immune system defense
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Immune System Defense
Patrick Clements, University of South Carolina
Jeremy Pesner, Dickinson College
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Introduction• Dr. Zheng drew parallels between OO
programming and biological systems in a published paper
• Also wanted an educational game to have interested students play. Should be fun, but also educational and factually accurate
• We were called upon to merge all these ideas together
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Educational Games• Have been in existence about as long as
computer games
• Educators tried to capitalize on the “magic of Pac Man”
• In 1981, Thomas Malone set out five main characteristics that he believed educational games should possess
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Malone’s Five Points• Clear goals that students find meaningful
• Multiple goal structures and scoring to give students feedback on their progress
• Multiple difficulty levels to adjust the game difficulty to learner skill
• Random elements of surprise
• An emotionally appealing fantasy and metaphor that is related to game skills
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Previous Educational Games
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Educational Games Today
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Our Game and CompetitionImmune Attack Immune System Defense
• Developed by the Federation of American Scientists, Brown University, and University of Southern California
• Modern looking graphics
• Fairly complex controls to non-gamers
• Little replay value, no difficulty setting
• Player is educated through a fictional scenario
• Developed by two college students with XNA Game Studio Express
• Simple graphics
• Very simple controls, anyone can pick them up easily
• Medium replay value (through randomized enemy actions), no difficulty setting
• Player walks through the realistic biological process
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The Immune System
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Software Process• Early Ideas:
– Real-Time Strategy Game (Turn-based combat)
– Shooter game (Shoot pathogens down)– Multi-faceted game with different mini stages– Tower Defense Game
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Software Process• How a Tower Defense game operates
• Our game– “Towers” = immune system cells– “Attackers” = pathogens– “Citizens” = generic body cells– Extra controls for user
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Software Process- Gameplay• Points
– Used to “buy” more cells after a stage– Cumulative– Earned based on the number of “citizen” cells
remaining after each stage
• Score Calculation– Number of cells remaining each round– Total number of pathogens destroyed
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Software Process• Implementation
– Cells derived from base class with multiple interfaces such as Bindable, Dividable
– Update and Hit Test for each object type– “Vicinity” targeting by immune system cells
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Future Works• Randomly Generated Levels
– A vein network created from branching nodes
• Various Types of Pathogens– More biologically accurate and entertaining– memory based immunities
• Different Degrees of Difficulty– Suit wider range of user abilities
• Framework?– Scripting for use with several different biological
systems
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Conclusion• Without formal testing available, evaluate with
regards to Malone’s elements of good educational games
• The Steps:
1. Clear, Meaningful goals
2. Multiple Goal Structures, immediate feedback
3. Multiple Difficulty levels
4. Random Elements of Surprise
5. Emotionally Appealing fantasy
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Conclusion• Game loosely adheres to Malone’s
elements• Some games are successful without many
of the concepts (Simulation games for example)
• Real value comes from actual testing– How entertaining is it?– Does the entertainment lend itself to the
learning process?