The goal of this thesis is to describe the issue of computer game creation and to develop a race game for people connected to the Virtual World using Unity 3D game engine. The first part of this thesis is dedicated to the history of video games, platforms and to describing of development processes and development tools. The next part is about Unity 3D game engine, which was used for creating the game. The resulting application is described in the last part.

La distinction du droit public et du droit privé est si pompeusement intronisée summa divisio juris – division suprême du droit – dans tout enseignement juridique qu’elle paraît de prime abord modeler toute l’armature du système juridique. Néanmoins, lorsque l’on cherche les fonctions qu’elle y remplit, son intérêt semble tout relatif. De l’avis général en effet, cette distinction n’aurait aujourd’hui plus d’autre attrait que de présenter une utile classification de ce que l’on nomme les branches du droit. Une branche du droit est un ensemble ordonné de normes juridiques, qui régissent un même domaine, une même matière sociale, c’est-à-dire un ensemble soudé de rapports sociaux. Elles apparaissent comme « des ensembles cohérents et autonomes de règles adaptées à un secteur déterminé d’activités ». Elles forment chacune « un corps de droit alimenté par une matière spéciale, par des lois spéciales et par une jurisprudence spéciale ». Ainsi en est-il par exemple du droit constitutionnel, du droit civil, du droit commercial, du droit de l’environnement, du droit pénal, etc., qui, chacun, réglemente une certaine matière sociale. La summa divisio juris n’aurait d’autres objets que de classer ces branches du droit. Par suite, « souvent plus pédagogique que scientifique », elle n’offrirait rien d’autre qu’une structure académique intéressante, en organisant l’enseignement français du droit depuis le premier semestre de la licence jusqu’aux concours d’agrégation. / No English summary available.

The writing of contemporary history has implications regarding objectivity, subjectivity, the idea of progress, ecumenical history and its relationship to world history. Riane Eisler’s dominator and partnership models in her cultural transformation theory provide an appropriate hermeneutical basis for a historical consideration of the concept of partnership in mission (PIM) along with traditional biblical concepts which have guided mission theology for centuries. Partnership in mission is a laudable concept in the furtherance of participation in God’s mission. It has a distinguished history despite the difficulties experienced in making it a functioning reality. It has had the potential to enable sending and receiving churches to experience fellowship, humility and dignity in relationships. However, the issue of power in the ‘older’ sending churches has been an intrusive factor in preventing the theory from becoming a reality. In the case of the Church of Scotland, which stands in the grand ecumenical tradition of the twentieth century, despite great strides being made over the years to develop mutually enriching relations, increasing problems presented the opportunity for partner relationships to become authentically interdependent. Unfortunately, vulnerability on the part of the Church of Scotland World Mission Council has led to a return to a colonial/dominator approach to partnership. Recent developments in the Church of Scotland indicate that partnership in mission, while still the official model on which mission policy is based, has been challenged in its essence. Attempts to reform the work of the World Mission Council by means of a business consultancy have added no apparent value to the work of the Council or to its worldwide relationships. A lack of flexibility characterises recent developments along with a refusal to examine any other possible models which will enable the maintenance of existing partner church relationships. This has resulted in policy decisions, which affect them deeply, being made without any reference to partner churches. Nor has the Church’s constituency in Scotland been adequately consulted. For the first time in recent history policy decisions of WMC have been the cause of much discussion and deep division within the Church of Scotland. Further, they have ruptured valuable long term relationships and have through differential approaches to partners posed a potential threat to relationships between younger churches and possibly to a diminution of the standing of the Church of Scotland in the ecumenical movement. Opportunities for repentance, self sacrifice and the growth of fellowship in relationships have been spurned to the eventual cost of the Church of Scotland. Authentic partnership in mission is a distinct possibility through the development of relations based on mutuality, where resources must be subject to the norms of accountability, horizontal relations and management of the gifts of God for the people of God. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Church History and Church Policy / unrestricted

Procedural content generation is a method that is sometimes used in video games to increase their replayability. In our previous work (Nepožitek, 2018), we implemented an algorithm for procedural generation of 2D dungeons, with the main focus on giving game designers complete control over the structure of generated levels. The algorithm takes a set of user-defined building blocks as input and produces levels that all follow the structure of a specified level connectivity graph. In the first part of the thesis, we address some shortcomings of our previous work. We improve the algorithm with several new features such as better support for corridors between rooms or the possibility to generate platformer levels. We also propose several performance improvements and analyze the speed of the algorithm on various inputs. In the second part of the thesis, we present an integration of our algorithm into the Unity game engine. In the final part of the thesis, we demonstrate that our generator is able to produce levels that are similar to what we can see in two popular games - Enter the Gungeon and Dead Cells. The resulting algorithm is much faster than the previous version, contains new features and is ready to be used in the Unity game engine.

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / The essence of the study is to examine progress in the transformation of public service under fiscal and constitutional contraints. The thesis focuses on the implementation of affirmative action and human resource development programmes. The emphasis is on linking the transformation of the public service with the attainment of RDP goals and objectives. The reform of the public service should create opportunities for the employment of new staff to improve the representativeness of the civil service, whilst at the same time increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of government, and generating significant savings to help reduce the fiscal deficit and release resource for productive investment.

