University of Ulster Creative Computing @ Coleraine Research Group

Amazing augment reality video

2009-03-03T10:41:00.003Z

Can be found here.

Group news

2009-03-02T14:26:00.002Z

Richard Paul, the newest member of our game group at UUC, successful negotiated his 100 day review in December (we must get his project profile up here) and is now working towards his transfer to PhD in the summer. Ben and Leo are in the last breaths of the sprint to write up their thesis' while Chris and James are right in the midst of the experimental fog which makes up 2nd year. James has just started his "real person" trials with his games for rehab software. Therese is beginning her thesis write-up - finished the abstract and now on to the first line of the introduction (to be precise!). Much more going on and perhaps other members of the group will post some other news soon ;-)

I have been working on my on site a it and have some new CFPs posted there today: http://play2learn2play.com/

Screw Guitar Hero!

2008-10-15T15:52:00.003+01:00

Taking back the game space invasion of the Kingdoms of Rock, here's a guy who had the brain wave of strapping his WiiMote to his axe. Now we just need a 'mote on a violin bow, and the Nintendo age Zeppelin can be born.

IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games

2008-10-13T09:32:00.002+01:00

Just recieved this call for papers.
IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games

Since the dawn of computing, games have posed
fascinating challenges for AI and machine learning research.
In recent years there has been increasing interest in this
field, both in traditional games such as Go, and also in
video games, where more convincing AI is a priority for
next generation games. As the physics models in games
become ever more realistic, they also offer a convenient
testing ground for many types of robotics research.

This increased interest is reflected by the new conferences
in the area (e.g. IEEE CIG, and AIIDE), together with
workshops, special sessions and tutorials at major neural
network and machine learning conferences (e.g. NIPS, ICML, WCCI, PPSN).

There is now an important new journal to provide a focus for
archival quality research in the area:

IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games
http://ieee-cis.org/pubs/tciaig/

The journal is now open for submissions, with the first issue
due to be published in March 2009.

Brain-waves controlled games - I could be wrong

2008-10-09T19:03:00.002+01:00

It seems that I have to take brain controlled games more seriously. Square Enix are experimenting with a game using one sensor that can be used to find out if a player is concentrating or relaxed presumably so the game can know when to go BOO!! and scare the player at just the right moment.

Article here.

Negative myths about games debunked

2008-10-08T15:51:00.002+01:00

This is an excellent article from (Henry Jenkins - MIT) - even if I only say that because it supports my own experience and instinct (plus bias!). Games do not (by-in-large) cause violent behaviour (except in play), I don't have to be a young male to play them, and they don't desensitise me.
So, I'm off home to not kick the dog and listen to my wife's woes as I play WoW as my ususual female wood-elf (like) character and I try to exterminate tons of wild animals (online of course).

Got any great self-portraits?

2008-10-08T12:15:00.002+01:00

If you want your ugly mug published in a games book, that is. Jesper Juul is looking for a few good gamers to feature in his book.
Knowing there are amateur photographers and ardent gamers on this blog, it's worth a post.

http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/?p=479

Brain-computer interface

2008-09-29T21:52:00.002+01:00

I came across this when I was checking if my CNN phone interview came to anything.

http://cnn.tv/2008/TECH/science/09/08/Futureofgaming/index.html

It seems I was quoted (if you look carefully), though I don't remember saying those exact words :-) When will I learn not to talk to the press. Interesting technology but I'm not sure it would have much to offer as a "brain controller".

iPhone is the key to a "virtual goldmine".

2008-09-20T15:32:00.002+01:00

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/indie-developer.html

"The iPhone is a revolutionary handset. But it is also the key to a virtual gold mine -- the iTunes App Store, where independent developers can become multimillionaires in just a year."

The iPhone definitely appears to be an extremely viable platform for commercial indie development. I find myself constantly checking the app store on a daily basis to see what new useful or stupidly fun applications have been released, and have no hesitation in buying applications (a lot of which cost a mere 59p). With thousands of people round the world doing the same thing, its not hard to see how these small priced apps can rake in the money for indie developers.

The iPhone SDK costs $99 to license and requires an Apple Mac to develop on. So... Who wants to buy me a mac? I'll pay you back once I've made my millions, I promise?

Can lecturers work in the real world?

2008-09-18T20:10:00.002+01:00

Do they want to? :-)

Seriously though, congratulations to my old mate Stephen Mcglinchey who has just got a job with Eurocom as a core graphics programmer - http://www.eurocom.co.uk/. All he needed to do was get a good degree in Computing, complete a PhD in neural networks, lecture for around seven years in game development, and develop a skill in PS2 low level programming!

Lecturers can work in the real world :-) and its possible for PhD students to get a job in the games industry if they really want to.

