Radical Entertainment is a video game developer which creates and develops games for all current and next generation platforms. Each year, computer games become graphically more realistic due to advances in computer technology and animation. The object of this project is simulation of deformable objects (such as a mattress or jelly-like substances) in real-time for computer gaming purposes. The equations of motion for such objects is quite different and more difficult to solve than those used for rigid bodies.

Frantic Films, headquartered in Winnipeg, MB, has developed a reputation for creating innovative, custom built R&D solutions. The intern’s research project will straddle both the worlds of microbiology and physical simulation in order to create a dynamic, physically-based model of the cytoskeleton within a cell.

Video games must be able to present things in ‘real time’, with no delays thus performance is critical. A modern processor can deal much quicker with information that is in one continuous section of memory as opposed to divided into smaller chunks. When information is split, it causes a delay in processing. The intern’s research will focus on optimizing a new system for memory management that will attempt to achieve greater performance through a system that organizes memory into collections of whole blocks in order to prevent the need for data to be split.

SPIELO is a Moncton, NB-based company which designs, manufactures and distributes high-tech gaming products. The intern’s project will focus on analyzing the LZ77 compression algorithm and the AES encryption algorithm from a mathematical standpoint in order to identify any potential performance bottlenecks. This analysis will enable changes to be made to existing implementations of AES and LZ77 in order to increase their real-world performance.

As computer hardware becomes more powerful, the ability to produce effects approximating physical phenomena in soft real-time for computer games becomes an achievable and important goal for game realism. Interactive smoke effects are one such phenomenon. Despite advances in game architecture, however, computing gas/fluid motion with a high degree of physical accuracy is prohibitively expensive. This project's immediate goal is to research the optimal balance of physics and aesthetics so that this particular effect can be provided to gamers in soft real-time on current hardware.

The objective of the project is to determine the impact of various game features on VLT game play. These features are based on the current strategies adopted by SPIELO for its North American market. This data will be collected from players in a real life setting, then analyzed, and used for player profiling and as an input for improving existing strategies and measure their effectiveness. The analyzed data, the derived player profiles and the inference from the study will be used in developing a software simulator of original gaming environment.