After having experienced a number of games and related them to the course readings (especially to Gee 2003), the final stage of my proposed learning trajectory consisted in undertaking a superficial analysis of an authoring tool for creating 3 D learning environments.

Thinking Worlds is one of the tools that was suggested in the course discussions and I had downloaded and run version 2 until I downloaded version 3.0 a few days ago, for what was a disapointing journey

The tool consists of an authoring and a runtime environment.

I had tried the runtime environment of version 2 and it worked fine.

I was more interested in learning how to create environments from scratch and therefore tried the authoring part of the tool.

At first, it was nice to receive On-Demand and Just-in-Time information to guide me through the creation of a journey and scene. The tool proposes many environments and characters to begin with which greatly facilitates the design process (provided one of them fits our needs).

When I ran the environment as a player, I realised that my character wasn't walking but that it sort of floated above the ground instead (which didn't happen with the version 2).

After adding another character and a communication interaction with it, I received an error and couldn't run the environment as a player anymore:

Screenshot: a miserable start to 3 D authoring

Several attemps with other types of interactions didn't change thing.

Neither the videos available on tools' website nor the in-depth guides proved more useful (Thinking Worlds 2008) even though they gave me further information as to how to use the interaction editor.

I don't understand why I haven't been able to replicate the results of those tutorials.

Given the variety of interactions that the tool proposes, I'm sure it can be quite powerful if I can figure out the origin of my problem.

Unfortunately, it seems that there isn't any demo version of Mission Maker, another authoring tool Matthew tried successfully.

So for now, I'll wait for the Innovate's Online Simulations, Role Playing, and Virtual Worlds issue which will feature, among other things, information about "technologies used to create and manage virtual environments (tools, hardware, software)". If any tool stands out, I will invest more time in learning how to use it.

References:

Thinking Worlds (2008). In-depth guides.
http://www.thinkingworlds.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=78&Itemid=90