Serious Games

1
Serious Games Game DesignLecture 1 Intro
Game Engines

• Jay Crossler
• Senior Software Engineer
• www.crossler.com

2
Serious Games Highlights

• Related Knowledge Zones (Informal KM categories)
• Modeling and Simulation
• Education Training
• Training Technologies
• Computing Methodologies
• Military Programs Operations
• Military Simulation
• Systems Engineering
• Human Factors Engineering

3
Serious Games
Serious Games Initiative is focused on the uses
of games in exploring management and leadership
challenges facing the public sector use of games
in education, training, health, and public
policy Seriousgames.org
6.5 million registered users

• MMOG - Massively multiplayer online games
• 1000s of players simultaneously connecting
• (supported by 1000s of self-transforming machine
  elves)
• Sharing actions and state millions of objects
• In persistent worlds

Ultima Online 1997 Origin Systems
4
Ludology social science analysis of games
5
Higher Education is supporting Ludology
6
Overcoming Negative Social Stigma
Excerpt from Raph Kosters Theory of Fun book
7
Related Areas Virtual Economies
8
CMU PeaceMaker - www.peacemakergame.com

• Simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment
  Technology Center
• Aimed at conflict resolution and understanding
• Play as either the prime minister of Israel or
  The Palestinian president

9
National Institute of Health games

• Nanoswarm Invasion from Inner Space
• Escape from Diab (www.ArchimageOnline.com)
• Collaborated with the Children's Nutritional
  Research Center of Baylor College of Medicine
• Help prevent childhood obesity and Type II
  diabetes
• "We want to get into kids' heads. Games are a
  channel that reaches children in a way they want
  to be reached,
• Players can learn through actual experience as
  we deliver positive messages,"
• To successfully play the game, players must set
  and achieve real life diet and exercise goals.

10
Game Engines
11
Game Engines
Cost ranges from open source (CrystalSpace) to
100K (Unreal Engine)

• 3D graphics tools
• Physics engine
• Audio
• Animation
• Character AI

Visual3D Architect .NET Screenshot RealmWare
Corporation

• Typically tailored to a particular kind of game
• first person shooter (FPS)
• massively multiplayer online role-playing game
  (MMORPG)
• A few game engines include facial animation
  toolkits (e.g. Source Engine)

12
Torque and Microsoft XNA
13
Current Microsoft SDK Beliefs

• Visually stunning titles
• Half Life 2, Halo 2, Far Cry, Doom 3
• Largest worlds
• Most detailed levels of realism
• Not just graphics AI, physics, animation
• Longest development times
• Extensions
• Maya
• Max
• Photoshop
• Windows Shell
• Xbox 360/DirectX 10 Integration
• Increasing geometric detail
• 2K ? 5K ? 15Ktriangles/character
• More silhouette
• More shadow detail

Offload common functions to the GPU
Variable Transparency Mapping
Tessellation Displacement
Unsorted Transparency
14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
Game Engine List

• Engines
• Torque Low cost set of engines (2D, 3D,
  3DShaders), large dev community
• 3D Game Studio Hundreds of games, C-script,
  many libraries of pre-made games
• OGRE Scene-oriented, 3D engine, open source,
  Basic Physics
• Crystal Space Used for Modeling and Simulation,
  Physics engine, True 6DOF
• Many others at http//www.devmaster.net/engines/
• Terrain Tools
• L3DT Plugable Terrain Generation engine, low
  cost, importing into Torque
• Terragen 2 Amazing photorealistic terrains and
  terrain imagery More real than real
• Mod tools
• Return to Castle Wofenstein / Enemy Territory -
  Based upon an older version of the Quake engine. 
  
• Quake III - One of the most heavily modified
  games ever.  id has announced they will make the
  game code open source. 
• Counter Strike - A great starting point for
  tactical law enforcement sims and FPS
• Counter Strike Source - A rebuild of the
  original but to use the Source engine. Despite
  using the Source engine, you can "dial down" the
  graphics and effects to make this run on a more
  modest PC 

17
Game Engine List

• More Mod tools
• Call of Duty - COD2 added a smarter AI.  Tool
  support is really just for the map editor and not
  really for the program logic.
• Unreal Run-time - This is free and can be
  downloaded from the Unreal Dev site.  Very well
  documented - UT/editor documentation can be
  applied pretty easily as well.
• Medal of Honor franchise - Based on the older
  Quake engine so modest resource requirements.
• Halo (PC) Works on a very large number of
  machines and not just to the hardware extreme. 
  You can only make levels for an add-in
  multiplayer environment.
• Empire Earth II - An RTS favorite. Much more
  modest graphics and physics than Empire Earth
  III. Has a map tool but no way to re-write the
  application logic. 
• Rise of Nations - Comes with a map editor and a
  script editor for editing the logic of the game. 
  The scripting environment is specific to this
  platform but uses an event-driven paradigm that
  is widely used elsewhere - conceptual you get
  some mileage out of that investment.  You can
  create scenarios that are modern - good for
  simulations.
• Warhammer 40,000 -  The game as a very good RTS
  engine in it and Relic clearly knows its stuff in
  this genre.  The Relic developer site looks
  informative and has lots of tutorial and
  map-making information. 
• NeverWinter Nights - Used for several studies or
  experiments discussed in journal articles from
  the IEEE, ACM, etc. If you buy the DVD version
  you get lots of product for your money. Tools are
  easy enough for school kids to use.