29 research outputs found
A Bot Approach-Based Capacity Testing Automation for Online Video Games
Online games are a type of computer game that can be accessed using the internet network and played with other players to play the same game. With the advance in online game development, game developers are required to develop games that can be played by many players in one game, especially in the capacity of an online game server. Those needs can be achieved by utilizing bots. However, previous works only conducted bot-based testing for testing network capabilities. In this research, those works will be extended further ftotesting the capacity of a game server. The result of this research suggests that bot approach testing can simulate real players adequately. Other than that, the bot approach also can be scalable. However, the result also suggests that the bot approach still has some limitations as bots cannot simulate the dynamics shown by real players. Special attention is also needed towards clients utilized for executing the bots for them to be scalable
Models, methods, and tools for developing MMOG backends on commodity clouds
Online multiplayer games have grown to unprecedented scales, attracting millions of players
worldwide. The revenue from this industry has already eclipsed well-established entertainment
industries like music and films and is expected to continue its rapid growth in the future.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) have also been extensively used in research
studies and education, further motivating the need to improve their development process.
The development of resource-intensive, distributed, real-time applications like MMOG backends
involves a variety of challenges. Past research has primarily focused on the development and
deployment of MMOG backends on dedicated infrastructures such as on-premise data centers
and private clouds, which provide more flexibility but are expensive and hard to set up and
maintain. A limited set of works has also focused on utilizing the Infrastructure-as-a-Service
(IaaS) layer of public clouds to deploy MMOG backends. These clouds can offer various advantages
like a lower barrier to entry, a larger set of resources, etc. but lack resource elasticity,
standardization, and focus on development effort, from which MMOG backends can greatly
benefit.
Meanwhile, other research has also focused on solving various problems related to consistency,
performance, and scalability. Despite major advancements in these areas, there is no standardized
development methodology to facilitate these features and assimilate the development of
MMOG backends on commodity clouds. This thesis is motivated by the results of a systematic
mapping study that identifies a gap in research, evident from the fact that only a handful
of studies have explored the possibility of utilizing serverless environments within commodity
clouds to host these types of backends. These studies are mostly vision papers and do
not provide any novel contributions in terms of methods of development or detailed analyses
of how such systems could be developed. Using the knowledge gathered from this mapping
study, several hypotheses are proposed and a set of technical challenges is identified, guiding
the development of a new methodology.
The peculiarities of MMOG backends have so far constrained their development and deployment
on commodity clouds despite rapid advancements in technology. To explore whether such
environments are viable options, a feasibility study is conducted with a minimalistic MMOG
prototype to evaluate a limited set of public clouds in terms of hosting MMOG backends. Foli
lowing encouraging results from this study, this thesis first motivates toward and then presents
a set of models, methods, and tools with which scalable MMOG backends can be developed
for and deployed on commodity clouds. These are encapsulated into a software development
framework called Athlos which allows software engineers to leverage the proposed development
methodology to rapidly create MMOG backend prototypes that utilize the resources of
these clouds to attain scalable states and runtimes. The proposed approach is based on a dynamic
model which aims to abstract the data requirements and relationships of many types of
MMOGs. Based on this model, several methods are outlined that aim to solve various problems
and challenges related to the development of MMOG backends, mainly in terms of performance
and scalability. Using a modular software architecture, and standardization in common development
areas, the proposed framework aims to improve and expedite the development process
leading to higher-quality MMOG backends and a lower time to market. The models and methods
proposed in this approach can be utilized through various tools during the development
lifecycle.
The proposed development framework is evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively. The thesis
presents three case study MMOG backend prototypes that validate the suitability of the proposed
approach. These case studies also provide a proof of concept and are subsequently used
to further evaluate the framework. The propositions in this thesis are assessed with respect to
the performance, scalability, development effort, and code maintainability of MMOG backends
developed using the Athlos framework, using a variety of methods such as small and large-scale
simulations and more targeted experimental setups. The results of these experiments uncover
useful information about the behavior of MMOG backends. In addition, they provide evidence
that MMOG backends developed using the proposed methodology and hosted on serverless
environments can: (a) support a very high number of simultaneous players under a given latency
threshold, (b) elastically scale both in terms of processing power and memory capacity
and (c) significantly reduce the amount of development effort. The results also show that this
methodology can accelerate the development of high-performance, distributed, real-time applications
like MMOG backends, while also exposing the limitations of Athlos in terms of code
maintainability.
Finally, the thesis provides a reflection on the research objectives, considerations on the hypotheses
and technical challenges, and outlines plans for future work in this domain
Network traffic characterisation, analysis, modelling and simulation for networked virtual environments
Networked virtual environment (NVE) refers to a distributed software
system where a simulation, also known as virtual world, is shared over a
data network between several users that can interact with each other and
the simulation in real-time. NVE systems are omnipresent in the present
globally interconnected world, from entertainment industry, where they are
one of the foundations for many video games, to pervasive games that focus
on e-learning, e-training or social studies. From this relevance derives
the interest in better understanding the nature and internal dynamics of
the network tra c that vertebrates these systems, useful in elds such as
network infrastructure optimisation or the study of Quality of Service and
Quality of Experience related to NVE-based services. The goal of the present
work is to deepen into this understanding of NVE network tra c by helping
to build network tra c models that accurately describe it and can be used
as foundations for tools to assist in some of the research elds enumerated
before.
First contribution of the present work is a formal characterisation for
NVE systems, which provides a tool to determine which systems can be
considered as NVE. Based on this characterisation it has been possible to
identify numerous systems, such as several video games, that qualify as NVE
and have an important associated literature focused on network tra c analysis.
