This article evaluates the practical limitations and dramatic possibilities of modding (which means modifying) the commercial role-playing game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the visualization and exploration of literature. The latest version of a 20 year-old game franchise, Skyrim has inspired various writings and musings on its relation to Digital Humanities. Digital Humanities has moved to a more immersive, participative, tool-making medium, a recent report on digital archives has proposed digital tools integrate with history curricula (Sampo, 2014) and that “digital history may narrow the gap between academic and popular history”. Can games also be used to promote traditional literary mediums as well as experiential and immersive archives?
EDIT: They have the wrong version uploaded on the Sheffield website. I will add the correct version here:
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Looking forward to returning even if briefly to Europe, I will be presenting the below paper (which I just sent off, hopefully complete) for the proceedings of the 8th international conference of the Digital Games Research Association taking place May 14th-17th at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Title: Role-playing and Rituals For Heritage-Oriented Games Abstract: Roles and rituals are essential for creating, situating and maintaining cultural practices. Computer Role-Playing games (CRPGs) and virtual online worlds that appear to simulate different cultures are well known and highly popular. So it might appear that the roles and rituals of traditional cultures are easily ported to computer games. However, I contend that the meaning behind worlds, rituals and roles are not fully explored in these digital games and virtual worlds and that more work needs to be done to create more moving rituals, role enrichment and worldfulness. I will provide examples from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda, 2006, 2011) to reveal some of the difficulties in creating digitally simulated social and cultural worlds, but I will also suggest some design ideas that could improve them in terms of cultural presence and social presence.
The youtube link is to Colleen Morgan’s presentation at York University 20 January 2015. The John Robb article (Towards a critical Otziography: inventing prehistoric bodies) she referred to is an excellent read (and just after I could well have used this in my upcoming book! Dramatic Sigh). But what has really got me thinking are the questions at the end on representing or creating people in virtual environments especially for archaeology and the critique by someone at 49:50 minutes in (an architect? I had trouble hearing him).
My thoughts:
The “peopling” in architectural presentations is not meant to reveal the building in all its architectural glory, but to sell the building independently of how it will actually be used. There is an old architectural joke that new hospital buildings would be perfect if they didn’t have people using them.
Architects and archaeologists so often seem to have different approaches or understanding (I noticed this when at UCL in 2003 or so when both understood vomitorium differently).
The notion of a virtual environment as a process rather than a presentation seems lost.
Archaeological VR/VEs can show the process and systematic differences between our world and another world (of past perception). Imagine putting on a virtual medieval suit of armour. It is really really heavy, and uncomfortable and inflexible. To you. To a knight say 7 centuries ago it may well be such a badge of honour and a functionally superior life saving device that it seems to weigh less. Plus they will have spent years lifting it as a squire and wearing it, they were probably balls of bone and muscular. So should the simulated weight be the weight you would experience or the weight that a trained knight would experience? I would argue, both.
When emailing with Bond University PhD student and game designer Jakub Majewski (exploring roleplaying worlds such as Skyrim), we differed on the extent of immersivity we preferred. For heritage purposes I did not value it over task ability, and I would shift to third person view so I could see and navigate more easily. While Jakub wanted to stay in first person view at all times for full roleplaying-immersivity. So I/we may not be designing games per se. We may not fully want to. That said, I can see the value of avatar-using virtual worlds, and I did briefly list some reasons in my book chapter on narrative. But it is a chapter or book on its own (or perhaps an edited book of cross-commenting essays). So much to ponder further!
NB there was also a reference to my use of NPCs in Adobe Atmosphere, as virtual (talking) furniture! Well I could have them move but in my already streamlined 3D models of the Mayan city Palenque Mexico,, running inside Internet Explorer was taking the 2001-2003 technology to breaking point! You could bump the NPC though..
palace guides chan
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When we ported the three environments to one environment using UT2004 in 2005, we did not have problem and there were NPCs scampering all over the place. I should try and see if I can get this old environment working in UT2004 then porting to UDK..
We have developed an experimental version of FAAST with support for the Kinect for Windows v2, available for download here (64-bit only). Please note that you must already have the Microsoft Kinect SDK v2 installed and the KinectService application running. This is based on preliminary software and/or hardware, subject to change.
The VAC system is a useful program which you use to issue commands to your flight simulator , role playing game or any program. Since you have your hands full while playing those busy games you can now put your voice to work for you. Use your voice to speak words or phrases to issue commands to you favorite games. VAC uses a unique method in phrase recognition which greatly reduces unwanted issued commands caused by ambient noises.
Here is an abridged answer I just gave to an architectural academic who is interested in using games and game modding and AI (bots) in consideration was something like 3DVIDIA/Virtools, Unity or Unreal. I hope this is of use to others or if my sourced information is out of date or inaccurate please comment below the post!
I am no AI expert although I too have an AI project I wish to develop: I don’t know 3DVIDIA, I do know Unreal (UT) used to have AI research projects, I don’t know if UDK has easily available AI projects but UDK does look good. Overall Unity is probably the easiest and their asset store has many content packs and scripts and avatars for purchase (including for AI) and it runs on Mac and PC and quite well on older machines. You may not need the Professional version, I am not sure.
On a more urban design and cinematographic level, one used to be able to link Simcities and the SIMS2 avatars but I have not heard of related urban design or BIM research. We are also going to look into Skyrim the Crysis/CryTek engine, which may be too powerful / complex for your needs. I personally will also look into, the earlier version, Oblivion, had very simple scripting tools for avatar interaction and also had good modding tools (but it was not multiplayer, at least not officially). Skyrim (Creation kit) has built in habits for NPCs, which I believe can be modded/affected, new buildings/settings can be added relatively easily. http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/topic/6547-new-artificial-intelligence-mod/
SUMMARY For ease of use, most designers and researchers seem to be using Unity, but UDK (free download for PC) may have some benefits if you find similar AI projects. If you want to show behaviours and don’t mind or can replace medieval settings, Skyrim may suffice. For path finding UDK may be good, Unity can do all of it but if you can’t find prebuilt software in the Unity story, you may need to build it from scratch. Overall, Unity is probably easiest, there plenty of presets/modules, and scripting can be in JavaScript or Python or C# etc. And MiddleVR seems a good for fit for connecting Unity to VR devices and for stereo projection (a video tutorial is here).
Ear Zow Digital