Serious video games applied for learning purposes play a significant and important role for the modern technology enhanced education. The paper presents an educational 3D maze video game dedicated to the development of carpet fabrication in Bulgaria since 17th century until modern days. The game was automatically generated by means of declarative description of the maze pro-cessed by an open software tool named Maze Builder and built on top of Unity game platform and specially designed for automatic generation and easy modifi-cation of maze video games. There are explained the maze game design process, the educational tasks embedded into the maze, and a practical experiment con-ducted with the generated game. The initial results obtained from these experi-ments are very positive and encouraging with regard of playability of such edu-cational mazes and, as well, concerning their easy and straightforward generation by educators, who are not IT professionals.
80 ĐỀ THI THỬ TUYỂN SINH TIẾNG ANH VÀO 10 SỞ GD – ĐT THÀNH PHỐ HỒ CHÍ MINH NĂ...
Generation of Educational 3D Maze Games for Carpet Handicraft in Bulgaria
1. Generation of
Educational 3D Maze Games
for Carpet Handicraft in Bulgaria
(invited talk given at 9.IX.2017)
Boyan Bontchev with Radina Panayotova
Department of Software Engineering
Fac. of Math. and Informatics,
Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria
DIPP'2017September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria
Audio record is available at
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx4W_
8u_HGFDTnpveEVMcXpYRWs
2. AGENDA
Introduction
Types of computer video games
Serious games for cultural heritage
Problems with serious games
Need of open/free platforms for game construction
The MAZE BUILDER platform for game generation
A generated video game for carpet handicraft in
Bulgaria
Case study results
Conclusions
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 2DIPP'2017
4. BUT WHAT IS A GAME?
AND WHERE ARE THE GAMES?
I found the answer
when I was a little boy…
… together with my friends,
while playing in the street
… a war game!
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 4DIPP'2017
5. GAMES ARE “AT EVERY MILESTONE”
(FOUND THANKS TO BALKANTON, 9.IX.1970)
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 5DIPP'2017
A game is a type of play activity,
conducted in the context of a pretended reality,
in which the participant(s) try to achieve
at least one arbitrary, non-trivial goal
by acting in accordance with rules.
(Source: Adams, E. Fundamentals of Game Design, 2010)
6. COMPUTER GAMES AS A NEW MEDIA
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 6DIPP'2017
Credits:
Hitbox Team
8. For 2017, see at at
http://www.techradar.com/news/best-games-
2017:
the best Xbox One games
the best PS4 (Sony PlayStation 4) games
the best Nintendo 3DS games
the best PC games
the best indie games
a video game created without the financial support of a
publisher;
rely on:
Innovation
digital distribution.
the best iPhone games
the best Android games
ENTERTAINMENT GAMES
8
DIPP'2017 September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria
9. September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria9
SERIOUS GAMES (SG)
Digital interactive applications that allow users to make
specific experiences that promote active and experiential paths
of learning in various domain of human existence,
through virtual/augmented simulations
through ludic and playing formats
“A serious game or applied game is a game designed for a
primary purpose other than pure entertainment” (Abt, 1970)
“A serious game is a digital game in which education is the
primary goal, rather than entertainment” (Micheal & Chen, 2006)
SG enable self-controlled, active and playfully learning
9
DIPP'2017
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 5DIPP'2017
10. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENTERTAINMENT
GAMES AND SG
Criterion
Games
Serious games
Entertainment
games
Task vs. rich
experience
Problem solving in focus
Rich experiences
preferred
Focus
Important elements of
learning
To have fun
Simulations
Assumptions necessary
for workable simulations
Simplified simulation
processes
Communication
Should reflect natural
(non-perfect)
communication
Communication is often
perfect
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 10DIPP'2017
Source: Susi, Johannesson and Backlund, 2007.
