DISE : a game technology-based digital interactive storytelling framework

This thesis details the design and implementation of an Interactive Storytelling Framework. Using software engineering methodology and framework development methods, we aim to design a full Interactive Storytelling system involving a story manager, a character engine, an action engine, a planner, a 3D game engine and a set of editors for story data, world environment modelling and real-time character animation. The framework is described in detail and specified to meet the requirement of bringing a more dynamic real-time interactive story experience to the medium of computer games. Its core concepts borrow from work done in the fields of narrative theory, software engineering, computer games technology, HCI, 3D character animation and artificial intelligence. The contributions of our research and the novelties lie in the data design of the story which allows a modular approach to building reusable resources such as actions, objects, animated characters and whole story 'levels'; a switchable story planner and re-planning system implementation, allowing many planners, heuristics and schedulers that are compatible with PDDL (the "Planning Domain Definition Language") to be easily integrated with minor changes to the main classes; a 3D game engine and framework for web launched or in browser deployment of the finished product; and a user friendly story and world/environment editor; so story authors do not need advanced knowledge of coding PDDL syntax, games programming or 3D modelling to design and author a basic story. As far as we know our Interactive Storytelling Framework is the only one to include a full 3D cross-platform game engine, procedural and manual modelling tools, a story -editor and customisable planner in one complete integrated solution. The finished interactive storytelling applications are presented as computer games designed to be a real-time 3D first person experience, with the player as a main story character in a world where every context filtered action displayed is executable and the player's choices make a difference to the outcome of the story, whilst still allowing the authors high level constraints to progress the narrative along their desired path(s)

On the limits of engine analysis for cheating detection in chess

The integrity of online games has important economic consequences for both the gaming industry and players of all levels, from professionals to amateurs. Where there is a high likelihood of cheating, there is a loss of trust and players will be reluctant to participate — particularly if this is likely to cost them money. Chess is a game that has been established online for around 25 years and is played over the Internet commercially. In that environment, where players are not physically present “over the board” (OTB), chess is one of the most easily exploitable games by those who wish to cheat, because of the widespread availability of very strong chess-playing programs. Allegations of cheating even in OTB games have increased significantly in recent years, and even led to recent changes in the laws of the game that potentially impinge upon players’ privacy. In this work, we examine some of the difficulties inherent in identifying the covert use of chess-playing programs purely from an analysis of the moves of a game. Our approach is to deeply examine a large collection of games where there is confidence that cheating has not taken place, and analyse those that could be easily misclassified. We conclude that there is a serious risk of finding numerous “false positives” and that, in general, it is unsafe to use just the moves of a single game as prima facie evidence of cheating. We also demonstrate that it is impossible to compute definitive values of the figures currently employed to measure similarity to a chess-engine for a particular game, as values inevitably vary at different depths and, even under identical conditions, when multi-threading evaluation is used

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Skill Rating by Bayesian Inference

Systems Engineering often involves computer modelling the behaviour of proposed systems and their components. Where a component is human, fallibility must be modelled by a stochastic agent. The identification of a model of decision-making over quantifiable options is investigated using the game-domain of Chess. Bayesian methods are used to infer the distribution of players’ skill levels from the moves they play rather than from their competitive results. The approach is used on large sets of games by players across a broad FIDE Elo range, and is in principle applicable to any scenario where high-value decisions are being made under pressure

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Simulation modelling and visualisation: toolkits for building artificial worlds

Simulations users at all levels make heavy use of compute resources to drive computational simulations for greatly varying applications areas of research using different simulation paradigms. Simulations are implemented in many software forms, ranging from highly standardised and general models that run in proprietary software packages to ad hoc hand-crafted simulations codes for very specific applications. Visualisation of the workings or results of a simulation is another highly valuable capability for simulation developers and practitioners. There are many different software libraries and methods available for creating a visualisation layer for simulations, and it is often a difficult and time-consuming process to assemble a toolkit of these libraries and other resources that best suits a particular simulation model. We present here a break-down of the main simulation paradigms, and discuss differing toolkits and approaches that different researchers have taken to tackle coupled simulation and visualisation in each paradigm