Procedural content generation is a method that is sometimes used in video games to increase their replayability. In our previous work (Nepožitek, 2018), we implemented an algorithm for procedural generation of 2D dungeons, with the main focus on giving game designers complete control over the structure of generated levels. The algorithm takes a set of user-defined building blocks as input and produces levels that all follow the structure of a specified level connectivity graph. In the first part of the thesis, we address some shortcomings of our previous work. We improve the algorithm with several new features such as better support for corridors between rooms or the possibility to generate platformer levels. We also propose several performance improvements and analyze the speed of the algorithm on various inputs. In the second part of the thesis, we present an integration of our algorithm into the Unity game engine. In the final part of the thesis, we demonstrate that our generator is able to produce levels that are similar to what we can see in two popular games - Enter the Gungeon and Dead Cells. The resulting algorithm is much faster than the previous version, contains new features and is ready to be used in the Unity game engine.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) provide powerful, natural, and robust ways to interact with digital content, across a number of different domains. AR and VR, collectively known as Extended Reality (XR), can facilitate the execution of surgical procedures, aid in maintenance and repair of mechanical equipment, provide novel visualization paradigms for data analysis, and even empower new ways to experience video games. These experiences are built on rich, complex real-time interactive systems (RISs) that require the integration of numerous components supporting everything from rendering of virtual content to tracking of objects and people in the real world. There are decades of research on the development of robust RISs, utilizing different software engineering modalities, which facilitate the creation of these systems. While in the past, developers would frequently write all of the components and the “logical glue” themselves (often built with graphics suites such as OpenGL and DirectX), with the the rise of popular 3D game creation engines, such as Unity and Unreal, new development modalities have begun to emerge. While the underlying game engines provide a significantly easier pipeline to integrate different subsystems of AR/VR applications, there are a number of development questions that arise when considering how interaction, visualization, rendering, and application logic should interact, as developers are often left to create the “logical glue” on their own, leading to software components with low reusability. As the needs of users of these systems increase and become more complex, and as the software and hardware technology improves and becomes more sophisticated, the underlying subsystems must also evolve to help meet these needs. In this work, I present a new software design pattern, the Relay & Responder (R&R) pattern, that attempts to address the concerns found with many traditional object-oriented approaches in XR systems. The R&R pattern simplifies the design of these systems by separating logical components from the communication infrastructure that connects them, while minimizing coupling and facilitating the creation of logical hierarchies that can improve XR application design and module reuse. Additionally, I explore how this pattern can, across a number of different research development efforts, aid in the creation of powerful and rich XR RISs. I first present related work in XR system design and introduce the R&R pattern. Then I discuss how XR development can be eased by utilizing modular building blocks and present the Mercury Messaging framework, which implements the R&R pattern. Next I delve into three new XR systems that explore complex XR RIS designs (including user study management modules) using the pattern and framework. I then address the creation of multi-user, networked XR RISs using R&R and Mercury. Finally I end with a discussion on additional considerations, advantages, and limitations of the pattern and framework, in addition to prospective future work that will help improve both.

The evolution of the movement of virtual creatures is an interesting application of evolutionary algorithms in the field of Artificial Life. The goal of this thesis was to explore the possibilities of its use in computer games. As part of this thesis I proposed a game with the theme of evolution of the movement of virtual creatures, I created a system for their evolution based on information from existing works and expanded it with the features needed for the proposed game. In the course of the work, it turned out that the evolution is too computationally demanding to use in the game. Therefore, I created a simplified game prototype and in my work I focused more on experimenting with various settings of the algorithms for the evolution of virtual creatures.

