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2014 Earthquake Rebuild: A Game for the Stealth Learning of Middle School Math Danial Smith

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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE

EARTHQUAKE REBUILD:

A GAME FOR THE STEALTH LEARNING OF MIDDLE SCHOOL MATH

By

DANIAL SMITH

A Thesis submitted to the Department of Scientific Computing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science

Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2014

Copyright c 2014 Danial Smith. All Rights Reserved. Danial Smith defended this thesis on November 14th, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were:

Gordon Erlebacher Professor Directing Thesis

John Burkhardt Committee Member

Fengfeng Ke Committee Member

Shachin Shanbhag Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

ListofTables...... v ListofFigures ...... vi Abstract...... vii

1 Motivation 1 1.1 USMathematics ...... 1 1.2 VideoGames ...... 2 1.3 Educational Games ...... 3 1.3.1 Tangential Learning Opportunities in Games ...... 4 1.3.2 Gamification ...... 4 1.3.3 ThePerfectBlend ...... 5

2 Game Background 6 2.1 GameTheme ...... 6 2.1.1 Earthquakes...... 7 2.1.2 Temporary Buildings ...... 7 2.2 Newton’s Playground ...... 7 2.3 EvidenceCenteredDesign ...... 8 2.3.1 CompetencyModel...... 8 2.3.2 EvidenceModel...... 8 2.3.3 TaskModel...... 8

3 Game Development 9 3.1 Team...... 9 3.1.1 FengfengKe...... 9 3.1.2 Gordon Erlebacher ...... 9 3.1.3 ValerieSchute ...... 9 3.1.4 Kathleen Clark ...... 10 3.1.5 Anne Taylor ...... 10 3.1.6 MatthewVentura...... 10 3.2 Process ...... 10 3.2.1 BiweeklyMeeting...... 10 3.2.2 WeeklySubgroupMeeting...... 11 3.2.3 WeeklyTasks...... 11 3.3 Technology ...... 12 3.3.1 Graphics ...... 12 3.3.2 Game Engine ...... 13 3.3.3 Versioning...... 14 3.3.4 Code...... 15

iii 4 State of the Game 16 4.1 Story...... 16 4.2 Mechanics...... 17 4.2.1 GameObjects ...... 17 4.2.2 Adventure...... 22 4.2.3 Building...... 23 4.2.4 Menu ...... 30 4.3 Mathematics ...... 31 4.4 PreviousVersions...... 32 4.5 ClassOverview ...... 34 4.5.1 AdventureMode ...... 34 4.5.2 BuildingMode ...... 35 4.5.3 Other ...... 37 4.5.4 NGUI ...... 38

5 Play Testing 39 5.1 DataCollection...... 39 5.2 Reception ...... 39 5.3 Analysis...... 40

6 Conclusions 42 6.1 FutureWorks...... 42 6.1.1 PlayerModeling ...... 42 6.1.2 Procedural Generation ...... 42 6.1.3 Player Adaptation ...... 43 6.1.4 Educator Toolbox ...... 43 6.1.5 Multi-playerModes ...... 43 6.2 WrapUp ...... 44

Bibliography ...... 45 BiographicalSketch ...... 47

iv LIST OF TABLES

4.1 Familysizesandspacerequired...... 22

5.1 Playeractions ...... 40

v LIST OF FIGURES

3.1 The whiteboard during one our weekly meetings showing ideas for a level map with windandlightbeingafocus...... 12

3.2 Workflow of programs used in Earthquake Rebuild...... 13

4.1 Game modes and actions...... 18

4.2 Collectible items in Earthquake Rebuild from the Top, Side, and Front. A)Container B)Panel C)Plank D)Pillar E)Small Rubble F)Medium Rubble G)Large Rubble . . . . 19

4.3 Left: A family before it has been found. Right: A family after it has been found. . . 21

4.4 Screenshot from the adventure mode of Earthquake Rebuild...... 23

4.5 Screenshot from the building mode of Earthquake Rebuild...... 24

4.6 Cutting tool used on plank to cut at 4 meters...... 26

4.7 Scaling tool used on pillar to scale by 50 percent...... 27

4.8 Measuring tool checking the length of a container...... 28

4.9 Screenshot of the menu in the adventure mode of Earthquake Rebuild...... 29

4.10 Screenshot of the menu in the building mode of Earthquake Rebuild...... 29

4.11 Old versions from oldest to newest: top to bottom ...... 33

5.1 Four player’s position with a map reference ...... 41

vi ABSTRACT

The United States has fallen below many countries in international assessments of middle school aged students in the fields math and science. At the same time, computer games have only grown in popularity. In the last few decades with the average time spent playing increasing as well. Educational games try to recapture some of this time that may otherwise be wasted, but many have failed to preserve the main reason people are drawn to them, the sense of fun. Earthquake Rebuild is a game being developed to assist teachers in the presentation of the common core standards in mathematics in a fun and engaging way without telling the player they are learning. The game is being developed for students in grades six through eight. The setting and story line are motivated by the Fukusima earthquake. Rebuilding a village after its destruction by an earthquake will be the main goal of the player. Earthquake Rebuild follows a progression from using temporary structures, such as the container mall found in Christchurch, New Zealand. Traditional permanent structures will be built using smaller parts as the difficulty increases. These buildings will also be inspired by famous architecture. Earthquake Rebuild is being developed by a small group of students and educators. A proof of concept demo is completed, with classes to score and track players, as well as classes that will shorten the development cycle of the next version. Results from a handful of students has been analyzed, and will be discussed.

vii CHAPTER 1

MOTIVATION

Mathematics competency in the United States is no longer what it used to be. Compared to other nations that participated in studies like the Program for International Student Assessment(PISA) American 15-year-old students scored below average in mathematics in 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2012[19][18][17][16]. The same tests showed average results for reading. One contributing factor to this deficiency may be disinterest. In surveys by the tested students ”Only 50% of students in the U.S. agreed or strongly agreed that they are interested in learning mathematics: 53% of boys and 47% of girls.” [19]. Tools that may combat this disinterest are computer games. People spend hours each day playing games on their phones, PC’s or game consoles. Some see this as wasted time, but it actually presents educators with an opportunity. Dr. Rick Nauert states ”A com- mon viewpoint is that playing video games is intellectually lazy. New research however, suggests such play actually may strengthen a range of cognitive skills such as spatial navigation, reasoning, memory and perception.”[4] Given that most games guide the player towards the skills needed to complete the game, our goal is to make these skills applicable to learning mathematics. By com- bining these math and game skills, Earthquake Rebuild can break down one of the largest barriers of learning mathematics. Proper learning of math involves developing a set of skills that must reach the subconscious level. To reach this part of the mind a number of repetitions are required. Because everyone learns at different rates the number of repetitions will vary. While necessary for understanding, students lacking interest in math will find the repetition boring. Forcing a bored student to focus on math will further diminish interest in mathematics.

