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Investigating the Effect of Pace Mechanic on Player Motivation And
Investigating the Effect of Pace Mechanic on Player Motivation and Experience by Hala Anwar A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Applied Science (MASc) in Management Sciences Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2016 © Hala Anwar 2016 AUTHOR'S DECLARATION I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. Hala Anwar ii Abstract Games have long been employed to motivate people towards positive behavioral change. Numerous studies, for example, have found people who were previously disinterested in a task can be enticed to spend hours gathering information, developing strategies, and solving complex problems through video games. While the effect of factors such as generational influence or genre appeal have previously been researched extensively in serious games, an aspect in the design of games that remains unexplored through scientific inquiry is the pace mechanic—how time passes in a game. Time could be continuous as in the real world (real-time) or it could be segmented into phases (turn- based). Pace mechanic is fiercely debated by many strategy game fans, where real-time games are widely considered to be more engaging, and the slower pace of turn-based games has been attributed to the development of mastery. In this thesis, I present the results of an exploratory mixed-methods user study to evaluate whether pace mechanic and type of game alter the player experience and are contributing factors to how quickly participants feel competent at a game. -
Video Games and the Mobilization of Anxiety and Desire
PLAYING THE CRISIS: VIDEO GAMES AND THE MOBILIZATION OF ANXIETY AND DESIRE BY ROBERT MEJIA DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communications in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Kent A. Ono, Chair Professor John Nerone Professor Clifford Christians Professor Robert A. Brookey, Northern Illinois University ABSTRACT This is a critical cultural and political economic analysis of the video game as an engine of global anxiety and desire. Attempting to move beyond conventional studies of the video game as a thing-in-itself, relatively self-contained as a textual, ludic, or even technological (in the narrow sense of the word) phenomenon, I propose that gaming has come to operate as an epistemological imperative that extends beyond the site of gaming in itself. Play and pleasure have come to affect sites of culture and the structural formation of various populations beyond those conceived of as belonging to conventional gaming populations: the workplace, consumer experiences, education, warfare, and even the practice of politics itself, amongst other domains. Indeed, the central claim of this dissertation is that the video game operates with the same political and cultural gravity as that ascribed to the prison by Michel Foucault. That is, just as the prison operated as the discursive site wherein the disciplinary imaginary was honed, so too does digital play operate as that discursive site wherein the ludic imperative has emerged. To make this claim, I have had to move beyond the conventional theoretical frameworks utilized in the analysis of video games. -
D3D11 Software Tessellation
D3D11 Software Tessellation John Kloetzli, Jr Graphics Programmer, Firaxis Games About Firaxis ● Founded in 1996 ● Strategy games! ● Sid Meier lead designer ● 20+ shipped games ● Civilization V ● XCOM: Enemy Unknown “Games that stand the test of time” About Me ● I work on the Civilization team ● Graphics programmer ● Over 7 years at Firaxis ● Procedural modeling ● Terrain rendering Civilization V ● Shipped Sept. 2010 ● One of the first DX11 games ● Variable-bitrate GPU texture decompression ● Hardware tessellation ● Two large expansions ● Gods & Kings ● Brave New World OLANO et al. Variable Bit Rate GPU Texture Decompression. In EGSR 2011 Civilization V ● Low-res Heightmap ● 64x64 per hex ● Procedurally generated ● Unique – no repeat ● High-res Materials ● 512x512 per hex ● Artist-created ● Repeats across the world Better Terrain ● Problem: Sharp features ● Low-res heightmap cannot display unique, high-res detail ● Solution: High-res heightmap ● More data (Compression? Streaming?) ● Efficient Tessellation GPU Displacement Tessellation Demo Simple procedural terrain... ● Ridges to test difficult case ● Assume strategy game camera (lots of pan/zoom) ● High res: 256x256 Heightmap per tile ● Large: 128x128 tiles (32,768x32,768 heightmap) ...all done on the GPU ● Heightmap/Normalmap created on demand ● Use texture arrays to implement megatexture ● Tessellation created on demand using GPU CPU GPU Resources Compute Visible Tiles Create Heightmap Height Build New Tiles Create Normalmap Normal Render Visible Cells Tessellation ? Shade Overview -
Freecol Documentation, User Guide for Version V0.11.6
