This paper aims to improve the UX of the AR game cARcassonne for the Hololens 2 by making changes to its UI. Previous research and existing games are analyzed to determine the changes to the UI. A questionnaire is developed using said research as well as research of other UX measuring methods such as the GEQ and UPEQ. The results show an increase in UX, but also that the AR game has problems for new users. It is discussed that UI is actually not the main problem in the UX, but rather the technology of the Hololens 2.

The digital age has launched numerous opportunities for game developers, yet the transition from traditionaltabletop games to digital platforms presents a unique set ofchallenges. This thesis delves into the intricacies of this transition.Guided by the Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM),the study focuses on the serious tabletop game ”Futuroscopio,”aiming to convert it into a digital format.The research investigates the challenges encountered duringthe digital conversion process, from the implementation of gamemechanics to the design of a digital interface.Utilizing the Unitygame engine and the C# programming language, a digital artifactis developed to closely mimic the original tabletop game.The study contributes to the growing field of game developmentby providing insights for developers and designers. It servesas a guide for those interested in the digital conversion ofserious tabletop games, shedding light onto the benefits, aswell as drawbacks of such conversion. The thesis concludesby emphasizing the research’s utility for future studies and itsrelevance to a broader audience interested in the domain ofserious games.

Dream Quest(2014) introduced the Roguelike deckbuilder as a game genre. The genre later became popular with the help of Slay the Spire in 2017. As the genre is still fairly new, there are not a lot of tools for designing games of said genre. Taking inspiration from games of the same genre could be a solution to such a problem, one way to do so is via modding. Slay the Spire offers an extensive modding API to users which lets users create new cards, items, events, and even characters. By utilizing these features, it is possible to create a concept for a new game. To use the API, however, would require users to be familiar with programming, which could take a long time to learn for a beginner. Thus, a UI, The Creator was created to let users without experience create mods for Slay the Spire. The UI lets users create cards with different actions and properties without the need to interact with the source code.

If you want procedurally generated content in your games, you often have to rely on your own ability to develop the desired tools. This can be limiting for newer game developers, leading to certain types of gameplay not being considered when designing games. One instance of this problem regards procedurally generated planets, a rather uncommon type of game world, with a lack of tools online to create your own. To improve upon the issue, this paper sets out to explore how a tool can be developed to supply game developers with worlds in the form of planets. This resulted in Planet Designer, a Unity tool for quickly generating diverse planets with the potential to be used in a variety of game concepts. The tool utilizes layers of manipulated noise to generate wide ranges of terrain, which can be populated with trees, bushes, stones, etc. using a brush. By playing around with the terrain and ocean shaders, the user can give each planet a unique aesthetic through different colors, textures, and thresholds. The paper features an extensive description of how the tool’s features were implemented, and how the tool was evaluated, as well as a discussion about why the tool is considered a valid solution to the problem.

Terrain is a key aspect of a game to help immerse the player in the virtual environment. Producing such content can however be quite challenging for a designer since landscapes need to satisfy the game’s visual and playable needs. This paper presents a way to generate different terrain features through the control of software agents to help aid the design process. An artifact was developed which enabled the terrain features to be evaluated in combination with each other. While the features themselves performed well in isolation there would be a few issues depending on how these were integrated.

The consumers of today have become used to a constant flow of new content. Whether the content being music, film and series, games or other forms of media. This has created a strain on the developers and creators, to create new and original content for an ever demanding audience. Creating original content can be a costly and time consuming process. Today there are tools to help in this process, many that build on the idea of procedurally generated content. But with these tools alone it can be hard for the creator to leave their mark on the content, since most of it will look all the same from the same tool. 

We propose CLAPPY, or Collaborative Learning Algorithm for Predicting Personal Yield. The AI colleague that will learn the patterns of the creator, and help them express themselves in their content, regardless of the tool. 

Controlled experiments were conducted where subjects were given a content creation tool in the form of a terrain generator for games. The thesis then compares the results of the content creation tool when the subjects used it on their own and with an AI-collaborator. 

This paper is aimed at investigating whether a biofeedback device can positively increase a player's experience of thrill and suspension in a horror game. To facilitate this, two versions of the same horror game were created with a connection to a heart rate monitor. The difference between the two versions of the game was that the core elements were controlled by the heart rate which attempted to keep the player in a constant suspense state based on their heart rate. This was done to enhance the player's experience and thrill. These two versions of the game were then play-tested by users. Users had no insight into which version they were testing and afterward, a questionnaire was administered to ascertain the tester's emotional responses.The collected data was then analyzed and a pattern could be observed where testers preferred the version of the game that was controlled by the heart rate. This, backed by previous studies showed that using a biofeedback device to implement only the heart rate into a game had a marked positive effect on player experience. Still, additional research is needed with a larger control group to get more accurate results.