1.1 US Mathematics

The United States is a wealthy country, and it spends roughly one trillion dollars yearly on education[2]. Although the US spends more money per student than all but four countries in the PISA[19], that money does not translate into mathematical proficiency the way most would hope. Throwing money at the problem has yet to solve it. New and innovative techniques and

1 tools are in great need. Although the world has changed, the approach to student education has remained essentially unchanged. Students sit in class rooms and listen to lectures and are forced ot memorize information to reproduce on assessments. The need for memorization is decreasing as information becomes more readily available. Because Earthquake Rebuild targets middle-school- aged children, it follows that the mathematical concepts incorporated into the game should also target this age group. It is currently accepted that the introduction of the common core will help standardize education uniform the nation. To focus on the desired age group, the common core state standards are used as a guide for the types of problems to be incorporated into the game. The standards were developed in 2009 to make English language and mathematics skills for grades kindergarten through twelfth equal across the country. As of June 2014, forty-three states and a number of U.S. territories have begun to implement the common core[1]. While developing these standards, the highest state and international standards were used to make our students college- and career-ready. The common core standards for mathematics put an emphasis on the sequence of the key math topics. This leaves room for many types of problems, but the theme of Earthquake Rebuild lends itself to some better than others. For example, ratio and proportional relationships, statistics and probability, and measures of angles, areas, and volumes lend themselves well to a game environment, while expressions and equations may be hard to present. The 21st Century Skills, creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking are all necessary for learning math. The partnership for 21st Century Skills(P21), states, ”These habits of mind are evident in the CCSS(Common Core State Standards) and are central to the teaching and learning of mathematics, as has been advocated by national mathematics content groups such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)”[9]. These four C’s are something that games take advantage of natively. Hopefully, new learning technologies will help as well.

1.2 Video Games

Often painted as murder simulators and time wasters, video games are often viewed in a negative light. Video games are everywhere, and should be used as the tools and opportunities that they are. One billion hours every week are spent playing video games around the world[14]. The US population has been invaded by computers in the last thirty years. Some device capable of playing video games can be found in pocket, living room, classroom, or office of a majority of people. Fifty

2 four percent of Americans play video games on one of these devices[8]. Those percentages are even higher for people under eighteen. Ninety nine percent of boys and ninety four percent of girls regularly play games[14]. Players over thirteen years old average over six hours of game play each week. Similarly, by the ”10 minute rule” students from grade six through eight should be assigned roughly 5-6.667 hours weekly[12]. When surveyed, 55% of students reported spending less than an hour per weekday[12]. The US console market has a revenue around eleven billion dollars, the same as US box offices[11]. The Avengers made 373 million dollars in its opening ten days[11]. Iron Man 3 made 285 million dollars in its opening ten days[11]. The latest Call of Duty game made more than these two blockbusters combined, 650 million dollars, in half the time[11]. The one billion people that play games spent 65 billion dollars a year globally. Twelve billion dollars profit came from just software sales[11]. A large fraction of the population choose to spend their valuable free time and disposable income on video games. Thus, there is an opportunity to turn this leisure time into something even more valuable.

1.3 Educational Games

Educational games are not a new idea. There have been educational card and board games before the invention and popularization of the personal computer. Chess has been used in schools for decades, and has proven to help with mathematics and critical thinking. [15]. Educational computer games are not novel either. The Oregon Trail, which taught the player of the dangers of frontier life, came out in the 1970’s. The 1980’s were full of classic educational computer games, Reader Rabbit, Number Munchers, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, to name a few. In the 1990’s even Nintendo’s Mario, one of the world’s most recognizable characters, tried to teach children everything from basic concepts, such as numbers and letters, to higher level concepts, like typing, history, and geography. These had a couple of things working for them. For a number of children these games are some of their earlier exposure to computers. Interest in these strange machines would draw some students in. These games had some intellectual property backing them, like Mario or the companion cartoon for Carmen Sandiego, but they had one big flaw; they were not great games. They lacked the spark that make them fun and made no attempt at hiding their purposes.

3 1.3.1 Tangential Learning Opportunities in Games

Many AAA video game titles are realistically based. War-based shooters, historically-based real-time strategy and adventure games, and surprisingly accurate racers are all extremely popular. Call of Duty and Battlefield are some of the most played games every year. Both started as World War 2 games. These games used real battle locations and real weapons for their basis. Gun manufacturers even work with developers to get their product into video games as realistically as possible[6]. Assassin’s Creed follows the bloodline of man through recognizable periods. You met characters from the time line of all these games, such as, George Washington in Assassin’s Creed III and Leonardo Da Vinci in Assassin’s Creed II. The Total War series often used by the History channel to recreate historic battles. Gran Turismo allows you to modify and race real cars on photorealistic tracks. While Gran Turismo claims it is a simulator, the others embellish these connections to the real world. They take what could be a very teachable moment and bend it to a more entertaining experience. Concepts are planted. An interest may be sparked, but there is nothing to cement this information in reality. Most players will spend extra looking up any information they can get on a pastime they enjoy. Harnessing this excitement and hunger for information and focusing the energy of the player is not the goal of these games. They focus on creating an engaging environment, and these hooks into reality accomplish this. It is this same thirst for more information that we will try to foster in Earthquake Rebuild.

1.3.2 Gamification

On the flip, we have the gamification of learning. These are projects that encourage learning with some sort of score or achievements. The Khan Academy walks the user through the world of mathematics giving the user badges for watching videos, completing lessons overviews, and finishing challenges. Vocabulary.com helps the user increase their vocabulary and again rewards them with badges for completing sections of their content. Duolingo tries to teach the user another language, and it keeps the rewards for completing section and adds rewards for continuing streaks by returning each day. Each of these examples has a social aspect. Cooperation and competition will keep the users engaged a while longer. They allow the user to compare their progress to that of a friend, but as soon as the novelty of these trivial rewards wear off, the user is left with a learning environment

4 that mirrors the current classroom environments. These projects incentivizes learning and try to make it more fun, but in the end the goal is educating not enjoyment.

1.3.3 The Perfect Blend

If the user is not having fun, they will not spend their time with a game. If they are having fun, players will lose hours to a game, but this is not time spent learning in most situations. The goal is to blend the concepts discussed in the previous section to make a game where the user is learning, but fun is at the forefront. The player should not even know they are in an educational program, as it may ruin the engagement for some less motivated students. This seems like a very difficult goal, but most computer users have played a pair of games that did just that. Microsoft Solitaire and Microsoft Minesweeper have been included in most versions of Windows since Windows 3.0. These games are seen as a giant time waster and are removed or locked away in many school and office environments, but that is because they completed their tasks so well. When Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were released, users felt there was too much importance placed on the mouse. The input device was new, and people preferred their keyboards to this unfamiliar tool(Most command-line users still feel this way). These games were introduced to make users familiar with the functions of the mouse in Microsoft’s new desktop environment. Solitaire focused on dragging and double clicking. Minesweeper focused on precision pointing, speed, and right-clicking. Users spent hours with these simple games without knowing their motives. The same should be true of Earthquake Rebuild. Instead of pointing and clicking, players should receive an informal knowledge of the math concepts presented in each level and task. This informal knowledge should then be reinforced by an instructor.

5 CHAPTER 2

GAME BACKGROUND

Although many educational games focusing on math exist today, most of them are just math exercises with pictures and sounds. Number Munchers was released 1986 and replaced by Math Munchers in 1995. The game was consisted of moving around a square and ”munching” the multiples, factors, or equalities of a number. Math Blaster is another classic math game. Since 1983, at least twenty three versions of Math Blaster have been released, as well as a cartoon series, with the last game being released in 2009. The game itself involves solving math problems and shooting the answer in outer space. It has remained mostly unchanged for the last twenty years, but with graphical and sound over time. These games target elementary school and younger children. These games boil down to electronic flash cards and repetitious memory exercises. Earthquake Rebuild seeks to become something different, game at heart. The players will play because they want to, not because they have to. The player should be sufficiently excited about the game to try and ”cheat” by searching for unique solution techniques or looking it up online. To this end a theme based in real world scenarios was chosen. To maintain engagement, the game must tailor the experience to the player’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. For this reason the game has been develop with an eye towards evidence-centered design and referencing projects that have experience with measuring players actions.

