A Future in Virtual Reality

Image Link - Creative Commons

Found this article last night after having talked about it with a buddy of mine. Found it particularly interesting and thought about it for some time. VR’s arrival into the technological age has been both interesting and gimmicky. For starters, VR can be overwhelming and troublesome, especially if the wrong type of simulation or even game is used. There’s also the issue of simulator sickness where people get disoriented after some use of VR. The real interesting part of this article (link below) is that it seems there’s this misconception about VR’s role in the world.

Why the real promise of virtual reality is to change human connection

When I went to SigGraph for Summer 2016, I got a taste of VR that summer and saw many of its potential purposes that research teams are looking into with it. Some of these uses for VR are listed below.

1. Gaming, of course this one would be here! VR’s gaming role may not be dominating now, it definitely has some interesting games that exist at this current time like job simulator and other games like that.
2. Movie/Storytelling: Taking advantage of 360 cameras, a group created a story video that allows the VR users to watch an entire storyline unfold in front of them. The video I viewed in VR related to Syria at the time.
3. Therapy: Taking advantage of the user’s sense of sight and hearing. A group utilized those senses to soothe and calm users that experienced the exhibit.

Where I was going with this is that there are a lot more uses and roles that VR can take care of (one that was not listed there was training simulations) than simply just gaming as many people believe it to be. What I found particularly interesting about the article was that Peter Rubin (interviewed in the article) mentions that there’s this sense of trying to better a human connection in it.

Given our current day and age, a lot of our interactions can be simply just tweets, chats, texts where we just simply write to each other and don’t really interact much outside of that. Rubin’s goal is to find a means of using VR to extend our interactions past that.

What I find particularly interesting as I continued reading this article is that it does shine light to part of what I liked about an application in VR called VRChat. Now, while VRChat can be…”interesting” in several scenarios, where it shines is in some of these areas that Rubin mentions. To summarize VRChat for those that don’t use it, imagine a chat room, but everyone has a 3d avatar that they can use to move around and talk with people in the room. The voice audio is local (meaning if a person is far enough away, you can’t hear them) and there can be full body tracking (if the person has the equipment).

With tracking, users can see other’s body language or at the bare minimum “Hand presence” as Rubin refers to it. There’s no text chat, so if you don’t have a microphone, you can’t really take part in the discussions so it does make that a bit difficult. There are rooms however were you can write and draw with pens so I guess that can be used instead. My few experiences have been interesting and I’ve met some interesting people there as well (other animators and even people who work on games).

It’s interesting being able to connect the dots from this article and VRChat as an application and understanding another of VR’s roles. I’m curious as to what other roles it could serve in the future, but probably won’t really use it as a gaming medium (since it’s still a bit pricey for a lot of people).

 

 

The Rise of Web Gaming

We’ve known gaming to be around for decades now, but with the work being done in browsers to make them more capable of graphics, it might come as a shock to mention that a lot of games have been starting to be developed in the web browsers we use daily. Sure there’s simple games like Tower Defense games involving monkeys and the many games you can find on Newgrounds, but those have been around for a while. With the inclusion of the <canvas> element in HTML 5, I’ve been able to create a few games that simply use the browser themselves (like the simple game below)

Picture of gameplay from StarFighter – web game prototype – Play Here!

But what’s impressive is that WebGL (OpenGL for Web) and WebVR are both starting to take off in. Using some 3d frameworks like three.js, devs can utilize 3d models to create 3d games in the browsers using JavaScript! Several Game engines have recently been created to help with game development on a web browser. These engines can handle singleplayer and multiplayer games! Even Unity can help to development web games as mentioned in this article!

Where are HTML Games Heading in the Future?

But why focus on web gaming? One HUGE benefit to web gaming is that gamers don’t need to download and store game files as they will be loaded in as soon as the player loads up the game’s webpage. With several big titles (Destiny franchise, Rust, PUBG, etc) moving into an always online approach, this might be a potential avenue to look into later on as well!

I’m curious to see where web game development goes in the future! It’s possible that it could take over or even compete with modern day gaming as it is.

Game Difficulty, the most challenging part of game development!

