Teses

O Almansur é um jogo multijogador de browser de estratégia por turnos desenvolvido ao longo da última década. Este projecto teve como objectivo criar uma nova versão do Almansur focando-se em melhorar a usabilidade da interface, fazendo com que seja mais fácil ensinar a novos jogadores, e mais eficiente de usar para veteranos. Este documento descreve o processo de desenvolvimento desta nova versão. Em primeiro lugar o jogo já existente foi analisado, criando um modelo conceptual, uma listagem das tarefas possíveis de executar na interface, e comparando-o com outros jogos dentro do mesmo estilo. A interface antiga foi de seguida testada através de observação de jogadores e das heurísticas de Nielsen. Uma nova interface foi então de seguida criada, inicialmente em papel, de seguida num simples prototipo interactivo, e por fim implementada, tendo sido a implementação iterada várias vezes ao longo do desenvolvimento. Finalmente o trabalho resultante foi testado e comparado com a versão antiga, utilizando tanto jogadores novos como veteranos para o fazer.

Geometry Friends (GF) is a physics-based platform game, which was part of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) competitions of the IEEE CIG Conference in 2013 and 2014. On GF there are two different characters, a circle and a rectangle, whose goal is to catch all the diamond-shaped collectibles available on each level of the game. In this work, a novel approach to the GF problem for the circle agent is proposed. This approach is based on learning algorithms, is character-agnostic and circumvents the excessive specialization to the public levels observed in the agents submitted to the 2014 competition. The solution uses a Divide-and-Conquer strategy that partitions the problem of solving a GF level into a series of three sub-problems: solving one platform (SP1), deciding the next platform (SP2) and moving from one platform to another (SP3). This method uses reinforcement learning to solve SP1 and SP3 and a depth-first search to solve SP2. To measure the quality of the developed agent, its results on the levels of the 2014 Competition are measured against the performance of that competition contestants, CIBot and KUAS-IS Lab The results show that despite having a worse performance overall, the agent successfully avoided becoming over-specialized to a specific sub-set of levels.

The aim of this thesis is to create a didactic chemistry game. There are many educational chemistry games but this thesis does not only have the objective to create a didactic chemistry game that teaches chemistry but is fun to play. For this reason, the author decided to test several chemistry games and analyse each of them in order to obtain their strengths and weaknesses. Flow experience is needed in an educational game in order to achieve its main objective which is teaching and being entertaining at the same time. This flow experience makes users abstract themselves from the educational part of the game and learn while they are having fun. The experiental gaming model is a way to achieve flow experience in an educational game and divides learning in three different cycles. The implementation of the experiental gaming model was achieved and all the game development was done in five iterations. After finishing the development of the game, moderated and unmoderated user tests were done and their results were good which might be a good evidence about the learning and entertainment in ChemCreator.

Encouraging someone to perform certain tasks is often difficult, especially when the purpose of the task is not clear. In order to make tasks more attractive nowadays Gamification1 is used, i.e., the application of techniques of play in order to motivate users to perform tasks. Out of all the aspects of gamification, the following stand out: making the product/service more attractive, stimulating in the user the habit to frequently use the product/service. The basis of this work is the "Hook Model", which is a habit training cycle consisting of four phases: Trigger, Action, Reward and Investment. The results suggest that the use of gamification techniques in conjunction with the model of "Hook" came to better our solution. The goal of this thesis is to evaluate the use of gamification techniques with the habit formation cycle, together with the model of "Hook" in habit creation of the users in using the platform. Finally we tested our methodology with users in the task of using the platform and after use, registering on it and re-accessing the platform. It was shown that it is possible to create the habit in the users of frequently using the platform. But when a platform fails at being active, users begin to reduce the number of accesses.