Designing entertaining games requires control over the difficulty experienced by players. Gameplay has a clear impact on the difficulty and as such is easy to handle but other factors such as graphics do not share this clear cut impact. Therefore a game was made with adjustable graphical settings without changing any game elements in order to evaluate the effect on 18 participants. No effect was found for the measured performance but a weak correlation is possible for perceived difficulty.

This paper describes a modification to the mixed-initiative co-creative tool, the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer, and a study performed to evaluate and analyze the co-creative relationship between human designer and AI. The relationship between AI and human designer in creative processes is delicate, as adjusting the autonomy of the AI can negatively affect the user experience. To perfect this type of Human-AI collaboration, further research is needed. In this thesis, different degrees of initiative of the AI are explored, to gain further understanding of mixed-initiative co-creative tools. A user study was performed on the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer, with three varying degrees of AI-initiative. The study highlighted elements of frustration that the human designer experiences when using the tool, and the behaviour in the AI that led to possible strains on the relationship. The paper concludes with the identified issues and possible solutions, as well as suggested further research.

Writing is a notoriously time-consuming and challenging activity that is difficult to avoid during the development of a game, and the steady increase in complexity behind producing games is putting pressure on the industry to cut unnecessary costs and streamline processes. With recent breakthroughs in Neural Network research the capabilities of causal language models like the GPT models made by OpenAI have reached a level where they could be used to assist with creative assignments that previously only could be done to an acceptable level of quality by a human writer. This paper aims to combine the power of a language model with the versatility and control of the Mixed-Initiative Co-Creation approach. In order to limit the scope of the artifact to a manageable size the focus will be to generate a shorter biography with backstory for characters and items in a level made in the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer by Alvarez et al. The artifact was evaluated with a user study in which both quantitative ratings and qualitative feedback was collected. The results suggest that the artifact has potential as it has the ability to generate compelling narratives and users attested that it had a positive effect on their work.

Conversations between the PC (player character) and NPCs (non-player characters) in conventional games are usually sequence-based. The NPC talks to a certain point before pending the player's input, sometimes consisting of several prepared actions displayed on the screen in order to advance the conversation. While this method does provide the ability to converse within video games, our study shows it lacks the immersiveness that asynchronously based dialogue provides in some scenarios. Interruptions occur in real-life conversations and may add to a more convincing interaction. In this paper, we present a novel dialogue system that incorporates interruptions alongside emotion, making it possible for different participants involved in the conversation to interrupt and speak over each other while also having lasting consequences. This approach improves conversational players' experience by increasing character believability and engagement. For illustration purposes, interruption was integrated into a text-based game encompassing two variations of the same scenario. The study involved playing both variations of the same game, one being a traditional sequence-based conversation while the other had a fluent dialogue which supports interruption both from the PC and NPCs. Eight students previously familiar with video game dialogues played both variations, half starting with the other version. Each test ended with a survey followed by an interview talking about the answers. Each test took 30-40 min.

This study is concerned with digital two-dimensional rivers for games. Specifically the aim is to create a river shape from the basis of a spline curve and make it look like a river with a water flow-rate. This is achieved by developing an artifact capable of river simulations in 2D, with the flow-rate calculated using the necessary hydraulics equations. The scientific process described in Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems Research is presented and followed. Artifact simulations are demonstrated and evaluated, especially calculations for river mean velocity and discharge are shown to be possible by assuming that the river channel is of trapezoidal shape. Simulations show a type of river not usually seen in games, a river with more accuracy than other game simulations. The artifact river simulations are however limited by a missing smoothness when going between different channel shapes. Also there could be a way of improving the texture used, or possibly use more then one texture in one simulation. The conclusion is that the methods used for river generation by this study could be part of a design tool that targets 2D games.

