Kok Wai Wong

Chun Che Fung

Arnold Depickere

Cyber Games and Interactive Entertainment

Strategy game and simulation application are an exciting area with many opportunities for study and research. Currently most of the existing games and simulations apply hard coded rules so the intelligence of the computer generated forces is limited. After some time, player gets used to the simulation making it less attractive and challenging. It is also costly and tedious to incorporate new rules for an existing game. The main motivation behind this research project is to improve the quality of artificial intelligence- (AI-) based on various techniques such as qualitative spatial reasoning (Forbus et al., 2002), near-optimal hierarchical pathfinding (HPA*) (Botea et al., 2004), and reinforcement learning (RL) (Sutton and Barto, 1998).

Le Minh Duc

Amandeep Singh Sidhu

Narendra S. Chaudhari

Hierarchical Pathfinding and AI-Based Learning Approach in Strategy Game Design

Online games have exploded in the last few years. These games face several problems linked to scalability and interactivity. In fact, online games should provide a quick feedback of users' interactions as well as a coherent view of the shared world. However, the search for enhanced scalability dramatically increases message exchange. Such an increase consumes processing power and bandwidth, and thus limits interactivity, consistency, and scalability. To reduce the rate of message exchange, distributed virtual environment systems use filtering techniques such as interest management that filters messages according to users' interests in the world. These interests are influenced by perceptual facts which we study in this paper in order to build upon them a perception-based filtering technique. This technique satisfies users' needs by precisely providing an exact filtering which is more efficient than other techniques.

Souad El Merhebi

Jean-Christophe Hoelt

Patrice Torguet

Jean-Pierre Jessel

Perception-Based Filtering for MMOGs

Story has traditionally been seen as something separate to gameplay&#8212;frequently relegated to an afterthought or epiphenomenon. Nevertheless, in the FPS genre there has been something of a renaissance in the notion of the story-driven title. Partially, this is due to advances in technology enabling a greater capacity for distributed storytelling and a better integration of story and gameplay. However, what has been underrecognised is the dynamic, epistemological, and psychological impact of story and story elements upon player behaviour. It is argued here that there is evidence that story may have a direct influence upon cognitive operations. Specifically, evidence is 
presented that it appears to demonstrate that games with highly visible, detailed stories may assist players in recalling and ordering their experiences. If story does, indeed, have a more direct influence, then it is clearly a more powerful and immediate tool in game design than either simply reward system or golden thread.

Dan Pinchbeck

Story and Recall in First-Person Shooters

An efficient terrain generation algorithm is developed, based on constrained conforming Delaunay triangulation. The density of triangulation in different regions of a terrain is determined by its flatness, as seen from a height map, and a control map. Tracks and other objects found in a game world can be applied over the terrain using the &#8220;stenciling&#8221; and &#8220;stitching&#8221; algorithms. Using user controlled parameters, varying levels of detail can be preserved when applying these objects over the terrain as well. The algorithms have been incorporated into 3dsMax as plugins, and the experimental results demonstrate the usefulness and efficiency of the developed algorithms.

Sundar Raman

Zheng Jianmin

Efficient Terrain Triangulation and Modification Algorithms for Game Applications

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have been known 
 to create rich and versatile social worlds for thousands of 
 millions of players to participate. As such, various game 
 elements and advance technologies such as artificial 
 intelligence have been applied to encourage and facilitate 
 social interactions in these online communities, the key to 
 the success of MMOGs. However, there is a lack of studies 
 addressing the usability of these elements in games. In this 
 paper, we look into interaction patterns and awareness design 
 elements that support the awareness in LastWorld 
 and FairyLand. Experimental results obtained 
 through both in-game experiences and player interviews reveal 
 that not all awareness tools (e.g., an in-game map) have been 
 fully exploited by players. In addition, those players who are 
 aware of these tools are not satisfied with them. 
 Our findings suggest that awareness-oriented tools/channels 
 should be easy to interpret and rich in conveying 
 &#x201C;knowledge&#x201D; so as to reduce players-cognitive 
 overload. These findings of this research recommend 
 considerations of early stage MMOG design.

