David Neville: The DigiBahn Project

Download Game Prototype

2011-04-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Digital Bahnhof (DigiBahn) Project is an interdisciplinary software development initiative seeking to program a 3D digital game-based learning (3D-DGBL) environment for teaching German language, vocabulary, and culture to advanced high school and beginning university students. The current basic prototype addresses the topics of recycling and waste management in Germany and has been developed to test proof of concept and as a research bed to evaluate how the narrative structures these environments generate can best be leveraged to teach a second language within simulated sociocultural contexts. Project development has been made possible with generous support from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) and Teaching and Learning Technologies at Elon University. Future work on the project will be supported through the CATL Scholars Program at Elon University.

The 3D game prototype is the next evolution of an interactive fiction (IF) game that was developed to teach students how to navigate a German train station (available for download here). The 3D game prototype and instructional materials have been developed with open source technologies, freeware, and software that is commonly found in the second language acquisition classroom. Developmental costs have thereby been kept to a minimum, easily within the range of the tight operating budgets that many language departments and programs deal with on a daily basis. Language instructors everywhere are invited to use the game and related materials in their own courses and to adapt or correct them as they see fit. I'm sure that there are numerous errors in the programming code, German language, and instuctional design. It is hoped that the game will show language instructors what is possible with current technologies and will help to serve as a catalyst for them to network in fields traditionally beyond the boundaries of their own discipline (e.g., digital art, computer science). The game, all associated digital resources, and supporting instructional materials are made publicly available under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

If you would like more information about the project, please contact the project director David Neville (dneville@elon.edu). Your feedback and experiences with the game will direct future game development and help create an environment that is fun, educational, and broadly accessible. I did all the 3D development, coding, and instructional design myself in my spare time over the course of one year, so the game doesn't play like Half-Life 2 or Mass Effect 2. It nevertheless hopefully shows the directions that language education can (and should) explore in the coming years.

For Students/Instructors

The game can be downloaded as a compressed .zip file and extracted to your computer. The extracted folder contains two releases of the game: (1) a Windows .exe file, which can be played on a PC, and (2) a Mac universal binary file, which can be played on a Mac computer. An accompanying player guide in .pdf format gives instructions on how the game can be played.

Download game

For Instructors

Instructional materials are available for download and include: (1) a PowerPoint presentation on recycling and waste management in Germany, (2) a vocabulary list, (3), classroom exercises; (4) a level-appropriate reading, and (4) a homework assignment. With the exception of the PowerPoint presentation, all instructional materials can be modified in OpenOffice, an open source word processing program.

For Developers

Game resources are distributed as a Unity package, a proprietary compressed file format that contains all the game source files for 3D models, code, and sound. Please download Unity and install it on your computer before attempting to extract these files. You can either double-click the package, which will prompt Unity to create a new project into which the package will then be imported, or your can import the package into an existing project. As the Unity package is rather large and contains many resources, it may take a while to download and extract all files. Computer code for the game was done in C# in Microsoft Visual Studio Express, 3D model development in Blender, 3D model textures in GIMP, and sound effects with Audacity using open source, royalty free, or collaborative sound resources (e.g., freesound). Once the Unity package has been extracted, all game models, scripts, and sounds can be found in the Assets folder.

Creating Instructional Materials

2011-03-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

Now that the game prototype is finished, I have been spending time getting the instructional materials ready. First to be created was the story, which the students will read before doing the related exercises and playing the game:

I was able to find several websites dealing with recycling in Germany and Austria (Berlin sammelt and Umweltprofis) and I adapted the information from these websites so that it was appropriate for a first-year German student. Basically, the reading details how recycling is sorted in Germany and simply presents factual information on the types of recycling bins available. The exercises that will follow (yet to be created) will personalize this information for the student. For example, a fill-in-the-blank story that describes how a student in Germany recycles objects in her apartment. The experiment group, of course, will use the game as a means whereby this learning can be made even more subjective and personal, hopefully resulting in measurable improved learning outcomes.

Walk-Through for DigiBahn Game Level

2011-03-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I made a video highlighting the finished game, essentially a walk-through of the environment. After capturing the video with FRAPS, I put the computer on standby and went off to teach. Once I came back to the office a few hours later I found, to my horror, that the computer would not run. The technicians at the university said it was loose RAM, which may have caused a short that fried the motherboard.

I just got the computer back, so I decided quickly to upload the video I had made before anything else happened to the computer:

That's it for now in terms of game development; I'll be focusing now on the development of the instructional materials. Once I get everything organized and ready for distribution, I will post links to where it all can be downloaded.

Score Screen Finally Finished

2011-02-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

I've been busy with teaching and other sundry university service responsibilities, which has taken me away from game development these last few weeks. Thank goodness that I was able to get the majority of development done during Winter Term when I didn't have a teaching load. The final problem I faced was getting the player performance data out of the game and into the score screen. In Unity, when one game scene is unloaded and a new scene is loaded, all assets (including class variables, etc.) associated with the old scene are destroyed. I was able to find a work around to this problem by 1) saving the performance data as player preference data in one scene, and 2) loading these variables in the new scene. Here's the code for it:

In the old scene, once the player completes that last task, his performance data is sent to the system before the new scene is loaded:

PlayerPrefs.SetString("PointsScore", pointsHolder.guiText.text);
PlayerPrefs.SetString("HealthScore", healthHolder.guiText.text);
PlayerPrefs.SetString("MoneyScore", moneyHolder.guiText.text);
Application.LoadLevel("final_screen");

Here I'm directly accessing the guiText object where this data is stored and then sending this data as a string object to the player preferences. In the new scene, I use the following code (excerpted) to get the data out of the system and printed to the screen:

public string finalPointScore;
public string finalHealthScore;
public string finalMoneyScore;
public GameObject geld;
public GameObject gesundheit;
public GameObject punkte;

public void Awake()
   {
   Screen.showCursor = true;
   Screen.lockCursor = false;

   finalPointScore = PlayerPrefs.GetString("PointsScore");
   finalHealthScore = PlayerPrefs.GetString("HealthScore");
   finalMoneyScore = PlayerPrefs.GetString("MoneyScore");

   geld = GameObject.Find("GUITextGeld");
   geld.guiText.text = finalMoneyScore;
   geld.gameObject.transform.position = new Vector3(0.14f, 0.517f, 1);

   gesundheit = GameObject.Find("GUITextGesundheit");
   gesundheit.guiText.text = finalHealthScore;
   gesundheit.gameObject.transform.position = new Vector3(0.185f, 0.45f, 1);

   punkte = GameObject.Find("GUITextPunkte");
   punkte.guiText.text = finalPointScore;
   punkte.gameObject.transform.position = new Vector3(0.145f, 0.38f, 1);
   }

And here's a screenshot of what this code actually looks like once the game is played:

Now that the game is finally finished, I need to start looking at getting the instructional materials assembled and creating lesson plans for the day on which the game will be tested in class. As I will also be working with human test subjects, I will need to get institutional IRB approval. All sorts of little things to keep an eye as the project moves forward!

Beer Bottles (Nearly) Imported

2011-02-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

The new semester has finally started and, as anticipated, I've been busy with teaching and course preparations. I'm glad that I had time over Winter Term to code the game, get the functionality figured out, and polish the game interface. I'm going to test the game prototype in about two months and, as it currently stands, I only have some minor tweaking to do and development of instructional resources.

The game will require students who play it to recycle bottles according to glass type: clear, brown, and green. This will allow students to practice vocabulary and grammar (German two-way prepositions, e.g.: Ich werfe die Flasche in den Braunglascontainer), all within a simulated real-world context. For the last few weeks, however, I've had some difficulties getting the bottles to be "just right." Either I could make the entire bottle transparent, or none of it. Basically there was a problem with applying more than one texture to a single game object inside of Unity. I was finally able to solve this problem by composing one bottle out of several different objects, each of which had an unique textured applied to it. So, for instance, I was able to take a German beer label (which shouldn't be transparent):

And apply it to a beer bottle, which needs to be entirely transparent. So, I made an object for the label inside of Blender and applied the label as a texture before importing it into Unity. I did the same thing with the beer bottle, albeit with a space in the model where the beer label object would be inserted. Once inside Unity, I created a compound object composed of the the Blender objects. And here's the result:

A minor detail, perhaps, but one that I think adds a little extra layer of authenticity to the game, although I don't know whether the students will take time to think about the extra work that it entailed. Now that I got the clear and brown glass bottles finished, I just have to do the green glass bottles and non-recyclable trash and the game will be mostly finished. And, by the way, Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier is really good.

Start, Info and About Screens Finished

2011-01-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

Took a break from doing modeling in Blender, where I still need to make game resources (bottles, cans, trash), and spent a few days getting the game start, about and information screens setup. With Unity, this was a snap to do and only required minimal scripting in C# and light image creation skills in GIMP. This is what I got:

Start Screen

Info Screen

About Screen

In the coming days, I will try to make a screen capture of the game as I also included a really nice sound loop that I found on FlashKit, which unfortunately does not come across on screen shots. I'll probably also get back to making the final game resources before getting down to writing the instructional materials for the game. Nevertheless, I'm happy to say that I'm weeks ahead of schedule and should be able to test the game out in-class in April.

Game Finally Coded

2011-01-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

I have been working feverishly these last few days, hoping to get get my game coded before the semester begins. Once the semester begins, I'll have my hands full with grading, teaching, and the what-have-yous of being a university professor. And although I won't be testing the game until the end of the semester, experience has taught me that the end always has a tendency of sneaking up. So, better to get it done sooner than later. Here's what I got:

I finished just in time, as I was starting to get loopy from writing code. This morning I was getting frustrated from making changes to a certain script but not seeing any difference in gameplay. Then I realized that I was editing a script for a totally different object than the one with which I was interacting. Time for a break!

Now that all the game logic is coded, I just have to add a few more game objects (e.g., bottles and trash) and then think seriously about how I will instructional the game. Sure, I have a general idea about what topics will be covered, but I need to think about prior knowledge that players may have and sequencing the instruction. In sum, a good chance for me to put my ideas from an earlier article into effect. Once that is done, I will be making student supporting materials (e.g., homework) using Scribus. After that, well, hopefully an article and national open-source distribution of the project.

Polishing Interface and Writing Code

2011-01-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

I have been working these last few days on tweaking the game interface and writing the code the will provide game functionality. I'm happy to report that the code for managing the points and health in the game are all finished, as seen in this screenshot:

Every minute, the code will deduct one health point and play a small audio file (a "ping"); players will be able to get health points by purchasing something to eat or picking up a first aid kit. When players gain health points, another sound file is played. The game points work on the same logic. Once I get the money interface finished (what you see in the screenshot is just a place holder), I will get to work on developing the interactive objects that the player needs to pick up and recycle (or throw away).

I'm also happy to say that coding the game is going much more smoothly than I thought. Progress in this area was helped on tremendously by code I grabbed from the AlmostLogical blog. Once I got my mind wrapped around the code, tweaking it for the game was very straight-forward. Here's a screenshot of the code:

I've been really impressed with the Unity code libraries. Some game functionality, which I thought would take lines of code to write, are accomplished with one-line function calls. Hats off to you, Unity.

On a side note, an interesting report on the NPR website detailing how video games increase brain power and multitasking skills. Apparently, computer gamers perform better than non-gamers on certain tests of attention, speed, accuracy, vision and multitasking. Who would have thought?

The Verisimilitude of Real Spaces

2011-01-07T09:58:00.000-08:00

Playing Half-Life 2 Lost Coast a few weeks ago, I was struck by the sense of "place" that the game provides and the story that the spaces tell in a visual manner. Not only were the images beautifully rendered, but the spaces themselves seemed to emit a sense of real history, especially inside of the church:

Since starting work on my project, I've been fascinated by this real sense of space that can sometimes be found in virtual worlds and I've been wondering if it could be leveraged to help teach a second language. They say that nothing helps students learn a second language better than immersion abroad. I just wonder if immersion in a virtual space can also be helpful and, if yes, in what manner. Can the story that virtual spaces tell help to create mental narratives that students can use organize a second language and navigate spaces in which this language is used?

Although clearly not as beautifully rendered as the Half-Life 2 game, I've been trying to develop a verisimilitude of real space in the game I've been developing. In other words, to get it as close to a real-world German town as possible:

Now that the models are developed and inserted into the game, future work will focus on scripting player/object interactivity an C#, polishing gameplay, and testing the game prototype in my German 122 class in Spring Semester 2011. After that, well, then comes the boring stuff of writing up essays to discuss data and research findings.

Reflecting and Refracting with the Fountain

2011-01-03T11:42:00.000-08:00

More than halfway with reimporting developed game models, which entails opening the models up in Blender, removing the object scale (Alt-S) and rotation (Alt-R), and redoing the rotation and scaling in Edit Mode. For fun, I decided to throw in a model of a fountain into the museum square instead of a tree. I also wanted to play with the water reflection and refraction capabilities that Unity offers. Almost every German town has a fountain at the center of town and, in my opinion, Bad Oberdinkelheim should be no different. This is what I got:

The second floor of the museum is reflected in the water and the bottom of the fountain is refracted through the water. All in all, very easy to do with no coding involved; just drag-and-drop functionality that is controlled through the Unity GUI.

Reimporting Blender Models

2010-12-29T10:45:00.000-08:00

Have been busy these last few days putting the finishing touches on the new and improved city museum for the game and have begun reimporting already-developed models. I will be using the opportunity to change the format of the textures from .png to .jpg as the latter seems to be much smaller in size and Unity can handle them better. Here's a screen capture of what I've got so far:

Once I get a spare moment I will make a video of a walk-around to better illustrate the virtual space. Broke my hand - again - so I'm having to manage Blender and Unity with a left-mouse configuration; at least for the next four or so weeks. Good thing I already have most of the development work already done.

Blue Window Frames and FRAPS Test

2010-12-18T11:05:00.000-08:00

Finally got the second floor of the museum finished, including all textures and the final changes to the meshes. Although I will be adding several more models for the prototype test (e.g., medieval tower and some traffic signs one would normally find in a pedestrian zone in Germany), I wanted to do a quick test to see how the framerate for the game was. I exported what I had as a Windows executable file, ran the game from my laptop (Dell XPS M1730) in 1280x 1024 windowed format, set the graphics quality for "beautiful," and let FRAPS record the information for me. This is what I got:

Frames: 2739
Time (ms): 48159
Min fps: 49
Max fps: 76
Avg fps: 56.874

Still a better framerate than television (~30 fps). And here is a screenshot of the test, showing the completed second floor of the museum and the remaining meshes that need to be textured:

I noticed in earlier tests that the .png texture format was just too large and caused the game to slow down too much; I switched all textures to .jpg format, which seems to render much more quickly. All in all, a pretty good test, I suppose, although I wonder what the framerate will be on my students' computers when they test the game next semester. They may have to set the graphics quality for "good," or perhaps the game will lag too much. One other thing to test out before the prototype is deployed.

I thought a day or so about what I should do with the second floor window frames on the museum. Although I could have done them in a regular brown wood texture, I didn't know whether this would be as optically interesting. Then again, I didn't want to add something that one wouldn't perhaps find in Germany. So, after searching a while "Fachwerk Fenster" in Google Images, I discovered this nice picture:

I thought the blue color added a nice touch, so I sampled the color inside GIMP and created a texture map for the windows. I didn't put too much effort into the frames, however, since I'm guessing that most players won't spend too much time looking at the second floor of the museum and I needed to quickly move on to other aspects of the project, such as programming the whole thing in C#.

Fachwerk Imported and Pontification on the State of Second Language Studies

2010-12-14T09:38:00.000-08:00

After making some minor tweaks to the museum model inside of Blender, I was finally able to texture- and bump-map the exposed timber work meshes and import them into Unity. Once I got the workflow down, the whole process went very quickly. Main points to remember: (1) make modifications to meshes in Edit Mode, not Object Mode inside of Blender; (2) break up larger mesh objects into smaller ones (select vertices you wish to separate in edit more and then press P-Key); (3) create one base object, apply texture- and bump-maps, and *then* make copies of the mesh (Shift-D in Edit Mode). So far, this is what I got:

Front View, Entire Project

Side View, Close-Up

Back View, Close-Up

Now that the timber work is in, I'll be focusing on getting the window frames completed and perhaps texturing the second floor of the museum. Once that is done, I'll maybe do a quick walk-around in a video.

Finally, a bit of pontification. I've been watching the support and study of second languages at the university level slowly unravel under the weight of the economic recession, with programs at the University of Albany SUNY, University of Toronto, University of Southern California, and elsewhere either get "streamlined" or eliminated altogether. Although I certainly bemoan this trend, I wonder if language professionals have not, in some small part, helped to bring this calamity on their own heads. I was surprised, for example, that at the recent 2010 ACTFL conference in Boston, no panel discussions or exhibitors were addressing the impact the iPads and similar devices could potentially have on the teaching of literature. If second language professionals were more engaged with new and emerging technologies, and actively conducting research (and writing grants) to evaluate this technology in instructional settings, would we be more relevant for a wired world? Would it help to revitalize our profession?