2.1 Game Theme

The first level of Earthquake Rebuild is set in a small village somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The buildings have an Asian influence. The player should feel engaged in this virtual world. Tools and story are presented in a way that draws the player farther into the world rather than break this immersion. Each iteration of been developed share two common threads. First, each level has an earthquake. Second, at the beginning of the game building and structures are made of large preconstructed objects. Other biomes have been developed to vary the play style by changing the natural and man made characteristics of the setting. Forests, deserts, urban cities, frozen

6 tundra, large intersections, and rural farm land have all been mocked up with details including wind direction and the location of the sun.

2.1.1 Earthquakes

For the setting of a Pacific Village, earthquakes are a daily reality. The world averages around twenty five thousand earthquakes yearly. Today, there were one hundred eighty earthquakes[5]. Educating students about earthquakes not only gives an opportunity to increase safety knowledge, the game can present many mathematics problems rebuilding from the disaster of these destructive powerhouses. Buildings must have the appropriate strengths for the anticipated strength of the earthquake in different zones.

2.1.2 Temporary Buildings

Earthquake Rebuild starts with a very top down method of construction. Shipping containers are used for houses, shops, and other buildings to make the player familiar with the tools and game play. This was inspired by the reconstruction of Christchurch, New Zealand. Houses and malls are made out of these containers as they were readily available and sturdy. The Re:Start Mall was created in less than eight months and under $4 million. This innovative idea restored the city after the 6.3 magnitude earthquake devastated the area. ”Since opening, Re:START has been the cornerstone for the tourist industry in Christchurch and helped rocket Christchurch to number six in the Lonely Planet guide to the ‘must visit’ places in the world.”[3]. Other structures have been made out of cardboard tubes, such as cathedrals and schools. These type of structures show a resourcefulness that easily translates into challenging and interesting game play.

2.2 Newton’s Playground

Newton’s Playground is a two dimensional physics sandbox game developed using the ECD framework. It was created by some of the Co-PI’s working on this project. Many of the concepts used in the development of Newton’s Playground will be used as a model for the development of Earthquake Rebuild. Newton’s playground record’s a play information in log files and uploads them to a server when the user logs out. Some of the things recorded include ”time spent on the level in seconds, number of restarts of the level, total number of objects used in a solution attempt,

7 whether it was ultimately solved, and trajectory of the ball in the x,y coordinate space” [21]. This information is then used to create a model of the player.

2.3 Evidence Centered Design

ECD, or evidence centered design, is a system to develop assessments that measure the attributes the designer would like to test for. ECD was chosen because it is well suited for ”dynamic interactive environments that lie beyond the analytic capabilities of simpler assessments” [20]. The system of models can then be looked at in another direction to obtain information about the subject. It comprises of three main models: the competency model, the evidence model, and the task model.

2.3.1 Competency Model

The competency model in ECD describes what ideas the subject should be familiar with. This what we want to measure. In the case of Earthquake Rebuild, the competency model will include the common core state standards for grade six through eight mathematics. Also included in the competency model are design standards and principles.

2.3.2 Evidence Model

The evidence model describes the practices or behaviors a student would demonstrate if they were proficient in the related member of the competency model. The evidence model is a bridge between the tasks and the competencies, and shows a statistical connection between the evidence and competency.

2.3.3 Task Model

The task model describes the tasks used to evoke the evidence the game is trying to develop. The tasks are the in game challenges. This model may include how each problem is posed, the acceptable solutions, and the information that must be recorded to check which corresponding members of the evidence models have been demonstrated.

8 CHAPTER 3

GAME DEVELOPMENT

3.1 Team

Our team is a great group of people with a diverse knowledge in many fields from architecture, math education, educational psychology, learning systems, scientific computing, and game design. The team meets regularly to ensure progress is being made constantly. These meetings are integral to successful game design.

3.1.1 Fengfeng Ke

Dr. Fengfeng Ke is an associate professor at the Florida State University in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems and the principal investigator for this project. She is an expert in game-based mathematics learning, educational game development, and computer- supported collaborative learning. She is involved in all aspects of the development of Earthquake Rebuild.

3.1.2 Gordon Erlebacher

Dr. Gordon Erlebacher is a professor at the Florida State University in the department of Scientific Computing. His focus is in the area of games and visualization using GPU’s and other specialized hardware. He developed and teaches Game and Simulator Design in the department. This course attracts a number of students from inside and outside the department with no game development skills required. He will oversee the implementation of the stealth assessment in the program.

3.1.3 Valerie Schute

Dr. Valerie Schute is a professor at the Florida State University in the Department of Edu- cational Psychology and Learning Systems. She is the principal investigator of two of research projects with the goal to develop stealth assessment models for use in computer games. She is responsible for the development of the stealth assessment models for Earthquake Rebuild.

9 3.1.4 Kathleen Clark

Dr. Kathleen Clark is an assistant professor at the Florida State University in the School of Teacher Education. Her focus is on mathematics learning. As our expert in mathematics education, she is developing the task library for the game.

3.1.5 Anne Taylor

Dr. Anne Taylor is an ACSA Distinguished and Regents Professor Emerita from the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico. Anne video conferences in to the biweekly meetings from New Mexico. She consults on the mathematics integration and focuses on the design learning of the students.

3.1.6 Matthew Ventura

Dr. Matthew Ventura is a research associate at the Florida State University in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems. Matthew has a passion for games and is an expert in educational technology. He is also responsible for the design of the stealth assessment systems in Earthquake Rebuild.

3.2 Process

The development of the game is a three part process repeated biweekly. 1) a biweekly meeting of the team; 2) a weekly meeting of all the research assistants working on the project and a few others led by Fengfeng Ke; 3) individual work throughout the week.

3.2.1 Biweekly Meeting

At the biweekly meetings, a more overhead, top down approach to designing the game is taken. Higher level ideas are thrown around and implementation is rarely discussed. These meetings look at the big picture of the game to figure out what the game should be and how it should get there. Most of the mathematics and architectural problems are developed at these meetings. They range from one to three hours long with emotions from quiet agreement to vocal disagreement. Although these conversations can trail off topic sometimes this is where innovation emerges and great ideas are collected and improved upon. The competency and evidence model are discussed here, as well

10 as the task library. The biweekly meetings allow an opportunity to test our game prototype with people familiar with the project and its goals, but who are not actively coding the game.

3.2.2 Weekly Subgroup Meeting

During the weekly meetings of the Earthquake Rebuild design subgroup, discussion focuses on how ideas developed in the biweekly meeting should be implemented in the game. A lot of time is spent on specific mechanics. The team attempts to answer the same questions for everything that is developed. How could the game be broken? The way in which mechanics are implemented may not cause bugs if used as intended, but if they are use in a different manner, will the game perform as we intended. Could a player game the system? Even if nothing causes technical problems, what could a player do to bypass tasks intended to be teaching moments. The help and text are there to guide player. Do they give away a solution without provoking thought? Are these controls intuitive? There is a lot we assume of the player. THe controls are influenced by modern games in first person shooter genre. Is it safe to assume familiarity with these control schemes? Testing occurs most often in these meetings. Each new feature or feature change is presented, dismantled, and put back together every week. The group at these meetings have a narrower scope of the project and work is done from the bottom up. The goals and tasks are often subject to change. The discussion concentrates on the game evolution over a time period of of several weeks. Many tools are used during these meetings. Prototype maps are drawn on whiteboards as seen in figure 3.1. Toys, such as building blocks, or nearby props, like markers and erasers, are used for acting out game mechanics before they are implemented, and a bit of debugging is done to see how certain changes will influence the game play in real time.