With a variety of games in existence, players develop their own skills and create their own stories that come from their time in each game. Most stories tend to be silly little moments that occur while playing while others are feats of glory or honor from the game’s difficulty. One of the most interesting things that I’ve come across when developing games is the concept of a game’s difficulty.  A while back, I read this article and still keep it around as a means of helping others who ask me that question.

https://www.gamedesigning.org/learn/game-difficulty/

I can 100% agree with the answer that they provide! Difficulty comes down to what type of game you are looking to create. Lets look at two examples for this. The first game I’m going to discuss is one many (if not all of us) should be able to identify! Minecraft!

(Pictures from a screenshot of my own gameplay with buddies)

Just in case you don’t know Minecraft, it’s a survival game that focuses heavily on crafting items to survive. Players build bases/homes, farm, develop weapons and armor, and everything else they would need to do to survive the world they are in. Difficulty in this game is easy to change and alters how some mechanics work in-game. As the game gets more and more difficult: the enemies do more damage, can break doors, hunger meter depletion means characters can starve to death, etc. With the highest mode being Hardcore mode, with is almost no different than Hard difficulty save for the fact that you only get one life. This game isn’t that difficult overall, which is why the game is very widespread.

Let’s look at a different game now.

(Pictures from a screenshot of my own gameplay - This is Normal difficulty)

This game is called Rabi-Ribi. Unlike Minecraft, this is a bullet-hell adventure game. Most of the game involves exploration and leveling gear, but as you level…so does your enemies. Boss fights (like the one above) feature attacks where a lot of damaging bits come flying your way. Difficulty isn’t as easy to obtain (you have to beat the game previously in a lower difficulty to unlock the next). This is done, because the higher difficulties in this game are designed to make things more and more chaotic and challenging on the player. As mentioned in the caption, that is normal difficulty. The image below shows the same attack pattern on the highest difficulty in the game.

(Screenshot from Video by Josh Burns - Video Link )

This follows how Bullet-hell games get more difficult. There is a lot more action on screen and players are required to master patterns, have good reaction times, and even have strategies on how to beat these types of bosses. Players looking for this type of challenge are required to practice and build up these particular skill sets to overcome these dangers. Compared to minecraft, this game is significantly harder, and so there are not as many players of this particular game.

So as the article mentions above, there is a lot of consideration that must be done for determining how to make your game difficult. It really comes down to how you want your game to be difficult based on what the game itself has. But the one thing to remember at the end of the day, is that there is no wrong answer!

Picking our brains with AI

(https://openclipart.org/detail/278132/artificial-intelligence)

Towards the end of my studies in the CSCI (Computer Science Computer Informatics) department at IUPUI, I spent a semester in learning and creating Artificial Intelligence (or as I’ve come to know it, Artificial Stupidity). What’s fascinating about this particular branch of computer science is the amount of research and development that’s been occurring in this particular field for a while now.

For those that aren’t very familar, here’s a pretty decent conceptual video that introduces some of the history that brought about AI.

One of the things this video covers is how AI were first created to play games and learn how to play them over time. Games and even Video Games are one of the best ways to really test and create AI and see how algorithms and heuristics work.

What makes this particular area of study even more interesting is that many scientists have been working to make AI reason and behave how a human would in the same situation. After some research and theory, scientists have developed the Four Goals of AI when it comes to problem solving.

(From Textbook: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach [Peter Norvig/Stuartt Russell])

Each of these particular goals are all different and come with their own pros and cons. It is believed that the “Acting Rationally” approach is the best of the four at the current time and is more widely used.

What’s interesting is that Artificial Intelligence has caused many scientists to look at how humans perceive and think through scenarios. This focus on how we as humans think and act is necessary for properly programming AI .

As time has shown, there’s been significant strides in the development of AI in various fields of our everyday lives. Gaming still remains the most affected field as AI have been created that have defeated even the best at certain games like Chess, GO, and other various games.

DeepMind’s AlphaZero beats Chess Champion

DeepMind’s AlphaGo beats Go World Champion

OpenAI defeats Top Dota 2 players in one-on-one matches

AI is truly a very interesting field to learn more about. As an aspiring game developer, AI is definitely a field that is important in gaming as it can make the game more difficult to complete. I have spent considerable time working to create q-learning AI (variant of a rational acting agent) that add significant difficulty to a game’s experience.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton