Aiming strategy error analysis and verification of a billiard training system

A low cost training system is proposed for regular billiard game tutoring. We describe the elements to construct an interactive computer system which helps train billiard players in enhancing their skills. Most research on computer billiard has focused on creating highly competitive billiard playing programs, based on various search algorithms. Game playing strategies are embedded into these programs to beat the toughest human players. None of them is designed to reveal these information and help increase the public players’ skills. This lack of interactivity foundations makes most billiard playing programs inadequate as billiard tutors too. Our computer system is designed to combine with a visual guide interface to instruct users for a reliable strike. The system makes use of a vision system for cue ball, object ball locations and cue stick tracking. A least square error calibration process correlates the real world and the virtual world pool ball coordinates for a precise guidance line calculation. Users are able to adjust the cue stick on the pool table according to the visual guidance line instruction displayed on a PC monitor. Analysis found that a tolerance angle around the ideal visual line for the object ball to slide into a pocket decide the difficulties of a strike. This value further depends on the distance from pocket to the object, the distance from object to the cue ball, and the angle between these two vectors. Simulation results of tolerance angles as function of the angle variation between cue, object ball and pocket and distance variation between pocket and object ball are conducted.Players with different proficiency level were selected for the experiment. The result indicates that all players benefit from our proposed visual guide system in enhancing their skills. All exhibit enhanced hit-in rate both in maximum values and average values, while the low skill player shows the maximum enhancement in skill with the help of our system. The maximum hit in rate increases about 20.45% while average hit in rate increases about 38.76%. The experiment result as evaluated in hit-in rate has shown a consistent pattern with that of the analysis. The hit-in rate is thus tightly connected with the analyzed tolerance angles to sink object balls into a target pocket. These prove the efficiency of our system, and the analysis results can be used for an efficient game playing strategy.     

Multi-objective design method based on evolution game and its application for suspension

Through research and bionics of biology survival mode, game players with competition, cooperation and self-adaptation capacity are introduced in the multi-objective design. The dynamic behavior and bounded rationality in game processes for players are considered according to Chinese saying “In success, commit oneself to the welfare of the society; in distress, maintain one’s own integrity”. An evolution rule, Poor-Competition-Rich-Cooperation (short for PCRC), is proposed. Then, the corresponding payoff functions of competition and cooperation behavior are established and a multi-objective design method based on evolution game is proposed. The calculation steps are as follows: 1) Taking the design objectives as different game players, and calculating factors of the design variables to objective and fuzzy clustering. The design variables are divided into multiple strategy subsets owned by each game player. 2) According to the evolution rule, each player determines its behavior and payoff function in this game round. 3) In their own strategy subsets, each game player takes their payoff as mono-objective for optimization. It gives the best strategy upon other players. And so the best strategies of all players conform the group strategy in this round. The final equilibrium solution is obtained through multi-round game based on convergence criterion. The validity and reliability of this method are shown by the results of an example of a tri-objective optimization design of passive suspension parameters.     

Automatic analysis and identification of verbal aggression and abusive behaviors for online social games

Online multiplayer games create new social platforms, with their own etiquette, social rules of conduct and ways of expression. What counts as aggressive and abusing behavior may change depending on the platform, but most online gaming companies need to deal with aggressive and abusive players explicitly. This usually is tied to a reporting mechanism where the offended player reports an offense. In this paper, we develop tools for validating whether a verbal aggression offense report refers to a real offense or not, in the context of a very popular online social game, called Okey. Our approach relies on the analysis of player behavior and characteristics of offending players. In the proposed system, chat records and other social activities in the game are taken into account, as well as player history. This methodology is sufficiently generic, and it can be applied to similar gaming platforms, thus describing a useful tool for game companies. We report our results on data collected over a six months period, involving 100,000 users and 800,000 game records, and illustrate the viability of such analysis, while providing insights on the factors associated with verbal aggression and abusive behavior for social games.     

Kinematic adjustments in the basketball jump shot against an opponent

The aim of this study was to analyse the adjustments in technique made by a basketball player when shooting against an opponent. The subjects used consisted of 10 professional basketball players of the Spanish First Division League. Three-dimensional motion analysis based on video recordings (50 Hz) was used to obtain the kinematic characteristics of basketball jump shots with and without an opponent. It was found that when performing against an opponent the release angle of the ball increased, the flight time was reduced and postural adjustments as determined by the angles at the knee and shoulder increased, all significantly. There were several other non-significant differences that helped to interpret the changes in technique imposed by the presence of an opponent. It was suggested that when shooting with an opponent, players attempted to release the ball more quickly and from a greater height. This strategy will lessen the chance of the opponent intercepting the ball. It was concluded that the differences noted in the technical execution of the skill had implications for practice. It was suggested that training would benefit from practice with an opponent for at least some of the time to condition players to the demands which they were more likely to meet in the game situation.     

Kinematic adjustments in the basketball jump shot against an opponent

The aim of this study was to analyse the adjustments in technique made by a basketball player when shooting against an opponent. The subjects used consisted of 10 professional basketball players of the Spanish First Division League. Three-dimensional motion analysis based on video recordings (50 Hz) was used to obtain the kinematic characteristics of basketball jump shots with and without an opponent. It was found that when performing against an opponent the release angle of the ball increased, the flight time was reduced and postural adjustments as determined by the angles at the knee and shoulder increased, all significantly. There were several other non-significant differences that helped to interpret the changes in technique imposed by the presence of an opponent. It was suggested that when shooting with an opponent, players attempted to release the ball more quickly and from a greater height. This strategy will lessen the chance of the opponent intercepting the ball. It was concluded that the differences noted in the technical execution of the skill had implications for practice. It was suggested that training would benefit from practice with an opponent for at least some of the time to condition players to the demands which they were more likely to meet in the game situation.     

Computer agents versus avatars: Responses to interactive game characters controlled by a computer or other player

Computer and videogames often require that users interact with other characters on the screen that represent other real people or characters that are controlled by computer code running within the game. The difference between game play with other avatars (player-controlled characters) or agents (characters controlled by the computer) may influence the engagement a game player experiences. This study investigated the effects of agency (avatar versus agent) and the type of gaming activity (competition versus cooperation) on physiological arousal and subjective evaluation of play. A 2 (avatar, agent)×2 (competition, cooperation) within-subject experiment was conducted (N=32). Players exhibited greater physiological arousal to otherwise identical interactions when other characters were introduced as an avatar rather than an agent. Furthermore, the co-player's source of agency interacted with the type of gaming activity. The results have implications for understanding how different forms of representation in virtual worlds and games will affect psychological responses in the contexts of entertainment, learning and the conduct of serious work.     

Does it matter with whom you slay? The effects of competition,cooperation and relationship type among video game players

Cooperation and competition have emerged as factors that may affect video game players. Competition consistently has been found to elicit increased aggression whilst cooperation has been found to mitigate aggression and increase cooperative behaviors after game play. Of interest is the effect of the relationship between players (friend vs. stranger) in cooperative and competitive multiplayer contexts. In this study, we considered how game goal structure – competition or cooperation – and relationships between players – friend or stranger – affect aggression and cooperative behaviors. Compared with competition, cooperative play resulted in significantly more cooperative behaviors in a modified Prisoner’s Dilemma task. However, neither competitive nor cooperative goal structures significantly increased state hostility, suggesting that altering players’ gaming goals (e.g. competition or cooperation) may not be enough to elicit strong affective aggression. Additionally, cooperative game play was found to predict increased cooperative behaviors and trust in their partner. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

A game attention model for efficient bit rate allocation in cloud gaming

The widespread availability of broadband internet access and the growth in server-based processing have provided an opportunity to run games away from the player into the cloud and offer a new promising service known as cloud gaming. The concept of cloud gaming is to render a game in the cloud and stream the resulting game scenes to the player as a video sequence over a broadband connection. To meet the stringent network bandwidth requirements of cloud gaming and support more players, efficient bit rate reduction techniques are needed. In this paper, we introduce the concept of game attention model (GAM), which is basically a game context-based visual attention model, as a means for reducing the bit rate of the streaming video more efficiently. GAM estimates the importance of each macro-block in a game frame from the player’s perspective and allows encoding the less important macro-blocks with lower bit rate. We have evaluated nine game video sequences, covering a wide range of game genre and a spectrum of scene content in terms of details, motion and brightness. Our subjective assessment shows that by integrating this model into the cloud gaming framework, it is possible to decrease the required bit rate by nearly 25 % on average, while maintaining a relatively high user quality of experience. This clearly enables players with limited communication resources to benefit from cloud gaming with acceptable quality.     

Playing for social comfort: Online video game play as a social accommodator for the insecurely attached

Internet connectivity has changed the way video games are played by allowing individuals to connect worldwide in shared gaming spaces. These highly social environments allow players to connect, interact with, and learn from each other. However, there is a growing concern that these social environments also have the potential to displace real-world connections and interactions, contributing to a variety of losses in ‘offline’ sociability. The current study aims to elucidate what users may be gaining or losing (socially) as a result of continued participation in online video game environments, and what potentially underlies these social changes, by examining the associations between social skills and online video game involvement through the perspective of attachment theory. The results challenge the assumption that online video game play is inexorably associated with negative social consequences for the player and indicates the potential for online gaming spaces to serve critical attachment functions by providing a social outlet that promotes a sense of closeness, belonging, and security that satisfies attachment needs for those high in attachment avoidance.     

The Trojan Player Typology: A cross-genre,cross-cultural,behaviorally validated scale of video game play motivations

While many video game researchers have built scales to tackle the motivations that people have for playing video games, these scales are often limited by their focus on specific game genres or player cultures as well as their lack of behavioral validation. The present research offers a new scale for player motivations and then examines its validity across two distinct gaming genres and cultures, drawing from server-side data combined with survey data of 18,627 players of the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena League of Legends and 18,819 players of the Chinese Massively Multiplayer Online Game Chevalier’s Romance Online 3. Six types of player motivations were found: socializer, completionist, competitor, escapist, story-driven, and smarty-pants. Consistent with previous research on player motivations, this typology offers new insights into why people play video games and how player motivations can be used to infer players’ in-game behaviors.     

The effect of flow experience on player loyalty in mobile game application

Mobile gaming is an emerging with highly competitive industry. There are hundreds of games launched per day in the past two years. To understand whether factors influence the player loyalty (PL) of game users through flow experience, this study tested the proposed hypothesis by administering a questionnaire survey on the mobile game application “Tower of Saviors”. A structural equation modelling analysis and the FsQCA method were adopted to explore the survey responses of 394 players who were recruited for this study. According to the empirical study results, human–computer interaction (HI), social interaction (SI), skill (S), and challenge (C) independently positive influenced flow experience, and further positively influenced the PL of mobile game users. This study contributes to the literature on flow theory by elucidating the influence of player behavior on their PL. In particular, the higher the C and SI are, the more the game challenges experienced players and facilitates interactions with each other, thereby raising PL.     

基于预测模型的最佳进攻球员和进攻点选择

以FIRA SimuroSot5v5仿真平台为背景,针对策略中如何最大化进攻威胁的问题,提出一种基于预测模型的最佳进攻球员和进攻点选择方法。对机器人和球的运动规律进行建模,根据建立的预测模型确定机器人的有效进攻时间,计算可进攻球员和可进攻点,并对每个可进攻球员及进攻点进行进攻威胁度评估,得到最佳进攻球员和最佳进攻点。仿真实验验证了该方法的有效性。     

Evolving an expert checkers playing program without using humanexpertise

An evolutionary algorithm has taught itself how to play the game of checkers without using features that would normally require human expertise. Using only the raw positions of pieces on the board and the piece differential, the evolutionary program optimized artificial neural networks to evaluate alternative positions in the game. Over the course of several hundred generations, the program taught itself to play at a level that is competitive with human experts (one level below human masters). This was verified by playing the best evolved neural network against 165 human players on an Internet gaming zone. The neural network's performance earned a rating that was better than 99.61% of all registered players at the Website. Control experiments between the best evolved neural network and a program that relies on material advantage indicate the superiority of the neural network both at equal levels of look ahead and CPU time. The results suggest that the principles of Darwinian evolution may he usefully applied to solving problems that have not yet been solved by human expertise     

The effects of a player’s network centrality on resource accessibility,game enjoyment,and continuance intention: A study on online gaming communities

This study applies social capital theory to investigate how a player’s network centrality in an online gaming community (i.e., a guild) affects his/her attitude and continuance intention toward a Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). Analysis of 347 usable responses shows that players’ network centrality has a negative impact on their ties to players who belong to other guilds (i.e., non-guild interaction), but a positive effect on players’ access to resources. However, players’ network centrality fails to increase their perceived game enjoyment directly. Players’ resource accessibility and perceived game enjoyment play mediating roles in the relationship between network centrality and attitude toward playing an MMOG, which in turn influences game continuance intention. The results also show that although players’ non-guild interaction is negatively related to their resource accessibility from the networks, it is positively associated with perceived game enjoyment. The article concludes with implications and limitations of the study.     

Training and learning for crisis management using a virtual simulation/gaming environment

Recent advances in computers, networking, and telecommunications offer new opportunities for using simulation and gaming as methodological tools for improving crisis management. It has become easy to develop virtual environments to support games, to have players at distributed workstations interacting with each other, to have automated controllers supply exogenous events to the players, to enable players to query online data files during the game, and to prepare presentation graphics for use during the game and for post-game debriefings. Videos can be used to present scenario updates to players in “newscast” format and to present pre-taped briefings by experts to players. Organizations responsible for crisis management are already using such technologies in constructing crisis management systems (CMSs) to coordinate response to a crisis, provide decision support during a crisis, and support activities prior to the crisis and after the crisis. If designed with gaming in mind, those same CMSs could be easily used in a simulation mode to play a crisis management game. Such a use of the system would also provide personnel with opportunities to rehearse for real crises using the same tools they would have available to them in a real crisis. In this paper, we provide some background for the use of simulation and gaming in crisis management training, describe an architecture for simulation and gaming, and present a case study to illustrate how virtual environments can be used for crisis management training.     

Analyzing repetitive action in game based on sequence pattern matching

As games become more popular, procedures which can support the analysis and understanding of players’ behaviors are necessary for success of commercial games. This paper presents a log-based usability evaluation system to analyze user behavior in a gaming environment. We explore the potential of input log data for automated usability evaluation and visualization of player behavior in a game. We traced the keyboard input value and mouse movement of users using a sequence data mining technique in a gaming environment. And we also constructed 3D body meshes for the behavior analysis using Kinect interface. We visualized the data obtained by tracing and automatically searched repetitive patterns in the game and analyzed them. The result obtained from the analysis can be used for user interface optimization, fun evaluation, and the bot-detection field.     

Opportunistic mobile games using public transportation systems: a deployability study

With the growing availability of personal communication devices, we are witnessing a tremendous increase in the demand for mobile services based on location and context. Mobile gaming as a service is, of course, no exception. Unfortunately, differently from other services, location- and context-based gaming strictly requires near-field communication to interact with nearby players to create teams and arenas. Since currently adopted technologies suffer from scalability (Bluetooth) or energy (WiFi) constraints, opportunistic networks (ONs) have already been addressed as a viable solution to involve a considerable number of players on a wider area. Nevertheless, it is not yet clear how player experience will be affected by the increased delay and probabilistic message forwarding introduced by an ON. In this paper, we address the aforementioned problems by studying, by means of simulations, the feasibility to deploy a contact-based game on top of the ON provided by the public transportation systems (PTSs) of three cities: Milan (Italy), Edmonton (AB, Canada), and Chicago (IL, USA). Furthermore, to provide playability and scalability considerations, we also study an opportunistic collaborative version of a famous standalone game. The focus on this specific game is functional to foster the use of the PTS itself. The contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we provide simulation results hinting that deployment on a PTS is feasible when targeting users commuting inside the city. Secondly, we provide a number of considerations and guidelines for game designers to actually deliver a compelling and intriguing experience.     

Automatic fuzzy decision making system with learning for competing and connected businesses

We study uncertainties surrounding competition on business networks and board games. We investigate these uncertainties using concepts of fuzzy logic and game theory. We investigate how the payoff of the players is affected by a number of factors. These include the level of connectivity or number of links, the number of competitors, possible constraints on the networks and on the boards, as well as choice of strategy adopted by competitors. We introduce one fuzzy player in the game. This player uses fuzzy rules to make strategic decisions. We introduce learning to train and analyze how the fuzzy player adapts over time during the game.     

Public Displays of Play: Studying Online Games in Physical Settings

As research on virtual worlds gains increasing attention in educational, commercial, and military domains, a consideration of how player populations are ‘reassembled’ through social scientific data is a timely matter for communication scholars. This paper describes a large‐scale study of virtual worlds in which participants were recruited at public gaming events, as opposed to through online means, and explores the dynamic relationships between players and contexts of play that this approach makes visible. Challenging conventional approaches to quantitatively driven virtual worlds research, which categorizes players based on their involvement in an online game at a particular point in time, this account demonstrates how players' networked gaming activities are contingent on who they are playing with, where, and when.     

基于改进遗传算法的RBF网络的截球策略

在RoboCup2D仿真足球比赛中,球员的底层动作设计的好坏直接影响着比赛的输赢,特别是一些关键的动作,比如截球、传球、射门等动作。鉴于此,提出一种新的截球方法,即改进的遗传算法和RBF神经网络相结合的截球方法。该方法是用改进的遗传算法优化RBF神经网络的结构参数,通过优化,提高了网络的全局搜索效率。实验表明,经过改进遗传算法优化的RBF神经网络的截球成功率比单一的RBF神经网络截球成功率高很多。