· · · Institutional Repository

Higher education is cautiously exploring a new educational tool: computer games. Educational computer games were recently the focus of a symposium held in Delft. Will we soon be giving and following courses, lectures and trainings in a virtual 3D world, instead of in lecture halls?

The game industry is one of the quickly advancing areas of software industry. Other areas of industry have things in common with the game industry, but are way behind. This is especially the case for the rendering done for simulations. The graphical quality of what is shown in simulation packages is about 10 years behind compared to the game industry. Because simulations in which the positions of objects play important roles, like logistics simulations, have a lot of things in common with computer games, they can use game technology. This research attempts to bridge the gap between the two industries, by creating a library that can be used to visualize the simulations, and that itself is based on a game rendering engine. In this way, the simulations can be visualized with a better quality, making use of the latest game technology. In this research, a proof of concept of such a visualization library is created, which utilizes the Ogre3D rendering engine. The working of the library and its general usefulness are demonstrated by using it to visualize two simulations. One of them is a simple DEVS simulation, the other is a complex container terminal simulation based on the DEVS formalism. It is found that the new visualization gives a huge increase in the realism of the graphics. By hiding implementation details and providing a configuration system, the solution is easier to use than the current visualizations of these simulations. Choices however need to be made in the trade-off between realism and rendering speed. As the solution is geared towards the future, it has been designed in a multi-threaded way. That has the drawback that it slows down the simulation on single-core processors.

Cooperative communication is a technique to use nodes in the wireless network as relays to forward information to the destination. Cooperative communication technique relies on the relay selection and power allocation process to optimize its performance since not all available nodes are beneficial to use for forwarding. Game theory is a branch of mathematics theory which tries to model the behavior of a player in strategic situation, or games, when dealing with other players’ choices. In the cooperative communication networks, the game theoretical approach has been shown to be a good means to solve the relay selection and resource allocation problems which have multiple objectives. In this thesis we analyze the relay selection and resource allocation using pricing game in a cooperative wireless communication network with interference. Using simulation results we show that interference affects the relay selection and resource allocation process. From the relay selection result we also find that the number of selected relay nodes influences the optimization process and when the number of selected nodes is large, the source node significantly suffers from payment to relay nodes. We propose an algorithm to limit the number of selected relay nodes and to keep the benefit of the source node. We also propose an evolutionary game approach for resource allocation in cooperative wireless networks. The method has flexibility in optimizing the system based on preferred objectives. The evolutionary game approach is based on evolutionary programming, where the behavior of each node is modeled to mimic the biological evolution process. Results of this study can be used in a wide range of wireless sensor networks where power, bandwidth, and other resource constraints are present. The proposed scheme provides a flexible relay node selection given the resource constraints of the wireless network.

Do The Math is a game, developed in a BSc programme, by two students. The goal is to enable people to practice their math skills. The main focus of the project was the scalability of the backend systems.

In our society the health, education and lifestyle of children are societal issues. Outside play is one of the aspects that government institutions want to stimulate among children, because playing outdoors helps in their development and is good for their health. My graduation project is in cooperation with the municipality of Delft. The municipality of Delft is a government institution at city level. The municipality want to improve the outside play experience for children in Delft. This graduation project will give insides in outdoor play of children in the public space and this will result in a concept design of a solution to improve the outdoor play experience of children.

This report presents the development of an Augmented Reality (AR) application to visualize research data and the development of a 3D video game. These applications are completely developed at the University of Aveiro (UA) as a part of the Bachelor Project IN3700 of TU Delft. The AR application is used for a qualitative study which visualization method is most natural for human perception. The 3D game is used for a quantitative study of usability using different navigation methods.

Rendezvous problems and search games (with two players) are related problems. In a rendezvous problem the players like to meet as soon as possible, while in a search game one of them tries to avoid the meeting as long as possible. So in a rendezvous problem the players have a common interest and in a search game the players have conflicting interests. We consider in this thesis a rendezvous problem on a discrete labeled interval and a search game on a star with players having motion detection abilities. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part (Chapter 2) is about the rendezvous problem on a discrete labeled interval. This problem was first introduced by Alpern in [1]. Most results for this problem are summarized in [2], Chapter 13. This thesis contains new results extending the results in [2]. The work was done in Delft in February 2008 until May 2008 and in July 2008. Moreover a part of the results in Chapter 2 were presented at the 13th International Symposium on Dynamics Games and Applications in Wroclaw, Poland. The second part of this thesis (Chapter 3) is about a search game on a star with players having motion detection abilities. This problem was proposed by Prof. S. Gal (University of Haifa, Israel) and until now no results were available. The work on this problem was done in June 2008 in Haifa resulting in (numerical) solutions for the game and insight in its asymptotic behavior. [1] S. Alpern, The Rendezvous Search Problem, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization 33 (1995), 673â683. [2] S. Alpern and S. Gal, The Theory of Search Games and Rendezvous, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.

