EAGER: Drummer Game: A Massive-Interactive Socially-Enabled Strategy Game

EAGER：鼓手游戏：大型互动社交策略游戏

• 批准号: 0940723
• 负责人: Yong Cao
• 金额: $ 14.96万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-01 至 2012-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0940723&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Drummer; Game; Massive; Interactive

The goal of this project is to foster new research collaborations across different disciplines by developing a novel massive interaction game that represents a unique genre wherein teams of users strategically direct armies of virtual 3D "terra cotta" soldiers by employing physical drum beats as control signals to determine the warriors' behavior. It is intended that the game will engage and enthrall both user teams and a live audience with the special demands of cooperative and competitive game play in a compelling and creative scenario. Successful completion of the research will require intensive collaboration across multiple fields of computational science, art, and music. The culmination of the project will be a social event centrally located on the Virginia Tech campus, in which the finished game is publically introduced to the community at large.To achieve these goals, the PI team will engage interactive game design approaches to draft and enrich the overall game experience. They will adopt commoditized Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to meet the computational challenges of real-time simulation, animation, and rendering of massive number of 3D characters. Novel numerical methods will be developed to enhance the efficiency of global path finding for massive crowd simulation. The individual combat behavior of the virtual soldiers will be automatically regulated by an artificially intelligent component, which is supported by GPU accelerated agent-based simulation. In order to provide visualization capacity for a massive crowd in an enormous environment, the investigators will develop technologies to enable level-of-detail rendering and animation. For massive interaction support, signal processing and computer vision approaches will be used to recognize the drumbeats and to interpret the audience participation behavior (which will be tracked with the aid of microphones embedded among the members of audience and cameras aimed at them). Synthetic music generation approaches will be utilized to produce real-time accompaniment to the drums.Broader Impacts: The outcome outlined above will be the result of broad and intensive collaboration between engineering and the arts. Computer engineers will design and develop the overall game engine architecture, graphics rendering technologies, numerical solutions for character path planning, and approaches to recognize drum beats. Graphics artists will design 3D geometry models and animations for "terra cotta" soldiers, and will work closely with engineers to build a smooth "pipeline" to import digital content into the game software system. Researchers in modern music will produce accompaniment to the cadence of the drums. The team-based approach adopted in this project will expose students to cross-disciplinary research, so that they come away with an understanding and appreciation of the need to function cooperatively to achieve rewarding and exciting results. Teaming of undergraduate students with graduate students will, it is hoped, lead some of the undergraduates to choose research related career paths while also encouraging the graduate students to learn how to better mentor others. The PI team hopes that the mass media event at the culmination of the project will imbue the broader public (and especially K-12 students) with the excitement of computing and the arts.

该项目的目标是通过开发一种新颖的大规模互动游戏来促进跨不同学科的新的研究合作，该游戏代表了一种独特的类型，其中用户团队通过使用物理鼓点作为控制信号来确定战士的行为，从而战略性地指挥虚拟3D“兵马俑”大军。这款游戏的目的是让用户团队和现场观众在引人入胜和创造性的场景中，通过合作和竞争的特殊需求来吸引和着迷。成功完成这项研究将需要计算科学、艺术和音乐等多个领域的密集合作。该项目的高潮将是一个位于弗吉尼亚理工大学校园中心的社交活动，在这个活动中，完成的游戏被公开介绍给广大社区。为了实现这些目标，PI团队将采用互动游戏设计方法来起草和丰富整体游戏体验。他们将采用商品化的图形处理器(GPU)来应对实时模拟、动画和渲染大量3D角色的计算挑战。将开发新的数值方法来提高大规模人群模拟的全局路径查找的效率。虚拟士兵的个体作战行为将由一个人工智能组件自动调节，该组件由基于GPU加速的基于代理的仿真支持。为了在巨大的环境中为大量人群提供可视化能力，调查人员将开发能够实现细节级别渲染和动画的技术。对于大规模互动支持，将使用信号处理和计算机视觉方法来识别鼓点并解释观众参与行为(将借助嵌入观众成员中的麦克风和针对他们的摄像头进行跟踪)。将利用合成音乐生成方法来为鼓产生实时伴奏。广泛的影响：上述概述的结果将是工程和艺术之间广泛和深入合作的结果。计算机工程师将设计和开发整个游戏引擎架构、图形渲染技术、角色路径规划的数值解决方案，以及识别鼓点的方法。图形设计师将为《兵马俑》士兵设计3D几何模型和动画，并将与工程师密切合作，建立一条顺畅的“管道”，将数字内容导入游戏软件系统。研究现代音乐的人会随着鼓声的节奏伴奏。在这个项目中采用的基于团队的方法将使学生接触到跨学科的研究，这样他们就会理解和欣赏合作的必要性，以实现有益和令人兴奋的结果。希望本科生和研究生的合作将引导一些本科生选择与研究相关的职业道路，同时也鼓励研究生学习如何更好地指导其他人。PI团队希望，在该项目达到顶峰时的大众媒体活动将使更广泛的公众(特别是K-12学生)充满对计算和艺术的兴奋。