<p>   This bachelor thesis describes the development of a MOD music player to run on GBA (Game Boy Advance) for Lypson Game Engine. GBA is a basic platform for embedded development, and the stereo system makes it possible to use the platform as a music player. The sound players of the GBA for Lypson Game Engine were designed to play wave files and the size of typical wave files is in the order of megabytes. MOD files are much smaller when compared with wave ones. Therefore, to avoid consuming the resources of the CPU and memory to process and store wave files, the use of MOD files represents a better alternative.The development took C++ as programming language and the development platform used was HAM. The first step was to obtain samples of music, and then control the hardware of GBA to play sound. After that, came the phase of combining it with Lipson Game Engine. These tasks enabled the acquisition of knowledge about the frame of MOD files; learning how to make the GBA play sound and mastering the operating instruction of GBA hardware by the process of development. In addition, it provided a chance to learn about embedded development, which represented a starting point to learn about embedded programming in general.As for the main result, it was achieved by the successful development of the MOD Player, which is now running on the Lypson Game Engine. As the MOD files are of small size, the music player is more efficient when compared with those previously used.</p>

Games have been used to evaluate and advance techniques in the eld of Articial Intelligence since before computers were invented. Many of these games have been deterministic perfect information games (e.g. Chess and Checkers). A deterministic game has no chance element and in a perfect information game, all information is visible to all players. However, many real-world scenarios involving competing agents can be more accurately modeled as stochastic (non-deterministic), im- perfect information games, and this dissertation investigates such games. Poker is one such game played by millions of people around the world; it will be used as the testbed of the research presented in this dissertation. For a specic set of games, two-player zero-sum perfect recall games, a recent technique called Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) computes strategies that are provably convergent to an -Nash equilibrium. A Nash equilibrium strategy is very useful in two-player games as it maximizes its utility against a worst-case opponent. However, once we move to multiplayer games, we lose all theoretical guarantees for CFR. Furthermore, we have no theoretical guarantees about the performance of a strategy from a multiplayer Nash equilibrium against two arbitrary op- ponents. Despite the lack of theoretical guarantees, my thesis is that CFR-generated agents may perform well in multiplayer games. I created several 3-player limit Texas Holdem Poker agents and the results of the 2009 Computer Poker Competition demonstrate that these are the strongest 3-player computer Poker agents in the world. I also contend that a good strategy can be obtained by grafting a set of two-player subgame strategies to a 3-player base strategy when one of the players is eliminated.

Syftet med studien var att skapa en bättre förståelse för hur några juniorishockeyspelare och deras tränare ser på hur faktorerna lagsammanhållning, spelaromsättning, roller och prestation förhåller sig till varandra och hur de arbetade med dessa faktorer. Instrumenten som användes var GEQ (Group Environment Questionnaire) och två helstrukturerade intervjuguider. Deltagarna i studien var ishockeyspelarna i ett J18-lag (n=18) och deras tränare (n=1) i en medelstor klubb i Sverige. Resultatet visade att samtliga intervjudeltagare upplevde ett positivt samband mellan lagsammanhållning, spelaromsättning, rollklarhet och prestation. Sambandet beskrevs dock som cirkulärt, att alla faktorerna var beroende av varandra och påverkades av varandra. Spelaromsättningen upplevdes som positiv då den skapade konkurrens och förbättrade prestationen. Talang och intresse var basen för den formella rollfördelningen. Spelarna upplevde att de var klara över sina roller och att det bidrog till både bättre lagsammanhållning och ökad prestation. The purpose of this study was to create a wider understanding about how some junior ice-hockey players and their coach experience how the factors cohesion, player turnovers, roles and performance are interacting whit each other and how the team is working whit these factors. The instruments that were used were GEQ (Group Environment Questionnaire) and two whole-structured interview guides. The participants of this study were the ice hockey players of a J18-team (n=18) and their coach (n=1) in a club of average size in Sweden. The results showed that all the participants experienced a positive correlation between cohesion, player turnovers, role clarity and performance. The relationship however was described like a circle, that all the factors were depending on each other and were affected by each other. The player turnovers experienced as positive though it created competition and improved performance. Talents and interests represent the base of the formal roles. The players experienced clarity in their roles which led to both better cohesion and improved performance.

