[game_edu] Gamemaker for intro programming; who owns student work

[Seth Sivak]

Hey Everyone,

Alice is certainly a wonderful tool to use and is free.  At Carnegie
Mellon we also use Panda3D (www.panda3d.org) which was made by Disney
and is now open source and totally free.  The engine is built in C++
and Python and handles everything from simple 3D interactions to
advanced shaders (our project was done totally using panda:
www.activeadventuregame.com).  This engine was used to make Toon Town
and several other games and has an impressive amount of capabilities.
It has support for both maya and 3dsmax.

Thanks
Seth

On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 11:23 AM, Karen Collins <collinsk at uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

> Here at University of Waterloo, we've been using Clickteam's Multimedia

> Fusion for Arts students to get acquainted with programming concepts. It's

> been great, although the program is not without some bugs and can be

> expensive to license ($200 and change per student). I've heard good things

> about GameMaker and plan on perhaps using that instead next time around to

> keep costs down for students.

>

> Actionscript 3 is quite advanced now--it's really an OOP, although you could

> theoretically still teach AS2 if you're using Flash to make games. I don't

> think AS3 has a short learning curve at all, it's is so different from AS2

> that they can't really use AS2 as an intro to AS3.

>

> -Karen

>

>

> --

>

> Karen Collins, PhD

> Canada Research Chair

> Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology

> University of Waterloo

> 200 University Ave W

> Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1

> 519 888-4567 x 38326

>

>

> www.gamessound.com

> Out Now and available on Amazon:

> Game Sound, MIT Press (US)

> From Pac-Man to Pop Music, Ashgate (UK)

>

> Ian Schreiber wrote:

>>

>> I haven't heard of this, but I wouldn't be surprised. There are actually a

>> lot of "lite" programming languages out there that are explicitly made for

>> teaching purposes (when I was in junior high, we used "Karel the Robot" for

>> a few weeks as an introduction to the structure of Pascal). These days, I

>> hear a lot about Alice 3D (www.alice.org <http://www.alice.org>) which was

>> created at CMU specifically for the purpose of introducing programming in a

>> less intimidating way. I suspect other scripting languages like ActionScript

>> and Python/Pygame would have a relatively short learning curve as well.

>>  Whatever you use, the challenge here is in concentrating on the

>> transferable concepts, and pointing out at every step of the way the

>> generalizable parts. The syntax of an If/Then statement may vary from

>> language to language, but all of them have it in some form (well... most of

>> them :). Design the lessons in parallel with the advanced class (Java, C++,

>> C#, or whatever it is that you teach at your school as the "primary"

>> language) so that when they take their first "hardcore" programming language

>> everything will have a ring of familiarity. The more integrated, I think,

>> the better.

>>  As for the IP ownership column (hooray for Jim!), it makes me wonder --

>> is anyone here at a school that claims IP rights to student work, and if so,

>> how is this enforced? Is there a contract that students sign upon

>> matriculation, or is it simply the school making a loud claim and hoping it

>> never goes to court?

>>  - Ian

>>

>> --- On *Wed, 11/12/08, Lewis Pulsipher /<lewpuls at gmail.com>/* wrote:

>>

>>    From: Lewis Pulsipher <lewpuls at gmail.com>

>>    Subject: [game_edu] Gamemaker for intro programming; who owns

>>    student work

>>    To: game_edu at igda.org

>>    Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 7:07 PM

>>

>>    Do you know of anyone who has used Gamemaker as a principal tool for

>>    teaching Introduction to Programming classes (not just for game

>>    students, but for programming students in general)?  It would appear

>>    to be an ideal way to put some fun into elementary programming.

>>

>>

>>    Going back to the question of who owns student work, the response of

>>    the lawyer who writes the legal advice column for IGDA will be of

>>    interest:  http://www.igda.org/columns/lastwords/lastwords_Nov08.php

>>

>>

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>>

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