Teaching Math through Game Development

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Teaching Math throughGame Development

• Birds of a Feather
• Room 507
• 200 p.m. 330 pm
• Tuesday, August 12, 2008
• SIGGRAPH 2008, Los Angeles

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• Mitch Williams
• 3D-Online
• Mitch.Williams_at_3D-Online.com,
• http//www.3D-Online.com
• Teacher
• Mira Costa High School,
• Video Game Design and Development
• Manhattan Beach, CA, http//www.mbusd.org
• UC Berkeley, UCLA Extension
• 3D Graphics Engineering
• Westwood College (online)
• Game Development

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Teaching Math throughGame Development

• Audience
• K-12 Teachers Admin?
• So. Bay School Districts?
• El Segundo, Mttn Bch, PV/P, Redondo,
  No/So/West/Torrance
• College Teachers?
• Students?

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Agenda

• Overview of my high school video game class
• Course notes with Math Demonstrations
• Tools Used
• Issues / Successes / Look Ahead
• Input from the audience
• Resources, Moving Forward
• Q A, Discussion

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School Background

• Teach thru So. Cal. Regional Occupation Center
• Vocational courses for 9 L.A. south bay high
  schools
• Dental Asst, Automotive, Fashion, Graphic Design
• Mira Costa High School
• Manhattan Beach, south of L.A. Airport
• Top 300 School (U.S. News, 2008), 9th-12th,
  Enrollment 2400
• Won girls state Vball, 2nd state
  girls Basketball, So Cal. boys champs
  VBall, 2nd So Cal H20 polo
• Outstanding Music, Drama, etc.

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Goal Answer Where do use any of this math
anyway?

• Algebra
• Normals (Polygon/Vertex)
• Trigonometry
• Backface Culling
• Lambert Cosine Law (angle betwn light, polygon
  normal)
• Matrices
• Rotations in Transformations
• Field of View
• Complex Numbers
• Quaternions

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Course Overview

• Principally to Teach Math, then Art
• 1st Semester
• 3D Graphics Pipeline
• Lights, Cameras, Animation, Collision Detection
• 2nd Semester 3D Graphics and Art
• Only played Video Games before holiday
• Products and Tools
• X3D
• X3d-edit
• Dynamic-X3D
• Unreal Editor, Runtime v2

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Course Notes

• UC Berkeley, UCLA 3D Graphics and Game Engines
  Mira Costa Video Game Design and Development
• http//www.3D-Online.com/3D Graphics and Game
  Engines/
• Ray-Box intersection (picking) Demo
• 3 steps) Math, X3D file, then view in 3D
• Bounding Box (BB) at (3, 4, -5.5) and size (2, 2,
  3)
• MinBB (2, 3, -4) and MaxBB (4, 5, -7)
• Rays from origin to (3, 4, -10), (6, 7, -10) and
  (8, 8, -10)
• Equation MinBB / X, Y and Z MaxBB / X, Y and Z
• If maximum of MinBB values lt minimum of MaxBB
  values, then intersection
• Ray 1 Min(2/3, 3/4, -4/-10) gt Max(4/3, 5/4,
  -7/-10)
• Ray 1 does not intersect, ray 2 and 3 do

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Issues

• Students hoped class would be about video game
  tips on WOW, Madden NFL strategies
• No book for high school course
• suggestions?
• Survey results
• Did course contribute to understanding of Math?
• 2.29 on 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly
  Agree) scale
• Cynical Students Even class room lights only
  got a 3.5
• Need to be better organized

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Successes / Best Practices

• Survey results
• Did course contribute to understanding of Art?
• 3.29 point higher than Math survey results
• Report from Game Dev mag Rachet Clank
• Fridays Video Day
• SIGGRAPH E-theatre, Story of Computer Graphics
• Bigger isnt better High school resources
• Art, Math, Drama, English teachers to assist me.
• Had Abode suite since room shared w/ Graphic
  Design course

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Future

• Video Game Design Devp a Math elective
• More on Shaders, Ray-Tracing
• More art tools 3D Studio Max
• Integrate 3d models into Unreal game engine
• Offer 3D Graphics Programming
• Alternative / Replace Computer Science AP course

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Questions, Comments, Ideas