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Learning activities at the Creative Media State Polytechnic after the pandemic period, especially in the design department of the game technology study program, were held in blended learning. Blended learning is the right choice of learning because it needs adaptation from lecturers and students, where previously learning was held fully online, now it is held online and offline. Blended learning activities can be very effective and efficient in their implementation if the learning process is well prepared. One of the learning activities carried out is independent learning activities. Therefore, this study aims to produce a learning application that can be used as an independent learning module so that students can learn without being assisted by anyone just by using this independent learning module. The approach taken is the ADDIE development method. The ADDIE development model consists of five stages, namely analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Expert response to this learning application is a crucial thing to do. This application is evaluated by an expert with a background in graphic design, learning media, and communication. The independent learning module application was successfully developed and implemented in semester 3 of the 2-dimensional game programming course.

The digital age requires basic computer use qualifications as well as coding skills for individuals to produce technology instead of using them. The programming education, which was previously at the undergraduate level, started to be given to students at high school and secondary school levels because of their contribution to problem solving, critical thinking and mathematical thinking skills of the learner. Due to the fact that programming education contributes to academic development, the result of the addition of education to education has been the low level of student success in programming education and the complexity of coding. In order to overcome the understanding of conceptual abstract sequences from coding difficulties, the teaching of the software of the concrete systems is emphasized, and the contribution of new fields of study such as game programming and robotics programming to education is discussed. This research is to describe the work done in Turkey on robotics programming; studies have been conducted to provide general information. For this purpose, academic research on robotics programming in Turkey was examined using content analysis.

Computational thinking (CT) has become a skill that is taught starting from an early age with its increasing popularity. In addition, the opinion that CT is related to other 21st century skills finds its place in the literature. The main purpose of this study is to identify the contributions of scaffolding-based game programming activities to students' CT and 21st-century skills. In line with this purpose, the study was designed as a qualitative case study. The participants of the study consisted of 16 primary school students, 10 pre-service ICT Teachers, and 2 primary school teachers. The research results reveal that game programming has a positive effect on students' CT skills, 21st century skills and some psychometric variables like self-confidence and motivation. In future studies and implementations, educators may support their instructions of programming through different scaffolding strategies. In addition, it should be taken into consideration that students can become innovative designers with content that they find interesting.