Bachelor thesis on an internship in Singapore where minigames were developed for a game company that was developing an educative speech recognition game to teach English pronunciation to Chinese speakers.

This thesis presents a training game intended to train crisis management teams to negotiate collaboratively in order to reach the group goal in the best way possible. The importance of the group goal in comparison to their individual goals is touched upon as well, as are various conflicts that can occur during such a negotiation. The game, which is implemented in the Blocks World 4 Teams environment, gives a team a specific scenario and allows them to negotiate a plan of action. This plan of action is then performed by agents, after which the team members will be debriefed on their performance. An experiment was performed to test the training effect of the game of which the results are discussed in the thesis.

The thesis presents a use of a domestic building's automation system with a serious game embedded in it, as a method to motivate inhabitants to conserve resources.

In many real-world decision making settings, situations arise in which the parties (or: players) involved must collectively make decisions while not every player is supposed to have an equal amount of influence in the outcome of such a decision. The "weighted voting game" is a model that is often used to make such decisions. The amount of influence that a player has in a weighted voting game can be measured by means of various power indices. Weighted voting games are part of the more general class of simple games. In this thesis, we study the problem of finding for a given class of simple games (including weighted voting games), the game in which the distribution of the influence among the players is as close as possible to a given target value (i.e. power index). We investigate the posibilities that we have for exactly solving this problem. For the case of weighted voting games, we obtain a method that relies on a new efficient procedure for enumerating weighted voting games of a fixed number of players. The enumeration algorithm we propose works by exploiting the properties of a specific partial order over the class of weighted voting games, for which we prove existence. The algorithm enumerates weighted voting games of a fixed number of players in time exponential in the number of players, but polynomial in the number of games output. As a consequence we obtain an exact anytime algorithm for designing weighted voting games. We look at various ways to improve on this algorithm. A large improvement follows by exploiting the properties of two specific types of coalitions, which we refer to as roof coalitions and ceiling coalitions. The algorithm, together with these improvements, has been implemented in order to measure the practical performance and to obtain various data on the class of weighted voting games. Our method for solving the voting game design problem heavily relies on the ability to transform between different representations of simple games, which we refer to as "voting game synthesis problems". We give an extensive treatment of these synthesis problems, and in particular we prove that there does not exist a polynomial time algorithm that transforms the list of ceiling coalitions of a game into the list of roof coalitions. However, we also show that an output-polynomial time algorithm for this problem actually does exist, by providing one.

Serious games are an important tool in creating, explaining, building, deploying and evaluating solutions for complex multi-actor problems. The Indian electricity challenge is such a complex multi-actor problem which forms the content of the Indian Electricity Game. To become a success it is necessary that serious games, like the Indian Electricity Game, are adjusted to the culture of its players. By playtesting with the targeted players, game designers are able to adjust their serious games to the culture of the targeted players. However, due to a lack of time, high costs and the need for a good first impression, playtesting is not always possible. This problem statement led to the following main research question: What method is able to adapt serious games to the culture of the players without playtesting them with these players? In an answer to this main research question, this research proposes the culture driven game design method. This method consists of the culture driven game design iteration which is embedded in the iterative Triadic Game Design development model. The iteration consists of three steps. In step 1 the culture difference between the playtesters and the targeted players is assessed using a questionnaire. In step 2 the assessed culture difference is translated to a set of potential conflicting game elements. In step 3 the relevance of the conflicting game elements is determined. When the relevant conflicting game elements are mitigated in the proceeding design step, the game is adapted to the culture of the players. The culture driven game design method was evaluated by means of two case studies and an expert interview. In these case studies the Indian Electricity Game was used that was developed during this research at the Centre for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) in Bangalore. It was concluded that the culture driven game design method was able to adapt the Indian Electricity Game to multiple groups of players with a different culture without playtesting the game with these players. However, further research is needed to evaluate if the method is also applicable to other types of serious games and other types of cultures.

