Æliens

goal(s)

• to develop a game that could be used for promoting our institute, and
• to prepare a masterclass game development for high-school students.

requirements game

• the game must provide information about the faculty of sciences of the VU,
• the game environment must be realistic and sufficiently complex, and
• the interaction must be of a non-aggressive, non-violent, nature.

requirements masterclass

• it must be suitable for beginners, in particular high school students,
• it must explain basic texture manipulation, and
• offer templates for modifying a game level, and finally
• there must be a simple (easy to understand) manual.

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(a) restaurant	(b) restaurant	(c) restaurant

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technical issues

• level design
• game modifications
• importing models

level design

To give an impression of the overall size of the VU.vmf game level, as map information we obtained 6464 solids, 41725 faces, 849 point entities, 1363 solid entities, and 129 unique textures, requiring in total a texture memory of 67918851 bytes (66.33 MB).

game modification(s)

• player properties -- players start out immortal, meaning that they cannot "die" while exploring the world. Furthermore, continuous sprinting is enabled, which allows the player to walk around faster.
• puzzle HUD -- when the player starts out, the puzzle HUD is the only HUD element displayed.
• puzzle setter -- allows puzzle parts to be displayed on the puzzle HUD.
• weapon enabler -- allows weapons to be enabled/disabled for the player. Enabling the weapons also enables damage, and swithes from the puzzle HUD to the default Half-Life 2 HUD, which displays weapon and damage information along with a crosshair.

importing models

• the model must be exported to the custom Valve format smd
• the model must be compiled from smd to mdl format

assignment(s)

1. to modify an existing game level by applying different textures,
2. to create objects within an existing game level, and
3. (for advanced students only) to create a new level.

instruction(s)

• an overview of the history of games,
• a general introduction on modelling characters and objects,
• the use of the Hammer editor, and finally,
• an explanation of the assignments.

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(a) converter	(b) VMT tool	(c) camera

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(a) masterclass room	(b) room in Hammer editor

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hammer editor

• block tool -- for creating simple object,
• selection tool -- to select objects for texturing,
• entity tool -- to select dynamic or interactive objects, and the
• texture tool -- to apply textures to an object;

Somewhat surprisingly, all students worked directly from the (paper) manual, rather than consulting the online documentation, or the help function with the tool.

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matrix

competition

To stimulate the participants in their creativity, we awarded the best result, according to our judgement, with a VU-Life 2 T-shirt and a CD with Half-Life 2. The results varied from a music chamber, a space environment, a Matrix inspired room, and a messy study room. We awarded the Matrix room with the first prize, since it looked, although not very original, the most coherent.

civilisation

Media are special cases within the history of civilisation. They have contributed there share to the gigantic rubbish heaps that cover the face of our planet or to the mobile junk that zips through outer space.

dead media project

Together with like-minded people, in 1995, Bruce Sterling started a mailinglist (at that time still an attractive option) to collect obsolete software. This list was soon expanded to collect dead ideas, or dead artifacts, and systems from the history of technical media: inventions that appeared suddenly and disappeared just as quickly, which dead-ended and were never developed further; models that never left the drawing board; or actual products that were bought and used and subsequently vanished into thin air.

machines can die

Sterling's project confronted burgeoning phantasies about the immortality of machines with the simple facticity of a continuously growing list of things that have become defunct.

technology and death

Once again, romantic notions of technology and of death were closely intertwined in the Dead Media Project.

scenario(s)

Michelle is a writer, and she writes a book about Dutch paintings. To collect necessary information, she analyses different sources about Dutch culture, many of them in Dutch language. However, being a beginner in Dutch, she often has to translate phrases from and to English. She also needs to find additional information about particular concepts and facts. Instead of using several tools, such as online dictionaries, definition books and search engines, she decides to compose a simple service that aggregates all the services she needs.

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dimension(s)

• scope -- individual vs. corporate
• platform -- local vs. web-based
• functionality -- data aggregation vs. interaction
• developers -- end-user vs. professionals

Additionally we address the issue of

• licensing -- OS vs. proprietary

service-oriented computing

• service brokering -- to connect services,
• service adapters -- to transform data, and
• integration mechanisms -- to deploy services.

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camera input	voice input	news reader

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