Open Source Games - Pygame - Education

This site caught my attention this morning. (http://www.stoicmonkey.com/2007/01/gpl-vroom-for-linux/.) It looks like good stuff. The way I landed there was from the pygame site. The game is a lot of fun. My son played it for half an hour last night.

The best thing about these games in my opinion is that I can read how they are programmed. Slowly the methods of programming are seeping in as I read them. What a great collection there is out there of good code. Most of the classic game genres are covered. Just some slight tweaking and most of these games can hold educational content.

I'm looking to be the tweaker and then pass the tweaking off to public school teachers and students.


I found another interesting site.

Open Source Education Software by Charles Cossé
http://www.asymptopia.com/

Edge Loop Selection in Blender

Edge loops. Yeah, those.

Edge loops are like when I first started learning photoshop and had a conceptual problem with layers. I have know that I want quad based modeling for ease of manipulation, proper animating, and good results with sub-surfacing.

However, I am not formally trained in modeling and my work in the past is not to the standard I'd like to achieve. In watching modeling training videos I'm seeing the edge loop tool select being used. I'm not able to successfully follow along. It isn't working for me. I'm hitting ctrl-e 6 like they are telling me but nothing happens.

This morning I look up in the blender wiki manual edge loops and voila! Like magic. Hold and and right click. All the cool edges in my forming skull model are selected nicely. Joy.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Edge_and_Face_Tools

Science and Education as Exploration

John Gage, who is a Sun Fellow and researcher -- published his Ph.D. thesis, Sketchpad, which founded the field of computer graphics and computer-aided design. Had this to say about the relationship of science and education.

Science and education are both forms of exploration. The same tools that are used for scientific exploration should be in the hands of students in schools, so that they can explore the world around them from the earliest age. We're seeing that today with four-year-olds playing on their Macs and interacting with visual and auditory environments. And that exploratory environment is a form of education, which is truly lifelong.

http://onesearch.sun.com/search/onesearch/index.jsp?qt=sketchpad&charset=UTF-8

Scientific visualisation and computer gaming are pretty much the same thing. The best games play with aspects of science. Civilization...Political Science and History. Marble Madness...Physics. The whole of it wraps right into one of my favorite sciences, art. Both create computer generated user interacted with art. Teaching is an art. Art is a science. Teaching art is a science, teaching science is an art.

We need to get computer programs more complicated than the current round of teachers understands into the classrooms at early ages. The students need to be playing games that they can modify. Put their picture on the character, change gravity. The montessori counting blocks of the 21st century. Blender
is the tool for the job. Children will learn it quickly. I've taught a 13 year old for one hour and he started making school projects that blew his teacher's minds. My son is nine and he watches me model and plays the games I make. Rather the games we make. He is artistic oversight, and gameplay advisor. My three year old son loves to play my driving game. As time permits I'm gonna put in the letters of the alphabet with sounds when you bash them.

Sketch Renders from Blender using Composite Nodes

I've been using Blender for 3 years now. When I first touched Blender it was in version 2.31 (I'm pretty sure). In the intervening years the addition of tools has left me in a perpetual state of can't learn fast enough. I've relaxed into this state realizing it is just living in a cornucopia and I shouldn't sweat excess of stuff I want, like, and need. Nodes were added in the recent past (2.43-2.42?) and I am focused on the game engine so I haven't studied the new neat toy/tool.

Today on Blendernation I found a link to this tutorial about how to use the render nodes to do sketch renders. http://matthieu3d.free.fr/TutoVira2/tut2en.html
I won't say I know how to use the nodes now, but I think I understand the concept much better.

Blender Game Engine Menu Pre-Built and Customizable

From Blending Online

"Don't want to spend hours developing a menu system for your new game project? Then try using this template. It provides many functions such as playing intro scenes before the game starts, mapping keys, adjusting mouse, game, and sound settings, and having a credits section.

As an added bonus Social's FPS template now comes packaged as an example of how to apply the menu to a game.

For a tutorial on integrating it into your own game, see the Tutorials section."

Download the file

Hurray Open Source games.

Blender Lighting Rigs

When one goes to render in a 3d modeling program much of what one sees is based on the lighting. Lighting is a profession in theatre and film. Lighting is hard to get right in 3d.

The blender manual located at: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual
has a good tutorial on lighting: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Lighting_Rigs
at the end of the tutorial a link to a .blend with all of the lighting rigs referenced is recommended with this exhortation:

"Hopefully, you will want to download the blend file here. Save it on your hard drive, and when you want to start a new scene, do a File->Append->(filename)->Scene->(and select the rig you want)."

Download the LightingRig Blend

Documentation is getting better in the Blender world since the advent of Wikis.

Blender 2.43

Blender 2.43 has been released.

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

http://www.blender3d.org

Hello World

Hello World.