as the competition puzzles.

[admin]

Great idea! Just like chess, in fact. The intro puzzles would never get old, even for experienced players. We might have to constrain what a move means, for really long pulls, but perhaps we won't even need that.

[goodgameXXX]

I'm educated in molecular biology and biochemistry, so this is fun for me in seeing complex work done on my personal PC, like it was Battlefield Bad Company 2. That and it is a little bit of a self-study in those topics to try to devise a move that will gain a few points in score.

But I'm also enjoying watching the vast improvements in my folding due to just looping various scripts of others.

[enszyme]

After 5 month playing this game i'm in a position to loose my interest for it. My main philosophical question is : what is the interest of seeing my total global points and rank increase? Will i be more happy when my rank will reach the top ten (it's not possible but everybody can dream..) than when i succeeded to access to rank 300?

The main question to my mind is: "what is the interest of that play for science. Why was it so important for the community that i obtained a better score in the last puzzle played. What have I really learned with that game?"

I would be very happy to be enough informed of goals and science interest for each puzzle. That is done i think, but that kind of information need to be hardly worked. A short explanation for each puzzle should be for me the answer to that important question.

Please , excuse my bad english writing this text.

Salut a tous….