This thesis focuses on the development and utilization of a virtual reality bicycle simulator for the purposes of traffic safety research. The bicycle simulator is developed using a virtual reality head mounted display (HMD) and commercially available hardware and software in the Unity framework. An experiment was conducted by exposing 24 participants to select scenarios in a virtual environment that were constructed to imitate a real-world location in Lund, Sweden. Observing the effects in term of immersion and cybersickness in relation to development. Recordings from drones were used to capture real life traffic from the location that were tracked and implemented into Unity for increased realism. The participants answered questionnaires incorporating VRSQ: Virtual reality sickness questionnaire and SPES: The spatial presence experience scale. The results indicate that the induced cybersickness is similar to, but slightly lower than that of average mean simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) results. SPES showed generally positive results, average answer being 3.6 on a scale from 1-5. 

Splines are a common mixed-initiative technique for road generation. A designer draws the shape of the curve but the mesh can be procedurally generated along the spline. This relationship improves the workflow of building roads in virtual environments and video games without taking away all of the control of the designer. Whilst this technique is useful when building single roads such as race tracks, it unfortunately struggles when dealing with more complex road networks that feature intersections. These intersections struggle with overlapping meshes and flickering textures without a straightforward solution. This problem significantly limits the usefulness of spline tools when generating roads. This paper aims to solve part of this problem by suggesting a method for detecting intersections in splines that support procedural mesh generation.

This thesis compares the effects of badges andleaderboards in a gamification game used by students studyingFrench. A game is developed in collaboration with teachers froma German university where it is meant to be a tool for themto use in their education. The game itself contains a numberof minigames each with a leaderboard and a set of badges thatthe students can achieve. Information about how the studentsuse the application is then collected and analyzed. This studyaims to deduce what positive and negative effects the badges andleaderboards have on the motivation of the students and howthese gamification elements compare to each other.

Tabletop games have within recent years evolvedto become more and more complex, such as through the useof dynamic rules, permanently changing how the game worksafter a playthrough, and players playing different roles in thegame. This leads to unique challenges for Artificial Intelligence.A Tabletop Games Framework (TAG) is a framework intended topromote research within general AI for modern tabletop games.Rolling Horizon Evolutionary Algorithms (RHEA) are a typeof algorithms that have been applied to games with successin the past. By implementing a RHEA agent we can studyhow it compares to other types of agents such as Monte CarloTree Search and Random Mutation Hill Climbing agents. Ofparticular interest is the game Pandemic (2008), as the existingagents are unable to win at it.

Interactive evolution is explored and applied for the automatic generation of 8-bit sound effects (SFX). Procedurally generating a type of content can result in greater accessibility, cut development costs, and more. However, a natural problem that follows this approach is user fatigue. An 8-bit SFX generator is developed, tested, and then evaluated to understand its capabilities, usability, and effectiveness of several applicable solutions for reducing user fatigue. Results indicate that the software is intuitive to learn and use while providing a decent variety to the generated content with a probable feeling of progression. The implemented solutions for abating user fatigue show promise towards making the software practically viable. However, there are still areas in the developed artifact that suggest for further study.

This paper aims to explore how different design choicesaffect players perceived feelings of purposeful limitations andpredatory monetization in educational gamified software. Thisstudy, along with two others, is part of an initiative by the EUto explore teaching of a second language, in this case Russian,through gamification. Using Design Science it is the goal of thiscase study to determine whether it is possible to teach Russianwith the help of gamified software, with a progression model thatdoes not invoke feelings of predatory monetization game conceptsas seen in similar software on the market.

The video game industry grows bigger and bigger with each year and this growth does not seem to slow down anytime soon. With that, it's important for society and video game developers to know how this media affects the players playing the game as it's already a very big industry, with large numbers of players playing video games every day. Game designers have, and are using information horizons to influence the players in different ways, an example of this is making the player play more cautiously. There have also been previous studies that have shown that music has an impact on a player's behavior and performance while playing a video game, making players more stressed and aggressive being a conclusion for some studies. With this in mind, this study delves deeper into how music in conjunction with information horizons affects a player, playing a video game. This was done by using a controlled experiment in conjunction with a first-person shooter game, the goal of the game being clearing out a linear level of turrets using an automatic rifle. One group of test subjects played a version of the game consisting of high-tension music and information horizon in play, with another group of test subjects playing the same game without these effects in play. Data was collected in the background from each test subject's playthrough and this data was then analyzed and compared between both groups. From the data gathered it seems that music made the players play faster and more aggressively, with the information horizons effect being diminished by the music's overpowering effect. This is in line with numerous previous studies that have gotten similar end results from the effects of music in video games, with an existing research gap with regards to information horizon making the effects of the information horizon unclear.  The end results showed that group 1, playing the version of the game with high tension music and information horizon in play, had fired their weapons more, been less accurate with their shots, destroyed turrets slower, had more deaths, and played faster. These results indicate increased stress levels and aggressiveness with group 1’s test subjects.