Vertical Beams Completed

2010-12-10T09:07:00.000-08:00

Just finished getting all the vertical beams inserted into the mesh, which I have highlighted in this screen capture in white:

All the beams were based on one root mesh object, to which I applied both a color and bump map channel. Once this was done, I made a copy of the mesh inside Edit Mode (Shift-D) and then dragged the copied mesh to the new position. So that the same face of the beam was not facing out on each beam, I rotated the copied mesh object 90 degrees on its z-axis. On every fourth rotation I would rotate the mesh object on its y-axis. This provides a possibility of eight "unique" faces for each beam, hopefully giving the viewer a sense of variety while not increasing the work load of the designer (me, that is) too much. Next development task: the horizontal beams.

CATL Scholar Award and Bump-Mapped Beams

2010-12-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

Now that the semester is almost officially over (one more final to give, to the regret of my students), I have had more time to catch up on small project minutiae and make some substantial progress on my project. One thing I forgot to mention in prior posts is the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) Scholar Award, which was announced back at the beginning of November and which will help support the DigiBahn Project as develops one complete level of a 3D digital game-based learning environment for second language acquisition. The award will provide course release time to assist in project development, purchase hardware and software, and grant access to technical training and new conference venues.

I've been making progress these last few days on getting the exposed vertical beams in the second floor of the model in place:

If you read my earlier posts below, you will recall that I complained that the color and bump maps could not be applied to all the beams after they had all been created and that I had to start from scratch again. However, I found out that if channels for color and bump maps are created in the original object, and copies of this object are then made, all subsequent changes to these channels propagate across all already-made copies of the original object. So, in a sense, copied meshes inside of Blender are object-oriented, provided that the root object of these meshes contains all the information required. In sum, changes to copies of an object cannot be applied retroactively.

I've also been having some fun with the bump map channel inside of Blender:

The color for the beams was sampled in GIMP from a photo of exposed timber work on a German building and the bump map, which was also created in GIMP, was selected from a photo of wood grain. The result, I hope, shows old rough-cut wood beams that, over numerous generations, have been painted over. I'm not sure how I can get the bump maps into Unity 3D, and this is something that I will need to work on.

Textured Beams On the Way!

2010-12-08T08:31:00.000-08:00

Seems to be either feast or famine when it comes to blog postings with me. Now that the semester is officially over (besides the final I still have to administer), I have a lot more time to do game development. Wish I would just be able to spend more time on doing background research on the use of 3D digital game-based learning environments, but I figure that if I don't get the game developed I won't have anything to test anyway.

After creating the model completely, I discovered that you can't apply a texture to one instance of an object (say, a vertical beam) and expect it to be applied to all instances of vertical beams in the game object. So much for a true object-oriented paradigm. So, what I have had to do is delete all instances of vertical beams (except for one), apply a texture to this object, and then make copies of it:

To ensure that there was some variety in the textures visible to the player, I would copy a beam, rotate it 90 degrees, make another copy, and repeat the process. This ensures that at least four different faces are visible; hopefully players won't look too closely or they will discover the pattern. But at least it is better than the same face for every beam. So, in the coming days I will be working on getting all the textures applied to the model and then importing it into Unity 3D.

Full Museum Model Finished

2010-12-08T07:01:00.000-08:00

Well, I should add that the full museum model is almost finished - I still have to add the door handles to both doors. Otherwise, how will people be able to get in and out of the building? Although I still need to get a handle on how to light a scene most effectively in Blender, I made a few quick untextured renders to provide an overall impression of the building:

Front View

Back View

Minus the door handles, the model consists of 3731 vertices, which I hope Unity 3D will be able to handle once I import the model. As this will be the only model in the game with a high vertex count, I'm hoping that the game engine won't take a big hit. We'll just have to wait and see. In the coming days, I hope to make another turnaround render of the model and post the video.

Exposed Timber Work (Fachwerk)

2010-12-01T06:58:00.000-08:00

Since I started redesigning the city museum model, I thought I would add a few extra features that were not in the original. If you check my earlier posts (see below), you will notice in the screen shots that the exposed timber work (Fachwerk) on the second floor of the museum is simply painted on in the textures; there is no real 3D "feel" to this aspect of the model. I thought about adding the exposed timber work for some time now, wondering if the extra vertices would slow down the game at all. But it is exactly this feel that makes, in my opinion, the real Fachwerk so interesting when you see these buildings in Germany:

So, now that the semester is starting to wind down and I have a little extra time on my hands, I thought that I would start adding the Fachwerk to the second level of the city museum. After checking a few sources online about how these buildings were constructed, I came up with the following (untextured) addition:

I think the addition adds much more to the real "feel" of the model, although I'm not sure what type of performance hit the game engine will take with the extra vertices. Oh well, that's what prototypes of for, I suppose. I particularly like the crisp edges of the model, although this is obviously lacking in the original buildings, which have an old, weathered look to them and a more "organic" feel; as if they have grown rather randomly through the ages. The next thing for me to work on in the coming weeks.

Burning Down the House

2010-11-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

These last few weeks I have been banging my head against the proverbial digital wall, trying to get my computer game -- or 3D digital game-based learning environment, which sounds more sophisticated -- to work just the way I would like. The primary problems were: (1) the door animations in the game just didn't open and close right and (2) I couldn't get two animations on the same mesh object to play independently of each other inside of Unity. Taking inspiration from a Talking Heads song, I decided to burn everything to the ground and start over. As trying to explain my problems in written format is difficult, I made a video highlighting what the problems were and the solution I found for them:

So what have I learned? Well, for starters, any changes (e.g., scaling and rotation) you want to make to a Blender object that you will eventually import into Unity *must* be done in Edit Mode, not in Object Mode. If you made these changes already in Object mode then Alt-R will clear the rotation and Alt-S will clear the scaling. Apparently, you cannot include more than one animation armature on an object, which makes animations working independently of each other difficult to create (e.g., opening and closing two doors). However, this worked example by Devin and Calin Reimer shows that it is possible, with some advanced knowledge of how Blender animations work inside of Unity and a handle on the C# programming language. Thanks, Devin! Oh, by the way, if you use Devin's script in Unity when you have the Terrain Toolkit loaded, you'll get nothing but errors.

Now it's just a question of getting the models rebuilt, working on a GUI for the player to use, and getting some of the game functionality programmed. Trying to make the deadline by end of next semester so that I can run an experiment with a beginning German language course and publish the results. Let's see if I will be able to get everything done by then.

First Blender Animation Imported into Unity

2010-10-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

I have had my nose to the proverbial grindstone these last few days, working hard to get a Blender animation to play inside of Unity. After two solid days of coding, debugging, and scouring the Web for clues, I finally got it to work:

To summarize my findings: Unity doesn't automatically import mesh animations from Blender. Rather, what you need to do is to create an armature, make the mesh child object to the parent armature, and then animate the armature. The animation needs to be saved as an action in the Blender Action Editor, which Unity picks up once you import the file. Work on the animation spanned three development platforms, Blender, Unity and Microsoft Visual C# Express (which I configured for automatic code completion). Now that I have a rough idea of how to get objects to move within the game, I'll add some extras such as sound and screen-based text. Should be a lot of fun.

Jacked-Up .blend Files

2010-10-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

For some reason or another, it has been a busy start of the semester, even though I have one course reduction and also minimal preps since I'm teaching a course I've already taught in the past. Getting the NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant team together, the proposal written, and submitted took some time, in addition to my other committee responsibilities at the university. Pretty soon, the semester was half-way over and I hadn't done any real development work on the project directly.

To get me back into development, I formulated a project workflow that would increase my knowledge of Blender and Unity while getting a prototype game developed, which I hope to test live in my beginning German language and culture course next semester: (a) view a few videos from Blender Essential Training; (b) import models into Unity; and (c) begin programming game in Unity. Imagine how frustrated I was when, after opening the .blend file for the main building in the game, I noticed that I could not get the models to rotate while in mesh mode:

After I had checked other .blend files, which seemed to work fine, I came to the realization that the model file itself must - somehow - be corrupted. Nothing I did seemed to correct the problem, and I'm not even sure I could fix it, so I was forced to revert to a prior version. Good thing for backups! I did lose some work, which perhaps equates to about 1-2 days of recreating what I lost.

NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant Proposal Submitted

2010-09-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a long while since I last posted an entry on this blog. The start of any semester is always difficult, and this last was no exception. Between course preparation, grant submissions, and other sundry tasks needing completion, I've been rather busy. To get back in the swing of things, I've decided to post excerpts from my recent NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant proposal. Much of what I drew upon to draft the grant can be found in prior articles addressing the topic of 3D digital game-based learning for second languages acquisition, although the process of writing the grant - I think - sharpened my focus a great deal and made a few things clearer to me, such as the role of narrative structures as a means of transmitting situational linguistic and cultural knowledge. Anyway, here's an excerpt of what I sent off:

4a. Environmental scan
The research and development of 3D-DGBL environments for SLA is still in its infancy, with most advances coming from private industry although work in the academy is quickly gaining momentum. Alelo Inc., for example, produces a customized series of 3D interactive video games and simulations that are widely used by the US military to train its personnel in Arabic, Dari, Pashto, and French. The academy, on the other hand, tends to rely primarily on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games, the modification (or “modding”) of these games, and 3D virtual reality worlds such as Second Life as instructional platforms for SLA. Although COTS games can be used to teach a second language, they run the risk of conveying false cultural information. Foreign releases of the popular strategic life-simulation game The Sims, for example, are linguistically and culturally disjointed in that they simply layer the second language over gameplay based on a US West Coast suburban lifestyle. Modifications of COTS games can also be limited by copyright restrictions, and purchase of the original game is usually required to play any derivative modification. Furthermore, the effort and time required to modify a COTS game to the point that it is culturally accurate and pedagogically viable speaks powerfully in favor of developing a custom 3D-DGBL environment from the beginning. Finally, 3D virtual worlds have proven popular in SLA and open source projects, such as the synthetic immersive environment (SIE) Croquelandia, which is used in intermediate Spanish courses at the University of New Mexico, are beginning to gain traction. The recent spate of virtual world closures (e.g., Teen Second Life), however, raises the question of whether this technology is ideal for long-term development as an instructional platform. The open-ended and unstructured gameplay of virtual worlds can additionally be difficult to manage and assess in an instructional setting, and the pragmatics of these worlds may not necessarily be those of the target language and culture. While 3D video games commonly rely on a predefined story or narrative arc to structure gameplay, virtual worlds emerge out of unpredictable, unscripted, and complex sets of interactions among their denizens and the unique communicative norms of the virtual worlds themselves. As these norms can potentially be overwhelming for beginning students of a second language and culture, more research must be conducted on how the narrative structures of standalone 3D-DGBL environments can be used to scaffold the learning process.

4b. Enhancing the humanities through innovation

Situated cognition theory, sociocultural approaches to SLA, and current discussions in video game studies point to ways in which the narrative generated by 3D-DGBL environments may be leveraged to help teach second languages and cultures. Situated cognition theory posits that people apprehend reality and transmit knowledge by means of narrative structures. Essentially subjective "stories" of a perceived reality, these narrative structures are not monolithic and unchangeable, but must be continually validated, augmented, and corrected by the communities of practice occupying specific sociocultural spaces. Current sociocultural approaches to SLA focus on this intersection of the personal and the communal, with particular attention being paid to the linguistic artifacts that emerge there. Underlying these approaches is the assumption that language acquisition is a process occurring not only in the head of the individual language learner, but also between the heads, so to speak, of people sharing common linguistic and cultural systems. This insight is important for SLA as it suggests that narratives shape specific social, cultural, and linguistic contexts; that they transmit the core values of the communities of practice inhabiting these contexts; and that they are ultimately negotiated on a personal level based on the identities, needs, and unique subjectivities of the people seeking entrance to these communities. Each person provides a "plot," as it were, to interpret these dominant narratives, which in turn generates a life "story" that can be evaluated as an independent artifact of this interaction. Many video games have a similar core dynamic. Presenting simultaneous multimedia output that is shaped by player interactions with the game world, these games generate narrative that is highly immersive and necessarily participatory in nature. The figured worlds that unfold through these interactions, each one being slightly different based on player input, performance, and personal preference, are a direct result of players feeling their way through the contours of the game world on a physical, mental, and emotional level and, as a result, form a story that is as unique as the players who interact with the game.

The DigiBahn Project will be developed at this intersection of narrative as a form of situated knowledge, narrative as an artifact of intercultural and interlinguistic activity, and narrative as the product of a figured digital world. Informed by these complementary theoretical approaches, the project will prototype a 3D-DGBL environment for teaching the German language in specific sociocultural contexts to advanced high school and beginning university students. Underpinning project development is the instructional proposition that immersion in a 3D-DGBL environment will allow players to create narrative structures that they themselves configure through interactions with the game world and which, in turn, configure players as new members in a simulated community of practice. A corollary of this proposition holds that these narratives can then be transferred out of the game world in order to help players navigate and make sense of real-world sociocultural and linguistic contexts.

Screenshot of gameplay from The DigiBahn Project

Towards these ends, the proposed project will develop one level of standalone 3D graphic adventure game for both PC and Mac platforms requiring players to navigate a virtual German pedestrian zone and train station while meeting specific instructional goals such as using recycling and trash containers, operating a foreign automatic teller machine (ATM), purchasing a telephone calling card, interpreting departure and arrival tables, finding the appropriate track for departure, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs). Answering calls made by the Modern Language Association in its Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages Report to revise and revitalize the teaching of second languages and cultures by means of new technologies and innovative instructional approaches, the project will look for specific ways in which 3D-DGBL environments can: (a) engage a wider range of students in the SLA process through challenging and meaningful gameplay; (b) align with SLA learning objectives and assessment strategies; (c) function as a gateway to upper-division cultural studies and language courses; (d) recruit high school students to second language and culture courses at the university level; (e) promote learning through the development of transferable mental schemata and situated sociocultural knowledge; and (f) foster deeper translingual and transcultural reflection.

So, Like, Where is Bad Oberdinkelheim?

2010-08-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

Earlier plans for the game I am developing included creating an exact mock-up of a real-world German space, specifically Stuttgart Central train station, as the game environment. My thinking at the time was that the game should expose a player to virtual spaces that were as authentic as possible so that the learning that takes place in these spaces would also be authentic - or "real" - as possible. For some reason or another, I was stuck on the idea that a video game is only legitimate insofar as the spaces it represents are based in the real world. Not only would this help in transfer of mental schemata, I theorized, but it would also go a long way in removing the stigma that video games were in someway separate from reality and, by extension, therefore useless in an instructional setting.

Problems emerged, however, when I realized that many real-world spaces just don't lend themselves very well to a video game environment. Sure, games can be layered onto real-world space (such as geocaching does), but games generally involve the creation of what Huizinga describes as a "magic circle" that separates the real from play. Real-world spaces are generally simply meant to be functional, and sometimes they do a poor job of even that. The idea of making the game environment to be as "authentic" as possible was finally put to rest after a discussion with Anne Balsamo at the Humanities Gaming Institute a few months ago, where she asked me (roughly paraphrased): "And why would normal instruction in the classroom be perceived as more authentic?"

Her comment led me to realize that what I normally do in the classroom is also, at its most basic level, also a personal interpretation of what I perceive to be authentically German and that I had unrealistic expectations of 3D digital game-based learning environments. Just because the environment appears to me more real than, say, a textbook does not mean that it really is. There is also a large degree of personal interpretation that creeps into the creation of the game space. So, I decided to create a game that had playful virtual spaces that emulated German sociocultural spaces, instead of a game that used real German sociocultural spaces and forced them to be fun. The latter, I thought, seemed to be a recipe for disaster (or, at the very least, a potentially boring game). Thus the imaginary town of Bad Oberdinkelheim came into being:

The development of the town will be influenced by the the surrounding area: The Romans were indeed this far north and buildings in this area do manifest a certain type of architecture. The game, in sum, is a verisimilitude of the real. How these game spaces play and feel, however, will be largely informed by theories formulated by game studies, new media, and digital game-based learning. It will, at the very leasts, be interesting to see what comes of the whole project in the end.

Finally, looking at the recent video I made for the last blog posting, it occurred to me that the video settings were all whacked-out. I specifically did not like the black letter boxing on either side of the screen. So, here's another attempt at the same thing:

Although this time I think I did less of a good job explaining why I think 3D video games are good for second language acquisition. Oh well. It's hard to talk, think, and walk around a 3D space at the same time. In sum, my hypothesis is that such video games lead to more efficient and effective learning by helping students perform better on assessments in certain areas, retain what they learn longer in their minds, and develop mental schemata that can more easily be transferred from simulated virtual environments into real-world environments. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me via email.