Occupancy Regulated Extension (ORE) är en algoritm som används för att procedurellt generera banor till spel. Detta arbete undersökte användning av ORE för att skapa byggnader med tätt packade rum, specifikt från ett prestandaperspektiv. Detta genomfördes med treimplementationer av olika varianter av ORE. Dessa varianter är rutnät, svepande linje, och AABB. För små rum var rutnät snabbast, med svepande linje därefter och AABB den långsammaste. Med större rum var svepande linje i stort sett oförändrad och därmed snabbast, medans de andra två visade en ökning i genereringstiden. Rutnätsgeneratorn påverkades mest av rumstorlek, men inte tillräckligt för att vara långsammare än AABB. Resultatet var inte betydligt nog för att definitivt utse en implementation som bäst, eftersom skillnaderna var för små för att utesluta problem med implementationerna. Ytterligare arbete krävs för att uppnå ett mer exakt resultat. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet som ska skickas till arkivet.</p>

Audio in today’s first person computer games plays a vital role in informing players about their surroundings as well as general gameplay elements. Awareness of the direction, distance, and spatial placement of audio sources can be crucial for players in various contexts. Spatialising audio through stereo panning can pose challenges to players when it comes to accurately localising sound sources in front, behind, below, or above the player. Binaural audio is another technique used for spatialising audio by simulating how sound interacts with the head and ears before reaching the eardrums from a specific direction before the signal is rendered through the headphones. While binaural audio attempts to alleviate the front-back confusion, the cues from binaural audio are lost when the listener moves their head if some form of head tracking solution is not incorporated. Hence, this study’s research question is: ”How is localisation of audio sources in first-person computer games — while wearing headphones— helped by spatialising the soundscape in relation to head movement utilising head tracking technology?”. To be able to answer the research question a prototype of a game was developed following design science guidelines. The objective was to timely and accurately localise 14 invisible targets emitting sound in a virtual three-storey house. During one half of the test the spatilisation with head movements was inactive and the other half had it activated in order to compare the testers ability for localisation with and without the tool. The order for which half would have spatilisation activated was randomised for each test. The research strategy consisted of two types of experiments, blind — with 20 participants, and open — with five testers, that were conducted to measure and evaluate the participants’ head movement and performance in terms of accuracy and time of localising the targets by shooting them. For data collection this study used a mixed methods approach that included questionnaires with closed questions and semistructured interviews. Data about the testers’ performance was automatically logged during the test. The results from the first, blind experiment showed little head movement and no significant impact on localisation performance from the spatialisation. Consequently an open follow-up experiment was performed to discover if the blind experiment design affected the results. The results demonstrated a higher degree of head movement but corroborated the first test in no substantial effect on the testers’ accuracy or time when localising the targets. In summary, there could be found no positive or negative impact on one’s localisation of audio sources in first-person computer games —while wearing headphones— when spatialising the soundscape in relation to head movements by utilising head tracking technology. Additionally, some participants found the tool to be unfit for the genre that the prototype resembled and suggested that spatialisation of audio with head tracking could perhaps be better suited for other genres. This could serve as material for future research on the use of head tracking for spatialisation of audio in computer games.