FreeCol Documentation User Guide for Version v0.11.6 The FreeCol Team December 30, 2019 2 Contents 1 Introduction7 1.1 About FreeCol..........................7 1.2 The Original Colonization....................7 1.3 About this manual........................9 1.3.1 Differences between the rule sets.............9 1.4 Liberty and Immigration..................... 11 2 Installation 13 2.1 System Requirements....................... 13 2.1.1 FreeCol on Windows................... 14 2.2 Compiling FreeCol........................ 14 3 Interface 15 3.1 Starting the game......................... 15 3.1.1 Command line options.................. 15 3.1.2 Game setup........................ 19 3.1.3 Map Generator Options................. 21 3.1.4 Game Options....................... 22 3.2 Client Options........................... 25 3.2.1 Display Options...................... 25 3.2.2 Translations........................ 26 3.2.3 Message Options..................... 27 3.2.4 Audio Options...................... 28 3.2.5 Savegame Options.................... 29 3.2.6 Warehouse Options.................... 29 3.2.7 Keyboard Accelerators.................. 29 3.2.8 Other Options....................... 29 3.3 The main screen.......................... 30 3 4 CONTENTS 3.3.1 The Menubar....................... 31 3.3.2 The Info Panel...................... 36 3.3.3 The Minimap....................... 36 3.3.4 The Unit Buttons..................... 36 3.3.5 The Compass Rose.................... 37 3.3.6 The Main Map...................... 37 3.4 The Europe Panel......................... 42 3.5 The Colony panel......................... 43 3.5.1 The Warehouse Dialog.................. 46 3.5.2 The Build Queue Panel.................. 46 3.6 Customization........................... 47 4 The New World 49 4.1 Terrain Types........................... 49 4.2 Goods............................... 50 4.2.1 Trade Routes....................... 52 4.3 Special Resources........................ -
HUBERT, Our Freeciv AI
HUBERT, Our FreeCiv AI Michael Arcidiacono, Joel Joseph Dominic, Richard Akira Heru Friday 7th December, 2018 Abstract FreeCiv is an open-source alternative to Civilization, which is a turn-based strategy game that allows the player to control an empire by building cities, constructing and moving units, and engaging in diplomacy and war with other nations. We build an artificial intelligence (AI) nicknamed HUBERT to play this game. We use a modified SARSA algorithm with linear approximation of the Q function. We have also tried training HUBERT using a memetic algorithm. 1 Introduction The Civilization video game series is a collection of turn-based strategy games that allow the player to control an empire by building cities, constructing and moving units, and engaging in diplomacy and war with other nations. There are several different ways of winning the game such as through military dominion (i.e. by taking over all the cities of other empires). We use an open-source alternative to Civilization, FreeCiv and focus on getting the highest score for this agent. A screenshot of the game in progress can be seen in Figure1. We model this game as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) with states, actions and re- wards. In our model, the states are quantified as a β vector per city containing the total number of cities, total amount of gold, tax, science, luxury, gold per turn, turn number, the number of technologies, city population, city surplus, city unhappiness level, and city food. At any given turn, the player can choose to build cities, build units, move units, declare war, trade resources, research technology, and engage in many other possible actions. -
Playing a Strategy Game with Knowledge-Based Reinforcement Learning
Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Playing a Strategy Game with Knowledge-Based Reinforcement Learning Viktor Voss · Liudmyla Nechepurenko · Dr. Rudi Schaefer · Steffen Bauer Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract This paper presents Knowledge-Based Reinforcement Learning (KB- RL) as a method that combines a knowledge-based approach and a reinforcement learning (RL) technique into one method for intelligent problem solving. The pro- posed approach focuses on multi-expert knowledge acquisition, with the reinforce- ment learning being applied as a conflict resolution strategy aimed at integrating the knowledge of multiple exerts into one knowledge base. The article describes the KB-RL approach in detail and applies the reported method to one of the most challenging problems of current Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, namely playing a strategy game. The results show that the KB-RL system is able to play and complete the full FreeCiv game, and to win against the computer players in various game settings. Moreover, with more games played, the system improves the gameplay by shortening the number of rounds that it takes to win the game. Overall, the reported experiment supports the idea that, based on human knowledge and empowered by reinforcement learning, the KB-RL system can de- liver a strong solution to the complex, multi-strategic problems, and, mainly, to improve the solution with increased experience. Keywords Knowledge-Based Systems · Reinforcement Learning · Multi-Expert Knowledge Base · Conflict Resolution V. Voss arago GmbH, E-mail: [email protected] L. Nechepurenko arago GmbH, E-mail: [email protected] Dr. R. Schaefer arXiv:1908.05472v1 [cs.AI] 15 Aug 2019 arago GmbH, E-mail: [email protected] S. -
Into the Cosmos: Board Game Project Blending 4X and Eurogame Styles