Oyun geliştirmeye dayalı öğrenme stratejisi, öğrencilerin oyunlara karşı olan ilgilerini sıfırdan bir oyun geliştirmeye veya mevcut bir oyuna eklentiler yapmaya yönlendirerek programlamayı öğrenmelerini sağlamayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu stratejide öğrenciler yazılım mühendisliği yöntem ve tekniklerini oyun geliştirme projeleri vasıtasıyla deneyimlemektedir. Bu tez çalışmasında araştırmacının kendisinin vermekte olduğu Nesne Yönelimli Programlama dersinde yaşanan sorunları en aza indirebilmek ve dersin verimliliğini artırabilmek için oyun geliştirmeye dayalı programlama öğretiminin mevcut derse bütünleşmiş edildiği bir eylem araştırması yürütülmüştür. Bu bağlamda araştırmanın amacı; mevcut Nesne Yönelimli Programlama dersinin sorunlarının tespit edilmesi; mezun öğrencilerin, uzmanların ve alanyazındaki çalışmaların önerileri ışığında mevcut dersin oyun geliştirmeye dayalı öğretim stratejisini temel alarak yeniden tasarlanması; geliştirilen dersin uygulanması ve bu süreçte yaşanan deneyimlerin raporlanması olarak belirlenmiştir. Belirlenen amaç ve hedefler doğrultusunda bu tez çalışması, iki araştırma döngüsünü kapsayacak şekilde tasarlanmış ve uygulanmıştır. Birinci döngü analiz, tasarım, uygulama ve değerlendirme basamaklarını içerirken ikinci döngü tasarım, uygulama ve değerlendirme basamaklarını içermiştir. Birinci döngünün analiz aşamasında daha önce nesne yönelimli programlama dersini almış ve okullarından mezun olmuş 59 katılımcı ile nesne yönelimli programlama dersini vermekte olan altı öğretim elemanından veriler toplanarak mevcut dersin sorunlarının detaylı bir şekilde tespit edilmesi sağlanmıştır. İlave olarak analiz aşamasında öğrencilerin derste geliştirmek istedikleri yazılım projesi ve oyun türleri nedenleriyle incelenmiştir. Tasarım aşamasında; analiz aşamasından elde edilen verilerin çözümlenmesinden ve alanyazından yararlanılarak mevcut nesne yönelimli programlama dersi Morrison, Ross ve Kemp öğretim tasarım modeli ışığında oyun geliştirmeye dayalı öğretim stratejisini temel alacak şekilde yeniden tasarlanmıştır. Birinci döngünün uygulama aşaması sekiz hafta sürecek şekilde Türkiye'deki bir meslek yüksekokulunun bilgisayar teknolojisi programında öğrenim görmekte olan 29 önlisans öğrencisi ile yürütülmüştür. Birinci döngünün uygulama aşamasından sonra uygulanan eylem planının etkinliği değerlendirilmiş ve birinci döngüde karşılaşılan sorunların giderilmesi amacıyla ikinci döngünün tasarım aşamasında bazı revizyonlar gerçekleştirilmiştir. Revize edilen nesne yönelimli programlama dersi acil uzaktan öğretim yöntemi kullanılarak 15 hafta sürecek şekilde Türkiye'deki bir meslek yüksekokulunun bilgisayar teknolojisi programında öğrenim görmekte olan 30 önlisans öğrencisi ile yürütülmüştür. Bu aşamadan sonra uygulanan eylem planının değerlendirilmesine yönelik yansıtma yapılmıştır. Araştırmada hem nitel hem de nicel araştırma tekniklerine uygun olarak toplam 14 adet veri toplama aracı kullanılmıştır. Araştırmanın birinci döngü bulgularına göre oyun geliştirmeye dayalı stratejisi temel alınarak sunulan öğretimin katılımcıların nesne yönelimli programlama bilgi ve becerilerini anlamlı şekilde geliştirdiği tespit edilmiştir. Bunun yanında katılımcıların en çok çokbiçimlilik, kurucu metot ve kapsülleme konularında zorlandıkları da ortaya çıkmıştır. İkinci döngüde gerçekleştirilen revizyonlarla birlikte bu konularda gelişim sağlanmıştır. Araştırmanın diğer sonuçlarına göre oyun geliştirmeye dayalı programlama öğretiminin her iki döngüde de katılımcıların çoğunun programlama dersine yönelik motivasyonlarını ve programlama öz yeterlilik algılarını olumlu etkilediği görülmüştür. Ancak programlama kaygısı bağlamında değerlendirildiğinde, katılımcıların programlama kaygılarının çalışmanın başlarında arttığı ancak süreç içinde azaldığı; yine de programlama kaygılarının devam ettiği sonucuna varılmıştır. Bu çalışma kapsamında gerçekleştirilen öğretim tasarımın ve uygulama sonucunda elde edilen deneyimlerin, geliştirilen \"Programlama Kaygı Ölçeğinin\" alanyazına katkı sunması açısından önemli görülmektedir. Oyun geliştirmeye dayalı öğretim stratejisinin nesne yönelimli programlama dersine entegrasyonu açısından değerlendirildiğinde, mevcut çalışmanın öğrencilerin nesne yönelimli programlama dersinde karşılaştıkları sorunları en aza indirmeye çalışması; öğrencilerin programlamaya yönelik ilgi ve motivasyonlarını artırarak programlama öz yeterlilik algılarında olumlu değişimler yaratmayı amaçlaması bakımından güncel, işlevsel ve özgündür. The game development-based learning strategy seeks to assist students in learning programming by directing their interest in games towards creating games from scratch or adding features to existing games. Students gain exposure to software engineering principles and techniques through game development projects in this strategy. This participatory action research aims to redesign the Object-Oriented Programming course in which the first author is both the instructor and researcher by integrating game development-based programming instruction to make it more effective and efficient. In line with the determined goals and objectives, this dissertation was designed and implemented to cover two research cycles. While the first cycle included the analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation stages, the second cycle comprised the design, implementation, and evaluation steps. In the analysis phase of the first cycle, data were collected from 59 participants who had previously taken the object-oriented programming course and graduated from their schools, and six instructors teaching the object-oriented programming course, and the problems of the current course were determined in detail. In addition, the software project and game genres that the students desired to develop in the course were investigated during the analysis phase. The present object-oriented programming course was redesigned in light of the Morrison, Ross, and Kemp instructional design model, based on the study of the data obtained from the analysis phase and the literature. The implementation phase of the first cycle was carried out with 29 associate degree students studying in the computer technology program of a vocational school in Turkey, for eight weeks. The effectiveness of the action plan adopted after the first cycle's implementation phase was assessed, and some adjustments were conducted during the second cycle's design stage to address the issues that emerged during the first cycle. For 15 weeks, the revised object-oriented programming course was taught to 30 associate degree students in a vocational school's computer technology program in Turkey, utilizing the emergency remote learning technique. Following this stage, an evaluation of the action plan was carried out. The study employed a total of 14 data collection tools, which included both qualitative and quantitative research methods. According to the first cycle findings of the research, it was determined that the instruction based on the game-development-based strategy significantly improved the object-oriented programming knowledge and skills of the participants. In addition, it was revealed that the participants had the most difficulties in polymorphism, constructor methods, and encapsulation. Progress has been made in these areas as a result of the adjustments made in the second cycle. According to the research's other findings, game-based programming education had a good impact on the motivation of the majority of the participants toward the programming course and their perceptions of programming self-efficacy in both cycles. However, when the participants' programming anxiety was assessed in the context of the study, it was discovered that their programming anxiety increased at the start of the study but decreased over time; however, it was established that programming concerns persisted. The instructional design employed in this study, as well as the experience gained as a result of the implementation, are regarded as significant contributions to the literature. Regarding the endeavor to integrate a game development-based teaching technique into an object-oriented programming course, the current study is up-to-date, functional, and distinctive. It aims to reduce the problems schools encounter in the object-oriented programming course and to increase students' interest and motivation for programming by increasing their programming self-efficacy perceptions. In addition, the Programming Anxiety Scale was developed as part of the research.

We present ENGAGE, the first battery-free, personal mobile gaming device powered by energy harvested from the gamer actions and sunlight. Our design implements a power failure resilient Nintendo Game Boy emulator that can run off-the-shelf classic Game Boy games like Tetris or Super Mario Land. This emulator is capable of intermittent operation by tracking memory usage, avoiding the need for always checkpointing all volatile memory, and decouples the game loop from user interface mechanics allowing for restoration after power failure. We build custom hardware that harvests energy from gamer button presses and sunlight, and leverages a mixed volatility memory architecture for efficient intermittent emulation of game binaries. Beyond a fun toy, our design represents the first battery-free system design for continuous user attention despite frequent power failures caused by intermittent energy harvesting. We tackle key challenges in intermittent computing for interaction including seamless displays and dynamic incentive-based gameplay for energy harvesting. This work provides a reference implementation and framework for a future of battery-free mobile gaming in a more sustainable Internet of Things.