This may be my last posting for a few weeks. The semester is starting up in a few weeks and I need to get my classes, and a conference paper on webcams in the classroom, organized. IN the future, I will be doing the coding for the game, so we'll start to see how the game objects, player interactivity, and learning objectives all come together.

3D Resources for Game Prototype Finished

2010-08-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

Fall semester will be starting in a few weeks, so I have been working like mad to get as much finished on the game as possible. Experience has taught me that, despite best intentions and wishing otherwise, the start of every semester brings with it the inevitable distractions and game development generally tends to suffer during this period. The hard work on long summer hours in the office finally paid off, and just this morning I put the final touches on the door handles to the museum. What better way to celebrate than to make a screen recording?

Actually getting the screen recording made was an odyssey in itself. I've been using Camtasia in the past to make the recordings, but I wasn't happy with the frame rate and choppy playback. Doing some research online, I discovered that the other people soled this problem by running Camtasia with the DivX video codec (which is lossy, compared with the standard lossless Camtasia codec that ships with the software). In other words, no choppy playback. This solution did not work, so ended up saving my Unity3D game as an .exe file, running that file in a smaller windowed screen, and using FRAPS to record the results. A lot nicer solution!

The video shows all the models I created in Blender and GIMP for the game so far, talks about my plans for testing the game prototype, and even outlines some of my ideas on why 3D digital game-based learning environments would be good for second language acquisition. Basically, my hypothesis is that such video games lead to more efficient and effective learning by helping students perform better on assessments in certain areas, retain what they learn longer in their minds, and develop mental schemata that can more easily be transferred from simulated virtual environments into real-world environments. I'll be using Fall Semester to polish the game interface and program player interactivity and, in Spring Semester, I'll go live with the software in a beginning German class to see what aspects of the hypothesis can be supported by experiment. An article will follow shortly thereafter. In any case, should be a lot of fun.

Signs Inserted

2010-07-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Spent the morning and early afternoon working on a display box for the museum signs. Had some difficulties getting the stainless steel texture "just right" for the sign, so I opted to go with a scratched metal texture from DeviantArt. I wish I could spend more time getting the 3D objects to look more authentic, but since I do the art design, programming, and instructional design for the whole project, I have to keep things fairly simple. Too much depth in one area means that the project won't go forward quickly. In any case, here's the latest screenshot:

I didn't make a close-up screen capture of the poster display as I wanted to show how it fit into the whole museum entrance. For the rest of the afternoon I think I will turn my attention back to the book project, which has been on the back burner for a while.

The Romans in Bad Oberdinkelheim

2010-07-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to make the historical background to Bad Oberdinkelheim seem as authentic as possible. While looking at the map of the surrounding area, it occurred to me that, perhaps, the Roman presence was felt this far north. After looking at a few historical maps, specifically one that detailed Roman history in the state of Hessen, I discovered that the Limes Germanicus indeed ran through the area. What better way to celebrate this fact than to have a numismatics exhibit in the city museum:

I wonder just how far I could push the Roman influence and history in the game. Roman ruins as a historical site that the player can visit, similar to the Roman baths in Weißenburg, Bavaria? Perhaps a good point of collaboration with a classicist. I'm still not completely happy, however, with simply hanging the exhibit posters on the wall next to the museum entrance. I'm thinking that perhaps I should model some type of stand or holder in which the posters can be displayed.

Special Exhibit in Bad Oberdinkelheim

2010-07-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

While designing the square in from of the city museum, it occurred to me that perhaps the museum should have a special exhibit. A few moments on the Web for gathering inspiration and a few moments with GIMP resulted in the following poster:

Very nice that the exhibit has generous support from the Goethe-Institut, Sparda-Bank, and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research! I wish they would support the DigiBahn Project. Anyway, I was originally going to insert the sign into a holder, which would be displayed in front of the entrance to the museum. Instead, I decided to hang it on the wall to the side of the entrance. Partly because I felt it gave the wall some color and, perhaps more truthfully, I was tired of developing 3D models:

Now I need to think of ways to include the poster and special exhibit into the game. Perhaps the player finds a ticket to the special exhibit on the ground, which he is able to sell to an NPC, finally giving the player enough money to purchase a phone card to complete the level objective of making a phone call.

First DigiBahn Walkthrough in Unity

2010-07-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

For the last week, I have been working on getting my Blender models imported into Unity, installing a skybox, and putting some of the first person interactivity in place. Fortunately, with Unity much of this is simply a questions of dragging and dropping the appropriate pre-constructed assets into the game project. Here's a screenshot of what I have developed so far:

And - if you are interested - here's a video of the same thing, with some additional commentary on the game models and perceived benefits for second language acquisition courses:

Since FRAPS doesn't work with Unity, I'm back to using Camtasia to do my screen recording and, as a result, some choppy video when recording the game sequence. I'm going to have to find some software that will do screen recording for games, preferably something free. Any suggestions?

While looking through some old screen recordings of earlier DigiBahn Project development, I came across this video:

At this point of project development (about one year ago), I was working with seven students from German, digital art, and computer science to get something off the ground. As we were not in agreement with what platforms to use, we decided to mock something up with an Oblivion mod. As some of the students have graduated and gone on to pursue advanced degrees, I have been left to do all the 3D development, programming, and instructional design on my own. It's been a steep learning curve, but I've certainly learned a lot and the project is moving forward at a very decent pace, as a comparison between these two videos will attest.

And Thus It Begins

2010-07-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

After conducting some initials test of importing Blender models into Unity, I decided that it was time to begin development of the game in earnest. I fired up Unity, started a new project, imported a Blender model, and saved the scene. Here's what I got so far:

A modest start, but at least I'm moving forward. In the coming days (weeks, months?), I will be working my way through Will Goldstone's Unity Game Development Essentials while creating my own game. I'm very happy that Unity can read Blender files natively, which grants me much more flexibility in actually developing the game. I can, for example, import a Blender model, see how it looks in the game, make any necessary changes to the Blender file, have the changes automatically update in Unity, and then move on to importing the next game resource. In this manner, I think I will be able to develop the whole game in a step-wise manner.

Stadtplan von Bad Oberdinkelheim

2010-07-09T10:39:00.000-07:00

Keeping with the idea that the city museum will also be a tourist office of sorts in the game, I decided that a map of the city and its immediate area should be located in front of the museum. Simply modifying the meshes for work I have done already on the pedestrian zone sign, I came up with the following model:

To make the sign, I did a quick Google search for "Stadtplan" and found a nice .png image for Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz. This image is actually only a placeholder as, once the game level is done, I'd like to make a map for the way the game level actually looks. This way, the player/learner has a reference point for the layout of the game. And, keeping with the idea of transferable learning, gets used to looking for similar structures in real-world spaces while abroad in German-speaking lands. Here's a quick render of where the map could potentially be placed in front of the city museum:

I'm at a loss, however, on what to do with the empty space adjacent to the city museum:

The other day I was thinking that, perhaps, it would be a nice place for an outdoor cafe, and I even went as far as making a sun awning for the cafe. Unfortunately, however, it just didn't look realistic and I decided to forget about it. Perhaps simply the exit for the museum? I'll have to give it some more thought.

Museum Signs and Integrating Information Channels

2010-07-07T10:27:00.000-07:00

Spent the later morning and early afternoon getting signs made for the city museum. Here is a quick render of what I have so far:

I think that in the coming days I just may add a sign indicating hours of operation. Once that is completed, I will add a few other things that can typically be found in a pedestrian zone plaza in front of a museum: a few benches, flower pots, bicycle rack, etc. One aspect of the 3D digital game-based learning environment that I find particularly attractive is the interactive-visual. Player/learners will have to integrate information passed along a visual channel (e.g., the "Stadtmuseum" sign) with information passed along audio channels (e.g., a NPC who tells the player/learner: "Gehen Sie zum Stadtmuseum"). I'm thinking that the process of piecing this information together in a virtual representation of a real-world space could help foster the growth of stronger mental schemata.

Learning Objects and Unity Import Test

2010-07-06T08:44:00.000-07:00

Since writing my conceptual analysis on how to structure narrative in 3D digital game-based learning (3D-DGBL) environments in support of second language acquisition, which is scheduled to appear in the upcoming issue of The Foreign Language Annals, I've been thinking a lot about how to make my design recommendations an instructional reality. In the analysis, I basically describe the unique problem that 3D-DGBL environments pose for the instructional designer, that of player/learner agency, and posit that a learning object/object-oriented approach might be a way to manage this agency. Each game resource could potentially present an opportunity to learn for the player/learner and should be designed as a complete unit of instruction, addressing areas of language, society, culture, and overall gameplay.

Although I think my conceptual analysis is a step in the right direction, a move away from abstract theory toward practical application, I still am wondering how these design recommendations will actually be coded into the game. Case in point: The tower I have been working on for the last few weeks. I've spent a lot of time trying to make it look realistic, but how do I I move it out of the realm of "eye candy," so to speak, and into the realm of valuable instructional object? And how do I do so in an unobtrusive and interactive manner? Some of these questions, I think, will be answered in the coming weeks as I work in Unity and discover its strengths and limitations. Some of the object-oriented design that I propose in the article may need to be layered onto the game (e.g., code that causes a certain event to be triggered when a player is in the vicinity of the tower) instead of being included directly in the object in true object-oriented fashion. This insight leads me to believe that the pedagogy of the future will be strongly defined by its tools and player interaction with the products of these tools, rather than solely by theory which prescribes how these tools should be applied. Effective instruction may arise at the intersection of tools, theory, and practice, which in my mind highlights the importance of language instructors of the future being proficient in numerous technologies and programming languages. Anyway, just some thoughts as I work on the game.

I took Unity and Blender for a test ride yesterday, wanting to see how easy (or difficult) is would be to import models from Blender into Unity. Initially, it did not look so good as the first model I imported (into the demo game that ships with Unity) had a lot of shadowing on the meshes:

After consulting Unity Game Development Essentials by Will Goldstone, however, I discovered that I was importing the models incorrectly. That is, I was not making the appropriate settings in the Meshes section of the Inspector component. Once I checked the options for calculating normals, smooting angles, splitting tangents, and swapping UVs, I got this much cleaner import:

So much nicer! And I really like the effect of having a medieval tower on a tropic island. Some aspects of the import could still be improved upon, such as how to get the bumpmap applied and getting the lighting just right, but otherwise the process of getting it imported was very easy. Here's the screen capture illustrating how I did it:

Video of Finished Tower and Explanation

2010-07-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished putting the final touches on the 3D tower model in Blender. I decided to document some of my backend work on the model with FRAPS and show of the tower with an turnaround render. This is what I got after merging the two videos in Camtasia:

From here on out, I need to figure out how to import this model into Unity 3D. From what I've looked at so far, I need to bake the textures onto the model, and then put the .blend file into the correct Unity project directory. Apparently, Unity reads .blend files natively, but I'm sure that I will uncover some interesting problems as I import the model.

Windows and Clock Finished

2010-06-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

Just finished remodeling the tower, which entailed adding recessed windows for the upper tower structure, a recessed clock face, a recessed door-like entrance on the side of the tower, and a hoist. Here's the most recent render (w/o a bump map or much thought given to the lighting):

I suppose if I had more time, I would really make the upper tower structure look nice. Once I become more proficient in Blender, I'll move on to explore some of its more powerful features. For the time being, however, I gotta get these models cranked out and imported into Unity, so some of it's gonna be fast and a bit dirty. Maybe someday I'll take a 3D art class myself, or get some digital art students on-board who can really get some work done.

Tower Hoist Addded

2010-06-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

While getting the tower model ready for importing into Unity, it occurred to me that I should perhaps also add some type of hoist mechanism above the elevated window/door. After all, the denizens of the medieval town needed someway to get their mead up into the tower, right? Here's a quick render (w/o bumpmaps or much thought given to lighting) on what I developed this morning:

Although the particular image I have been using of the Obertor tower in Bad Camberg does not show a hoist, I have seen this mechanism on other medieval structures in Germany and thought that it would perhaps look good on the model. A bit of artistic freedom, perhaps. I also thought that it would break up the flat surface of the model a bit, giving players something to look up to while they are exploring the game. All in all, it was an addition with a fairly low vertex count, the iron ring having a total of 32 vertices. Still don't know how the Unity game engine will handle such things, but I'm hoping that the addition of such minor details - although hopefully not a CPU or GPU hog - will give the game world an added sense of depth.

Summer Workflow and Theory at 30,000 Feet

2010-06-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I sat down and updated my research blog. With the birth of our new son, the dramatic and total failure of my computer's video card, and my attendance at the recent Humanities Gaming Institute I have been extremely busy and distracted. Now that things are settling into a routine at home, my computer has (once again) been returned, and the institute is over, I can get down into a productive summer work flow. This is how I'll most likely divvy up my time:

Monday through Thursday:

Mornings: Work in the office, develop 3D game resources, watch Blender videos, play with Unity game engine.
Afternoons: Help out at home with children.
Evenings: Help out with children, read up on secondary literature (gaming, second language acquisition)

Friday:

Mornings: Work in the office on book project and blog.
The rest of the day same as M-Th.

Weekends:

Do whatever I can, whenever I can.

Before the summer is out, I'd like to polish my workflow by developing some models in Blender, baking UV textures onto the models, and then importing these into Unity. Once I've done this, I should have a fairly good idea of how Unity will handle the files and whether they are low-poly enough. I'm sure other bugs will emerge during the process, which will hopefully help me figure out where potential bumps are and how to smooth them out. I'm specifically focusing on two models to import into Unity, the tower and building I have already developed (see posts below). There are a few things I would like to adjust on the tower before I import it into Unity, namely the windows and clock. In past models, I simply “slapped” these features onto the main mesh, which seemed passable enough but did not give the tower a sense of reality. Windows generally are recessed a bit, a feature I'd like to add to the model:

Now for my feedback on the Humanities Gaming Institute. I've been torn for a while on what I should say about it. Although I did not stay for the entire time (family responsibilities called me home early), I'm not sure that my staying the full three weeks really would have provided me with new insights on how games could be used in a humanities context. In fact, much of the discussion at the institute seemed to be highly theoretical – at 30,00 feet, if you will – and did not address the “how” and “why” that are fundamental before games can be successfully applied in humanities contexts. There was a lot of talk of Foucault, Flusser, and Huizinga, and not enough talk (in my opinion) on learning objectives, the nature of knowledge in games, game affordances, assessment, and debriefing strategies. My question was simple: “Why should I choose to use a game to teach Topic X instead of another approach and what is the best way to use the game?” and I'm afraid that I did not get a solid answer. This was a huge oversight, in my opinion. Perhaps this is just my training as an instructional designer coming out, but I think that video games must be carefully thought-out before they are used as instructional tools.

The Dell from Hell

2010-05-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Now that the semester is finally over, I thought that I would be able to get some quality development time in. My Dell XPS M1730, however, had other ideas. I've been having nothing but problems with it for the last, oh, four or five months. For a while, the Battlefield 2142 would come up with visual glitches, showing weird model textures:

And sometimes even getting the in-game text all jacked-up:

Most irritating! Especially since I was trying to gather gameplay images for my book project. And since I also wanted to sink my teeth into Blender and get more modeling done. So, after countless software re-installs, driver wipes and updates, memory stress tests, and graphics card stress tests, I finally turned the XPS over to campus tech support, who installed a new motherboard and, just yesterday, a new graphics card.

The XPS worked well for about one day, whereupon it promptly crashed hard to a black screen and now stubbornly refuses even to boot. I'm now on a Dell Latitude D630 loaner and am watching Essential Blender Training videos to keep in the flow. Hopefully the XPS will be back soon in good working order (which I doubt), so that I can get back to game development and, most important, so that I can pose as a hard-core gamer at the upcoming Humanities Gaming Institute.

Would I ever get (or request) a Dell product again? Given my experiences with the XPS, probably not. Maybe a comparable Apple product would be nicer.

FRAPS Test and Musings on Second Language Acquisition

2010-04-29T09:50:00.000-07:00

Finally got the full license for FRAPS yesterday and I decided to take it for a spin around the Battlefield 2142 neighborhood to see what it would do. All in all, I'm very impressed with the software and consider it $37 well spent. It will be especially useful when I begin to document gameplay for my book project and describe the development work I am doing in Blender. While making the video, I also started to reflect on 3D digital game-based learning for second language acquisition:

To summarize what I say in the video: I think that the sense of presence these 3D games provide can be a powerful platform on which to design second language instruction. Specifically, the simulated social contexts found in these game environments - when coupled with well-designed second language instruction - could potentially create learning situations that combine embodied action with spatially-situated knowledge. Or, in other words, the student will know what to do and when to do it.

