ProjectProposal-NathanYan
From CS 160 Fall 2008
Contents |
Ideas on the table
- Photography Simulator - render a 3D environment that a user can take simulated photos
- Speed-reading application - flashes text/images on screen, as a speed-reading/memorization application. Similar to Spreeder
- Business simulator - Lemonade-tycoon type business simulator that teaches the basics of business management
- Orbit/angular momentum simulation - Simulator that would render bodies of mass and their gravitational effects on each other. The main idea is to simulate planetary orbits - how a certain body of a certain mass traveling at certain speed would orbit around a larger body, stable orbits vs. lengthening orbits or shrinking oribts.
- Baseball stats simulation? - Simulates baseball games given various game decisions (to steal, to bunt, batting order choices)
- Evolution sim - evolve an organism to learn basic biology and natural selection
- RPG based on real-life fitness - your typical MMORPG, except you'll level by working out in real-life rather than a virtual dungeon
Evolution sim
Target User Group
The target user group for program would be high-school age or above students, particularly those with an interest in or studying biology. While an interface could certainly be made accessible to middle-school aged students, the material presented in the simulation may be too complex for that age level. Perhaps a simplified version could be introduced that would be suitable for middle-school or even elementary-school kids.
Problem Description, Context, and Forces
The evolutionary process is a concept that is oftentimes misunderstood. While some of this has to do with the somewhat heated political/religious debates concerning evolutionary theory in contrast to other origin-of-life explanations such as creationism, there are just a bunch of other general problems that are associated with all other areas of education. Namely, students are lazy and don't study, resort to test-passing memorization while not fully understanding the concepts, and are generally uninterested in learning.
Evolution is a topic that is ripe for hands-on demonstration and observation, rather than the usual study or memorization of facts from a book. Even beyond the high school biology student user group, an interactive demonstration of the evolution of an organism would be an accessible way for the general populace to learn about the process, which would likely explain the issue more clearly for those mired in messy debates that are mixed in with religious beliefs and confusing media coverage.
The goal is to demonstrate the evolutionary process in a fun, engaging, and interactive manner, with the user creating and guiding the evolution/development of their own custom organism. The game shouldn't emphasize the specifics of gene transfer, or even how organisms realistically evolve - instead the focus will be on simply demonstrating the concepts of adaptive traits and natural selection.
As an educational game, the Evolution Sim would most likely be suited for a classroom setting, or for playing around with at home. An interesting motivator may be a multiplayer element, involving a persistent world where different users' organisms could exist and interact (and would also need to adapt and compete with each other for scarce resources). Like growing bean plants in elementary school science, the game could function more like a simulator, where students would be able to come in and check up on the game, update some inputs, and then let the game simulate until the next day.
A few other evolution-type simulators do exist. A notable example is the game Spore which also uses organism evolution/development as a major gameplay element, but has a somewhat more RPG/character development type of gameplay, rather than a simulator of evolution. Another similar game concept (though it is far more simplified and linear) is the Pandemic online flash mini-game. Both of these games have similar themes, although neither focuses purely on a realistic evolution concept, and neither would really be suitable for a serious in-classroom learning tool.
Solution Sketch
The idea behind the game is an evolution simulator that would put the user into the role of guiding the development of an organism. There would likely be "rounds" of simulation (turn-based), where the environment may change, resources (such as food or shelter) may appear/disappear, other organisms would evolve and change, and the user would be able to evolve their own organism to adapt to the changes.
There would be three main sets of stimuli that a user's organism would need to react to or interact with: environmental factors (temperature, climate type), resource availability (water, food, shelter), and other organisms (possible predators, prey, mutual or parasitic symbiotic relationships).
The goal or victory condition of the game could be made to be fairly open-ended. An obvious goal condition would be to simply have the user's organism thrive as a species and become the most numerous species in the habitat. On the other-hand, a user may simply want to develop a highly specialized species that doesn't dominate its habitat, but instead survives in its own niche (which is a useful lesson in itself, since not all species can dominate their habitats population-wise).
For a more complex (and realistic) simulation, development or evolution of the organism could only take place within the genetic variation of the species for that round - instead of simply adding new traits or parts, they would have to be truly "evolved" from random genetic variation from round-to-round. The user would simply select breeding pairs each round and hope to promote greater genetic diversity, which is another important concept to learn.
The game would not require a graphical component - the results of each round of play would be heavily based on statistics that would tell the user things like how many of the species survived, how the species died, attributes of the environment, etc. A graphical component would probably make the program much more attractive and interesting, but it would serve no functional purpose.
Virtual Photography Studio
Target User Group
The target user group would be anyone interested in the technical aspects of photography. This could range from entry-level users who know nothing of photography and who simply want to experiment and learn about basic concepts like angle of view and perspective, to advanced users who want to visualize things like depth of field, blur, or different lighting techniques.
Problem Description, Context, and Forces
I teach a digital photography course, and as a science-oriented person one of the most frustrating aspects of teaching photography is the inability to do controlled tests. For example, when reviewing a student's photo, a topic of discussion might be how different the image might look with a change in perspective - if the photo was taken from 5cm away vs. 50cm away vs. 5m away. Of course, the student has already taken the photo and can't exactly visit the scene again, so the review session would just consist mostly of speculation and trying to articulate something very graphical (a photo) with words and diagrams.
Of course, controlled tests can be done - pick a static subject and take a whole series of different shots. The issue here is that the results aren't easily replicable (if you decide you want to try out more shots, it'd be nearly impossible to revisit the same subject and retain the exact same vantage point.
Thus, a method for repeatable, controlled photography is needed, so that students can view a subject taken with various kinds of camera settings, and also revisit and recompare results in light of new ideas and changes. Ideally, a virtual environment where all the different kinds of photographic settings could be simulated would provide this.
There aren't any virtual photography simulations that I know of. A few photography-based games exist, such as Pokemon Snap], but these are purely entertainment games and are neither realistic nor touch on the technical aspects of photography. There are numerous tools that calculate and plot various attributes, such as a depth of field calculator or bokeh out-of-focus area plotter. However, these simply return calculations, and don't give any visual representation of the results.
Solution Sketch
The virtual photography studio would be a 3D environment in which the user can freely roam. Ideally it could be loaded with different environments and users could create their own, but for the basic program just a simple room-type environment with objects should exist.
While the user can freely roam around, there are a number of settings the user can play around with, from angle of view (zoom) to aperture to shutter speed. The program should be able to realistically render such things as depth of field, exposure and also provide perspective distortion for various subject distances).
As an open-ended experimentation tool, there would not be any serious victory conditions for the game. However, mini quizzes or problem-solving tasks could be implemented, such as achieving the minimal depth of field for a particular shot, out of a choice of three possible lenses.
Images to come
