Drexel Research on Play ("RePlay") is a collaborative effort between the Digital Media program (in the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design) and the Computer Science department (in the College of Engineering). Digital Media students learn design, art, 3D modeling and animation, scripting and programming, storytelling, and digital audio. CS students learn the logic and organization of game engine programming and asset pipeline integration. Students in both majors take gaming courses together and work on multi-discipline team projects together with Music, Scriptwriting, and Engineering majors, and examples of student work can be found at http://digm.drexel.edu/2009_annual_review. See the About page for contact information.

 

October 26, 2009: Congratulations to our Digital Media senior group,The Fourmation, has had their game,Fourmation,for winning the 9th annual Adobe Design Achievement Awards in the Non-Browser-based Design category. This was presented at the Icongrada World Design Congress in Bejiing China.

October 25, 2009:Philly GameJam 2009t Drexel University’s gaming team, Team Reverie, took First Place with “Most Innovative Game” at the 2nd Annual Philly Game Jam, Oct. 23-25, 2009. Held in conjunction with the GameX Industry Summit, the Game Jam included teams from nearby universities and professional game developers. Their goal was to create a video game within 48 hours based on an abstract theme. This year’s theme was a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning author and Philadelphia native James A. Michener: “An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.” The two award categories were “Most Innovative Game” and “Game Closest to the Concept.” While Team Reverie won first place in “Most Innovative Game” with their game, Insight, a team from Space Whale Studios took second place in both categories with their game, The Shovel Nose Screamer. The Space Whale Studios team, while not officially from Drexel, consisted of mostly current and former Drexel students.

 

Pulse-2 featured at IEEE Gaming Innovation Conference

August 2009: Digital Media student Christian Hahn expanded the work of the Pulse-1 game created by his graduate team to create Pulse-2, which was presented at the talk and paper "An Audio Processing Library for Game Development in Flash" in ICE-GIC 2009 in London, England.

 

SIGGRAPH 2009, New Orleans, LA
August 2009: Congratulations to Dan Bodenstein who took part in the GameJam! at SIGGRAPH last week, and his team won for 2D - Crowd Favorite

Interactive Displays, San Francisco CA
April 2009: Dr. Diefenbach is an invited speaker on Drexel's many efforts in developing technology for interactive displays, including multitouch displays for gaming and education.

Eurographics 2009, Munich Germany
March 2009: Former student Will Muto (DIGM MS 2009,BS 2008) presented his collaborative work with former student Justin Dobies (DIGM MS 2008,BS 2008) and advisor Dr. Diefenbach on education applications for multitouch displays.

Game Developers Conference, San Francisco CA
March 2009: Current DIGM MS students Craig Stevenson and Phil Lyon presented their group's Brain Computer Interface (BCI) at the Digini company booth. This game was build using Digini's Blade3D software and uses NeuroSky's BCI device.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2008, Singapore
December 2008: Dr. Diefenbach presented a talk on creating a university game development program and the trials and tribulations of doing so.

URAI 2008, Seoul Korea
November 2008: Dr. Paul Diefenbach presented a virtual robot interface for the Robonova humanoid robot, which will be extended for the Hubo humanoid robot. This is an NSF funded project in cooperation with Drexel's Mechanical Engineering department and several Korean universities. DIGM Graduate students Daniel Letarte and Joyce Tong implemented the Maya interface for this project.

 

September 12, 2008: Our Digital Media senior group, Voxel6, has had their game, Lazy Brains, featured in several stories, including the LA Times and Wired Magazine. Congrats to team members Jordan Santell, James Borden, Aaron Bohenick, Zachary Brooks, Keneth Oum and BioMed Engineering Ph.D. student Hasan Ayaz.

June 30th, 2008: Watch the CBS 3 11PM news on Wednesday, July 2nd for a story about our Lazy Brains game, and the 6:30 or 7:00AM CBS 3 Morning news on Thursday, July 3rd for a story on our Inversion and Planet Diggum games. See the stories online here: Lazy Brains story and video, and Planet Diggum and Inversion story and video.

May 26th, 2008: The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a Memorial Day front-page story on the RePlay Lab. This story is available at the philly.com site.

Dr. Paul Diefenbach, Professor in the Digital Media Program and Co-Director of Drexel's RePlay Lab on Computer Gaming will present a talk, "Building Planet Diggum: A Case Study of Multi-Discipline, Multi-Touch Gaming Collaboration." This talk discusses the inter-disciplinary nature of game development and its role in academia by focusing on the development of Planet Diggum, a multi-touch, multi-user game which uses finger and hand gestures to create a kiosk where users can interact with the system without need of training. With the rise of video game systems like the Wii, gestures are becoming more prevalent within gaming. This research bridges the disconnect between the user and the physical screen image with multi-point touch screens. This talk is scheduled Wednesday, August 13th at Wednesday 10:30-12:15 in room 406 AB. Digital Media Graduate student Will Muto who is advised by and co-authored with Professor Diefenbach, will present their poster, "Applications of Multi-Touch Gaming Technology to Middle-School Education" based on Will's Master's thesis work. Working with Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering members, Will has created a platform where gaming technology and internet-enabled multi-touch displays can create effective learning tools for middle school children. The purpose is to encourage collaboration and learning through play.

The Digital Media Senior Show is set to take place on Saturday, June 7th. It starts at 1:30pm and ends around 6:30pm. The shows will highlight all of the Graduating Senior's projects they have worked on over the last two terms (20 weeks). One of the groups presenting will be Lazy Brains, as featured on the RePlay Lab website! If you can, please try and make it out to show your support for them and all of the other groups that day. The details of the event, as taken from the exact listing on the AWCOMAD website, can be viewed below:

• Saturday, June 7, 1:30 PM-5:30 PM
• Nesbitt Hall (33rd & Market St.)
• Info: 215-895-2408

As you can see, the RePlay website has been completely redone. This is just the beginning, you can expect loads more content on the most current games and projects coming out of Drexel University's RePlay lab. Also keep your eyes opened because the RePlay Lab Lounge is set to open up sometime this Summer term.

RePlay hosts a guest speaker series. Past presentations include:

• Kudo Tsunoda - GM Electronic Arts (EA Games) Chicago. Executive producer of Fight Night series.
• Tom Fulp - Founder of Newgrounds.com and creator of Alien Hominid
• Don Bain - GM of The Electric Sheep Company. Leading content provider for SecondLife, MTV, and more.

Expect more guest speakers as time goes on!