This thesis presents a comparative study between Overwatch (2016) and Doom (2016) to determine how these fast-paced games facilitate flow in their gameplay. The second chapter looks at formal definitions of flow and level design to establish a vocabulary for following chapters. Through formal analysis the level designs of both games are then examined to establish what elements in them guide players and keep the flow in gameplay. The thesis also examines how the initial gameplay design principles, which are rooted in the older shooter genre, have impacted the level design. The author uses screenshots from both games, interviews with the design teams and published literature on game design for the study.It was found that the architectural design of a level in hero-based gameplay (Overwatch (2016)) could control the pacing by changing the elements that enable certain types of movement such as climbing or creating setups that favor one team over the other. On an individual player level, flow is kept with intentional placement of light and bright colors to guide the player. While Doom (2016) uses different abilities and movement sets for its hero, the tools of guiding the player proved to be very similar but with heavier focus on environmental markings and lights. In both cases the look of these guiding tools was adapted to fit into the game world without breaking the player’s immersion. / I uppsatsen görs en jämförelse mellan Overwatch (2016) och Doom (2016) för att komma fram till hur dessa snabba spel underlättar flödet i spelandet. I kapitel två av uppsatsen ges formella definitioner av flöde och level design för att skapa förutsättningar för förståelsen av följande kapitel. Genom en formell analys undersöks level design i bägge spel för att fastställa vilka element som styr spelarna och håller flödet uppe. Uppsatsen undersöker också hur de ursprungliga designprinciperna, som har sitt ursprung i den äldre shooter genren, har påverkat spelens level design. Författaren använder skärmdumpar från båda spelen, intervjuer med designteam och litteratur om speldesign för studien.Det visade sig att den arkitektoniska utformningen av en level i ett hjältebaserat spel (Overwatch (2016)) skulle kunna styra takten genom att ändra element som möjliggör vissa typer av rörelser, t.ex. klättring eller skapandet av uppsättningar som gynnar ett lag framför det andra. På en individuell spelarnivå hålls flödet uppe med avsiktliga placeringar av ljus och ljusa färger för att styra spelaren. Medan Doom använder olika förmågor och rörelser för sin hjälte, visade sig verktygen för att styra spelaren vara mycket lika men med tyngre fokus på miljömärkningar och ljus. I båda fallen var dessa verktygs utseende utformat för att passa in i spelvärlden utan att bryta spelarens inlevelse.

This work uncovers perceptions of the Czech society concerning cultural and social role of a digital entertainment (computer games and videogames) as a relatively new interactive media form. The author tries to verify validity of a presumption that the digital entertainment is an object of a cultural stigma that was formed by combination of various factors which are closely specified in the work. According to the author, present perception of the digital entertaiment in society is formed by a media panic that repeated itself regularly in the course of history. Amongst other significant determinants one can find certain stereotypical viewes, efforts of a ruling class to sustain status quo and struggle of various social groups over cultural dominance which leads to hierarchization of cultural tastes. Suggested cultural stigmatisation of the digital entertainment probably leads to a social stigmatisation of players, who submit to social pressures and often adapt their behaviour to general tastes. Essential part of the work is formed by a research based on qualitative and quantitative data collected from teachers and gymnasium (high schools) and elementary school students. The research supports a presumption that the negative view on the digital entertainment is subject to specific generational...

