McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 1

Bellairs Games Workshop

1st Bellairs Workshop onComputer Games

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 2

Outline• Welcome• Workshop Goals

• Research / Teaching• Content Overview

• First two days• Practical Information

• Workshop sessions• What to do in Barbados

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 3

Welcome!• 9 participants• 5 professors

• 4 from McGill School of Computer Science• 1 from CS at Queens University

• 4 students• 2 from McGill School of Computer Science• 2 from McGill Department of Psychology

• 2 participants arrive on Monday!• 1 leaves Thursday

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 4

Workshop Goals (1)• Research

• Common game development platform• How to get there?

• Define future master theses / projects• Co-supervision?

• Apply for grants• Team grants? Inter-university grants? Industrial

collaborations?• Publications

• Where? Who?

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 5

Workshop Goals (2)• Teaching

• Add “game content” to existing courses• Define new game-related courses

• Inter-faculty courses• Game program at McGill?

• Future of the McGill “games lab”• Developing a game

• Visibility!

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 6

Tentative Workshop Plan• Presentation on research profile of each participant

• Fault Tolerance, SE, Frameworks, AO (Jörg - 30 min.)• Database Replication (Bettina - 40 min.)

• Introduction on Games• Overview (Clark - 90 min.)• Massively Multiplayer Games (Jörg - 30 min.)• Game Design (Alex - 30 min.)• Graphics (Alex - 30 min.)• Minueto (Alex - 45 min.)

• Game Physics (Alex - 30 min.)• Voice Messaging (Alex - 30 min.)• Virtual Humans (Alex - 30 min.)

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 7

Workshop Sessions• Morning Session

• 8am - 1pm• Evening Session

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 8

What to do in Barbados?• Concrete

• Transparent boat on Wednesday• Suggestions

• Surfing• Turtles / Snorkling• Hiking• See “the cliffs”

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 9

Research Interests (1)• Clark

• Formalizing semantics of games• Consistency issues, relaxed models• Cheating issues• Content creation, game balance

• Nick• Validate workspace model in the game area• Consistency• Computer-aided exercise• Content creation by end users• Highly immersive virtual worlds (exotic interaction

modalities)

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 10

Research Interests (2)• Alex

• Shorten pipeline / fast prototyping• Scalability in MMOG, independence on player movements,

load balancing• Jodene & Stephane

• Using technology for fast development• Measuring reaction time / pulse rate / etc… of players (+/-

0.5 milliseconds)• Felix

• Narratives• Game idea• Progress management

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 11

Research Interests (3)• Jörg

• Fault tolerance: impact of architectures, OMTT andconsistency, performance improvements for multiprocessors

• Software engineering: game development method adaptedto framework, testing / monitoring / data acquisition

• Aspect-Orientation: implement game concerns, e.g. AI,cheat-detectors

• Hans• Physics, hybrid models, time-scale abstraction• DEVS applied to gaming problems for validation purposes• Domain-specific modeling• Multi-level abstraction modeling and consistency, killer app

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 12

Research Interests (4)• Bettina

• Workflow modeling• Validate new consistency models and architectures

with games• Continuous query processing in games• Aggregation• Approximations for queries, etc…

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 13

Non-Interests• Graphics• Low-level Networking• Complex game development engines• Clark: P2P, CS, Cryptography

McGill Games Workshop - Bellairs, © 2005, Jörg Kienzle Slide 14

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