Eike Falk Anderson

Developing serious games for cultural heritage: a state-of-the-art review

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result, the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented.

The case for research in game engine architecture

This paper is a call for research in the field of game engine architecture and design, a more comprehensive and thorough understanding of which we consider to be essential for its development. We present a number of key aspects that may help to define the problem space and provide a catalogue of questions that we believe identify areas of interest for future investigation.

Using Augmented Reality as a Medium to Assist Teaching in Higher Education

In this paper we describe the use of a high-level augmented reality (AR) interface for the construction of collaborative educational applications that can be used in practice to enhance current teaching methods. A combination of multimedia information including spatial three-dimensional models, images, textual information, video, animations and sound, can be superimposed in a student-friendly manner into the learning environment. In several case studies different learning scenarios have been carefully designed based on human-computer interaction principles so that meaningful virtual information is presented in an interactive and compelling way. Collaboration between the participants is achieved through use of a tangible AR interface that uses marker cards as well as an immersive AR environment which is based on software user interfaces (UIs) and hardware devices. The interactive AR interface has been piloted in the classroom at two UK universities in departments of Informatics and Information Science.

On the Provision of a Comprehensive Computer Graphics Education in the Context of Computer Games: An Activity-Led Instruction Approach

Over the past decade the development of computer games – which originated in academia with the creation of Spacewar at MIT in 1961 – has evolved into an accepted academic discipline, closely related to the field of computer graphics. Games courses can be found embedded in traditional computer science degrees or as dedicated degree programmes for students aiming to work in the games industry. In this paper we present a student-centred, activity-led approach to teaching computer graphics in the context of a computer games technology undergraduate degree. We describe our computer graphics related courses and demonstrate how they are formed by the activity-led teaching methodology.

In at the Deep End: An Activity-Led Introduction to First Year Creative Computing

Misconceptions about the nature of the computing disciplines pose a serious problem to university faculties that offer computing degrees, as students enrolling on their programmes may come to realise that their expectations are not met by reality. This frequently results in the students’ early disengagement from the subject of their degrees which in turn can lead to excessive ‘wastage’, that is, reduced retention. In this paper, we report on our academic group’s attempts within creative computing degrees at a UK university to counter these problems through the introduction of a 6 week long project that newly enrolled students embark on at the very beginning of their studies. This group project, involving the creation of a 3D etch‐a‐sketch‐like computer graphics application with a hardware interface, provides a breadth‐first, activity‐led introduction to the students’ chosen academic discipline, aiming to increase student engagement while providing a stimulating learning experience with the overall goal to increase retention. We present the methods and results of two iterations of these projects in the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 academic years, and conclude that the approach worked well for these cohorts, with students expressing increased interest in their chosen discipline, in addition to noticeable improvements in retention following the first year of the students’ studies.

Off-Line Evolution of Behaviour for Autonomous Agents in Real-Time Computer Games

This paper describes and analyses a series of experiments intended to evolve a player for a variation of the classic arcade game Asteroids? using steady state genetic programming. The players behaviour is defined using a LISP like scripting language. While the game interprets scripts in real-time, such scripts are evolved off-line by a second program which simulates the real-time application. This method is used, as on-line evolution of the players would be too time consuming. A successful player needs to satisfy multiple conflicting objectives. This problem is addressed by the use of an automatically defined function (ADF) for each of these objectives in combination with task specific fitness functions. The overall fitness of evolved scripts is evaluated by a conventional fitness function. In addition to that, each of the ADFs is evaluated with a separate fitness function, tailored specifically to the objective that needs to be satisfied by that ADF.

A Classification of Scripting Systems for Entertainment and Serious Computer Games

The technology base for modern computer games is usually provided by a game engine. Many game engines have built-in dedicated scripting languages that allow the development of complete games that are built using those engines, as well as extensive modification of existing games through scripting alone. While some of these game engines implement proprietary languages, others use existing scripting systems that have been modified according to the game engines requirements. Scripting languages generally provide a very high level of abstraction method for syntactically controlling the behaviour of their host applications and different types of scripting system allow different types of modification of their underlying host application. In this paper we propose a simple classification for scripting systems used in computer games for entertainment and serious purposes.

Randomly Generated 3D Environments for Serious Games

This paper describes a variety of methods that can be used to create realistic, random 3D environments for serious games requiring real-time performance. These include the generation of terrain, vegetation and building structures. An interactive flight simulator has been created as proof of concept. An initial evaluation with two small samples of users (remote and hallway) revealed some usability issues but also showed that overall the flight simulator is enjoyable and appears realistic and believable.

Distinctive Approaches to Computer Graphics Education

This paper presents the latest advances and research in Computer Graphics education in a nutshell. It is concerned with topics that were presented at the Education Track of the Eurographics Conference held in Lisbon in 2016. We describe works corresponding to approaches to Computer Graphics education that are unconventional in some way and attempt to tackle unsolved problems and challenges regarding the role of arts in computer graphics education, the role of research‐oriented activities in undergraduate education and the interaction among different areas of Computer Graphics, as well as their application to courses or extra‐curricular activities. We present related works addressing these topics and report experiences, successes and issues in implementing the approaches.

Distinctive Approaches to Computer Graphics Education: Distinctive Approaches to Computer Graphics Education

This paper presents the latest advances and research in Computer Graphics education in a nutshell. It is concerned with topics that were presented at the Education Track of the Eurographics Conference held in Lisbon in 2016. We describe works corresponding to approaches to Computer Graphics education that are unconventional in some way and attempt to tackle unsolved problems and challenges regarding the role of arts in computer graphics education, the role of research‐oriented activities in undergraduate education and the interaction among different areas of Computer Graphics, as well as their application to courses or extra‐curricular activities. We present related works addressing these topics and report experiences, successes and issues in implementing the approaches.