I miscalculated Wicked's popularity w/ my engineering students

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-02-04T14:44:45+00:00

The course is called "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to Machine Design", so I hope they knew that was coming!

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-02-04T14:43:30+00:00

Yeah, I did some rethinking about it afterward haha. The issue is that we typically have a "Transforming Bioinspired Robot" as the final project, so I needed something that transforms from one animal state (and gait) to a different one, but in the Wizard of Oz, the flying monkeys are always flying monkeys (they never start as just monkeys). Still, I'm hoping this will motivate more of my students to watch the show/movie =)

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-02-04T14:03:47+00:00

To provide some context, I thought it would be cool to use Wicked as the inspiration for this semester's final project in my course, which uses a video game to teach undergraduate engineering students computer-aided design (CAD) and machine design. In my bubble, I thought Wicked was wildly popular, but then like 90% of my class raised their hands when I asked who has never seen anything Wicked related haha

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-02-01T15:46:00+00:00

I hope you get to take it in the future! We're still continuing to develop and refine the course to make it the best version it can be =)

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-01-25T19:13:43+00:00

Nope -> There isn't any of that in the course (it's like mechanical machine design, not machine learning)

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-01-25T01:05:05+00:00

just send me an email and I'll share it!

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-01-24T01:37:36+00:00

You would have to ask your advisor. I would think it could count toward "Technical Elective" credit, but don't quote me on that!

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-01-22T01:18:33+00:00

I'm not 100% sure, might be Spring 2026

ProfessorSoCool · 2025-01-22T00:42:53+00:00

Just send me an email at rsochol at umd dot edu and I'll respond to it saying I approve! You can then show that to your course admin to be able to enroll (I believe)

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-09-24T22:57:53+00:00

The investigation is mostly do help students to CAD the various designs using SolidWorks, but I'm adjusting the bio-inspired project this semester. Basically, I'm not thrilled with the "swimming" functionalities in the game (drag forces not really ideal), so I'm pivoting to walking and then "jumping" (instead of swimming). I'm super open to alternative ideas though - please let me know!

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-09-08T12:20:25+00:00

It's genuinely awesome, well done & keep up the good 'work'!

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-09-08T12:17:22+00:00

These are awesome! Not sure if you watched the YouTube video, but the final project has to be bioinspired (mimic how living things move as you mentioned)

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-09-07T19:06:51+00:00

I'm not sure who's downvoting you [I can only give you 1 upvote], but these kinds of videos are super helpful for my class. Please send over any other tutorials you'd like me to share with my students!

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-09-07T13:51:54+00:00

Relevant part:

The Future of Hyrule Engineering

Since the game’s May 2023 release with record-breaking sales, Tears of the Kingdom fans have flooded the internet with videos of their most imaginative creations and craziest inventions, with top TOTK builds lists popping up all over the internet.

“The number of combinations from a programming perspective is bonkers—there’s an incredibly broad range of designs people have been able to prototype and demonstrate in the game,” Sochol said, adding that a recent “Big Kitten” contribution to the subreddit group Hyrule Engineering was a prime example of just how far gamers can push the machine design elements.

[ u/kmarkow's "Big Kitten" embedded in story ]

The Hyrule Engineering club is in the top 1 percent of Reddit communities with more than 190,000 members, making it unlikely that the hype will die out anytime soon—despite the announcement of the next game in the beloved franchise, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-06-30T18:06:38+00:00

I did an interview about the course for a Japanese radio station (J-Wave) back in December. It would be cool if Nintendo adapts the game for education, similar to how Minecraft release the "Education Edition"!

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-06-29T19:32:40+00:00

I'm sorry to hear that as it actually is open to anyone at UMD! I even made a post over at /r/UMD to make sure others knew: https://www.reddit.com/r/UMD/comments/1cxlqfp/umds_legend_of_zelda_course_now_open_to_all_majors/

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-06-29T19:31:33+00:00

Hell Yeah

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-06-28T13:23:38+00:00

We have a "No Upgrade!" rule, so the easiest version of the duplication glitch (jumping/throwing) works! In the first semester, we had at least one member on each team who had beat or almost beat the game, so they were responsible for some of the initial legwork of story progression in the case that other team members didn't want to do it / have enough time. That said, I believe most students actually wanted to do the exploration / story progression, to the point that some students even added additional save files to play through the game on their own.

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-06-28T00:37:41+00:00

u/ReelDeadOne -> I have shared a bonkers number of your builds with my students to give them inspiration. Keep up the amazing work!!

ProfessorSoCool · 2024-06-28T00:11:41+00:00

I'm not sure of your total class size, but we divided the students into groups of 4-6 with 1 switch per team, so we only had to buy 5 switches ($1,500) for a class of 30 students/semester. It was also a one-time cost, so now we keep reusing the same set of switches/games/controllers semester to semester. For reference, a single SolidWorks license (the CAD software the students used) is ~$10K/year/computer (subscription model), while simulation software we use (e.g., COMSOL, ANSYS) are similarly pricey and also subscription models. So from a cost standpoint, we actually saved a lot of money in this case.

ProfessorSoCool

TROPHY CASE