EcoGames - Bee Simulator

Closed Human-Computer Interaction Computer Science Games Engineering Bachelor Master Project Thesis Games Research Lab

Background

Serious games are driven for a primary purpose other than entertainment [2]. For instance, they may be tailored to instil new knowledge or entrain the players. Ecogames [1] inform about environmental issues, species at the brink of extinction, or, in general, about various eco systems and the “circle of life”. Recently, we have designed and implemented a comprehensive mobile game in Unity3D that features important aspect of the life cycle of bee colonies. The player can take control of individual bees and steer them towards flowers, to fend off intruding wasps or to rebuild the destroyed hive. A controlled bee can recruit its peers to join its efforts—both for foraging or defence. Whenever the bee leaves the hive to find precious resources, it needs to orientate itself in a (3D visualised) different world, avoid poisonous gases, water puddles, spider webs and other perils. When winter comes, the hive needs to have grown to a certain size and the food banks have to be filled up.

Tasks

The existing implementation of the beehive simulator has been mentioned in several surveys [4, 3]. In order to fully harness its value, several steps need to be taken. First, it needs to be ported to the latest version of Unity3D. Second, the visualisations and the UI need to be polished to some small extent. Yet, the focus of this project lies in an extensive user study, the scientific documentation of the game and its publication on the Apple and Android app stores. Considering young adults to be the main target group of the game, several iterative design cycles with internal playtesting sessions need to ensure that a meticulously planned field test in the classroom of a local school can be successfully conducted.

Prerequisites

A background in computer graphics, mobile programming, and Unity3D is a great asset for this work.

References

[1] G. L. Mallen. The role of simulation in social education. Innovations in Education & Training International, 10(4):248–249, 1973.

[2] Tarja Susi, Mikael Johannesson, and Per Backlund. Serious games: An overview. 2007.

[3] Sebastian von Mammen. Self-organisation in games, games on self-organisation. In VS-GAMES 2016 - 8th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications. IEEE Press, Barcelona, pages 1-8, 2016.

[4] Sebastian von Mammen, Sarah Edenhofer, and Jörg Hähner. Cosmos in the interactive simulation curriculum. In Proceedings of the 2015 Workshop on Complex System Modelling and Simulation (CoSMoS), pages 85–106, 2015.

Contact Persons at the University Würzburg