New Worlds of Learning

HC in 1352 AD.

This video clip shows how the Toolset from the game Neverwinter Nights can be used to design a 3D world and create an interactive story for players - in this case the 'world' is the Hobart College campus in 1352AD.

Students in the Games Programming and Multimedia classes are currently learning how to create and link game areas through 'doorways' which may be a cave, a gateway, a light portal or a... door. The Toolset has wizards which allows the game designer to set up characters that act out a story. Object, sound effect and environment libraries allow the designer to set the look and mood of each scene.

The Neverwinter Toolset has been used by international educators to create engaging learning environments to teach communication skills and elements of journalism.

Tribute to Pacman...

The Computer Games Programming class have been busy building their skills... Early work started with some basic Flash 8 productions such as the following grass skier "game".



This progressed to more adventurous productions such as Hunters and Assassins by Tom:



Others have been using game development software such as GameMaker. The following is Daniel's tribute to the very early Pacman games. It might look simple but getting the trigger keys to time correctly was not easy...



Next term students will begin to use more complex 'game engines' from some successful commercial computer games.

In the meantime some students have been playing the new game PeaceMaker. This is a difficult game where the player takes on the role of Palestinian or Israeli leader and attempts to bring peace to those countries. The game uses actual historic events and the player chooses from a range of security, political and development options to bring peace.



You can watch some video clips about the game here and here.

Games on Toast

Delicious wafts of raisin toast filled the air in the Games & gaming SIG this morning - so did some smoke when one piece was cooked twice... fortunately the smoke alarms were not triggered and we didn't send the whole building out into the rain

After a slow start due to blocked roads we went through 3 loaves of toast.

A gamers SIG Community has been set up on the HC Social Learning Network and several people joined up.

Members can post to the blog about the SIG or their gaming experiences or comment on existing posts.

The Games and Gaming Special Interest Group (SIG) had a great started yesterday with 26 students hearing about Roger Stack's adventures in Second Life and Bernie's experience with WoW and The Lord of the Rings - The Battle for Middle Earth.

Roger talked about the 4.1 million users in Second Life (SL) and how hundreds of thousands of $$$ of real money change hands each day. A few people make their real life living in SL! He bought a property in Eldora some months ago - it's above the snowline - and he has built a gallery for some of his wife's art. That's his avatar on the left with the gallery behind him...

He's exploring the educational potential of SL - some believe that in the near future as bandwidth rapidly increases online interations will more often take place with avatars in 3D environments rather than just the text of chat or email. Many universities have already established annexes in SL.

More and more designers are using immersive worlds like these to try out their ideas... walking around, in and even through them. Recently the Half-Life game engine has been used to create a walk-through of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

Over the last year UNICEF has been hosting Global Kids in Second Life - teenagers from around the planet looking at local and global issues - see video clips.

After Second Life Bernie did an excellent presentation talking about WoW and Battle for Middle Earth - while showing off his new laptop

Here is his Middle Earth character Thrugg. Bernie took us on a bit of a tour demonstrating some of the features that makes this game one of his favourites at the moment.

Journalism Students Investigate Food Poisoning

Several students were rushed to hospital with cheese poisoning - and the journalism class were on the case - virtually! They were playing the Be A Reporter Game at News University and had to race against the clock to file a story by the deadline set by the Editor - who wasn't happy with sloppy work. All facts had to be verified and some of the characters in the game had to be interviewed several times before they told the whole story. But in the end several students saw a smiling Editor happy with their investigations.

The first couple of lessons were full on with interviewing and active listening, technology, reading The Mercury newspaper, more technology, writing a story, more technology... A little too much technology for some but everyone coped very well.

Students worked together to post their interviews on a blog - something new for most. Finding attention grabbing headlines and writing leads that capture the reader's interest didn't come easily...

The class watched EPIC 2015 and talked about the changing face of journalism as different media are converging and news services become more personalised.

The class has a great breadth of skills including writing, IT, graphics, photography and even video so it will be interesting to see what publications they decide to produce this year.