New personal websites

2008-09-01T17:40:00.004+01:00

Its been a while since I've had a personal website on the net - I've been busy :-) But, I've finally got round to doing something about that and I now have two personal work related websites!

http://www.darrylcharles.com will act as a kind of online business card and will hold details on my current work.

I will maintain http://play2learn2play.com/ as my blog site and this will hold more topical information on serious games and game AI research.

Not much on these sites yet, but I'm only getting started.

Darryl

Fancy flash technique for textures

2008-08-29T15:00:00.002+01:00

This is a really neat idea:

Students confirmed as PhD students

2008-06-18T15:47:00.002+01:00

Congratulations to James and Chris who were confirmed as PhD students yesterday. Now for the real hard work and the black hole that is the 2nd year of a PhD :-)

Anyone going to Paris in the summer?

2008-05-27T21:12:00.001+01:00

Interesting Game AI workshop:

http://aigamedev.com/events/paris

The State of Indie Gaming

2008-05-01T11:44:00.002+01:00

Gamasutra have published a nice in-depth article about the current state of indie gaming, defining an indie game as:

"...above all trying to innovate and provide a new experience for the player. It is not just filling a publisher's portfolio need. It has not been invented at a marketing department. And it has not been designed by a committee".

Read the full article here.

Game Over: Learning by Dying

2008-04-28T11:03:00.003+01:00

"Because no one can save the universe..."

As I'm currently embarking on my literature review, I've been blazing through various conference and journal papers regarding different aspects of my PhD. Last night I came across a very enjoyable paper entitled "Game Over: Learning by Dying", by Dimitri Grammenos, from the CHI 2008 proceedings. The paper presents "the world's first universally inaccessible game (i.e. a game that can be played by no one)" and is intended as an educational tool for emphasising the importance of adhering to game design rules when designing and developing a game.

The game is designed around a reversal of the stereotypical Space Invaders scenario, whereby you assume the role of an alien at the top of the screen, defending the universe from the invaders at the bottom of the screen. Each level is designed to stress the importance of a fundamental game design guideline, with the guideline being displayed (along with some humourous quotes) at the end of each level.

The game has a very light hearted feel to it, but was evaluated by users to be a very useful educational tool for game designers. You can download the game at UA-Games and try it out for yourself. I found it to be pretty enjoyable, even though it was (not surprisingly) ridiculously unfair.

Games! Lots of Games!

2008-02-01T02:28:00.000Z

Nice list of free indie games to inspire or play.

http://gnomeslair.blogspot.com/2008/01/100-excellent-free-games-in-bloom.html

Can Games ever become Art?

2008-01-16T20:19:00.000Z

Received this synopsis of an Irish Times article recently, edited by the sender but essentially verbatim. It's not an uncommon theme for the specialist press, but as we know (and as Hegarty comments) games rarely go through the mainstream press, so I thought this worth posting. My own quick reaction follows...

by Shane Hegarty, Irish Times Weekend Review, January 12

'This column will be about computer games. Please don't turn away. I mention it only because the subject appears to be regarded by newspapers as an effective reader repellent. Millions play computer games, but it seems that few want to read about them. It is a thriving, multi-billion-euro cultural behemoth, but there are more interesting multi-billion-euro behemoths elsewhere.

...I've been playing (on) an Xbox 360...Halo 3... in which the player (in practice) must ignore the story and just shoot lots of things to survive and reach the next level. (he goes on to complain that games really haven't developed/ matured with their players; film evolution was so much more impressive - from Lumiere Bros. to Fritz Lang over a similar 35-year time-frame). 'What have games given us? Pacman, Mario, Lara Croft and Sonic the Hedgehog.

"Games boast ever richer and more realistic graphics, but this has actually inhibited their artistic growth", argued Daniel Radosh in the New York times in September, after three days of eye-blurring play with Halo3. "The ability to convincingly render any scene or environment has seduced game designers into thinking of visual features as the essence of the gaming experience". worse, he complained, the genre can't break free of another medium it has pretensions to supercede. "Many games now aspire to be 'cinematic' above all else". Not so, claimed Slate.com's gamer. Reviewing the game on the merits of its single-player campaign is like judging a deck of cards on how fun your last game of solitaire was".

He argued that a game such as Halo 3 should instead be lauded for the way in which it offers open-ended artificial environments, which the player can reshape and jump into alongside players from all over the world.

This debate is seldom picked up in a wider media that tracks every trend in music or movies, and which frets constantly over standards in each. Games are confined mainly to the business or technology pages or, pejoratively, when discussing the obesity crisis. Titles are reviewed in some publications, but not with anything like the same attention given to movies or music.

There are some obvious reasons for this. Games are predictable. For all the bluff put into the story on the back of computer game boxes, many of them actually require players to do only one thing: ignore the story and just shoot lots of things to reach the next level.

