Another event

I went to the stock car races. They're about as exciting as real world races: cars go round, and around, and around, and ....You get the picture. The cars are cool tho and they have good driving animations. There's a mall and a pit area. It would be a col place to film a machinima. Ok - I"m watching Death Race on HBO ....maybe we don't want to reenact it tho.

ANyway - I'm glad I got a chance to see the races. There was some impressive driving. I'd like to meet the script writers and the people who created the cars.

Here are some pictures

We have a cave and a waterfall now - thanks to Zoltan Bigboots

Zoltan Bigboots, one of the game design students built a cave and waterfall today. He figured out texturing, transparency, building, and some elemental scripting. He used the smooth animation script in the library to make his water fall ...wellll...fall. It came out great. And you can walk thru the waterfall into the cave. Nice work!

Here are some photos. Zoltan was playing as the Alien today - that's him in the pictures.

Events in SL

The students in Games & Society have to go to some event in SL this weekend. I sent them some examples to consider - giant snail racing, MMA fighting, poetry performances...something for everyone. I will post some of their pictures in a later post.

I figured I would check out some new events too and went to a geisha performance. there are pictures below. As you can see, the stage was set with a taiko drum and a statue of a samurai - or let's say samurai armor on a stand maybe. There were 5 or 6 performers on stage in gorgeous kimonos with highly decorated fans. The audience sat quietly on floor cushions and really seemed to be enjoying the performance. It was a nice change of pace from the country music/line dancing I have been doing a lot of lately. The sound track to this performance was drums and string instruments and a flute - no steel guitars or twangy fiddles.

PLay games and more games and more games

There's a thread on a mailing list I"m on about helping students have access to old classic games. One interesting suggestion was to get a license with steam as an internet cafe. Another was to get a subscription with GameTap. Both of them have interesting older games. Game Fly subscriptions for the students (like buying a textbook) is another possibility. The conversation turned to lists of games people should be playing.

Here's one list from the Game Career Guide - new, old, Flash, board, card, D&D....an ipmressive list -
http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/668/ask_the_experts_31_games_students_.php

And here's a list of games that seem to have been abandoned by their publishers or their publishers have gone out of business. You might not be able to play the games, but you can use the descriptions and images on these lists to get a sense for what the games included and how they looked.

• Abandonia - http://www.abandonia.com/
  
• Abandon Games - http://abandongames.com/
  

And last but not least by any means is to look for game play videos on youtube and elsewhere on the net. This is especially good for older games that just aren't available anymore (or their consoles aren't available. My students use game play videos now to illustrate the games they're presenting each week rather than bringing in hardware we don't have at school.

Game students exploring social games

We are talking about social games a bit this week so I had students play some facebook and twitter games.

Here are a couple they made using the tools from shufflebrain and sharendipity to earn some extra credit.

Alyssa Onofreo made two Shufflebrain Photograb games that are really challenging - Game One and Game Two

Students exploring SL

I gave my freshmen (for the most part) games & society students an assignment to go take a picture of themselves someplace cool. They had to use the camera controls so they would show their face in the pic. They couldn't be wearing newbie clothes.
here are a couple I got the day of the assignment. It was an assignment designed to encourage them to practice a few basic SL skills - camera controls, inventory manipulation, and searching.




And no collection of pics would be complete without a little Zombie action. Thanks, Mary, for this one!




And here's a link to the whole collection on flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgregson/sets/72157622435425358/

Cutest Little Avatar!

OK - I"m a big softie - I just bought a Chilly WIlly avatar. Is this not the cutest thing you've ever seen? He stands about .4 meters high. Normally I'm about 3.5 or 4 meters tall so he's tiny. Here's chilly standing on the carpet in my house (check out the pink flamingo statue behind him giving him the evil eye) and little chilly sitting on the couch. I will not be using this avatar often - but he's fun and most people have a very positive reaction - my girl friends all want to take him home in their pockets. My friend who plays as a dog sometimes wanted to use him as a chew toy but i put my foot (or in this case tiny webbed yellow flipper) down on that idea.

After 4 years I finally decided to buy a skin

We go thru SL looking at our own backs for the most part. I'm not sure I could pick my face out of a crowd with out looking at the name. In fact I changed my hair once and couldn't find myself in a crowd till I moved.

I've been fairly plain looking till just recently. I had the default skin or some freebie skin I picked up. Same with eyes and shape. Default was good enough.

This summer tho I suddenly got the shopping bug and bought a new skin and eyes and hair. I love prim hair - so does everyone in SL I think. Here's a pic of me in my new skin sitting in the house I built. I bought a pink dress too - me in a pink anything is pretty funny if you knew me in real life.

Some awesome avatars I saw over the summer

I forget where I was when i took these pictures but these are some cool avatars I saw over the summer.

Students building on the Park Communication island

At the end of the Spring09 semester my game design students did some building in SL - they didn't get much past basic prims, texturing, but they turned out some good board games so I'll give them a pass this time. Here are some photos of what they built

The re-enactment of the Henry the 8th coronation

I found some photos on my hard drive from this event. It was a hoot. It was fun to watch as well as colorful, historically accurate. They had definitely done their research. They had avatars for all the main characters who gave all the important speeches. They had clothes for the visitors so we'd all fit in with the event's theme. They even had a jousting tournament. The scripting for the jousting was amazing - it registered hits and damage and determined a winner.

Enjoy the pictures.



They had child avatars dressed up to match the actual costumes of children in the original ceremony. It's always kind of strange to see kiddie avatars, but these were necessary for historical accuracy.

Check out the background - that's a photograph of the real cathedral where the ceremony took place. Someone recreated robes, gowns and the crown.






They had a parade up to the church. We all stood outside to cheer as the king and his party approached the church.