11. VIDEO GAMES FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE
All video games do always reflect somehow human
culture because they are "objects produced and played
within culture at large", however, "not all games
manifest transformative cultural play to actually
transform culture“ (source: Salen and Zimmerman,
2007)
Unlike other traditional media, video games are
capable to make deeper our understanding and
feelings of cultural heritage (both tangible and
intangible) in a very interactive and immersive way
(source: Bontchev, 2015)
September 9, Burgas, BulgariaDIPP'2017 11
12. TYPES OF VIDEO GAMES FOR CULTURAL
HERITAGE
1. Entertainment documentary games
2. 3D role-playing adventure games
3. Interactive virtual museums
4. Prototypes and demonstrators
5. Social tagging and knowledge acquisition SG
(Bontchev, DIPP’2015)
September 9, Burgas, BulgariaDIPP'2017 12
13. TYPE 1. ENTERTAINMENT DOCUMENTARY GAMES
‘History Line: 1914-1918’ (Blue Byte, 1992)
‘Great Battles of Rome’ (Slitherine Strategies, 2007)
‘Napoleon: Total War’ (Creative Assembly, 2010)
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14. TYPE 2. 3D ROLE-PLAYING ADVENTURE GAMES
‘Red Dead Redemption’ (Rockstar San Diego, 2010)
‘Assassin’s Creed II’ (Ubisoft Montreal, 2009)
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 14DIPP'2017
15. TYPE 3. INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL MUSEUMS
use gaming technology for both entertaining and
educating visitors usually by incorporating some
exploration and reassembling tasks and quizzes
examples - ‘Virtual Egyptian Temple’, ‘Olympic
Pottery Puzzle’, ‘Walk through Ancient Olympia’
and ‘ThIATRO’
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 15DIPP'2017
(Froschauer et al,
Design and Evaluation
of ThIATRO, 2012)
16. TYPE 4. PROTOTYPES AND DEMONSTRATORS
games based on 3D virtual reconstruction 3D and geo-
referenced modeling of ancient historical sites
provide not only realistic archaeological exploration with
historical accuracy but also political, religious and artistic
walkthrough with crowd restauration of ancient
characters with procedurally generated NPC
examples - ‘Pompei: The Legend of Vesuvius’
edutainment SG and ‘Roma Nova’ brain-controlled SG
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 16DIPP'2017
17. TYPE 5. SOCIAL TAGGING AND KNOWLEDGE
ACQUISITION SG
SG for encouraging players to submit accurate
information about cultural artifacts embedded into
the games for further knowledge verification and
mining
Examples - ‘One-Up’ is a multi-round mobile
crowdsourcing metadata tagging game fostering
players to propose high-quality metadata and
rewarding them based on metadata (Flanagan et
al, 2013)
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 17DIPP'2017
18. SERIOUS PROBLEMS OF SERIOUS GAMES
Higher development cost
Lower attractiveness compared to entertainment
games
Transition between instructional design and actual
game design implementation - how Game Mechanics
impact and interact with the Learning Mechanics
Assessment - effectively tracking and analysing of the
right parameters related to learners’ progress
(knowledge gain, reflection and application)
How psychological theories should be used in the
design of realistic and convincing NPCs?
How different pedagogical paradigms relate to SG
and SG mechanics - reference framework needed!
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 18DIPP'2017
D1.6 GALA Roadmap 2, Nov. 2011
19. THE GREATER CHALLENGE:
Higher development cost …
and, on the other side,
… lack of enough free and customizable
platforms for automatic creation of serious
games!
