Hero Academy Architect: Data Division

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HERO ACADEMY ARCHITECT

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St Ignatius · Year 8 Computer Science

HERO ACADEMY
ARCHITECT

DATA DIVISION

Build a superhero academy. Power it with binary. Defend it with ciphers. Win the house cup.

Welcome, Architect! Pick your hero and let’s build.

Who’s building today?

Choose your avatar and type your name. It appears on your end-of-game summary.

Your name

How to play · {{ tut.step }}

Plan · choose a building

Professor Hexley

Tab / arrows to move · Enter to choose · P auto-place

Flashback! You missed this earlier, so here it is in a new format.

House standings

Speed bonus: {{ qv.timeLeft }}s

Hint ladder

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Exam conditions: no hints. Picture the place values and the groups of four.

EVENT CARD

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TARGET COLOUR

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Power meter: {{ qv.bitsTotal }}

Click a switch, or Tab to it and press Space. Use ← → to move along the board.

All sorted. Check, then press Submit.

Click a card, then click a box (or press its number). Click a sorted card to move it.

Click a card (or press its number) to move it into the next empty slot. Click a slot to send its card back.

Caesar wheel: +{{ qv.shift }}

Focus a wheel button and use ← → too. Top row = plain, bottom row = secret.

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Testing key {{ qv.shift }}: {{ qv.preview }}

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Imaging Lab · mini-lesson (new skill!)

How big is an image file?

An image is a grid of pixels. Each pixel is stored as a few bits. The number of bits per pixel is called the colour depth.

1 bit per pixel gives 2 colours (0 or 1). 2 bits per pixel gives 4 colours. More bits means more colours, but a bigger file.

THE RULE

size in bits = width × height × colour depth

size in bytes = size in bits ÷ 8

Worked example: this 8 × 8 smiley at 1 bit per pixel

8 × 8 = 64 pixels

64 × 1 bit = 64 bits

64 ÷ 8 = 8 bytes

At 2 bits per pixel it would be 8 × 8 × 2 = 128 bits = 16 bytes.

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8 pixels wide × 8 pixels high. Each pixel is one bit: 1 = yellow, 0 = dark.

Inter-house Championship

Pick your house!

Points for accuracy, streaks and sportsmanship. The timer only adds bonus points. It never ends a question.

Sportsmanship moment

Championship results

No question-by-question record for this game. It started before this feature was added.

Correct answer: {{ r.ans }}

Revise in the Knowledge Organiser

Everything is Secure. Outstanding work, Architect!

Paused

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Settings

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Save and load

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Export progress

Import progress

Reset progress?

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Knowledge Organiser

Computer Science · Year 8 · Term 2 · St Ignatius Catholic School · read-only

1. Number bases

Binary

Denary

Hexadecimal

Base

Base 2

Decimal / Base 10

Base 16

Digits

0 and 1

0 to 9

0 to 9, then A to F

Use

Used internally by computers

Used by people every day

A shorter way for people to represent binary

2. Compression

Compression removes data from a file so that it uses less storage space. This makes files quicker to upload, download and transfer.

Lossless compression reduces file size without losing information; the original file can be rebuilt exactly. It is suitable for text, spreadsheets and program files.

Lossy compression permanently removes some data to make a file much smaller. It is often used for photographs, music and video where a small quality loss may be acceptable.

3. Encryption

Encryption scrambles data so that only someone with the correct key can read it. It protects information sent over the internet and stored on devices.

A Caesar cipher is a simple substitution cipher: each letter is shifted by a fixed number of places in the alphabet. Decryption reverses that shift.

4. Converting number bases

Binary uses only 0 and 1. Each column represents a power of 2. Add the values above every column containing a 1.

128

Example: 10101000₂ = 128 + 32 + 8 = 168₁₀

5. Hexadecimal

Hexadecimal is base 16. It uses 0-9 then A, B, C, D, E and F, where A = 10 and F = 15. Each hexadecimal digit represents exactly four binary bits (a nibble).

Binary to hex: Split the binary number into groups of four from the right. Convert each nibble separately. Example: 1010 1000₂ = A8₁₆.

Hex to binary: Replace each hex digit with its four-bit binary value. Example: A8₁₆ = 1010 1000₂.

Real world: web colour codes #RRGGBB use one pair of hex digits (one byte) each for red, green and blue.

6. Run-length encoding

Run-length encoding (RLE) stores repeated values as a pair: the number of times the value occurs, followed by the value itself. It works best when there are long runs of the same item.

Example: A A A A B B C C C C C becomes 4A 2B 5C.

This is lossless: the original sequence can be recreated exactly from the encoded data.

7. Caesar cipher

Encrypt: apply a fixed shift to each plaintext letter. With a shift of +2, COMPUTER becomes EQORWVGT.

Decrypt: reverse the shift. Move every letter back by the key value. The key is the shift amount.

Important: Caesar ciphers are useful for learning but are not secure for real-world sensitive data because they have only 25 possible shifts.

Key vocabulary

Exam-style reminder: Show working for every base-conversion question, including the place values or groups of four. Use subscripts where needed: 1010₂, 10₁₀, A₁₆.

Imaging Lab notes (extra, taught in the game)

File size in bits = width × height × colour depth (bits per pixel). Divide by 8 to get bytes.

Example: 8 × 8 pixels at 1 bit per pixel = 64 bits = 8 bytes. At 2 bits per pixel: 128 bits = 16 bytes.