The Power of Play: Effective Training Through Games and Simulations, 4/25

The Seventh Biannual UMBC Spring Training Forum is focused on The Power of Play: Effective Training Through Games and Simulations. It will be held in the Main Seminar Room of the UMBC Technology Center from 6:30-8:30pm on Wednesday, April 25, 2007. Refreshments will be available starting at 6:00pm. Three experienced speakers will talk about how to use games and simulations to motivate and actively engage learners, improve teamwork and accelerate learning. Topics will include

• The impact of the “gamer generation” on Training and Development
• Learning the game development process, from concept to completion
• Using low-tech and high-tech games to fit your learners
• Innovation in games and simulations

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UMBC Digital Entertainment Conference 28 April 2007

The UMBC Game Developer’s Club will host the second Digital Entertainment Conference on careers in the computer game and interactive entertainment industry. The event will take place on Saturday April 28th from 10:30-5:30 in Lecture Hall 5 of the Engineering and Computer Science Building. It is free and open to the public.

The 2007 DEC will feature presentations from seven speakers from four Maryland game companies and cover a range of topics, including art, programming and production.

• Dave Inscore (Art Director, Big Huge Games)
• Katie Hirsch (Artist / Programmer, Breakaway)
• Ryan McFall (Engineer, Day 1 Studios)
• Dominic Cerquetti (Engineer, Firaxis)
• Don Goddard (Technical Director, Breakaway)
• Barry Caudill (Executive Producer, Firaxis)
• Matt Udvari (Designer, Day 1 Studios)

See the GDC site for a detailed schedule and biographic sketches of the presenters. Consult this UMBC map for directions and parking information.

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Fall 07 seminar: computer graphics for games

Computer Science professor Marc Olano will offer a special seminar this Fall on computer graphics for games.

CMSC 491G/691G: Computer Graphics for Games, Dr. Marc Olano, TuTh 2:30-3:45, Pre/co-requisite: CMSC 435/634.

This course is an introduction to some of the computer graphics methods commonly used in 3D computer games. Computer graphics encompasses a wide variety of algorithms and techniques, many more than can be covered in just one or two courses. This course is similar in style and scope to CMSC 635/Advanced Computer Graphics, but uses computer games as a focus and motivation to explore a different set of graphics algorithms. Topics include using and manipulating scene graphs, design of interactive applications, collision detection, geometric level of detail, potentially visible set computation, and hardware procedural shading. Students will learn several common algorithms in each topic area in sufficient depth for implementation.

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Animated character to talk at UMBC Computer Mania Day

The UMBC Center for Women and Information Technology will host Computer Mania Day to provide a half day of technology-related activities geared for 6th - 8th grade girls and their parents. The invited speaker will be Jennifer Webb, described as

a digitally animated 8th grader at Computer Mania Middle School. Although she does not always receive straight A’s, Jennifer really enjoys school, especially her algebra class.

While boys are welcome, the focus is on girls because of their continuing under-participation in information technology classes and careers. This program is designed to provide a broad-based introduction to information technology applications to different careers.

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Contact

Contact us by email at gaim at cs.umbc.edu and by post at

Games, animation and interactive media
c/o Professor Marc Olano
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Baltimore MD 21250
fax: 410-455-3969

We are especially interested in hearing from companies that would like to collaborate with us through joint projects, research, internships, sponsoring events and activities, and hiring UMBC graduates.

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Microsoft adds social networking features to Xbox 360

The game console business is big and very competitive. Microsoft’s latest move in it’s three way battle with Sony and Nintendo is to allow users to link their Xbox gamertag identifier with an Windows Live Messenger account, enabling IM interactions via the Xbox. As reported in the NYT article Microsoft Brings Instant Chat to TV Screen, Through Games:

“We feel this is a huge step in driving social networking further into the family room by allowing Xbox 360 users to I.M. directly from their couch,” said John Rodman, Microsoft’s group manager for the Xbox 360, in a telephone interview last week. “Now you don’t have to manage two separate groups of friends online.”

I think there is a lot of potential here. There seems to be a trend in which social applications are spreading out from their base of blogs, forums and sharing sites to mobile phones (Twitter), music (last.fm) and now games.

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Understanding games in four episodes

Everybody loves Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. The content is informative, thought provoking and at times even philosophical. But the form — a comic book about how comic books work — is not just cleverly self-referential but also a direct demonstration of the techniques that underly the unique graphical format.

Kongregate uses the same approach to explain the basics of computer games. They’ve released a set of four simple 2D flash games to “raise awareness for the basic concepts of computer and video games.”

• Episode one covers rules, interactivity, representation and simulation in games.
• Episode two deals with player’s motivation to continue playing instead of leaving a game and examines what makes a game fun — instead of frustrating — to play.
• Episode three introduces the principles of learning in computer games.
• Episode four covers identification in computer games

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XNA game studio demonstration and tutorial

On March 31st, the UMBC Game Developer’s Club hosted a presentation by Microsoft on their XNA Game programming framework. Dr. Ranjan K. Sen, Microsoft’s Academic Developer Evangelist for the Mid-Atlantic region, kicked off the event with an overview of XNA and Microsoft’s Krishna Kumar gave a hands-on demonstration and tutorial of XNA and XNA Game Studio Express.

XNA Game Studio Express is a free integrated development environment intended to help students and hobbyists develop games. It is based on Visual C# Express 2005 and lets developers target both Windows and Xbox 360.

Some photos from the UMBC XNA event are avilable on Flickr.

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New UMBC programs on games, animation and interactive media

UMBC is developing tracks tracks for students interested in studies in interactive entertainment and game development. The Visual Arts Department is planning a new undergraduate emphasis on Animation and Interactive Media. The CSEE Department has proposed a new track within the Computer Science program on Game Development. Both departments hope to begin offering these programs in the Fall of 2007.

We will use this blog for news and announcements about these new academic programs as well as related topic, including new courses, events, the UMBC game developers club, etc.

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About

UMBC is developing tracks tracks for students interested in studies in interactive entertainment and game development. The Visual Arts Department is planning a new undergraduate emphasis on Animation and Interactive Media. The CSEE Department has proposed a new track within the Computer Science program on Game Development. Both departments hope to begin offering these programs in the Fall of 2007.

We will use this blog for news and announcements about these new academic programs as well as related topic, including new courses, events, the UMBC game developers club, etc.

Contact us by sending mail to gaim at cs.umbc.edu.

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