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20. EXISTING PLATFORMS FOR AUTOMATIC
CREATION OF SERIOUS GAMES
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 20DIPP'2017
Criteria/
Solution Quandary Qedoc Quiz
Maker ADAPTIMES Maze Builder
Distribution Web Desktop Desktop Desktop/Web/
Mobile/Console
Type 2D 2D 3D 3D
Game platform None None None Unity 3D
Programming
language None None Python C#
Learning
resources
slides, test
questions
slides, test
questions,
learning games
slides, test
questions,
arranging
images
slides, test
questions,
arranging 3D
objects, hidden
3D objects
Customization
images,
music,
video, font
images, font,
sound effects
Textures,
rooms
Textures,
images, music
Open code No No Yes Yes
Price Free Free Licensed Free
21. OUR GOAL: TO PROVIDE A FREE AND OPEN
SOLUTION BASED ON A POPULAR GAME ENGINE
Criterion
Game Engine
Unreal
engine 4
CryEngine Ogre 3D Blender Godot Unity3d
Distribution Windows,
Linux, Mac
OS X,
Xbox One,
PlayStation
4, HTML5,
iOS and
Android
Windows,
Linux,
PlayStation 3,
PlayStation 4,
Wii U, Xbox
360, Xbox
One, iOS and
Android
Windows,
Linux,
Mac OS X
Windows,
Linux,
Mac OS
X
Windows,
OSX, Linux,
HTML5,
iOS,
Android,
BB10
Windows, OSX,
Linux, Windows
Phone, iOS,
Android,
BlackBerry 10,
Tizen, Xbox 360,
Xbox One, Wii U,
PlayStation 3/4,
PlayStation Vita,
Nintendo Switch,
WebGL
Supported
languages
C++,
Blueprints
C++, C#, Lua C++ Python C++,
GDscript
C#, JavaScrtipt
Community and
documentation
Big Big Little Big Little Very big
Price Free $9.90/month Free Free Free Free
Requirements for
developer PC
High High Low Medium Medium Medium
Graphic quality Very high Very high Medium Medium Medium High
Extensibility Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 21DIPP'2017
22. CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF THE MAZE BUILDER
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 22DIPP'2017
Unity 3D
Game Platform
Maze Builder
Custom
Package
XML Maze
Description
Game Assets
(text, images,
audio)
3D
Maze
3D Maze
Game
Read
Import
Generate
Build
Import
Arrange
4min
2weeks
5min
4days
2s
20s
4h
12min
Guess the timing
for creating a six
room maze game?
23. RESTRICTIONS TO THE MAZE CONSTRUCTION 1/2
Each node (i.e., room) can have maximum four doors
The maze connectivity graph must be planar
Cycles are possible within the maze graph
A par of incoming and outgoing doors is shown as a
lack of door
Each door can be unlocked by correct answering a
question
Each question may have text and raster graphic
Walls have maximum one door per wall
Walls have maximum two slides per wall
Each slide may have text and/or raster graphic in
JPG, PNG, TIFF or BMP format
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 23DIPP'2017
24. RESTRICTIONS TO THE MAZE CONSTRUCTION 2/2
Each room can have a game with balls, circles
and/or rings (explained further in the thesis)
Each room can have zero or N hidden objects.
Each room can have textures for the walls,
ceiling and the floor
Each room can have no more than one map laid
over the floor
Each room can have no more than one audio
file for playing while the player is inside it (one
or in repeating mode)
The maze should have one starting room
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 24DIPP'2017
25. MAZE BUIDER DATA MODEL
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 25DIPP'2017
26. BASIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MAZE BUILDER
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 26DIPP'2017
Prefabs
Labyrinth
class
MazeBuilder
class
Deserialize XML
Return Labyrinth
object
Room HiddenObject
BallBoard
CircleBoard
TorusBoard
GameManager
GlobalGameManagerOpen scene
Instantiate
prefabs
Set properties,
Position in 3D space
27. IMPORTING THE MAZE BUILDER PACKAGE IN
UNITY
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28. AFTER THE IMPORT: CUSTOM PANEL OF THE
MAZE BUILDER PLATFORM IN THE UNITY EDITOR
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29. A SAMPLE XML MAZE DESCRIPTION
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30. THE MAZE IS GENERATED JUST AFTER THE XML
IMPORT
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31. PERFORMANCE
The performance testing of the Maze Builder was
performed on a developer laptop with Windows 10:
Importing of Maze Builder unity package – 4 minutes
Importing of 4 audio files with total volume 28MB -
176 seconds
Importing of 86 images with total volume of 212MB –
65 seconds
Importing of a XML document describing a 6 room
maze and generation of the maze - 12 seconds
Building a desktop standalone (executable) – 3
minutes 20 sec
Building a WebGL game distribution - 12 minutes
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 31DIPP'2017
32. CASE STUDY: Educational 3D Maze Games
for Carpet Handicraft in Bulgaria
Target: vocational training and education in Bulgarian
ethnography.
Focus: the game is dedicated to the fabrication of carpets in
Bulgaria since 17th century to the present times.
Maze connectivity graph: six rooms interconnected by doors
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 32DIPP'2017
RoomCenter
Intro
RoomNorthWest
Tciprovtzi - 2
RoomWest
Tciprovtzi - 1
RoomEast
Kotel - 1
RoomNorth
Sliven
RoomNorthEast
Kotel 2DoorE
DoorE
DoorW
DoorW
DoorS
DoorNDoorN
34. A SCREENSHOT OF THE INITIAL VIEW OF THE
GAME (THE CENTRAL ROOM)
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 34DIPP'2017
35. ANSWERING THE QUESTION FOR UNLOCKING
THE DOOR TO THE WEST ROOM
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 35DIPP'2017
36. ROLLING A BALL TO THE LOCATION OF THE
TOWN OF TSIPROVTCI
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 36DIPP'2017
37. A GAME TASK FOR ROLLING THREE BALLS (RIGHT) TO THEIR
CORRESPONDENT RINGS (LEFT), WITH A SEMITRANSPARENT
HIDDEN OBJECT HANGING FROM THE TOP
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 37DIPP'2017
38. PRACTICAL EXPERIMENT
WITH TWO GROUPS OF USERS
Educators - passed though a demonstration of generation of
a maze game and arrangements of didactic objects
embedded into it and watched a video about the maze
creational process. Next, they filled in a questionnaire about
platform usability and game playability
Students – learners through the generated serious game
available online at http://adaptimes.eu/carpetgame/ and who
played the game
either online by a Firefox browser with Unity Web Player Plugin
installed from https://unity3d.com/webplayer,
or offline by downloading the desktop version of the game from
this Web page.
Next, they filled in a questionnaire about game playability
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 38DIPP'2017
39. VIEW OF THE WEB PAGE WITH THE GENERATED
GAME (HTTP://ADAPTIMES.EU/CARPETGAME/)
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 39DIPP'2017
40. VIDEOS
A video about the maze creational process
available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IBqYooK
wQg (2:39 min.)
A video containing a demonstration of a
game session with the generated game is
available at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLH4F6g
q9Gs (3:21 min.)
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 40DIPP'2017
41. RESULTS FOR THE QUESTION “DO YOU THINK THAT
EDUCATIONAL VIDEO MAZE GAMES ARE AN EFFECTIVE TOOL
FACILITATING EDUCATION?”
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 41DIPP'2017
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
definitely no more likely no I can't say more likely yes definitely yes
42. RESULTS FOR “THE IDEA TO USE TEXT IN XML FORMAT FOR
DESCRIBING VIDEO MAZE GAMES IS VERY GOOD AND HAS FUTURE”
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 42DIPP'2017
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
definitely no more likely no I can't say more likely yes definitely yes
43. RESULTS FOR “THE UTILIZED LEARNING TASKS, ANSWERING
TEST QUESTIONS FOR UNLOCKING DOORS AND FINDING HIDDEN
OBJECTS, ARE VERY APPROPRIATE FOR EDUCATIONAL GAMES”
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 43DIPP'2017
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
definitely no more likely no I can't say more likely yes definitely yes
44. RESULTS FOR THE QUESTION “THE TIME SPENT ON GAME AND
AMUSEMENT OBTAINED IS GREAT”
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 44DIPP'2017
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
definitely no more likely no I can't say more likely yes definitely yes
45. CURRENT AND FUTURE WORKS
New extensions of the platform:
JavaScrips for controlling texts over pictures
Other embedded mini-games – e.g. a puzzle game for unlocking a
door
More prefab objects – e.g torches instead lamps, stony doors instead
wooden doors, etc.
More than one question for unlocking a door
Text decorations specified in the XML document
Collecting hidden objects and placing them on specific places
Sounds for events like unlock/open/close a door, find a hidden
object, etc.
Interactive map showing the current player location in the maze
More …?
Other application of the ball games – e.g. a game ordering the
balls in a line
Using the platform for other case studies, with greater number of
participants
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 45DIPP'2017
46. CONCLUSIONS
The market space of both entertainment and
applied video games entertainment games and
applied will continue to grow in next years
The impact of serious video games will be higher
thanks to their synergy of story, art and
technological achievements including affective and
adaptive gameplay.
Applied maze games for cultural heritage will be
used more and more for immersive cultural
presentation, teaching, assessment and training
Open and free gaming platforms will be a must
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 46DIPP'2017
47. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
Questions?
Proposals!
Remarks…
Doubts
Congrats
Donations$
Sth else®
Boyan Bontchev, bbontchev@fmi.uni-sofia.bg
September 9, Burgas, Bulgaria 47DIPP'2017