3.2.3 Weekly Tasks

This portion of the games development is where the game actually gets developed, i.e. code is written. Goals are set in regard to game development. Most goals are implemented the following week. Some of the more extensive tasks are broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks to ease the implementation, maintenance, and revisions. The person developing each feature has autonomy during the week. Ideas that aren’t working right away should be changed. If there is a great idea it should be implemented. The weekly meeting is then used as a sounding board for these changes.

11 Figure 3.1: The whiteboard during one our weekly meetings showing ideas for a level map with wind and light being a focus.

3.3 Technology

A number of applications are being used in the development of the Earthquake Rebuild project. Here, we will discuss them briefly. Figure 3.2 shows what programs are used for which tasks and which programs use their output.

3.3.1 Graphics

The visual aspect of the project is covered by a number of programs. Blender is a free and open- source graphics and animation application. Blender also has a game engine built in. It is used as the primary tool in the Game and Simulator Design course here at Florida State University. While the game engine is improving rapidly, Earthquake Rebuild is not using this part of the program. Blender’s purpose in this project is strictly for modeling, UV mapping, and animating the 3-D art assets. Maya has also been used for some of the objects. The objects are exported from Blender or Maya to be used in the game engine in the form of an OBJ file. OBJ is an open, nearly universally accepted file format for 3D objects. Unfortunately, Blender exports to an ASCII version of this format that it can not read. For this reason, Autodesk’s OBJ Converter is used to convert Blender’s

12 Figure 3.2: Workflow of programs used in Earthquake Rebuild. output to a more compact and widely used binary format. The textures used on the sculpted three dimensional models are be created and edited in another program designed for two dimensional art. GIMP, which is similar to Photoshop, is free and open-source graphics program well suited for this task. For simpler two dimensional artwork where a powerful tool like GIMP is not needed, paint.NET is used. Most of the images used in the user interface were created in paint.net. in Earthquake Rebuild. t.

3.3.2 Game Engine

The game engine is a useful tool to handle graphics rendering, physics simulation, user input, and sound effects. It allows the project to move forward much more quickly by not reinventing the wheel for all these tasks. Unity is the game engine chosen to develop Earthquake Rebuild. The project uses version 4.3 of the Unity. It was chosen for it’s several reasons including pricing, the number of platforms it can create games for, the availability of help from the community, and its robustness compared to the Blender game engine. Unity is one of few closed-source solutions used in the project, although it does have a free version. Some of the team uses Unity’s free license;

13 others use the Pro version. The main reason for choosing the Pro version when we did is the Team license. This allows for the use of versioning software with Unity. It also enables some more powerful features, such as rendering to texture and advanced shaders and lighting. Although the editor only runs on OS X and Windows, Unity supports building the game for several platforms including iOS, Android, web, Windows, Windows Store, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 3, Playstaion 4, OS X, Linux, and the Wii U. Earthquake Rebuild has been test and built as a standalone application for Linux, OS X, and Windows. Early in development a web build was also included. This allowed for faster and easier distribution. Because of the limitations of running in the browser, mostly security related, were greater than the benefits, the web version has not been built for several months. The user interface has been built with a combination of Unity’s included OnGUI tools and NGUI, an addon for Unity that allows for more efficient implementation and faster development cycle. NGUI offers a what you see is what you get system for designing the interface as well as a number of scripts that simplifies most of the standard user interface controls. NGUI also reduces the number of draw calls for the user interface down to one, where the OnGUI system had a separate draw call whenever it was invoked[7]. When Unity 4.6 releases later this year, the user interface will be redone to use the new system and remove the combined system of NGUI and the previous Unity OnGUI methods. The physics system is worth mentioning separately. It takes care of all movement in the game. This movement is done by user input, gravity, and collisions. To make these movements realistic and computationally cheap but believable, colliders are used. These are boundaries where an object would hit another, but they often use simplified geometries to save resources. Colliders have class methods that allow the programmer to take action when one object hits another. The colliders also contain all the material properties that would affect the collision, such as friction and bounciness. Another important part of the physics system is the rigidbody. Without rigidbody, physics does not act on a game object. The rigidbody contains properties like mass, whether the object is affected by gravity, or if it is free to rotate.

3.3.3 Versioning

Versioning and distribution are essential to game development when working with a team, but have some unique concerns. While Git and GitHub are great for most code projects, ours quickly grew to a size where GitHub was no longer viable. GitHub requests repositories be kept under

14 one gigabyte. Within a few weeks, our project was multiple gigabytes. Art assets, such as images, models and sounds, can be very large, abd also cause an issue when trying to differentiate between versions since most are stored in a binary format. Perforce been used for Earthquake Rebuild to solve these issues. Not only do this program track the assets, they also keep metadata on each file. Perforce is a distributed version control systems. This will allow recovery in almost every situation since every user has a copy of the data, with the server in charge of checking out and locking files when they are in use. So if one or two hard drives fail it is not an issue. A Perforce server, using the 20-person free license, is used to store changes and push them to users as needed.

3.3.4 Code

Unity supports scripting in three languages. Boo is a python derivative that is not used in this project. A JavaScript derivative, original called UnityScript, is used in some of the standard Unity assets, such as the character motion controllers. In Earthquake Rebuild the majority of the code is written in C# as it is slightly faster and the most common of any of the three languages. C# is a strongly type object oriented language, similar to Java. The code is written in MonoDevelop or Visual Studio. MonoDevelop is an open-source development environment. It is cross-platform and comes bundled with Unity. It uses the same compiler as Unity, unlike options like Visual Studio. Microsoft recently acquired SyntaxTree and their tool UnityVS. This allows debugging in Visual Studio. Visual Studio is a much more robust IDE, but setup is not as simple as MonoDevelop. All of the code is compiled by Unity in a .NET dynamically linked library using Mono.

15 CHAPTER 4

STATE OF THE GAME

4.1 Story

Earthquake Rebuild, as previously stated, is a game focus on rebuilding a village after a dev- astating earthquake. The goal is not to make the village exactly as it was, but to make similar representations using materials found in the wreckage. The demo level implements these ideas using shipping containers to represent homes for the displaced refuges. The shipping containers, other materials, and certain scraps are collected by the player as they look for missing families. The player then switches to the building mode where they begin constructing their homes using an image from before the disaster as a template. For the first building, a set of plans with di- mensions of the building is included. In future levels, this information will be more scarce. The location of the building site is to be determined from the predisaster image. Using landmarks, terrain features, and the scale on the image., the player should be able to estimate the dimensions of the building if it is not included. Upon completion of the building, the player must mark the main entrance to their structure. Once an entrance has been selected, families are assigned to the rooms of the building. There are a few constraints on the way these families may be assigned. These are currently based on the size of the building and family. After the player has placed all of the families in homes, or if time runs out, the earthquake simulation is triggered. The player will advance if everyone survives the new earthquake. A score will be given for four criteria. The first criteria is time. Finishing all tasks for the level before the time expires will grant you points based on the remaining time. Time remaining will not be shown to the player until the completion of the level to raise suspense, but warning will be given at milestones. The next criteria is resources. The resources score is calculated by what you have left in your inventory at the end of the level. Since your inventory will not be carried over to the next level, the resources store will be converted into credits to used in the store in later levels. Thirdly, the happiness of the non-player characters involved in the episode will affect the players score. Happiness will take things such as protection from the elements, feeling safe, sense of community, and comfort when calculating this part of the

16 score. Lastly, the building created will be scored according to resemblance to the original. Size, rotation, location, and composition will be taken into account. Perfectly recreating the original structure will be impossible and is not the goal of this criteria. The building score will impact the happiness score. These four criteria will be combined into the final score with a threshold for advancement.

