2007 review, Boot Camps at The Guildhall at SMU, GDCSE

Hi Everyone:

It's been a little while since I checked in, and since I've just completed a bunch of long format projects, I wanted to take some time to let you know what I've been up to.

As many of you know I spend a great deal of time working with schools interested in using Torque to teach game programming, game art and game design. Traveling to meet educators face to face at conferences, and making campus visits form a big part of my networking efforts. So I end up spending a lot of time on the road. In 2007 alone I attended GDCSE, GDC, TechEd, GDX, Sandbox, SIGGRAPH, GameFest, IGC, Austin GDC, FuturePlay and MIGS, which kept me regularly on the road about once every 5 weeks. Each conference provided an opportunity to talk with teachers, meet students, see really cool projects and spread the vision of indie games and collaborative development. I also got to visit a number of schools in 2007 including the University of Central Florida, Savanna College of Art and Design, Full Sail, Oregon State University, and locally the University of Oregon. It's been a big time investment, however, the results have been favorable. By the end of 2007 over 200 Universities had adopted Torque for classroom instructional use!

With so many new schools adopting Torque, we've had a big interest in more books and Boot Camp trainings. In addition to helping promote "Torque for Teens" and "Creating Game Art for 3D Engine" I've also been working with Ed Maurina III and John Kanalakis on two new titles, which will come out later this year. Ed's book will delve even further in to our core TGE engine and discuss source code programming and networked multiplayer programming with Torque. John's book is focused being an end-to-end guide of our newest game engine, Torque X.

I've also been working on coordinating Boot Camps for Torque X. Our first one was at The Guildhall at SMU in January. The camp was well attended, attracting teachers from all over North America including Missouri, New York and Canada. We choose to present on Torque X, because it is both our newest engine and has recently undergone significant updates. For the Boot Camp at SMU we flew in community super star John Kanalakis and GarageGames' master trainer Stephen Zepp for 3-days of hands on training with the Torque X 3D Beta. Stephen lead the class through a high level overview of the Torque X engine as well as practical hands-on training with Torque X 2D. John K took the lead on day 2 picking up where Stephen left off and explaining how component based game design works for 3D games. Day 3 was mostly a hands on session with previews of the full Torque X 2.0 engine. We received great feedback from the teachers who attended the session:

"I truly enjoyed both John and Steve's presentations and work. A very good balance with theory and design followed up by some very well done programming follow-along examples. I actually got excited when I saw how the entire architecture was laid out with Torque X as I knew exactly how I could leverage a tremendous amount of my students previous learning in architecture and design, providing that much needed reinforcement."-Fred Paine, Morrisville State College

"What I learned will make a tremendous difference in our development of game design courses."-Richard Marcoux, Morrisville State College

"Outstanding value! Thanks for adding the student option also. It meant a lot to [my students] to be able attend."-Jeff Huff, Missouri State University

Torque X 2.0 is just days away from launch and will feature full 3D support and integration with XNA 2.0.

This winter I was invited to speak at several Texas colleges and universities including Texas A& M, Rice University, University of Houston and Houston Community College, thanks to the coordination efforts of Bradley Jensen of Microsoft's Academic Developer Evangelist group. Bradley was a fantastic host, and even though he was fighting an ear infection, provided me with transportation to speaking events and information on successfully navigating from school to school. Bradley was also influential in helping us secure an invitation to this year's Game Development in Computer Science Education (GDCSE) conference. (https://www.msadgd08.net/Main.aspx) from which I just returned. (See pictures on Jean-Luc David's flickr stream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jldavid/sets/72157604040774210/)

GDCSE is a fantastic event drawing together some of the world's top computer science, robotics and game educators. This was my second year attending (Review my blog from last year where I took way more pictures: http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/54612/12456) and this year's conference brought more content and a broader range of educators together to talk about the future of computer science. For this year's conference not only was I invited to speak, but we also were able to offer a 2-day mini-boot camp on the cruise. GG brought John Kanalakis and Josef Rogovsky along to handle the technical presentation while I took on discussing indie games and the future of digital distribution. Each of our session was well attended (even though John's session on Torque X 2.0 3D was scheduled from 10pm-12am on the last day) and our presenters did a fantastic job. (John, Josef you're awesome!)

Wow! That's a Monster .plan post and I didn't even get to talk about GDC! I think I'm gonna call it quits there. But stay tuned for another huge year from Torque in Education!

--davey