This week, we've released a bunch of new features to improve Frankenstories. Some are significant enough to be worth a newsletter!
- Completely new multi-host view
- Pause game now keeps the game paused, even if everyone submits
- Shelley the snail now collects edits
- My Version is now called Polish, and is better
- Highlighters in projector
- Gallery browsing is better
- Frankenstories is now 99.99% stable
Completely new multi-host view
This is a big one! Frankenstories is great when played in small groups, but moderating simultaneous games has previously required jumping between tabs, which can get confusing.
Now you have a completely new multi-host view that puts everything at your fingertips.
It looks a little bit like a plane cockpit:
- You can manage all replies in the main column
- Manage specific games on the left
- Manage specific players on the right
But you'll find it makes moderation really easy when you play:
- If you use projector mode, you can toggle which game is currently projected (no more tabs!)
- If you want to keep an eye on something specific, you can filter in all sorts of useful ways (by game, by watch list)
- If you like to control the pace, you can pause and restart games individually or all at once
- If you like to read as a class the winners in each round, you can sync games so that they all pause at the awarding phase
This is a complete overhaul, but we hope it makes small-team play easier for everyone without sacrificing your ability to fully control the experience.
Pause game now keeps the game paused, even if everyone submits
Have you ever had the game paused while you are speaking and then suddenly the round bell goes off and the game advances to the next phase? That's because, historically, the pause button has only paused the timer.
Now the pause button prevents the whole game from advancing. Students can still write and submit, but the game will not proceed to the approval or voting phase until you click to resume.
(The only downside is that kids might yell at you for forgetting to unpause the game.)
Shelley the snail now collects edits
Previously, Shelley only collected unsaved responses, so if a student edited a saved response and didn't resubmit before time ran out, their edits were lost.
Everyone's favourite snail now collects all responses as they stand at the end of the round.
No more yelling at kids to save their updates before the round ends!
My Version is now called Polish, and is better
If you don't know about it, this feature lets students revise a version of the game text. It's a good post-game editing activity.
- We've renamed My Version to Polish.
- Students can insert and polish the final story text and/or their own replies.
- As before, these edits do not affect the text in the completed game; they are a separate copy.
- You'll find it easier to see student-submitted versions.
We have had several requests for track changes in these revisions. That's much more complex than you might think, and we can't get to it right now.
(As always, if you want cool features faster, spread the word so more teachers use Frankenstories Pro so we can pay for stuff!)
Highlighters in projector
If you've ever wanted to point out specific text features in a reply in projector view, we've added some highlighters!
The colours don't have any intrinsic meaning, and highlighting is not saved to the reply.
These are just a way to call attention to different parts of a reply as you speak.
Better image gallery browsing
We've made it easier to browse the image gallery while you're creating a prompt.
The main reason for this update was that I allow students to choose prompt images as a reward for behaviour in class.
I will have a prompt ready to go, but I will randomly roll images and let one student choose the image for the game before we play.
This update makes that process much easier, and makes the gallery easier to use overall.
And finally, Frankenstories is now 99.99% stable
Frankenstories is a busy game that puts a lot of traffic through school wifi networks, so if you have played it often enough, you will have run into instances where players drop out or freeze. Usually players can refresh the browser and pick up where they left off, but sometimes entire games can lock up.
We're always working on ways to make the game more stable, and as part of building and testing the new multi-host system, we have tracked down and fixed some of the most obscure and rare causes of game freezes.
Always send feedback, but you should notice a significant, if not total, reduction in gameplay issues.
That's it!
So much new stuff! And we have more on the way.
The next thing we are cooking up is going to have us back in our cave for a little while, but we're very keen to show you something we've been wanting to do in Frankenstories for a long time.
Always feel free to send requests; we do what we can to incorporate your requests.
Andrew & the team