Video games often include various creatures within their games, these creatures often give the world in which they inhabit a richer experience for the player. Creating these creatures can be costly, to lower these costs procedural content generated creatures could be used instead. Creatures created with PCG will have a lower upfront cost but comes with the downside of less control without a large amount of testing. This is a problem, what we have tried to do is lessening the amount of time needed to achieve the desired level of perfection. In this paper we have tried to find patterns which will further help the use of procedural content generated creatures. The game Forest Moon will be introduced to gather data and to find pattern of how players interact from various visual cues. With the data we have gained further understanding on how players react and what kind of emotions they feel when certain visual cues are presented.

Visual cues are a technique used for the purposes of guiding a viewer towards points of interest. Most commonly this is done with the use of color and contrast to make objects stick out more from its environment. Within the context of video games, visual cues are implemented to guide player actions in otherwise complex scenarios. Due to the steady increase of high-fidelity graphics in video games, visual cues are becoming more important for players so that visual clarity can still be maintained. In the video games analyzed in this thesis this is primarily done by adding a glowing outline (highlight) around the object or entity that the game designers want the player to interact with. Thus, this thesis attempts to explore two different qualities of visual cues: color and glow intensity, to see their effects on player performance and experience. To do this, an experiment was conducted in a scaled-down version of an FPS game with the purpose of testing these different qualities in four different scenarios and how they may influence both reaction time and player satisfaction. The results from this study indicate that neither of the tested qualities had any significant impact on a participant’s ability to complete their task. On the other hand: color had a big effect on player experience where one color, purple, was deemed irritating by most participants. Finally, the differences in glow intensity went unnoticed in most of the tested scenarios which points towards color being the more important quality of the ones tested in this study. 

Controlling external actions with the voice is something humans have tried to do for a long time. There are many different ways to implement a voice control system, and many of these applications require internet connections. Leaving the application area limited, as commercially available voice controllers have been stagnating behind due to the cost of developing and maintaining. In this project an artifact was created to work as an easy to use, generic, voice controller tool that allows the user to easily create different voice commands that can be implemented in many different applications and platforms. The user shall have no need of understanding or experience of voice controls in order to use and implement the voice controller. 

Elements of randomness are a common factor inmodern digital games, from simple rolls of a die tocomplex AI systems. These elements have an impacton how the player experiences a game. We believe thatexploring the field of luck analysis can benefit designersthrough an developed understanding of how such elementsaffect players. The developers of the digital card gameSlay the Spire has released 77 millions of instances ofplay and sample of these are explored in this study. Withthe use of data mining, data clustering and correlationanalysis the effect of elements of randomness present inSlay the Spire are analyzed. In conclusion, three playerskill groups were identified with the use of clustering:Winners, Low skill losers and High skill losers. Weobserved that people who succeeded in beating the game,had an increased amount of randomness in the formof cards by a factor of 1.82. Showing that more skilledplayers do not shy away from randomness but insteadembrace it more than lower skilled players. 

Loot boxes are items in video games that contain a randomized reward. Some of them can be purchased with real-world money. In recent years loot boxes have become very common in almost all of the top games. Because of its similarities to gambling there have been thoughts on branding loot boxes as a form of gambling. Some countries have already taken this matter into their own hands and banned certain loot boxes.But there are different loot boxes with different features. This study looks at what aspects of purchasing loot boxes correlate to form of gambling. By researching the top 10 games on steam and their loot boxes combined with a literature study. In conclusion it was found that the main features of Loot Boxes that correlate to a form of gambling are features that try to mirror or copy features from Electronic Game Machines or different casino games.

Frequently in MMORPGs, players will encounter something known to players as farming or grinding. Grinding is a controversial matter in the gaming community, as many do not enjoy it and see it as a sign of lazy and poor game design. However, it is a difficult topic to argue as whatever is a grind, differs for each person. To elevate the discussion about grinds in the gaming community, this paper aims to give a definition of grinds and answer how they are perceived by players and designers alike. Grinds are argued to be dull, tedious and monotonous, but they are ever prevalent in games today.  To find what differentiates between a satisfying or waste of time grinding, this paper also aims to discover what makes a grind enjoyable, and when they are appropriate. 

