Book Chapter on Game Modding
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:
There are very [...]
Neverwinter Nights for military
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. [...]
I/ITSEC 2007 (Orlando, FL)
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 [...]
NWN2 Custom Model Contest
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 [...]
Playing to Learn
The Murphy Winter Report (2005/2006) ran an article about Kathleen Hansen and Nora Paul of University of Minnesota using NWN for Journalism. (I have known about someone using NWN for journalism for quite sometime now, but it keep slipping my mind as to who the researchers are… Now I won’t forget.)
Original article: http://sjmc.umn.edu/mreporter/winter2005/neverwinter.html
(Excerpt… ) NWN [...]
Serious Games Challenge
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 [...]
CGames 2007
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 [...]
Neverwinter Pedia
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 [...]
Neverwinter Nights 2 “Research”
I have finally come across the first report about folks “using Neverwinter Nights 2 for learning and/or research.” I am pretty sure the folks at Heriot-Watt University are somehow “inspired” by the success at West Nottinghamshire — since both Judith Good and Judy Robertson also hailed from the United Kingdom.
But whatever the things they are [...]
NWN eXtender 4 (beta) for NWN2
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 [...]
Peter Gorniak (MIT)
Peter Gorniak, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is probably the first person who used NWN as a research platform. He originally conceived it as Situated Speech Understanding (you can read his thesis proposal here) but eventually turned it into Affordance-Based Concept [ABC] (you can read his thesis here). Some of his other writing [...]
Making the News
Kathryn Jaehnig did a write up for CILR’s Information Trails research team today. The article was printed in today’s Southern Illinoisan newspaper.
Headline: Computer Games May Help with Class Work
ID: 19394578.doc
Author: Kathryn Jaehnig
Approx. number of words: 687
CARBONDALE – Some day, in the not-so-distant future in a school not far away, students may claim that a dragon [...]
Scripting Compendium
There have been many scripting tutorials written for NWN (since 2002). David Gaider (Lead Writer, Bioware) once compiled a long list of tutorials for beginning scripters at Bioware NWN Forum based on many of Celowin’s works (see this thread). The list of tutorials proved very useful when I set out to find resources for my [...]
NWN Modding: West Notts College, UK
West Nottinghamshire College at Mansfield, UK has been modding NWN since 2005. Those of us who followed the Bioware’s Wednesday newsletter would have read about their educational NWN project at one time or another.
The project has also been reported in the news, here’s one write-up, and here’s another. On Jan 12, 2007, BBC News released [...]
Database-Driven Persistent World
The Database-Driven Persistent World (DDPW) Project was conceived as a response to the difficulties that were being encountered by Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) fans who either lacked the required technical knowledge or simply did not have the massive amonts of time required to create a decent Neverwinter Nights (NWN) module which would take a short [...]
