Development of a Virtual World Game Application - Essay Example

?Development of a Virtual World Game application Contents 0 4 2.0 Introduction 4 3.0 Related Work 5 3.0 Objectives of theproject 5 4.0 The development process 7 5.1 pre- development stages 8 5.1.1 Planning and requirements. 8 5.1.2 The Game Functionalities and Interaction Modalities 9 5.2 Development 10 5.2.1. First Iteration 10 5.2.2 Second Iteration 11 5.2.3 Third Iteration 12 5.2.4. Fourth Iteration 12 5.2.5. The Fifth Iteration 12 5.2.6. Sixth Iteration 12 5.3 Post-Development of the Application 12 6.0 Conclusion 14 References 15 Table of figures Figure 1 flow chart of the development processes..………………………………………….. 6 Figure 2: village………………………………………………………..…………………… 10 Figure 3 Figure 1: the village with houses………………………………………………….. 10 Figure 4 Figure 2: a complete waste management game……..…………………………….. 12 1.0 Abstract The virtual world is an online society, which is in the form of a computer system environment. The main elements of the virtual world are the avatars that are visible to each other in 2-dimension, 3-dimension, and even as textual. The users of the virtual world related or interact through a computer based 3-D system and create objects no matter where they are located physically. The virtual world application enables the many users to use such computer applications at the same time. Virtual world applications are used in marketing, prototyping, training, sales, replication and distance learning. Development of Digital virtual world involves the ability of producing a user-friendly environment where multiple users are able to interact. The virtual world is commonly used in institutions, schools, government organization, institutions, and corporations. Virtual world enables users to meet online and have the feeling of being together thereby enabling partnership of different countries. 2.0 Introduction In the world today, needs are arising of enforcing strong values on waste disposal through education of the masses, coming up with strategic planning and creating tools for effective communication towards enhancing behavioural change. To best capture the majority specifically the youthful population, there has been need to develop a series of game are designed that will capture their attention. Games are viewed to be enjoyed when played. While people engage in playing games, learning is also enhanced through the game. Youths sand children are expected to gain constructive knowledge through virtualizing their world. Notably, the development of the game involves the same methodologies as applied in the application development. Therefore, this project aims at deploying the Agile Application development method. The Agile game development usually aims at educating children and youths on the collection of waste materials, that helps in conserving the environment. 3.0 Related Work Numerous virtual game applications are available in the market. Simcity Application is an example of a virtual world game where users can play the game by creating and managing modelled societies and world. Simcity does not make use of individual Avatars as a demonstration of the players. The Math - city is an example of simulation-based learning that supports students in their learning process especially in Mathematical calculations. The advancement in Mathematics is used to promote the growth in the community. Recycle city recommends a point-and-click interfaces that will help in delivering environmental education the people. Nonetheless, this project will employ the 3D virtual world approach that can explore the use of an avatar as association and competition social methods. In this sense, the learner playing the game that involves environmental management techniques will develop the sense and the need of environmental conservation through the game (Kalivarapu et al, 2004, Pg. 7). 3.0 Objectives of the project The project is designed to help in mass education of the young population and learners to know the importance of environmental management through waste collection. Eventually, young persons are expected to contribute to the community constructively through their involvement in waste collection. Skills achieved will enable different societies to have responsible youths, thereby evading magnitude waste generation. Reusing of waste products and better disposal methods of waste products are necessary in reducing the amount of waste in the environment. The project has an attractive multimedia lecture on waste management and online virtual games of learning the concepts of waste management (Beaudouin-Lafon, 2000, Pg. 4) 4.0 The development process The development process of several game applications involves many unclear things including establishing the fun in the game that as proved not to be an easy task; therefore, intensive research needs to be done. Adoption of the latest technology into the application can be involved especially the games that need the 3D applications. Virtual world applications are generally complex to develop; therefore, different and intensive talents are usually required towards the same. Nonetheless, this project aims at using the Agile development methodology to develop the intended game. In Agile, the scrum is used to manage the application development. Scrum implements industrial method control in the development of the application. The application is chosen for use since it is empirically easy to adapt and it is the most appropriate for the development of the small applications with a small team. The figure below shows the Agile development flow chart (Kim and Vance, 2003, Pg. 67) Fig. 1: flow chart of the development processes. 5.1 pre- development stages Planning and architecture 5.1.1 Planning and requirements. The team will consist of a young child who will act as the end user of the game application, software developers, a teacher who will help in domain management, graphic designer and a person in charge of the project. At first, we needed to work on the initial application Build-up. This consisted of technology requirements and business functionalities. The graphic designer was in charge of designing a series of multimedia lessons on the topics selected by the teacher. All the activities done by different teams needed to be related. All the members of the team defined and understood the objective the game. This game belongs to Real time Strategy, player advance in a virtual environment. The real time strategy game involves gathering of resources, building methods, and competing with an enemy. The activities involved spreading principles of disposal management where the winner in each level would emerge through strict adherence to the rules of environmental management. Ranking levels are adopted in this game where success on one level automatically generates the next. The game aims at making the student improve their areas of staying and the whole world eventually. The educational content of the game is the collection of waste product and reusing them. After a first rehearsal, a concept Chart demonstrating the interface among the contents to recommend was organized, including all the crew members and the teacher. The game adopted co-operation in order to achieve a clean environment. For the game to run well, it needed to generate real time, it had to be in 3-D, has multi sound senses, vision, depth, and space to encourage several users. It should be viewed as a reality with interactive detection of the user and the virtual world appropriately changed from time to time. The sensation of presence is to be included in the game and has multi-user capabilities. 5.1.2 The Game Functionalities and Interaction Modalities The game is structured in the following levels: World, Class, School, The student and The mini game and village Learners will register and find a 3-D village where they will collect garbage to gain marks and rewards that the learner can use to improve the area by building new homes, community and, houses like schools and post offices. The credits will enable the player to plant trees and engage in decorating the village. An individuated interactive method for pointing and clicking was adopted. To build a new house, the player has to accumulate enough points that represent a paper, ten plastic sacs, 3 organics and 4 on paper. Players without enough of one kind of material will be directed to exchanging with the neighbour. The user learned that waste material could be a source of income; they can visit another village to collect their wastes. 5.1.2 Architecture The following open source resources were required for the establishment of the game: Server by the name Darkstar was selected to support the game JMonkey Engine that was selected by the team members as a most preferred Game engine It renders 3-D graphics, animation and scripting Netbeans development environment The 3D art graphics pipeline was selected Apache supervision was selected as the configuration management tool. The software Architecture includes the following: Red Dwarf server, Mysql database, World editor, Web portal for administration, Generic Common component, Client component, a simulator component, and Distribution server After the description of the software architecture, a database schema was drawn to show entities involved and their relation. At the end of pre-development stage, the team designed a review based on proposals and implementation conclusions. Pilot strategies unfolding the release content were also defined. 5.2 Development Under Agile, Scrum methodology was employed. Development stages were arranged in Sprints, iterative stages that were to take one week to a month to complete. The sprint stages include requirements, analysis, design, advancement, and final distribution stage. Each stage led to the system development and architecture advancement. The team took part at the start of the phases of the preparatory meeting where functionality to be dealt with were spelt out clearly. In the second stage of development, only the Scrum member met and made decisions on how the game should be incremented. The members worked from the same room and met daily. Pair programming was adopted to reduce the mistakes made during the coding. Time, requirement, resources, quality, and implementation method are constantly checked (Harding and Newcomb, 2004, Pg. 6). 5.2.1. First Iteration The team was not very familiar with Scrum methodology, a problem raised in the selection of technology. The last two weeks were for installation and testing of the application. By using the word editor, a first sample of the virtual world was released including some objects rendered in it. The first iteration was to ensure the technology was okay and working for the application under development. Objects were compressed by using Maya, hence dropping the number of triangles. The figure below show at first the village virtual design Figure 2: village 5.2.2 Second Iteration The virtual world was improved further during the second iteration by importing many objects and characters made from 3-D art. New problems were experienced due to the importation of these objects. After a long time of trial and error, members of the team successfully diagnosed and solved the problem. Figure 3 depicts how the village looks like with the houses (Harding, 2004, Pg. 57). Figure 3: the village with houses 5.2.3 Third Iteration Instruments for developing a village and resource exchanging were developed. 5.2.4. Fourth Iteration While the application was being instigated, the appearance the area/village was improved with the objected designed in 3-D. This process lasted for a period of one week. The looks of female and male were designed and there was a great improvement. 5.2.5. The Fifth Iteration The mini applications were clearly defined and developed. Well-known games were used to compare with the garbage collection came to verify the working probably of the game. 5.2.6. Sixth Iteration Construction of administrative structures to support this game application and its management was done and it included creating a village, classes and schools and the student account. 5.3 Post-Development of the Application After integration of the modules and testing, the final stage was to release the Application to the market. The figure below shows the outlook of the final game that was released to the market. Figure 4: a complete waste management game 6.0 Conclusion The paper is a description of the development of a virtual world game application. The development process was by the use of the agile methodology. The development processes had the challenges of developing a virtual based world technology. The coding team faced problems due to the programming complexity of coming up with a code for a virtual world application. This was solved by the application of short iteration phases throughout the coding and development of the Game. Strict monitoring of the quality of the management, help the development reduces errors during the development process. Nonetheless, the virtual world game is to be tested for its effectiveness in the environmental conservation as well as its application in other sectors. In future, the team’s priority is to advance in the game to covet energy saving. References Harding, C. (2004). Supporting Interactive Data Exploration for GIS Planning Tasks with a Multimodal Virtual Environment. Proceedings IEEE HAVE’04 conference. Harding, C., & Newcomb, M. (2004). Supporting Interactive Data Exploration for GIS Planning Tasks with a Multimodal Virtual Environment. Proceedings to IEEE International Workshop on Haptic Audio Visual Environments and their Applications. Ottawa, Canada. Kalivarapu V., Vaze A., & Winer, E. Data Modeling and Handling for Analysis and Visualization in a Collaborative Setting. (2004). Pro-ceedings 10th AIAA/ISSMO Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization Conference. NY: Albany. Kim, C. &Vance, J. (2003). Using VPS (Voxmap Point Shell) as the Basis for Interaction in a Virtual Assembly Environment. ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Chicago: IL, Sep tember 2 – 6, 2003: DETC2003/CIE-48297. Kim, C. & Vance, J. (2004). Collision Detection and Part Interaction Modeling to Facilitate Immersive Virtual Reality As sembly Methods. ASME Journal of Computing and Information Sciences in Engineering. Beaudouin-Lafon, M. (2000). Instrumental Interaction: An Interaction Model for Designing Post- WIMP User Interfaces. CHI Letters, 3 (1): 446-453. Read More