Current Issue : October - December Volume : 2014 Issue Number : 4 Articles : 4 Articles
Thedevelopment of a serious game requires perfect knowledge of the learning domain to obtain the desired results. But it is also true\nthat this may not be enough to develop a successful serious game. First of all, the player has to feel that he is playing a game where the\nlearning is only a consequence of the playing actions.Otherwise, the game is viewed as boring and not as a fun activity and engaging.\nFor example, the player can catch some items in the scenario and then separate them according to its type (i.e., recycle them).Thus,\nthe main action for player is catching the items in the scenario where the recycle action is a second action, which is viewed as a\nconsequence of the first action. Sometimes, the game design relies on a detailed approach based on the ideas of the developers\nbecause some educational content are difficult to integrate in the games, while maintaining the fun factor in the first place. In this\npaper we propose a new methodology of design and development of serious games that facilitates the integration of educational\ncontents in the games. Furthermore, we present a serious game, called ââ?¬Å?CleanWorldââ?¬Â, created using this new methodology....
This paper describes a practical technique for 3Dartistic facemodelingwhere a human identity can be inserted into a 3D artistic face.\nThis approach can automatically extract the human identity from a 3D human face model and then transfer it to a 3D artistic face\nmodel in a controllable manner. Its core idea is to construct a face geometry space and a face texture space based on a precollected\n3D face dataset. Then, these spaces are used to extract and blend the face models together based on their facial identities and styles.\nThis approach can enable a novice user to interactively generate various artistic faces quickly using a slider control. Also, it can run\nin real-time on an off-the-shelf computer without GPU acceleration.This approach can be broadly used in various 3D artistic face\nmodeling applications such as a rapid creation of a cartoon crowd with different cartoon characters....
Ecology plays a central role in biology and deserves special attention in scientific education. Nonetheless, the teaching and learning\nof ecology face a number of difficulties. In order to tackle these difficulties, electronic games have recently been used to mediate\necology learning. This paper presents an electronic game that fulfills these gaps in order to make the studentsââ?¬â?¢ work with ecological\nconcepts more concrete, active, and systematic. The paper presents the computational model of the ecological system included in\nthe game, based on a real ecological case, a sand dune ecosystem located in the semiarid Caatinga biome, namely, the sand dunes\nof the middle SÃ?Å?ao Francisco River, in the state of Bahia, Brazil. It includes various ecological relationships between endemic lizards\nand the physical environment, preys, predators, cospecifics, and plants.The engine of the game simulates the physical conditions\nof the ecosystem (dune topography and climate conditions with their circadian and circannual cycles), its biota (plant species\nand animal species), and ecological relationships (predator-prey encounters, cospecific relationships).We also present results from\none classroom study of a teaching sequence structured around Calangos, which showed positive outcomes regarding high school\nstudentsââ?¬â?¢ understanding of thermal regulation in ectothermic animals....
Video games are (also) real-time interactive graphic simulations: hence, providing a convincing physics simulation for each specific\ngame environment is of paramount importance in the process of achieving a satisfying player experience.While the existing game\nengines appropriately address many aspects of physics simulation, some others are still in need of improvements. In particular,\nseveral specific physics properties of bodies not usually involved in the main game mechanics (e.g., properties useful to represent\nsystems composed by soft bodies), are often poorly rendered by general-purpose engines. This issue may limit game designers when\nimagining innovative and compelling video games and game mechanics. For this reason, we dug into the problem of appropriately\nrepresenting soft bodies. Subsequently, we have extended the approach developed for soft bodies to rigid ones, proposing and\ndeveloping a unified approach in a game engine: Sulfur. To test the engine, we have also designed and developed ââ?¬Å?Escape from\nQuaoar,ââ?¬Â a prototypal video game whose main game mechanic exploits an elastic rope, and a level editor for the game....
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