Video Game Design Method for Novice

This paper shows how college students withoutprior experience in video game design can create an interestingvideo game. Video game creation is a task that requires weeksif not months of dedication and perseverance to complete.However, with Alice, a group of three sophomore students whonever designed a game can create a full-fledged video game fromgiven specifications. Alice is 3D graphics interactive animationsoftware, which is well-tried and proven to be an enjoyablelearning environment. At the start of this project, students aregiven guidelines that describe expected outcomes. With minimumsupervision, in three days, a working program that matches theguidelines is accomplished. In additional two days, studentsenhance the quality with better graphics design and music.With this experience, 3D graphics interactive animationsoftware, like Alice, is demonstrated to be a useful teaching toolin education for academic courses of game development anddesign. This paper not just discusses how the video game wascreated, but also speaks of the difficulties the team overcomeseasily with Alice

Spartan Daily, March 8, 1996

Volume 106, Issue 31https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8816/thumbnail.jp

Computer-Assisted Interactive Documentary and Performance Arts in Illimitable Space

This major component of the research described in this thesis is 3D computer graphics, specifically the realistic physics-based softbody simulation and haptic responsive environments. Minor components include advanced human-computer interaction environments, non-linear documentary storytelling, and theatre performance. The journey of this research has been unusual because it requires a researcher with solid knowledge and background in multiple disciplines; who also has to be creative and sensitive in order to combine the possible areas into a new research direction. [...] It focuses on the advanced computer graphics and emerges from experimental cinematic works and theatrical artistic practices. Some development content and installations are completed to prove and evaluate the described concepts and to be convincing. [...] To summarize, the resulting work involves not only artistic creativity, but solving or combining technological hurdles in motion tracking, pattern recognition, force feedback control, etc., with the available documentary footage on film, video, or images, and text via a variety of devices [....] and programming, and installing all the needed interfaces such that it all works in real-time. Thus, the contribution to the knowledge advancement is in solving these interfacing problems and the real-time aspects of the interaction that have uses in film industry, fashion industry, new age interactive theatre, computer games, and web-based technologies and services for entertainment and education. It also includes building up on this experience to integrate Kinect- and haptic-based interaction, artistic scenery rendering, and other forms of control. This research work connects all the research disciplines, seemingly disjoint fields of research, such as computer graphics, documentary film, interactive media, and theatre performance together.Comment: PhD thesis copy; 272 pages, 83 figures, 6 algorithm

Towards an Ecosophical Praxis of New Media

We live under the enduring shadow of ecological crisis. Contemporary theorists have suggested that this ‘problem of ecology’ indicates a more general crisis of human subjectivity. Having observed much new media art praxis operates largely without awareness of the ecological implications of those practices I began developing new processes for conceptualising and developing media art works which I termed ‘Ecosophical’. My objective was to discover whether such works could be used to create contexts within which participants might reflect upon connections between the ‘problem of ecology’ and the proposed problem of human subjectivity

Imagining a digital future: how could we design for enchantment within the special education curriculum?

The implementation of the new “Successful Futures” curriculum in the UK, means that learners between the ages of 3 to 16 will be challenged to use digital media to develop their life skills, personal confidence, work skills, career planning, health and well-being (Donaldson, 2015). Teaching staff, responsible for delivering this multi-faceted programme for learners with profound disabilities, have reported that the perceived benefits of technology are misaligned to individual needs and capabilities. This is particularly evident when combined with a developmental approach that favours the achievement of milestones rather than discovery-led, task free, interaction (Simmons, 2019). The work reported here aims to directly address these gaps. We describe a series of Digital Imagining workshops, which set out to encourage creative and co-productive relationships between teaching professionals, academic artists, makers and computer scientists. During the activities, we experimented with digital fabrication tools as a means to envision contingent, imaginative interactions between learners with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD), other people and their environment. In collectively critiquing the ideas developed during the workshops participants recognized the benefit of simple contingent, cause and effect actions for drawing attention to the material properties of objects. Almost seamlessly, these sensory explorations became the trigger for more complex ideas for integrating the demands of the digital curriculum into more natural daily scenarios. The shared process of ideation and tinkering was reported to be vital in generating a shift toward inclusion as a creative, imaginative and expressive counterpoint to the pervasive emphasis on utility and function