I think that this type of research is really sorely needed at the moment as the humanities continue to flounder. As essays in The New York Times recently pointed out, the outlook for the humanities is particularly bleak and the recession has hit graduate students especially hard. Not that digital game-based learning is the panacea for all these problems, but perhaps it is a new direction (like the neurological approach to English literature) that will help us to re-conceptualize what we do and lead us to see it in a new light.

Test Render for Foreign Language Annals

2010-04-19T12:46:00.001-07:00

This past week I have been polishing my 3D digital game-based learning article for The Foreign Language Annals, getting ready to get the final submission out the door. Now that the text has been corrected and improved, I thought that I would look at the images that I would include in the essay. I have done a lot more 3D development since the time I originally submitted the essay and I want to put my best foot forward. Throwing all the models together that I have created so far, I came up with this:

Nothing really fancy with lighting or texturing, just something to give the readers of the essay an idea of what is currently possible in a 3D gaming environment. I just wish that some of this technology had been around when I was learning Russian. It would have made mastering the whole perfective and imperfective verbal aspects so much more fun.

Hitting Two-For-Two

2010-04-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Good news on the DigiBahn front! Briefly stated, the paper I submitted to The Foreign Lannguage Annals (FLAnnals) was accepted with minor revisions and my application to the Humanities Gaming Institute was also accepted. Wow, hitting two-for-two. I was particulalry surprised (and flattered) about what the three reviewers for the FLAnnals had to say about my essay:

I'm fascinated by this topic and I think the author has introduced the subject well, defended his/her thesis and I look forward to seeing more things from him/her.

I think it's safe to say, however, that there needs to be more research of this kind to keep pace with the changing definitions of literacy.

I enjoyed reading this manuscript. It is very well written; it flows very logically. As a instructor who utilizes a great deal of technology and recognizes the potential for game play, I find the intersection between theory and the potential of gaming nicely stated and reflecting many possibilities.

I thank you for a glimpse of what language learning could become in the near future. An app for my iPhone!

As noted above, the text is extremely well written and does not need much editing in terms of mechanics, style, etc.

I was hesitant about the manuscript would be received as the topic of digital game-based learning is extremely new in the field of second language acquisition and I was afraid that it would be perceived as fadish or just way out there. Computer games to teach a foreign language ... huh? Anyway, the feedback was a tremendous source of validation for my project and made me think that a book project - just maybe - might also be similarly received.

I've been spending the last week tightening up my submission to FLAnnals and will return to modeling once I got the essay where I would like it to be. Then, as the submission also needs some good images as eye candy, I will spend some time setting what models I do have up for some still renders. I'll will add more information about the Humanities Gaming Institute as soon as I find out more. And lots of pictures, too, when I am down there.

Leave a Light On

2010-04-10T05:30:00.001-07:00

I am getting closer to finishing work on Building A, after which I will make a movie using most of the models I have developed so for for the game. Because I couldn't wait to see what it would all look like in the end, I inserted my lamp model last night and did a quick render:

Not bad, I suppose; it looks almost real! In the coming weeks, before I make the video, I'll be adding the finishing touches to the models. For instance, cleaning up some of the meshes, putting recessed windows into the tower, a gabled roof for Building A, perhaps some flower boxes, and a few other knick-knacks such as a museum sigh, hours of operation, and an international sign indicating tourist information. I'll also see if I can grab a model or two off the Web for a bench I'd like to have in front of the museum.

Layering the Bumpmap

2010-04-04T10:26:00.000-07:00

Since I started using Blender, I have been using GIMP to make my bumpmaps. Usually I just took the colormap and did the following to it:

Desaturate the layer
Invert the colors
Adjust the brightness (to 15) and the contrast (to 90)

Then I would import it into Blender in its own texture channel, map it to the rendered normals, and call it good. The problem I have been encountering, however, is getting different quality of bumps, so to speak, on the same bumpmap.

This problem became especially apparent as I was modeling the upper floor of Building A, an older exposed timber work structure. How would the beams look - well, like wood beams - and the stucco more smooth? Then it occurred to me that, just like I make the colormaps in GIMP using layers, perhaps I should also try to make the bumpmaps with layers, too. And this is what I got:

Although I still need to work on the texture for the beams a bit - the wood grain runs (strangely) in the same direction for all of the beams - I am pleased with how it was possible to make a distinct contrast between the strongly-grained timbers and the smoother stucco. I think that I will revisit the bumpmaps for all the models I have developed thus far and tweak them bringing them into Unity3D.

Update: And here is a quick render of the model with a new and improved bumpmap:

Looks a lot more interesting and realistic, although for complete realism I suppose that I would have to check out a book on how to construct exposed timber work houses in Germany. Something else for my "to-do" list I suppose.

The German Town is Taking Shape, Nein?

2010-03-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

It has been a long while since I made a video detailing work on the 3D models for the German town I am currently developing, so what better time than the present to correct this oversight? Here's a brief 44-second video of what I got so far (with a voice narration as an added bonus):

Although I say in the video that I will be dropping the models into Unity3D very soon, it may take a few more weeks until I get all the textures applied and baked on. Should be exciting to see if it all works out!

Fachwerk and "Jacob's Ladder"

2010-03-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

Spent a nice spring day, when I should have been outside, instead in front of the computer working on 3D models. I was able to get a substantial amount of work done on the second floor of Building A, which entailed fiddling with Blender settings to unfold the mesh a bit cleaner, looking at photos online to get ideas on German exposed timber framing (Fachwerk), and trying things out in GIMP. A screenshot of the Blender interface, showing the work in progress:

On a totally unrelated note: I also spend the afternoon crawling through YouTube while working on my model, listening to whatever caught my fancy. Today is was "Jacob's Ladder" by the Canadian prog rock band Rush. Madness, I say! Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Grant Awarded, Game Progress, and Application for Summer Gaming Institute

2010-03-23T07:04:00.001-07:00

Some good news to report: The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) at Elon University has awarded me with a substantial grant to foster the development of the DigiBahn Project. The grant will be used to upgrade the game engine from the free Unity3D Indie to Unity3D Pro (license comparison here), which will allow me, among other things, to improve the render-to-texture effects in the game, optimize game performance with the editor profiler, and import streaming videos into the game. I'm thinking that the latter will be especially useful for inserting instruction videos into the game (such as those I make for my beginning German language courses using Camtasia) via an in-game hand-held PDA device. Incorporating such a device virtually in the game might be a good way to blend instruction and the game environment in a non-obtrusive manner that minimizes impact on the game flow. I will even have some grant money left over to get some textures from Arroway.

Now that I am on Spring Break, I have been spending a lot more time with game development. I'm still working on developing what I have termed Building A for the game, which will be located adjacent to the tower, and had the chance recently to do a quick render:

The render showed that I needed to tweak the bump map a bit and, perhaps, that I also need to revisit the color map as well. I'm not too fond of the corners of the building. I'm also wondering what I should do with the doors. Eventually, I'd like to be able to open them, but I'm not exactly sure how I will go about doing this at the moment. As Building A is an older structure, I'm thinking that it will probably serve the purpose of a city museum (Stadtmuseum), such as the kind that is also located in an old building in both Munich and Göttingen.

Finally, I just sent off an application to the upcoming Humanities Gaming Institute, which will take place 07-25 June on the University of South Carolina. My wife and I are expecting our second child (a boy) shortly before the institute kicks off, but hopefully I will be able to attend as much of the institute as possible. I will keep you posted regarding developments in this area.

Making UV maps and 3D model textures get along

2010-03-18T08:43:00.001-07:00

I've been having some fun recently getting the textures for my game models look just right, which has resulted in a change in my workflow. In the past, I would create a UV map by first making seams in the 3D meshes where I think the least amount of distortion would occur, unwrap the mesh, export it as a .tga file into GIMP, and then create the texture based on this file inside GIMP. As my models became more complicated, however, I would have to texture the models in layers. I also began using the Unwrap Smart Projection option, which seemed to produce flatter surfaces with less distortion. An unfortunate side-effect of this procedure was getting my mesh scattered from hell to breakfast, as you can see in the UV/Image Editor of this screenshot:

And although the UV maps generally came out more distortion free than usual, some components of the mesh (such as the windows in this model) continued to come out in different sizes and slightly skewed, which made it difficult to texture the model inside of GIMP.

After tweaking around with the software for a while, I came up with the following solution:

Insert seams into the mesh so that the least amount of distortion occurs;

Unwrap and the mesh using the Unwrap Smart Projection option;

Clean up and organize the projection;

Export as .tga file into GIMP, where a rough 3D texture is created;

Save texture as .png file (high compression) and upload into Blender;

In the 3D View Edit Mode of Blender, select areas in mesh that need fine-tuning;

Adjust UV projection points in the UV/Image Editor; and

If necessary: make aesthetic changes to 3D texture in GIMP and re-import.

Hopefully this workflow will last me for a while, or until I come up with something else that works better, is easier to do, or both.

Heroic Narratives?

2010-03-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to get some development on the project done these last few weeks, but I have been distracted by the day-to-day responsibilities of a college professor that have been nickel-and-diming my time. An interesting product of these distractions, however, has been a new general studies course examining the role of the hero in Western culture, with a primary focus on texts in the German tradition. I thought that, since most video games use a heroic figure as a means of inserting a player into the game space and for advancing gameplay, an examination of a recent video game hero, say, Commander Shepard of Mass Effect 2 fame would also be in order for the class.

But thinking about player agency, and how it could potentially trouble the emergence of a heroic narrative, got me to thinking about how current heroes are structured, what it means to be a hero today, and if contemporary heroic narratives differ from traditional ones. How is Beowulf different from/similar to Commander Shepard? Nothing really structured at this moment, but some good questions that could be thrown around in a seminar. Perhaps a more solid idea will emerge from discussion with the seminar participants.

German Town Taking Shape

2010-02-15T11:46:00.000-08:00

I have been busy with various university responsibilities this last week, so I have had time neither for modeling in Blender nor posting my progress here. I have a few extra hours today, so I was able to quickly knock down a few buildings for the game level. Here's a quick wireframe of the scene:

In developing these models, I have been looking at ways to use recessed windows built directly into the mesh, whereas with the tower I developed the windows as separate objects and "floated" them where they should be. The built-in windows, I think, look a lot nicer so I'm probably going to go back to the tower and do the same with it. I also thought, since players will only see one side of the game objects, it won't be necessary to develop the other side of the objects. I'll probably include this change in the tower as well when I revisit it.

Now I just have to think of a name for this imaginary German town. Bad Dinkelheim? Ober Dinkelheim? Dinkelheim am Fluss?

Animated Render and Turnaround of Tower

2010-01-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

I had a few hours free last night to make an animated render of the latest model, the tower at the end of the pedestrian zone where the player will be inserted into the game level. Add a snowstorm this morning that makes the streets somewhat impassable, and you get a weekend with Blender, GIMP, YouTube, and the project blog. Anyway, here is the result of my latest endeavors:

Although clearly not at the artistic level of many 3D modelers out there, and probably violating numerous design pet peeves as described by blenderguru, I'm still impressed with what I've accomplished and realize that I still have a lot more to learn. I'd particularly be interested in learning how to make the corners of my models more "rounded" and real-life while keeping the model within the low-poly mesh range. The roof also looks much too reflective for a typical slate roof like you find in Germany, which I noticed only after doing a turnaround of the model and seeing the it catches the light of lamp at certain angles. Need to figure our how to correct this (probably with a specularity map, right?).

Instead of baking the textures and importing the 3D model into Unity 3D, at the moment I'm thinking that I will continue to develop models for the game level and continue with my research on 3D digital game-based learning for second language acquisition. It has been fun and also interesting to be involved in the design process while simultaneously reading primary and secondary literature on the topic. I'll be interested in seeing what come of this whole thing in the coming year.

Tower Finished!

2010-01-26T09:13:00.000-08:00

After nearly two weeks of working on the pedestrian zone tower in my spare time, I am happy to say that I finally got it finished. And here is the final product:

Not bad, considering that I have no 3D art experience at all and am pretty much self-taught on Blender and GIMP, the two open source platforms I used to create the tower model. The source of inspiration for the tower is Das Obertor in Bad Camberg. Not an exact copy, but fairly close:

Most of the textures I grabbed off the Web, although for the sides of the tower and the passage I found some high-quality textures at Arroway Textures. I can't begin to tell you how happy I am with the textures I found there. Although I grabbed a few to test them out on this project, I'm most certainly going to purchase the some of the CDs they offer on their site. In the coming days, I will post a video of a turnaround render, a FRAPS of how the model was put together, and a few other things.

Fun With Blender Texture Channels

2010-01-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

Had an interesting problem a few days ago with Blender's texture channels. I had developed two models separately, a sign for the pedestrian zone and the tower, and wanted to bring them together (a) to see how they looked and (b) to get my workflow ironed out a bit. I am planning to develop the models separately, stage them within Blender and join them, and then import them into Unity 3D. Should be easy enough, I thought, and I was quickly able to package the image resources for the sign, import it into the tower model, and scale it to size. According to my Blender interface, things were going well:

The texured viewport indicated that, indeed, the model for the sign was where it was supposed to be and looked the way I wanted. Imagine my frustration, then, when I got this render:

The problem, which I discovered after a long time of tinkering and swearing, was with my texture channels. To simplify things a bit, I had one channel called "colormap" and the other called "bumpmap" for all my meshes. In all my models. Although Blender can keep these channels separated in individual files, once these models are imported into other models, Blender gets the channels confused. Thus, my pipe colormap being applied to my sign colormaps. I thought that each file would maybe have a unique namespace, or something like this, to avoid such a problem, but apparently not. To avoid this problem in the future, I will create unique texture channels for all models.

FRAPS Test of Blender Interface

2010-01-20T16:29:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just found the FRAPS shareware online and downloaded it for doing screen captures to support my book project. I also noted that the software supports games using OpenGL technology, which meant that - perhaps - it would also support Blender video captures as Blender is OpenGL API-based software. Previous attempts with Camtasia proved less than satisfactory at doing Blender video captures, so I thought I would give it a try. And here is what I got:

Although the shareware version only supports 30-second video captures, I was extremely impressed with the quality of the capture and the audio track. I did this particular capture at half-size 30 fps, although FRAPS allows a user to go up to 60 fps with a full-size capture. I felt a little pressed to explain everything regarding the tower and how I see it fitting into the game withing the alloted 30 seconds, so I just may shell out the $37 for the full unlocked version in the near future.

As for the tower itself, I envision the passage through the tower being the insertion point into the game level, with the pedestrian zone connected to one end of the passage and the other exit being blocked by a car. This would naturally entice the player to move forward into the pedestrian zone without giving him or her the sense of being forced into this direction. I am nearly finished with the texture map for the tower and will then move on to making bump maps for it. When these are finally done, I will do a turnaround render and move on to the next model.

FRAPS and Feedback from The Modern Language Journal

2010-01-17T04:39:00.000-08:00

On account of the recent holidays and an unfortunate problem with my computer's motherboard, I haven't been blogging as much as I would have liked. Now that the computer problem is resolved and the powers that be have turned the heat back on in my office, I am once again in full production mode. A new year ahead of me and new ideas to explore!

I just finished reading Nitsche's Video Game Spaces and Gee's What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. I have started the latter on numerous occasions, but never really got around to finishing it. So, as the computer was in the shop, I went back to the library, checked it out, and finally read it cover to cover. I'm now on to reading Juul's Half-Real and am about half-way (no pun intended) through it.

Based on what I have read so far, I'm thinking about radically redoing the level in which I insert the player into the game. The main problem, I think, with the prior level design was the layout of the level itself, which might lead to a lack of player guidance and direction. It occurred to me that a real-life pedestrian zone is functional in that it creates an environment in which people can walk around and explore, without having any clear objective or destination. We want people to stay and shop, not quickly move through while looking for something else. A virtual gamespace, on the other hand, will have specific objectives and instructional goals, and the player/learner will need to move through this space in order to maintain a sense of momentum in the game. We want players to move forward in the game and continue learning, but while simultaneously maintaining a sense of the real pedestrian zone that allows limitless lateral movement and exploration. And it has to be fun. A tricky design task, no doubt. I have some ideas of what the new level should look like and will post these later.