4.2 Mechanics

Although Earthquake Rebuild is still in its early stages and is in a continuous state of flux. I will go over the mechanics, tools, items, modes, and actions in their current incarnation. Each of these functions in distinct modes of the game. The actions of the game are broken up into their respective game modes in figure 4.1.

4.2.1 Game Objects

In the current level of E-Rebuild, there were only a few items created for the game. In the future, this unlikely to change. Construction will be done with only a few primitive objects, similar to Minecraft. Out of these objects, the player can make as many complicated, imaginative, and fun objects as they would like. The decision to use only small objects was made not only to give the player freedom, but by combining smaller objects to make larger ones it allows the game to simulate the earthquake at a much lower level. With large objects made out of smaller parts, each joint can be given a specific force. When that force is exceeded, the joint breaks. Instead of whole buildings just falling over, they will collapse and shatter as the forces acting on them exceed their material strength. It is important to note that this is not a physics game, and while there are similarities to the real world, realism is not our goal. A believable look and feel to the environment and its destruction is sufficient.

Wooden Plank Earthquake Rebuild needed some large boards to let the player cut and scale them to the sizes the want. The plank is pictured as item C in figure 4.2.1. This allowed the player to exercise some of the mathematical competencies we are trying to measure and nurture. The plank can be scaled, and cut along any axis since the resulting object(s) will also be symmetrical about the

17 Figure 4.1: Game modes and actions. three main axes. The plank is intended to be used to create a ladder or ramp to reach the upper levels of structures created in the demo level. The wooden plank was the first object introduced in Earthquake Rebuild. It was not original wooden, but the necessity for objects of varying density led us to change the object from just a rectangular prism to the wooden plank, by setting the mass of the object proportional to the volume.

Cement Pillar Like the wooden plank, the cement pillar had simple origins. It gives us opportunities to teach different math competencies, such as area of circles or the use of pi. The pillar is pictured as item D in figure 4.2.1.The pillar is more massive than the plank, and it is intended to be a support object for buildings. The ability to cut or scale the object in any direction was removed for the pillar. The added freedom complicated the game needlessly. As a result, the pillar can only be cut perpendic- ular to the axis of the cylinder. The resulting objects are always shorter cylinders. The object can be scaled along the length of the object and along all axes. This allows for shorter or smaller pillars.

18 Figure 4.2: Collectible items in Earthquake Rebuild from the Top, Side, and Front. A)Container B)Panel C)Plank D)Pillar E)Small Rubble F)Medium Rubble G)Large Rub- ble

19 Container Panel The container panels make up the shipping containers used in the game. It is in figure 4.2.1 as B. These are one square meter. The thickness of this object is as close to 0 as the game engine will allow. It is so thin that it is invisible in the the side view in figure 4.2.1. Unfortunately, this is still thick enough for the player to stand on. This allows the player to cheat the system a bit if they no- tice this. These panels were originally quads when the shipping containers were made with pieces. These worked great until the player entered the building. They were only drawn on the outside. To fix this problem the two quads were used. This seemed to work, but doubling the number of items in the scene caused a great amount of slowdown. The panels are currently extremely thin cubes. Other than composing the containers, these panels currently have no purpose. In future levels, they will take on a huge role of letting the player construct objects of their liking by joining these together or collect extra resources by selling them.

Shipping Container The shipping container is the workhorse of the current level of the game. It can be seen as item A in figure 4.2.1. Early in the development process, the team decided that a top down method should be used while making the test level. The container was inspired by construction in Christchurch as discussed in the motivation, section 2.1.2 of this paper. The simplicity that allowed the container to quickly let New Zealand rebuild their destroyed structure also allowed us to quickly prototype a simple level for the students. Each container is made of multiple parts. The walls, floors, and ceilings of these containers are made from the container panels discussed next. There is also a frame along the edges of each container. These containers are constructed in the editor using a class develop for this purpose alone. Given a height, length and width the container will be cre- ated at the origin of the level with all the necessary parts and components attached to each part. Originally, the container was just a modified cube, scaled appropriate amount in each direction. While this worked for a while, the complexities of cutting parts out for doors and windows required a different solution. The overhead for using multiple game objects for one thing was quite high using a naive implementation, and slowed the game to an unplayable crawl. For example, a 5x5x10 meter container now had 250 colliders instead of the original one collider. What was 8 verticies

20 Figure 4.3: Left: A family before it has been found. Right: A family after it has been found. spiraled out of control to 2000. This was an unacceptable solution for an object that would be used numerous times per level. Optimizing these objects to use different levels of refinement for the required scenarios allowed this to be an acceptable solution. The small colliders were wrapped in a large, single collider, and enabled only when the player wanted to remove parts of the container. By using the same material on the containers, and enabling draw call batching the rendering no longer noticeable affected game play.

Rubble Mound There are piles of dirt and brick scattered all around the current level. There are three sizes of these rubble piles, E, F, and G in figure 4.2.1. When collected, these objects add a random amount of resource credits to the players total based on the size of the mound. They are currently the only way for the player to accrue more resource credits.

Families The families in the game act as a unit. They cannot be separated or altered. There are currently four types of families, each requires a certain amount of space based on the composition of the family unit. The composition varies the number of adults and children. Currently we included families of the sizes found in table 4.1:

21 Table 4.1: Family sizes and space required

Children Adults Space(sq. m) 1 1 6 1 2 8 2 1 10 2 2 12

In the current level, each adult requires 4 square meters and each child requires 2 square meters. In future levels, the types of families may increase to increase difficulty, or another type of family member, such as a pet, may be added. The families have three states: lost, homeless, and sheltered. When the families are found, they transition from lost to homeless, and they begin to smile. The lost family is pictured in figure 4.2.1, and the homeless family is on the right in figure 4.2.1.

Static Objects The other objects in Earthquake Rebuild cannot be interacted with. They are there as decoration or necessary for navigation. This includes the trees, docks, water, and terrain. In their current state, there is no way for the player to know which objects can be moved or collected. They must experiment with their surroundings. This is a topic the team has not discussed much since it is not much of an issue at the moment, but as the number of different types of objects grow there should be a simple way to distinguish between them..

4.2.2 Adventure

In the adventure mode of E-Rebuild, the player surveys the environment, collects building materials and rescues missing families from a first person point of view. The player controls there position using a combination of the keyboard to move and the mouse to look around. Collecting objects is done by aiming and clicking with the mouse. Interacting with families is done in the exact same way as collecting objects. Originally there was no visual feedback when interacting with families, which made it hard to notice any changes and remember which families have been found. Adding a simple face to make the families smile has made this much simpler, but some people find the transition kind of creepy. After collecting objects and families, the families must be assigned to homes. This is done using a combination of the menu and adventure modes. Holes can be created

22 Figure 4.4: Screenshot from the adventure mode of Earthquake Rebuild. in the containers by changing the mode the player collects in. This is indicated by the color of the tip of the wand. Yellow collects only container panels. Green collects all other objects, including the whole and partial containers.

4.2.3 Building

In the building mode of E-Rebuild structures are built to house the dislocated citizens. You mainly control this mode with the mouse. A toolbar is located in the upper left hand corner of the screen. In this toolbar, there are buttons for each of the following tools. If the player hovers the mouse over any of these buttons, a tool tip will appear with the name of the tool that is under the mouse.