Tiffany Y. Tang

Cheung Yiu Man

Chu Pok Hang

Lam Shiu Cheuk

Chan Wai Kwong

Yiu Chung Chi

Ho Ka Fai

Sit Kam

A Study of Interaction Patterns and Awareness Design Elements in a Massively Multiplayer Online Game

This paper is part of an experimental approach aimed to 
                  raise a videogames classification. Being inspired by the methodology that Propp used for the classification of Russian fairy tales, we have identified recurrent diagrams within rules of videogames, that we called &#8220;Gameplay Bricks&#8221;. The combinations of these different bricks should allow us to represent a classification of all videogames in accordance with their rules. In this article, we will study the nature of these bricks, especially the link they seem to have with two types of game rules: the rules that allow the player to &#8220;manipulate&#8221; the elements of the game, and the rules defining the &#8220;goal&#8221; of the game. This study will lead to an hypothesis about the nature of gameplay.

Damien Djaouti

Julian Alvarez

Gilles Methel

Pierre Molinier

A Gameplay Definition through Videogame Classification

Game assets are portable between games. The games themselves are, however, dependent on the game engine they were developed on. Middleware has attempted to address this by, for instance, separating out the AI from the core game engine. Our work takes this further by separating the 
game from the game engine, and making it portable between game engines. The game elements that we make portable are the game logic, the object model, and the game state, which represent the game's brain, and which we collectively refer to as the game factor, or G-factor. We achieve this using an architecture based around a service-oriented approach. We present an overview of this architecture and its use in developing games. The evaluation demonstrates that the architecture does not affect performance unduly, adds little development overhead, is scaleable, and supports modifiability.

Ahmed BinSubaih

Steve Maddock

Game Portability Using a Service-Oriented Approach

This paper proposes a novel method to generate strategic 
    team AI pathfinding plans for computer games and simulations 
    using probabilistic pathfinding. This method is inspired by 
    genetic algorithms (Russell and Norvig, 2002), in that, a fitness function is used to 
    test the quality of the path plans. The method generates 
    high-quality path plans by eliminating the low-quality ones. The 
    path plans are generated by probabilistic pathfinding, and the 
    elimination is done by a fitness test of the path plans. This 
    path plan generation method has the ability to generate 
    variation or different high-quality paths, which is desired 
    for games to increase replay values. This work is an extension 
    of our earlier work on team AI: probabilistic pathfinding (John et al., 2006). 
    We explore ways to combine probabilistic pathfinding and 
    genetic algorithm to create a new method to generate strategic 
    team AI pathfinding plans.

Tng C. H. John

Edmond C. Prakash

Strategic Team AI Path Plans: Probabilistic Pathfinding

Despite the ubiquity and rich features of current mobile phones, mobile games have failed to reach even the lowest estimates of expected revenues. This is unfortunate as mobile phones offer unique possibilities for creating games aimed at attracting demographics not currently catered for by the traditional console market. As a result, there has been a growing call for greater innovation within the mobile games industry and support for games outside the current console genres. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a novel location-based game which allows us turn a camera phone into a mixed-reality laser cannon. The game uses specially designed coloured tags, which are worn by the players, and advanced colour tracking software running on a camera phone, to create a novel first person shoot-em-up (FPS) with innovative game interactions and play.

Fadi Chehimi

Paul Coulton

Reuben Edwards

Using a Camera Phone as a Mixed-Reality Laser Cannon

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology publishes original research and review articles on both the research and development aspects of games technology covering the whole range of entertainment computing and interactive digital media.

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International Journal of Computer Games Technology

Cyber Games and Interactive Entertainment 2006

Cyber Games and Interactive Entertainment 2006

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