The aim of this study was to design, implement and evaluate the programming process for gifted students and offer suggestions to teachers and researchers. For this purpose, 5 gifted students were provided programming activities for ten weeks. Scratch was used in the programming training process. The qualitative data was collected by observation, interviews and written forms. The results showed that students' interests and needs should be taken into consideration in programming teaching plans. The duration of the lessons should be kept flexible and the programming activities should be project-based. The study revealed that game programming increases the attendance and motivation of the gifted students. In future research, programming instruction can be repeated by making necessary corrections and researched in different dimensions such as motivation, academic achievement and self-efficacy.

This article builds on prior work that aims to measure computational learning (CL) during middle school. Since game computational sophistication (GCS) has been used as a proxy for a student’s engagement in CL we build on their model to more completely describe the relationship between different types of building blocks of computer games and GCS. In doing so, we present a single quantitative measurement for GCS. Our model, called GCS 2.0 , has face validity for 39 games, each programmed by a pair of middle school children. We choose four of these games, two with high GCS and two with low GCS, and discuss the computational building blocks found in each game. We do this to help the reader better understand our measurement of GCS and its relationship to CL.

The goal of this paper is to make use of the CodePlay framework to teach software engineering in a computer games development cohort and record whether the use of such systems can enhance student attendance, satisfaction and performance. This is based on content gamification, tabletop role-playing games and the concept of student-generated assessment. In this experiment, students play the role of a character exploring a haunted mansion, and the in-game role-playing shapes the final assignment. This case study reports findings from a Level 5 cohort of 35 students enrolled in the unit “Software Engineering for Games: Methods and Tools” in computer games development (Software Development) and (Indie) courses, at Solent University. While this paper is the application of the CodePlay framework, the framework itself is analyzed in its complementary paper “CodePlay: A Tabletop Role-Playing Game System used in Teaching Game Programming using Content Gamification”.

The goal of this paper is to provide a role-playing game system that combines gamification, role-playing teaching techniques and tabletop RPGs to be used in teaching, in an effort to increase student involvement. The main theory behind it is Content Gamification (which focuses on making a module’s content more fun), and tabletop role-playing games combined with rules from the “Betrayal at the house on the hill” board game. The framework itself is called “Code-Playing Technique” and it directly combines physical role-play and learning programming. This is a learning technique designed for use in Software Engineering and Game Programming curricula. With the “Code-Playing Technique”, students may express themselves through coding instead of via words or natural language. As such, during role-playing a character in a virtual setting, anything that the player does and anything that happens to that character must be expressed through programming and scripting from within a game engine. While this paper explores the CodePlay framework itself, the complementary paper “The Blackthorn Manor: A Case Study in Teaching Software Engineering for Computer Games Courses using CodePlay Framework” applies it in a university module.

Serious games or educational games have attracted the interest of instructors and researchers for several years. In the field of education, serious games are being used for motivating students, attracting their interest in cognitively demanding fields and making the teaching and learning process more fun. Moreover, learning through implementing games has been proposed as an effective alternative to the traditional instructor-centered approach to teaching programming. Towards this direction the study presented in this article aims to investigate whether it is feasible to learn programming concepts, as well as game programming concepts, through implementing a game in Python. More specifically, the study presented has the following goals: firstly, to review and comparatively analyze existing game engines and libraries that can be used by novice programmers for implementing simple games in Python; secondly, to investigate whether it is feasible to implement a simple but yet meaningful game that can be used as a prototype for learning programming concepts and game programming concepts in Python. In order to reach the second goal a serious game was implemented as a case study, using the free and open source Python library of pygame that based on the aforementioned comparative analysis is appropriate for novices. The PyDiophantus Maze game that was implemented can be used for teaching and learning game programming in Python, but also for learning mathematics. The article concludes with proposals for utilizing the game in mathematics and (game) programming education, as well as plans for further research.

Game-based competitive or cooperative robotics activities constitute an effective approach to exploit the child-robot interaction perspective. However, in most game-based robotics activities robots act autonomously to achieve the goal. In this work, we aim to promote the child-robot interaction aspect through a multiplayer game where one team of robots and humans collaborates to compete with another team of humans and cobots. We describe the design of an open space that will allow children to gain access, locally and remotely, and program robotic agents to play the traditional “Capture the Flag” game in a physical stadium-arena. Through this space, we intend to teach robotics, while programming human-robot interfaces, within a computer-supported game-based learning environment. We give insights on the initial design of such an open space and the educational benefits of its use in the comprehension of abstract computational and STEM concepts.

The inclusion of women in technology has increased in recent years, but the number of women in technology is still much smaller compared to male involvement. Many factors make women not part of the information technology field. These factors include cultural, social factors of lack of information about the area. Thus, this paper aims to understand some of the factors that lead women to look less for professional areas involving science and technology. This article presents the state of the art of science and technology projects that have been aimed at women around the world. In addition, a questionnaire was applied in order to present some of the factors that can affect the performance of girls in projects in the field of Exact Sciences. Among the variables studied, the one that had the greatest correlation with the worst performances achieved by the girls was the absence of technology and internet at home. Furthermore, a quali-quantitative analysis shows the importance of carrying out projects that involve women in science and technology.

This document describes the whole process of making a 3D video game demo for the Final degree project in Design and development of video games, especially the artistic section of the video game. The artistic section consists of the design of the game art for a medieval fantasy RPG video game. The different parts of the art of The Final spell are: 3D models, user interface, particle systems, shaders and improving the visual quality of the game. The game engine used in The Final Spell is the Unity 3D engine. In addition, Unity offers several tools to improve the visual quality that were used throughout the project.

