Creating programs that can play games such as chess, checkers, and backgammon, at a high level has long been a challenge and benchmark for AI. Computer game playing is arguably one of AI's biggest success stories. Several game playing systems developed in the past, such as Deep Blue, Chinook and TD-Gammon have demonstrated competitive play against the top human players. However, such systems are limited in that they play only one particular game and they typically must be supplied with game-specific knowledge. While their performance is impressive, it is difficult to determine if their success is due to generally applicable techniques or due to the human game analysis. A general game player is an agent capable of taking as input a description of a game's rules and proceeding to play without any subsequent human input. In doing so, the agent, rather than the human designer, is responsible for the domain analysis. Developing such a system requires the integration of several AI components, including theorem proving, feature discovery, heuristic search, and machine learning. In the general game playing scenario, the player agent is supplied with a game's rules in a formal language, prior to match play. This thesis contributes a collection of general methods for analyzing these game descriptions to improve performance. Prior work on automated domain analysis has focused on generating heuristic evaluation functions for use in search. The thesis builds upon this work by introducing a novel feature generation method. Also, I introduce a method for generating and comparing simple evaluation functions based on these features. I describe how more sophisticated evaluation functions can be generated through learning. Finally, this thesis demonstrates the utility of domain analysis in facilitating knowledge transfer between games for improved learning speed. The contributions are fully implemented with empirical results in the general game playing system. / text

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Bakalauro darbe analizuojamos paauglių pomėgio žaisti kompiuterinius žaidimus ir bendravimo su aplinkiniais ypatybės. Darbo tikslas – išanalizuoti ryšį tarp paauglio bendravimo su artimaisiais ir pomėgio žaisti kompiuterinius žaidimus. Tyrime dalyvavo 100 mokinių, kurių amžius nuo 14 iki 17 metų. Tyrimas atliktas Vilkaviškio „Aušros“ gimnazijoje. Uždaro tipo klausimynu tirta paauglių demografinė padėtis, paauglių ryšys su kompiuteriu, internetu bei kompiuteriniais žaidimais. Taip pat tirta, kokie yra paauglių santykiai su tėvais ir draugais. Analizuojant tyrimo duomenis, ieškota ryšio tarp paauglių pomėgio žaisti kompiuterinius žaidimus ir bendravimo su aplinkiniais. Tyrimu nustatyta, kad paauglystės amžiaus tarpsnyje labai svarbu yra, kaip paauglys reaguoja į savo fizinį brendimą. Paauglystės amžiaus tarpsnyje formuojasi paauglio tapatumas bei vertybių sistema. Tai yra patys svarbiausi ypatumai, kurie nulemia tolimesnę paauglio raidą. Mokslinėje literatūroje pateikiami kompiuterinių žaidimų rūšys: imitaciniai, mokomieji, nuotykiniai, vaidmeniniai, sportiniai, strateginiai – koviniai, veiksmo. Išskirta, jog kompiuterinių žaidimų poveikis yra teigiamas ir neigiamas. Gauti tyrimo rezultatai parodė, kad dauguma respondentų prie kompiuterinių žaidimų praleidžia vidutiniškai iki valandos, tik nedidelė dalis 9 procentai vaikinų žaidžia kompiuterinius žaidimus nuo 2 iki 4 valandų laiko. Rezultatai atskleidė, kad paaugliai žaidžia įvairius kompiuterinius žaidimus ir neturi vieno... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / My bachelor work analyzes the teenager‘s obsession with computer games and interaction with surounding properties. The following aim of the research was formulated based on the research problem: to analyze the relationship between adolescent communication with family and the love of playing computer games. The study included 100 hundred students, age from 14 to 17 years. The study was conducted at Vilkaviskis “Ausros” gymnasium. Closed-ended questionnaire it was analyzed the demographic situation of the teenagers, the relationship between teenagers and computers, internet, and computer games. It was also examined, what is the relationship between teenagers and their parents and friends. While analyzing the data it was necessary to find out the connection between adolescent obsession with computer games and interaction with others. The study confirmed that at the age of adolescent it is very important to make it clear how the teenager is responding to his or her physical maturity. At the age of adolescent it is time where the formation of his or her identity and the role of his or her values take the most important part. These are the most important characteristics which determine the further development of the adolescent. In scientific literature we can find such types of computer games as these: imitation, educational, adventure, role-play, sport, strategy- fighting, action. It is emphasized that there are negative and positive affect of the video games. The obtained... [to full text]

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This thesis reports on a usability study conducted on the Virtual Learning Spaces (VLS) computerbased educational adventure game. The aim of the game is to improve the acquisition of knowledge through play in an interactive, entertaining and intrinsically motivating computer-based environment. The objective of this study centred on assessing the quality of the VLS game user interface, and determining faults and problems that may hinder implementation Literature on usability of virtual reality educational game systems and related phenomenon of usability of other types of computer application systems was reviewed, including, to a lesser extent, literature on usability of web pages. The major issues of interest included, usability issues concerning principles of good user interface design, factors that influence how a user interface promotes user satisfaction and the objectives of playing the game, from player, game and the game as medium of learning perspectives. These principles provided a set of usability requirements for the VLS game user interface on which the evaluation was based. A series of data collection methods comprising a cognitive walk through, heuristic evaluation, usability testing and post-test questionnaire, were used in this study. Despite some usability problems, results indicate that the VLS user interface design conformed, extensively, to the principles of good user interface design in appearance, interaction and user help. It was also found to be engaging, comprehensible and unbiased (in terms of gender and variable computer skills). / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

