Yesterday, the Reuter ran an interesting report about LittleBigPlanet (see excerpt below). I am interested less so about the game per se, but more so in the “moddable” aspect of it. It seemed that a “toolkit” will be given so that players can create and share player-created levels after they are done with the game’s original campaign (about 50 levels or so).
Sony Computer Entertainment America’s”LittleBigPlanet” game, released in North America on Tuesday, lets players create characters and scenarios for the PlayStation 3, taking the Internet’s embrace of community-created sites to video games.
The new game has 50 levels of play in a universe of castles and mountains where customizable sackcloth puppets must navigate obstacles and puzzles to proceed.
What separates it from the pack is a suite of tools, which allows players to create their own game challenges and share them with others online via Sony Corp’s PlayStation Network…
“The three pillars of the game are equal: play, create, and share,” said Ettouney, who co-founded the game’s development studio, Media Molecule.
Electronic Arts Inc has proven that empowering gamers is a good business decision these days. Gamers have populated the new “Spore” universe with over 25 million creatures, vehicles and buildings of their own creation. “Spore” PC and Nintendo DS games sold over 1 million copies worldwide in the first three weeks.
Billy Pidgeon, video game analyst for IDC, believes “LittleBigPlanet” will help Sony drive sales of its PS3. The PS3 lags Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii in total sales, but new games made by Sony exclusively for its machine may help it gain ground….
I have finally sent off the book chapter I co-wrote with JaeHwan Byun for the Gibson-Baek’s book.
Book Title: Digital Simulations for Improving Education
Editors: David Gibson & Young Kyun Baek
Chapter 18 - Making Video Game By Modification (Game Modding): Lesson Learned
Apart from the regular “fix this”, “change that”, I am actually very pleased with the reviewers’ feedback:
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There are very few chapters that I know of that walk a reader through the mod process. As such, this was not only entertaining, but also informational.
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…this would be potentially one of the more widely used chapters!
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…the chapter will be widely used by designers and educators.
Firaxis has just announced a Modding contest for Civilization IV! There are a total of four categories:
- Best In-Game Asset (art, including units, buildings and/or wonders)
- Best World-Builder Scenario (just a single .wbs file)
- Best Map Script (just a single .py file)
- Best Educational Mod (only educators and schools can submit entries for this one)
The contest runs from Dec 23, 2007 to February 18, 2008. (Read the official announcement.)
Take note that in order to mod Civilization IV, you will need to have some (okay, quite a bit more than ’some’) knowledge of Python.
It was at I/ITSEC 2007 that I first heard about Shawn A. Weil from the folks from Aptima, Inc. (Woburn, MA). It appeared that Aptima (or should I say Weil?) also worked on Neverwinter Nights for a little bit, and had presented their papers at past I/ITSEC (2004/2005).
It looks like they have been busy:
- Alexander, A. L.; Brun, T.; Sidman, J.; and Weil, S. A. (2006). From Gaming to Training: A Review of Studies on Fidelity, Immersion, Presence, and Buy-in and Their Effects on Transfer in PC-Based Simulations and Games. DARWARS research paper. (PDF)
- Freeman, J., MacMillan, J., Haimson, C., Weil, S., Stacy, W., and Diedrich, F. (2006). From
gaming to training. Society for Advanced Learning Technology (SALT Conference). Orlando, FL. 8-10 February 2006. (PDF)
- Weil, S. A., Hussain, T. S., Brunye, T., Sidman, J., & Spahr, L. (2005). The use of massive multi-player gaming technology for military training: A preliminary evaluation. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 49th Annual Meeting. Santa Monica, CA: HFES. Also found here: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting Proceedings, pp. 1186-1190(5)
- Weil, S. A., Hussain, T. S., Brunye, T. T., Diedrich, F. J., Entin, E. E., Ferguson, W., Sidman, J. G., Spahr, L. L., MacMillan, J., & Roberts, B. (2005). Assessing the potential of massive multi-player games to be tools for military training. Proceedings of the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (I/ITSEC). Abstract (PDF)
- Freeman, J., MacMillan, J., Haimson, C., Weil, S., and Diedrich, F. (2005). Systems, studies, and
strategies in game-based learning. Proceedings of Training & Simulation International (TESI Conference 2005). March, 22-24, 2005. Maastricht, Netherlands. (PDF)
My participation in the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2007 was more chance than planned. I had seen an advertisement for Serious Games Challenge on the Serious Games listserv, and decided to go for it. After two months of hardwork, we finally had a completed mod for submission… and it came in as a Finalist entry!