Treball final de Grau en Disseny i Desenvolupament de Videojocs. Codi: VJ1241. Curs acadèmic: 2020/2021 This document describes the process of developing the demo of a 3D RPG video game called “The Final Spell” for the Bachelor’s Thesis in the Bachelor's Degree in Video Game Design and Development, including the design, implementation, art, music and teamwork required for the creation of said demo. Specifically, this document emphasizes the development from a programming view, explaining the implementation of the different mechanics of an RPG, such as the main character movement and spells, the interactions with NPCs - dialogues, quests… -, the interactions with the environment and a save system. The game has been developed using Unity Engine and coded in C#.

Programming by demonstration (PbD) has a straightforward application in the development of the artificial intelligence (AI) for nonplayer characters (NPCs) in a video game: a game designer controls the NPC during a training session in the game, and thus demonstrates the expected behavior for that character in different situations. Afterwards, applying some machine learning technique on the traces recorded during the demonstration, an AI for the NPC can be generated. Nevertheless, with this approach, it is very hard for the game designer to fully control the resulting behavior, which is a key requirement for game designers, who are responsible for putting together a fun experience for the player. In this paper, we present trained behavior trees (TBTs). TBTs are behavior trees (BTs) generated from traces obtained in a game through PbD. BTs are a technique widely used for AI game programming that are created and modified through special purpose visual editors. By inducing a BT from a PbD game session, we combine the ease of use of PbD with the ability to fine-tune the learned behavior of BTs. Furthermore, TBTs facilitate the use of BTs by game designers and promote their authoring control on game AI.

This study explored the ways that the Computational Thinking (CT) process can be evaluated in a classroom environment. Thirty Children aged 10–11 years, from a primary school in London took part in a game-making project using the Scratch and Alice 2.4 applications for eight months. For the focus of this specific paper, data from participant observations, informal conversations, problem-solving sheets, semi-structured interviews and children’s completed games were used to make sense of elements of the computational thinking process and approaches to evaluate these elements in a computer game design context. The discussions around what CT consists, highlighted the complex structure of computational thinking and the interaction between the elements of artificial intelligence (AI), computer, cognitive, learning and psychological sciences. This also emphasised the role of metacognition in the Computational Thinking process. These arguments illustrated that it is not possible to evaluate Computational Thinking using only programming constructs, as CT process provides opportunities for developing many other skills and concepts. Therefore a multiple evaluation approach should be adopted to illustrate the full learning scope of the Computational Thinking Process. Using the support of literature review and the findings of the data analysis I proposed a multiple approach evaluation model where ‘computational concepts’, ‘metacognitive practices’, and ‘learning behaviours’ were discussed as the main elements of the CT process. Additionally, in order to investigate these dimensions within a game-making context, computer game design was also included in this evaluation model.

This longitudinal study investigates the impact of an extra-curricular programming workshop in student interest development in computer science. The workshop was targeted at 12–18-year old youngsters. A survey was sent to all previous participants with a known home address; 31.5% responded the survey (n = 197). This data was then combined with pre-workshop survey data, and analyzed with mixed methods. Positive development of interest was discovered for 57% of the respondents, of which nearly all attributed their interest increase to the workshop at least partly (92%). Qualitative inspection revealed that the workshop provided three anchors that facilitated students’ reengagement with programming and development of interest: disciplinary content, a concrete artifact built by students themselves, and tools. Neutral development and interest regress were also discovered, though the impact of the workshop on these interest trajectories remains unclear. peerReviewed

Video game programming is a diverse, multi-faceted endeavor involving elements of graphics programming, systems programming, UI, HCI, and other software engineering disciplines. Game programmers typically employ a new “codebase” per software artifact which often means a unique choice of game engines and scripting languages. Non-portable code is exacerbated by a lack of a shared language and a lack of translation utilities between languages. Meanwhile, many game programming tasks occur time and time again. Aspect-oriented programming was largely developed to assist software engineers in decoupling tasks while maintaining software reuse. GAMESPECT is a language that promotes software reuse through aspects while also providing a platform for translation of software artifacts which has enabled it to be used in multiple game engines across multiple projects. Code reuse on these projects has been high and our methodologies can be summarized by discussing three tenants of GAMESPECT: 1) composition specifications, which define source to source transition properties 2) pluggable aspect interpreters and 3) high level language constructs and modeling language constructs (MDAML) which encourage designer friendly terminology. By comparing accuracy, efficiency, pluggability, and modularity, these three tenants are demonstrated to be effective in creating a new game programming language.

