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Education Entertainment Games

Engine for Collaborative Science Education MMOG? 56

Posted by Cliff from the outside-of-the-FPS-box dept.
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?"
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Engine for Collaborative Science Education MMOG? More

Engine for Collaborative Science Education MMOG?

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  • Flash.

  • idsoftware (Score:4, Informative)

    by oni ( 41625 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @12:45PM (#12421468) Homepage
    if I'm not mistaken, id has released the quake 1 and 2 engines under the gpl

  • Two words... (Score:5, Informative)

    by shadwwulf ( 145057 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @12:45PM (#12421469) Homepage
    Crystal Space [sf.net]

    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

    • CrystalSpace also has a vibrant community willing to help you if you have any questions. I coded with CrystalSpace for a while, and I would never have gotten as far as I did without a lot of help.

  • Quake 2 (Score:2, Funny)

    by LiENUS ( 207736 )
    The Quake 2 [planetquake.com] 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...
  • I've never used it, but Ogre3d looks promising.

    http://www.ogre3d.org/ [ogre3d.org]

  • Croquet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Usquebaugh ( 230216 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @12:56PM (#12421630)
    This would appear to mesh exactly with your aims :-

    http://www.opencroquet.org/ [opencroquet.org]

    Two psossible downsides SmallTalk and Alan Kay. Both are positives for me but I understand some peoples aversion.
  • It's free, but not open source:

    http://www.qubesoft.com/ [qubesoft.com]

  • Second Life (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:07PM (#12421779) Journal
    Second Life [secondlife.com] 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.
    • This is the first thought that came to my mind too. Some land would be relatively cheap (far cheaper than the development time to make an MMO), and you could have a prototype to prove your idea fairly quickly. Its also cheap to use, a 1 time 10 dollar entrance fee if you want to keep your character.
    • Recently read an article on this subject:

      Second Life: Educational Possibilities
      http://www2.kumc.edu/netlearning/SLEDUCAUSESW2005/ SLPresentationOutline.htm [kumc.edu]

      It's likely one of the easiest and most affordable options.

  • A similar project (Score:3, Informative)

    by mwber ( 235552 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:09PM (#12421812)
    Chris Dede's group at Harvard is doing something like this:
    http://muve.gse.harvard.edu/muvees2003/ [harvard.edu]

    I saw him present this at AERA this year.

    You have to root around to find the science experiment stuff.
  • Also check out Delta3D [delta3d.org].

    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.

  • Torque engine from Garage Games

    RealmForge from www.realmforge.com is open source. They just released v0.6.1 but are not yet to a beta version, (Puts on Tinfoil Suit) and it is .NET based quickly points out runs on Mono.Net.
    Very complete feature set (many yet to be implemented however).

    Nevrax
    Radan Labs
    Reality Factory
    3D Game Studio

    but better, browse to
    http://www.devmaster.net/engines/ [devmaster.net]
    and waste some time there!
  • The Cube engine is open source, I'm not sure how well it would fit your requirements, but its probably worth a look. It runs really well on lots of older hardware as well!!

    http://cube.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

  • Soya (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chilltowner ( 647305 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @01:45PM (#12422194) Homepage Journal
    I've found Soya [tuxfamily.org] 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.
  • You may want to check out Nevrax.org [nevrax.org] home of Nel [nevrax.org], the MMO Engine that powers The Saga of Ryzom. [ryzom.com] NeL is licensed under the GPL and is a set of C++ libraries and utilities.
  • ... is going to cut it from what I gather. Most engines, no matter what features they laud tend to do really well at certain functional aspects and only mediocre to dismal in others. Another thing to consider is that the engine as a whole will only be incorporating 3D visuals as the visualizations portion of the engine. I would gather that the networking portion of the engine would have to be very robust, efficient and all around top-notch if they're planning on doing a MMOG style persistent world.

    This

  • You might want to give the torque (tribes2) engine [garagegames.com] a try, as it supports large environments, unmodified up to about 128 simultaneous players, has decent physics and is more mature in a lot of ways than anything in the F/OSS realm. and at $100 per developer seat, the cost of entry is really not that high.

