If the UW-Stout campus were to appear in a game, what would it look like?
The Pixel and Vector Art class recently took on that challenge, and the result will be unveiled at the Stout Game Expo, SGX, which will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 12, in the Great Hall of the Memorial Student Center.
The free event is open to the public. Parking in UW-Stout lots is free after 4 p.m.
Most of the expo will feature opportunities to play video, tabletop and arcade games, including in virtual reality. Students will be on hand to answer questions and discuss their work. Games by juniors will be formatted to use a student-made arcade cabinet. Sophomores will exhibit mobile games, and first-year students will have play-testing of tabletop games, said Kimberly Loken, an assistant professor in the design department.
Yearlong senior projects will be featured in the spring expo.
The colorful campus game map, believed to be the first of its kind, will be unveiled as a printed poster 6 feet by 3 feet. It was created by 42 students in two sections of the class taught by Karl Koehle, a game design and development instructor.
The project involved re-creating the 45 campus buildings along with walkways, streets, vehicles, foliage and more from a bird’s-eye vantage point in a style similar to a board game or video game.
“We are all very pleased with the result,” Koehle said. “Re-creating the campus seemed to provide the best opportunity for students to work on their art skills, learn about their environment and practice interpersonal communication — all while working on a meaningful project.”
Students visited University Archives to learn about campus building history before embarking on the project. The map eventually will be available online, Koehle said.
“As an instructor, it was challenging managing assets from 42 students, so we used tools and techniques commonly used in production to help automate tedious tasks like combining all of the layers. At completion there were over five hundred layers of content,” Koehle said.
UW-Stout’s game design programs, in computer science and art, have been ranked in the top 25 in the U.S. for the past six years. Three games created by students in recent years have won national awards.
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Photos
A group of seniors collaborate on a game design project at UW-Stout.
Karl Koehle