Cette thèse se situe dans le contexte de l'optimisation. Deux grandes parties s'en dégagent ; la première concerne l'utilisation d'algorithmes évolutionnaires pour résoudre des problèmes d'optimisation continue et sans dérivées. La seconde partie concerne l'optimisation de séquences de décisions dans un environnement discret et à horizon fini en utilisant des méthodes de type Monte-Carlo Tree Search. Dans le cadre de l'optimisation évolutionnaire, nous nous intéressons particulièrement au cadre parallèle à grand nombre d'unités de calcul. Après avoir présenté les algorithmes de référence du domaine, nous montrons que ces algorithmes, sous leur forme classique, ne sont pas adaptés à ce cadre parallèle et sont loin d'atteindre les vitesses de convergence théoriques. Nous proposons donc ensuite différentes règles (comme la modification du taux de sélection des individus ainsi que la décroissance plus rapide du pas) afin de corriger et améliorer ces algorithmes. Nous faisons un comparatif empirique de ces règles appliquées à certains algorithmes. Dans le cadre de l'optimisation de séquences de décisions, nous présentons d'abord les algorithmes de référence dans ce domaine (Min-Max, Alpha-Beta, Monte-carlo Tree Search, Nested Monte-Carlo). Nous montrons ensuite la généricité de l'algorithme Monte-Carlo Tree Search en l'appliquant avec succès au jeu de Havannah. Cette application a été un réel succès puisqu'aujourd'hui les meilleurs joueurs artificiels au jeu de Havannah utilisent cet algorithme et non plus des algorithmes de type Min-Max ou Alpha-Beta. Ensuite, nous nous sommes particulièrement intéressés à l'amélioration de la politique Monte-Carlo de ces algorithmes. Nous proposons trois améliorations, chacune étant générique. Des expériences sont faites pour mesurer l'impact de ces améliorations, ainsi que la généricité de l'une d'entre elles. Nous montrons à travers ces expériences que les résultats sont positifs. / In this thesis we study two optimization fields. In a first part, we study the use of evolutionary algorithms for solving derivative-free optimization problems in continuous space. In a second part we are interested in multistage optimization. In that case, we have to make decisions in a discrete environment with finite horizon and a large number of states. In this part we use in particular Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithms. In the first part, we work on evolutionary algorithms in a parallel context, when a large number of processors are available. We start by presenting some state of the art evolutionary algorithms, and then, show that these algorithms are not well designed for parallel optimization. Because these algorithms are population based, they should be we well suitable for parallelization, but the experiments show that the results are far from the theoretical bounds. In order to solve this discrepancy, we propose some rules (such as a new selection ratio or a faster decrease of the step-size) to improve the evolutionary algorithms. Experiments are done on some evolutionary algorithms and show that these algorithms reach the theoretical speedup with the help of these new rules.Concerning the work on multistage optimization, we start by presenting some of the state of the art algorithms (Min-Max, Alpha-Beta, Monte-Carlo Tree Search, Nested Monte-Carlo). After that, we show the generality of the Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithm by successfully applying it to the game of Havannah. The application has been a real success, because today, every Havannah program uses Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithms instead of the classical Alpha-Beta. Next, we study more precisely the Monte-Carlo part of the Monte-Carlo Tree Search algorithm. 3 generic rules are proposed in order to improve this Monte-Carlo policy. Experiments are done in order to show the efficiency of these rules.

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:25:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 luiz_eduardo_cerquinho_cajueiro.pdf: 13320957 bytes, checksum: 09498857b50a4bf1d42eb6e110d3fc87 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-27 / This research introduces a classification model for digital games, based upon the textual genre theory. The motivation is to forge a common ground for dialog between the many disciplines that study the digital games, like Information Sciences, Social Sciences, Communication and Art Studies, including as well the game developers community. The epistemic basis for this work are the genre theories by Bakthin (1979), Charaudeau (1997) and Marcuschi (2003, 2004, 2008), the studies in multimodality and hypermodality by Kress e Van Leeuwen (1996) and Braga (2004, 2005), the communication theories by Lévy (1993, 1996, 2000, 2001) and David Crystal (apud Shepherd, Saliés, 2013) and theories in digital game studies presented by Crawford (1984), Wolf (2001, 2003), Aarseth et al. (2003) and Branco (2011). The digital games genre classification system proposed in this work is different from the previously proposed, since it accounts for the discursive locus it identifies, and the possibility of including any digital game. The conclusion was that it is possible to distinguish, in digital games, the thematic, stylistic, formal and discursive obrigatory characteristics for the creation of a textual genres classification, and it is possible to use a common lexic between the different areas of knowledge that access the digital games. / Esta dissertação apresenta um modelo de classificação dos jogos digitais a partir da teoria de gêneros textuais. A principal motivação é criar um ambiente de diálogo entre as diversas disciplinas que estudam os jogos digitais, como Ciências da Informação, Ciências Sociais, Comunicação e Artes, bem como a comunidade de desenvolvimento de jogos digitais. As bases epistemológicas que norteiam este trabalho são as teorias de gênero de Bakthin (1979), Charaudeau (1997) e Marcuschi (2003, 2004, 2008), os estudos de multimodalidade e hipermodalidade de Kress e Van Leeuwen (1996) e Braga (2004, 2005), as teorias de comunicação de Lévy (1993, 1996, 2000, 2001) e David Crystal (apud Shepherd, Saliés, 2013), as teorias de estudo dos jogos digitais traçadas por Crawford (1984), Wolf (2001, 2003), Aarseth et al. (2003) e Branco (2011). O sistema de classificação de gêneros de jogos digitais proposto por esta dissertação não encontra similaridade com os que já foram propostos, por abarcar diferentes esferas discursivas nas quais o objeto de estudo é tratado e pela possibilidade de classificar qualquer jogo digital. Concluiu-se que é possível distinguir nos jogos digitais as características temáticas, estilísticas, formais e discursivas necessárias a uma classificação de gêneros textuais, e é possível a utilização de um léxico que sirva aos diversos campos de conhecimento que estudam os jogos digitais.