By all accounts, I/ITSEC was a wonderful conference. There are a lot of interesting folks (mostly military, or ex-military personnels) who peers at the world using the same sand-colored binoculars as I do. 
This is so liberating, I actually have one guy said it to my face, we only want empirical studies! YES!!! Looks like I will be back next years, too.
Oh, it was a surprise to meet Mike Matzko there, too. (Long time no see!)
Okay, I must admit I missed this one altogether. Apparently, Obsidian had commissioned a Custom Model Contest sometime in November… (I figured it was right around the time I was preoccupied with The Witcher). Anyway, for posterity sake, you can still view (and download) the custom models submitted for the contest here.
The original announcement said:
This contest is primarily for modelers. Participants can submit a single entry into each of the following categories (total of 6 entries allowed per participant):
- Creature/Monster (requires animations)
- Weapons
- Buildings (can have animations if you like, such as a swinging sign or shutters, but doesn’t have to)
- Placeables (can have animations, but do not have to)
- Clothing/Armor
- Props & Miscellaneous (equipable items that don’t fit into any specific category - such as books and bouquets of flowers)
The best news from this contest is that you can already download these contents and use them in your mod! My favorite submission has got to be the celestial plate (armor) by Byterunner!
After two months of planning and several weeks of crazy coding/scripting, my research team has finally put together a game for the 2nd Annual Serious Games Challenge and Showcase at I/ITSEC. I must say I learned a lot. Before, I was able to put together a story, and even build the set. But when it comes to scripting, I am no help… But now, I must say I can script pretty decently.
For the last 3 days, I was basically fitting all seven areas together. Due to time constraint, instead of sending it off to the team for any inspection and correction, I decided to rewrite about 80% of the scripts (well, because I messed up). The process nearly killed me as I had to pull an all-nighter. I finally postmarked it by 10.30am my time (11.30am EST). Now, considering the deadline being 12.00 noon EST, that was cutting it really close!
Still like I said, now I feel I have finally earn the rite of passge. I can boldly call myself a developer (and I have done game design from the beginning to finish). So, I am one of them now. I believe this is what separate instructional designers who talks about game design, from instructional designers who have done game designs.
Now to put all that behind me, and wait for the outcome of the judging/selection.
Oh, the story? It’s about saving a young girl from a mysterious illness… and the name of the Mod is aptly, “Saving Adryanee.”
I will be presenting “Assessing What Players Learned in Serious Games: In Situ Data Collection, Information Trails and Quantitative Analysis”at the 10th International Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Educational & Serious Games (CGAMES 2007) on July 25th - 28th, 2007, in Louisville, KY.
This would be my first foray into the computer games conferences outside of the field of instructional technology, it would be interesting to see what others think of Information Trails, and in situ data collection methodology.
The paper can be downloaded here: cgames2007.pdf
The main source for NWN2 tutorials is obviously NWN Vault, where you will find several leads, and even a series of video tutorials in Spanish. Amongst these, I will heartily recommend Githonym’s Don’t Panic Guide for new comers, and for those who wans to go on further.
But NWN2 being a new game, there is simply much less resources out there as compared to resources for NWN1. Can’t complain, with time, the situation will change, and for the better, I know. But right now, I need a tutorial that is suitable for a 4 week course, and preferably, one that’s based on the “project-based learning” approach. Looks like I will have to put in some elbow grease and make one myself.
The result of several weeks of hard work is the Neverwinter Pedia. I ended up learning to mod the game better, so again, no complain there. Once I have everything completed, I should have it posted to NWVault, too.
After 6 months of waiting, NWNX4 has finally reached beta! The NWN eXtender has been an essential add-on program (plug-in) to those of us who intend to make persistent world out of NWN. Acting as a game state viewer, it allowed a peek into the game engine, and extraction of certain variables from the game engines to be stored into an external database (such as SQLlite, or MySQL). The data storage is the most basic feature of a persistent world.
Having seen NWNX in action, it helped us tremendously in implementing the logistic for Information Trails. Hopefully NWNX4 is equally helpful (if not better) in extending the functionality of NWN2.
Although I do wish the naming convention can be better than what it is right now (i.e. NWNX2 for NWN1, and NWNX4 for NWN2). This is a work of love by Papillon; and to top it all, it is free. I can’t complain, can I?
NWNX4 Prototype 1.07
State: beta | Version: 4.0.0.7 (This is version 7 of the prototype.)
Now includes a GUI, demo modules, new logging option, important bugfixes, upgrade to current SQLite library, and changes to how locations are stored.
NWNX prototype 7 is now officially considered BETA.