The results of this paper are built upon previous works and media on game design and grinds. Interviews were held with players that grind to get a deeper understanding of what drives players to grind. The results define grinds as the act of doing something repeatedly for one's own gain. Seven sub-grinds that are found in different games were defined, each with varying characteristics. Grinds are not inherently bad, despite the negative connotations. They are like any other aspect of a game, they can be executed well or poorly. The developers' responsibility is to design a well-balanced grind that does not hinder players from doing what they like and deliver a satisfying experience.

The application of PCG to generate puzzles offers great value since their replayability is severely limited, requiring any game that employs them to produce many different puzzles. In this paper we propose a modified version of the progressive content generation approach to function as a mixed-initiative system, to create puzzles for the novel partially physics-based game \textit{Everyone Must Die}. Thus exploring the adaptability and usefulness of the progressive content generation approach for a unique type of puzzle game. Further the mixed-initiative system is explored in relation to how effectively it can generate puzzles with a specified difficulty, an issue many papers exploring puzzle generation neglect. This is explored by implementing and incorporating a PCG system by extending an existing puzzle editor featured in the game. The analysis is conducted with the help of a user study on the developers of the game by testing qualitative experiences with the system. The promising results are then discussed and concluded with suggestions for future work and improvements to the described system and its used approach.

This thesis explores the uses of a multi-agent system(MAS) for procedural content generation(PCG) in the Generative Design in Minecraft (GDMC) competition. The generatorconstructed is capable of surveying the terrain and determining where to start building a roadnetwork. Extendor and connector agents build the road network used for the settlement. Aplotting agent surveys the area around the created roads for plots appropriate for buildinghouses. A house building agent then generates basic buildings on these plots. Finally afurniture agent places furniture in these buildings. The result of the thesis shows that thegenerator is capable of generating an interesting road network that is appropriate to its terrain.The buildings have potential but are lacking in form of adaptability to the current biome andbuildings are overall too similar to be interesting, causing it to get low scores in the userstudy and competition. The generator was entered to the GDMC-competition in 2021 where itplaced 17th of 20th place.

Objects interacting with fluid are of high interest to visually present in three-dimensional applications, such as computer games and virtual environments. For presenting the interactions with high correctness, dynamic rigid body simulation may be used. This paper presents methods for efficient, physics-based real-time simulation of fluid-immersed rigid bodies, where the correctness of the simulation is maintained. Simulated forces include gravity, buoyancy, thrust, drag, and lift. To have the simulation run efficiently in real-time, discretization of the simulated rigid body is made by applying mentioned forces to a user-defined number of particles, sampled pseudo-randomly within the rigid body.

Research has shown that creating uniformity in video games has a larger potential to be objectively good. Realistic video games can create uniformity by implementing a dynamic weather system. The purpose of this thesis is to compare dynamic and static weather and their contribution to the overall player satisfaction. Three weather components were created: wind, rain and clouds. Which weather component that creates the most enjoyment have been examined. Two virtual environments, one dynamic and one static, were created and a test group answered a questionnaire regarding the simulations. Results indicate that dynamic weather is preferred over static weather regarding overall satisfaction.

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) has become more common in usage in game development nowadays, with the motivation of finding new ways to make games replayable, new ways for games to be played or for generating content during development. This paper explores the question how often Procedural Generation is used in practice and furthermore how often it is used by different game genres and how they use PCG in their particular games. This paper will try to answer these questions through both an industry review, discovering which games have used Procedural Generation and also through a literature study to find out what kind of research has been done within the area ofPCG and how Game Developers could utilize that in the future. The findings were that even if the usage of PCG differentiated between genres, certain areas like Level Generationand entity instancating were more commonly using Procedural Generation compared with others such as Puzzle generation, Plot generation and Dynamic Systems. The literature study gave a perspective that there are plenty of research done within PCG on how to create new, different and unique ways to generate content, but it is usually in forms of prototypes and not ready to be used in games yet.This gives the conclusion that game genres use Procedural Generation to maximize the user experience with what the game wants out from that genre or use it to make game development more efficient. However, certain genres such as Adventure-games and Role-playing-games could benefit from having PCG for parts of the games where it is not used today which means there is still room for potentially using Procedural Generation. But with that also comes a discussion about what areas of PCG can be improved to meet the needs of the developers and make them more willing to use PCG on areas where it is not currently used.

