193 research outputs found
Motivational game design patterns of ’ville games
The phenomenal growth of social network games in the last five years has left many game designers, game scholars, and long-time game players wondering how these games so effectively engage their audiences. Without a strong understanding of the sources of appeal of social network games, and how they relate to the appeal of past games and other human activities, it has proven difficult to interpret the phenomenon accurately or build upon its successes. In this paper we propose and employ a particular approach to this challenge, analyzing the motivational game design patterns in the popular ‘Ville style of game using the lenses of behavioral economics and behavioral psychology, explaining ways these games engage and retain players. We show how such games employ strategies in central, visible ways that are also present (if perhaps harder to perceive) in games with very different mechanics and audiences. Our conclusions point to lessons for game design, game interpretation, and the design of engaging software of any type
Procedural Generation of Complex Roundabouts for Autonomous Vehicle Testing
High-definition roads are an essential component of realistic driving
scenario simulation for autonomous vehicle testing. Roundabouts are one of the
key road segments that have not been thoroughly investigated. Based on the
geometric constraints of the nearby road structure, this work presents a novel
method for procedurally building roundabouts. The suggested method can result
in roundabout lanes that are not perfectly circular and resemble real-world
roundabouts by allowing approaching roadways to be connected to a roundabout at
any angle. One can easily incorporate the roundabout in their HD road
generation process or use the standalone roundabouts in scenario-based testing
of autonomous driving
Enemy NPC Design Patterns in Shooter Games
Gameplay in single-player shooter games primarily consists of combat with Non-player Characters (NPCs). However, there has been little research done to study how enemy NPCs affect player behavior in shooter games. As a consequence, there is no formal language for designers to discuss how NPCs are used in shooter games. This paper presents design patterns for NPCs in shooter games and explores their effects on gameplay. These patterns help designers communicate about and explore new ideas for enemy NPCs and further our understanding about how NPC types can be implemented, enabling more engaging experiences
SCISAT-1 ACE Mission C&DH Unit Development
The SCISAT-1 Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) Mission is a part of the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA’s) space science program, to support ongoing research in the areas of solarterrestrial relations, atmospheric sciences and space astronomy. Bristol Aerospace Limited is the CSA’s Spacecraft Prime Contractor for the ACE Mission. The ACE spacecraft will be launched on a Pegasus XL vehicle in mid-2002, co-manifested with a NASA spacecraft. A Control and Data Handling (C&DH) Unit is being developed by Bristol for the ACE Mission. This C&DH Unit will be responsible for all onboard command, control, monitoring and science data recording. This unit is being developed to support a range of Canadian small science missions, from Smallsats to Microsats. The unit is low power and light weight, and features a rad-tolerant core to assure reliable operation in a single string architecture. The C&DH Unit is comprised of a Controller Card (CC), Data Handling Card (DHC), Input/Output Card (IOC) and a Power Supply Card (PSC). Each card is housed in its own aluminum frame, and the frames are integrated into a vertical stack. The unit is expected to operate with 7 Watts orbit average power and uses a UTMC 80C196 16-bit processor running at 16 MHz to manage the satellite operations and perform attitude control. Mass storage of 1.5 Gbytes and CCSDS variable-rate telemetry up to 5 Mbits/sec are provided. This paper will present an overview of the ACE Mission and a description of the C&DH Unit, describing its architecture, hardware/software partitioning, FPGA functionality and key performance specifications
Privacy In The Age Of Technology
The rapid developments in technology have brought increased convenience, but at the price of loss of privacy. Consumers should be aware of the potential threat to their personal information and should learn the facts and take steps to protect themselves.
Computer-Generated Music for Tabletop Role-Playing Games
In this paper we present Bardo Composer, a system to generate background
music for tabletop role-playing games. Bardo Composer uses a speech recognition
system to translate player speech into text, which is classified according to a
model of emotion. Bardo Composer then uses Stochastic Bi-Objective Beam Search,
a variant of Stochastic Beam Search that we introduce in this paper, with a
neural model to generate musical pieces conveying the desired emotion. We
performed a user study with 116 participants to evaluate whether people are
able to correctly identify the emotion conveyed in the pieces generated by the
system. In our study we used pieces generated for Call of the Wild, a Dungeons
and Dragons campaign available on YouTube. Our results show that human subjects
could correctly identify the emotion of the generated music pieces as
accurately as they were able to identify the emotion of pieces written by
humans.Comment: To be published in the 16th AAAI Conference ON Artificial
Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainmen
Radio MARC Nov 3,1989
Radio program sponsored by Franco American Centre on WMEB, University of Maine radio station
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