Game Technology for Training and Education

MediamaticsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

Constraint solving for direct manipulation of features

In current commercial feature modeling systems, support for direct manipulation of features is not commonly available. This is partly due to the strong reliance of such systems on constraints, but also to the lack of speed of current constraint solvers. In this paper, an approach to the optimization of geometric constraint solving for direct manipulation of feature dimensions, orientation, and position is described. Details are provided on how this approach was successfully implemented in the Spiff feature modeling system.MediamaticsIndustrial Design Engineerin

Declarative Terrain Modeling for Military Training Games

Military training instructors increasingly often employ computer games to train soldiers in all sorts of skills and tactics. One of the difficulties instructors face when using games as a training tool is the creation of suitable content, including scenarios, entities, and corresponding terrain models. Terrain plays a key role in many military training games, as for example, in our case game Tactical Air Defense. However, current manual terrain editors are both too complex and too time-consuming to be useful for instructors; automatic terrain generation methods show a lot of potential, but still lack user control and intuitive editing capabilities. We present a novel way for instructors to model terrain for their training games: instead of constructing a terrain model using complex modeling tools, instructors can declare the required properties of their terrain using an advanced sketching interface. Our framework integrates terrain generation methods and manages dependencies between terrain features in order to automatically create a complete 3D terrain model that matches the sketch. With our framework, instructors can easily design a large variety of terrain models that meet their training requirements.MediamaticsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

Authoring Adaptive Game World Generation

Current research on adaptive games has mainly focused on adjusting difficulty in a variety of ways, for example, by providing some control over adaptive game world generation. These methods, however, are mostly ad-hoc and require quite some technical skills. To the best of our knowledge, so far, there has been no adaptive method that is truly generic and explicitly designed to actively include game designers in the content creation loop. In this paper, we introduce a generic method that enables designers to author adaptivity of game world generation, in a very expressive and specific fashion. Our approach uses adaptation rules, which build atop gameplay semantics in order to steer the online generation of the game content. Designers create these rules by associating skill profiles, describing skill proficiency, with content descriptions, detailing the desired properties of the specific game world content. This game content is then generated online using a matching and retrieval approach. We performed user studies with both designers and players and concluded that adaptation rules provide game designers with a rich expressive range to effectively convey specific adaptive gameplay experiences to players.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Comp Graphics & Visualisatio

Constructive generation methods for dungeons and levels

This chapter addresses a specific type of game content, the dungeon, and a number of commonly used methods for generating such content. These methods are all “constructive”, meaning that they run in fixed (usually short) time, and do not evaluate their output in order to re-generate it. Most of these methods are also relatively simple to implement. And while dungeons, or dungeon-like environments, occur in a very large number of games, these methods can often be made to work for other types of content as well. We finish the chapter by talking about some constructive generation methods for Super Mario Bros. levels.Comp Graphics & Visualisatio

Usability in virtual and augmented environments: A qualitative and quantitative study

Virtual and Augmented Reality are developing rapidly: there is a multitude of environments and experiments in several laboratories using from simple HMD (Head-Mounted Display) visualization to more complex and expensive 6-wall projection CAVEs, and other systems. Still, there is not yet a clear emerging technology in this area, nor commercial applications based on such a technology are used in large scale. In addition to the fact that this is a relatively recent technology, there is little work to validate the utility and usability of Virtual and Augmented Reality environments when compared with the traditional desktop set-up. However, usability evaluation is crucial in order to design better systems that respond to the users’ needs, as well as for identifying applications that might really gain from the use of such technologies. This paper presents a preliminary usability evaluation of a low-cost Virtual and Augmented Reality environment under development at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. The objective is to assess the difference between a traditional desktop set-up and a Virtual/Augmented Reality system based on a stereo HMD. Two different studies were performed: the first one was qualitative and some feedback was obtained from domain experts who used an Augmented Reality set-up as well as a desktop in different data visualization scenarios. The second study consisted in a controlled experiment meant to compare users’ performances in a gaming scenario in a Virtual Reality environment and a desktop. The overall conclusion is that these technologies still have to overcome some hardware problems. However, for short periods of time and specific applications, Virtual and Augmented Reality seems to be a valid alternative since HMD interaction is intuitive and natural.Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc