Computer Games

Ciocarlan et al (Ciocarlan, 2018), developed a wellbeing game that utlised some of Cialdini's well-known principles of influence and persuasion (Cialdini 1984) to persuade players to perform real-world acts of kindness.  The artefact was used to address a number of research questions including the impact on subjective wellbeing.  Although this was a significant piece of ongoing research, the artefact they used would make an interesting muse for a Minecraft mod.  Although Ciocarlan et al's results were inconclusive, the results could be used as a steer to scope-down to something achievable in the timescale for a Computing project.

This would be a DBT project, so research on the effectiveness of the artefact in behaviour change would NOT be required.

Experience of Minecraft modding, as well as keen interests in Persuasion Psychology and Positive Psychology would be needed to do something worthwhile in the timescale available to you.  Are you persuaded?

This project is specifically for students who have already developed a Game Engine through their work on the 2nd year Games module and are continuing that work on the 3rd year Games module.  Your Game Engine Architecture will need to be developed to the extent that a Collision Management element already exists.

In this project, you will design, build, and test an extension to the Collision Manager of your Entity-based Game Engine Architecture, that introduces a 'broad-phase' test alongside the already functional narrow-phase test (eg the Monogame Rectangle 'hitbox'), that employs quad-tree partitioning to cull the number of narrow-phase tests needed per update.  Testing will require verification of your Engine + demo software against the requirements.

This project is specifically for students who have already developed a Game Engine through their work on the 2nd year Games module and are continuing that work on the 3rd year Games module.  Your Game Engine Architecture will need to be developed to the extent that a Collision Management element already exists.

In this project, you will design, build, and test an extension/modification to the Collision Manager of your Entity-based Game Engine Architecture, that replaces the built-in Monogame Rectangle based 'hitbox' with a bespoke implementation of the Separating Axis algorithm for arbitrary convex polygon shaped hitboxes.  Testing will require verification of your Engine + demo software against the requirements.

This project is specifically for students who have already developed a Game Engine through their work on the 2nd year Games module and are continuing that work on the 3rd year Games module.  Your Game Engine Architecture will need to be developed to the extent that a Behaviour Management element already exists.

In this project, you will design, build, and test an extension to the Behaviour Manager of your Entity-based Game Engine Architecture, to allow entities to exhibit 'realistic' physics behaviours, including propulsion, gravity, and 'bounce'.  Testing will require verification of your Engine + demo software against your chosen physics model.

This project is specifically for students who have already developed a Game Engine through their work on the 2nd year Games module and are continuing that work on the 3rd year Games module.

The problem of Path Finding in games is broken down into two (slightly) smaller problems: environment mapping and graph search.  Environment mapping is where the game levels are 'filtered' (usually manually) into meaningful maps of obstacles, navigable regions, and route costs.  Graph search is the problem of finding shortest/least-expensive path through a graph of data.

Additionally, NPCs need to be able to navigate along paths returned by a path finder system in a realistic-looking way.

In this project, you will design, build, and test an extension to your Game Engine that allows game developers to add Path Finding to NPCs in their game.  Testing will require verification of your Engine + demo software against a model of a chosen directed search algorithm (eg A*), environment map, and NPC movement behaviours.

Note that this is likely to be a challenging project.

This project is specifically for students who have already developed a Game Engine through their work on the 2nd year Games module and are continuing that work on the 3rd year Games module.  Your Game Engine Architecture will need to be developed to the extent that a Behaviour Manager element already exists.

In this project, you will design, build, and test an extension to the Behaviour Manager of your Entity-based Game Engine Architecture, to allow NPCs to be implemented with team behaviours (eg shoaling or 'squadding').  This will require a hierarchical approach to the AI Components of your Engine.  Testing will require verification of your Engine + demo software against a model of a chosen team-based behaviour.

The project will address the issue of excess sedentary behaviours typically undertaken by gamers. The project may consists of the following:

 - Undertake a critical literature review of sedentary behaviour interventions and examine their effectiveness
 - Develop a novel technology driven sedentary behaviour intervention on gamers.
 - Evaluate the effectiveness of this newly developed intervention.