The inclusion of Computational Thinking in the classroom can bring great advances to education. The Computational Thinking approach allows students to practice problem-solving in a way that they can use a computer and the Computer Science mindset. In this sense, the collaboration between students is a key aspect of problem-solving activities. Therefore, social interactions among students from collaborative learning methods could contribute to cognitive development in different ways. This PhD thesis describes a research that has as objective the design of a collaborative learning strategy to support the Computational Thinking development in learners. In order to design the proposed strategy, several fundamental features of the collaborative learning concept of the literature have been studied and sketched. Each step of the collaborative approach was designed to fit this scheme. The proposed strategy uses Game Development teaching approaches to engage learners. Elements of Agile Software Engineering and Problem-Based Learning have also been taken into account. To carry out the experiments, a game development workshop was applied to middle school students from two public educational institutions. Data were collected by three means: (1) collecting artifacts produced during activities; (2) recording of game programming sessions; and (3) applying a structured interview to students. Also, a triangulation of the resulting information was carried out to give more robustness to the results. The data analysis showed evidence that the strategy was able to mobilize Computational Thinking skills related mainly to the algorithm design in addition to mobilizing collaborative skills in learners. The inclusion of Computational Thinking in the classroom can bring great advances to education. The Computational Thinking approach allows students to practice problem-solving in a way that they can use a computer and the Computer Science mindset. In this sense, the collaboration between students is a key aspect of problem-solving activities. Therefore, social interactions among students from collaborative learning methods could contribute to cognitive development in different ways. This PhD thesis describes a research that has as objective the design of a collaborative learning strategy to support the Computational Thinking development in learners. In order to design the proposed strategy, several fundamental features of the collaborative learning concept of the literature have been studied and sketched. Each step of the collaborative approach was designed to fit this scheme. The proposed strategy uses Game Development teaching approaches to engage learners. Elements of Agile Software Engineering and Problem-Based Learning have also been taken into account. To carry out the experiments, a game development workshop was applied to middle school students from two public educational institutions. Data were collected by three means: (1) collecting artifacts produced during activities; (2) recording of game programming sessions; and (3) applying a structured interview to students. Also, a triangulation of the resulting information was carried out to give more robustness to the results. The data analysis showed evidence that the strategy was able to mobilize Computational Thinking skills related mainly to the algorithm design in addition to mobilizing collaborative skills in learners.

Physiological sensing has been a prominent fixture in games user research (GUR) since the late 1990s, when researchers started to explore its potential to enhance and understand experience within digital game play. Since these early days, is has been widely argued that "affective gaming"---in which gameplay is influenced by a player's emotional state---can enhance player experience by integrating physiological sensors into play. Reflecting in 2020 on these last 20 years of progress, we systematically review the field of affective gaming to answer whether or not it has met this promise. We create a framework (the affective game loop) to classify 162 publications (included from an initial search set of 52,834 results) within affective gaming, present findings on the current state of the field, and discuss how our findings, contextualized within the affective game loop, can guide the future of affective gaming.

Problem-solving skills can make students more autonomous in their learning in addition to contributing to the individual's success in real-life situations (professionally or personally). In this sense, Computational Thinking, as a problem-solving approach that can involve information technologies, can contribute a lot to this subject. Therefore, due to its essence, the development of Computer Science concepts is closely related to the employment of problem-solving activities. However, teachers may face difficulties when proposing Computational Thinking problem-solving activities to their students. This paper proposes the engineering of a software that aims to allow teachers to generate challenges related to game and interactive animations programming to support their classes. The problems generated by the system, do not limit the learners' creative power. Besides that, teachers can balance the reasoning component of the challenges according to the learners' level of knowledge in programming and algorithms. An experiment with Computational Thinking workshops was analyzed in order to design the proposed software.

Classroom response systems (CRSs) are tools that allow all students to respond to teacher questions individually through a software platform during lectures. Some widely used CRSs, like Kahoot or Classtime, include gamified designs that transform teacher questions into competitive or cooperative challenges in an attempt to make their usage more enjoyable. A question arises as to what differences may exist in the effects of competitive and cooperative gamified CRSs on student's test performance and learning. This study aims to analyze those differences in the context of a pre-graduate programming university course, which introduces students to video game programming. We present a quasi-experiment with 69 students assigned to two experimental and one control group. We examine between-group differences in CRSs' quiz results and programming skills when using competitive, cooperative, and neutral CRSs. An initial analysis suggests that quiz results are significantly lower when using competitive CRSs, in contrast with cooperative and neutral CRSs, but that there are no significant differences in the programming skill acquisition, considering practical assignments, as well as midterm and final examinations.

The field of computing has not been a popular area of study for young women entering the University of Brasilia (UnB). In 2015, female students comprised a mere 5% of the students seeking to enroll in a Computer Engineering major. In an effort to popularize the field of Computer Science among girls in High School, the Meninas.comp Project (Girls.comp, in English) is being carried out in the public high schools of Brasfla, in Brazil. The project is coordinated by female professors from the Department of Computer Sciences at the UnB. This article reports on one of the activities of this project, presenting the hands-on workshop with programming for public high schools. These programming workshops are attended by students from 10th, 11th and 12th grades. The workshops include game programming, robotics and developing apps for mobile phone.

In game development, mechanics are one of the basis of the entertainment experience. However, the cost of implementing, improving, and refactoring economy mechanics is high because solutions cannot be easily reused across products. We argue that a reference architecture reduces this cost by providing knowledge reuse in addition to software reuse. To achieve that, we designed Unlimited Rulebook, a reference architecture for economy subsystems in games. It builds on established techniques such as Predicate Dispatching, the Entity-Component-System pattern, and the Adaptive Object-Model architectural style to facilitate the addition and modification of entity types and mechanics to the game while reducing the cost of changing existing code. We evaluated this cost reduction empirically via quasi-experiments with university students in two game programming courses.

The game of life, a cellular automation model, is based on the principles of emergence and self-organization. It is a zero-player game that plays out on the basis of its initial state only with the help of some simple rules. It is an infinite computational process which may generate complex patterns over time. In this paper, we propose and compare 2 different methods along with their architectures to optimize the functioning of the existing method. The first method uses OpenMP which works on the fundamentals of shared memory architecture whereas the second method uses MPI which in turn uses message passing techniques on distributed memory systems.

The best way to learn game programming is to start coding one. In this chapter, we'll build a simple card game, Crazy Eights. Crazy 8 is a popular game, both the actual card game and its electronic counterparts. If you search Google Play for Crazy Eights, it'll turn up quite a few selections.