To increase a player's immersion in the game world, its objects should behave as one would reasonably expect. For this, it is now becoming increasingly clear that what game objects really miss is richer semantics, not eye-catching visuals. Current games' lack of semantics is mostly due to the complexity of designing semantic objects. If game designers would have to design all semantics by themselves, and game programmers would have to implement the handling of these semantics, game development time would increase enormously. The goal of this research is to improve the semantics of game objects (or more properly, entities) in virtual worlds, resulting in more and better object interaction in games. This thesis proposes a solution in the form of services, describing interaction possibilities between entities, and a structure that makes it easier to specify them. An example of this is the service of a vending machine, which exchanges a coin supplied by a player for a soda. By introducing several components, such as classes, attributes and actions, a service is defined as the capacity of an entity to perform a particular action, possibly subject to some requirements. To incrementally specify and add services to game objects, a three-phased methodology is presented. This approach has been implemented and validated by means of a prototype system, which enables a simple and intuitive definition of services in an integrated environment. By using two different editors, services can be defined during the game development process. In turn, a semantics engine is charged with all service handling during a game itself. It is concluded that if game designers are presented with the tools to easily add semantics to game objects, these objects become aware of their services, therefore facilitating more and better object interaction, resulting in a much deeper gameplay experience than in current games.

The thesis aims at extending the capabilities of devices and enabling cooperation, i.e., data connection sharing, among users who may or may not necessarily be related to or know each other. To achieve this objective as well as to validate the results of our theoretical analysis, we developed a smart-phone application for data connection sharing. By means of data connection sharing, users may influence the pricing schemes of mobile network operators, increase spectrum utilization and build their own cooperative network. We define the mobile tethering game and investigate what makes the cooperation work and what are the economic requirements for building a cooperative network. The mobile tethering game may pave the way for a new business model where users not only get Internet connection service but also sell it in a mobile fashion. Using the results of the conjoint analysis integrated with the game theoretic model and the smart-phone application, the thesis will present a clear picture as to the interactions among players of the mobile tethering game and the influential preference factors. We are interested in figuring out whether people might be willing to share their connection for incentives (money or virtual currency) or whether they are just expecting to receive the same treatment (service) in a future interaction.

During the last ten months, we have designed and developed a game for the Microsoft Imagine Cup. This game, built on the Cannibal Engine, was to revolve around the Millennium Development Goals. The obvious goal was to win the Imagine Cup, or at least to get as far as we could possibly can. Our team consisted of three programmers with little to no game design experience, and in the last couple of months a 3D artist helped us with creating the models of the game. In the end, we did not win, nor even made it to the finals, but we were still an experience richer. The design of the game did not go as quickly and as smoothly as expected, but in the end we came up with a design everyone was happy with. It would be a game that did not incorporate the Imagine Cup theme as explicitly as most other entries of the year before, but still would convey the message of the Millennium Development Goals. Set on a distant planet, we also gave ourselves some artistic freedom with the character design, which was necessary because we did not have an artist yet. The main gameplay element of the game would be the ability to travel back in time, whenever for however long you wanted. In the end the mechanic became limited in its use by an energy meter that depletes when you went back in time, and by a five-minute limit of the time you can go back in time. Implementation-wise this mechanic proved to be quite a challenge, especially in combination with an adventure-puzzle-platform game with enemies and other moving and changeable objects. However, with three programmers working almost full-time on it, any problems that arose were dealt with. Having three programmers also meant a sound and solid structure, except when the deadline nears, which is when anything goes, as long as it works. This did not have to happen very often, however. Near the end of the development process, we got the Cannibal Composer from Cannibal Game Studios, to go with their Engine. Using this Composer the world was created, story elements and puzzles were added to the world, and all just in time for the deadline of round 2. Or rather a trifle too late, since the end result could have been that much better, even with just a few hours more. All in all this has been a hard, but challenging and rewarding Bachelor Project, and none of us have regretted our choice of doing this.

