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Engine for Collaborative Science Education MMOG?
plisdku asks: "My research advisor wants to create an online, collaborative science education game for middle- to high-school students; we need a 3D engine! A pioneer in internet-assisted laboratories (iLabs), he has developed real experiments that students can operate remotely over the internet. We envision a game where students wander a campus, solving Caltech-style 'stacks,' and learning collaboratively as they perform the great experiments of the history of science in simulated and real laboratories. What we need is a 3D engine and content creation system with which our team of artists and bright student developers can produce a prototype within a year. Requirements: customizable avatars, flexible integration with other technology (iLabs, CompEdu, etc.), and reasonable licensing fees (open source would be great). Our last project used SGI tools -- what are our modern-day options?"
Flash.
Best Windows Freeware
if I'm not mistaken, id has released the quake 1 and 2 engines under the gpl
Crystal Space
It's highly configurable and easy to code for. There are multiple included implementations of apps using the engine that come with it so you can keep the wheel reinvention to a minimum.
Also it supports multiple formats to be imported such as 3DS and the like.
MTW
The Quake 2 engine is probably the most advanced open source engine youl'l find. But It sounds like it would be better to start from scratch if your advisor intends to be putting science expiraments into this...
This would appear to mesh exactly with your aims :-
http://www.opencroquet.org/
Two psossible downsides SmallTalk and Alan Kay. Both are positives for me but I understand some peoples aversion.
Second Life is ideal for this sort of thing.
They even have a special program for universities.
It's not just a graphics engine, it's a whole 3D world where you can collaboratively build and script stuff... it has very customizable humanoid avatars and is extremely user friendly.
It's got physics too - based on the "industry standard" Havok engine.
Chris Dede's group at Harvard is doing something like this:
http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/muvees2003/
I saw him present this at AERA this year.
You have to root around to find the science experiment stuff.
Open-source under the LGPL license, and developed at the Naval Postgradute School (former home of America's Army).
Please post on the forum if you have any questions, and I'll be glad to help you out.
I've found Soya to be a very friendly Python-based 3D engine. It also has ODE physics built in, so that might be useful, too. It also works closely with Blender models. In addition, the developers are very responsive, and they've produced a number of tutorials to get people up to speed quickly. Not sure if the software you'd like to integrate with has Python bindings, but this is a good option if it does.
But it was an RPG for little kids to learn math. Basically they start in a town, that teaches them the basics about math and pointers about that section. Then they walk around the wilderness, being challenged with math problems. Eventually they face a boss that gives them several math problems they have to solve. When they complete an area, they move on to the next. Maybe have them choose their adventuring buddies that may give them hints in math-battles. It'd works because the way math builds on past math foundations. Start with counting, and if you put enough levels in, you could have them up to calculus.
God spoke to me.
2 AMAZING 3D game engines developed in Java. this makes any environment that is built cross platform on Win32, OSX and Linux straight away!
http://www.agency9.com/
http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/
What about OGRE? Not used it but it looks like a competitor to CrystalSpace.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Quake2 is GPL'ed
... well you get the idea. With a bit of searching
Quake3 will probably be in the near future, and has a very active community of modders/tools/information/...
Cube (and nextgen Sauerbraten) are zlib licensed:
http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
fun for its realtime ingame editor iirc
Ogre is LGPL'ed and also very active community
http://www.ogre3d.org/
I think you must be able to find some decent open source stuff.
I'm not sure creating an MMOG to teach students will actually teach them science. What will most likely happen is 1 student will figure everything out and then post it online and everyone else will copy-paste his directions and not learn anything, just like it is with most quests in MMORPGs. Also how would you pull them away from games like: WoW, GWs, CS:S, Halo 2 etc. and get them to play an educational game? The only way I could see getting them to play it would be to have teachers integrate it into their curriculum but there's still the 1st probelm
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
This sounds very, very similar to a project idea that I've had boiling in the back of my mind, and I would very much love to be a part of this. Can you let me know what school you're at, and who your research advisor is?
The University of Nottingham has been working for years on MASSIVE which is designed explicitly for this purpose. Prof. Benton and Dr. Greenhal have been working on this for years. Last time I experienced it the graphics were more 1980s VR than Doom 3, but you were able to manipulate the environment collaborativly (I built a house with 10 other people) in real time, use it as a meeting space with full audio and very low lag. Not sure about the licensing, you would have to ask them.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!