Group items tagged

Abstract: "This paper describes possibilities and examples in which augmented reality solutions can be implemented in planning and participation processes, based on an analysis of the results of the project "ways2gether - Target - group - specific use of augmented reality and web 2.0 in participative traffic planning processes". An augmented - reality - demonstrato r based on the free metaio Mobile SDK was developed as part of the project ways2gether. This new communication and information tool was practically evaluated in three test cases to show the benefit in planning and participation processes in transport plann ing. The actual possibilities and challenges in implementing augmented reality in planning processes are discussed, the technical background and a possible workflow for the integration of augmented reality solutions in planning processes are described and finally the benefits and difficulties in using augmented reality in participation processes are explained based on the results of the test cases."

"The evacuation of complex buildings is a challenge under any circumstances. Fire drills are a way of training and validating evacuation plans. However, sometimes these plans are not taken seriously by their participants. It is also difficult to have the financial and time resources required. In this scenario, serious games can be used as a tool for training, planning and evaluating emergency plans. In this paper a prototype of a serious games evacuation simulator is presented. To make the environment as realistic as possible, 3D models were made using Blender and loaded onto Unity3D, a popular game engine. This framework provided us with the appropriate simulation environment. Some experiences were made and results show that this tool has potential for practitioners and planners to use it for training building occupants."

From the abstract: "Collective Artificial Intelligence (CAI) simulates human intelligence from data contributed by many humans, mined for inter-related patterns. This thesis applies CAI to social role-playing, introducing an end-to-end process for compositing recorded performances from thousands of humans, and simulating open-ended interaction from this data. The CAI process combines crowdsourcing, pattern discovery, and case-based planning. Content creation is crowdsourced by recording role-players online. Browser-based tools allow non-experts to annotate data, organizing content into a hierarchical narrative structure. Patterns discovered from data power a novel system combining plan recognition with case-based planning. The combination of this process and structure produces a new medium, which exploits a massive corpus to realize characters who interact and converse with humans. This medium enables new experiences in videogames, and new classes of training simulations, therapeutic applications, and social robots. .... As a proof of concept, a CAI system has been evaluated by recording over 10,000 performances in The Restaurant Game, automating an AI-controlled waitress who interacts in the world, and converses with a human via text or speech. Quantitative results demonstrate CAI supports significantly open-ended interaction with humans, while focus groups reveal factors for improving engagement."

"At a DICE Summit conversation this morning, Valve cofounder Gabe Newell and TV and movie director J.J. Abrams announced plans to collaborate on future game and movie projects, including potential Portal and Half-Life movies."

"This paper presents a design methodology that allows technical leads in the game industry to introduce story designers with low technical background to generative techniques for automatic plot creation, in particular to a specific method of AI-based planning. The approach provides support to convey necessary technical knowledge by paper prototyping. Further, it demonstrates that paper prototypes are not only useful to learn these concepts but also as tools of creation."

From the abstract: "A serious game for construction planning and scheduling education must provide an authentic environment for gameplay. To achieve this requirement, the game environment must be created from CAD drawings of a real project. The game engine must have components for providing timely scaffolding and support to the user. Storing the vast amount of data for a real project requires data structures optimized for fast rendering at the same time easily accessing and manipulating building elements and element data. This paper discusses a game engine developed for creating construction planning and scheduling educational games. The game engine is designed from scratch for performance and flexibility. It includes a component for directly importing data from a Revit model for building the game environment, interfaces Microsoft Project for scheduling, includes a feedback module, and a scoring system for measuring user performance."

"Driven by an initiative of the Adult & Paediatric Diabetes Psychology Service of New Zealand, research has been performed to develop new mechanisms, in the form of computer games, to educate children and teenagers about living with diabetes. Aimed at achieving maximum education effectiveness, the ultimate goal of our research is to develop innovative machine learning algorithms that can be used in games to improve their ability to learn about the changing needs of children and to incorporate this intelligence into the game interface. We also plan to collect and report on the information collected from testing our computer games within a small group of children who have been diagnosed with type I diabetics. "

Mainstream game publishers exploring Linux game development

"As research for a Ph.D. thesis, we propose to show that a layered Statechart-based AI is a suitable formalism for Game AI, enabling the use of model-driven development techniques such as reuse and high-level analysis including model-checking. The fundamentally modular nature of this approach leads naturally to reuse as a fundamental component of the design process. Supported by a clearly defined formalism, useful behavioural analyses become possible, such as testing reactions to various inputs at design time. We also explore transformations at the modelling level to enable procedural generation, allowing rapid deployment of varying AIs. Additionally, such a model allows for the generation of efficient code that can be directly inserted into games. Tool support for reuse, generation, and analysis will be developed, then employed in creating an industrial scale AI, proving that this formalism is appropriate for industrial use."

Abstract: "There have been tremendous ways of developing creativity, yet instead of traditionally formal instruction, games are the best media to spur creativity, as creativity can easily and spontaneously be evoked through games. On the other hand, metacognition is a good way to promote creative thinking, as metacognition which contains the abilities such as self-planning, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation can foster creative-relevant cognitive processes. Games are exactly the ideal platform that provides a playful context for metacognitive awareness prompting creative processes. Based on the advantages of games and that design is a creativity-relevant cognitive and constructive process, this research adopts the means of digital game-based learning (DGBL) to propose a metacognitive approach to inspiring creativity through a creativity game of players as game story designers."

Abstract: "This essay is about common problems that can arise during game development projects. It is focused around the production cycle and how the game industry treats the game development pipeline. It mainly describes issues with communication within game development teams, problems concerning planning and how the design process affects members of the game development team's work process and efficiency. It includes an analysis of common problems that I have found during my studies of literature describing the game industry, a short research study of post mortems written by game developers and a survey about game design documentation and communication sent out to game developers and game design students."

Abstract: "Among numerous classical statistics paradoxes, N - uel (for N ℕ \ {1}, because N - uel where N = 1 is clearly not that interesting!) problem shows that the fittest of all competitors does not necessarily win this competition. Truel, Quadruel, and Nuel is simply an extension of a duel tournament, which involves more than two people ( Pirates of Caribbe an three - way sword fight serves as an appropriate visual representation). In addition, each N - uel player actually may possess different winning maximization strategy , since the Nuel tournament is known to illustrate that a fitter/better competitor in a mul ti - entry survival type competition does not necessarily possess significantly higher chance of survival than others. It is my desire to see this process: I want to visualize the N - uel process as a third - person observer, and if a person was playing this as a video game (which I plan on developing via Java Programming), I also want to visualize the winning strategies each video game participant follows."

Abstract: "Obesity has become an outstanding public health issue in most countries around the world. Many attempts have been made to address this issue that ranges from taking medication to doing exercise to follow- ing a diet plan to playing games. Few approaches combine exercise and game to engage the obese people in playing fun-based games or pur- poseful games, also known as serious games, while monitoring their bio- signals. However, existing work hardly provides a configurable, scalable and context-aware serious game framework that can be used as a sup- port for obesity treatment. In this paper, we take an attempt to propose such a framework. The proposed framework facilitates bio-signal monitor- ing based on body sensor network, context-awareness based on perva- sive sensors, and on-the-spot activity recommendation based on current game-playing context. It uses the cloud computing platform as infrastruc- tural support that ensures the scalability of the framework. In order to demonstrate the suitability of the proposed framework, we developed a sample serious game; deploy it over a cloud platform; and experiment with it by capturing some psycho-physical data while the obese are en- gaged in game-play. We observed that the obese people were very much engaged in game-play and they had positive experience using the system"

Abstract: "Serious Games are increasingly used as a training and educational tool. Fire keeps claiming a high number of victims. Some authors allege failures during the evacuation process as the main cause that contributes for that number. Fire drills are used to train buildings' occupants for emergency situations. However, fire drills' participants often have prior knowledge of their schedule and as result they are not as focused as they should. Moreover, fire drills require the mobilization of some resources, leading to financial costs. Performing a fire drill will always affect the normal functioning of the place where they take place; for this reason, sometimes they are not performed at all. In some special locations, like hospitals, fire drills are unsuitable. Emergency planning is crucial to prevent and minimize damage and victims. Albeit the improvement on safety measures, many occupants and employers in this type of buildings still lack adequate knowledge and training on how to behave in such hazardous situations. EVA is presented as a possible solution, which is based on the concept of Serious Game that can be used as a training tool for healthcare professionals. A preliminary prototype was developed. A sample of 20 subjects was selected to test it giving promising results. Results also showed that users who had training in fire prevention appear to perform better in the course. Moreover, participants who regularly play computer games overcame easily the game challenges. Further research and development are still to be explored, which are discussed in the concluding part of this paper."

from the introduction: "Collision avoidance and navigation among virtual agents is an important component of modern video games. Recent de- velopments in commodity hardware, in particular the utiliza- tion of multi-core and many-core architectures in personal computers and consoles are allowing large numbers of vir- tual agents to be incorporated into game levels in increasing numbers and with increasing fidelity. As a result, there is a need for efficient techniques to automatically generate real- istic behaviors for such groups of virtual agents"

Abstract: "In our energy-restricted world, planners and engineers have to cope with problems of CO2 emissions and oil- and gas-shortages. Many planning activities not captured under the heading of "futures studies" share common goals like dealing with an uncertain, complex future. We focus on two novel approaches: agent-based modelling and serious games. These approaches, even though they stem from the same general systems theory roots, allow its users to experience "reality" in different ways. This has implications for when and how to use these methods in scanning future developments and how these are communicated."

Introduces the Game Book concept as used by an 11 year old to work with ideas for games that aren't yet made and also to develop creativity skills analogous to graduate attributes, useful in university and beyond.

Experience of Star Command game development and crowdfunding process shows more to fundraising process than immediately apparent

"This project involves developing an action-platformer game for the Flash platform. The user controls a character who must progress through levels, while avoiding obstacles, collecting items and fighting many types of enemies. Role-playing game elements such as equipment and upgrades support user customization and varied battle strategies. Developing a successful Flash game involves several factors. Flash games must be simple to get into, yet rewarding to play in both short and long sessions. Flash games must be accessible to a wide audience; both in terms of user preferences and technical limitations. Finally, Flash games must offer something unique to stand out from the crowd, in a market where hundreds of free games are published every month. This report covers the research, design and implementation done to achieve these requirements, in terms of game mechanics, interface, level design, visual design, accessibility options, and replay value. Technical challenges include building, testing and optimizing a game engine and interface from scratch, balancing the game mechanics and difficulty, and structuring the whole development process in a way that enables easy creation of new content. In addition to game design and development, this project also deals with the business aspects of developing online games; how games generate revenue, how they are marketed and distributed, and developing trends in the consumer market. Project success in different areas has been evaluated through usability studies, user ratings and reviews, and vast quantities of usage and distribution statistics. Overall, the project has been a success in terms of user reception and generated revenue, and the final section of this report includes plans for a second game, utilizing and building upon the same game engine and mechanics."