What if you mix (indoor) gaming with outdoor play? Nowadays children spend much more time indoor instead of outside, playing with friends. Outdoor play is good for both physical as mental development of children, and this problem was the foundation of this design project. Two years ago the idea was risen by Auke Ferwerda to develop an outdoor game console, which in the end has led to ten working models. These products however were mainly developed to obtain functioning prototypes, without having to invest in mass production. The current product is a shoulder band that contains positioning technique, for which four external antennas are needed. The feasibility was leading in this design process, not the user. For this reason a new design track was started with focus on the end user, and that is what this graduation report is about. The assignment was to design a new outdoor game console, which invokes an outdoor game experience that is fun and appealing for children of the age 8-12, and is more physical active than playing indoors. Children should all have their own device to create personal feedback, to be differentiating from the current competition. The end product should be used in the existing neighbourhoods of the Netherlands. It should be possible to play many various games with the designed product, to address a broad target group and to make sure the console remains interesting over time. The to be designed experience will be a mix of the world of gaming as well of outdoor play. A design process was chosen that is based on designing a new experience. When you want design an experience it is important to know the user and its context. For that reason the ViP method was partly used, to research the context and to generate visions about how the product should interact with the user. Together with more conventional idea generation techniques, this resulted in four and ultimately one final concept. A large part of the design project was spend on the research; literature research as well as user research. Many hours of observations were carried out at a primary school, combined with in-depth interviews, creative sessions and play sessions. The goal of this qualitative research was to discover how children nowadays experience outdoor play and gaming; what makes it fun, what are the needs. A good understanding was gained about the context of the user, and the following interaction visions were stated: - encourage - simple - ‘cool’ - trustful - free - Analyses of the context eventually led to more concrete design directions like: the console should offer more complexity and depth than current outdoor games, it should trigger the fantasy and creativity of the children, it should not hinder social communication and should help to find playmates in the neighbourhood. After a long design track, with much focus on the appearance of the product, the communication of game signals and of course the introductory game, the final concept came into life. The end product is a handheld product named the ‘Blop’ and is a stick that communicates through a ring of LED light, sound and vibration. You can operate the stick with three buttons and a turning wheel for changing settings for example. The main operation of this device is however is done by making gestures with it. The final shape has been developed with feedback of the children. They seem to like organic shapes the most. The result is that the Blop has an organic design with an own identity, playful but mature enough to be considered as a console. The two buttons that are located at thumb and index finger are easy and fast to operate. The top button indicates that there is no need for delicate handling - just hit the top and start playing! The Blop has a soft ring to protect it from impact and the bottom has a soft and round shape as well. The organic body fits comfortably in a child hand, and can be firmly held in the fist while running around. To protect the Blop even more a strap is enclosed as well. There was chosen for a handheld product because the feedback of light, sound and vibration is well communicated this way. It encourages to interact with it, and gives the possibility to use gestures as an input. Besides, a stick can be many things in a child’s imagination - a sword, gun, racket, whip, paddle... you name it! The home station of the Blop is not only for charging the device, but is mainly the gate for connecting easily with your friends. The home station is provided with Internet access, so it will connect through your online profile with your friends. Once you arrive home, you press the main button while its in the station. The home station will check if your friends are home. If they are, your blop will light up and start making noises! You can call them over VoIP, or summon him to play through the blop. The game that will be sold together with the blop is an adventure game. First the children will adapt their avatar in front of the PC, and choose skills and powers - this will help them get through the mini challenges that wait ahead. Once they start playing, the children will have to move from home to home (plastic discs) and complete several mini-challenges to reach the secret treasure. At every home you can collect a star (a light that lids up), and if you’ve collected enough stars you can win the level! If you meet your friends at a home you can battle them or cooperate to win extra stars or even a secret key... Are you ready to row, fight, swim and puzzle your way through the levels??

Analysis of the high-low search game for a point on an interval. By limiting the number of guesses for the searcher, it is possible to study the game numerically. The principal motivation for this analysis is an old and open question due to Baston, Bostock and Alpern: is the optimal strategy for the searcher pure? The answer is no if the number of guesses is 3.

This project describes the development of a handheld, stand-alone game for a target group of people between 12 and 28 years of age. The product contains games that are based on movement of the arm and reactive power of the user. The product is designed to stimulate physical activity in a playful way. Such a product has an innovative character which design agency ‘Pilots Product Design’ can use to expand its portfolio. The game functions by measuring movements of the player, to compare with predefined data, to give feedback on correct or incorrect execution of the game commando. Comparison of the player’s movement with predefined data is done by the ‘pattern recognition’ principle. To design the described product, a design approach is used consisting out of an analysis-, synthesis,- simulation- and evaluation phase. The purpose of the analysis was to explore the project’s topic as well as to create ‘design guidelines’ to direct the rest of the design process. The synthesis phase contains ideas which, after evaluation, have led to three game concepts. One of these concepts has led to the previously described product. During simulation and evaluation, all aspects of the game have been elaborated on and a proof of principle has been conducted. All predefined criteria, in combination with the information out of the synthesis and simulation, have led to one final product design.

Developing a new bridge championship table and exploring the world of the card game contract bridge. An analysis of the present used table, the surroundings of the product and the users is done to find problems and possible improvements that can be done. Resulting in a redesigned innovative championship table.

Sasér is an educative board game to explain what Smart Grids are and how the exploitation of renewable resources for electricity production they allow will impact consumers' behavior in private households.