Earthquake Simulation The earthquake simulation causes the terrain to shake wildly in the game world. It is can be run by the user to test their structures during building. The earthquake is simulated by adding an impulse to each object touching the terrain. The direction is chosen based on the type of earthquake the current level is attempting to recreate, either vertical wave, horizontal wave, or a combination of the two. The force of the earthquake varies randomly in a range defined for each level. This can be

23 Figure 4.5: Screenshot from the building mode of Earthquake Rebuild. change to increase or decrease the difFiculty. The duration of the earthquake also has an element of randomness. A duration goal is set for each level. The actual length is the duration goal plus or minus ten percent of the goal. This way play throughs of even the same level will be different to increase replay-ability. The simulation is run after a prescribed time if the user does not finish early. This time limit is not shown to the user to increase suspense. To offer some information to the user, two warnings will be given, one after half of the time has elapsed, the other after three quarters of the time has passed. This will signal the end of the current level. Scores are calculated and the win conditions are tested.

Grab Tool The grab tool is used to move game objects that are already in game world, i.e. not collected to your inventory. The grab tool moves a selected object using the mouse in the x-z plane, parallel to the ground. Objects are selected by left clicking. After selecting an object, it will no longer collide with anything else. Instead, the object changes colors based on any intersection that may stop you from placing the object. Green indicates the objects is unobstructed and may be place in its current location. Red means that there is something in the way and the current location is invalid. [You can move the objects in the Y dimension using the up arrow and down arrow. Rotation is

24 done through a number of key presses. (,) and (.) control rotation about the X axis. Likewise, (k) and (l) control rotation about the Y axis. Lastly, (o) and (p) control rotation about the Z axis. Each key press rotates to currently selected object fifteen degrees and will force the rotation value of the object to the nearest multiple of fifteen if the object has become misaligned. The selected object will try to snap to other objects around the to make alignment less difficult. There has been some critisim that the number of keys necessary to control objects is too high. Eight keys and the mouse button are quite a lot to remember. Revisions are being considered, but changes are on hold until user testing of the current control methods have been ruled out.

Inventory Tool The inventory tool works similarly to the grab tool. The main difference is, while the grab tool works on game objects in the game world, the inventory tool moves and places objects from the player´sinventory. Upon clicking the button for this tool, two things happen. First, the players inventory is displayed over the majority of the right half of the screen. Second, the active item slot appears next to the button that was just clicked. This is where the player drags an item they want to place from their inventory. Only building materials may be place in the active item slot. Scraps and waste will not be accepted. By dragging items from the inventory to the active item slot of the inventory tool, it enters the game world to be placed. At this time play is continued as if the grab tool had been selected. If, at any time, the player would like to change objects, they may drag the item in the active item slot back to their inventory and start again.

Painting Tool The painting tool allows the player to customize their buildings and construction materials by changing the color to one of eight colors. The player must activate the tool and choose a color. Clicking objects will change their color much like the paint bucket in most image manipulation programs. There are currently no restrictions on the number of times the paint tool can be used, but this is slated to be changed in the next few updates,

Cutting Tool The cutting tool allows the player to reshape objects. The object must be a primitive shape.

25 Figure 4.6: Cutting tool used on plank to cut at 4 meters.

Currently this includes rectangles and cylinders. The user must right click an object to bring up the cutting dialog. The dialog box gives the option of cutting in the X, Y, or Z axis. The resulting objects must be similar to original object. This means the cylinder can only be cut perpendicular to its height. The other options are disabled to avoid confusion. The dialog also has an input for the length of the cut. If this input is longer than the object in that direction, the cut will not take place, and the user will be notified with an error message to that effect. The result is two objects, one the length of the cut, the other’s length is the object length minus the cut length. An example is shown in figure 4.6 with the plank before being cut above the cut plank.

Scaling Tool Like the cutting tool, the scaling tool also allows the player to reshape objects of a primitive shape. By activating the tool and right clicking one of the appropriate objects, the plank or pillar, a dialog box appears. The player may scale the object along the X, Y, Z, or all axes by selecting the appropriate radio button. The percentage by which to scale is input into the text entry field in the dialog box. This must be between zero and one hundred, stopping the the player from

26 Figure 4.7: Scaling tool used on pillar to scale by 50 percent. creating materials out of nothing. The result is one smaller object. The other part of the object is not lost. Resource credits proportional to the volume lost are awarded to the player. An ex- ample can be seen in figure 4.7. The pillar above was scaled down by fifty percent along all the axes.

Measurement Tool The measurement tool allows the player to estimate the size of objects or the distance between them. The tool takes two clicks. The first sets a marking pole on the terrain or object clicked. The second places another marking pole, but it also draws a straight line between these two points. The length of this line is displayed to the user in the top center section of the screen. The tool also allows the user to define an angle to draw relative to the measured line. The measurement tool can be seen in action in figure 4.8.

Joint Tool The joint tool allows the player to connect game objects to each other. Joints will have differ- ent strengths proportional to their cost or the types of materials connected. To create a joint, a player must place two objects adjacent to each other. If the distance is too great an error will be displayed to the player. After two objects are joined, they will move and behave as one object. There is currently no way to remove joints from objects, but it will be added in an upcoming version.

27 Figure 4.8: Measuring tool checking the length of a container.

Shopping Tool The shopping tool opens a window to a store containing different building materials like pillar or plank, or completed buildings like the shipping container. To obtain these items, the player must spend Resource credits. The player starts with a small amount of these credits and can gain more by collecting the rubble piles scattered around the world. Like the joint tool, the inverse of this tool has not been created yet. When completed, selling objects will also grant resource credits. The current plan for the shopping and selling tool is to allow many teaching moments about ratio and proportion by forcing the player to convert their credits when they move to different regions. Another opportunity will be bulk sales. By charging a different amount for buying a group of the same object and making some of the shops slightly dishonest, the player will be force to check the price per unit of the items they are buying and selling.

28 Figure 4.9: Screenshot of the menu in the adventure mode of Earthquake Rebuild.

Figure 4.10: Screenshot of the menu in the building mode of Earthquake Rebuild.

29 4.2.4 Menu

The menu mode of the game contains a tabbed toolbar that is navigated using the mouse. You may switch to the menu at any time using the escape key in either building or adventure mode. The menu is overlaid on the current view. The menu from adventure mode can be seen in figure 4.9; building mode can be seen in figure 4.10. The tabs with a short description follow.

Options This tab contains buttons that control the game. Currently, there are buttons to quit to the desk- top and restart the current level. In the future, controls for key bindings and audio/video options will be located in this tab.

Inventory The inventory tab allows the player to inspect and reorganize their object. If the player hovers over an object a tooltip will appear with details about the object including a description, the name, a count, and size of this object. The player is limited to twenty different types of objects. Currently, there is no limit to the number of each type of object.

Episode The episode tab contains information on the current episode. There is a map, a brief description of the episode, a list of the current and completed tasks. This provides an overview of the information needed to progress in the game. The description of the game tries to offer direction if the player gets lost or would like to improve their score.

Actions The Actions tab contains information and controls to help you complete the active task. It controls assigning families into homes in the current level. To assign families the player must move their avatar into the container that they would like to assign families to. The player can then increase or decrease the number of each type of family until the container is full. If the player tries to overfill the container, they will see an error message and lose happiness credits. In other levels, this tab may be different.

30 Help The help tab contains a brief introduction to how the game is played, along with the controls used for most modes and tools. The help screen has become out of date since many changes have been made to the game. This page should be altered to be created dynamically from data provided in the script or game editor. In later versions, this tab will also change based on the situation and offer hints to the players to guide them.

Calculator Tool and Scratch Pad The calculator and scratch pad are a tool for the user to make notes and do calculations in a controlled environment that will allow the use of the player’s input in any assessment or player modeling tools in the future. Most simple calculator tools are allowed such as addition, multiplica- tion, subtraction, division, and parenthesis. Each input and output is stored in a log file that will be analyzed in the future.

