Museum Signs and Integrating Information Channels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.