Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
for their acquisition). Therefore, we devised a modification of PexAce, where players
play with
their own images
and, while playing, help themselves in organizing their
personal image repositories.
5.1 Description of PexAce
PexAce is a computer adaptation of the popular
Concentration
game, purpose of
which is to provide annotations for arbitrary images in the form of keywords.
The original Concentration is a board card game, where two or more competing
players seek for identical card pairs, contained within a pack cards consisting of
several mutually different pairs. The cards are mixed and laid on the board, facing
down. The players move consecutively in turns. When on turn, the player chooses
and discloses (flips) two cards. If they are identical, he keeps them, otherwise he flips
them back. Then the next player moves. The game ends when all cards are collected,
the winner is the player with most collected pairs. Since randomly picking of the
identical card pair is highly improbable (there are usually 32 pairs on the board),
the only way to be successful in the game is to gradually discover and remember
locations of as many cards as possible by observing unsuccessful attempts (of both
player and his opponents) and then use it during one's own turns.
The PexAce is a computer adaptation of the Concentration game as well as its
modification. The main shift is frommulti-player to single player game with different
scoring scheme. In PexAce, player gains points for every pair he discovers, but looses
points for each turn he makes. He also looses (a minor number of) additional points
proportional to the time spent in the game. Thus the best score is awarded to fast
players playing on large board sizes (more pairs available), with economical “flip
management” (good memory). The competitive aspect of the game moves from
a duel to ladder ranking system, where players compete for top ranks instead of just
winning a single game against an opponent.
Yet the key difference is not the single player nature of the game, but an additional
feature that allow players a little “cheat” to help their memory. When particular
cards are disclosed, the game allows the player to annotate the cards with textual
information (see Fig.
5.1
). This textual information is then available to the player for
the rest of the game: the player may, at any time, hover the cursor over a disclosed
card to display and read the annotation from the tooltip frame (see Fig.
5.2
). This
way, he may recall the position of a particular card, if the annotation he left on the
card was descriptive enough.
The easier card localization motivates players to annotate images to use less
number of flips and thus improve their score. It is apparent that it also lowers the
original challenge of the Concentration game—the memorizing of the card positions.
On the other hand, it brings a new challenge of writing effective annotations. For
instance, if there are multiple similar images of beaches, a simple “beach” annotation
would not properly distinguish between them, forcing players to be more specific.
Only option by then is to either make extra card flips (and loose points) or use more
specific annotations. Thus, especially for larger game board sizes, PexAce demands
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