Looking for a way to create screen captures of gameplay for my current book project on digital game-based learning for second language acquisition, I came across FRAPS. It's shareware, so some of its functionality is limited unless you decide to purchase it, but it makes documenting gameplay so much easier than taking screenshots of a game in windowed mode. I'll certainly be using this a lot as I work on the book. It works with programs running on OpenGL or DirectX, which means that it also makes nice screen captures of Blender. Here, my recent work on a game model:

Finally, I just found out that the article I submitted to Modern Language Journal was rejected. This is what they had to say:

This is an insightful and well-argued paper on the design features and potential value of gaming environments for language learning. It makes a distinct contribution in this area. Although we have published in this area recently (most recently the 2009 Focus Issue), as the author notes, we do not feel that The MLJ is the appropriate venue for this paper. The MLJ readership would be interested in implementation and empirical investigation of the uses and effects of such games, rather than in the complexities of the design. While some designers and CALL specialists no doubt consult The MLJ from time to time, they are more likely to focus on specialized technology journals. I strongly recommend the author to approach one of the technology or CALL oriented journals, e.g. LLT, ReCALL, System.

I am very thankful for the positive feedback and high regard of my scholarship. On the other hand, what threw me was the emphasis on implementation and empirical investigation. After all, somebody has to make these types of learning environments and without initial and well-formulated inquiries into how to build them, there would never be anything to evaluate anyway. So, I added some extra references to research I recently read and sent it off the next day to The Foreign Language Annals. We'll have to see what comes of it there.

Real-Life US Army Simulation

2009-12-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

Just found an extremely facinating video on the CNN website detailing how American soldiers prepare for deployment in Iraq. Apprently, the US Army has developed a National Training Center at Ft. Irwin in the Mojave Desert which realistically simulates all of the stresses a soldier will face on deployment in Iraq. There is even a mock Al-Qaeda organization, complete with a terrorist leader, which stages attacks against the soldiers and organizes political assasinations:

A great way for soldiers to synthesize knowledge and activate transferable mental schemata. Obviously creating such an opportunity for high school and university foreign language students would be out of the question, but a digital game-based learning approach could replicate some aspects of the experience in a scalable and more economical fashion. Much like the Tactical Iraqi game developed for the US Army, but without the guns. Seems like the military understands the usefuleness of simulations and gaming as learning platfroms; I just wonder when foreign language instructors in higher education will get it.

Fußgängerzone Sign Turnaround

2009-12-18T15:37:00.000-08:00

Finally got the turnaround for the pedestrian zone sign finished and posted on YouTube:

For the pole and brackets holding the sign I applied a galvanized metal texture to the meshes and created a bump map on the same texture to give them a more authentic feel. The signs themselves just have specularity and reflectivity maps applied, breaking up the reflection of the surface a bit and mimicing the weathering that such signs would encounter without altering the surface of the signs as a bump map would.

Researching information for the graffiti on the back of the middle sign, I came across the concept of Stasi 2.0 (English here), a current civil rights hot topic in Germany regarding the use of current and emerging technology for preemptive security measures. I like the stencil on the back of the sign, however there appears to have been some stretching when I unwrapped the meshes that is distorting the graffiti somewhat. Perhaps also add a few stickers as well? In any case, here is an improved render of the sign:

Looks a lot better. Now I'll need to think of some other objects that can be found in the pedestrian zone and model them next.

Pedestrian Zone (Fußgängerzone) Sign

2009-12-17T12:04:00.001-08:00

Just finished putting the bump and specularity maps on the sign for the pedestrian zone and did a quick render:

Looks pretty good, nein? I was thinking of doing a quick turnaround render before I went home, but will probably do this tomorrow once I come back to the office. Anyway, I'd still like to add a few things that you would normally find on the back of these signs, such as graffiti and stickers. I'm still not sure what the exact layout of the pedestrian zone will be like. I am trying to keep in mind that the game narratives will be uncovered and supported by the layout of the virtual space, so I'm aiming for a combination of sociocultural authenticity and ludic functionality. Inother words, its gotta be fun and intuitive to play, while also being true to life.

Streetlamp Created

2009-12-15T09:34:00.000-08:00

Finally got a streetlamp object made for the level where the player will be inserted into the game. Here is a quick turnaround of the mesh, complete with a bump map applied to the glass panels of the lantern itself (and some additional tweaking done to the raytracing for mirror reflection and transparent refraction rendering):

I felt less than inspired on the music track for the video; perhaps next time will be better. In any case, the insertion level will hopefully replicate the pedestrian zone found in an older German village and will help the player become accustomed to the game interface (e.g., navigation in a virtual 3D space and game controls) as well as establish some of the backstory. I'll be developing more game objects in the near future, including some signs for player navigation.

Student Newspaper Article and Final Findings

2009-12-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed a few weeks ago by a student reporter from The Pendulum, the student newspaper here at Elon University. The interview dropped off my radar until just a few days ago when I noticed that an article on my efforts to develop a 3D-DGBL to teach beginning German had finally been published. The article sounds like I already have the project fully developed (which would be nice), but in actuality I'm still very much in the development phase.

I just finished the Fall 2009 semester with a final in German 321, the course I am using as a testbed to develop dialogue for the game. Although I do not have any pictures to post of the final, an important dynamic of gameplay emerged that will need to be addressed in the final game: the tension between playing the game simply to collect points and as a way to assemble cultural knowledge. Some players decided to play the game as quickly as possible (to beat the clock) and to complete the level objectives as expeditiously as possible. Although this is certainly a legitimate way to play the game, this unfortunately resulted in a superficial examination of the cultural spaces in which the game dialogue was couched. In sum, players would play fast but not go deep.

At the end of the final I theorized with the students ways to overcome this problem. We came up with the following:

Award "culture points" to players who dig deep into the culture (e.g., pursuing hints dropped by NPCs about contemporary German culture or events). Through some type of algorithmic function, these culture points would improve the overall points that a player earns during the game (total points multiplied by a logarithm of culture points to increase the overall score?).
Structure the level challenges so that all but one can be completed (thus preventing the player from advancing to the next level). Game resources are earned based upon player interactivity with cultural topics in the level, thus allowing the player to complete the level

Both suggestions are very good and perhaps both (or a version thereof) can be incorporated in the game as a way to encourage player interaction with sociocultural topics. This will certainly be a topic to revisit in the future. Now on to 3D model development with Blender...

Visual Learning and Game Maps

2009-12-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

Now that I have my article on digital game-based learning out the door and the semester is gradually coming to an end, I have had much more time to spend on Blender and creating 3D models. Although directly related to the research I am conducting on 3D-DGBL environments and their eventual application for second language acquisition, I have been pleasantly surprised (but sometimes also frustrated) by the demands that this project has been placing on the right hemispehere of my brain. In a way, however, the project is moving me towards a holistic fusion of research, art, and creativity that I have found lacking in my academic career up to this point. Here is the result of this fusion thus far:

Feeling that the video was by itself rather boring, I also spent a few hours this last weekend mixing sound loops and samples from FlashKit and The Freesound Project. Granted, I probably will not have a career in techno any time soon, but it certainly was fun trying to line up the images with the music.

Working with images, sound, and the unstructured nature of 3D game environments has led me to ponder how best to teach with new and emerging media. A lot of what we do in the classroom today is print-based and very linear: Students and instructors move from Point A to Point B, whereupon a test is administered. New media requires us to step back and look at the whole environment as a potential platform for learning, one that is not contrained by previously employed instructional paradigms. For instance, the anti-capitalism graffiti I grabbed off the Web and applied to the side of the fountain (did you see it in the video?)

also tells a story in itself, and these small, individual, visual components need to be harmonized with the overarching story of the 3D-DGBL environment. The challenge, I suppose, is recognizing (and somehow working with) the fact that some instruction will be delivered through a visual channel via images and other instruction through a purely audio channel via spoken language. The final instructional package, so to speak, will be a uniquely individual syntehsis of these different channels. So, how will I fit this image into the game I am planning and its story arc? I'm not sure. Perhaps as an underlying tension between leftist and right-wing elements similar to what was experienced in the Weimar Republic during the 1920s and 1930s.

I've also been thinking a lot about the spatial flow of the game, and how all the well-received professionally developed 3D games use the virtual space and NPC action as a way to direct the player. These thoughts have been fueled in part my my own work in developing a 3D game, in part by the book on video game spaces by Michael Nitsche I am currently reading. The map I have developed so far (see related post) seems a bit too open-ended and may not give the player/learner enough direction in order to accomplish specific level tasks. I'll certainly revisit this topic at a later date as I start to crank up my Unity3D training. In any case, I've been thinking of narrowing down the pedestrian zone into which the player/learner is first insterted at the beginning of the game - something based on a small German town like Harburg, Bavaria or Neuhaus an der Pegnitz.

Getting My Blender Chops Back

2009-12-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

It has been a few weeks (months?) since focusing intently on Blender, and I have been having some difficulty getting back into it. I thought I would start out small and finish work on the center point of any pedestrian zone - the fountain - but this has proven to be somewhat of an arduous task. Particularly difficult was the lip of the fountain's basin. Apparently I had inserted too many edges into the lip in order to give it a rounded feel, which caused no little amount of texture stretching when I worked with the UV map. Ah, the frustration! I even tried moving away from image textures toward procedural textures and inserted unwrapping seams nearly everywhere I could, just to avoid the stretching, to no avail.

As the picture above shows, I finally removed some extra edges in the lip and was able to finally get a grip on the excess texture stretching. For fun, I also added a bump map to the image, tweaked the specularity a bit, and also changed the lamp color to produce the warm type of glow that you get on a summer evening.

The final image shows the basin lip of the fountain, complete with grouting between the stones. Oh...and anti-capitalsim graffiti, which I often see on my trips to Germany, especially in university towns. I was planning to put some anarchy graffiti on the fountain, but this particular image just seemed to speak to me, so I grabbed it off the Web, modified it a bit in GIMP, and inserted it into the color map. In the coming days I will be working on the bump map for the fountain and perhaps tweaking the mesh a bit to round the fountain lip off.

Back in the Saddle and Paper Out the Door

2009-11-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

Finally made it back to Elon University after a whirlwind couple of days in sunny San Diego at the 2009 ACTFL conference. I had many excellent opportunities to share ideas about 3D digital game-based learning with interested colleagues. Many thanks to all I met at the San Diego Conference Center and who visited my poster presentation!

I was also able to send off a paper draft to The Modern Language Journal. I'm making a PDF of it available here on this blog in case somebody out there would be interested in reading it. In any case, I would appreciate any feedback or ideas that you may have.

Now that I have the paper out the door, I will be getting to know Blender and Unity3D more in-depth. The idea is to have a playable level prototype done within the year. Perhaps fodder for more research articles or a possible book in the future? With more time to focus on the development of the game, I will be able to post more images and movies in the coming weeks. Should be fun!

Going to California

2009-11-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

I have not been blogging for a few weeks now as I have been busy with other things, such as getting ready for the upcoming ACTFL Conference in San Diego, teaching my German language courses this semester, and finishing a research paper on the pedagogical applications of narrative in first-person 3D gaming interfaces of the single-player computer role playing game (CRPG) genre. Lots of stuff to do and, unfortunately, some of my 3D development work with Blender and (now, probably) Unity3D has had to take a place on the back-burner. I just purchased the Unity Game Development Essentials book and am eager to spend some more time with it (click here for a review of the book).

Since I will be leaving in a few days for California, I've been busy getting my presentation materials ready. I finally finished them today and am posting them here on my blog in the off chance that somebody, somewhere might find them interesting:

Now that I got the preparations for the ACTFL conference out of the way, I will be putting the finishing touches on the research article, a link to which I will post here later. I've been thinking about submitting the essay to The Modern Language Journal instead of L2 Journal as the latter has a 8,000 word limit (including references) and I am now sitting at. . . let me check. . . 9,844 words. And I still have not written a conclusion. The Modern Language Journal has an upper limit of 12,000 words (excluding bibliography), and recent article have looked at digital games in second language acquisition, so perhaps this would be a better forum for me.

Unity Available for Free!

2009-11-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

Just cruising around the recent postings on BlenderNation and came across the news item that the Unity 3D game engine and editor are now being released under a free indie license. Apparently there is tight integration between Blender (and other 3D applications) and Unity, which will allow all development in the DigiBahn Project up to this point to be brought into Unity without a bump. After reading the article on Gamasutra and checking out all of Unity's features myself, I am definitely going to download this package tomorrow at the office and begin playing with it on my own. Or, as soon as the article is out the door. More on this topic at a later date...

ACTFL Poster Presentation and Handout (Thanks, Inkscape!)

2009-10-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

I spent the time this weekend working on my poster presentation for the upcoming ACTFL Conference, which will be held 20-22 November in San Diego, California. I will be chairing a panel at the conference, presenting my own paper, and also doing a poster presentation: Should make for a busy and exhilarating couple of days. I've been several times to San Diego, so the thrill of going to a new city for a conference won't be there, but next year's ACTFL will be in Boston, where I have never been; I should start making plans to attend. I played around with several different graphics programs, including Fireworks and GIMP, before I finally found Inkscape. Fireworks didn't seem to fit my purposes, and for some reason was running too slow on my computer, and GIMP is more for photos. I didn't want to spend the money on Illustrator, so I gave Inkscape a try. I was impressed with the ease of use and the wide range of options available. Making a 48 in. x 48 in. poster was a cinch, and I was even able to export a .png file with a 300 dpi resolution, which I can take to the printer, in a matter of seconds. Here is a smaller version of the file for the Web:

And here is the handout for the poster presentation (also with Inkscape):

Coming up soon: The slides for the panel presentation (alas, with PowerPoint).

Aligning Narratives: Theories of Situated Cognition, SLA, and Game Studies

2009-10-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

For the last, oh...I dunno, say, four months I have been reworking my submission to L2 Journal, at the cost of me actually doing any real game development. I just finished up a section of the article, which describes the applicability of 3D-DGBL, specifically its first-person ilk, for second language acquisition (SLA). A dry theory read, granted, but I just wanted to put it out there in the off chance that somebody in the blogosphere might find it interesting. Once I get this beast of an article off my chest, I promise (myself, at least) to get back to doing some actual game development and posting some nice screen captures. Anyway, here it is:

The essential insights that theories of situated cognition afford our current discussion are, that knowledge is contextualized within physical and sociocultural spaces, and that it is also inextricably bound to the intentional action of actors within these spaces. For our purposes here, this triad of knowledge, setting, and actors will be understood as a "problem space," or a unique constellation of "alternatives that a problem solver has available and the various states that can be produced during problem solving by the decisions that the problem solver makes in choosing among alternatives" (Pirolli & Greeno, 1988, p. 182). The example of an airplane pilot serves to illustrate how these triadic components function together within a problem space (cf. Hutchins & Klausen, 1996). A pilot undoubtedly understands the thin airfoil theory that describes the dynamic lift of an aircraft, although the mere understanding of this theory cannot help her to get the aircraft off the ground. Rather, it is the practical application of this theory in a physical setting – the flight deck – and the assistance provided by other members of the flight crew – the sociocultural setting – that cause the aircraft to fly. The flight deck and its instrument displays represent a transition point between the internal mental processes of the pilot and the external action of flying the aircraft, functioning as environmental tools that shape, support, and ultimately direct these processes. In essence, the pilot "thinks" through the controls in a manner that would not be fully realizable or even possible in their absence. Members of the flight crew also interact with the pilot according to scripted behavioral protocols that recognize and reinforce their specific role in the flight deck hierarchy. These members also utilize profession-specific language forms to relay the information provided by their individual instrument panels and to convey their thought processes to the pilot. The activity of flying the aircraft unfolds in real-time and is a product of the complex and dynamic interplay of human know-how, communication patterns, specific actor roles, and the machine environment.

Seeing knowledge as being contextually situated has a profound impact on both teaching and learning. In particular, it fundamentally alters how a student interacts with a problem space, with other people within the space, and similarly influences the form that knowledge assumes. For example: although pilot training consists of theoretical courses on the ground, it is also complemented by a substantial practical component both in the air and in flight simulators. Learning about how the flight deck functions in real-life is dramatically different than classroom-based discussions of the same topic and involves a complex process of hypothesis formation based on an understanding of theoretical knowledge, testing this knowledge within a real or simulated problem space, receiving feedback, and modifying and retesting the manner in which knowledge is made actionable. Performance feedback is provided not only by the instrument displays, or the condition of the immediate physical environment, but also by more experienced members of a flight crew whose job is to train the pilot and evaluate her competency. Learning, therefore, involves a process of "knowledge negotiation" between a more advanced practitioner and a neophyte as the latter becomes encultured within a particular community of practice and develops increasing competence with its practice-specific narratives (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Vygotsky (1978) suggests that the process of negotiation is mediated by a zone of proximal development (ZPD) between the teacher and learner, or "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (p. 86; cf. Del Río & Álvarez, 2007). As the learner becomes more adept in navigating a problem space and more integrated into the community of practice cohabiting the space, this guidance is gradually withdrawn, or faded, until support is no longer needed and the learner is naturally operating at the level of a more competent peer (see Daniels, 2007, pp. 317-322).