Slay the Spire is a complex deck-building and roguelike game with many possibilities of improving players ability to win. An important part of Slay the Spire is choosing a path that makes the players character as successful as possible. In this study we show that machine learning can help players pick better paths by creating an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) that predicts the most successful path of all available paths, we also discuss what makes a path successful. This study performed two experiments, one user study and one simulation experiment, with the intention of evaluating the created ANN and analysing what makes paths successful. Through the user study this paper shows that the ANN was effective at predicting paths, outperforming all other human players who played normally in all three cases. This study concludes that machine learning can be used effectively to help make pathing decisions in Slay the Spire. Furthermore the study proves the importance of the room types ’Elite’ and ’Campfires’ through the simulation experiment, user study and analysis of data from previous playthroughs. 

The Swedish healthcare industry has been in a crisis and suffered from a lack of staff and high burnout rate for many years. In this thesis we explore the possibility of bringing this to everyones’ attention by developing a serious game, where the player can experience and learn about the issues from within a hospital. Our goal is to provide a way for the player to increase their knowledge on the issues and inspire a desire to participate in the ongoing healthcare debate. Although the ability to promote engagement appears bleak, the results suggest that serious games do have the potential to educate, both on this matter and in general.

Runtime performance is essential for real time games, the faster a game can run the more features designers can put into the game to accomplish their vision. A popular architecture for video games is the Entity Component System architecture aimed to improve both object composition and performance. There are many tests for how this architecture performs under its optimal linear execution. This thesis presents a performance comparison of how several popular open-source Entity Component System libraries perform when fetching data from other entities during iteration. An object-oriented test is also done to compare against and verify if the known drawbacks of object-orientation can still be seen within these test cases. Our results show that doing a random lookup during iteration can cause magnitudes worse performance for Entity Component Systems.

Abstract - Through our work we validated the symmetry and leniency heuristics used to evaluate content which has been procedurally generated in a mixed-initiative tool called the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer (EDD). This was done by analyzing and comparing how said heuristics differs from what a human player perceives the metrics to be. A user study was performed for which we developed a game for human testers to try and experience different dungeons, in order to collect the data needed for making the necessary comparisons. We propose potential improvements to the metrics that are intended to represent difficulty and aesthetics used in EDD so that they could better match their intended goals. In general, the testers found the maps to be close to the expected difficulty but there was a big discrepancy in the symmetry metric and how aesthetic they found the maps. We further discuss how the research performed by us could be expanded upon for the purpose of making further improvements to automatic evaluation heuristics, by either making similar research on games of different genres or on games with different game mechanics.

This paper investigates how VR Impacts game user satisfaction. Four games were tested. Each game has a different genre to help better understand if it will affect player’s preferences in platforms. This study uses a customized ‘The Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale’ (GUESS) which has seven key factors that are used to determine a satisfaction grade for each game on each platform. The results are then compared between each other to analyze the differences and similarities. The result of this thesis showed that the playtesters preferred playing on VR, and that both people with more gaming experience and those with less, preferred VR interactions over PC.

This thesis explores the procedural generation of 3D buildings from the floor plan all the way to the fa¸cade and building’s details such as doors, windows, and roof. Through this, the study explores several techniques and approaches to create different layers of the building generation pipeline. The focus is on implementing a set of algorithms that, when running sequentially, are able to create complete 3D buildings in a short time (so they can be used in online generation), could be used in any open-world game, and with a limited count of triangles per building. Furthermore, the tool provides a clear and easy-to-use interface for designers in Unity, where they can interact with the multiple parameters of each building layer, giving designers a high degree of controllability. The tool is evaluated using the resulting buildings based on different metrics and how individual changes to different parameter starting from a template affect the output of the generator in terms of the metrics and the resulting building. The result from the analysis show that the polygon mathematics is well suited for generating 3D buildings for games.

Immersive environments are a big part of video games. With hardware being more capable than ever of displaying millions of triangles at once both the capability and demand of more content in an environment increases. This puts more strain on level designers who have to spend more time per scene to make everything meet the constantly increasing visual standards. Being able to procedurally decorate any environment in such a fashion that it follows the hand-made hero scenes of the game becomes an important way to save time and money better spent elsewhere in the project. This thesis investigates a hierarchical method of procedurally generating objects inside an environment. This was accomplished by creating an artifact to analyze the feasibility of efficiently hierarchically decorating environments at run-time of a video game. Though focusing on furniture and decorative objects of rooms the system can also be used to procedurally place game related content.