4.3 Mathematics

”This is a math game, where is the math?” is the comment heard most often about Earthquake Rebuild when it is shown to people who are not involved in the development of this project. Although the goal of this project is to teach mathematics without the player realizing it, instructors and others with a deeper understanding of the concepts being covered should see the learning opportunities. The answer to the previous question is we have only just begun. Although the appropriate methods are available, the required levels have not been fully implemented. In the current level, math teaching opportunities are found in the assignment of families to the living spaces available. We spent many meetings discussing how we could make the player use math skills in the assignment task. This can be seen in the language, interface, penalties, and number of solutions. The language for the task description was chosen to use ratio language instead of giving the user the information directly to push them towards computing the space needed per family. The user

31 interface went through a number of iterations to help the player without giving away the solution by disabling controls when the container was full. A penalty was added for over filling containers to deter guessing and force the student to think about the task. The number of solutions was lowered from two or three to one to reduce confusion in which was the best solution. This was accomplished by lowering the number of families in the level and increasing the space each person needed. A lot of thought, time, and iteration has gone into the assignment task. It is not perfect, but it requires mathematical thought. With varying constraints and goals, the very simple task currently in Earthquake Rebuild can be morphed into many complex mathematical problems with numerous solutions. Another learning opportunity is in the construction of the buildings themselves. Since the construction takes place at the same location as a building that existed previously, measuring the size of the building and finding the location give the player an opportunity to use ratio and proportion. As the player’s virtual world grows, more constraints arise. Some non-player characters may want to live close; some may want to live away from others, some may want to live near certain terrain features. The conversion of the resource score to credits requires care while cutting objects to the correct size to not waste product. Planning, measurement, and conversion will all play important roles in the mathematics learning of the player.

4.4 Previous Versions

Earthquake Rebuild has been a very iterative design process. There are at least five versions of the game that contain minimal similarities. Many of the classes used in the previous versions have been recycled into the current iteration, many more have been reworked or discarded. In the original version, dragging objects around with the mouse in a top down view was the only control mechanism. The next iteration, saw the removal of the often clunky mouse controls for a keyboard centered control scheme and the top down view replaced with a first person point of view. This can be seen in the top picture of figure 4.4. These keyboard controls quickly became much too complex for some players with numerous key combinations necessary to perform simple tasks. The third version of the game returned to the top down view with more refined mouse controls, along with a button toolbar to control game actions and change how the mouse buttons behave. This version is pictured in the middle screen shot in figure 4.4. This version is most similar to the current building

32 Figure 4.11: Old versions from oldest to newest: top to bottom

33 mode. Most, if not all, tools developed in this version have carried over to the current iteration. The last big leap, was combining the two previous versions. Each had its virtues, but alone seem like an incomplete game. The combination of the two allowed for task to be performed in a natural way for most things. Implementing new tools and objects lead us to the version pictured at the bottom of figure 4.4. The change from whole containers to object made of smaller pieces was a jump, but mostly happened behind the scenes. The mouse controls in the building mode are refined almost monthly to make construction more intuitive as issues arise. Looking back some of the earlier prototypes are unrecognizable when compare to the current version.

4.5 Class Overview

Earthquake Rebuild uses a number of classes to accomplish the mechanics in the game. They are briefly discussed here, sorted by the game mode they are used in.

4.5.1 Adventure Mode

The adventure mode class pertain to the movement and interaction between the player avatar and the game world.

Collect The Collect class is used to collect objects, find families, switch between macro and micro collection modes, and buy objects. This class has expanded to include task that should be moved into other classes.

Character Motor The Character Motor class is a Unity standard asset. It is used to propel the character object in 3D space.

Drowning The Drowning class tracks the players vertical position and resets the player position if their po- sition is lower than the threshold. This class should be modified to place the player at their most recent legal position.

34 FPS Input Controller The FPS Input Controller class is a Unity standard asset. This class takes input for moving the character in 3D space, limits those inputs based on constraints, and passes it to the Character Motor class.

Look at Me The Look at Me class is used to make the nonplayer families constantly face the player when they enter a defined range.

Mouse Look The Mouse Look class is a Unity standard asset. This script is used to control where the player camera is looking by moving the mouse.

4.5.2 Building Mode

The building mode classes pertain to the placement and management of game objects in the game world.

Calc The Calc class is use to draw, process input of, and record output of the in game calculator/Scratch Pad. This class must be rewritten to use the NGUI system that the rest of the UI elements have been changed to.

Count Families The Count Families class globally tracks families sheltered, lost, and homeless. It also tracks and controls changes in the number and type of families assigned to the currently active container.

35 Cut Prefab The Cut Prefab class contains the functions to cut and scale the currently selected game object. It draws the dialog box to input the parameters of these functions.

Joint The Joint Class is used by the joint button to combine objects with joints that will break under defined stresses.

Measure The Measure class is used by the measurement tool. It draws the measurement dialog box, creates the measuring tape and angle game objects, and measures the distance between the points.

Orbital Camera Script The Orbital Camera Script class is used as the camera movement controller. It enables the camera to fly around the selected game object while facing it. This class also contains the methods for the camera’s zoom.

Place Objects The Place Objects class is used by both the place objects button and the drag button. It is respon- sible for the movement of the objects as well as changing the color to indicate whether the item is unable to be dropped in the current location.

Shake The Shake class is used by the shake button to begin the earthquake simulation. This class also calls the method on its own if the allotted time has passed.

Toolbar Button Controller The Toolbar Button Controller class contains no methods. This class is used to contain a public variable containing the active tool menu button.

36 4.5.3 Other

Create Container The Create Container class is used to make prefabs of composite containers to be used in the game. This is a script to be used in the editor. Given x, y, and z dimensions a container made of 1x1x.01 meters is made.

Family The Family class has no methods. This class is for keeping the information of individual families currently loaded in the level.

Game Controls The Game Controls class contains global game controls. These controls are available in both modes. They include quit and reload.

Happiness Credit Functions The Happiness Credits Functions class contains public methods to increment and decrement the happiness credit score UI element.

Level The level class is used to control loading levels. Currently, it also sets the build date on the splash screen.

Mode The Mode class controls switching between building and adventure mode. It also controls bringing up the menu and disabling game controls while the menu is open.

Object Stats The Object Stats class contains no methods. It contains information about the construction objects such as inventory ID number, families currently living in the construction object, and the maximum number of families allowed to live in the construction object.

37 Save Location The Save Location class is used to record the players location in an XML file with a time stamp. This class is called every n seconds. The Save Location also has a public method that can be called to record events with their time and place.

4.5.4 NGUI

There are number of NGUI classes used in this project. Most are used as designed by their creator, Tasharen Entertainment, for UI elements. About ninety percent of the GUI is made using NGUI. The last ten percent is a hold over from one of the older versions of the game that still used Unity’s cumbersome and inefficient UI system. Unity has sine updated the UI system and Earthquake Rebuild is due for a GUI redesign in one of its next versions. A few have been modified to alter the inventory system provided in an example to suit the projects needs. Since the NGUI package is large and this document would be needlessly long if I discussed them all. The main modifications are adding item types and item attributes necessary for this project.

38 CHAPTER 5

PLAY TESTING

At this point in the project, we have done some limited testing of the current level. The purpose of the tests is usability testing, but we did not turn down an opportunity to collect some data from the test subjects. Using the data collected from these play sessions, some basic analysis has been completed to determine which game actions should be recorded. The results of this analysis will be discussed here.

