Marija Punt

An integrated environment and development framework for social gaming using mobile devices, digital TV and Internet

The amount of digital multimedia devices in a modern day household capable of connecting to the Internet has increased dramatically over the last years, including mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets as well as digital TV sets and set-top boxes. Since these devices are readily available and allow customization through software they can be easily used to support and enhance traditional social activities in the living room. This paper presents an integrated environment of mobile devices and digital TVs connected to the Internet used as a platform for exploring both traditional and novel gaming concepts in either a single living room or across different homes connecting multiple living rooms. To create such an environment a framework was developed enabling the implementation of distributed social games, using the digital TV as a display showing game content public to all players and using the available personal mobile devices as controllers and displays showing private portions of the game. The framework also allows the innovative use of broadcast related information and social media during game play. Five different games were developed using the framework. The framework effectiveness was evaluated by comparing TV-centric games developed with and without the framework using size and complexity metrics, additionally application responsiveness was measured using a game developed without and with the framework and compared with a state-of-the-art game controller. The experience of playing the developed games was obtained by collecting and analyzing self-reported data using a questionnaire combined with additional observations from volunteers and researchers.

TV-centric multiplayer gaming over the cloud for consumer electronic devices

In this paper a cloud-based TV-centric gaming architecture is proposed, enabling the creation of games played amongst friends seated in geographically separated living rooms. In each living room a television is used as a public game display and mobile devices are used as game controllers. An example of a multi-player board game using the proposed architecture was developed and validated using tests measuring the communication performance between server and client.

TV-centric gaming applications for Android OS: Architecture and a framework

The proliferation of devices with Android OS recently facilitated the integration of various consumer electronic devices running Android for novel applications. In this paper the architecture and a framework for the development of TV-centric games is presented. These games involve set-top boxes or TV receivers, mobile devices and the Internet towards the creation of an innovative gameplay. The paper discusses the benefits of TV-centric gaming concept, presents several developed game prototypes and gives the first results of user survey with regard to the usability of the concept.

New possibilities of human-computer interaction in integrated video games for mobile phones, TV and Internet

Advances in the capabilities of both mobile devices and digital televisions have created new possibilities for human-computer interaction, which can be used for developing informal TV-centric games. Those possibilities were tested by creating a game that can be played on a TV, while a television program is showing, which can be controlled through mobile phones. Both the TV and the mobile phones are connected via a wireless network and the results of the game can be shared on social networks. The game performance was evaluated by measuring the responsiveness to user actions and a survey was conducted among a group of test users.

A Simulation Environment for the On-Line Monitoring of a Fault Tolerant Flight Control Computer

An approach of designing a simulation environment for the on-line monitoring of a fault tolerant flight control computer is presented in this paper. The simulation environment is designed to evaluate an improved on-line monitoring technique for processors with a built-in cache. This technique assumes that a monitor checks on-line whether the execution of a program is in accordance with the control flow graph created for the program off-line by a preprocessor. The simulation environment consists of the target processor and the monitor, but also includes carefully chosen benchmark programs, fault injection modules and the preprocessor.

Integration of communication services for Android-based set-top box applications

This paper presents a developed application which integrates new communication capabilities of set top boxes running Android OS. The application is a game showing its content overlaid on top of the television program whereas Android mobile devices are used as controllers. The performance of the application is tested by measuring the speed of the various communication devices and by analyzing feedback from a selected group of users.

Configurable simulator for computer architecture and organization

This paper presents a novel visual educational configurable simulator for computer architecture and organization (COCONUT). By using the simulator students can create their own processor with an arbitrary architecture and simple organization on the register transfer level, write an assembly program to be executed on the processor and observe the instruction execution phases of the program on the processor. The students can create their processor by using the simulator of a computer system with fixed and configurable parts. The configurable part allows students to use the simulator for defining the instruction decoding of the processor operation unit and the content of the microprogram memory of the processor control unit. The simulators usage was evaluated at the University of Belgrade—School of Electrical Engineering on two courses for two consecutive school years. The evaluation results showed that 80% of the students stated that the simulator helped them to better understand the course material and that they had a positive user experience with the simulator.

Human-computer interaction in an integrated environment combining digital TV, mobile devices and internet

Applications developed in an integrated environment consisting of digital TV, mobile devices and internet can offer users novel human-computer interaction scenarios compared to the scenarios that a single device could offer. In this paper the SHARP development framework is presented. The framework allows efficient implementation of distributed systems in an integrated environment. The field of game development was chosen as the target domain to verify the benefits of the framework. Conclusions on how the users accepted the identified scenarios were made by examining the experience of test users interacting with the developed applications. The SHARP framework was verified by comparing size, complexity and responsiveness of the applications developed using the framework and without using the framework.

Rebooting the TV-centric gaming concept for modern multiscreen Over-The-Top service

The TV-centric gaming concept creates an environment where people can play games with each other in the living room gathered around the TV screen. Games are controlled through mobile devices, using them not only as controllers, but also as personal screens for each player. The TV-centric gaming concept was hard to commercially deploy due to a lack of a common programming platform on the customer premise equipment. However, recent developments in TV operating systems may allow for rebooting the TV-centric gaming approach. This paper presents a proposal of integrating the TV-centric concept with a modern Internet TV based ecosystem, and a potential business case which regards Over-The-Top services as a means of deploying the concept in practice.

Implementation of a social gaming cloud service for mobile and TV devices

This paper presents an implementation of a social gaming cloud service allowing mobile and TV devices to connect to as clients. Development of this service will allow players from multiple homes to play together, using TV devices as main displays and mobile devices as game controllers. In order to evaluate the service, an example game was developed and server response times and server load were measured.