7th grader Kyra's remix of my Viking Video Game!  

She completely remixed  the Vikings game that I gave it to my middle school classes creating her own environment, obstacless, and also her own music to go along with the game. Just demonstrating the students as early as fifth grade can't start building their own video games and projects, learn computer programming, and to be a successful entrepreneur by the time they get to high school.

Unity3D Virtual Reality Game Building 

02/12/13 by Mark Schoennagel

What a great day of training yesterday. Mark ran a excellent training seminar and we were able to build a virtual reality video game in about five hours.

He really put together an excellent lesson and everyone was able to follow along and learn quite a few new  tricks to use with Unity3D.   I can't wait to have my Roosevelt Middle School and Glendale High school students do this lesson this coming week

Shaq and A-Rod buy into eSports, invest in League of Legends team-   The Video Game Industry is Exploding

We are going into video games design and programming because it is the fastest growing industry in the world.    

We will also soon start our iwn  player competition to help us further understand what makes a great video game. 

Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O'Neal and Jimmy Rollins are among the latest investors in esports.

NRG eSports, which has one five-player team that competes in League of Legends and another team of five focusing on Counter-Strike, announced Thursday that Rodriguez, O'Neal and Rollins contributed to their latest financing round.

The teams are owned by Andy Miller and Mark Mastrov, who along with O'Neal are minority partners of the Sacramento Kings.

"Valuations of teams are still small," Miller told ESPN.com. "They wanted to get in super early as they are seeing the giant viewership numbers that are dwarfing pro sports right now."

Miller did not disclose the size of the investment. He said he expects to call on Rodriguez, O'Neal and Rollins to assist the team.

"All know what it's like to be super young and play in front of millions of fans every week," Miller said. "We need that guidance and perspective."

Miller also said he won't be shy on calling on his celebrity owners if he needs to sign a player.

Rick Fox, O'Neal's former Los Angeles Lakers teammate, bought an esports team, Echo Fox, in December. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is an investor in esports betting startup Unikrn.

Said Miller: "This is pro sports for the millennial generation. We will see other pro sports owners buying in by the end of the year for sure."

O'Neal's employer, Turner, is co-owner with WME/IMG of an esports league called the ELEAGUE, which will broadcast Counter-Strike competitions.

http://www.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/shaq-alex-rodriguez-invest-nrg-esports-league-of-legends-031716

http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/15000505/shaquille-oneal-alex-rodriguez-jimmy-rollins-invest-nrg-esports-teams

 Seventh- Eight-grade students building their own video game from start to scratch

After teaching my 3D animation and video game design and programming class for two years I decided this year the part of my class the students are really interested in is making their own video games.  While they enjoy making 3D animation and models you can only play so many animations and do things with them.

On the other hand if you make a video game you can play it and send it to others.   And I've spent about 500 hours working on my video game packages. So now my students in the last two weeks are making their own 3D model of a room in Autodesk Maya 2016, extruding it, bring it into Unity3D, adding physics to it, and then making their own video game

And this last week I figured out how they can then publish and send their game to other people, and then also we are going to add a shooter gun and start making her own shooter games this next week.

The images below show the sequence we followed and making our own room and then making a game you could walk and run through in it.

Next week we start writing our own programs to make our shooter perform. So we will be learning computer programming also

Using Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset 

I just got the Oculus Rift Headset Installed on my MacBook ProAnd working for my class!  It is absolutely amazing. It virtually lets you walk into the game as if you were inside the game.

The students were blown away and they all lined up to try once or twice.  Now this will further motivate them to learn to computer program so that they can build their own their own unity base video game.

We are using Autodesk Maya to build 3-D models, and then bring them into Unity3D to build video games.  We will be using the C# programming to get started and to develop our skills.

Help me bring 3D Animation and Video Game Design to all students worldwide

Please fund my kickstarter project to bring 3D Animation and Video Game Design and programming to all students and classrooms worldwide.  

Read more at

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2096879612/bring-3d-animation-video-game-design-to-students-w?ref=email

Create my own to terrain in Unity3D-  for my middle school students two now do the same

We are now going to start using Unity3D to create our own video games.   it is incredibly easy and powerful as you can see from the pictures. It only took about 12 minutes to create this island with mountains, trees, grass.

I have also figured out how to bring our 3D models made in Maya so we can really start to design and build I would video games

USC has added  "Game Development" track within their computer science program

The last year and a half I have been blessed to have a student come in from GCC and work with me and my middle school students at Roosevelt middle school in Glendale. His name is Richard Dean

He originally came in to help with math but he was also an expert in 3D animation and Maya. In addition he was the one who got me to go into video game design and see the unlimited job opportunities for doing that as a career.

He just told me this week that he is trying to get into the USC computer science program and their new video game development track. This is one of the hottest tracks in the world today and look at some of the classes that are required.

I'm hoping that other school districts are making plans for putting in AP computer science and animation tracks.

