Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

Player coordination is a key element in many multi-player real-time digital games and cooperative real-time multi-player modes are now common in many digital-game genres. Coordination is an important part of the design of these games for several reasons: coordination can change the game balance and the level of difficulty as different types and degrees of coordination can make the game easier or more difficult; coordination is an important part of ‘playing like a team’ which affects the quality of play; and coordination as a shared activity is a key to sociality that can add to the sociability of the game. Being able to exercise control over the design of these coordination requirements is an important part of developing successful games. However, it is currently difficult to understand, describe, analyze or design coordination requirements in game situations, because current frameworks and theories do not mesh with the realities of video game design. I developed a new framework (called PLATO) that can help game designers to understand, describe, design and manipulate coordination episodes. The framework deals with five atomic aspects of coordinated activity: Players, Locations, Actions, Time, and Objects. PLATO provides a vocabulary, methodology and diagram notation for describing and analyzing coordination. I demonstrate the framework’s utility by describing coordination situations from existing games, and by showing how PLATO can be used to understand and redesign coordination requirements.

This thesis aims to find out the relationship, if any, between playing multi-player online games and developing teamwork qualities. Online multi-player games involve thousands of players who play in teams (or solo, as the preference may be) in sophisticated gaming environments. As gamers team together to complete missions within the game, teamwork concepts such as communication skills, leadership, coordination, negotiation and other similar qualities come to the fore. The research component of this thesis consists of a survey where respondents answered questions about their online gaming behavior. They also answered questions about their experience working in teams in the offline environment. A total of 202 responses were collected and analyzed. There was a significant negative association found between autocratic leadership ability and hours spent per week playing online games in teams/groups. Team communication skills and leadership communication skills were significantly related to the degree of involvement in the gaming community, but only for individuals with low leadership-work experience. A significant relationship was also seen between democratic leadership skills and the degree of involvement in the gaming community. In addition, a significant negative relationship was found between autocratic leadership ability and degree of involvement in the gaming community.

While there is a broad theoretic foundation for creating artificial intelligence based solutions for two-player games, such as Chess, the multi-player domain is not as well explored and artificial intelligence solutions for multi-player games is often flawed. This report is an attempt to apply a multi-agent approach to a multi-player game, and use distributed problem solving to create viable plans in an environment of huge search spaces and multiple adversaries. An automated player (bot) for the game Diplomacy was created using distributed methodologies, and tested against other existing bots. The tests show that the bot developed can outperform opposition in score while being competetive in speed.

The optimal allocation of the resources to the emergency locations in the event of multiple crises in an urban environment is an intricate problem, especially when the available resources are limited. In such a scenario, it is important to allocate emergency response units in a fair manner based on the criticality of the crisis events and their requests. In this research, a crisis management tool is developed which incorporates a resource allocation algorithm. The problem is formulated as a game theoretic framework in which the crisis events are modeled as the players, the emergency response centers as the resource locations with emergency units to be scheduled and the possible allocations as strategies. The pay-off is modeled as a function of the criticality of the event and the anticipated response times. The game is played assuming a specific region within a certain locality of the crisis event to derive an optimal allocation. If a solution is not feasible, the perimeter of the locality in consideration is increased and the game is repeated until convergence. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology and metrics are derived to quantify the fairness of the solution. A regression analysis has been performed to identify the statistical significance of the results.

A distributed virtual environment (DVE) is a shared virtual environment where multiple users at their workstations interact with each other. Some of these systems may support a large number of users, e. g. , massive multi-player online games, and these users may be geographically distributed. An important performance measure in a DVE system is the delay for an update of a user's state (e. g. , his position in the virtual environment) to arrive at the workstations of those users who are affected by the update. This update delay often has a stringent requirement (e. g. , less than 100 ms) in order to ensure interactivity among users. <br /><br /> In designing a DVE system, an important issue is how well the system scales as the number of users increases. In terms of scalability, a promising system architecture is a two-level hierarchical architecture. At the lower level, multiple service facilities (or basic systems) are deployed; each basic system interacts with its assigned users. At the higher level, the various basic systems ensure that their copies of the virtual environment are as consistent as possible. Although this architecture is believed to have good properties with respect to scalability, not much is known about its performance characteristics. <br /><br /> This thesis is concerned with the performance characteristics of the two-level hierarchical architecture. We first investigate the issue of scalability. We obtain analytic results on the workload experienced by the various basic systems as a function of the number of users. Our results provide valuable insights into the scalability of the architecture. We also propose a novel technique to achieve weak consistency among copies of the virtual environment at the various basic systems. Simulation results on the consistency/scalability tradeoff are presented. <br /><br /> We next study the update delay in the two-level hierarchical architecture. The update delay has two main components, namely the delay at the basic system (or server delay) and the network delay. For the server delay, we use a network of queues model where each basic system may have one or more processors. We develop an approximation method to obtain results for the distribution of server delay. Comparisons with simulation show that our approximation method yields accurate results. We also measure the time to process an update on an existing online game server. Our approximate results are then used to characterize the 95th-percentile of the server delay, using the measurement data as input. <br /><br /> As to the network delay, we develop a general network model and obtain analytic results for the network delay distribution. Numerical examples are presented to show the conditions under which geographical distribution of basic systems will lead to an improvement in the network delay. We also develop an efficient heuristic algorithm that can be used to determine the best locations for the basic systems in a network.

A distributed virtual environment (DVE) is a shared virtual environment where multiple users at their workstations interact with each other. Some of these systems may support a large number of users, e. g. , massive multi-player online games, and these users may be geographically distributed. An important performance measure in a DVE system is the delay for an update of a user's state (e. g. , his position in the virtual environment) to arrive at the workstations of those users who are affected by the update. This update delay often has a stringent requirement (e. g. , less than 100 ms) in order to ensure interactivity among users. <br /><br /> In designing a DVE system, an important issue is how well the system scales as the number of users increases. In terms of scalability, a promising system architecture is a two-level hierarchical architecture. At the lower level, multiple service facilities (or basic systems) are deployed; each basic system interacts with its assigned users. At the higher level, the various basic systems ensure that their copies of the virtual environment are as consistent as possible. Although this architecture is believed to have good properties with respect to scalability, not much is known about its performance characteristics. <br /><br /> This thesis is concerned with the performance characteristics of the two-level hierarchical architecture. We first investigate the issue of scalability. We obtain analytic results on the workload experienced by the various basic systems as a function of the number of users. Our results provide valuable insights into the scalability of the architecture. We also propose a novel technique to achieve weak consistency among copies of the virtual environment at the various basic systems. Simulation results on the consistency/scalability tradeoff are presented. <br /><br /> We next study the update delay in the two-level hierarchical architecture. The update delay has two main components, namely the delay at the basic system (or server delay) and the network delay. For the server delay, we use a network of queues model where each basic system may have one or more processors. We develop an approximation method to obtain results for the distribution of server delay. Comparisons with simulation show that our approximation method yields accurate results. We also measure the time to process an update on an existing online game server. Our approximate results are then used to characterize the 95th-percentile of the server delay, using the measurement data as input. <br /><br /> As to the network delay, we develop a general network model and obtain analytic results for the network delay distribution. Numerical examples are presented to show the conditions under which geographical distribution of basic systems will lead to an improvement in the network delay. We also develop an efficient heuristic algorithm that can be used to determine the best locations for the basic systems in a network.

No description available.