The declarative programming of video games has not gained the interest it deserves in the computer science research community. For example, although Quasi-Engine is a Qt5-based framework that intends to be a complete multiplatform toolset to ease 2D game development, providing ready-to-use QML elements representing the basic game entities needed by most games, this project seems to be abandoned. On the commercial software side, the VPlay engine (now Felgo Engine) is a cross-platform development tool, based also on the Qt framework. Felgo developers use QML, the declarative tongue of Qt, along with an additional language required for scripting such as JavaScript or C++ to create mobile apps and games. Regarding general-purpose programming languages, to the best of my knowledge, I am not aware of any initiative out there, in Python or Ruby or any other “competing” language, that provides a standard, free, open source, and declarative game programming engine besides Ring.

We researched virtual strategies that can help engage college geology students in formal and/or informal environments. These virtual strategies were accomplished by using technological advances in photogrammetry, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), panoramic photography, gigapixel imagery, 360° imagery, 3D mapping, 3D rendering, 3D game programming, and virtual reality. The core part of our virtual strategies is the Virtual Geology Learning Toolbox which contains virtual tools such as virtual specimens in a traditional laboratory, virtual roadcut, virtual overlook, virtual helicopter tour in 3D map platforms, and virtual field trips in 3D game worlds. We developed a virtual reality application as well and brought those tools into a more immersive virtual world. In addition to the Virtual Geology Learning Toolbox, we exploited technologies to promote active participation in traditional field trips by introducing UAS and an outdoor media sharing platform. Feedback from students and instructors is very positive, although we have faced limitations in some aspects of the technology. We predict that these limitations can be addressed as the technology develops, resulting in more powerful tools to leverage active learning in college geology.

The graphical and game programming environment provides a practical way to improve the learning process, especially the motivation of game creators. However, the research on students seldom uses graphic and game programming in higher education. Therefore, this study takes Ylands, a sandbox game of Tencent, as an example to investigate the creative thinking of higher education curriculum games and explore the factors that affect higher education’s acceptance of graphic programming. Based on FSLSM results, the students’ initial learning based on the sandbox game has different preferences for creative content. In addition, the early experience of students with a lot of game experience has become an important factor affecting students’ acceptance of sandbox and game creation. Other factors, such as self exploration ability, sense of achievement, expectation of effort, degree of realization of ideas, social influence, convenience, participation, skills and control, are also important factors. According to the results of this study, the instructional designer can control the content of sand box game creation course, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the course.

Game programming requirements, which is one of the problems of game programming in recent times, is constantly changing. Therefore, the process we are conducting while programming the game does not keep up with this change leads to the failure of the product we develop or the result of higher costs. Therefore, the use of agile programming, which brings a more dynamic and modern solution to changing environment conditions, is increasing day by day and the project teams are transitioning to these processes. In this thesis, firstly historical development, content, rules and methods of Agile methods are presented with literature researches. In the next section, Grumpy Ball is applied by using Scrum method which is agile programming method. Since the agile methods provide dynamic solutions, an end date cannot be determined Therefore, the aim of this article is to determine the exact date of a game application using agile method. For this reason, our project is divided into specific parts and the last periods given to these parts were compared according to certain criteria. In the light of the results, determinations were made.

We are developing a high-level synthesizable software game library to realize high performance and low power mobile terminals executing game applications. High-level synthesis, HLS, is a technology that automatically converts software into hardware. Games developed by HLS oriented game software library are executed by high-speed and low-power hardware reconfigured on reconfigurable devices in mobile terminals. This paper develops a circle drawing processing as one of functions in HLS oriented game software library. We employ Michener's algorithm which is suitable for hardware implementation as a circle drawing algorithm because it just consists of simple integer operations. We also show the program description method so that HLS tool can convert the circle drawing processing based on Michener's algorithm to a good hardware module. The experiments evaluate the execution time and the amount of hardware of the hardware module HLS generated.

U ovom radu vidjeli smo kako funkcionira SFML. To je C++ biblioteka koja omogućava programiranje dvodimenzionalnih računalnih igara. SFML nudi razne mogućnosti u razvoju igara koje su ponuđene preko 5 glavnih modula, a to su sustav, prozor, grafika, zvuk i mreža. S njima možemo crtati po zaslonu, upravljati likom i ostalim dijelovima programa, puštati zvukove i igrati preko mreže. Sve te mogućnosti dovode do toga da možemo programirati kvalitetne i komplicirane igre. Kako bi taj kod bio pregledan i održiv, koristimo oblikovne obrasce. Oni su isprobane metode organiziranja koda koje dovode do toga da je kvalitetnije napisan. Bez njih bi kodove s velikim brojem linija bilo teško čitati i održavati. Oni daju višu razinu apstrakcije kodu. Na kraju smo vidjeli kako implementirati jednu igru u SFML-u. Pri tome smo koristili njegove module i oblikovne obrasce. Na tome primjeru vide se mogućnosti SFML-a i zašto su korisni obrasci. Također su korištene neke standardne prakse pri programiranju igara koje olakšavaju organizaciju i dodavanje novih dijelova igre. In this paper, we have seen the capabilities of SFML. It is a C++ library that allows us to program two-dimensional video games. SFML offers different possibilities when developing games and they are offered through 5 main modules, these are system, window, graphics, sound and network. We can use them to draw on the screen, manipulate the character and other parts of the game, play sounds and play over a network. All those possibilities give us the option to develop high quality complex games. To make that code readable and sustainable, we use design patterns. They are tried and tested methods of organizing code that leads to it being written better. Without them, codes that have many lines would be difficult to read and maintain. They provide a higher level of abstraction to the code. Finally, we saw how to implement a game in SFML. While doing so, we used its modules and design patterns. That example showed the capabilities of SFML and usefulness of design patterns. Some standard game programming practices have also been used which facilitate the organization and addition of new parts to the game.