Game design is also too collaborative to throw up great individuals [my emphasis].

This week, Irish-based company Havok won and Emmy. No one seemed to be able to explain exactly what it was for. They add to the realism and interactivity of games, was the standard line, although one paper just went with, "Game Geeks Win Award".

Cinema and music offer collective experiences, while gaming is still seen as pretty anti-social. Games offer collective experiences too - with the new generation of consoles tapping into social networking - but its not the same as getting several hundred, or tens of thousands, of people in the same space to enjoy the same event.

Meanwhile, cinema has personality, unpredictability, and the possibility of a great performance. The only great performance in computer games comes from the player, and nobody else cares.

Listen to this games expert on slate-com talking about his personal highlights from 2007, and see how many syllables you get through before losing consciousness. "So there I was, minding my own business, flying my Rupture-class cruiser in a low-security star system called Klogori. All of a sudden, a Thorax blastership flown by a pilot from the then-powerful RISE alliance appears on my heads-up display...". Which reminds you that, in 35 years, the genre has yet to throw up a great critic either.

So, for the moment, this cultural giant - which increasingly influences cinema, drives technology onwards, generates huge revenue, and occupies millions of people - remains somewhat in the shadows. It seems if it still has a little way to go before it overcomes its enemies and gets to the next level'.

ENDS

shegarty@irishtimes.ie

comments to: www.ireland.com/blogs/presenttense

Shane Hegarty was pretty much on the money. The reason for it is that, up until recently anyway, games development usually attracts two types - men who are recidivist adolescents, with accompanying juvenile power fantasies (I've got my hand up :D), and money grubbing bastards.

And there are 'grown-up' games out there, but nobody's really interesting in talking about them, not even the games press {who are themselves even more useless than the developers, so much in the pockets of the big publishers}.

Calls, Calls and More Calls

2008-01-14T18:32:00.000Z

The Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence and InteractiveDigital Entertainment
October 22-24, 2008
Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA

Submissions deadlines: April 22, 2008
Extended abstracts for demonstrations due May 6, 2008
www.aiide.org

****************************************************************************

Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/si/aicg.html

****************************************************************************

Facial and Bodily Expressions for Control and Adaptation of Games (ECAG '08)http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/conference/ECAG08

****************************************************************************

Special Issue on "Game Technology for Training and Education,"
scheduled for publication on March 1, 2009.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/si/gtte.html.
The manuscript due date is September 1, 2008.

****************************************************************************

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS
Submission Deadline:January 31, 2008
Digital Sport for Performance Enhancement and Competitive Evolution: Intelligent Gaming Technologies
A book edited by Dr. Nigel K. Ll. Pope, Kerri-Ann L. Kuhn and Dr. John Forster, Griffith University, Australia

****************************************************************************

Best game of 2007

2007-12-20T00:03:00.000Z

Since its nearly Christmas we should join with all of those other sites in voting for our favourite games (you can vote for more than one game) of 2007. I can add other games if your favourite isn't here.

IFIP Entertainment Computing Symposium (ECS-2008)

2007-12-05T22:53:00.000Z

Call for Papers for the 1st IFIP Entertainment Computing Symposium, "New Frontiers for Entertainment Computing": http://cs.unibo.it/~ifip2008gamestrack/

E-learning and Games conference

2007-12-04T10:28:00.000Z

Edutainment 2008 - its in China though which could be difficult funding-wise.

Megabucks in Metaplace

2007-12-04T09:37:00.000Z

As some of you know I'm interested in Metaplace as a possible game engine for research and teaching. There is a post up on the Metaplace website today about currency. Effectively they are going to have a similar model to Second Life where you can buy Megabucks with real money and use the virtual money to create things that you may charge for - then potentially turn the virtual cash back into real pocket money.

Is it acceptable for our students to make money from their coursework (even if it's unlikely) or projects? Perhaps it's more problematic for staff to be making personal gains from work that may be tied into research work? Maybe I should keep any work that I may do on Metaplace strictly to the weekends in case I start to make a fortune ;-)

HCI conference call

2007-12-04T09:35:00.000Z

Could be useful to some of our researchers:

http://www.hci2008.org/

Leaderboard

2007-11-30T16:11:00.000Z

In the spirit of mischief, I'd like to share the leaderboard of the great Pacman player's super-league and uber-tournament that you didn't know you were playing. So without further ado:

Player ----------- Points ----------- Level

James ---------- 32990 ------------ 13
Darryl ----------- 30860 ----------- 14
Chris ------------ 30160 ------------ 13
Ben ------------- 29800 ------------ 12
Leo -------------- 15510 ------------- 6
Therese --------- 11240 ------------ 6