Abstract. This master thesis presents the results from investigating usage patterns on portable devices and finding gamers attitudes towards different pervasive game elements.The main motivation of this project is to help developers create a better game experience with the use of pervasive elements and mobile technology, finding some pointers as to what players are likely to enjoy (or not). At the same time, the usage patterns will help us understand how players currently use games, which is important information creating games tailored to the players usage patterns. The results for usage patterns shows that game sessions are usually very short. We found that most people do not utilize multiplayer functionality in games on portable platforms. Investigating why players play games on portable devices, we found that quite many only use games as a secondary activity. Often, playing on portable devices are a result of some other main activity, like for example waiting for some form of transport in real life. To better understand what types of pervasive games users would be interested in, we proposed four concepts and asked the participants for their opinions of these concepts. Of the concepts proposed, the most popular concepts were one in which the game used the users geographic location to create questions from the nearby area and a concept where the game used proximity to other players as a part of the gameplay. Generally, we saw that players liked the idea of playing games with others in teams, and often as a planned event where people meet up to play.To understand what elements are likely to be successful, we studied attitudes towards the different categories of game elements. Some elements, like visual and sound feedback are staples of modern games, and therefore a necessity. Another popular output method is force feedback, in which the game shakes the controller or in other ways provide tactile feedback. Social elements were the most popular, competitive and cooperative game styles along with chat/communication abilities are important to players. Players also wish to be able to play anywhere and be able to start and stop playing at any time.

Video games are very popular today and the electronic entertainment industry is in many areas equal to the more mature entertainment industries like film and music in terms of usage and revenues. The MOOSES (Multiplayer On One Screen Entertainment System) allows players to play on one big screen together with the use of their mobile phone as a game controller. The framework was designed for easy development of multiplayer games in Java and C++.Flash is a very popular technology on the Internet, with a great many people using and developing all kinds of games, video players and other software applications. Flash applications are easy to develop due to a modern programming language and a vast amount resources available online.In this thesis the possibility of creating Flash games for MOOSES will be explored. A set of components will be developed which will allow Flash games to use the MOOSES framework. These components will be designed to aid the game creation as much as possible and still be generic enough to allow as many game types as possible. Three different games will be developed using the components and each game will focus on a different multiplayer mode. In the end, the components, the three games, and the Flash platform will be evaluated.

This report presents the implementation and analysis of a simple create-andplaygame for the iPad. The game is a platformer with a level editor, utilizingthe iPad’s touchscreen and acceleration sensor. We believe the results arealso applicable to games, that have level editors, for other types of post-PCtablet devices (Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom etc.).The analysis comprise a usability test with a questionnaire. 33 universitystudents and 4 children attended the test. The attendants were given severalopportunities to provide feedback as free text. The free text answers havealso been categorized and summarized.The level editor provided a low entropy building scheme which was popularamong the test population. Multiple mechanisms were provided for scrollinginside levels and controlling the game character. The population was dividedin which mechanisms they learned to use, and which they preferred. Webelieve that this indicates that they did all contribute to a good game andeditor experience.We also provide some general advice about GUI appearance on touch baseddevices. Many of our test attendants were dissatisfied with how well theycould understand the meaning of the menu icons. Some attendants suggestedthat on-screen text should be used more extensively, but we do not concludewhether an improved set of icons, more text, a demonstration or informationmode or some other, yet unknown strategy is the best way to handle theissue.

World of Wisdom er et læringsspill som ble startet utviklet av studenter i etfag ved NTNU i 2008. Prototypen har deretter blitt forbedret ved etterfølgendeprosjekter og bidragsyterne og kvalitetssikret av Alf Inge Wang og Bian Wu som veiledende professorer. Prototypen er fullt utviklet til et fungerende spillog evaluert av studenter.Et prosjekt ferdig i desember 2011 evaluerte ulike tilnærminger til åkonvertere 2D-versjonen til en 3D-versjon. De to utgangspunktene, å skrive omde grafiske delene til egen produsert grafikk kode, eller implementere logikk og annen bakenforliggende kode inn eneksisterende 3D​​-motor, ble begge prototypet og evaluert.Dette prosjektet vil fortsette der det forrige prosjektet stoppet, som erimplementeringsfasen og full produkttesting. Men denne rapporten børfortsatt være selvstendig og vil derfor drøfte rundt noen av de valg og beskrive fremdriften så langt i korte sammendrag, slik at den kan leses uten kjennskap til tidligere stadier i forskning og utviklingen av World of Wisdom.Hovedmålet med dette prosjektet er å videre undersøke mulige alternativer for å skapeen 3D-versjon av World of Wisdom hjelp av en 3D-motor. Dette prosjektet bør ogsåprodusere en prototype av World of Wisdom 3D. Dette prosjektet tar sikte på å skapeet åpen kildekode læringsspill som kan bistå i læringssituasjoner og være et alternativ til klasseromsundervisning i høyere utdanning institusjon.

