An all-female team of Cornell students recently captured the university’s first computer game-design prize when their interactive game “Green, Eggs, and Pan” took first place at the Games4Girls programming competition in Urbana, Ill.

“I’m all for women in game design,” said Sally Huang, a senior in film and the project’s manager and programmer.

“We’re the first Cornell team to win a game-design competition,” said a smiling Lisa Marie Allen, a junior in biological engineering. Allen helped provide art for the game.

The national all-female competition was designed to promote women in computer science. The Cornell team, organized under the Game Design Initiative at Cornell (GDIAC), beat out entries from game-design programs at the Universities of Bradley, Buffalo and California-Irvine, as well as Franklin and Ohio State universities. For first place, each Cornell team member received $1,000, and $1,000 will go to GDIAC to support future female game-design activities.

In addition to Allen and Huang, team members and their roles included: Dora Helen Fraeman, a junior with an independent major with a concentration in computer science, programmer; Brenda Chen, a junior in biological engineering, artist; and Pamela Chuang, a senior in electrical and computer engineering, musician.

Most of the team members have taken CIS 300, Introduction to Game Design, and went on to take independent study credit in game design. David Schwartz is a lecturer in computer science and director of GDIAC. Schwartz said other teams under GDIAC — usually all or mostly male — have fared well in other competitions, often reaching the finals. However, this is the program’s first grand prize.

“What we have are some phenomenal female game designers here at Cornell,” Schwartz said. “To win the contest shows Cornell has its foot in the door in terms of this new area in academia.”

Contest prizewinners were announced at the Third Annual ChicTech Retreat held at the University of Illinois April 21-23. The ChicTech Retreat brings high school girls to the University of Illinois campus for a weekend of fun and learning.

Contestants — teams of college women — wrote computer games for middle school and high school girls. The games were evaluated by a panel of judges and by the high school girls at the retreat. The Cornell team was unable to attend the contest and instead submitted a video presentation along with their game.

In designing the game over this past winter, Huang said the team used a basic concept: “Girls are more social. Girls want to be in a more social environment. I think girls really need to fit in. For guys, it’s not that important.”

To support that concept, team members parlayed their diverse academic backgrounds and personal pursuits in music, art, programming and sports to create a game that requires players to work in tandem to win. The two-player game requires only one computer, with the keyboard and mouse used as separate controllers. The team used the GameMaker platform, the user-friendly game-designing software required by the Microsoft-sponsored contest.

The Mario-style “Green, Eggs, and Pan” — available for download at http://g4g.sallyhuang.com — was described by one retreat participant as the “the best game ever.”

Since word started circulating about their victory, the team said they have heard everything from jeers to cheers from their male classmates. Now they hope their win will spark other girls’ interest in game design just as they’ve heard how the team’s victory has motivated some of the guys.

“Our professor says now the guys all want to win,” said Chen.

By J.R. Clairborne 

A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes – key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer’s to vaccines.

After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they’re playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science. The free program is at http://fold.it/.

The game was developed by doctoral student Seth Cooper and postdoctoral researcher Adrien Treuille, both in computer science and engineering, working with Zoran Popovic, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering; David Baker, a UW professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator; and David Salesin, a UW professor of computer science and engineering. Professional game designers provided advice during the game’s creation.

“We’re hopefully going to change the way science is done, and who it’s done by,” said Popovic, who presented the project today at the Games for Health meeting in Baltimore. “Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize.”

Proteins, of which there are more than 100,000 different kinds in the human body, form every cell, make up the immune system and set the speed of chemical reactions. We know many proteins’ genetic sequence, but don’t know how they fold up into complex shapes whose nooks and crannies play crucial biological roles.

The Foldit homepage, http://fold.it. Click here for more information.

Computer simulators calculate all possible protein shapes, but this is a mathematical problem so huge that all the computers in the world would take centuries to solve it. In 2005, Baker developed a project named Rosetta@home that taps into volunteers’ computer time all around the world. But even 200,000 volunteers aren’t enough.

“There are too many possibilities for the computer to go through every possible one,” Baker said. “An approach like Rosetta@home does well on small proteins, but as the protein gets bigger and bigger it gets harder and harder, and the computers often fail.

“People, using their intuition, might be able to home in on the right answer much more quickly.”

Rosetta@home and Foldit both use the Rosetta protein-folding software. Foldit is the first protein-folding project that asks volunteers for something other than unused processor cycles on their computers or Playstation machines. Foldit also differs from recent human-computer interactive games that use humans’ ability to recognize images or interpret text. Instead, Foldit capitalizes on people’s natural 3-D problem-solving skills.