In this thesis we explore natural user interfaces and pattern recognition approaches. We did this by designing and developing an artifact which acts as an interactive spell-casting experience in virtual reality. In the artifact the user draws patterns to cause magical effects, such as summoning balls of fire, and gusts of wind. While there are other similar solutions available, they only allow a limited level of detail to the patterns that can be recognised. To make an experience that feels intuitive to the user, an interface capable of detecting advanced patterns is required. Furthermore, a pattern recognition solution able to read these advanced patterns, without causing loss of frame rate, is an absolute prerequisite when the experience is entirely in virtual reality. We pose the question: how can you create a natural user interface that reads a player's intricate hand motions to execute various actions in a Virtual Reality gameplay environment? The pattern recognition system we developed is based on template matching, supported by a syntactic pattern recognition approach. With our intuitive interface we made it possible for the system to read a user’s drawn patterns in a 3D space as a 2D drawing. To keep it easy for us to add new patterns to the system’s library, we created a system that allowed us to quickly and easily add additional patterns for the system to recognise. We evaluated the artifact by conducting an experiment with eleven participants. The experiment was a user study consisting of a structured observation, where the users got to draw patterns as we observed them, followed by a semi-structured interview, to generate elaborate qualitative data. The final artifact does not provide a viable solution in and of itself, but it does have great potential for future work. The results show that the intuitiveness of the interface in a system like this relies heavily on the other parts connected to the interface, such as the leniency on the accuracy of the pattern recognition system.

Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes to a project overtime and is used to save these changes. Today it is being used by millions of people and is becoming a demand on the job market. For this reason it has become important to learn the version control system. Learning Git however may be difficult for beginners and learning it through tutorials may not always be effective. Learning it through a serious educational game (SEG) may be more effective as a SEG can provide motivation and feedback which are two factors for successful learning. This study seeks to assess how effective a SEG is in teaching Git by looking at the amount of knowledge gained from playing a SEG. This study also seeks to assess how much participants learned Git using a tutorial compared to participants who used a serious educational game. From the results, the study found that the SEG expanded the understanding of Git. The study also found that there was no significant difference in the amount of understanding gained from the SEG and the tutorial.

This paper shows the difference in User Experience between Physical and Digital tabletop games. The goal of the project is to get an understanding of how and why playing tabletop games differentiates depending on the platform. Seven tabletop games have been chosen from different genres with an official digital adaptation. We’ve measured four key factors, Usability, Aesthetics, Social Connectivity and Engagement. The key factors have been used to gather User Experience metrics that were used to compare the digital and physical versions of the tabletop games. The result from this thesis is that physical tabletop games have a higher rating than the digital versions in all key factors except in usability where the differences were miniscule. Games that rely on imperfect information offer a much higher social connectivity and engagement when it’s played around a table. Games relying on tile-placement offers a higher usability and engagement when played digitally due to the assistance provided by the game. Physical tabletop games are the preferred option of the two but the accessibility of the digital versions makes them remain relevant.

This paper explores the appeal of customizable user interfaces (UI) in video games, and the choices players make when this option is available to them. In the video game industry at present, players aren't given much choice in regards to the UI, even though it is usually a vital element that will support them throughout their whole experience. To determine the value of customizable UIs, players were provided a testing environment with tools that allowed them to modify their UI, and quantitative data was collected during this test. A qualitative study has also been conducted with a focus on the players attitude towards the subject. The results of the study show a high favor for UI customization among the players. It does however show that players are split on several aspects within the topic and further research is required. This can hopefully lead to developers adapting more uses of user experience (UX) and implementing UI customization within their games.

This paper explores graph grammar and constructive solutions for settlement generation in Minecraft. It uses graph grammar to flatten parts of the surface in order to increase the space for the buildings. Buildings are then generated with a constructive solution that follows a step-by-step model where different parts of the building are created in a certain order. Different parts include the shape of the foundation itself, the walls, the roof and the furniture. The algorithm picks which blocks to use on different parts of the house through an object called district palette. The buildings are divided up into areas called districts, where all the houses within the district follow a similar aesthetic style. The goal is to compare our solution with existing solutions from the Generative Design in Minecraft (GDMC) competition to see how it holds up against the other submissions. To evaluate, a user study was performed where each jury has to score four criteria: adaptivity, functionality, evocative narrative, and aesthetics. The results show that the solution had a strong aesthetics but fell behind in adaptivity, functionality, and evocative narrative. Most of it was due to not being able to generate different structures, and not cleaning up the trees around the buildings and the roads.

With a recent rise in popularity (and controversy) of challenging games, many have attempted to emulate their success. These games are commonly styled with dark, gritty and often surreal settings and characters. Beyond setting the tone, is there a measurable effect from these visual styles on the perception of challenge, and if so, what are those effects? This study looks at similar research and/or the fields visual style, and/or challenge in games to create a game with two distinct styles, from which as a result, a set of categories to better describe a visual style is proposed. The game is then used as an investigation into what to look for when testing for the impact of visual style on perceived challenge.

Together with the growth of procedural content generation in game development, there is a need for a viable generation method of procedural context to make sense of the content within game space. Previous research discusses how interactivity and narrative are almost opposite of each other and when combined needs to be generated in two steps, one for the game space and the other for context. We propose procedural narrative as context through objectives, as a useful means to structure content in games. In this paper we present and describe an artefact developed as a sub-system to the Evolutionary Dungeon Designer (EDD), that procedurally generates objectives for the dungeons created with the tool. The artefact is developed with macro patterns which can be defined as an extension of the existing meso patterns in EDD. The macro patterns are used to generate objectives in the rooms of the dungeons, and the system evaluates the priority of the room objectives based on the design of the dungeon and the quality of the objective to maximize the usage of game space and create a suitable narrative. The work for this thesis and its artefact resulted in a successful expansion on the knowledge of procedural narrative generation by presenting macro patterns as a viable solution for contextualization of procedural game content.

FitPet och Pokémon Go är två exempel på Augmented Reality mobila spel som resulterat i en ökad motivation för gångbaserat träning hos spelaren. Detta faktum leder till syftet för denna studie: att identifiera vilka tekniker och mobila spel som ökar en spelares fysiska rörelser, samt utifrån detta utveckla ett eget spel som ökar motivationen för gångbaserad träning. Denna studie utfördes med Peffers Design research methodology. Vidare utfördes en kvantitativ undersökning för att ge en överblick av mobila spel som ökar motivationen till gångbaserad träning, samt tekniken bakom en spelares rörelser. Baserat på den kvantitativa undersökningen gjordes även ett eget spel vars syfte är att motivera en spelare till att gå mer och således få spela fler nivåer i spelet. Resultatet från det empiriska materialet i jämförelse med den tidigare forskningen visade att mobila spel som använder gångbaserad träning ökar en spelares motivation för att utföra fysiska aktiviteter. Det finns dock en negativ syn på mobila spel som använder sig av Augmented Reality och Virtual Reality, vilket är att olyckor kan uppstå under tiden man spelar. Resultatet visar även att Augmented Reality i kombination med fysisk aktivitet motiverar spelaren till att bli mer fysiskt aktiv överlag.

In this paper we have compared and evaluated two different representations used in search based procedural content generation (PCG). The comparison was based on the differences in performance, quality of the generated content and the complexity of the final artifacts. This was accomplished by creating two artifacts, each of which used one of the representations in combination with a genetic algorithm. This was followed up with individual testing sessions in which 21 test subjects participated. The evaluated results were then presented in a manner of relevance for both search based PCG as a whole, and for further exploration within the area of representations used in this field.

An Evolutionary Algorithm was run in real-time for the procedural generation of enemies in a third-person, wave based hack and slash and shoot 'em up game. The algorithm evaluates enemies as individuals based on their effectiveness at battling the player character. Every generation is presented as a new wave of enemies whose properties have been adjusted according to the fitness of the last wave. By constantly making new enemies more adept at the task of the defeating the current player, I attempt to automatically and naturally raise the difficulty as the game progresses. The goal is also to improve player satisfaction as a result. By analyzing the response from players and observing the changes of the generated enemies, I determine whether or not this is an appropriate implementation of Evolutionary Algorithms. Results showed that the success of the algorithm varied substantially between tests, giving a number of both failed and successful tests. I go through some of the individual data and draw conclusions on what specific conditions makes the algorithm perform desirably.

Climate change might be our time's defining issue and our way of producing and consuming food is a large contributor of global climate change. This thesis investigate the possibility of using serious gaming with the intent of raising awareness for the difference in emissions of distinct food types. With the development of a serious game, this paper aims to raise awareness for these issues among university students. The game was evaluated with nine university students and the results suggests that the use of serious gaming with the intent of raising awareness for the difference in emissions of distinct food types show potential, however it was unclear whether or not the students gained a wider understanding of the issue or only acquired some factual knowledge.