Languages are not just systems for communication, they are also often a marker of ethnic and/or national identity and sometimes a politically contentious issue. A country where this is the case is Latvia, which has a large Russian-speaking population. During the Soviet occupation of Latvia, Russian became the dominant language in public life. Since regaining independence, Latvia has pursued language policies aimed at strengthening the position of the Latvian language, at the expense of the Russian. Latvian is the single official language and over the last decades, the bilingual education system inherited from the Soviet Union has moved towards an increasing share of Latvian as the language of instruction. In 2018, the Latvian parliament amended two educational laws, meaning the share of subjects being instructed in Latvian in so-called minority schools increased markedly. The decision was controversial and was opposed by parties with a large Russian-speaking voter base. The purpose of the thesis is twofold. The first is to describe and analyse the arguments of political actors[1] regarding mono- and multilingual education, focusing on the reform of 2018. The arguments will be analysed in relation to theory regarding the connection between nationalism/nationhood and language, and theory on linguistic minority rights. The second part of the purpose is to advocate normatively and constructively for an approach regarding two different areas of policy: 1) Whether Russian should be an official language or not. 2) Language policy in education. The point of departure for the analysis is the aspiration to create a sense of national belonging, where both Russian-speakers and Latvian-speakers are seen as a part of the Latvian imagined community. In order to create this sense of inclusive imagined community, the approach seeks to be impartial in relation to the “pro-Latvian” and “pro-minority” positions with regards to language policy. The normative argumentation also seeks to include and balance the values of linguistic minority rights and preserving small languages (such as Latvian). For the first part of the thesis, a descriptive idea analysis is applied. The arguments are analysed in relation to my theoretical framework, which consists of various concepts relating to the relationship between language and nationalism and models regarding linguistic rights. The main analytical tool is the concept of an imagined community, where a sense of national belonging and social cohesion can be based on either mono- or multilingualism. In the second part, a normative and constructive method is used to argue for my position in a systematic fashion.   The arguments of the proponents of the 2018 reform can be described as based on the idea that Latvian is the common and unifying language of all the Latvian residents and one of the foundations of the imagined Latvian community. At the same time, the proponents claim wanting to ensure that members of linguistic minorities can preserve their language, and that the reform provides the right to learn a minority language. The opponents of the reform argue that, while it is important that students learn the Latvian language, drastically decreasing the level of instruction is an assimilatory policy that will weaken rather than strengthen the national unity.   In the second part, the author suggests that Latvian will remain the single official language since granting the Russian language official status may cause the language decline of Latvian, and because the issue is very divisive. In terms of language in the school system, the author concludes that Latvian ought to have a special position in Latvia and should therefore be the dominant language. Therefore, Latvian should be the main language of instruction, in the proportions prescribed by the 2018 reform. Another conclusion is that all students, regardless of mother tongue, should learn Russian on at least an elementary level. [1] Specified under “Delimitations”.

This thesis is focused on development of a game based on mobile virtual reality. The models used in the game are created in 3ds Max application. The game itself is implemented using the Unity engine and the scripts are written in C# language. The user can control the game naturally using the sight on the basis of the cell phone data. Target platform of the game are mobile devices with operating system Android and the game requires using of virtual reality viewer Cardboard.

When developers or organizations need to develop a game, simulation or a similar project, they phase the question of whether or not to use a game engine as well as the question on which one to use. Are all game engines the same or does the architecture change and how is the game design different between various game engines? The objective of this thesis is to research these questions as well as giving a concrete understanding of the impact of picking one engine over the other and how each engine influences the way games are developed and answer some more specific questions regarding architecture and usability.  A project was designed with the goal of developing a game. This game was developed by two separate teams over a period of 6 weeks, using two different game engines. The development was split into separate iterations done simultaneously between the teams and questionnaires were filled in to gather data. The game engines used for projects had similarities but also things which were different. Each engine offered ways to speed up development by allowing the developer to reuse and distribute changes among objects to reduce work. The differences caused one engine’s code architecture to be more complex than the other while allowing a better code structure as well as adding more time to learn how the engine handles certain things such as collisions. In conclusion, there is an importance to properly evaluating different game engines depending on the project a developer or organization is creating, not evaluating this properly will impact development speed and project complexity. Even though each engine has their differences, there is no superior game engine as it all depends on the project being developed. The game developed for this project was only touching on certain areas related to 2D games.

In the area of 3D visualization there are often several stages in the design process. These stages can involve creating a model, applying a texture to the model and creating a rendered image from the model. Some software can handle all stages of the process while some are focused on a single stage to try to perfect and narrow down the service provided. In this case there needs to be a way to transfer 3D data between software in an efficient way where the user experience isn’t lacking. This thesis explores the area of 3D data synchronization by first getting foundation from the prestudy and literature study. The findings from these studies are used in a shared file-based implementation and a design of a network-based system. The work presented in this thesis forms a comprehensive overview which can be used for future work.

In computer games, one use case for artificial intelligence is used to create interesting problems for the player. To do this new techniques such as reinforcement learning allows game developers to create artificial intelligence agents with human-like or superhuman abilities. The Unity ML-agents toolkit is a plugin that provides game developers with access to reinforcement algorithms without expertise in machine learning. In this paper, we compare reinforcement learning methods and provide empirical training data from two different environments. First, we describe the chosen reinforcement methods and then explain the design of both training environments. We compared the benefits in both dense and sparse rewards environments. The reinforcement learning methods were evaluated by comparing the training speed and cumulative rewards of the agents. The goal was to evaluate how much the combination of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards accelerated the training process in the sparse rewards environment. We hope this study helps game developers utilize reinforcement learning more effectively, saving time during the training process by choosing the most fitting training method for their video game environment. The results show that when training reinforcement agents in sparse rewards environments the agents trained faster with the combination of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards. And when training an agent in a sparse reward environment with only extrinsic rewards the agent failed to learn to complete the task.