The intuitive skills that make someone good at playing Foldit are not necessarily the ones that make a top biologist. Baker says his 13-year-old son is faster at folding proteins than he is. Others may be even faster.

“I imagine that there’s a 12-year-old in Indonesia who can see all this in their head,” Baker says.

Eventually, the researchers hope to advance science by discovering protein-folding prodigies who have natural abilities to see proteins in 3-D.

“Some people are just able to look at the game and in less than two minutes, get to the top score,” said Popovic. “They can’t even explain what they’re doing, but somehow they’re able to do it.”

David Baker’s user page. Foldit includes tools to create online profiles, chat with other members and form teams of players who have complementary skills. Click here for more information.

The game looks like a 21st-century version of Tetris, with multicolored geometric snakes filling the screen. A team that includes a half-dozen UW graduate and undergraduate students spent more than a year figuring out how to make the game both accurate and engaging. They faced some special challenges that commercial game developers don’t encounter.

“We don’t know what the best result is, so we can’t help people or hint people toward that goal,” Popovic explained. The team also couldn’t arbitrarily decide to make one move worth 1,000 bonus points, since the score corresponds to the energy needed to hold the protein in that shape.

Almost 1,000 players have tested the system in recent weeks, playing informal challenges using proteins with known shapes. Starting this week, however, the developers will open the game to the public and offer proteins of unknown shapes. Also starting this week, Foldit gamers will face off against research groups around the world in a major protein-structure competition held every two years.

Beginning in the fall, Foldit problems will expand to involve creating new proteins that we might wish existed – enzymes that could break up toxic waste, for example, or that would absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Computers alone cannot design a protein from scratch. The game lets the computer help out when it’s a simple optimization problem – the same way that computer solitaire sometimes moves the cards to clean up the table – letting the player concentrate on interesting moves.

Eventually, the researchers hope to present a medical nemesis, such as HIV or malaria, and challenge players to devise a protein with just the right shape to lock into the virus and deactivate it. Winning protein designs will be synthesized in Baker’s lab and tested in petri dishes. High-scoring players will be credited in scientific publications the way that top Rosetta@home contributors already are credited for their computer time.

“Long-term, I’m hoping that we can get a significant fraction of the world’s population engaged in solving critical problems in world health, and doing it collaboratively and successfully through the game,” Baker said. “We’re trying to use the brain power of people all around the world to advance biomedical research.”

Foldit includes elements of multiplayer games in which people can team up, chat with other players and create online profiles. Over time the researchers will analyze people’s moves to see how the top players solve puzzles. This information will be fed back into the game’s design so the game’s tools and format can evolve.

The research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Microsoft Corp. and Adobe Systems Inc., and through fellowships at Nvidia Corp. and Intel Corp.

For more information, contact Baker at (206) 543-1295 or dabaker@u.washington.edu and Popovic at (206) 543-4226 or zoran@cs.washington.edu.

Contact: Hannah Hickey
hickeyh@u.washington.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington

Online computer game providers often promise free computer games. But not many game providers offer free computer games. Game manufacturers often use the term free computer games to attract the attention of the buyers. Here we discuss some methods to download free computer games. The simplest way to get free computer games is to download the free game demos. Almost all computer game sites offer demos of their computer games. The demos are quite similar to the original computer games. The computer games now cost you more than $40 per title. So, from the buyers’ perspective, it’s always beneficial to download the demos first to get a feel for the games. Keeping the buyers’ viewpoint in mind, the computer game manufacturers offer free game downloads. Thanks to free computer games, buyers can check out the games.

The demand for free computer games are always on the rise. That’s why leading web portals such as MSN and Yahoo have started offering an extensive range of free computer games. Free computer games offer the opportunity to try the games before you ultimately decide to buy. The free computer games are mostly time-bound. The games expire on a certain date. During the trial period, the buyers can get a fair idea of the full game version. That’s why people prefer to check out the free computer games before they buy.

However, while downloading free computer games, you should keep some facts in mind. You must download free computer games only from those sites that are authentic. The game development companies you are targeting must be certified. This way, you can ensure that the free game downloads are free from bugs and viruses. As a buyer, you should not compromise with the quality of free computer games.

Online computer games take advantage of the Internet to offer an exquisite gaming experience. Online computer games are of four types. You can play some online computer games with a browser window. For that you need to log on to a specific web site. Some online computer games are text-based. You can play those games in a web-based forum. If the games are loaded with lots of graphics, you will require stand-alone software packages. Players challenge each other over the Internet. Some online computer games can be played with e-mail. E-mail computer games were the first stage of the online computer games revolution. MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons, were extremely popular during the age of e-mail computer games.