Whether virtual reality will have positive or negative implications on the social structure is debatable, but one thing is certain- virtual reality will play an increasingly important role in public and private life as we move toward the future (1). Over the years there has been a notable increase in the amount of people playing online virtual reality games. World of Warcraft (WoW) alone has an estimated eight million account holders, making it the largest Massive Multi-player Online Role-playing Game (MMORPG) in the world. Although the Internet has been appropriated by social practice, it does have specific affects on the social practice itself. Role-playing and identity building form the basis of online interaction (Castells, 2001:118), which suggests that social patterns of communication are starting to change. This study starts with the basic explanation of the Internet and Globalization which lends a hand to those wanting to escape into parallel online worlds, where they are able to reinvent themselves. This will lead into a discussion on how virtual reality online gaming can aid in the erosion of social communication as well as enhance it, through communities, the identity, and addiction. Theorists such as Rheingold (1994), Turkle (1998), Robins (1998) and Yee (2006) discuss how virtual reality gaming provides a window to a different world, where players can experiment with their identities as well as interact with people from around the world; all of which aid in the shift of normal social patterns and self construction. Finally a close look is taken on why these virtual reality online games hold such an allure to its players, turning them into gaming addicts, or is it an online communication addiction. During this dissertation a preliminary case study was under taken with a collected group of the Durban youth, regarding WoW and their online interactions with people abroad. It is evident that further research needs to be conducted in order to fully understand the extent of virtual reality online games and their effect on social behaviours and communication patterns. As a transformation in the relationship between the self and the social outside worlds, tends to blur when gamers enter into their fantasy society. (1) www.bilawchuk.com / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

This thesis investigates how to train the increasingly large cast of characters in modern commercial computer games. Modern computer games can contain hundreds or sometimes thousands of non-player characters that each should act coherently in complex dynamic worlds, and engage appropriately with other non-player characters and human players. Too often, it is obvious that computer controlled characters are brainless zombies portraying the same repetitive hand-coded behaviour. Commercial computer games would seem a natural domain for reinforcement learning and, as the trend for selling games based on better graphics is peaking with the saturation of game shelves with excellent graphics, it seems that better artificial intelligence is the next big thing. The main contribution of this thesis is a novel style of utility function, group utility functions, for reinforcement learning that could provide automated behaviour specification for large numbers of computer game characters. Group utility functions allow arbitrary functions of the characters’ performance to represent relationships between characters and groups of characters. These qualitative relationships are learned alongside the main quantitative goal of the characters. Group utility functions can be considered a multi-agent extension of the existing programming by reward method and, an extension of the team utility function to be more generic by replacing the sum function with potentially any other function. Hierarchical group utility functions, which are group utility functions arranged in a tree structure, allow character group relationships to be learned. For illustration, the empirical work shown uses the negative standard deviation function to create balanced (or equal performance) behaviours. This balanced behaviour can be learned between characters, groups and also, between groups and single characters. Empirical experiments show that a balancing group utility function can be used to engender an equal performance between characters, groups, and groups and single characters. It is shown that it is possible to trade some amount of quantitatively measured performance for some qualitative behaviour using group utility functions. Further experiments show how the results degrade as expected when the number of characters and groups is increased. Further experimentation shows that using function approximation to approximate the learners’ value functions is one possible way to overcome the issues of scale. All the experiments are undertaken in a commercially available computer game engine. In summary, this thesis contributes a novel type of utility function potentially suitable for training many computer game characters and, empirical work on reinforcement learning used in a modern computer game engine.

This thesis presents a study on how to create a production pipeline using a markerless motion capture system for the creation of animations in computer games. The questions the authors desire to answer are: Is it possible to create a pipeline that uses markerless motion capture for the creation of animations in computer games? And also: Can a markerless motion capture system fit in an animation pipeline for games? This thesis is based on previous work by Kakee Lau (Lau, 2012), a former student of Gotland University College. He describes a pipeline for working with passive optical motion capture for games. To fit the markerless motion capture system, there must be some changes to Lau’s already established pipeline. The method used in this thesis is based on a pipeline described in Lau’s thesis (Lau, 2012). The authors have made some alterations to this pipeline for it to be more suitable for markerless motion capture. The pipeline that the authors propose covers the setup of two Kinect cameras, the calibration, the recording, the cleaning and the preparation for MotionBuilder. Due to some factors that were not taken into consideration during testing, there cannot be any quantitative conclusion in this thesis to which system is the better one. Based on the findings of this study the authors can conclude that a markerless motion capture system is a viable method for game animation creation, yet not giving the same quality of results as a passive optical motion capture system.

Eight Directors of Religious Education (DREs) were randomly chosen in Indiana and asked to participate in this study to assess the media technology used in their religious education programs. DREs directly control the general curriculum for each class and grade level while mentoring teachers' development and execution of lessons. Catholic parochial schools were not included in this study; the sole focus of this study was Catholic religious education programs.The methods for accessing the media technology consisted of a triangulation between observations, interviews, and document analysis. After the DREs agreed to participate, the researcher spent a day shadowing them and conducted an interview. Also, the researcher collected documents in the form of the church's bulletin and web site when applicable. Only the DRE's perspective was assessed, and not the teacher's, student's or parent's. / Department of Telecommunications

This project concerned the development of a computer software system to help students reinforce material previously discussed in the classroom.The software is written in Apple Pilot, a computer language especially designed to help teachers with little or no programming background develop simple computer assisted instruction courseware. The program creates an adventure style game where the student finds treasure, fights monsters, and overcomes obstacles by answering questions related to English comparatives and superlatives.