In this paper, we argue for the need of new kinds of visual, digital game authoring tools. The main goal for this project is to reconceptualization the programming of interactive digital contents, to minimize the coding aspects, and focus instead on the creative and design-like parts, leveraging on a tangible metaphor, so to empower teachers and pupils to create digital interactive content, expanding the creative affordances offered by digital games. The resulting tool is called Stick&Click, it is based on findings from our past research, and it targets the pedagogical practice of editing games that is currently common in Danish primary schools. The study is organized according to the research through design approach, and centers around user needs and experience. We discuss our explorations of the computational model behind Stick&Click, requirements and design principles, and alternative ways to visualize its user interface. In this paper, we argue for the need of new kinds of visual, digital game authoring tools. The main goal for this project is to reconceptualization the programming of interactive digital contents, to minimize the coding aspects, and focus instead on the creative and design-like parts, leveraging on a tangible metaphor, so to empower teachers and pupils to create digital interactive content, expanding the creative affordances offered by digital games. The resulting tool is called Stick&Click, it is based on findings from our past research, and it targets the pedagogical practice of editing games that is currently common in Danish primary schools. The study is organized according to the research through design approach, and centers around user needs and experience. We discuss our explorations of the computational model behind Stick&Click, requirements and design principles, and alternative ways to visualize its user interface.

Our department has long been an advocate of the functional-first school of programming and has been teaching Haskell as a first language in introductory programming course units for 20 years. Although the functional style is largely beneficial, it needs to be taught in an enthusiastic and captivating way to fight the unusually high computer science drop-out rates and appeal to a heterogeneous population of students.This paper reports our experience of restructuring, over the last 5 years, an introductory laboratory course unit that trains hands-on functional programming concepts and good software development practices. We have been using game programming to keep students motivated, and following a methodology that hinges on test-driven development and continuous bidirectional feedback. We summarise successes and missteps, and how we have learned from our experience to arrive at a model for comprehensive and interactive functional game programming assignments and a general functionally-powered automated assessment platform, that together provide a more engaging learning experience for students. In our experience, we have been able to teach increasingly more advanced functional programming concepts while improving student engagement., The authors would like to thank the precursors of the 20-year functional programming culture and FPro unit at our university, and all the instructors and TAs that have been involved in the PLab unit throughout the years. This work is financed by the ERDFs European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 Programme within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006961, and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT s Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia as part of project UID/EEA/50014/2013.

In the last years, many didactic activities have been proposed to develop Computational Thinking (CT) skills in children and adolescents. Among these activities, the digital game programming stands out as a promising alternative considering that it is related to a familiar and motivating context for students. These initiatives are not specifically aimed at individuals with special needs such as the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children and adolescents with ASD usually have some limitations related to communication, cognitive flexibility, and interpersonal relationships. However, it seems natural that the skills potentially developed through game programming activities are especially beneficial for the public with ASD. In this paper, we describe the offering and evaluation of a Game Building Workshop adapted to adolescents with this condition. The guidelines used to define the workshop activities are described. An assessment based on the classroom observation and analysis of produced artifacts indicate that the participants acquired CT skills related to programming at a high level. In addition, the collaborative nature of the activities offered a stimulating and welcoming environment for individuals with ASD.

Deterioration modelling of ageing phenomena on materials is an actively researched topic in computer graphics and vision, with a wide range of applications in domains such as cultural heritage, game programming, material science and virtual reality. As a result significant progress has been accomplished and existing methods are able to produce visually pleasing results that appear realistic. However, there is a very limited connection to comprehensive measurements that actually capture the ageing process of a material. This paper focuses on this gap, aiming to provide a link between physical measurements and deterioration modelling. Based on extensive measurements of texture and surface geometry of artificially aged reference materials, a Deep Learning (DL) framework is proposed that models spatio-temporal variations on the 3D surface geometry and the 2D colour–image appearance. Concretely, the problem of material degradation over time is formulated as an 2D/3D material-to-material translation problem, where the goal is, given an input material and a target degradation time, to output the degraded material at that time. At the core of the method lies a modified conditional Generative Adversarial Network (cGAN), which maps input materials to degraded materials over time. In order to train and deploy the proposed cGAN model, proper data parameterization and augmentation steps are introduced. As shown through extensive experimentation on real data coming from materials commonly found in artwork and from actual artworks, the proposed approach produces high quality results.

Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) allows interactive applications to be modelled in a declarative manner using time-varying values. For practical reasons, however, operational constraints are often imposed, such as having a fixed time domain, time always flowing forward, and limiting the exploration of the past. In this paper we show how these constraints can be overcome, giving local control over the time domain, the direction of time and the sampling step. We study the behaviour of FRP expressions when time flows backwards, and demonstrate how to synchronize subsystems running asynchronously and at different sampling rates. We have verified the practicality of our approach with two non-trivial games in which time control is central to the gameplay.

Automatically generating content for videogames has long been a staple of game development and the focus of much successful research. Such forays into content generation usually concern themselves with producing a specific game component, such as a level design. This has proven a rich and challenging area of research, but in focusing on creating separate parts of a larger game, we miss out on the most challenging and interesting aspects of game development. By expanding our scope to the automated design of entire games, we can investigate the relationship between the different creative tasks undertaken in game development, tackle the higher level creative challenges of game design, and ultimately build systems capable of much greater novelty, surprise, and quality in their output. This paper, the first in a series of two, describes two case studies in automating game design, proposing cooperative coevolution as a useful technique to use within systems that automate this process. We show how this technique allows essentially separate content generators to produce content that complements each other. We also describe systems that have used this to design games with subtle emergent effects. After introducing the technique and its technical basis in this paper, in the second paper in the series we discuss higher level issues in automated game design, such as potential overlap with computational creativity and the issue of evaluation.

