Procedural generation of music-guided weapons

Beyond the standard use of music as a passive and, sometimes, optional component of player experience the impact of music as a guide for the procedural generation of game content has not been explored yet. Being a core elicitor of player experience music can be used to drive the generation of personalized game content for a particular musical theme, song or sound effect being played during the game. In this paper we introduce a proof-of-concept game demonstrator exploring the relationship between music and visual game content across different playing behaviors and styles. For that purpose, we created a side-scroller shooter game where players can affect the relationship between projectiles’ trajectories and the background music through interactive evolution. By coupling neuroevolution of augmented topologies with interactive evolution we are able to create an initial arsenal of innovative weapons. Those weapons are both interesting to play with and also create novel fusions of visual and musical aesthetics.Thanks to Ryan Abela for his input on designing the sound extraction methods. The research was supported, in part, by the FP7 Marie Curie CIG project AutoGameDesign (project no: 630665).peer-reviewe

“One of the baddies all along” : Moments that challenge a player’s perspective

Reflection has become a core interest for game designers. However, empirical research into the kinds and causes for reflection within games is scarce. We therefore conducted an online questionnaire where participants (n=101) openly reported perspective-challenging moments within games, their causes, experience, and impact. Where past work has emphasised transformative reflection that changes player’s views and behaviour outside the game, we found that players report predominantly moments of ‘endo’-transformative reflection, which is focused on players’ game-related behaviour and concepts. We further identify some causes of perspective-challenging moments relating to narrative, game systems, game-external sources, and player expectations. Narrative reveals emerge as a key cause of perspective challenge

Rescatemos nuestra ortografía.

El presente trabajo de investigación tendrá como punto de referencia incentivar a los alumnos a mejorar las faltas de ortografía a través de ejercicios de escritura, pero especialmente a través de la lectura y el análisis minucioso de la estructuración de las palabras. Nuestro país está pasando por una situación difícil, de intolerancia, donde alcanzar la paz se está convirtiendo en algo imposible. Si realmente se quiere alcanzar la paz, la solución es cambiar el pensamiento, dejar de invertir en la guerra "Pensando en situaciones y secuelas bélicas", e invertir en la educación, buscando una mejor formación intelectual, donde cada persona tenga la capacidad de decidir por sí solo, y buscar su propia paz, y de esta manera pueda con fluidez comunicarse con los demás, tanto en el aspecto oral como escrito. Precisamente uno de los aspectos que ha sido perjudicado en la educación del educando es el desarrollo de la habilidad de la comunicación oral y escrita. El buen uso de la Lengua Moderna es indispensable para lograr una formación integral de los educandos, porque no sólo les ayuda a adquirir conocimientos, sino que contribuye a su proceso de Ia socialización: les permite conocer la realidad dentro de la cual viven, se comunican con unos, expresan sus propias opiniones, ya sean orales o escritas. Así desarrollan hábitos de buen escucha, de buen lector y de buen escritor, enfatizando más en los dos últimos, ya que en este proyecto pedagógico se está trabajando el problema de las faltas de ortografía y esto se alcanza por medio del desarrollo de la lectura. El uso de la lengua debe exigirse no sólo en la clase de castellano, sino que debe ser el instrumento primordial para el desarrollo de todas las demás asignaturas y actividades escolares. Los maestros serán el modelo conecto de todos los aspectos de la lengua. En el proceso de enseñanza y de aprendizaje de cualquier lengua y, con mayor razón de la lengua Materna, es necesario que el alumno haya adquirido cierto dominio en el manejo de la lengua en forma oral (lectura), para posteriormente desarrollar una buena composición escrita, con una excelente ortografía. Es por eso que primero se enfatizará en el desarrollo de la lectura, porque es de esta manera como el educando se familiarizará con todos los aspectos ortográficos

RPGLite player data and lookup tables

Player data, game data and user interaction data for the mobile game RPGLite (available on Android and iOS). Data is given in JSON with attributes described in the README. Also included is the action and state lookup tables which show the optimal actions, position strength and can be used to calculate action-costs

Data underpinning: Self-consistent nanoflare heating in model active regions: MHD avalanches

Data comprises Lare3d, the code used in the publication: Reid, J., Threlfall, J., & Hood, A. W. (2023). Self-consistent nanoflare heating in model active regions: MHD avalanches. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 518(1), 1584–1600. [stac3188]. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac318

Project Massive 1.0: Organizational Commitment, Sociability and Extraversion in

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMPs) continue to be a popular and lucrative sector of the gaming market. Project Massive was created to survey MMP players about their play experience, social experience, and communication tool usage both inside and outside of their gaming environments. 1852 MMP players have completed the online Project Massive survey, reporting on their play patterns, commitment to their player organizations, and personality traits like sociability and extraversion. The primary focus of Project Massive has been on the player groups that form in MMPs. Most MMPs support and attempt to foster group formation of some kind or another among their players. These formal player groups, often called guilds, can be as persistent as the digital worlds in which they exist. We have found that players who are highly committed to their guilds spend significantly more time in-game than do moderately committed guild members and solo (non-guild) players. Enhancing a player's commitment to their guild can translate into extending their commitment to the game world. In turn, this may result in longer subscriptions and increased revenue for the game's creators. This research is important because there has not been substantial research into the traits and practices of the more successful player organizations that are able to sustain committed bodies of members. Project Massive has investigated how these groups develop, organize, communicate, and operate across a number of independent game worlds. Here we report on our findings and describe our future longitudinal work as we track players and their organizations across the evolving landscape of the MMP product space