The purpose of this study was to find a more efficient method for teachers and students to work on
projects in a 3D game design class. The system developed in this work can help the feasibility of
students’ game designs be discussed in more detail before investments in valuable class time or expensive
and complicated software. For 3D manipulation, the system uses DirectX in text format so that the
students can easily change the texture of a 3D object before compressing the object into a smaller file size
in binary format in order to share the results. By taking advantage of Google’s free yet powerful 3D
modeling tool, along with its free 3D warehouse website, students can save both time and money when
building 3D models.
For the digital presentation stage, our system uses the free Microsoft Virtual Worlds technology, as
this can reduce the costs and learning curve associated with a 3D digital game design class. The
extensibility and maintenance of our system are also considered, and these are not problematic due to the
use of popular web- and internet-based programming languages, rather than dedicated, commercial game
engines. In addition, the TCP/IP port the system used was set at 80 and 443, as these work well with
academic networks, which often block the gaming ports used by commercial game engines.