UCF is sponsoring the 11th annual Otronicon at the Orlando Science Center Friday January 15 – Monday January 18.
Ortonicon is a four-day conference that features exhibits, workshops, panels, speakers, and keynotes about the digital-media industry including video gaming, serious games, simulation, robotics, and virtual reality.
UCF is heading a number of exhibits:
Ongoing
- The UCF STEAM Exhibition will present paintings, drawings, photographs and 3-D artworks created by university fine arts students and UCF CREATE elementary students in response to STEM topics.
- FIEA will have a booth with students, alumni and faculty showing examples of student work and demonstrating the Oculus Rift virtual reality system.
- SVAD and E2i will present the 3rd annual Otronicon Game Jam, “Plug In & Jam”, at which jammers will have 30 hours to create a new game from scratch.
- The Department of Psychology will display avatars to talk with visitors so the artificial intelligence entities can increase their language skills. The project’s long-term goal is to use these avatars in treatment for children who are shy and would like to overcome their shyness and have fun talking to other people.
- E2i will showcase Otronicon’s first event app to track visitors throughout the event and also include an interactive game to keep people engaged.
Friday
- 2 p.m. – Project Spark. Paul Varcholik from FIEA will introduce participants to game programming using Project Spark on the Xbox One. The target audience is middle school students. Students will set up an avatar with the ability to move, jump and shoot.
Saturday
- 10:30 a.m. – Virtual Reality. Nick Zuccarello from FIEA will lead a workshop about the challenges of developing content for virtual space.
- 12:00 p.m. – Paper Prototyping. This workshop will show how to make paper prototypes so game designers can first try out their idea to see if it is fun before writing the first code.
- 2 p.m. – “How Building Legos is Like Building Games.” Ron Weaver from FIEA will lead a workshop about developing games and what to do when all the pieces of the system don’t seem to mesh.
Sunday
- 12:00 p.m. – Paper Prototyping. This workshop will show how to make paper prototypes so game designers can first try out their idea to see if it is fun before writing the first code.
- 2 p.m. – Project Spark. Paul Varcholik from FIEA will introduce participants to game programming using Project Spark on the Xbox One. The target audience is middle school students. Students will set up an avatar with the ability to move, jump and shoot.
- 2 p.m. – “How Building Legos is Like Building Games.” Ron Weaver from FIEA will lead a workshop about developing games and what to do when all the pieces of the system don’t seem to mesh.
Monday
- 10:30 a.m. – Virtual Reality. Nick Zuccarello from FIEA will lead a workshop about the challenges of developing content for virtual space.
- 1 p.m. – Game Production: The Stuff You Don’t Think About. Production is about more than just making a game. Other things to consider are web services, version control, hardware, documentation and peripherals. Presented by UCF’s Alexia Mandeville from the E2i Creative Studio
- 2 p.m. – Girls That Game. Mandeville will be part of a panel on the growing field of women developing video games.
- 3 p.m. – The Science and Business of VR. This presentation will address the current state of virtual reality and how virtual-environment applications will fit into our future. Presented by Mike Macedonia, UCF’s assistant vice president for research and innovation.
For more information and a list of workshops, panels, and speakers, visit Otronicon’s website.
You can also read more about UCF’s contributions on UCFToday