Assignments > Assignment 1: Find errors in games
In this assignment, you will create your own footage of a computer game in which path planning or crowd simulation goes dramatically wrong. You will also think about why the problem may have been caused, and how it could be solved.
Step 1 - Form a team
Based on the number of students enrolled so far, you will most likely work in teams of 2. The exact team size will be determined when the course begins.
Step 2 - Look for trouble
Choose a (preferably modern) computer game that has problems with path planning or crowd simulation. For example, you could look at:
- unnatural or incorrect collision avoidance between agents;
- agents that respond strangely (or not at all) to obstacles that appear, disappear, or move;
- groups of agents that fail to coordinate when the gameplay requires it;
- situations with narrow passages and/or crossing flows. These situations often lead to deadlocks that are difficult to resolve. For instance, agents may get blocked, pass through obstacles or each other, take illogical detours, et cetera.
Sometimes, these problems arise automatically. In other cases, you have to deliberately try and create them yourself. For example, try standing in the way of moving agents, parking a car on the sidewalk, or destroying an object.
Take a look at the following videos for inspiration:
Step 3 - Make videos
Use screen-capture software (such as Fraps or OBS studio) to make recordings of the problem(s). For the sake of a streamlined presentation session (see below), please take the following guidelines into account:
- Convert the result to a 'standard' format like WMV to ensure that your video can be played.
- Use a 1080p resolution if possible, but compress your video (e.g., with a mpeg4-based codec) to limit the filesize. There is no hard limit in Blackboard (as far as I know), but keeping your entire submission below 50MB sounds reasonable.
- Don't add text or other overlays to the video; you should be able to explain it "live" in your own words.
- The shorter the video, the better. Capture the essence of the problem (like each clip in the above video).
Step 4 - Make a short presentation
Prepare a presentation in which you explain your findings to the rest of the group. Please follow these guidelines:
- The presentation must consist of the following 5 slides:
- your names and basic information about the game;
- the video (embed as a reference); NB while you play the video, describe verbally what happens;
- a description of what goes wrong;
- an explanation of why it goes wrong (what could the underlying problem be);
- an elaboration of how it could be fixed (according to you).
- The presentation should be a PowerPoint file (.ppt or .pptx).
- Make sure that your presentation stays within 8 minutes.
- Make sure that all team members get some presentation time.
- Be ready to receive questions for 2 minutes.
Step 5 - Hand everything in
Hand in your video (separately as a file) and slides before the deadline via Blackboard. I'll download the files and I'll test and prepare them on my laptop.
Step 6 - Present your results
We will spend two class sessions on presenting all results. To this end, I will assemble all presentations and videos, so that everyone can present them on a single PC. Unfortunately, presenting it on your own laptop is not allowed due to time constraints.
There will be 10 minutes for each presentation, including questions. After each presentation, we have about one minute for switching to the next team. The groups' order is determined by the Paper presentation number.
Grading
The lecturer will grade your presentation on a 0-10 scale using the following score sheet. Presentation skills do not matter (yet) for this assignment. To get a good grade, focus on answering these four questions:
- What does the video show?
- What went wrong?
- Why did it go wrong (according to you)?
- How could it be fixed?