Binary Breakout Options

These instructions can be used to figure the Binary Breakout game on this site to adjust the level of difficulty.

Unless these values are explicitly changed, the game will start with three binary numbers already displayed and a new number will appear every seven seconds.  Each time a new number is added, the delay before the next number is added is reduced by 50 milliseconds.  The first number will only use the three least significant bits, and an extra bit will be added after each six numbers.  When a question is answered correctly the student scores ten points, plus an extra point for each second they take less than seven seconds.

The options that can be added to the querystring are as follows:

• period= the initial amount of time, in seconds, before the next question appears - e.g. if you add period=5, a question will appear every five seconds at the start of the game and bonus points will be awared if the question is answered in less than five seconds.
• step= the number of milliseconds by which the period is decreased with each question (i.e. how much it speeds up).  You use use step=0 if you don't want the same to speed up, or the value could be negative if you want it to slow down for the more difficult questions (but bear in mind that the time will continue to increase once you're up to 8 bit numbers).
• bits= the maximum number of bits used for the first question - e.g. if you use bits=4 then the maximum number in the first question will be 15.
• bitrate= the number of questions asked before the number of bits is increased - e.g. if bitrate=5 then an extra bit will be used every five questions (up to a maximum of 8).
• start= the number of questions that appear at the start of the game - e.g. if start=2 then there will be two numbers in place when the game starts

For example, if you start off with fewer bits and a longer period, then students will quickly answer the question and the game might be empty for a lot of the time, so you might want to have more numbers in place to begin with.

You can use as many of these options as you like - if you omit them then the default values from the second paragraph are used.

If you're not familiar with querystrings, you need ? before the first one and & between them and they can appear in any order.  For example, to play the game with a number appearing every five seconds but only having two numbers to begin with, use the URL https://www.advanced-ict.info/interactive/binary_game.html?period=5&start=2