Game teleporter: A development tool for everyone

The Game Teleporter is an application that translates one file format to another without any user intervention. The application itself is made up of different combinations of input plug-ins and output plug-ins. For example, the application can take an Adobe Flash file as an input and then output a Playstation Portable binary that can be run on the specified target platform and have the same functionality as the original Adobe Flash file. Flash is a file format commonly used by Web developers to create animated and interactive Websites. Using Flash as an input opens up development to people who might have great ideas for games, but cannot display them on the desired target as they do not know how to write programs for it. This tool is applicable at all levels of education. A very simple input/output plug-in combination allows elementary school children to create a game simply by drawing pictures. This can enhance their interest in learning computer programming. As shown in this paper, students used this tool with a customized graphical input plug-in to create a basic game that will run on both Microsoft Windows and on a Sony Playstation Portable. College students can also utilize this application by creating and modifying the plug-ins to adapt to whatever the current technology requires. This paper lays out how the Game Teleporter functions, and how it can be used in education at all levels to generate better computer programmers for the future.