The goal of this thesis has been to perform research on the relationship between the creative team, software architecture, and game development processes.Researching this relationship was done in three stages. The first stage was a literature review into software architecture and game development. In the second stage a questionnaire was designed based on the literature review, and this questionnaire was then distributed to several game developers. In addition to querying the game developers on their knowledge on the field, they were also asked whether or not they would be willing to answer a set of follow-up questions later.The responses to the questionnaire provided a lot of answers, but also gave rise to new questions. In the third stage these new questions were incorporated into a follow-up survey which was distributed to those respondents whom had previously answered that they were willing to answer follow-up questions.The problem definition has been divided into five research questions according to the Goal Question Metric approach. Supported by the literature review and the responses to both the questionnaire and the survey, these five research questions have been answered in detail in Chapter 11: “Research Conclusions”.The results from this thesis is not generalizable to all game developers, but provides a very interesting glimpse into how the creative team is affected by, and is allowed to affect, the software architecture and tools used, as well as the game development process.

In this master thesis we describe our work in creating a planner for the real-time strategy game Starcraft using case-based reasoning. Our work has been focused on the challenges in creating a usable casebase, and the resulting issues arising from scaling up the casebase.First, we present an agent designed to play Starcraft using plans from our CBR planner, and its architecture. We then move on to describe how this planner works, and how it overcomes the challenges in scaling up.We then present several experiments designed to measure how well our approach works given the limitations we have set. Finally, we discuss our results, and provide some interesting unsolved challenges which may benefit from further investigation.

Serious games and its related fields have lately received a lot of interest due to their potential for training and education. Serious games can be defined as (digital) games that are used for reasons other than entertainment. Gamification can be related to serious games and can be defined as the process of game-thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems.The initiator of this project was ABB. ABB delivers a process control system used to control the processes of an oil production facility. One of these processes is separating oil and gas from water. A simulator of this separation process was developed and then implemented into HawkEye, a prototype of the existing process control system. We have worked with ABB to gamify the implemented separation process using different game mechanics to discover whether gamification can be used to improve a process operator's skills, understanding, and motivation. In a process control system, the process at hand has the highest priority due to its severity, which means that the gamified elements have to be subtle.The implemented separation process was tested on two groups consisting of ten people each, most of them students. The two groups carried out the separation process twice, one time without the gamified elements and one time with the gamified elements. The difference between the two groups was in which order they did the separation process.After the experiment, data was gathered from the implemented system, and also from a survey, a quiz and interviews that we conducted. These data were analysed to determine if the gamified separation process yielded better results than the non-gamified separation process. Results from the experiments showed that there was no improvement in the participants' skill or understanding because of gamification, but that the gamified elements had a positive effect on both groups' motivation.

This thesis describes the effort of adapting potential field methods towards man-aging groups of units in real-time strategy game like environments. The focus is ondiscovering the suitability for this technology to create realistic group behaviourand whether it can be adapted to use learning for this purpose.A flexible simulation system for units that are controlled by potential fieldmethods in environments similar to those found in real-time strategy games isdeveloped. This is then used to conduct experiments where different types ofgroup behaviour is sought after. Stochastic optimization techniques are appliedin an attempt to create and optimize desired group behaviour. The results arediscussed and future directions for this research are proposed.

This thesis is a continuation of the author’s specialization project where the ultimate goal is to build an object recognition framework suitable for mobile devices in real world environments, where control over parameters such as illumination, distance, noise and availability of consistent network architectures are limited. Based on shortcomings related to object recognition performance and architectural issues the author’s goal was to increase the flexibility, usability and performance of the framework.Literature was reviewed on frameworks in order to discover useful techniques for development and documentation. Together with a re-introduction to the implemented recognition scheme an evaluation of the original framework artefact was performed with regards to the goals of this thesis. The results from the evaluation aided in finding an approach that balanced trade-offs between flexibility, usability, correctness and performance. By using proven framework development and documentation tactics from the literature study the author created a new iteration of the framework, improving upon the previous solution. The result is a stand alone artefact containing a hierarchy of software packages which divide functionality and offer customization using a combination of inheritance and components. The introduction of components hides domain knowledge and allows for easier reuse.In order to improve recognition performance and framework flexibility the author added external server support for image information extraction as well as support for the usage of different feature detectors and descriptor extractors. Because of time constraints the author did not test these new feature detectors and descriptor extractors suitability or performance. This testing can now be performed by the customer.In order to ensure proper correctness a lower bound on the image resolution is set at 600x600 pixels. Using properly built models correct recognition in about 90% of the cases is achievable. The added support for server side information extraction improves the object recognition performance by 42% in ideal conditions using the lower bound images. This improvement is still not enough to meet the performance criteria and combined with other issues results in the framework falling short of being ready to build production environment applications.

In 2009 Odd Erik Gundersen and Jo Skjermo described a conceptual framework for animating physically based forest fires. This project expands on their ideas with a focus on how modern graphics hardware can be utilized to achieve real-time performance. A prototype demonstrating some of the concepts suggested for the framework have been implemented and tested, successfully achieving real-time frame rates on a simple animation of a burning tree.