O crescimento explosivo no número de usuários de Internet levou arquitetos de software a reavaliarem questões relacionadas à escalabilidade de serviços que são disponibilizados em larga escala. Projetar arquiteturas de software que não apresentem degradação no desempenho com o aumento no número de acessos concorrentes ainda é um desafio. Neste trabalho, investigamos o impacto do sistema operacional em questões relacionadas ao desempenho, paralelização e escalabilidade de jogos interativos multi-usuários. Em particular, estudamos e estendemos o jogo interativo, multi-usuário, QuakeWorld, disponibilizado publicamente pela id Software sob a licença GPL. Criamos um modelo de paralelismo para a simulação distribuída realizada pelo jogo e o implementamos no servidor do QuakeWorld com adaptações que permitem que o sistema operacional gerencie de forma adequada a execução da carga de trabalho gerada. / The explosive growth in the number of Internet users made software architects reevaluate issues related to the scalability of services deployed on a large scale. It is still challenging to design software architectures that do not experience performance degradation when the concurrent access increases. In this work, we investigate the impact of the operating system in issues related to performance, parallelization, and scalability of interactive multiplayer games. Particularly, we study and extend the interactive, multiplayer game QuakeWorld, made publicly available by id Software under GPL license. We have created a new parallelization model for Quake\'s distributed simulation and implemented that model in QuakeWorld server with adaptations that allows the operating system to manage the execution of the generated workload in a more convenient way.

This thesis explores how virtual reality solutions affect children in their learning through educational games. The goal is to improve educational games in terms of how engaging they are. Therefore, a game was developed for both desktop monitors and VR, some children played both versions and were then interviewed. The collected data indicates that VR engages the pupils more, however it does not seem to necessarily make them learn more. This may be in part because of VR’s novelty, only gaining a mainstream status in the recent years. / Denna uppsats undersöker hur virtuell verklighet (VR) påverkar barns lärande genom utbildningsspel. Målet är att förbättra utbildningsspel för att öka elevernas engagemang. Därför utvecklades ett spel för både datorskärmar och VR-glasögon, några barn fick spela båda versionerna och blev därefter intervjuade. Resultatet av undersökningen indikerar att VR ökar elevernas engagemang, men inte nödvändigtvis att de lär sig mer. Detta kan delvis bero på att VR är relativt nytt och endast börjat bli allmänt förekommande under de senaste åren.

Master thesis deals with possibilities of playing games using artificial intelligence. Also, there is presented artificial intelligence with ability of playing selected game. Artificial intelligence presented in this work is considered as artificial neural networks. First theoretical part is focused on description worldwide successful and known artificial intelligence strategies. After that there is brief description of neural networks and analysis of some libraries for machine learning. Practical part is focused on implementation of created game with Python programming language and in the end, there is analysis of designed solution.

The aim of the study was to explore preschool teachers and preschool pre-service teachers approaches to gamification, game based learning and digital technology in early childhood education. The theoretical framework in the study is based on Mishra and Koehler's (2006) Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) theory. The method for the study was individual interviews and focus group interview. The results show that the area is relatively unknown to the participants in the study, as their focus when using digital technology is on documentation of preschool activities as well as searching for facts about various subject areas. Personal attitudes and values are of great importance for how digital technology is used in early childhood education. The results also show a lack of knowledge in teaching with digital technology, game based learning and gamification. Further research in the area is needed to support active preschool teachers to develop their didactic approach and to find ways to work with digital technology, game based learning and gamification.

Open-world computer games present the players with a large degree of freedom to interact with the virtual environment. The increased player freedom makes open-world games a challenging domain for artificial intelligence. In this thesis we present three novel techniques to handle various types of complexity inherent in developing artificial intelligence for open-world games. We developed behavior objects that extend the well-known concept of smart objects and help in structuring codebase for reactive reasoning, we propose and implement constraint satisfaction techniques to specify behavior from a global viewpoint and we have shown how adversarial search techniques can mitigate the need for complex reactive decision mechanisms when a large number of parameters has to be taken into account. The general techniques are implemented and evaluated in the context of a complete open-world game Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Recent advancements in audio technology for computer games has made possible for implementations with binaural audio. Compared to regular stereo sound, binaural audio offers possibilities for a player to experience spatial sound, including sounds along the vertical plane, using their own headphones. A computer game prototype called “Crystal Gatherer” was created for this study to explore the possibilities of binaural audio imple- mentation regarding localization and perception of objects that make sound in a 3D game. The game featured two similar game levels, with the difference that one used binaural sound, and the other stereo sound. The levels consisted of a dark space that the player could navigate freely with the objective to find objects that make sound, called “crystals”, as fast as they could. An experiment was conducted with 14 test sub- jects that played the game, qualitative and quantitative data was collected, including the time the players took to complete the game levels, respectively, and answers about how they experienced the levels. A majority of test subjects reported that they per- ceived a difference between the levels. No significant difference was found between the levels in terms of efficacy of finding the objects that made sound. Some test subjects stated that they found localization was better in the binaural level of the game, others found the stereo level to be better in this respect. The study shows that there can exist possibilities for binaural audio to change the perception of audio in computer games.