Dev Blog

Additional Image Reading Feature for UI Grid Tool

digm520admin / / Class Work, Programming

Another feature was added to this tool to help the artists make wall assets for the game, but it also doubles as another option for therapists to create wall poses. The UI grid can intake an image file (a 2D sprite) and output a grid based on the alpha values of individual pixels from this input image. This initially always looked at every pixel, but to help the tool deal with higher resolution (or just larger) images, I also added a resolution factor that would just very simply look at “every x pixels” instead of each individual one. The resolution factor just gets multiplied into the loop looking for pixels.

For example: With resolution factor of 4, the tool will look at pixel numbers: 0 * 4 = 0, 1 * 4 = 4, 2 * 4 = 8, etc.

While this clearly isn’t an amazingly intelligent system, it is a simple way to generally get a roughly similar shape to initially higher resolution images without creating hundreds of thousands of objects.

Creating UI Grid to Build Wall of Objects

digm520admin / / Class Work, Programming

Our team wanted to created a tool that could generate walls made of blocks for our “Hole in the Wall” style game. As a health game, we also wanted to have an in game system that a therapist could use to create their own wall objects as well. To satisfy these requests I decided to create a simple UI grid made of images that would tie into a wall generator object in Unity.

Using Unity 2018, I was able to use UI Image prefab objects. The height and width of the wall can be determined in “number of objects”. This will also be reflected in the UI grid object. The user can then click grid elements to either turn them on or off, which will also correspond with a color (white or black). Then when the user clicks the “create wall” button, a wall will be created of 3d objects directly reflecting the UI grid. The wall will have objects where the grid elements are on, and it will just have nothing (a hole) where elements are off.

Play in the Museum: Design and Development of a Game-Based Learning Exhibit for Informal Science Education

digm520admin / / Thesis

Title: Play in the Museum: Design and Development of a Game-Based Learning Exhibit for Informal Science Education

Resource: Academic Paper

Authors: Jonathan P. Rowe, Eleni V. Lobene, Bradford W. Mott, James C. Lester

Link to Paper pdf

This paper investigates the effects of game-based learning in a museum environment. It looks into ways to guide the game design in an effort to improve the amount of learning that occurs in these situations.

Validating Game-based Measures of Implicit Science Learning

digm520admin / / Thesis

Title: Validating Game-based Measures of Implicit Science Learning

Resource: Academic Paper

Authors: Elizabeth Rowe, Jodi Asbell-Clarke, Teon Edwards, Michael Eagle, Drew Hicks, Tiffany Barnes, Rebecca Brown

Link to Paper pdf

This paper investigates whether implicit science learning was occurring in students playing an optics related game. It also looks into better ways to measure this and practices to encourage it.

Generating Levels for Physics-based Puzzle Games with Estimation of Distribution Algorithms

digm520admin / / Game Design, Thesis

Title: Generating Levels for Physics-based Puzzle Games with Estimation of Distribution Algorithms

Resource: Academic Paper

Authors:Lucas Ferreira, Claudio Toledo

Link to Paper on Researchgate.net

“This paper presents an estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) to generate levels for physics-based puzzle games with the Angry Birds mechanics” from the abstract.

This can serve as a foundation for generating meaningful and interesting content for physics-based games

Experimenting with Unity: Player Movement – Rotation

digm520admin / / Game Design, Personal, Programming
Player controlled by rotation about a point

Vimeo – Video of Rotational Movement

I was experimenting with controlling a player agent solely through rotational forces. The first style I looked at was not a force in the physical sense as it just operates on moving the player at a constant rotation speed. This is dictated by the placement of a rotation pivot which the player can place to indirectly move the player agent.

To add an extra amount of control, the player can also press a key in order to reverse the direction of the rotation (switch between clockwise and counterclockwise). This combination of features led to some interesting movement patterns. One of the first things that jumps out is the fact that the movement being dictated by a constant rotation speed still leads to varying velocities by the player agent as this will vary drastically with the radius between the pivot point and the player object. Large pivot distances can lead to dramatic speeds, but will lead to the player covering a larger area.

Notes to remember:

I was having an issue where the rotation was not perfectly making a circle in the game view. It turns out the scripts were correct, but the camera needed to be set to orthographic so the camera was just viewing it at an angle. Remember to check both the editor view and game view closely to help determine camera-based issues.

Using cursor inputs in Unity is a bit awkward. It has been done plenty of times so the basic scripting is available on Unity’s main site, but the process of creating a plane, raycasting, and converting between screen and world space is a lot to keep track of. This might also be something to look into if mouse inputs are acting strange.

Procedural Generation – Far Cry 5 GDC Content Generation

digm520admin / / Programming

Procedural Generation – GDC 2018 Talk – Procedural World Generation of ‘Far Cry 5’

By: Etienne Carrier

GDC 2018 – Procedural World Generation of ‘Far Cry 5’ – GDC Vault Link

GDC talk where Etienne details a large scale tool they created using procedural generation techniques to help build the world of Far Cry 5. It covers both the user end (world editors/designers) and the behind the scenes processes that make everything possible. They use Dunia and Houdini together to create these tools.

Predictive Physics Simulation in Game Mechanics by Hamalainen et al.

digm520admin / / Game Design, Thesis

Resource – Research Paper
Title: Predictive Physics Simulation in Game Mechanics
Authors: Perttu Hämäläinen, Xiaoxiao Ma, Jari Takatalo, Julian Togelius

This paper explores using innovations with software and increasing technology and how to apply them to games as a game mechanic. This specifically targeted the increased ability of computers to process physics simulations as a predictive measure for the player to interact with. In the simplest explanation it can break down fast paced physics-based actions into a turn by turn type game or simulation.