Many types of interactive applications, including video games, raise particular challenges when it comes to testing and debugging. Reasons include de-facto lack of reproducibility and difficulties of automatically generating suitable test data. This paper demonstrates that certain variants of Functional Reactive Programming (FRP) implemented in pure functional languages can mitigate such difficulties by offering referential transparency at the level of whole programs. This opens up for a multi-pronged approach for assisting with testing and debugging that works across platforms, including assertions based on temporal logic, recording and replaying of runs (also from deployed code), and automated random testing using QuickCheck. The approach has been validated on real, non-trivial games implemented in the FRP system Yampa through a tool providing a convenient Graphical User Interface that allows the execution of the code under scrutiny to be controlled, moving along the execution time line, and pin-pointing of violations of assertions on PCs as well as mobile platforms.

This paper deals with the problem of overcoming difficulties and raising the motivation of novice engineering students studying programming. We consider this an important factor for engineering education in general and for programming of embedded devices, as well as for calculations and modeling in the field of scientific computing in particular. We present a case study on how novice engineering students can be motivated to study structured programming and coding in C using game programming in the App Inventor environment. The study is based on the authors’ practical teaching experience in the Applied Sciences University for novice programmers, with students of the Technology of Smart Devices specialty, as well as the authors’ long-time research activities in teaching Computer Science.

A computer game is one of the most efficient instructional media for improving learners’ programming skills. Implementing a game development platform or a game engine as an instruction tool provides benefits to learners. This paper observes progress in the learning process, and measures how long learners take to find solutions. The participants in the experiment were divided into two groups. The first group used traditional instructional media, such as lecturing, studying class materials, and solving assigned programming assignments. On the other hand, the second group attended the lectures, similar to the first group, and used a game development platform as instructional media to solve assigned programming assignments. The results showed that the progressive skills of the Game Development Platform learners were higher, and the problem-solving time they spent was lower.

Up to now the relationship between console games and gamers has been restricted by limitations in screen size. The gradual enlargement of these sizes has accommodated for a technological boom in the development of game software programs, some of which have been hugely successful and had broad repercussions across both the gaming and technological landscape. In 2010, Microsoft and their Kinect team released an advertisement using projection mapping technique, which gave users an exciting preview of the future of game technology and provided inspiration for aspiring young game developers. With the help of new techniques, developers had the chance to produce artistically unique projects by creating a variety of different game experiences. Additionally, the enhancement of digital games, their interactive features, and the enlargement of the screens enabled users to experience a completely new level of immersion in their games. Each new development within the industry allows for new avenues of exploration and provides the potential to further refine and enhance successful techniques. Two creative examples of application adaptations are Microsoft’s Illumiroom and RoomAlive projects, which include a game experience which incorporates a large part of the user’s physical environment using reflective techniques. The world of gaming entertainment and the technological advancements which propel it, are constantly improving the experience of its users, and this study, which starts out with aforesaid improvements, further examines the relationship between new generation interactive console games, aesthetic aspects of game interface designs, Microsoft Kinect and Projection Mapping. In light of these, this study discusses the future opportunities of console development, the current industry innovators, and the potential immersive qualities of digital games. Keywords: console game, game design, graphic design, game experience, game user interface design, projection mapping.

This article describes how game developers successfully ‘pull off’ game development, collaborating in the absence of consensus and working with recalcitrant and wilful technologies, shedding light on the games we play and those that make them, but also how we can be forced to work together by the platforms we choose to use. The concept of ‘boundary objects’ is exported from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to highlight the vital coordinating role of game development software. Rather than a mutely obedient tool, game software such as Unity 3D is depicted by developers as exhibiting magical, even agential, properties. It becomes ‘voodoo software’. This software acts as a boundary object, aligning game developers at points of technical breakdown. Voodoo software is tidied away in later accounts of game development, emphasizing how ethnographies of software development provide an anchor from which to investigate cultural production and co-creative practice.

Runtime verification is the process of observing a sequence of events generated by a running system and comparing it to some formal specification for potential violations. We show how the use of a runtime monitor can greatly speed up the testing phase of a video game under development by automating the detection of bugs when the game is being played. We take advantage of the fact that a video game, contrarily to generic software, follows a special structure that contains a “game loop.” This game loop can be used to centralize the instrumentation and generate events based on the game's internal state. We report on experiments made on a sample of six real-world video games of various genres and sizes by successfully instrumenting and efficiently monitoring various temporal properties over their execution, including actual bugs reported in the games' bug tracking database in the course of their development.

Developing a video game is a costly activity, not only from an economic perspective, but also in terms of the time devoted to researching innovative solutions and managing interfaces between the creative and technical team members. In this article, we explore the possibility to use an approach rooted into AI techniques (namely Behaviour Trees) to help establish a lingua franca between these two different functions, in order to optimize both the development time and the quality of the final product. In particular, we have developed BETTER, a middleware which can be easily embedded into any game engine, and tested it during the design and development of Crazy-Hill, a commercial video game for iOS-based mobile devices.

Interest towards implementing educational gaming into courses within higher education continues to increase, but it requires extensive amounts of resources to create individual games for each course. This paper is a description of a university’s effort to create a custom educational game engine to streamline the game development process within the university. This paper includes a discussion of the institutional effort, the game engine itself, as well as a case study of a game created with the custom FLAG (an HTML5 game engine built to run 2D games on any HTML5 compatible device) game engine to illustrate how the FLAG engine can simplify the game development process and promote game-based learning in higher education.