Applied IDEAS, a provider of game design solutions for education, has announced that Version 2.0 of the Ignition Game Design Academy Curriculum is now shipping.  "The Ignition® Game Design Academy is a comprehensive game curriculum that teaches the student real-world game engine principles and what it takes to create a functioning 3D game level. It demonstrates the processes involved in exporting game art from 3ds Max® or Maya® to a game engine environment in a quick and easy way, but also teaches the concepts and connections between game art and a game engine.”

New Features to Game Design Academy Version 2.0:

• Export Projects to Stand-Alone Executables
• New Section on 3D Visualization
• Vertex Animation Export
• Support for Compressed OGG Audio Files
• New Platform and Character Jumping System
• More UI Design Features

The curriculum shows students how to write scripts that enable rich gaming features such as lighting, particle systems, sound, game play, user interaction, and character behaviors.  Applied IDEAS has mapped this curriculum to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards, the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) language art standards, the National Council for Science Education Standards Assessment (NCSESA), and the International Technical Educators Association (ITEA), for technology standards.

Schools can purchase at reduced pricing for v2 as a stand-alone or lab pack.  Upgrades are available for schools who own v1.  The Ignition Game Design Academy is a perfect addition to any classroom teaching 3DS Max or Maya.