Tweeting your Destiny: Profiling Users in the Twitter Landscape around an Online Game

Social media has become a major communication channel for communities centered around video games. Consequently, social media offers a rich data source to study online communities and the discussions evolving around games. Towards this end, we explore a large-scale dataset consisting of over 1 million tweets related to the online multiplayer shooter Destiny and spanning a time period of about 14 months using unsupervised clustering and topic modelling. Furthermore, we correlate Twitter activity of over 3,000 players with their playtime. Our results contribute to the understanding of online player communities by identifying distinct player groups with respect to their Twitter characteristics, describing subgroups within the Destiny community, and uncovering broad topics of community interest.Comment: Accepted at IEEE Conference on Games 201

Geometrija sjena u realnom vremenu

Shadows provide important visual hints about the spatial relationship between objects. Shadow volumes are one way to generate sophisticated shadows for use in real time environments. This paper focuses on the geometric aspects which are involved in the creation of the shadow volume. Speed up techniques like shaders and dual space approaches for silhouette determination are discussed. Finally the application of the described methods in a software for shadow profile calculation is explained.Sjene pružaju važne vizualne informacije o prostornom odnosu među objektima. Tijelo sjene je jedan način kako generirati profinjene sjene za prkaze u realnom vremenu. U ovom članku usredotočilo se na geometrijski aspekt uključen u stvaranje tijela sjene. Razmatraju se brze i efikasne tehnike za određivanje rastavnice preko dva pristupa: dualnog prostora i programa za sjenčanje (shadera). Na kraju je prikazana primjena opisanih metoda u softveru za određivanje oblika sjene

Interaktivno modeliranje i razdioba fleksibilnog mehanizma jednakostraničnih trokuta

Based on the requests from architects, we developed a system which allows to interactively design and subdivide flexible triangular surfaces. Due to economical reasons the number of different types of building elements should be small. For that reason we only use equilateral base triangles of unique size with the possibility of subdivision. To allow to interactively move vertices and to ensure constant edge length we use force-directed methods instead of inverse kinematics. This paper describes the data structure, the algorithm and the influence of subdivision on the kinematic flexibility of the mesh.Prema zahtjevima arhitekata razvijamo sustav koji dozvoljava interaktivnu tvorbu i razdiobu fleksibilne triangulirane plohe. Broj različitih sastavnih dijelova iz ekonomskih razloga treba biti mali. Zbog toga koristimo samo sukladne jednakostranične bazne trokute s mogućnošću razdiobe. Kako bismo dozvolili interaktivno kretanje vrhova i osigurali konstantnost duljine bridova umjesto inverzne kinematike koristimo metodu upravljanja silom. Rad opisuje strukturu podataka, algoritam i utjecaj razdiobe na kinematičku fleksibilnost mreže

Segundo FOLGADO FLÓREZ, Teoría eclesial en el Pastor de Hermas, Real Monasterio de El Escorial (Biblioteca «La Ciudad de Dios». I. Libros, n. 30), 1979, 142 pp., 17 X 24. [RECENSIÓN]

Visual comparison of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) is commonly encountered in various disciplines (e.g., finance, biology). Still, knowledge about humans' perception of their similarity is currently quite limited. By similarity perception, we mean how humans perceive commonalities and differences of DAGs and herewith come to a similarity judgment. To fill this gap, we strive to identify factors influencing the DAG similarity perception. Therefore, we conducted a card sorting study employing a quantitative and qualitative analysis approach to identify (1) groups of DAGs the participants perceived as similar and (2) the reasons behind their groupings. We also did an extended analysis of our collected data to (1) reveal specifics of the influencing factors and (2) investigate which strategies are employed to come to a similarity judgment. Our results suggest that DAG similarity perception is mainly influenced by the number of levels, the number of nodes on a level, and the overall shape of the DAG. We also identified three strategies used by the participants to form groups of similar DAGs: divide and conquer, respecting the entire dataset and considering the factors one after the other, and considering a single factor. Factor specifics are, e.g., that humans on average consider four factors while judging the similarity of DAGs. Building an understanding of these processes may inform the design of comparative visualizations and strategies for interacting with them. The interaction strategies must allow the user to apply her similarity judgment strategy to the data. The considered factors bear information on, e.g., which factors are overlooked by humans and thus need to be highlighted by the visualization

GPU radiosity for triangular meshes with support of normal mapping and arbitrary light distributions

This paper describes an implementation of a progressive radiosity algorithm for triangular meshes which works completely on programmable graphics processors. Errors due to the rasterization of triangles are fixed in a post-processing step or with a fragment shader during runtime. Adaptive subdivision to increase the accuracy of the radiosity solution can be performed during render-time. Since we found that the gradient is not very robust to determine whether triangles should be subdivided or not, we propose a new technique which uses hardware occlusion queries to determine shadow boundaries in image space. The GPU implementation facilitates the simple integration of normal mapping into the radiosity process. Light distribution textures (LDTs) enable us to simulate a variety of real world light sources without much computational overhead. The derivation of such an LDT from a EULUMDAT file is described

Enhancing battle maps through flow graphs

So-called battle maps are an appropriate way to visually summarize the flow of battles as they happen in many team-based combat games. Such maps can be a valuable tool for retrospective analysis of battles for the purpose of training or for providing a summary representation for spectators. In this paper an extension to the battle map algorithm previously proposed by the author [1] and which addresses a shortcoming in the depiction of troop movements is described. The extension does not require alteration of the original algorithm and can easily be added as an intermediate step before rendering. The extension is illustrated using gameplay data from the team-based multiplayer game World of Tanks

HOMIE: An Artificial Companion for Elderly People

In this paper we present “Homie ” an artificial companion for elderly people. Our approach emphasizes amusement and benefit- amusement in form of entertainment and benefit in terms of medical care. The key to awake elderly people’s emotional engagement in an artificial companion is its emotional behavior. Therefore, we propose a companion that does not look technical, which is mostly associated with the words cold and impersonal. Furthermore it features facial expression and gesture. An important design aspect was that it is no additional burden for elderly people. Engaging with it is free and fun. Author Keywords Artificial companionship, elderly people, emotion, relationship, entertainment, medical care. ACM Classification Keywords H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)