The next contribution has been the study of this existing literature from
a NVE perspective and the proposal of an analysis pipeline, a structured
collection of processes and techniques to de ne microscale network models
for NVE tra c. This analysis pipeline has been tested and validated against
a study case focused on Open Wonderland (OWL), a framework to build
NVE systems of di erent purpose. The analysis pipeline helped to de ned
network models from experimental OWL tra c and assessed on their accuracy
from a statistical perspective. The last contribution has been the
design and implementation of simulation tools based on the above OWL
models and the network simulation framework ns-3. The purpose of these
simulations was to con rm the validity of the OWL models and the analysis
pipeline, as well as providing potential tools to support studies related to NVE network tra c. As a result of this nal contribution, it has been proposed
to exploit the parallelisation potential of these simulations through High
Throughput Computing techniques and tools, aimed to coordinate massively
parallel computing workloads over distributed resources
AI in Learning: Designing the Future
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is predicted to radically change teaching and learning in both schools and industry causing radical disruption of work. AI can support well-being initiatives and lifelong learning but educational institutions and companies need to take the changing technology into account. Moving towards AI supported by digital tools requires a dramatic shift in the concept of learning, expertise and the businesses built off of it. Based on the latest research on AI and how it is changing learning and education, this book will focus on the enormous opportunities to expand educational settings with AI for learning in and beyond the traditional classroom. This open access book also introduces ethical challenges related to learning and education, while connecting human learning and machine learning. This book will be of use to a variety of readers, including researchers, AI users, companies and policy makers
AI in Learning: Designing the Future
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is predicted to radically change teaching and learning in both schools and industry causing radical disruption of work. AI can support well-being initiatives and lifelong learning but educational institutions and companies need to take the changing technology into account. Moving towards AI supported by digital tools requires a dramatic shift in the concept of learning, expertise and the businesses built off of it. Based on the latest research on AI and how it is changing learning and education, this book will focus on the enormous opportunities to expand educational settings with AI for learning in and beyond the traditional classroom. This open access book also introduces ethical challenges related to learning and education, while connecting human learning and machine learning. This book will be of use to a variety of readers, including researchers, AI users, companies and policy makers
Collaborative Game-based Learning - Automatized Adaptation Mechanics for Game-based Collaborative Learning using Game Mastering Concepts
Learning and playing represent two core aspects of the information and communication society nowadays. Both issues are subsumed in Digital Education Games, one major field of Serious Games. Serious Games combine concepts of gaming with a broad range of application fields: among others, educational sectors and training or health and sports, but also marketing, advertisement, political education, and other societally relevant areas such as climate, energy, and safety. This work focuses on collaborative learning games, which are Digital Educational Games that combine concepts from collaborative learning with game concepts and technology.
Although Digital Educational Games represent a promising addition to existing learning and teaching methods, there are different challenges opposing their application. The tension between a game that is supposed to be fun and the facilitation of serious content constitutes a central challenge to game design. The often high technical complexity and especially the instructors' lack of control over the game represent further challenges. Beyond that, the distinct heterogeneity of learners who often have different play styles, states of knowledge, learning speed, and soft skills, such as teamwork or communication skills, forms a pivotal problem. Apart from that, the vital role of the instructor needs to be taken into account.
Within the scope of this dissertation, the problems mentioned above are analyzed, concepts to solve them introduced, and methods developed to address them. The first major contribution contains the conceptualization of a framework for adaptation of collaborative multiplayer games as well as for the control of those games at run-time through an instructor using the Game Master principle. The core concept hereby addresses the design of a model to represent heterogeneous groups and to represent collaborative Serious Games.
Based on that, a novel concept for adaptation of collaborative multiplayer games is developed, implemented, and evaluated. Automatic recognition and interpretation of game situations, as well as determination of the most well suited adaptation based on the recognized situations, is a major challenge here. Further, a concept is developed to integrate an instructor in a meaningful way into the course of the game, giving him/her the necessary resources to recognize problems and to intervene and adapt the game at run-time.
Therefore, it will be taken into account that the elaborated concepts are applicable in a generic way independent of the underlying game.
The second major contribution of this work is the conceptualization and design of a simulation of players and learners in a collaborative multiplayer game that behave realistically based on a player, learner, and interaction model. This is supposed to enable an evaluation of the adaptation and Game Mastering concepts using freely configurable player and learner types.
The concepts introduced and developed within this thesis have been thoroughly evaluated using a twofold approach. As a test environment, a collaborative multiplayer Serious Game was designed and implemented. Within that simulation environment, the developed Game Mastering and adaptation concepts were assessed and tested with large sets of virtual learners.
Additionally, the concepts were evaluated with real users. Therefore, two different evaluation studies with a total of 60 participants were conducted.
The results of the conducted evaluations help to broaden the areas of application of Serious Games as well as to improve their applicability, hence raising acceptance among instructors. The models, architectures, and software solutions developed within this thesis thus build a foundation for further research of multiplayer Serious Games
Strategic Latency Unleashed: The Role of Technology in a Revisionist Global Order and the Implications for Special Operations Forces
The article of record may be found at https://cgsr.llnl.govThis work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in part under Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and in part under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. ISBN-978-1-952565-07-6 LCCN-2021901137 LLNL-BOOK-818513 TID-59693This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in part under Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and in part under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. ISBN-978-1-952565-07-6 LCCN-2021901137 LLNL-BOOK-818513 TID-5969