Although interpersonal communication studies have focused on various aspects of interpersonal relationships, research on the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation in romantic relationships has received little attention. This narrative research inquiry was undertaken to explore perceptions of men and women related to the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation. This investigation used social construction as a theoretical perspective to understand three areas of investigation that include: the existence and relevance of the player identity, the player’s relation to emotionally manipulative behaviour, and the connection between socially constructed gender conventions and the player identity. Hesse-Biber’s (2006) feminist interviewing approach guided semi-structured interviews with six male and six female participants. Respondents reported the existence and relevance of the player identity in romantic relationships today, connecting this identity to emotionally manipulative behaviour, as well as relating this identity to traditional gender conventions. Finally, implications for men and women in romantic relationships today and future areas of research are discussed in light of these findings.

Although interpersonal communication studies have focused on various aspects of interpersonal relationships, research on the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation in romantic relationships has received little attention. This narrative research inquiry was undertaken to explore perceptions of men and women related to the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation. This investigation used social construction as a theoretical perspective to understand three areas of investigation that include: the existence and relevance of the player identity, the player’s relation to emotionally manipulative behaviour, and the connection between socially constructed gender conventions and the player identity. Hesse-Biber’s (2006) feminist interviewing approach guided semi-structured interviews with six male and six female participants. Respondents reported the existence and relevance of the player identity in romantic relationships today, connecting this identity to emotionally manipulative behaviour, as well as relating this identity to traditional gender conventions. Finally, implications for men and women in romantic relationships today and future areas of research are discussed in light of these findings.

The author narrative and the player narrative are distinct and separate parts that make up the whole of videogame literature. The videogame medium encourages a mixed-media understanding of conventions and the rejection of essentialism that leads to, inspires, and facilitates the player narrative. Videogame literatures require discreet actions that, as part of any possible reading, the player must do-- and in doing the player must make a choice with mind and body that involves a human-to-machine expression of agency within constraints that define the player narrative. So the decision making process in videogame storytelling is that human-to-machine interaction that can be understood as both the means by which the videogame story progresses, and the process by which the player wields his or her narrative within the procedural possibility space. Videogame literary analysis requires understanding how players make those decisions, understanding how the player leverages media conventions in order to wield power over the narrative, and understanding what role the player has in videogame storytelling. The choice dynamics of a videogame narrative are the key narrative elements within videogame literature that provide players and researchers tools for evaluating choice opportunities within videogame literature toward forming a better understanding of the space between and connection to the author narrative and the player narrative. All of these analyses combine to form a picture of decision making processes in videogame literature that are complex and contradictory path making endeavors that define the narrative experience in videogame literature, and the interconnected dynamics of the author and player narrative space.

A quitting game is an undiscounted sequential stochastic game, with finitely many players. At any stage each player has only two possible actions, continue and quit. The game ends as soon as at least one player chooses to quit. The players then receive a payoff, which depends only on the set of players that did choose to quit. If the game never ends, the payoff to each player is zero. In this thesis we give a detailed introduction to quitting games. We examine the existing results for the existence of equilibria and improve an important result from Solan and Vieille stated in their article “Quitting Games” (2001). Since there is no software for the analysis of quitting games, or for stochastic games with more than two players, we provide algorithms and programs for symmetric quitting games, for a reduction by dominance and for the detection of a pure, instant and stationary epsilon-equilibrium.

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Since the introduction of the iPod in 2001, portable music listening devices that play or stream compressed music files have steadily become the standard devices used to listen to music. Despite this, few music education researchers have investigated the role that such devices have in shaping students' music listening experiences. This dissertation is meant to fill that gap in the literature and contribute to the existing sociological and psychological literature on music listening in everyday life. Phenomenology served as the theoretical framework for the design of the study. 10 college students from three institutions underwent iterative interviews and were asked questions developed from McCarthy and Wright's (2004) Deweyan method for investigating user experiences with technology. The questions fell into five categories: sensual, emotional, compositional, spatio-temporal, and the sense-maker. The participants' responses were digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using grounded theory methods. The following four axial codes emerged from the data and were used to divide the dissertation into chapters: "Embodying the Experience," "Organizing the Experience," "Navigating Real and Virtual Spaces," and "Developing the Self." The main finding articulated in the chapter entitled "Embodying the Experience" is that the participants located the music in their heads while listening to music on their devices using headphones or earbuds. In contrast, participants consistently reported that, when listening to music through open-air speakers, they experienced the music as being located everywhere or in their whole bodies. The main finding in the chapter entitled, "Organizing the Experience," is that participants exercised agency in their music listening experience by creating playlists. Typically, playlists were created by the participants to be used in conjunction with other activities such as exercising, studying, commuting, and so forth. I used these findings to develop the concept of "Integration in Consciousness" which models the participants' simultaneous engagement with the music and other activities. In the chapter entitled "Navigating Real and Virtual Spaces," I explore how the participants simultaneously navigated the spatial aspects of the music listened to on their players and the spatial aspects of the physical spaces within which their activities naturally occurred. In doing so, I provide an example of how the participants experienced music and activities as "Integrated in Consciousness." In chapter seven, "Developing the Self," I explore how the participants' uses of their devices reflect their development as adolescents. In addition, I propose that participants' uses of their devices may be constitutive of their adolescent development. Finally, in chapter eight, I explore the ways in which music teachers can utilize the findings of this study in the development of their own classroom pedagogies. Among other things, I propose that music teachers can use the "Integration in Consciousness" model to help their students communicate about their music listening experiences in the classroom. In the use of this model, music teachers can tailor their pedagogies specifically for the technology rich, "post-performance" world within which they teach.

An interactive narrative is a form of digital entertainment in which players can create or influence a dramatic storyline through actions, typically by assuming the role of a character in a fictional virtual world. The interactive narrative systems usually employ a drama manager (DM), an omniscient background agent that monitors the fictional world and determines what will happen next in the players' story experience. Prevailing approaches to drama management choose successive story plot points based on a set of criteria given by the game designers. In other words, the DM is a surrogate for the game designers. In this dissertation, I create a data-driven personalized drama manager that takes into consideration players' preferences. The personalized drama manager is capable of (1) modeling the players' preference over successive plot points from the players' feedback; (2) guiding the players towards selected plot points without sacrificing players' agency; (3) choosing target successive plot points that simultaneously increase the player's story preference ratings and the probability of the players selecting the plot points. To address the first problem, I develop a collaborative filtering algorithm that takes into account the specific sequence (or history) of experienced plot points when modeling players' preferences for future plot points. Unlike the traditional collaborative filtering algorithms that make one-shot recommendations of complete story artifacts (e.g., books, movies), the collaborative filtering algorithm I develop is a sequential recommendation algorithm that makes every successive recommendation based on all previous recommendations. To address the second problem, I create a multi-option branching story graph that allows multiple options to point to each plot point. The personalized DM working in the multi-option branching story graph can influence the players to make choices that coincide with the trajectories selected by the DM, while gives the players the full agency to make any selection that leads to any plot point in their own judgement. To address the third problem, the personalized DM models the probability that the players transitioning to each full-length stories and selects target stories that achieve the highest expected preference ratings at every branching point in the story space. The personalized DM is implemented in an interactive narrative system built with choose-your-own-adventure stories. Human study results show that the personalized DM can achieve significantly higher preference ratings than non-personalized DMs or DMs with pre-defined player types, while preserve the players' sense of agency.