Narrative has an important role to play in the negotiation of a problem space and the process of becoming encultured within a specific community of practice. Bruner (1991) notes that people apprehend reality and organize knowledge by means of narrative structures and, furthermore, that these structures are the primary mode of communication underlying all human interaction. This narrative mode stands in contrast to the "logico-scientific" mode of structuring and transmitting knowledge, which, according to Bruner (1986), "attempts to fulfill the ideal of a formal, mathematical system of description and explanation. It employs categorization or conceptualization and the operations by which categories are established, instantiated, idealized, and related one to the other to form a system" (p. 12). Although logico-scientific mode is useful in describing the natural world in terms of causes and effects, it falls short in "constructing and representing the rich and messy domain of human interaction" (Bruner, 1991, p. 4) by myopically focusing solely on the general and the paradigmatic at cost of the unique, the fleeting, and the personal. Narrative, on the other hand, is uniquely positioned to account for these characteristics of human interaction as they focus on, among other things, unique patterns of events over time, the relation of these events to larger events, and the intentional states of the actors who move these events forward.

Whereas the logico-scientific mode concerns itself with truth statements and general paradigms, the narrative mode revels in the slippage between personal and communal interpretations of events, between local knowledge and larger communities of practice. As our pilot-in-training moves forward through the education process, she will interact with the narratives that inform her immediate environment, interacting with them and learning from them according to her personal trajectory of participation (Wenger, 1998). As Greeno (1998) notes, "regularities of an individual's activities, in a trajectory that spans participation at different times in a community and participation in different communities, are characterized as the individual's identity, which is coconstituted by the individual's relation to the communities and by the relation of those communities to the individual" (p. 6). The pilot-in-training's sense of individual identity, then, provides her with a subjective entry point into the narratives that contextualize her actions and thoughts, granting her access to a "plot" that helps her to organize the problem space in her mind, script the behavior of the actors within this space, and interpret the behavior of the machine environment. She will have, for example, a different script for landing the plane than for taking-off. These scripts, essentially subjective "stories" of the narratives that constitute reality, are not monolithic and unchangeable structures, but instead must be continually validated, augmented, and corrected by the communities of practice that cohabit a problem space. They must, as Bruner (1991) describes, be "constituted in the light of the overall narrative" (p. 8) through a process of hermeneutic composability that shapes, directs, and explains these stories within larger epistemological contexts. Seen within the context of our discussion of teaching and learning, the interaction of personal stories and communal narratives implies that knowledge is not only created through internal cognitive processes but must also be substantially supported by external sociocultural contexts, communities of practice, and negotiated meanings. Knowledge, then, is a very fluid commodity that is actively constructed at the intersection of competing narratives, personal and communal, and is the result of thinking and acting.

Current sociocultural approaches to SLA similarly focus on the intersection of the personal and the communal, with particular attention being paid to the linguistic artifacts that emerge at this intersection. Underlying these approaches is the assumption that language acquisition is not only an intra-mental process, or one that occurs solely in the head of the language learner, but is also inter-mental in the sense that it is situated within communities that share and shape a common linguistic system. Language acquisition is, as Lantolf (2000) summarizes, essentially a dialectic process of internalizing the linguistic system of a specific community of practice, which in turn then effects the manner in which the language learner both thinks and acts: "we come to organize and regulate our own mental and physical activity through the appropriation of the regulatory means employed by others" (p. 14). Influencing the manner in which a person both thinks and acts, language acquisition can be seen as a form of identity construction, shaping not only the internal thought processes of an individual but also influencing how the person functions in sociocultural spheres. This insight is of tremendous import for learners of L2 language and cultures as, according to Ros i Solé (2007), they achieve proficiency "by exercising agency and projecting and resituating themselves themselves in the new community of practice by engaging and dialogically building their L2 identities with their audience and sociocultural context. They take positions of power and exercise their agency in the relations established in the second language" (p. 205). The examination of personal narratives as a mediational artifact has therefore been especially useful in revealing how this process of internalization unfolds as these narratives demonstrate, in an intimate fashion, the manner in which language learners reconstruct their social selves within the context of new linguistic and cultural communities. As Ros i Solé (2007) concludes, narrative analysis "permits us to approach identity in a context specific fashion, as narratives are a form of discourse conveying events that take place in a particular place and time and can be traced to a particular life" (p. 208).

Seen as a site of sociocultural mediation between the personal and the communal, the native and the foreign, narrative functions as a "third place" in and through which an individual can refashion her identity and reexamine the roles she plays within a new community of practice (cf. Kramsch, 1993, pp. 233-259). Block (2007) characterizes this refashioning process as a negotiation of difference between the individual and her environment, her past and her present, noting that the "fissures, gaps, and contradictions" it produces frequently gives rise to an ambivalent sensation of "feeling a part and feeling apart" (p. 864). The tension inherent in this ambivalence provides fertile ground for sociocultural approaches to SLA and examinations of personal narrative have played a key role in uncovering the ways in which individual identity is restructured as a learner moves into a L2 language and culture. Pavlenko and Lantolf (2000), in their analysis of autobiographies of bilingual writers, discovered that personal narrative represents "a space where identities are reconstructed and life stories retold in the security of the double displacement granted by writing in a second language" (p. 162). Like spoken language, which people use as an organizational tool for structuring reality, narrative brings "past events (i.e. occurrences involving other people) into the present and for projecting the present into the future. In so doing, people are able to make sense, that is, make meaning, of what they do and of what others do with them" (pp. 171-172). Narrative, then, serves as a vehicle for projecting and situating the self into a new community of practice, although it can also function in reverse as a means of making this community meaningful to the self. In her examination of an intermediate-level ESL writing exercise, Kramsch (2000) found that students would use narrative to reencode the story on which the writing exercise was based so that it could be understood within a framework of their own life experiences. The resulting narrative, situated at the intersection of intramental and intermental language acquisition processes, revealed "the dialogic construction of rhetorical roles through the written and spoken medium that students experience themselves as both private, individual, and public, social sign makers" (p. 151). Finally, shifting their focus from written texts to oral life histories, Coffey and Street (2008) found that personal accounts related in spoken fashion manifest clear structural differences and employ dissimilar narrative strategies from those related through a written medium. The authors conclude that learning a foreign language and culture is a layered process that constructs personal identities through time by making use of a range of cultural narratives as resources to create "figured worlds" (p. 454). At the moment of telling, however, these figured worlds "are shaped by the interpersonal dimension of narrative performance and are developed further through learners' cross-cultural, ethnographic-like experience" (p. 462).

The narrative mode is important for SLA, therefore, as it reveals not only that narratives are situated within specific social and cultural contexts and transmit the core values of the communities of practice that inhabit these contexts, but also that these narratives are ultimately negotiated on a personal level based on the identities, needs, and unique subjectivities of people seeking entrance to these communities. Each person provides a "plot," as it were, whereby these dominant narratives can be interpreted and internalized, creating a life "story" that can be evaluated as an independent artifact of this interaction. Many computer games manifest a similar core dynamic. Providing simultaneous audio and visual input, and moved forward primarily by player interaction, which in turn is guided by a backstory that situates the player within the game world, the narrative provided by computer games is highly immersive and necessarily participatory in nature. The immensely popular Half-Life 2, a 3D science fiction first-person shooter, has, for example, a rich narrative that is developed by a wide range of non-player character (NPC) dialogue, in-game physics, dramatic staging, scripted transitional sequences, level design, interactive 3D models, and sound effects (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Train Station Square, City 17 (Half-Life 2)

A substantial part of the narrative in Half-Life 2 is visual and spatial in nature, representing a type of "invisible storytelling" that used "shapes and symbols to tell a story similar to the way letters and words are used to compose a written narrative" (Van Zelfden and Alexander, 2007). This narrative, in turn, produces a type of virtual record that gives "every location in the game a sense of place, history and verisimilitude" (Parkin, 2009). The virtual spaces of Half-Life 2, and those rendered by many first-person 3D gaming interfaces, for that matter, can therefore be experienced as a narrative text that the player figures in the very moment that an action is performed within the game, a process that Aarseth (2004) describes as giving rise to a "ludic pleasure" that is rooted in the "kinaesthetic, functional, and cognitive" challenges of managing a virtual topography (Art of Simulation section, para. 2). The figured worlds that unfold through this interaction, each one being slightly different based on player input, performance, and personal preference, are a direct result of the player feeling her way through the contours of the game world on a physical, mental, and emotional level and, as a result, form a unique story that is as singular as the players who interact with the game. They are, in sum, the product of a personal reaction to a simulated community of virtual practices.

Yet how these worlds unfold is a topic of intense debate within the field of game studies, although the tenor of the debate has subsided somewhat as of late. At the heart of the debate is whether to consider a game primarily in terms of its rules, which support specific processes of gameplay (ludology), or in terms of the narrative structures it employs, which are revealed to the player during gameplay (narratology). Although admitting that games and narrative share similar structural traits, and that narrative can be applied a posteriori to gameplay as an interpretive framework, Juul (2001) goes on to argue that the experiential narrative of games is fundamentally different from other forms of narrative in that game interactivity demands player action and input in the present moment in order to move the narrative forward: "[. . . ] the game constructs the story time as synchronous with narrative time and reading/viewing time: the story time is now. Now, not just in the sense that the viewer witnesses events now, but in the sense that the events are happening now, and that what comes next is not yet determined" (Time in the Computer Game section, para. 2). In a similar vein, Kücklich (2003) notes that "narrative is not an inherent feature of games, but something merely implemented virtually, i.e. as a possibility. The actual construction of narrative is always done by the player by taking the signs on the interface and interpreting them further" (Narrative section, para. 2). The act of generating narrative in a computer game, then, is a form of interactive semiosis, requiring the player to make sense of in-game signs and their relationship to each other the moment in which they are presented. However, whereas Juul seems to suggest that there is very little distance between narrative and story, or between in-game events and the personal interpretation of these events, Kücklich argues that the interactive semiosis fostered by gameplay unfolds through a process that necessarily creates a third space in which this interpretation must occur. Conceptualizing a computer game as a system of signs that resist the player by virtue of their secondness, Kücklich notes that the process of interpretation will cause the player to bring these signs into relationship with each other: "This whole process takes place on a level that cannot be located within the game, but exists merely as a projection of the player's mind. In this model, narrative is something that unfolds because of the players attempts to make sense of the game. The basic resistance, or secondness, is necessarily unstable, since the player cannot help but interpret this state, thus causing the semiosis to change to a state of thirdness" (Narrative section, para. 5).

Lindley (2002) similarly notes that the ludic aspects of gameplay, which occur at a lower level of game interaction, generally have very little to do with the narrative development of a game at a higher level, causing a split between individual actions that occur within a game and the framing of these actions within the narrative of an overarching story. He suggests, however, that this split may simply be a question of how a player approaches the game, specifically what mental gestalt, or pattern of interaction, provides the cognitive background underpinning all player performance within the game, and for what mental gestalt the game is originally designed. A gameplay gestalt, such as can be found in the "twitch" gameplay of first-person shooters (e.g., iterative patterns of "run - aim - shoot"), supports non-semiotic patterns of performance that separate the player from the narrative by creating "a form of dissolution of consciousness into the moment, acting against the strong incorporation of moments into an unfolding story structure. . . [it] is an operational pattern rather than a mechanism for learning declarative facts" (p. 213). This type of gameplay stands in stark contrast to gameplay designed to support a narrative gestalt, which is "a cognitive structure allowing the perception and understanding of an unfolding sequence of phenomenon as a unified narrative" (p. 209) and requiring the negotiation of "a varied emotional and thematic space of character interactions, where progress becomes a matter of developing emotional and thematic understanding" (p. 214). Seen from the field of cognitive load theory, this competition between gameplay and narrative gestalts may suggest a split-attention effect (Mayer & Moreno, 1998) that results from overloading the visual channel with feedback on player performance while simultaneously using the same channel to convey narrative structures. The irony, then, is that the very action supported by computer games as an interactive, experiential medium, which allows narrative to unfold, may, in the end, also prevent narrative from being understood as a unified, cohesive whole unless in-game action can be skillfully and properly managed. This observation is important for our discussion on 3D-DGBL in SLA as it highlights a potential obstacle to opening a space within a game that, similar to the third space that emerges during the second language writing process, allows the player to separate individual performance from in-game narratives, or the real sociocultural narratives they represent, and to reflect on questions related to identity formation within specific communities of practice. Although the mastery of basic operational patterns is undoubtedly useful to have when navigating a foreign language and culture, optimized gameplay, at least for SLA purposes, will seek to merge gamplay with larger narrative questions such as player identity formation, with the result that "[p]lay oriented toward characterization requires the moves of the game to be geared toward answering the question 'who am I' as a character within the game world" (Lindley, 2005, Narrative section, para. 8).

Finally, focusing primarily on how narrative structures in computer games can be leveraged to create meaningful play, Salen and Zimmerman (2004) do not draw a sharp distinction between narrative and play, instead arguing that the underlying question is not whether "if games are narrative but how they are narrative" (p. 379). The authors describe two forms of narrative that can be found in the dynamic structures of digital game systems: embedded narrative, which is pre-rendered narrative content that exists in a final form before a player's interaction with the game and provides the kind of narrative experiences that linear media forms such as cinema provides, and emergent narrative, which occurs in unexpected and uniquely different ways when the player interacts with the underlying rules, or algorithms of a game system. Meaningful gameplay and narrative experiences, they conclude, are achieved by addressing the goals, conflict, uncertainty, and core mechanics inherent to a game system (pp. 385-390). Yet all these these building blocks of narrative game design, the authors assert, can be subsumed under the rubric of the game as a virtual narrative space, in which "[e]very element. . . brims with narrative potential. The narrative components of a game are not just the backstory and cutscenes. Any representational element can be a narrative descriptor, an opportunity for you to communicate the story you want your players to experience. . . Nothing is irrelevant: every piece helps tell the story, which is greater than the sum of its parts" (p. 401). Seeing a game system as composed entirely of narrative descriptors, which "imply a representational logic that limits and constrains the design of a space of possibility" and which allow "for the integration and discernability of all elements contained with game world, a world whose setting describes the limits of its own action" (p. 403), allows us to make points of connection between the narrative structures found in a 3D-DGBL experience, the real sociocultural narratives that the game system virtually attempts to mediate, and the goals of a SLA classroom. Just as a foreign culture and language will allow or disallow certain actions in real life, so too will a game system empower or limit player performance based on the narrative structures made available within the system itself. The key concern, so it seems, is how best to ensure that the narrative structures simulated in a 3D-DGBL space closely resemble those in the real world so that meaningful play – and therefore meaningful learning – can occur.

By aligning descriptions of narrative as articulated in theories of situated cognition, current SLA approaches, and ongoing debates within the field of game studies, a more nuanced and informed understanding of the role that 3D-DGBL can play within SLA emerges. As we have seen above, theories of situated cognition stress the highly contextualized nature of knowledge and learning, both being dependent on the communities of practice that occupy a given sociocultural space, the actions of actors within these communities, and the manner in which new actors are brought into a community. Knowledge is not so much "in the heads" as it is "between the heads" of these actors, and the environment that surrounds them determines which actions are performable and the manner in which they are ultimately performed. Furthermore, as narrative structures give a voice to the intentional states of the actors who perform these actions, they allow for a very personal means whereby knowledge is transmitted and evaluated. In a sense, then, narrative represents a point of connection and intersection between the personal and the communal, micro- and macro-narratives. SLA research into narrative structures focuses almost specifically on this point, noting that the process of adopting a new linguistic system, or community of practice, is a complex process of identity formation that is negotiated between the individual, her past, the perceived future, the linguistic system, and people who make use of this system. A 3D-DGBL experience adapted for SLA purposes would be unique in that is would allow a language learner, albeit virtually, to "play" a community of practice, become familiar with its narratives, associate these narratives with 3D representations of real sociocultural spaces, and begin the complex process of identity formation before actual immersion abroad. Furthermore, the current discussion in game studies simply corroborates what proponents of theories of situated cognition have long suspected: That the semiotic encoding of an experience – of turning action into narrative – is central to the learning and knowledge transfer processes. After all, narrative structures are the means whereby we organize our experiences, classify them, relate them to others, and store them for future reference. Encouraging the formation of mental narratives, therefore, is an integral and essential step toward meaningful and permanent learning. However, computer games also show us that this can be difficult to do, as the medium itself can coopt the message and actually work counter to the production of narrative. Clearly, articulating best practices for encouraging narrative development in immersive 3D learning environments, including 3D-DGBL, will be one of the central and pressing issues as SLA moves forward in the 21st century. The remainder of this article will be a step in this direction, to suggest guidelines for developing and testing 3D-DGBL environments for SLA contexts.

References

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Blake, R. (2008). Brave new digital classroom: Technology and foreign language learning. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

Block, D. (2007). The rise of identity in SLA research, post Firth and Wagner (1997). Modern Language Journal 91(5), 861-874.

