Robert Konrad

StoryTec: A Digital Storytelling Platform for the Authoring and Experiencing of Interactive and Non-Linear Stories

Recently, within the information society and the up-coming, prospering creative industries, a lot of research has been investigated into Storytelling systems and authoring tools for the creation and representation of Storytelling based scenarios in a broad range of application domains, e.g. marketing and advertisement, training and simulation, E-Learning, edutainment, serious games. Prominent examples are the EU funded projects U-CREATE, nm2 and INSCAPE, whose global aim was to allow even non-specialists the easy and efficient creation of interactive stories for various application domains. Based on the achieved RTD results of these projects, this paper introduces StoryTec as Digital Storytelling platform for the authoring and experiencing of interactive, non-linear stories. Apart from a brief description of the StoryTec platform as a whole and the difference to the INSCAPE approach, this paper focuses on two specific modules: The Story Editor and ICML as standardized descriptive format for any interactive stories.

StoryTec: A Digital Storytelling Platform for the Authoring and Experiencing of Interactive and Non-linear Stories

Recently, within the information society and the up-coming, prospering creative industries, a lot of research has been investigated into Storytelling systems and authoring tools for the creation and representation of Storytelling based scenarios in a broad range of application domains, e.g. marketing and advertisement, training and simulation, E-Learning, edutainment, serious games. Prominent examples are the EU funded projects U-CREATE, nm2 and INSCAPE, whose global aim was to allow even non-specialists the easy and efficient creation of interactive stories for various application domains. Based on the achieved RTD results of these projects, this paper introduces StoryTec as Digital Storytelling platform for the authoring and experiencing of interactive, non-linear stories. Apart from a brief description of the StoryTec platform as a whole and the difference to the INSCAPE approach, this paper focuses on two specific modules: The Story Editor and ICML as standardized descriptive format for any interactive stories.

Computerized Assessment of the Skills of Impaired and Elderly Workers: A Tool Survey and Comparative Study

The number of impaired persons rises -- as a result of both regular degradation with age and psychological problems like burnout. Sheltered work organizations aim to reintegrate impaired persons into work environments and prepare them for the re-entry in the regular job market. Both for elderly and for impaired persons it is crucial to quickly assess the abilities, to identify limits and potentials and thus find work processes suitable for their skill profile. This work focuses on the analysis and comparison of software-tools that assess the abilities of persons with impairments. We describe two established generic tools (CANTAB, Cogstate), analyze a yet unknown specialized tool (Hamet) and present a new gamified tool (GATRAS). Finally, we present a study with 20 participants with impairments, comparing the tools against a ground truth baseline generated by a real-world assembly task.

Examining Approaches for Mobility Detection Through Smartphone Sensors

The ubiquity of smartphones with integrated positioning systems, and multiple sensors for movement detection made it possible to develop context-sensitive applications for both productivity and entertainment. Location-based games like Ingress or Pokemon Go have demonstrated the public interest in this genre of mobile-only games – games that are exclusively available for mobile devices due to their sensor integration. For these games mobility is a key component, which defines and influences the game’s flow directly.

Development of a Wii Balance Board Array System for Exergames

The goal of this work is to present and describe the development of a 6-Wii Balance Board array system for its use in exergaming scenarios. To avoid the main problem, which is connection stability and latency, we developed a board using a microcontroller from SILABS and a Bluetooth Stick was used to synchronize data acquisition and minimize data latency. Our data demonstrates that, under the described experimental conditions, the developed system is functional and is capable of delivering the data of 6 Wii Balance Boards in real time.

Game Design Principles in a Game Programming Framework

Programming game engines threatens to become an elitist activity with the industry split between the professional studios which are pushing for more direct but also more difficult to program hardware access and hobbyists using ready-made game-engines with little focus on understanding their inner workings. This paper presents an attempt to make game engine programming more accessible via a game programming framework which focuses explicitly on the programmers learning path in a similar manner to how video games are typically designed.

An Evaluation of Extrapolation and Filtering Techniques in Head Tracking for Virtual Environments to Reduce Cybersickness

Currently, numerous users who employ HMD devices such as the Oculus Rift develop symptoms similar to motion sickness. Recent literature defines this phenomenon as cybersickness, and one of its main causes as latency. This contribution aims to analyze the accuracy of different extrapolation and filtering techniques to accurately predict head movements, reducing the impact of latency. For this purpose, 10 participants played a VR game that required quick and subsequent head rotations, during which a total of 150.000 head positions were captured in the pitch and yaw rotation axes. These rotational movements were then extrapolated and filtered. Linear extrapolation seems to provide best results, with a prediction error of approximately 0.06 arc degrees. Filtering the extrapolated data further reduces the error to 0.04 arc degrees on average. In conclusion, until future VR systems can significantly reduce latency, extrapolating head movements seems to provide a low-cost solution with an acceptable prediction error, although extrapolating the roll axis movements remains to be challenging.

Conceptual Approach Towards Recursive Hardware Abstraction Layers

Cross-platform publishing is a must have in game development. Sophisticated game engines such as Unreal or Unity provide cross-platform publishing capability. Therefore, many developers use these game engines. On the other hand, several game developers also provide their own technology and do not want to become fully dependent on external technology. Based on that situation efficient mechanisms are required to combine both sides: Usage of custom in-house technology enhanced with multi-platform capabilities. This paper introduces a new concept for hardware abstraction layers tackling this issue. Sections 1 and 2 motivate the use of multiple hardware abstraction layers and provide a brief overview of related work. Section 3 describes the Kha and Kore frameworks as basic game technology for custom in-house game engines. In the main part of this paper, a conceptual approach of hardware abstraction layers, is introduced in Sect. 4 and Sect. 5 discusses its practical use for the integration in Unreal and Unity. Finally, Sect. 6 provides an overview and best practice examples of how to use Kha and Kore for Serious Games.