DESC 9180 Designing Virtual Worlds

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DESC 9180 Designing Virtual Worlds

• Coordinator Prof. Mary Lou Maher
• Kathryn Merrick
• Owen Macindoe
• Course website http//www.cs.usyd.edu.au/kkas068
  6/teaching.html

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About the Lecturers
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Outline of Todays Lecture

• Administrative information
• Lecture plan
• Introduction to designing virtual worlds
• What is this course about?
• Basic concepts

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Administrative Information

• Course website (slides, tutorials, readings)
• http//www.cs.usyd.edu.au/kkas0686/teaching.htm
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• Consultation times
• Tuesday 500 545pm
• PhD and Visiting Scholars Office on Mezzanine
  Floor
• E-mail kathryn_at_arch.usyd.edu.au
• omacindoe_at_gmail.com

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Lectures Studio, Room 313

• Lecture 6-7pm, Tuesdays
• Lecture
• Discussion of assigned reading materials
• Studio 7-9pm Tuesdays
• Tutorials
• Individual exercises
• Design project development

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General Information

• Lectures notes available on the webpage
• Readings available as PDFs or books from the
  Architecture library (reserve section)
• Discussions sessions will be related to readings
  announced the previous week

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Lecture Plan (Owen)
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Lecture Plan (Kathryn)
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Course Topics

• What are virtual worlds?
• What are the basic elements of virtual
  experience?
• What are the basic design elements?

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Course Topics

• Sense of place presence
• Virtual world styles and metaphors
• Virtual world applications
• Scientific visualisation, game technology, CAD,
  entertainment, and more
• Virtual worlds research
• HCI, agents, intelligent environments, sociology
• Game design

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Graphical Virtual Worlds

• Active Worlds www.activeworlds.com
• Second Life www.secondlife.com
• Moove Online, IMVU, vMTV, and numerous MMOGs.

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Game-Focused Worlds
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Socially-Focused Worlds
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Assessment Overview

• Task 1 Impossible places(individual)
• 15 Design and implementation
• 10 Report
• 5 Presentation
• Task 2 You versus the world (group)
• 25 Design and implementation
• 10 Group report
• 10 Group planning (individual mark)
• 5 Presentation
• Paper review (10)
• Tutorial participation (10)

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Tutorial Participation

• Attend tutorials!
• http//www.arch.usyd.edu.au/documents/latesub-att
  endance.pdf
• Ask questions!
• Complete the tutorial exercises
• Be active in critiques

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Design Project 1 (Individual)

• Design and implement an impossible social space
  in Second Life
• One or more areas for communicating with others,
  either casually or formally
• Each student will need to purchase their own
  land, which will be reused for the group
  assignment

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Design Project 1 (Individual)

• Informal critiques on August 21st, 7pm
• Final design due on August 28th, 6pm with
• Report discussing your design
• Short presentation summarising design
• The assessment criteria include
• Establishment of a sense of the spaces function
• Consideration of Second Life interaction norms
• Effective use of building primitives
• Presence of elements that accentuate the designs
  virtual nature
• Quality and consistency of the design

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Design Project 2 (Group)

• You versus the World! Design and implement a
  game in Second Life in which the environment is
  the primary antagonist
• The design brief is to create a dynamic game
  environment that presents challenges for players
  to overcome
• The design must make use of the interactive
  elements in Second Life (scripting in LSL)

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Design Project 2 (Group)

• Informal critiques on October 16th, 7pm
• Final design is due on October 23rd, 6pm
• Report discussing your group design
• Group process mark
• Presentation and demonstration
• The assessment criteria include
• Establishment of a sense place and consistency
• Demonstrated use of simple scripted behaviours
• Demonstrated use of agent technology
• Demonstrated use of advanced building techniques
• Exposition of a plot line

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Paper Reviews and Discussion

• Choose a paper from the virtual worlds literature
  and present it in front of the class (September
  2nd, 6pm)
• You will have 8 minutes of presentation time and
  2 minutes of question time
• You will also be asking questions of two
  classmates
• Your questions will count towards your tutorial
  participation mark

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University Policies

• Late submission
• http//www.arch.usyd.edu.au/CS/postgrad/late_subm
  it.shtml
• Plagiarism
• http//www.arch.usyd.edu.au/CS/postgrad/plagiaris
  m.shtml

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Questions?
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What is Cyberspace?

• A consensual hallucination experienced daily by
  billions of legitimate operators, in every
  nation, by children being taught mathematical
  concepts... A graphic representation of data
  abstracted from banks of every computer in the
  human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of
  light ranged in the nonspace of the mind,
  clusters and constellations of data. Like city
  lights, receding.
• William Gibson, Neuromancer
• Cyberspace is the "place" where a telephone
  conversation appears to occur. Not inside your
  actual phone, the plastic device on your desk.
  The place between the phones. The indefinite
  place out there, where the two of you, two human
  beings, actually meet and communicate.
• Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown
• The Internet is only one part

Cyberspace in popular culture Neos view of The
Matrix
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Metaphors for the Internet

• The metaphor we use for the Internet influences
  how we think about and relate to it (Stefik,
  2006)
• Information Superhighway (Traveller)
• Digital Library (Keeper of Knowledge)
• Electronic Mail (Messenger)
• Electronic Marketplace (Trader)
• Digital World (Adventurer)

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Definition Virtual

• Being in essence or effect, but not in fact.
• (Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary
  1989)

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Definitions World

• An environment that its inhabitants regard as
  being self-contained.

(Richard Bartle, Designing Virtual Worlds)
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Virtual Reality Virtual Worlds

• Textual Worlds
• Graphical Worlds
• Fishtank VR
• Projection VR
• Head-based VR
• Hand-held VR

(Sherman, Understanding Virtual Reality)
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In Next Weeks Lecture

• Introduction to virtual worlds
• Historical overview of virtual worlds
• Key elements of virtual experience
• Interface of virtual worlds
• Design metaphors
• Review of current virtual world examples

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In Todays Tutorial

• Fill in the skill-set survey
• If you have an ARCH account
• Set up a Second Life account
• Login to Second Life
• Visit the course website
• Read the Curtis paper on the course web site for
  discussion next week

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Bibliography

• Bartle, R.A. (2003) Designing Virtual Worlds,
  New Riders, Indianapolis
• Gibson, W. (1984) Neuromancer, Ace Books, New
  York
• Sherman, W.R. and Craig, A.B. (2003)
  Understanding Virtual Reality, Morgan Kaufmann,
  Boston
• Stefik, M. (1997) Internet Dreams Archetypes,
  Myths, and Metaphors, MIT Press, Boston
• Sterling, B. (1992) The Hacker Crackdown Law and
  Disorder on the Electronic Frontier,
  http//www.gutenberg.org/etext/101