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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The Game Background Story

2009-10-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in my office, looking across the Fonville Fountain Plaza and making some Blender renders for the upcoming 2009 ACTFL Conference, where I will be presenting a poster on DigiBahn game development, when it occured to me that I have not yet actually blogged on the background story of the game. What's it all about, anyway? This is what we got so far:

Conrad Schaeffer, a young 20-something journalist working for the Associated Press, just landed an assignment that any rookie reporter would dream of getting. Tasked with covering the story of Nazi gold that went missing after a suspicious train derailment, in which several guards were killed, Conrad is putting his fledgling German skills to the test for an assignment that could very well make or break his new career. Having just arrived at the Stuttgart Central Train Station, Conrad must quickly assemble facts regarding the robbery from available media, eyewitnesses, and word-of-mouth before the trail grows cold. To further complicate the issue, a mysterious blonde German woman suddenly appears, claiming to have inside information regarding the robbery. Can she be trusted, or does she have ulterior motives that could possibly cost Conrad more than just his job?

The idea of the stolen Nazi gold is actually something I came up after several long discussions with students about a catchy and immersive background story. I was actually rather hesitant about using it for a while, secretly wishing that students would be interested in something else besides Germany's Nazi past and wondering how the game would play with high school parents.

After mulling it over in my mind for some time, however, I'm thinking now that perhaps this is not such a bad idea. I invariably have several students every semester who start German and who are interested in recent German history, and such a game might perhaps be a way to broach this topic while learning German in the process. The topic also meshes nicely with films such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Goldfinger, which undoubtedly are in the students' collective pop-culture consciousness and shape their perceptions of Germans and Germany, so the game could potentially use this background as a way to attract and retain student interest. Finally, the topic of Nazi gold is also the grist of numerous conspiracy theories, which are good for hours of endless speculation. So, in sum, I think the topic of stolen Nazi gold providing the framework for a background story is perhaps not such a bad idea afterall, and could potentially appeal to a wide range of younger students, provided that the game also presents historical facts accurately and doesn't peddle in stereotypes.

First Test of Prototype Game Level - Paper Version

2009-10-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

As part of their midterm, students in the intermediate conversational German course tested what they had developed so far today in class. Over the past few weeks, students in this course have been researching assigned identities for the NPCs in order to develop more realistic depth of character. I am hoping that this research will result in more carefully articulated characters instead of typical German stereotypes and that students' work in small groups will help them to formulate connections between their NPCs that will, in turn, create more authentic gameplay. Research consisted of using available library resources, databases, and online materials to flesh out the sociocultural backgrounds of the NPCs more fully and the dialogue they developed based on this research was to be augmented by our class discussions of our weekly reading topics (e.g., East-West German relations 20 years after the fall of the Wall).

Students came to class today armed with their dialogue on 3 x 5 index cards and were provided prototype evaluations sheets to evaluate how the gameplay functioned. It seemed to me that this testing and evaluation was a critical part of the entire development process as students finally understood how their individual components fit into the big picture. A paper-based walk-though is standard operating procedure in many game designs studios early in the development process. I found this procedure difficult to fit into the academic calendar, however, thinking that it would perhaps be akin to midterm testing. I will have to think more carefully of how to apply external design assessment models in an academic setting in the future.

Below are the comments (verbatim) provided by the student prototype testers and their respective questions:

1. What seemed to work particularly well with the prototype test?

Using ideas in class with my character's conversation, mostly of unemployment and discrimination.
General game will work well when finished.
Getting food and money.
The individual conversations.
The character stories that we worked on.
Some cards led the player to his objective well / were appropriately complex.
It flowed within each person's cards, but not as a whole.
When we all sat here together it seemed to come together more easily, when we met out of class is was all unclear, also since we finished our cards we realized the missing connections.

2. What did not work so well with the prototype test?

We all didn't realize how crucial the connectors were so it was more individualistic I think.
Everyone did not really know what was going on. It was unclear.
No one was sure which objectives to do or how to lead the players to certain objectives; we didn't know who the player was; some cards were not so conversational; some information about the objectives was contradictory between different NSCs.
Connecting goals in a realistic way.
Relationships / interactions between people.
Finding some objectives.
It would have been nice to know the background of the player beforehand. Should coordinate our cards better.
Weaving other characters into my conversation.

3. Were there any moments when gameplay seemed to lag? What will you do to correct this in the next design iteration?

Throughout later note cards, it was hard to find conclusions to the conversation.
When there were dead ends. Not all goals were addressed. Mine was too involved.
Just from uncertainty on how to play.
The interaction and relationships between the characters.
It was hard to find a person who had a branch to a specific objective. Sometimes you can talk to a person for 5 minutes only to get the same objectives that you just got. We have to have more interconnections.
Some cards were too conversational and not enough about the objectives -> include more references to objectives or other NSCs who can help with the objectives.
Yes, it was because it was the first run through I think if we all had see what others had done before it would be more clear.
Only when there was a dead end and no connection.

4. Were there any challenges that were particularly easy to solve? Or too difficult? What will you do to correct this in the next design iteration?

Some answers went directly to the goals too easily.
Getting food, almost everyone could lead there.
Some cards made the answers to the objectives too easy -> hide the answers under a few more layers of conversation.
Geldautomat and Döner were easy. Telefonkarte was hard. We just have to keep working to connect all 6 objectives.
Geldautomat was too easy (lead player along more).
Too difficult: Telefonekarte, Untergang. We will correct by having people actually lead to these objectives.
Mine were too long and involved. Others seemed to be fine.
Figuring out order and connections between each card.

5. What are you going to do in the next design iteration in terms of character development?

Research more the other characters, integrate them into my conversation.
Go more into depth, maybe throw in some "Easter eggs," More clues.
Incorporate other players more.
Do more than just give the answer right away. Create more relationships with other characters. Help lead to most / all of the objectives.
I am going to connect more other players and have a way to reach all 6 goals from my character.
Write the part of a player for an American journalist; reference/lead the player to others who can help with each objective; more information about my character in the dialogue and more the objectives a little harder to achieve; reference class topics / current events when possible.
Mention other objectives, add in "is there something I can help you with"
More connections with other characters, not leading to a dead end right off the bat. For me: Zeitungen.

So, to summarize: It seems that students will need to work more carefully on how to weave their dialogues into a cohesive whole that can lead the player along specific challenge paths, but without being blatantly obvious so that gameplay becomes predictable and boring. Also: the students will have to figure out how to incorporate game objectives into their dialogue in a manner that seems to occur naturally and conversationally. As for many of the students the game seemed to "come together" for the first time only during the prototype testing phase, this is something that needs to happen sooner in the semester, rather than later. Here are some images from today's prototype test:

Left to right: Elizabeth Leman and Matt Trucksess figuring out points of connection between their characters. Elizabeth's character is an apprentice auto mechanic by Volkswagen, trying to help the player, a rookie reporter from the USA, navigate the intricacies of the German pedestrian zone.

Left to right: Christine Mader, John Lesko, and Matt Trucksess hammer out the details of their game components. Christine's character wants to have a smoking ban in Germany.

On other fronts, I am still working on my submission to L2 Journal and I will probably hold off all 3D mesh and texturing development until this article is behind me. Once I have that done, I will be working almost exclusively on the game and getting up-to-speed with Blender (and Python).

Been Really Busy. Sorry.

2009-10-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I have not had the chance to put any new posts up. As I had anticipated, teaching responsibilities this semester have put a slight damper on my development activities. In addition, I have also been investing more effort into the research side of the endeavor - and reaping the benefits! I have two articles coming out in the next few months: one in The Language Educator and the other in Computer Assisted Language Learning. I will post more here on these articles later.

I'm also working on a piece right now for L2 Journal, a new online journal based at the University of California. The first effort at publishing here was rejected (which I would have to agree with - it was a half-baked idea), so I'm reworking what I got into an examination of narrative structures in 3D computer games as a potential means of supoprting second language acquisition. Hopefully, the second time around will be better. And then, well, I'm thinking of focusing more on Blender to get one game level designed and use what I have learned in this push forward with a book project. Gotta feed the tenure beast, right?

Toward More Perfect Textures

2009-09-16T06:39:00.000-07:00

I have been playing with GIMP to create the textures for the fountain. Although not as "intuitive" as, say, Adobe Photoshop, I have found GIMP to be adequate for my needs. It is also free, which it great for an indie game producer/university professor with a tight budget yet big ideas.

Using Blender to export UV maps on which to create the textures was hardly easy: It seemed to take me forever to get a handle on the idea of the texture channels, not to mention that key parts of the interface were spread over different parts of the application. Perhaps the upcoming Blender 2.50 release will address some of these issues. Anyway, here is what I got so far:

I was particularly please with the water and rust stains I was able to replicate using the GIMP airbrush tool and grabbing samples from stock photographs of rust. Nevertheless, there are still some areas I would like to address in my second attempt at creating a more perfect model texture:

Remove seams: Blender unwraps a 3D mesh along predetermined and computer-generated seams. Here, the rust stain actually crosses a seam, making it visible to the viewer. Although the seam here is not so noticable (compared to the other side of the fountain and the lip of the basin), seams can be reapplied in a different pattern to an existing texture map, thereby allowing edges to be graphically altered and minimized.

Smooth stretching: The curved surface of the basin lip introduced a lot of image distortion when the texture was applied to the mesh. After unwrapping the UV map, I will probably have to go in an manually tweak the map in order to minimze stretching.

Create bump map: Although the stone texture looks fine if you look head-on at the fountain, the way that the light plays on the fountain at an angle creates the sense that the fountain is "unreal," are carved too perfectly. This is not the feeling I want to create with a fountain that has been exposed to the elements for years. A bump map will break up the surface reflection a bit, thereby creating the sense that the stone has texture. I will also have to cut down on reflection a bit, too.

Resize textures: The main pillar in the center of the fountain has, I believe, the right sized texture applied to its mesh. The grain of the stone appears to be the right size for the mass of the structure and, accordingly, just feels right. The basin, however, is another matter and the stone grain just looks too large.

In any case, a second (or even third) stab at it will hopefully create a more realistic sense of actually being there. Once that is done, I should probably start looking at some Python programming to structure the player interactivity with the object...

Old Rusty Pipes

2009-09-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

I spent Saturday afternoon playing with the procedural textures that ship with Blender to create the water pipes on my recent project, the fountain that will go in the center of the pedestrian zone. Thinking about how these pipes should look like, I thought that they would have been exposed to the elements for some time and would exhibit natural pitting and wear. As they are in a damp environment, they would be slightly mosit and reflect light, but not too much as to be distracting. The black iron would have slighter areas of grey highlights. After tweaking the settings and numerous test renders to get the texture just right, I came up with the following:

I have already grabbed a sandstone texture off the Internet that in the coming days I will apply both to the pillar in the center of the fountain, the basin itself, as well as to produce a bump and specular map. When I'm all finished, I will create a turntable render and post it here. I'm particularly pleased with the reflection off the water and the slight surface distortion. We'll just have to see how the remainder of the project develops.

And here is a screen capture of the complicated Blender interface, which is gradually becoming more manageable:

The large image size (1920 x 1200) is the native resolution of my computer screen. Next time: Applying the stone textures!

More Student Work on NPCs and the Bologna Process

2009-09-10T03:43:00.000-07:00

We spent a fair amount of time in our last class period fleshing out the NPCs for the DigiBahn game. Here are some images of the work that the students produced on the whiteboard:

The students will be working in small groups over the course of the next week, working with library resources and databases to expand the backgrounds of these NPCs, articulating connections between their NPCs, and reflecting on how this context and background influences the use of language and aids in identity formation.

In class next week we will be moving away from the experience of playing the text-based interactive fiction version of the game, which has hopefully given us some ideas on how to structure the 3D version, and will begin a week-long discussion of Germany's role and responsibilities in the European Union. I thought that an examination of the Bologna Process would be interesting for them and highly relevant as students. Should also be useful in formulating the NPCs, as well.

Finally, one last image of a render I recently did:

Hast du Durst?

2009-09-09T07:04:00.000-07:00

Since every Fußgängerzone needs a fountain, I've been busy these last couple of days modeling one in Blender in my spare time. Creating the basic shape was fairly easy, as was making an animation for the water in the fountain:

And here is the original image on which the design of my 3D model is based:

I was impressed with how easy this was and how good it looks! In the future I will work on getting the mesh textured, and then will make a final turnaround render. Maybe I can even get water to come out of the spouts? Of course, the game will not have the same level of visual quality that the render has, but I still think that we can get some basic funcionality established. I'll have to look at the Yo Frankie! open Blender game, which has water in it, to see how they did it.

DigiBahn Comes to the Intermediate German Conversation Course

2009-09-08T03:39:00.000-07:00

Over the last few days I have been attempting to create a fusion of my research and teaching agendas by getting students in my intermediate German conversation class involved in the DigiBahn Project. In class we have discussed - auf Deutsch, sogar! - language as a sociocultural tool that we use to structure reality and, in turn, which ultimately shapes and informs our identities. We also broached the topic of language as a sign system that can be manipulated and experienced in a playful manner in order to construct meaning. In a way, approaching class in this manner is a huge gamble for me as it represents a dramatic break from the way I have taught similar courses in the past and I am not exactly sure how the students will react to the project. I am excited, however, to see where this fusion of new technology and classroom instruction will finally take me (and the class) and what type of 21st-century pedagogies will ultimately be developed. Initial feedback from the students seems positive and we spent the end of last class beginning to flesh ideas out on the whiteboard:

Students (left to right): Alexander Howard, Christine Mader, Elizabeth Leman, Melanie Reyer, Alexander Hudson, Christian Monson, Matthew Trucksess, and John Lesko.

John Lesko (l.) and Alexander Hudson (r.) wonder how (and if) it will all fit together.

Arndt has a problem with the bottle, Jana is a widow living in Stuttgart, and Florian grew up in the former East Germany. What will they have to say to each other and how will their respective backgrounds influence this interaction?

Unfortunately, we spent too long in class discussing other things, so I will have to revisit the design phase in the next course. The primary ideas, that I hope to visualize on the whiteboard, are that language can be seen as a sociocultural space of playful possibility and conversational opportunity, which unfolds based on a person's interaction with this space and the people who occupy its communities of practice. Over the course of the week we will also be playing an earlier text-based version of the game, Ausflug am Wochenende nach München, to get ideas on how to develop the NPC dialog for the 3D version.

New DigiBahn Screen Capture and New Training Resources

2009-08-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

A new screen capture of the DigiBahn game, including a new model of the church (St. Andreas Church in Weißenburg in Bayern):

I also tweaked the camera to provide a more realistic human perspective; the point-of-view (POV) is much taller than in prior screen captures. In any case, we're making great progress on the game so far and with students returning to Elon University this week we will really be moving forward over the course of the next two semesters. The next mesh we will be importing? Well, maybe the post office...Or some apartment buidlings...

Finally, I was able to locate some excellent online Blender training videos at Lynda.com; really wish I had access to these a year ago when I was first learning my way around Blender as they would have saved me a lot of time and headaches.

Flow, Narrative, and Idealized Sociocultural Spaces

2009-08-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

One of the features of Half-Life 2 that impresses me time and time again is the seamless sense of flow that the game narrative, virtual spaces, and ludic activity provides. Unlike many other games that front load a large amount of interface training thinly masked as plot development or avatar "education" (America's Army 3 comes to mind), one simply "knows" what to do in Half-Life 2 and with a minimal amount of instruction. The virtual landscape directs the character along the appropriate path, with an occasional nudge from a NPC or a cleverly inserted audio track that provides a further sense of narrative depth without being overbearing or preachy. One maintains a tremendous sense of operational latitude when, in fact, the game narrative is moving inexorably forward along a predetermined path.

This sense of seamless flow between space and game narrative will be something that the DigiBahn Project will have to emulate. Developing a persuasive and engaging virtual environment that instructs while simultaneously giving the impression of unlimited operational latitude will be a tall order, in any case. Already at the beginning of game development we are dealing with the tension between the apparent freedom of avatar movement and the limitations of the virtual environment: Although certain aspects of the game's pedestrian zone will resemble the one in Stuttgart (the stairs leading down to the Klett-Passage), the original openness of the real pedestrian zone cannot be simulated in the game as, well, it goes on for a really long distance and we just can't do that in a 3D game (yet).

So, the pedestrian zone in the game will be a "stereotypical" one in the sense that it will have a post office, a bioladen, a fountain, lots of trees, benches, etc. My question is this: Is this good? If the pedestrian zone does not imitate reality, and instead renders an idealized and, in a sense, scripted version of this reality, is that necessarily a bad thing for an instructional 3D language game? Will abstracted and artificial representations of real sociocultural spaces and their narratives be more amenable to learning transfer or does fidelity to the real space provide a more authentic learning experience with an increased chance of transfer when the student actually sees the space in real-life?