I have included the classes required from USC for that track below, and you can see they also require Advanced math skills


MAJOR REQUIREMENTS (84 UNITS)

UNITS


CSCI 103L

Introduction to Programming 3


CSCI 104L

Data Structures and Object-Oriented Design 4


CSCI 109

Introduction to Computing 3


CSCI 170

Discrete Methods in Computer Science 4


CSCI 201L

Principles of Software Development 4


CSCI 270

Introduction to Algorithms and Theory of Computing 4


CSCI 350

Introduction to Operating Systems 4


CSCI 353

Introduction to Internetworking 4


CSCI 360

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence4


CSCI 420

Computer Graphics 4

CSCI 423

Native Console Multiplayer Game Development 4


CSCI 424

Game Engine Tool Development 4


CSCI 425

Immersive Game Design 4


EE 352L

Computer Organization and Architecture 4


GAME DEVELOPMENT (31 UNITS)

UNITS


CTIN 190

Introduction to Interactive Entertainment 4


CSCI 281

Pipelines for Games and Interactives 3


CSCI 491abL

Final Game Project (4-2) 6


CTAN 452

Introduction to 3-D Computer Animation 2


CTIN 484L

Intermediate Game Development 2


CTIN 488

Game Design Workshop 4


CTIN 489

Intermediate Game Design Workshop 3


ITP 380

Video Game Programming 4


ITP 485

Programming Game Engine 4


Total units 128

Teaching computer programming using Unity 3-D video game software

I am now starting to teach my seventh grade and eighth grade students how to program in C sharp.  We are going to be using the unity 3D program to do so.

This is an excellent way to get students motivated to learn computer programming.   They are able to apply their program to a model in the Unity3D software and then watch as the model does what their program says. And if they make a mistake it will give them an error message and they must go back and analyze their Code

Unity3d comes with its own compiler- Monodevelop  which makes for an excellent software program do you use to teach programming.  They can use Maya to create and bring in 3D models and objects, and then going to the Monodevelop program and write the code to manipulate them,  and then come back to Unity3D program to see what happens

Plus they're getting invaluable skills and designing a 3D video game. This is a huge market and a great opportunity to develop future job skills . Plus designing a video game requires them to sketch out and visualize how the game will look, how they will put it together, line of sight, etc. It's a project-based project for them to work on

All of these exercises will provide invaluable experience for the future job skills they will need to be successful in a highly technical world . Plus the video game market is one the fastest growing in the world. and so to be acquiring skills in designing, modeling and programming for 3D games is a great opportunity.

The students of today have been born into and are in the midst of the the computer age. They do not get frustrated when dealing with new hardware software, they have the patience and ability to solve and conquer almost any problem.

Using Unity 3D to teach Computer Programming 

I I am starting to teach my students how do you program in C# using unity 3D video game design package.

My students will be creating 3D objects in Autodesk Maya and then bringing them in to Unity3D.  We will then on how to apply computer programming to make these objects move, rotate, scale them, and have them start to learn how to create a videogame.

So I will be using the video game itself to motivate them to learn computer programming which of course they can use for many more applications other than video game design and creation. 

This my Youtube channel where I have all of my video lessons

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXThag16rqmYchqU1FauOUA/featured

My classes are now starting to program in C# using Unity video game engine 

This last week we wrote our first two lines of code using the Unity video game engine to make a cube rotate.  I hope to really expand this over the rest of the semester, and through the full next semester in 2015.

By having them build a 3-D model in Maya, and then bring it into Unity 3D program and then program the different features you want to apply to the model will be excellent way to teach my students computer programming.

Microsoft, Minecraft and Mojang: Here's How to Make Sense of Microsoft's $2.5B Purchase

Janine "I

ris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style


After some speculation, it's official: Microsoft has purchased voxel-based sandbox game Minecraft for $2.5 billion. Maybe that makes perfect sense to you and maybe it doesn't. This past weekend as we discussed the massive purchase, my mother asked my why on earth Microsoft would want to buy Minecraft for anything approaching that much money. My answer? That it might be better to think of it in terms of why a company might want to buy Barbie or Lego. They're monolithic brands; highly recognizable, widely available and beloved by huge swathes of customers, both young and old. There are already teenagers who look at Minecraft with nostalgia right alongside people experiencing it for the very first time. It's a cultural touchstone.


But there's more to it than that. If you break this purchase down into its most basic economic terms, as analyst Michael Pachter did at GamesBeat 2014, it makes perfect sense. Polygon's Owen Good has picked the juiciest bits out of Pachter's comments on Microsoft's acquisition of Minecraft, and summarizes the issue succinctly:







Essentially, Microsoft expects to make more money from Minecraft than it would make if that $2.5 billion sat in the bank for a year and generated $25 million in interest. And yes, given the sales of the game — which just launched on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 — not to mention the merchandise licensing that Minecraft has seen to date, $25 million sounds like a very, very doable number.


For more, be sure to read Good's full piece on Polygon, or go straight to the source andwatch the archive of Pachter's GamesBeat talk over on Twitch.

Record Breaking Number of students enroll in Harvards Computer Science Class 

This why I am teaching C# programming using the Unity3D program to get my students started in computer programming

Nearly 12 percent of Harvard College is enrolled in a single course, according to data released by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Registrar’s Office on Wednesday.

The course, Computer Science 50: “Introduction to Computer Science I,” attracted a record-breaking 818 undergraduates this semester, marking the largest number in the course’s 30-year history and the largest class offered at the College in the last five years, according to the Registrar’s website. Including non-College students, the enrollment number totals 875.


http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/9/11/cs50-breaks-enrollment-records/

Microsoft pays $2.5bn for Minecraft maker Mojang

This is why I am teaching 3D Animation and Video Game Design starting in Middle School 

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29204518

Unity Video Games