Accessibility of 3D Game Environments for People with Aphasia: An Exploratory Study

People with aphasia experience difficulties with all aspects of language and this can mean that their access to technology is substantially reduced. We report a study undertaken to investigate the issues that confront people with aphasia when interacting with technology, specifically 3D game environments. Five people with aphasia were observed and interviewed in twelve workshop sessions. We report the key themes that emerged from the study, such as the importance of direct mappings between users’ interactions and actions in a virtual environment. The results of the study provide some insight into the challenges, but also the opportunities, these mainstream technologies offer to people with aphasia. We discuss how these technologies could be more supportive and inclusive for people with language and communication difficulties

On the Complexity of Two Dots for Narrow Boards and Few Colors

Two Dots is a popular single-player puzzle video game for iOS and Android. A level of this game consists of a grid of colored dots. The player connects two or more adjacent dots, removing them from the grid and causing the remaining dots to fall, as if influenced by gravity. One special move, which is frequently a game-changer, consists of connecting a cycle of dots: this removes all the dots of the given color from the grid. The goal is to remove a certain number of dots of each color using a limited number of moves. The computational complexity of Two Dots has already been addressed in [Misra, FUN 2016], where it has been shown that the general version of the problem is NP-complete. Unfortunately, the known reductions produce Two Dots levels having both a large number of colors and many columns. This does not completely match the spirit of the game, where, on the one hand, only few colors are allowed, and on the other hand, the grid of the game has only a constant number of columns. In this paper, we partially fill this gap by assessing the computational complexity of Two Dots instances having a small number of colors or columns. More precisely, we show that Two Dots is hard even for instances involving only 3 colors or 2 columns. As a contrast, we also prove that the problem can be solved in polynomial-time on single-column instances with a constant number of goals

Implementation of 2D turn-based strategy game with AI

Práce se zabývá tvorbou strategické hry a umělé inteligence, která se ji naučíhrát. Je prozkoumán žánr strategických her, ale i důležité části pro umělouinteligenci. Dále práce analyzuje několik profesionálně vytvořených her a pro-gramů hrající tahové strategie. Závěrem hodnotí kvalitu jak implementovanéumělé inteligence, tak implementované hry a navrhuje možná zlepšení.The thesis deals with creating a strategy game and artificial intelligence learn-ing the game via self-play. It looks into a strategy game genre as well as im-portant components of artificial intelligence. It analyzes several examples ofreal-world games and programs playing strategy games. In the end, the thesisdiscusses the quality of implemented artificial intelligence but also the gameand suggests possible improvements

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Mimicking human player strategies in fighting games using game artificial intelligence techniques

Fighting videogames (also known as fighting games) are ever growing in popularity and accessibility. The isolated console experiences of 20th century gaming has been replaced by online gaming services that allow gamers to play from almost anywhere in the world with one another. This gives rise to competitive gaming on a global scale enabling them to experience fresh play styles and challenges by playing someone new. Fighting games can typically be played either as a single player experience, or against another human player, whether it is via a network or a traditional multiplayer experience. However, there are two issues with these approaches. First, the single player offering in many fighting games is regarded as being simplistic in design, making the moves by the computer predictable. Secondly, while playing against other human players can be more varied and challenging, this may not always be achievable due to the logistics involved in setting up such a bout. Game Artificial Intelligence could provide a solution to both of these issues, allowing a human player s strategy to be learned and then mimicked by the AI fighter. In this thesis, game AI techniques have been researched to provide a means of mimicking human player strategies in strategic fighting games with multiple parameters. Various techniques and their current usages are surveyed, informing the design of two separate solutions to this problem. The first solution relies solely on leveraging k nearest neighbour classification to identify which move should be executed based on the in-game parameters, resulting in decisions being made at the operational level and being fed from the bottom-up to the strategic level. The second solution utilises a number of existing Artificial Intelligence techniques, including data driven finite state machines, hierarchical clustering and k nearest neighbour classification, in an architecture that makes decisions at the strategic level and feeds them from the top-down to the operational level, resulting in the execution of moves. This design is underpinned by a novel algorithm to aid the mimicking process, which is used to identify patterns and strategies within data collated during bouts between two human players. Both solutions are evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively. A conclusion summarising the findings, as well as future work, is provided. The conclusions highlight the fact that both solutions are proficient in mimicking human strategies, but each has its own strengths depending on the type of strategy played out by the human. More structured, methodical strategies are better mimicked by the data driven finite state machine hybrid architecture, whereas the k nearest neighbour approach is better suited to tactical approaches, or even random button bashing that does not always conform to a pre-defined strategy

The EcoKids and the Paper Pests

This report details and explains the creation process of the Interactive Media and Game Development, Computer Science, and Professional Writing Major Qualifying Project titled The EcoKids and the Paper Pests, shortened in this report to Paper Pests. Paper Pests is an educational game about invasive species for a middle school audience, designed to teach concepts from a New Zealand invasive species scenario. This report goes into details on the game’s background research, all areas of development, playtesting results and iterations, public appearances, potential avenues of future funding and development, and team role postmortems