Just some thoughts rattling around in my mind on a Friday afternoon. Oh, and as every pedestrian zone in Germany (and other German-speaking countries) seems to have a church, here is the cleaned-up mesh of the St. Andreas Church in Weißenburg that we will be using in the game:

The render seems to be a little dark after exporting the original raw AVI into .mov format and then uploading it to YouTube. I'll have to keep that in mind for the future. And here is a recent still render, complete with skybox, bump and specularity maps, and some color thrown on the tree for good measure. A modest effort, but going in the right direction, I suppose:

DigiBahn, Blender, and Google SketchUp

2009-08-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

One of the primary difficulties facing the DigiBahn Project is the development of realistic 3D models to simulate an authentic German environment. One workaround we have been employing is to mine the Google 3D Warehouse for models and exporting them into Blender as a COLLADA file.

The workflow is fairly straight-forward:

Download the SketchUp model as a COLLADA .zip file.
Unpack the .zip file.
Import the COLLADA 1.4.1 .dae file into Blender

Blender provides an easy way to import COLLADA files via an embedded Python script, which, of course, requires Python to be installed:

Supposedly the script that ships with Blender is slightly dated, so a new COLLADA import script is available on the Web.

Importing the SketchUp models into Blender works well, although the script seems to generate extra edges and some unnecessary vertices, which need to be cleaned up within Blender edit mode. After this is done, the textures need to be reapplied to the mesh:

In any case, grabbing these models from the Google 3D Warehouse and cleaning up the meshes is a lot easier than trying to create the models based on incomplete images. Here is a list of the models we have grabbed so far:

We will probably be grabbing more in the near future in order to flesh out the pedestrian zone for the game.

Nothing But Blue Skies...

2009-08-14T09:28:00.000-07:00

I have been busy since 3:30 AM this morning, working on getting a basic prototype of the DigiBahn game ready for the 2009 ACTFL Annual Conference. I know that it won't be until November 22, but I'm afraid that once the semester starts the first week in September, I'll get too busy with other things. Besides, adding meshes to what has been developed this far will simply be a matter of importing, scaling, and then positioning. And I should also really start looking at grants and writing articles.

This test run of the Blender game engine sees the completion of the underpass stairs (finally got the railing installed; now I just need to get the textures applied) and a nice skybox (there is no air pollution in Germany, right?). Although I grabbed the skybox from Tony Mullen's excellent book, Mastering Blender, it will be a fairly easy procedure to make one myself; I can do this when I have more time. Anyway, here it is:

In any case, the skybox gives the game a more realistic feel, and I'm happy to note that the FPS (frame rate per second) did not really drop below 50. I was a bit disappointed, however, as the original screen capture was meant to have audio narration, but Camtasia didn't seem to pick it up. I'll have to fiddle with the controls and try again later.

Basically, what I wanted to say in the narration was this (major points):

Language usage is situated within specific, real-world communities of practice;
Classroom-based language instruction, however, tends to be purely academic, with no real-world contextualization;
This type of instruction can be applied to real-world setting, but only with difficulty;
3D games can simulate a real-world environment, allowing players to experiment with cultural hypotheses and play with language in a virtual environment; and
Learning in a virtual environment should transfer better to a real-world environment than traditional classroom-based learning.

I'm currently exploring how narratives of space, both virtual and real, can be aligned with the way that people apprehend reality through narrative frameworks. Can a connection be made between the game narrative and the sociocultural narratives of a real-world space (here: Stuttgart Central Station) via a virtual rendition of this space? Hmmm....

The Play of Language

2009-08-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

Thinking about how the DigiBahn game could eventually be used in a language classroom has led me back to thinking about language itself, specifically its "play-like" nature: We can "play" with meaning of words and even entire games focus on using language in playful contexts. Seen within a communicative framework in real-life settings, language and speech acts still retain a sense of play. I recall that, the first time I was in Germany I tried so very hard to sound and look like a native: I noticed verbal ticks, particular ways of holding the body while speaking, and particular turns of phrase that the natives used and I "played" with numerous ways of incorporating these observations in my own speech performance. Like games, language is also characterized by systems: Not only linguistic systems but also sociocultural ones as well that influence the final form that the speech act takes. So, I have got language, games, and systems running through my mind and I think that there is something to this topic that will have more of an influence on the DigiBahn Project.

To explore this topic in more depth, Ive decided to create a class around it:

Essentially, it is simply an advanced conversation course that I will be tricking out to make it more interesting and fun for the students, but perhaps I will also learn something from it as well. Chances are, I probably will. A complete course syllabus in PDF format can be found on my professional website in the "Teaching" section.

Specular and Bump Maps; New Screen Capture Software Needed?

2009-08-01T05:51:00.001-07:00

I have been experimenting a bit more with Blender to get the animation for the street sign in the pedestrian zone just right. Although it still doesn't look exactly the way I'd expect it to look in real life, the use of specular and bump maps has given the model a more realistic appearance than prior attempts:

I added some extra lamps to give the model a warm, golden feel that I think it might have in the evening sun. I'm still working on finding a way to remove the annoying flicker that appears at the mesh edges when the model rotates; hopefully I will be able to post a solution to this problem in the near future.

In the last few days I was also able to find a Blender project to develop a first-person shooter (FPS) on the Web. I have been taking a look at the Python code and trying to modify it so that it can serve the needs of the DigiBahn Project as, alas, I don't think that students playing the game will need to carry an assault rifle through Stuttgart Central Station (perhaps an Easter egg for the game?):

For some reason or another, the complete texture did not get imported into the game: I can only see the sign images but no stainless steel texturing. I'm going to have to look at this problem and see if I can find a solution. Do I need to "bake" the textures onto the mesh?

I've been using Camtasia to do the screen captures and, unfortunately, it has been providing some miserable frame-per-second (FPS; a different meaning of "FPS" than the one above) rates when recording the game engine. Thus the jumpy video of the second game engine test in Blender. I cranked up the video capture settings to 50 fps and rendered the video in 30 fps in the hope that the video render would be a lot smoother, but no such luck. The final product was a lot smoother than other renders I did, it still isn't as smooth as I know it can be. Looks like I am on the market for a new screen capture software; any suggestions?

Fun with Specular Maps and Stanley Fish

2009-07-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

For the last few days, in addition to getting a handle on the Blender Game Engine and Python scripting language, I have also been working on developing a workflow for creating 3D game models. Thinking that starting off small would probably be the best way to go, I decided to create a mesh texture for this sign, which I have seen in numerous photos of the Stuttgart Fußgängerzone:

As I was to quickly discover, creating the 3D mesh to begin with was the easy part; actually getting the thing textured in a realistic manner (which, in my opinion, I still haven't quite yet got right) was the more difficult part. The primary problems were the "bump" and "specular" maps that give the 3D model a sense of realism. Let's look at the following as an example:

The top image is a 3D model "straight out of the render box," so to speak, without any bump or specular maps. The problem is, that it looks too good and unblemished to be real. What I really want is what I have seen in real-life: A sign with scratches on the plastic surface that influences how the light gets reflected off the surface. Thus, the bottom image with specular map applied.

However, I'm still not quite happy with the "feel" of the sign as the stainless steel surface, although smooth in real life, nevertheless still has minute scratches and a rough surface that just isn't coming across in the render. I think that I will revisit the sign in a few days and focus specifically on how to use a bump map to get the texture for the stainless steel just right. In any case, here are some animation renders of the sign:

Seeing some of the excellent work that other artist are doing with Blender (e.g., the Angela Guenette Demo Reel), I am somewhat (actually, very) hesitant to post my work here. However, considering that I was originally trained as a medievalist and have branched off into 3D modeling and game programming only recently and am largely self-taught, I suppose that this is not a bad start. Now that I have somewhat of a modest handle on the concepts of bump and specular maps, I will be wrestling with Blender in the coming days to get the images that I have in my head to be reflected in the images that Blender actually cranks out.

Finally, I recently came across an essay by Stanley Fish addressing the use of the humanities in education today. In this essay he argues that the humanities cannot be justified "except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who enjoy them." Although I would agree with Dr. Fish that a humanities education offers something intangible to those who pursue it, something that cannot (should not?) be commodified, I would hesitate in asserting that a humanities education needs no justification within the context of higher education. Not feeling the need to explain ourselves to anyone, we end up explaining ourselves to nobody. How sad that, in a time of expanding global opportunities and falling boundaries, the humanities have failed to make connections to other corners of the academy and, especially in the study of foreign languages, find themselves on a path of increasing isolation. The real power of digital technologies within a humanities context is, I think, the power of making connections and explaining ourselves others in new and innovative ways, which probably explains why The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 took Dr. Fish to task and savaged his 401K.

So, in a small way, I hope that the DigiBahn Project will be a way for German Studies to find points of connection to other disciplines (e.g., computer science, art, instructional design) and reach out to a new generation of students through interactive new media. Ultimately, I'd like to sink my teeth into a more ambitious digital humanities project: A 3D digital game-based learning environment that explores aspects of the Middle Ages. Think about the connection that this project could make, both in the students' minds and among colleagues at the university!

Delving Into Python: Free Stuff!

2009-07-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

I just love free programming resources, don't you? Since the Blender game engine uses Python as its programming language of choice, I recently decided to dust off my coding skills (I went all the way up to C3, data structures and algorithms, while retooling as an unemployed, post-PhD graduate) and get more involved with Python. But where to begin?

I found an excellent and thorough introduction to Python, Dive Into Python, on the Web. Good stuff, and even funny! Looking for an IDE I was able to find Komodo Edit 5, which seems to have some good reviews and a Python plug-in. There are some other Python editors out there as well, I'm thinking of Pydev and Eric, but I've played with Komodo in the past for PHP and thought I would revisit it now in a different context. I'll let you know how it goes.

Game Level Map: A Good Start

2009-07-10T09:18:00.001-07:00

It occured to me a few days ago that a game level map would not only help us visualize the direction in which we want to go, but would also help us in marking progress and keeping track of what meshes we need to create in order to complete the level. So, after a few hours of tinkering around in Open Office Draw, I came up with the following:

Granted, this is just a rough sketch-up and will probably change as we develop the level, but at least now I have a clearer idea of what the end product may look like. Basically, the player will be inserted into the pedestrian mall and confined there through game-based obstacles (e.g., a conveniently parked postal van) until all the level objectives have been met. Although at this point in time we do not have the game scripted so that the player can enter the various stores, this can be expanded upon in the future.

It was not possible to model the pedestrian mall in Stuttgart as completely as I would have liked due to its length and size. Instead, I have opted for what should be considered a "typical" German pedestrain mall with bakery, post office, and a few stores thrown in for good measure. These features can be found in nearly all German pedestrian zones and therefore should produce good transferable mental schemata.

As it is currently conceived, the game level has three areas:

Immediate pedestrian zone. This consists of the items and NPCs the player will interact with and will also be where the game and level challenges will be housed.

Backdrop. Will consist of buidlings (e.g., church) that the player can see from the pedestrian zone and will change based on player perspective, but which cannot be reached by the player.

Skybox. The distant cityscape and sky.

I have been working on getting Blender down, specifically on applying and baking textures to meshes. As soon as I get a model completed I will post a 360-degree turntable video.

DigiBahn + Blender Game Engine

2009-07-05T10:37:00.000-07:00

Did a quick run-though today of the DigiBahn game with the Blender game engine (BGE). I was able to find a script for mouse/camera control on the Web, although it is using Python 2.5 and many of the functions – its seems – have been deprecated for Python 2.6. Future development in Blender 2.49 and, eventually, 2.5 (both of which will use newer Python releases) will need to take this into consideration and most likely program new code for player interaction with the mouse and screen. I arranged the Blender logic blocks to support a standard WASD key configuration for game movement, although the player movement in the game does not “follow” the mouse; the camera simply pans to where ever the mouse is pointed. Again, something that needs to be addressed in future game prototypes.

Once the BGE is turned on, one can see the physics in effect: The camera drops until it collides with the ground and the camera bounces a bit as it goes down the stairs:

Other than that, the screen capture was done with Blender in a solid viewport draw type as not everything was textured and, accordingly, would not appear in texture draw mode.

While doing the run-through, it occurred to me that future development should focus on these areas:

Player interface. What type of GUI are we going to have? The objects present in the game should also be explained to the player in some fashion as many of them will be immersed in this virtual representation of a foreign sociocultural space for the first time. What about a PDA that the player can access whenever s/he has a question? Perhaps a mashup with Wikipedia that downloads information directly into the game via the PDA screen? This idea sounds promising as a PDA would not interrupt the game flow and many players would have their own PDAs in the real world.

NPCs. Once we get the meshes fleshed out and imported, we'll need to have people to occupy the spaces. The art people on the project probably should focus on character animation and rigging in order to create authentic-looking NPCs.

I'll be spending more time with Blender, making meshes and texturing them. Once I get enough meshes developed in this area, and have developed more competency, I will turn my attention to the BGE and work through some tutorials. I have been using the 2nd edition of The Blender Gamekit, which has been OK (if you overlook the typos), but I have been happier with Mastering Blender as an intermediate introduction to Blender as a 3D content creation suite. Once I got a handle on modeling and the BGE, I'm going to focus more intently on Python as this will be the way to really get the game to do what I want.

First Animation Render in Blender!

2009-07-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

Well, it took me the better part of the evening to render ~ 13 seconds of video in Blender, but I finally got it knocked down. I didn't take too much time for cleaning up or smoothing the meshes, so some areas are a bit rough. I just wanted to test out Blender's animation capabilities and see how the meshes looked:

We tried to make the scene as realistic as possible to the lower part of the Königstraße in Stuttgart. However, as the pedestrian area would simply be too large for inclusion in the game level, we decided to limit the area through the inclusion of buildings one would normally find in the pedestrian area. The Deichmann building is actually based on the fassade of a building in Oldenburg. Some random information from the rendering process:

400 frames
30 frames/sec
13.33 seconds in length, without intro and extro
23075 vertices
25075 faces

And, in case you are interested, here is a screen capture of .blend file from which the animation was rendered:

Some of the camera turns went a bit quick, making me fairly dizzy, so I lowered the frame rate by 40% while adding the intro and extro in Camtasia. I should be able to do the same in Blender, but I just needed quickly to convert the file to the .mov format before I could upload it to the blog. I also noted that rendering lagged with the light posts; probably because I extracted a circle mesh along a Bezier curve to get these figures, which resulted in a high number of vertices. There also seemed to be a lot of lag time in areas of intense light, which means I should keep an eye on my light sources. All in all, a good first attempt.

Saved by a Python Script

2009-07-01T03:46:00.000-07:00

While rendering the first test images of Stuttgart Central in Blender a few days ago, I couldn't help but notice that the handrails on the moving walkway were a bit "chunky," for lack of a better word. This part of the mesh was actually the most difficult part to create as it required me to extrude faces on a curved surface. Apparently my first attempt at solving this problem had not worked as well as I would have liked, hence the chunky surfaces despite repeated attempts at smoothing them out.

So, yesterday I spend the better part of the afternoon playing with all combination of extruding, copying vertices and edges, and scaling to get the smooth handrails that I so desired. After repeated attempts and near the edge of my patience, I recalled seeing a tutorial on the Web on architectural modeling in Blender that just may solve my problem. A Google search later and a few tweaks of the mesh, the following (and improved) surface emerged:

And here is a screenshot of the rather ambiguously named Python script that saved my bacon:

I am particularly intrigued with the "Discombobulator" script and wonder what type of effect it would have on my mesh (or life). . .

DGBL Primers, the New Sesame Street, and Elon University Students

2009-06-30T05:47:00.000-07:00

There is so much literature out there about computer games, DGBL, and education, it is sometimes a bit overwhelming to find a good overview that can quickly provide an orientation point for future research. In the past I have suggested Richard Van Eck's Digital Game-Based Learning as a starting point, but a few days ago I came across Moving Learning Games Forward by Eric Klopfer, Scot Osterweil, and Katie Salen of the MIT Education Arcade, which is also an excellent introduction and provides a broader overview. Katie Salen is the author, along with Eric Zimmerman, of Rules of Play, a hefty tome and definitive guide on game design. I heartily recommend this book, although its attention to detail sometimes makes for difficult going. Weighing in at only 56 pp., the essay is a much easier read. It also seems that the Sesame Street folks are getting in on DGBL. Last week I found Game Changer, put out by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. If Sesame Street has finally gone DGBL, shouldn't higher education as well?

Finally, a few photos of Elon University students hard at work on the DigiBahn Project:

Jack Garratt, discussing the finer points of digital gameplay. Jack (who has gone on to graduate studies at Georgetown University) was instrumental in developing the game narrative.

Natalie Lampert on-site at Stuttgart Central Station taking photos for the 3D modelers to use as visual reference.