Game programming

Abstract: As experienced teachers of novice game designers, the authors have discovered patterns in the way that students grasp game design the mistakes they make as well as the methods to help them to create better games. Each exercise requires no background in programming or artwork, releasing beginning designers from the intricacies of electronic game production and allowing them to learn what works and what doesn't work in a game system. Additionally, these exercises teach important skills in system design: the processes of prototyping, playtesting, and redesigning. It teaches the fundamentals of game design through the study of classic systems. Its exercises will strengthen your understanding of how game elements work together.

Abstract: A multi-player computer game, system and development method that facilitate multi-player game play between and among various hardware platforms employing various operating systems and communication protocols. Special purpose software operable in connection with a processor of a client computing device provides a multi-player computer game. The special purpose software provides an interface between an application module, which provides the functionality for a specific multi-player computer game, and the operating system and hardware devices and protocols of the client computing device. A multi-player game system facilitates multi-player game play between and among a plurality of players regardless of the different hardware platforms (i.e., different client computing devices) used by the various players.

Abstract: A disclosed gaming machine is designed to execute a modular gaming software architecture. A plurality of gaming software modules may be loaded into RAM on the gaming machine and executed to play a game of chance. Many of the gaming software modules are designed to communicate via application program interfaces so that the logic in many of the gaming software modules may be designed independently of each other. In particular, the modular gaming software architecture allows a game flow software module used to generate a game of chance on the gaming machine to be decoupled from a game presentation software module used to present the game chance. Thus, a group of games may be designed where the games share a common game flow software module but use different game presentation software modules to change the look and feel of the game.

Abstract: Online learning in commercial computer games allows computer-controlled opponents to adapt to the way the game is being played. As such it provides a mechanism to deal with weaknesses in the game AI, and to respond to changes in human player tactics. We argue that online learning of game AI should meet four computational and four functional requirements. The computational requirements are speed, effectiveness, robustness and efficiency. The functional requirements are clarity, variety, consistency and scalability. This paper investigates a novel online learning technique for game AI called `dynamic scripting', that uses an adaptive rulebase for the generation of game AI on the fly. The performance of dynamic scripting is evaluated in experiments in which adaptive agents are pitted against a collection of manually-designed tactics in a simulated computer roleplaying game. Experimental results indicate that dynamic scripting succeeds in endowing computer-controlled opponents with adaptive performance. To further improve the dynamic-scripting technique, an enhancement is investigated that allows scaling of the difficulty level of the game AI to the human player's skill level. With the enhancement, dynamic scripting meets all computational and functional requirements. The applicability of dynamic scripting in state-of-the-art commercial games is demonstrated by implementing the technique in the game Neverwinter Nights. We conclude that dynamic scripting can be successfully applied to the online adaptation of game AI in commercial computer games.