Computer Games & Allied Technology 08 : Singapore Flyer

Over the past few years, faculty in Computer Engineering (at NTU, Murdoch and Manchester Metropolitan) with an interest in games programming have developed several noteworthy initiatives for the teaching of Software Games Engineering. These are: industrial case study, open-source game editors, generic game engine, and games development process project. The industrial case study allows the students to understand a myriad of factors in the technical and business sides of a real games company; the case study we presently use is id Software, an exemplary small company and real dichotomy in the games industry. The open-source game editor abstracts the programming details of the platform away form the game, and provides a easy and fast way of creating the domain and objectives of game. Thus, the students can focus their learning on the story-line, game boarding, and manipulating the conation of the player. The generic game engine allows the students to program players pitted in a tournament-style game. This is quite effective as a tutorial for assessing the students problem solving and programming skills. Finally, the process project demands that the student study and report on the approach to or method of developing games. This is an excellent mechanism for marrying games development with software engineering, and provides for a wide range of assessment criteria.

Game Development (Dr Edmond Prakash):

We will look at the state-of-art Game Engines for game development. The objective is to look at some of the recent game projects that we have developed using Torque, XNA and J2ME. Torque for example has lots of functionality but the learning curve is steep to incorporate custom models and animation. XNA on the other hand is programmable and has been pushed by Microsoft as a dual development platform for Xbox and PCs. Mobile development has a large support base with the Java environment through the J2ME interface. We also highlight architectural and security concerns in network games development and deployment especially in a Peer-to-Peer type of environment. Game usability is a perennial topic but often ignored by developers. This has become a bigger challenge with novel interfaces such as the Wii, Haptic devices and interfaces for hand-held games.

This session looks at some work we have done in Continuous Level of Detail (CLOD) Terrain Modelling. We look at the history of developments in CLOD and the adaptation of techniques like Real Time Optimally Adapting Mesh (ROAM) to terrain modelling for Computer Games. We also examine the kind of facilities available (for example L3DT) for developing large realistic terrain descriptions.

Player Adaptive Entertainment Computing (Prof Kevin Wong):

The entertainment computing industry has experienced exponential growth over the last few years and has also attracted many researchers to the field. This area of the entertainment industry has become a highly competitive area. We introduce the concept of Player Adaptive Entertainment Computing (PAEC), which is to provide personalized experience for each individual when interacting with the entertainment media. For the discussion of this concept, only entertainment digital games will be focus in this presentation. Two of the important areas in PAEC are to create specific targeted strategies to cater for individual game player, and also to perform personalization. One of the most important part of the PAEC is related to the perceived value from the game player. Normally, the perceived value is directly related to factors such as fun, challenge, entertaining, and interest level. As every individual is different, personalization becomes the important factor to improve this perceived value. Personalization for PAEC is defined as any set of actions that can tailor the entertainment media experience to a particular user or player. In this presentation the use of Artificial Intelligence will be explored to fulfil part of the objective of PAEC.

Future Game-AI Models (Prof Narendra Chaudhari):

In the decade of 1960’s, the computer games started with modest text based adventures. However, recent games typically include synergies in its typical sub-systems like graphics rendering, audio, user input system, and game artificial intelligence (AI). Current state of game development involves very small (typically 4-12%) percentage of CPU time for game AI. Future game-AI requires developing computational strategies that have little involvement of CPU for on-line plays, while utilizing CPU’s idle capacity when the game is not being played, thereby emphasizing the construction of complex game-AI models off-line. We introduce a framework for the construction of game-AI models off-line. The deployment of our game-AI models for on-line game-plays is fast (it does not require large percentage of CPU time). Our framework uses game-play history database(s), which are created while game is played. When the game is not being played, this captured game-play history is used to evolve non-conventional game-AI models. Since CPU is anyway idle when the game is not being played, our off-line computational construction of non-conventional game-AI models using game-play history can be substantially compute-intensive. We introduce a few of such non-conventional game-AI models.

Human Behavior Representation for Crowd Simulations (Prof Zhou Suiping):

Human crowd is a fascinating social phenomenon in nature. Simulating crowd behavior has many important applications in computer animation, computer games, emergency/crisis management, etc. Two important aspects of crowd simulation are the realism of the crowd behavior and the computational overhead involved. A good simulation of crowd behavior requires delicate balance between these aspects. This talk focuses on human behavior representation for crowd simulation. In particular, the behavior modeling framework, various social/psychological factors involved, and the autonomous navigation system will be discussed.

2. Audio Engineering in Games
Patrick Fernado , C. Girishanker , Alan Lek
SAE Institute Singapore

Introduction

Audio Engineering started its roots through sound integration with silent movies. Ironic as it may seems, it was in the form of a piano or an orchestra playing along side the movie to give the “live” sense. As technology evolves, it became possible to record sound onto film though the sound had to be edited together with the pictures as there were no means of separating visual from audio. Subsequently, audio engineering was applied to games as a critical aspect towards games. The visual aesthetics must match the audio feedback to let the gamers feel the sense of immersion to the game “world”. Emphasis shouldn’t just be on superb graphics or great animation but also crisp clear audio and superior surround sound quality. That added aspect of reality through audio engineering will enhance the mood and set the beat to the game experience.

Topics to be discussed:

Voice Dubbing in games audio post-production.

As more and more games are expanding their reach of target markets through internet or international publishers, there is a growing need to make games in multi-language. Voice dubbing becomes critical for the games production studios to tap into the global market.

Local and International pool:

Talent scouting from local and international arena

Budget and Constraints

Sound Design :

This is where the Audio Engineer let his/her creative juices flow.

Depending on the scale of the project, it will determine the equipments available and the period and cost of audio production. Enhancements of graphics through the use of audio techniques

Canned SFX

Spot SFX

Composition of Music

Mixing :

Balance of music (foreground, background, action & effects)

A balance must be achieved to get the desired effect across to the gamers, clearly.

Equipments :

Digital Audio Workstations

Digidesign’s Protools