6 Game version assessment
In order to evaluate the suitability of a game platform as a system for implementing a virtual museum for a generic audience, one has to assess the effort and resources needed for its development, the requirements set for the execution environment as well as the users’ opinion of the system. Although user satisfaction is and should be the primary objective, resources for the development and the requirements set for the execution are also of significance (Fig.8).
Fig. 3 Topographical map of the Virtual Museum
Fig. 4 a Exhibition space mesh. b Exhibition space with surface applied
Fig. 5 Screenshot of the Unreal editor Fig. 6 3D exhibit in the Unreal editor’s Mesh Browser
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6.1 Development effort
The time spent and the effort required for the development of the virtual museum using game technologies can be evaluated against the effort spent for the development of the original version of the virtual museums. The first phases of the development procedure are common for both implementation approaches. That is, the resources dedicated to the selection of exhibits, the design of the exhibition space, the selection of presentation methods and the design of the interactions are the same for both approaches. The differentiation starts with the actual implementation phase of the virtual museum. As described in the previous section, some extra effort was needed for the conversion of digitised objects into the format read by the Unreal graphics engine. The time needed for exporting objects in the Unreal format cannot be regarded as a development overhead because comparable effort had been given during the creation of the exhibits in the native format required for the original version of the virtual museums. Moreover, both tasks can be semi-automated, thus minimising user involvement in the whole process. Overall, importing spaces and objects into the game environment was rather straightforward. The virtual environment editor, which was bundled with the game software, featured functionality comparable to that of most 3D designer packages, making the placement of
exhibits in the museum space and the construction of the virtual exhibition easy. In contrast to the development of the original version of the virtual museums, where effort was put into writing code handling the interaction of users in the environment, in the game-based version, more effort seemed to be devoted to learning the new application programming interface (API) and to customising its object classes to fit the interaction design. That was due to the fact that most of the functionality needed was already built into the platform. On the other hand, there was a lack of detailed documentation, which often resulted in spending a lot of time to discover simple features. This was somewhat anticipated, since this was primarily game software and whatever programming documentation available was intended for users who wanted to create their own game levels and not for programmers who wanted to extend the API. It has to be pointed out that the customisations which needed to be performed have now been documented in detail, thus the process of building a new virtual museum in the Unreal suite runs now smoothly, without the need for locating extra information on customisations or techniques. For the development of the virtual museum, the programmer has to customise the environment and alter some of the game-based functionality. First of all, the programmer has to disable opponent computer-controlled avatars and to hide the weapons and the healthstatus bar. Secondly, the system menus have to be modified to enable the user to easily select the museum space she wants to visit. It has to be pointed out that the system can be configured so as to directly load a museum upon starting, but for the requirements of this case study, it was thought better to keep the look and feel of the game environment, where the user selects the ‘‘level’’ she wants to load. Some of the game functionality proved to be useful. The system could display, without the need for extra programming effort, a 2D map of the virtual space. This was considered to be an important feature, especially for large museum spaces, because it could be used as a navigational aid for the user (Haik et al. 2002). Other features offered by the system, such as teleporting or the ability to save the ‘‘game’’ were also useful. The first of these features can be used to move the user to a predefined position. The system supports two variations of teleporting: one where the environment designer creates ‘‘shortcuts’’ between points in the virtual space and marks them accordingly, and a second where the user can set a bookmark at a point of interest and be transported to it afterwards. Storing an instance of the navigation can be practical in cases where the virtual space is large or the user wants to quit navigation and continue at a later time. In total, taking into consideration the time spent for learning