The success of Online Social Networks (OSN) is influenced by having the ability to understand who is important. An OSN can be viewed as a graph where users are vertices and their interactions are edges. Graph-based methods can enable identification of people in these networks who for example exhibit the characteristics of leaders, influencers, or information brokers. A Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) is a type of OSN. It is a video game where a large number of players interact with each other in a virtual world. Using behavioral data of players' interactions within the space-based MMO EVE Online, the aim of this thesis is to conduct an experimental study to evaluate the effectiveness of a number graph-based methods at finding important players within different behavioral contexts. For that purpose we extract behavioral data to construct four distinct graphs: Fleet, Aggression, Mail, and Market. We also create a ground truth data set of important players based on heuristics from key gameplay categories. We experiment on these graphs with a selection of graph centrality, Influence Maximization, and heuristic methods. We explore how they perform in terms of ground truth players found per graph and execution time, and when combining results from all graphs. Our results indicate that there is no optimal method across graphs but rather the method and graph should be chosen according to the business intention at each time. To that end we provide recommendations as well as potential business case usages. We believe that this study serves as a starting point towards more graph based analysis within the EVE Online virtual universe where there are many unexplored research opportunities. / Framgången hos Online Sociala Nätverk (OSN) påverkas av förmågan att förstå vem som är viktig. Ett OSN kan ses som en graf där användarna är noder och deras interaktioner ärbågar. Grafbaserade metoder kan möjliggöra identifiering av personer i dessa nätverk somtill exempel uppvisar egenskaper hos ledare, påverkare eller informationsförmedlare. Ett Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) representerar en typ av OSN. Det är ett datorrollspel där ett stort antal spelare interagerar med varandra i en virtuell värld. Genomatt använda beteendedata om spelarnas interaktioner i den rymdbaserade MMO:n EVE Online är målet med denna avhandling att genomföra en experimentell studie för att utvärdera effektiviteten hos ett antal grafbaserade metoder för att hitta viktiga spelare inom olika beteendemässiga sammanhang. För det ändamålet extraherar vi beteendedata för att konstruera fyra distinkta grafer: Fleet, Aggression, Mail och Market. Vi skapar också ett ground truth" dataset av viktiga spelare baserat på heuristik från viktiga spelkategorier. Vi utför experiment på dessa grafer med ett urval av grafcentralitet, Influence Maximization och heuristiska metoder. Vi undersöker hur metoderna presterar i termer av antal ground truth spelare som finns per graf och över grafer, och i termer av exekveringstid. Våra resultat tyder på att det inte finns någon optimal metod för alla grafer. Metoden och grafen bör väljas beroende på intentionen vid varje tillfälle. För detta ändamål tillhandahåller vi rekommendationer samt potentiella affärsmässiga användningsområden. Vi tror att denna studie tjänar som utgångspunkt för mer grafbaserad analys inom EVEOnlines virtuella universum där det finns många outforskade forskningsmöjligheter.

The main purpose of the survey was to map older generations’ use of computer games, hereafter called gaming, and to highlight positive effects gaming has on the aging person. The goal of the survey is to contribute with deeper understanding and broadened awareness of which possibilities gaming offer to improve the wellbeing of the ageing human being. The collected empirical information was based on these questions: What does gaming look like amongst societies’ persons of the third age? Which factors contribute to encourage the ageing person to play? Can gaming be an important preventive factor for the ageing persons of the future? The gathering of data was carried out, using two different methods. A questionnaire based survey and thematically opens interviews. The selection of participants in the questionnaire based survey consisted of 32 persons. Two interviews were carried out. One with two persons and one with one person. All participants were of the third age, meaning that they are healthy and can manage daily life themselves. The result of the questionnaire based survey indicates thatmost persons of the third age, in spite of being in possession of digital instruments, well suited for gaming, very few of them actually play, and have no interest in it. The results of the interviews indicate that the lack of interest by older adults can partially be caused by the mass medias’ exposure of negative effects gaming can have on people, and partially by a lack of exposure of positive effects it can have to achieve improved wellbeing. Furthermore, the results of the interviews indicate that what could increase older persons interest in gaming, is research confirming the positive effects it can have on older persons, and that games that are both interesting and satisfying are available.

Yes / Mixed reality (MR) is a powerful interactive technology for new types of user experience. We present a semantic‐based interactive MR framework that is beyond current geometry‐based approaches, offering a step change in generating high‐level context‐aware interactions. Our key insight is that by building semantic understanding in MR, we can develop a system that not only greatly enhances user experience through object‐specific behaviours, but also it paves the way for solving complex interaction design challenges. In this paper, our proposed framework generates semantic properties of the real‐world environment through a dense scene reconstruction and deep image understanding scheme. We demonstrate our approach by developing a material‐aware prototype system for context‐aware physical interactions between the real and virtual objects. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation results show that the framework delivers accurate and consistent semantic information in an interactive MR environment, providing effective real‐time semantic‐level interactions.

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