Salvation: Into the Cosmos: Board Game Project Blending 4X and Eurogame Styles A Senior Project Presented To: the Faculty of the Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies by Zachary Griffith June 2017 © Zachary Griffith 2017 Griffith 1 Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2 How to Play................................................................................................................................................... 3 Blending Eurogames and 4X ........................................................................................................................ 3 Eurogames ....................................................................................................................................... 3 4X Strategy ....................................................................................................................................... 4 Putting it All Together ...................................................................................................................... 4 Influences ..................................................................................................................................................... 4 The Game Design Process ........................................................................................................................... -
Narrative Representation and Ludic Rhetoric of Imperialism in Civilization 5
Narrative Representation and Ludic Rhetoric of Imperialism in Civilization 5 Masterarbeit im Fach English and American Literatures, Cultures, and Media der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Malte Wendt Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Huck Zweitgutachter: Tristan Emmanuel Kugland Kiel im März 2018 Table of contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Hypothesis 4 3 Methodology 5 3.1 Inclusions and exclusions 5 3.2 Structure 7 4 Relevant postcolonial concepts 10 5 Overview and categorization of Civilization 5 18 5.1 Premise and paths to victory 19 5.2 Basics on rules, mechanics, and interface 20 5.3 Categorization 23 6 Narratology: surface design 24 6.1 Paratexts and priming 25 6.1.1 Announcement trailer 25 6.1.2 Developer interview 26 6.1.3 Review and marketing 29 6.2 Civilizations and leaders 30 6.3 Universal terminology and visualizations 33 6.4 Natural, National, and World Wonders 36 6.5 Universal history and progress 39 6.6 User interface 40 7 Ludology: procedural rhetoric 43 7.1 Defining ludological terminology 43 7.2 Progress and the player element: the emperor's new toys 44 7.3 Unity and territory: the worth of a nation 48 7.4 Religion, Policies, and Ideology: one nation under God 51 7.5 Exploration and barbarians: into the heart of darkness 56 7.6 Resources, expansion, and exploitation: for gold, God, and glory 58 7.7 Collective memory and culture: look on my works 62 7.8 Cultural Victory and non-violent relations: the ballot 66 7.9 Domination Victory and war: the bullet 71 7.10 The Ex Nihilo Paradox: build like an Egyptian 73 7.11 The Designed Evolution Dilemma: me, the people 77 8 Conclusion and evaluation 79 Deutsche Zusammenfassung 83 Bibliography 87 1 Introduction “[V]ideo games – an important part of popular culture – mediate ideology, whether by default or design.” (Hayse, 2016:442) This thesis aims to uncover the imperialist and colonialist ideologies relayed in the video game Sid Meier's Civilization V (2K Games, 2010) (abbrev. -
Integrating Reinforcement Learning Into Strategy Games
Integrating Reinforcement Learning into Strategy Games by Stefan Wender Supervised by Ian Watson The University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand A Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science The University of Auckland, February 2009 Abstract The present thesis describes the design and implementation of a machine learning agent based on four different reinforcement learning algorithms. The reinforcement learning agent is integrated into the commercial computer game Civilization IV. Civilization IV is a turn- based empire building game from the Civilization series. The reinforcement learning agent is applied to the city placement selection task. The city placement selection determines the founding sites for a player’s cities. The four reinforcement learning algorithms that are evaluated are the off-policy algorithms one-step Q-learning and Q(λ) and the on-policy algorithms one-step Sarsa and Sarsa(λ). The aim of the research presented in this thesis is the creation of an adaptive machine learning approach for a task which is originally performed by a complex deterministic script. Since the machine learning approach is nondeterministic, it results in a more challenging and dynamic computer AI. The thesis presents an empirical evaluation of the performance of the reinforcement learning approach and compares the performance of the adaptive agent with the original deterministic game AI. The comparison shows that the reinforcement learning approach outperforms the deterministic game AI. Finally, the behaviour and performance of the reinforcement learn- ing algorithms are elaborated on and the algorithms are further improved by analysing and revising their parameters. -
Playing Games with Technology: Fictions of Science in the Civilization Series Will Slocombe, University of Liverpool