  • Croquet [opencroquet.org]. There's nothing else like it.
  • RealmForge [realmforge.com] is a really good-sounding option for what you're talking about. It's an LGPL project. It's basically a game development kit built on top of Axiom (the C# version of OGRE). It's cross-platform, and one of its main advantages is the ease of content creation. It's still in development, but I must say that the framework is incredibly well-thought out, and I can't wait to see where this thing goes.
  • If you're trying to do something more basic that a full-blown 3D game, VRML/X3D is probably still an option.

    FreeWRL [sourceforge.net]

    You won't be able to do the type of things that an engine like crystal space would enable, but you will have easy access to web-like hyperlinking and information presentation. It depends on how game-like you envision the final product being and what information you are trying to convey.

  • I had an idea similar to this (Score:3, Funny)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @04:02PM (#12424233) Journal
    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.
    • Cool! Would it be online? Could you collect sets of theorems, that when combined gave you bonus abilities like +1 to nerdiness, and +2 to not getting beat up at school? Would you be able to collect all of Godel's theorems or would you leave that set incomplete for expansion pack purposes. Could a high level player gank a noob with calculus and get sweet drops and phat loot? How about special classes like Mathromancers and Wizards? Would there be races, too? Like jock, redhead and chinese kid? This has so mu
      • CrazyJim1 invented the MMORPG, you know... God spoke to him in a dream and says, "Ultima Online!" in a spooky voice and then CrazyJim1 went home and talked to his father (who worked at Origin Systems at a gardener, so he just happened to be there) and his father took him inside and showed him a box that says "Ultima Online" on it!
  • 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/ [agency9.com]
    http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/ [jmonkeyengine.com]
  • Garage Games has an open-source 3D engine that you can license for $100. You can even sell the final product (up to $250,000 worth of it) without paying a dime more.

  • OGRE (Score:2, Informative)

    by lennier ( 44736 )
    What about OGRE [ogre3d.org]? Not used it but it looks like a competitor to CrystalSpace.
  • It depends what you want.

    If you want to make it easy I'd recommend Torque [garagegames.com] from GarageGames. It has greate documentation, lots of premade widgets, it's also finished and being used for a number of games. Mainly it has the polish that makes working with it enjoyable. (Tutorials, prebuild samples, etc) Not open source but has a similar community
    Someone else has already recommened Crystal Space. If your looking for an example of an MMORG check out PlaneShift [planeshift.it].

    Another engine that I've been impressed with i

  • Quake 2/3, Ogre, cube, and many others (Score:3, Interesting)

    by obi ( 118631 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2005 @08:28PM (#12427289)
    Quake2 is GPL'ed
    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/ [fov120.com]
    fun for its realtime ingame editor iirc

    Ogre is LGPL'ed and also very active community
    http://www.ogre3d.org/ [ogre3d.org] ... well you get the idea. With a bit of searching
    I think you must be able to find some decent open source stuff.

  • Might not work (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pbaer ( 833011 )
    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

  • Tell me more (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Peristarkawan ( 875561 )
    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 headline says "MMOG", but the blurb reads as if they may only be a few players together within an instance. Similarly, it's unclear whether the game-world is to be a continuous, load-as-needed sprawling environment or if discrete levels would suffice.

    These are significant aspects of a game engine's architecture and you are not going to want to have to customize them in; clarifying the requirements here could significantly reduce the number of possible solutions. (Although, given the average slashdotter

  • OGRE (Score:2)

    by S3D ( 745318 )
    OGRE [ogre3d.org] and already mentioned Crystal Space are two most popular open sourced 3d engines, but OGRE community seems more active lately. Here is a summary of OGRE vs Crystal Space [sourceforge.net]

  • MASSIVE (Score:2, Interesting)

    by el_womble ( 779715 )
    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.
  • I was talking to Jesse Schell, the chairperson of the IGDA, about two weeks ago at the RPI GameFest [rpi.edu] about the work he's been doing at CMU. We were using Torque for our game development but he actually told me he was using Panda3D [panda3d.org] for their work. Not surprising when you consider that he's a former employee of Disney but apparently it has great qualities including editing, compiling, and modifying the engine while it's running (I believe it has some Python hooks or somesuch). Anyways, it hasn't been mentio
  • Thanks for your answers, all. I was able to present my advisor with a pretty comprehensive list of alternatives. And I think I am hooked on Ask Slashdot for life...

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