Let’s now discuss what you need to play those games. If you want to play computer games online, you need to have a high-quality Internet connection. You also need to ensure you have the hardware support to play the game. Not only that, you need to have the software installed on your computer to run the game. It’s always useful to have software capable of locating active game servers. This will make your job easier. As we have mentioned earlier, you can play online computer games in a web browser. The best thing about online computer games is that these games have successfully overcome the geographical barrier among the players. Players from far-off physical locations now can take part in online computer games. That’s the secret of their popularity.

Lineage, Counter-Strike, EverQuest, Quake and Half-Life are some popular online computer game titles. Internet users have especially found the online computer games quite interesting. If you want to enjoy gambling, card games or arcade games online, you need to check out what online computer games have in store for you. You can’t deny the fact that online games are here to stay.

Computer games have become a popular childhood spare-time activity. But research indicates that kids’ computer games adversely affect children’s physical and mental health. The games featuring excessive violence are actually doing more harm to the kids. Even children have developed a definite liking for those games. A recent study published on the web has revealed that 32% prefer to play violent computer games. Not only that, but 29% of the kids like sports games with violent themes. Only 2% want to play games with educational content. The statistics are quite alarming.

The supporters of video games may reason that computer games are phenomenal in enhancing hand-eye coordination. But the staggering statistics suggest otherwise. They show that kids are fast becoming violent thanks to those brutal kids’ computer games. Computer games have become an integral part of childhood. Most kids now play computer games on a daily basis. Kids’ computer games have been instrumental in injecting violent behavior into children. They tend to react aggressively if something annoys them. The connection between playing kids’ computer games and aggressive behavior has become so obvious that parents have started thinking about how to keep their kids away from those harmful computer games.

The theme of kids’ computer games is the same – an anonymous person brutally fights an anonymous enemy. This type of kids’ computer game infuses violent behavior into kids. Playing computer games has become the biggest addiction among kids. They even save money to buy the latest game titles. The kids’ computer game developers are trying to hard to cash in on their increasing popularity. They post advertisements on the Internet and show ads on TV to catch their attention. However, kids still prefer the Internet to find out more on their favorite computer games.

Who doesn’t like computer games? Especially the gizmo freaks around the world are so fond of them. It has become very popular in all age groups and especially kids. Let us try to figure out as to what are these computer games in order to know about them in detail. It is a video game which is played on a computer and so they are called as the computer games. However one of the main allegations against the video games is that they act as an addiction for the children and the teenagers. The inclusion of the objectionable content in the video gaming has often raised many eyebrows of the critics.

However, the computer games are on the zenith of the popularity. In 1995, the Microsoft Windows developed it and so started the success stories of computer games. With the games as Super Mario 64, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, City of Villains, Wolfenstein 3D and many more have been top selling computer games for all times. With the advent of online marketing, it is very convenient for everyone to buy their favourite online games on the Internet. There are various retail services that allow the users to buy the latest CD’s and DVD of the computer games on the World Wide Web. The user can also download computer games from the internet. There are some other online shops which also offer free computer games and so the users are attracted towards it.

You can check out the various online shops which are offering some of the best computer games on the Internet. You can check out the various retail services or some online shop which offers some of these games. Checking out on the various search engines would also be a good idea and it would help you to find some of the best deals on the World Wide Web. So, before you go out to buy one of those computer games, you can check out some of the interesting websites and freeze the final offer.

In the next generation of computer games we will see the computer program actually designing itself as the player plays along. Currently in computer games, video games and virtual reality if you were on a racetrack in a racecar you cannot go off the racetrack without crashing. And you may only be allowed to go one direction and you cannot do everything, which may want to do.

For instance if you’re playing the computer game and it is a football game and you were on the field as one of the players you cannot go up into the stands by hot dog, walk-through the tunnel, buy a beer and then walk into the parking lot get in a car and drive away to an In and Out Hamburger Joint or go see a movie.

Indeed it is obvious why you cannot do his, but what if you could? Well, that would probably be a very expensive computer game, video game wouldn’t or virtual reality system to make or buy? And it might take a programmer their whole life just to program and design it for every potential eventuality in first place.

In the Next Generation of computer video games and virtual reality you will be able to do just that. Being trapped in a current computer game would suck, but designing and playing in a Matrix is indeed the future of computer gaming and virtual reality and that is the next generation of computer games. Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow