281 research outputs found
Game Engine Solutions
The rapid development of hardware and system platforms provides a favorable foundation for game development. A game engine overview is introduced first. Then, key features and available solutions of game engines are discussed. Typical products of game engines are shown and evaluated. Finally, we summarize our findings
Cognitive fatigue: Exploring the relationship between the fatigue effect and action video-game experience
the effects of cognitive fatigue. Despite this, there remain advantages to regularly playing action video games. In Study 1, VGPs were significantly better at multitasking on the MATB-II compared to the NVGPs. Further, VGPs also demonstrated superior multitasking when driving, as they made significantly fewer traffic violations compared to NVGPs when not fatigued. VGPs demonstrated eye-movements similar to those of expert drivers; however, this did not result in any difference in performance between the two groups. There was also some evidence of a positive effect of video game training, although there was no advantage of one training technique over the other. In Study 2, participants experienced the effects of cognitive fatigue to a lesser extent after video game training than compared to before training. Further, there was a significant improvement in multitasking performance after video game training, though as participants continued improving even at the three-month follow up test, it is unknown whether this was due to the video game training or due to practice effects on the MATB-II. Overall, despite improvements in sustained and divided attention performance from regular action video game playing or training, VGPs and trained-NVGPs are just as susceptible to the effects of cognitive fatigue as NVGPs
Development of a Physics-Aware Dead Reckoning Mechanism for Distributed Interactive Applications
Distributed Interactive Applications (DIAs) are a class of software that allow
geographically remote users to interact within a shared virtual environment.
Many DIAs seek to present a rich and realistic virtual world to users, both on a
visual and behavioural level. A relatively recent addition to virtual environments
(both distributed and single user) to achieve the latter has been the simulation of
realistic physical phenomena between objects in the environment.
However, the application of physics simulation to virtual environments in DIAs
currently lags that of single user environments. This is primarily due to the
unavailability of entity state update mechanisms which can maintain consistency
in such physics-rich environments. The difference is particularly evident in
applications built on a peer-to-peer architecture, as a lack of a single authority
presents additional challenges in synchronising the state of shared objects while
also presenting a responsive simulation.
This thesis proposes a novel state maintenance mechanism for physics-rich
environments in peer-to-peer DIAs composed of two parts: a dynamic authority
scheme for shared objects, and a physics-aware dead reckoning model with an
adaptive error threshold. The first part is intended to place a bound on the
overall inconsistency present in shared objects, while the second is implemented
to minimise the instantaneous inconsistency during usersâ interactions with
shared objects. A testbed application is also described, which is used to validate
the performance of the proposed mechanism.
The state maintenance mechanism is implemented for a single type of physicsaware
application, and demonstrates a marked improvement in consistency for
that application. However, several flexible terms are described in its
implementation, as well as their potential relevance to alternative applications.
Finally, it should be noted that the physics-aware dead reckoning model does not
depend on the authority scheme, and can therefore be employed with alternative
authority scheme
Proceedings of the SAB'06 Workshop on Adaptive Approaches for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games
These proceedings contain the papers presented at the Workshop on Adaptive approaches
for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games held at the Ninth
international conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SABâ06): From
Animals to Animats 9 in Rome, Italy on 1 October 2006.
We were motivated by the current state-of-the-art in intelligent game design using
adaptive approaches. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are mainly focused on
generating human-like and intelligent character behaviors. Meanwhile there is generally
little further analysis of whether these behaviors contribute to the satisfaction of the
player. The implicit hypothesis motivating this research is that intelligent opponent
behaviors enable the player to gain more satisfaction from the game. This hypothesis may
well be true; however, since no notion of entertainment or enjoyment is explicitly
defined, there is therefore little evidence that a specific character behavior generates
enjoyable games.
Our objective for holding this workshop was to encourage the study, development,
integration, and evaluation of adaptive methodologies based on richer forms of humanmachine
interaction for augmenting gameplay experiences for the player. We wanted to
encourage a dialogue among researchers in AI, human-computer interaction and
psychology disciplines who investigate dissimilar methodologies for improving gameplay
experiences. We expected that this workshop would yield an understanding of state-ofthe-
art approaches for capturing and augmenting player satisfaction in interactive systems
such as computer games.
Our invited speaker was Hakon Steinø, Technical Producer of IO-Interactive, who
discussed applied AI research at IO-Interactive, portrayed the future trends of AI in
computer game industry and debated the use of academic-oriented methodologies for
augmenting player satisfaction. The sessions of presentations and discussions where
classified into three themes: Adaptive Learning, Examples of Adaptive Games and Player
Modeling.
The Workshop Committee did a great job in providing suggestions and informative
reviews for the submissions; thank you! This workshop was in part supported by the
Danish National Research Council (project no: 274-05-0511). Finally, thanks to all the
participants; we hope you found this to be useful!peer-reviewe
Techno-historical limits of the interface: the performance of interactive narrative experiences
This thesis takes the position that current analyses of digitally mediated interactive experiences that include narrative elements often lack adequate consideration of the technical and historical contexts of their production.From this position, this thesis asks the question: how is the reader/player/user's participation in interactive narrative experiences (such as hypertext fiction, interactive fiction, computer games, and electronic art) influenced by the technical and historical limitations of the interface?In order to investigate this question, this thesis develops a single methodology from relevant media and narrative theory, in order to facilitate a comparative analysis of well known exemplars from distinct categories of digitally mediated experiences. These exemplars are the interactive fiction Adventure, the interactive art work Osmose, the hypertext fiction Afternoon, a story, and the computer/video games Myst, Doom, Half Life and Everquest.The main argument of this thesis is that the technical limits of new media experiences cause significant âgapsâ in the readerâs experience of them, and that the cause of these gaps is the lack of a dedicated technology for new media, which instead âborrowsâ technology from other fields. These gaps are overcome by a greater dependence upon the readerâs cognitive abilities than other media forms. This greater dependence can be described as a âperformanceâ by the reader/player/user, utilising Ecoâs definition of an âopenâ work (Eco 21).This thesis further argues that the âmimeticâ and âimmersiveâ ambitions of current new media practice can increases these gaps, rather than overcoming them. The thesis also presents the case that these âgapsâ are often not caused by technical limits in the present, but are oversights by the author/designers that have arisen as the product of a craft culture that has been subject to significant technical limitations in the past. Compromises that originally existed to overcome technical limits have become conventions of the reader/player/userâs interactive literacy, even though these conventions impinge on the experience, and are no longer necessary because of subsequent technical advances. As a result, current new media users and designers now think of these limitations as natural.This thesis concludes the argument by redefining âimmersionâ as the investment the reader makes to overcome the gaps in an experience, and suggests that this investment is an important aspect of their performance of the work
Rethinking Social Media and Extremism
Terrorism, global pandemics, climate change, wars and all the major threats of our age have been targets of online extremism. The same social media occupying the heartland of our social world leaves us vulnerable to cybercrime, electoral fraud and the 'fake news' fuelling the rise of far-right violence and hate speech. In the face of widespread calls for action, governments struggle to reform legal and regulatory frameworks designed for an analogue age. And what of our rights as citizens? As politicians and lawyers run to catch up to the future as it disappears over the horizon, who guarantees our right to free speech, to free and fair elections, to play video games, to surf the Net, to believe âfake newsâ? Rethinking Social Media and Extremism offers a broad range of perspectives on violent extremism online and how to stop it. As one major crisis follows another and a global pandemic accelerates our turn to digital technologies, attending to the issues raised in this book becomes ever more urgent
Network Latency in Teleoperation of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles:A Review of Trends, Challenges, and Mitigation Strategies
With remarkable advancements in the development of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), the integration of teleoperation has become crucial for improving safety and operational efficiency. However, teleoperation faces substantial challenges, with network latency being a critical factor influencing its performance. This survey paper explores the impact of network latency along with state-of-the-art mitigation/compensation approaches. It examines cascading effects on teleoperation communication links (i.e., uplink and downlink) and how delays in data transmission affect the real-time perception and decision-making of operators. By elucidating the challenges and available mitigation strategies, the paper offers valuable insights for researchers, engineers, and practitioners working towards the seamless integration of teleoperation in the evolving landscape of CAVs
Imitation learning through games: theory, implementation and evaluation
Despite a history of games-based research, academia has generally regarded
commercial games as a distraction from the serious business of AI, rather than as an
opportunity to leverage this existing domain to the advancement of our knowledge.