Playing Games with Technology: Fictions of Science in the Civilization Series Will Slocombe, University of Liverpool Introduction Videogames might be thought to be too recent, and to concerned with entertainment, to reveal appropriately historicised attitudes to technology. However, as this essay will demonstrate, there is value in considering how one type of game, the “4X strategy” game, encodes particular assumptions about technology and its development. Although closely affiliated to the “God game” (a videogame in which the player is given absolute, and often supernatural power over a civilization or tribe’s development), “4X strategy” games are defined by the phrase “EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate”. That is, such games encourage players to “explore” the in-game environment, “expand” their civilizations, “exploit” the resources of their civilization’s territory, and “exterminate” rival civilizations. Whilst this phrasing is loaded, it provides a sense of the kind of activities within the game, although it does not foreground the importance of technological research. Using the Civilization series of videogames (six games and various “expansions” over the period 1991- 2016) as an exemplar, this article asserts that “technology trees”, as the underpinning structural element of such many 4X strategy games, reveal not only a specific cultural attitude to technology, but also towards the history of technology. Whilst this essay will describe and examine “technology trees” later, it is important to realise at the outset that these -
2K Games Gibt Bekannt, Dass Das Action-Strategiespiel XCOM: Enemy Unknown Von Firaxis Games Entwickelt Wird
Pressemitteilung 2K Games gibt bekannt, dass das Action-Strategiespiel XCOM: Enemy Unknown von Firaxis Games entwickelt wird Das ursprüngliche X-COM gilt als eines der besten Spiele aller Zeiten und wird von den Strategiespiel-Experten von Firaxis Games zu neuem Leben erweckt New York, NY – 5. Januar 2012 – 2K Games gab heute bekannt, dass Firaxis Games, das kreative Team hinter der berühmten Sid Meier’s Civilization-Reihe, den Titel XCOM: Enemy Unknown entwickelt, ein Action-Strategiespiel, das im Herbst 2012 veröffentlicht werden soll. Fans des ursprünglichen X-COM werden XCOM: Enemy Unknown sofort wiedererkennen, während es für die heutigen Konsolen- und PC-Spieler in Sachen Strategiespiele Neuland betritt. Der Schwerpunkt von XCOM: Enemy Unknown liegt gleichermaßen auf tiefgreifender Strategie und intensiven taktischen Kämpfen und die Spieler übernehmen die Kontrolle über eine geheime paramilitärische Organisation mit dem Namen XCOM. Als XCOM-Kommandant müssen die Spieler eine schreckliche globale Invasion durch Außerirdische abwehren, indem sie Ressourcen verwalten, Technologien weiterentwickeln und Kampfstrategien sowie individuelle Einheiten-Taktiken überwachen. “Wir freuen uns darauf, auf der Kern-Spielmechanik aufzubauen, die die Fans des Original-X-COM lieben, und die Serie dabei gleichzeitig einer neuen Generation vorzustellen“, so Sarah Anderson, Senior Vice President of Marketing bei 2K. “Mit Firaxis’ XCOM: Enemy Unknown und 2K Marins kommendem XCOM wird 2K Games zwei völlig unterschiedliche Spielerlebnisse anbieten, die beide an das klassische X-COM-Universum angelehnt sind. Jedes Spiel bietet ein einzigartiges XCOM- Erlebnis in unterschiedlichen Genres, so wie es sich die beiden Studios in ihren einzigartigen kreativen Visionen vorstellen.” Das ursprüngliche X-COM wurde im Jahr 1993 veröffentlicht und gilt als eines der besten Spiele aller Zeiten. -
Sid Meier's Civilization IV Now Shipping to Retail Stores Across
Sid Meier's Civilization IV Now Shipping To Retail Stores Across North America; All-new Features Include New Ways to Play and Win, New Tools to Manage and Expand Civilizations, All-new Mod Capabilities and Intense Multiplayer Modes and Options October 25, 2005 8:31 AM ET NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 25, 2005--2K Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO), and FIRAXIS Games, the world renowned video game developer, today announced that Sid Meier's Civilization IV for the PC has shipped to retail stores in North America. Sid Meier's Civilization IV will be in retail stores in Europe on November 4. Sid Meier's Civilization IV comes-to-life like never before in a beautifully detailed, living 3D world that expands the gameplay experience. This latest installment takes the franchise to new heights with the addition of new ways to play and win, new tools to manage and expand your civilization, all-new easy to use mod capabilities and various multiplayer modes and options. "With more than six million units sold, the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise is recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all-time," said Christoph Hartmann, Managing Director of 2K Games. "Sid Meier's Civilization IV expands on the popular gameplay in the Civilization series with new features including religion, some of history's most influential people and for the first time in the Civilization series, a full 3D engine." "The Civilization series is very close to our hearts," said Jeff Briggs, Founder, President and CEO of FIRAXIS Games.