5.1 Data Collection

The data used for this analysis was take from two sessions at Florida State University Schools(FSUS) middle school in their computer lab. FSUS is a charter school sponsored by the Florida State Uni- versity that provides educators with research and development opportunities[10]. There were people from the team readily available in case the student had questions, or we felt the student need a little guidance. The four students had around 30 minutes to explore the game world and complete four tasks. The goals could be completed however the student liked. The task were to collect all the families, to collect all the containers, to rebuild to Row House, and to shelter all the families. The students varied in video game experience greatly. For the first two students the only thing tracked was the character position every second. For the second two players nearly every game action was tracked. This information is stored in an XML on the client computer

5.2 Reception

The reception of the game was mostly favorable. There were many small suggestions to create better models of some of the game objects, or to slow down the mouse. The students who had played games before found the controls much more intuitive than the players who were not gamers, who had trouble with the control scheme.

39 5.3 Analysis

A very rudimentary analysis was done on these data files. The xml files were parsed using a python script that creates a two dimension histogram of the players position and a dictionary of the used game actions and the number of times they were used. The data from the dictionary can be seen in table 5.1 At this point the player reaction and the analysis tools are more important than the results themselves to help reach the next iteration of the game. Interestingly enough, players tended to stay on the path around the island. As seen in the position graphs in figure 5.1, three out of four of the players decided to move away in the South West corner, which contains nothing of use. Not much time was spent here by any of the players, and they quickly returned to the path. All of the players accomplished the fist two easier tasks, collecting the families and collecting the containers. Unfortunately, they struggled with the last two more difficult tasks, building the Row House and assigning the families. This is unfortunate since the last tasks contained the mathematics for this level. The measurement tool was only used once and the scratchpad was never used. As the game matures, students will be forced to use these to obtain higher scores and even pass more difficult levels because they will offer direct information about what math skills the player is using.

Table 5.1: Player actions

Item Measured Student 1 Trial 1 Student 1 Trial 2 Student 1 Total Student 2 Total Time Played 20 16 36 20 56 Items Collected 8 40 48 30 78 Items Placed 5 7 13 7 20 Items Bought x 1 1 x 1 Measurements 1 x 1 x 1 Entrance Placed x 1 1 x 1 Families Placed x 24 24 9 33 Families Found 10 10 20 10 30 Jumped 41 x 41 4 45 Switched Mode 10 34 44 25 69 History View 1 x 1 x 1 Scratch Pad x x x x x ItemsPainted x x x x x Finished Task 1 1 1 2 1 3 Finished Task 2 1 1 2 1 3 FinishedTask3 x x x x x Finished Task 4 x 1 1 x 1

40 Figure 5.1: Four player’s position with a map reference

41 CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSIONS

6.1 Future Works

Earthquake Rebuild is far from a finished product. Some of the goals are very ambitious, but will hopefully see fruition near the end of the three year project. After the completion of a prototype with analysis of the learning of the player, the next step would be to transform Earthquake Rebuild from a developed game into a tool for instructors to utilize themselves in the classroom, This would involve modeling the player, generating levels on the fly, adapting to the player, and creating a suite of tools to make the use of this product simple for the average user.

6.1.1 Player Modeling

Player Modeling, as discussed in the Newton’s Playground section, involves recording markers of the players game actions and processing them to obtain results about how the player is doing in certain areas of their learning, or what parts of the game the player interacts with the most. The recording of the markers is completed. Setting up the Bayesian Network will be the hardest part of this task. Luckily guidence is available from team members in this subject. Netica, a tool for solving Bayesian belief networks and creating influence diagrams has been used for post processing information from Newton’s Playground and would be a good tool for this project as well. This will allow for refinement of the level designs to remove the elements that distract from learning, enhance the elements that encourage learning, or streamline the experience by removing unused portions of the game.

6.1.2 Procedural Generation

Generating complex levels and tasks based on a few inputs from the educator is one goal of this project. Given a competency, a complexity, and a length if play, developing a unique level that explores the material will give endless opportunity for practice of the task until mastery without using repetitive drills. This would save time in the development cycle. Designing levels is a time consuming task; being able to generate levels and tasks would not only save time, but it would

42 also greatly increase replay value. Current research in this matter often focus on using Vornoi Tessellation to generate the terrain, but the problem and solution generation will be an interesting challenge.

6.1.3 Player Adaptation

The next step would be player adaptation. Using the Netica software for real time game adap- tation may prove to have some input and output troubles. The Infer.NET library is capable of generating these Bayesian Networks in the same executable as the game using the c# implementa- tion. Combining the results from player modeling and the procedural generation tools would allow Earthquake Rebuild to dynamically adapt the difficulty in areas where the player is struggling or increase the difficulty in areas where the player is advancing too quickly. Types of puzzles or tasks the player enjoys more in earlier levels would appear more in later levels. This kind of custom attention to the player should drive engagement, as well as help retain players by giving them a new appropriately challenging experience every time.

6.1.4 Educator Toolbox

The educator’s tool box would be the one of the last module to implement. It would contain a user interface for all of the other modules Earthquake Rebuild contains. This should require minimal knowledge of the games inner workings and be very easy to use. The instructor would have access to game play logs, reports from the model of the player, graphs and other visual information regarding this data. A console for the instructor to monitor and steer the player as they play will be available for all students. This module will also include a tool to interact with the generation of levels, allowing for custom versions of the game tailored exactly to the needs of the class.

6.1.5 Multi-player Modes

Massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft require collaboration and cooperation. They are also extremely successful. Back in 2011, players had accumulated nearly six million years in this virtual realm[13]. For E-Rebuild, we have also discussed two types of multiplayer game play. A free play mode similar to Minecraft, where players can invite their friends, show off their hard work, or work together to create something of a scale so massive that it would be daunting to an individual.

43 This mode will develop creativity, communication, and collaboration. The other mode would be similar to the current mode, but with two players. Creating scenarios that would be impossible for one player will create a fun environment that forces communication and collaboration.

6.2 Wrap Up

During this first year on Earthquake Rebuild, a lot of progress on the mechanics of the game have been made. Most game actions are finished, but there is still much to be done. The aesthetic and visuals need a complete make over. The levels need to be designed in such a way to support learning and scaffold the player to the game as well as mathematics. Although, there is much to be done, the tools necessary to get there are in place. The team is primed and ready to begin testing with students on larger scales. In the next few years Earthquake Rebuild will evolve from the demo it is now, to a fun game to learn math, and finally a tool and platform for teachers. Team meetings and the programs used will continue as is for the foreseeable future of this project.

44 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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[5] Earthquake facts and statistics. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/ year/eqstats.php, 2013. (Visited on 11/02/2014).

[6] Shooters: How video games fund arms manufacturers eurogamer.net. http://www.eurogamer. net/articles/2013-02-01-shooters-how-video-games-fund-arms-manufacturers, Jan 2013. (Visited on 11/05/2014).

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45 [13] Jane McGonigal. The benefits of videogames - wsj. http://online.wsj. com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704590704576092460302990884?mod=WSJ_ newsreel_lifeStyle&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle% 2FSB10001424052748704590704576092460302990884.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_newsreel_ lifeStyle, Jan 2011. (Visited on 11/02/2014).

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[15] Jerry Nash. Chess and critical thinking. http://www.alabamagifted.org/wp-content/ uploads/2014/10/JerryNash-AAGC-Chess.pdf, oct 2014. (Visited on 11/02/2014).

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46 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

My name is Danial Smith. I was raised in Brooksville, FL and began my collegiate career in at the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL as a chemical engineering major. I transferred to Florida State University and began working in the department of Scientific Computing in the summer of 2010. I graduate with a bachelor’s degree in the spring of 2012 from FSU and began graduate school in the fall of the same year. I have always had an interest in games, but was not until Dr. Gordon Erlebacher’s Game and Simulator Design Course that this interest came to a forefront. I have since worked with Dr. Erlebacher as the teaching assistant for the same course.

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