GSketch
GSketch is a system that will help novice programmers create games and simulations.
GSketch is based on the idea of first sketching out the key elements of a game and then animating them. Next, a designer can add behaviors as necessary to make the game react in appropriate ways. Our approach has been to conduct field studies with both game designers and novice programmers. With the former we have tried to understand their early stage processes and tools. To study the later we have carried out workshops at elementary schools where children try to create new games. We have used these field studies to create a library of 30 games and simulations that we have fed into our unique interface optimization technique (first developed for the k-sketch project) to obtain the minimum number of interface operations that GSketch must include to support a large percentage of this library. In this way, we can design a more simple interface while still allowing a broad range of games and simulations to be created with the tool.
The initial work on this project has been supported by a grant from the NSF's CreativeIT Program, Award #0742877.
Publications
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A Study of Early Stage Game Design and Prototyping, UW CSE-TR #UW-CSE-08-10-03 Brien Colwell, Richard C. Davis and James A. Landay CSE Technical Report , 2008. Technical Report (PDF) |