Additional Tool Development for Game Development Scripting:
This paper, written by Heikki Gauffin, focuses on some ideas of how to add new tools and functionalities to the Unity Editor in order to make game creation streamlined towards specific projects. The beginning of the paper gives a summary of game engines, then addresses the Unity Editor itself. Something important of note is the bevy of third-party tools provided in the Unity Asset Store. The main focus of the paper, however, is how to create new modules and functionality for the Editor. It first explains the preprocessor tags that the compiler uses to compile the code for different platforms, as well as the Editor. Serialization is another important concept, which is how data is broken into streams of bytes that can be used elsewhere, most notably when the Editor displays public variables attached to MonoBehavior scripts. After this, Gaukkin starts digging into how every window that is seen within the Unity Editor is an extended class of UnityEditor. Knowing this, one can make new windows and add new functionalities to old ones. New data fields and types can be added to objects, and even the Gizmos that give visual representations of certain data fields can be created. The paper finishes by giving examples of each use in the development of a game, Aurora Pirates.
https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/785334/Gauffin_Heikki.pdf?sequence=2
Artificial intelligence moving serious gaming: Presenting reusable game AI components.
This paper, written by Wim Westera (among others), is about how various AI tools can be used in a serious game to help development and the game experience itself. A serious game is a game that is designed for a serious use, such as training for a job. Flight simulators are a good example of this genre if they are made to be accurate. This paper is for a study, in which the writers released a batch of 40 free AI tools onto a game development marketplace and reviewed how often they were downloaded. In addition, a selection of the AI tools is given as an example. The three areas that these tools focus on are Player Experience Modeling, which is the AI interpreting the player’s mood and experience with the game based on cues and sensors; Natural Language Processing, which has the AI reading text or interpreting voices in order to give accurate feedback; and Non-Player Character Improvements, which involves making NPCs more believable and realistic. Multiple examples are given for each of these in the paper and some examples of how they are used are placed alongside. For example, an important part of PEM is stealth assessment, which is testing the player without them knowing. While not in any true games yet, testing and simulations have shown a 95% accuracy rate on subjects such as qualitative physics and problem solving. The paper finishes by noting that their AI products proved to be useful and helpful to developers.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-019-09968-2
Game Development for Teaching Physics
In this paper, G. Kortenmeyer discusses the benefits of using video games as a medium to teach physics concepts. He bases this off of his experience with helping develop the games A Slower Speed of Light and Kirchoff’s Revenge. The first of these explores relativity by creating a scavenger hunt. The catch is, as more items are collected, the virtual speed of light in the game world is slowed, creating odd effects that make the hunt for the rest more difficult. This game had some flaws in Kortenmeyer’s eyes, which he lists. He also helped develop a version of the game to work with planetarium projectors, which would allow for red and blue shift to be visible at the same time. The second game was based on electrical charges. The player would be in a series of puzzle rooms where they had to create pathways for electric charges to simulate real-world electricity with the ability to see said charges travel. Kortenmeyer still wants to work on this game and has planned multiplayer functionality due to the success of group work and peer learning that came with initial tests.
Additional References
Beeman, M., Durham, W. B., & Kirby, S. H. (1988) "Friction of ice." Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 93.B7: 7625-7633.
Galluzzo, B., Ramsdell, M. W., Thomas, J. D., Kavanagh, K., Ryder, C., Bissonette, D., & Knack, J. M. (2021). Cornhole Predicts the Perfect Pitch: A Hands-On Projectile Motion Experience Comparing Models and Data. Science Scope, 44(5), 54–60.
Harteveld, C. "Triadic game evaluation: A framework for assessing games with a serious purpose." Workshop of the ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems. 2010.
Keo, M. (2017) Graphical style in video games. Pages 19-24
Li, J., Ma, S., & Ma, L. (2012). The Study on the Effect of Educational Games for the Development of Students’ Logic-Mathematics of Multiple Intelligence. Physics Procedia, 33, 1749–1752. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phpro.2012.05.280https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_(series)#Gameplay
Pérez Collado, I. (2017) Design and Development of a playable 3D adventure game in an ice world setting. Walpurgis Night: Ice Souls.
Seals, C., Hundley, J., & Lacey, S. M. (2008). Game Design & Development: Using Computer Games As Creative And Challenging Assignments. I-Manager's Journal of Educational Technology, 5(2), 1-9. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/game-design-development-using-computer-games-as/docview/1473900879/se-2
Sungkaew, K., Lungban, P., & Lamhya, S. (2022). Game development software engineering: digital educational game promoting algorithmic thinking. International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 12(5), 5393-5404. https://doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v12i5.pp5393-5404
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Jump_maps
https://unity.com/
Urone, P. P. (2022). College Physics. Open Textbook Library
Wolf, M. J.P. (2013) Abstraction in the video game. The Video Game Theory Reader. Routledge. 47-65.