Le transfert de technologie est un processus d’innovation loin de se résumer à une simple relation émetteur / récepteur de connaissances. Il est complexe et de ce fait, les facteurs déterminants de son succès sont encore mal connus, sa modélisation reste à étudier et des principes de pilotage sont à établir.Cette thèse propose une modélisation descriptive du processus de transfert de technologie afin de mieux comprendre la dynamique des projets de transfert de technologie et de dégager des bonnes pratiques permettant de mieux le piloter. Dans le champ théorique, nous avons analysé les modèles de transfert de technologie existant dans la littérature et avons proposé un méta-modèle du point de vue de l’ingénierie système. Nous avons ensuite cherché à mieux comprendre les phénomènes in situ.Pour ce faire, une méthodologie d’observation pour la collecte des données au niveau « micro » a été mise au point. Nous avons suivi cinq projets de transfert durant une période allant de trois mois à deux ans. Deux dimensions ont été privilégiées : la dimension immatérielle et matérielle. Le concept d’Objet Intermédiaire de Transfert (OIT) est introduit à partir de la notion d’Objet Intermédiaire de Conception. Les données obtenues ont été analysées selon deux approches :- une approche comparative descriptive, permettant d’identifier les invariants et les phénomènes divergents entre les cinq processus. - une approche multicritère basée sur la théorie des ensembles approximatifs. Cette dernière approche fournit des informations utiles pour la compréhension du processus par l’intermédiaire des règles de connaissances. Elle a validé l’importance des OIT dans la dynamique du projet final / Technology transfer is an innovation process far from to be defined as a simple transmitter / receiver relationship of knowledge. It is complex. Thus the determinants of its success are still poorly understood and its modeling remains to be studied to a better management and optimization of the process.This thesis proposes a descriptive modeling of the technology transfer process. The aim is to have better understanding of the dynamics of technology transfer projects, and developing best practices to improve its management.In the theoretical field, we analyzed the models of the literature and proposed a meta-model of technology transfer from the point of view of systems engineering. We then sought to better understand the phenomena in situ.In order to reach our aim, an observation methodology for data collection at the micro level has been developed. We followed five transfer projects for a period ranging from three months to two years. Two dimensions have been emphasized: the immaterial and the material dimension. The concept of Intermediate Transfer Object (ITO) is introduced from the concept of design intermediary object.The data obtained were analyzed using two approaches:- a comparative descriptive approach, identifying invariants and divergent phenomena between the five processes. This has allowed us to propose best practices for technology transfer project management in the context of brazing.- a multicriteria approach based on the rough sets theory. This approach provides useful information for understanding the process through the decision rules. It validated the importance of the technology transfer object in the dynamics and the success of a project

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T18:15:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AnaRabello.pdf: 2792677 bytes, checksum: cdf8213d13eaa9dd616bb78b3d974ad8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-05-29 / The Massive Multiplayers On-line Game, a popularity worldwide communicational phenomenon are rapidly becoming an important socialization mechanism of all age people, nationality, ethnics and cultures. The object of this research is the Massive Multiplayer on-line Game Ragnarok on-line, an exclusive on-line game that has the constantly switch of information and ideas between players an essential condition for win. Analyze the communication interaction of societies build from these relations that can be producing new and challenging the actual rolls of social interaction and changing the verbal and non verbal dialog of communities in general. For participating communities, play by MMORPG can mean going in a complex social world, bringing together all of them real relationship problems and possibilities of problems existing in real life, possible by virtual representation of human figure. Analyze the relationship s characteristics of these communities, them building template, codes, representation systems and language adopted. Corpus of this analyze is constituted by interaction system made specifically in the game environment and implication about the communicational relationship pattern of these communities. The bibliography used evolve the know areas as follow: communication and information theory, communication media, theory of language, media studies, cyberculture, media culture, game theories / Os jogos multi-jogadores on-line, um fenômeno comunicacional de popularidade no mundo todo, estão rapidamente se tornando um importante mecanismo de socialização entre pessoas de diferentes idades, nacionalidades, etnias e culturas. A presente pesquisa tem por objeto o jogo eletrônico Ragnarok on-line , um jogo exclusivamente on-line onde as trocas de informações e conhecimentos entre jogadores são uma condição essencial à vitória. Analisam-se as interações comunicacionais das sociedades formadas a partir destas relações, que podem estar produzindo novas e desafiando as atuais regras de interação social e gerando grande alteração no diálogo verbal e não verbal das comunidades em geral. Para as comunidades participantes, jogar por meio de um jogo multi-usuário pode significar entrar em um complexo mundo social, trazendo junto todos os problemas e possibilidades de relacionamentos presentes em um mundo não virtual, que se faz possível pela representação virtual de sua figura humana. Analisam-se as características de relacionamento destas comunidades, seus padrões de formação, códigos, sistemas de representação e linguagem adotados. O corpus desta análise é constituído pelos sistemas de interação criados especificamente no ambiente do jogo e suas implicações sobre o padrão de relacionamento comunicacional destas comunidades. A bibliografia utilizada envolve as seguintes áreas do conhecimento: teoria da comunicação e da informação, meios de comunicação, teoria da linguagem, estudos sobre mediações, cibercultura, cultura das mídias, teoria dos jogos