Similarly, the computer game industry still relies on techniques that were developed
several decades ago, and has shown little interest in adopting more progressive
academic approaches. In recent times, however, these attitudes have begun to change;
under- and post-graduate games development courses are increasingly common,
while the industry itself is slowly but surely beginning to recognise the potential
offered by modern machine-learning approaches, though games which actually
implement said approaches on more than a token scale remain scarce.
One area which has not yet received much attention from either academia or industry
is imitation learning, which seeks to expedite the learning process by exploiting data
harvested from demonstrations of a given task. While substantial work has been done
in developing imitation techniques for humanoid robot movement, there has been
very little exploration of the challenges posed by interactive computer games. Given
that such games generally encode reasoning and decision-making behaviours which
are inherently more complex and potentially more interesting than limb motion data,
that they often provide inbuilt facilities for recording human play, that the generation
and collection of training samples is therefore far easier than in robotics, and that
many games have vast pre-existing libraries of these recorded demonstrations, it is
fair to say that computer games represent an extremely fertile domain for imitation
learning research.
In this thesis, we argue in favour of using modern, commercial computer games to
study, model and reproduce humanlike behaviour. We provide an overview of the
biological and robotic imitation literature as well as the current status of game AI, highlighting techniques which may be adapted for the purposes of game-based
imitation. We then proceed to describe our contributions to the field of imitation
learning itself, which encompass three distinct categories: theory, implementation
and evaluation.
We first describe the development of a fully-featured Java API - the Quake2 Agent
Simulation Environment (QASE) - designed to facilitate both research and education
in imitation and general machine-learning, using the game Quake 2 as a testbed. We
outline our motivation for developing QASE, discussing the shortcomings of existing
APIs and the steps which we have taken to circumvent them. We describe QASEâs
network layer, which acts as an interface between the local AI routines and the
Quake 2 server on which the game environment is maintained, before detailing the
APIâs agent architecture, which includes an interface to the MatLab programming
environment and the ability to parse and analyse full recordings of game sessions.
We conclude the chapter with a discussion of QASEâs adoption by numerous
universities as both an undergraduate teaching tool and research platform.
We then proceed to describe the various imitative mechanisms which we have
developed using QASE and its MatLab integration facilities. We first outline a
behaviour model based on a well-known psychological model of human planning.
Drawing upon previous research, we also identify a set of believability criteria -
elements of agent behaviour which are of particular importance in determining the
âhumannessâ of its in-game appearance. We then detail a reinforcement-learning
approach to imitating the human playerâs navigation of his environment, centred
upon his pursuit of items as strategic goals. In the subsequent section, we describe
the integration of this strategic system with a Bayesian mechanism for the imitation
of tactical and motion-modelling behaviours. Finally, we outline a model for the
imitation of reactive combat behaviours; specifically, weapon-selection and aiming. Experiments are presented in each case to demonstrate the imitative mechanismsâ
ability to accurately reproduce observed behaviours.
Finally, we criticise the lack of any existing methodology to formally gauge the
believability of game agents, and observe that the few previous attempts have been
extremely ad-hoc and informal. We therefore propose a generalised approach to such
testing; the Bot-Oriented Turing Test (BOTT). This takes the form of an anonymous
online questionnaire, an accompanying protocol to which examiners should adhere,
and the formulation of a believability index which numerically expresses each agentâs
humanness as indicated by its observers, weighted by their experience and the
accuracy with which the agents were identified. To both validate the survey approach
and to determine the efficacy of our imitative models, we present a series of
experiments which use the believability test to evaluate our own imitation agents
against both human players and traditional artificial bots. We demonstrate that our
imitation agents perform substantially better than even a highly-regarded rule-based
agent, and indeed approach the believability of actual human players.
Some suggestions for future directions in our research, as well as a broader
discussion of open questions, conclude this thesis
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