South African Computer Science and Information Systems Research Trends
Unity 6 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Fifth Edition
Overcome challenges head-on in Unity 6 shader creation with the help of expert tips, practical solutions, and cutting-edge techniques from best-selling author John DoranKey Features: - Explore Shader Graph to develop expertise in post-processing and advanced shading- Unlock shortcuts to achieve AAA shader quality without complex algorithms- Become proficient in Unity's latest tools, including VFX Graph and Unity Muse- Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBookBook Description: Shaders enable game developers to craft visually stunning experiences, but their complexity and mathematical and technical challenges make it hard to achieve the desired level of realism. Written by a top-selling author with extensive hands-on expertise in game development, this latest edition is your indispensable guide to mastering the art of shaders within this evolving landscape.Through meticulously curated recipes, this book takes a practical approach to equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to elevate your game visuals to unmatched sophistication. In this updated edition, you'll gain invaluable insights into leveraging Unity's latest tools, including Unity Muse for advanced AI-powered texture creation. From fully grasping Shader Graph to harnessing the power of vectors and textures, this Unity cookbook covers all the aspects of shader development without the need for elaborate mathematical calculations. You'll also discover practical techniques for achieving stunning visual effects with ease when creating 2D or 3D elements.What You Will Learn: - Understand the principles of shaders, along with how to work in Shader Graph- Harness URP and HDRP packages for efficient shader creation- Enhance game visuals with modern shader techniques- Optimize shaders for performance and aesthetics- Master the math and algorithms behind the commonly used lighting models- Transform your game's atmosphere with the Post Processing Stack- Develop sophisticated shader effects by leveraging fragment shaders and grab-pass techniquesWho this book is for: This book is for game developers looking to elevate their shader expertise and enhance game visuals using Unity 6. Game programmers, technical artists, and aspiring game developers eager to master shader creation with Shader Graph will find this book very useful. A solid understanding of Unity is required to get the most out of this book.Table of Contents- Using Post-Processing with URP- Creating Your First Shader with Shader Graph- Working with Surfaces- Working with Texture Mapping- Enhancing Realism: Unity Muse and Physically Based Rendering- Using Vertex Functions- Using Grab Passes - Optimizing Shaders- Creating Screen Effects with Fullscreen Shaders- Gameplay and Screen Effects- Understanding Lighting Models- Developing Advanced Shading Techniques- Utilizing the HDRP
Fast and Slow
Fast and Slow - Methods for Timely HCI and Interaction Design Research explores the dynamic interplay between rapid and reflective research in human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design research. In an era where fast approaches to technical research is foregrounded, this book provides a critical examination of the temporalities at play in various research approaches - from long-term studies to rapid prototyping.Drawing inspiration from fast and slow thinking, design thinking and our everchanging world, this book contrasts "fast" approaches--such as "quick-and-dirty ethnography, prototyping, and AI-driven automation--with "slow" methodologies that emphasize ethnographic studies, longitudinal research, and participatory design. By working across the fast and slow approaches to research the book helps researchers and practitioners navigate the trade-offs between efficiency and depth, rapid results and reflection. Ultimately, the focus of the book is on timely research contributions.With a focus on research approaches, this book presents cases, methodological insights, and theoretical discussions that foreground the temporalities at play in HCI and interaction design research. It questions whether the rush to iterate and deploy can sometimes obscure critical insights about human behavior, ethical considerations, and long-term impact.Whether you are an HCI researcher, UX practitioner, or technology strategist, Fast and Slow - Methods for Timely HCI and Interaction Design Research offers a fresh perspective on how to plan and carry out design research - no matter if the research process is fast, or slow.
New Media Pedagogy: Research Trends, Methodological Challenges, and Successful Implementations
This volume constitutes the revised selected papers of 3rd International Conference on New Media Pedagogy, NMP 2024, in Krak籀w, Poland, during November 28-29, 2024. The 23 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Innovative ICT applications in education; AI in education.
Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles
This book LNICST 622 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles, SmartSP 2024, held in New Orleans, LA, USA, during November 7-8, 2024. The 18 full papers were carefully reviewed an selected from 47 submissions. The proceedings focus on Emerging Applications, Hardware and Firmware Security, Adversarial Attacks in Autonomous Systems, Ethics, Privacy, Human-Centric Considerations and Security Techniques for Cyber-Physical Systems.
Designing Virtual Worlds
Designing Virtual Worlds, authored by a true pioneer, stands as the most comprehensive examination of virtual-world design ever written. This seminal work is a tour de force, remarkable for its intellectual breadth, encompassing the literary, economic, sociological, psychological, physical, technological, and ethical foundations of virtual worlds. It provides readers with a profound, well-grounded understanding of essential design principles.This first volume presents a rich, well-developed exploration of the foundational concepts underpinning virtual worlds. Tracing the evolution of such games from their inception, it draws upon examples ranging from the earliest MUDs to today's expansive MMORPGs. It elucidates fundamental design precepts often forgotten in the development of new games.No other book on online games or virtual worlds matches the level of detail, historical context, and conceptual depth found in Designing Virtual Worlds.
Designing Virtual Worlds
Designing Virtual Worlds, authored by a true pioneer, stands as the most comprehensive examination of virtual-world design ever written. This seminal work is a tour de force, remarkable for its intellectual breadth, encompassing the literary, economic, sociological, psychological, physical, technological, and ethical foundations of virtual worlds. It provides readers with a profound, well-grounded understanding of essential design principles.This first volume presents a rich, well-developed exploration of the foundational concepts underpinning virtual worlds. Tracing the evolution of such games from their inception, it draws upon examples ranging from the earliest MUDs to today's expansive MMORPGs. It elucidates fundamental design precepts often forgotten in the development of new games.No other book on online games or virtual worlds matches the level of detail, historical context, and conceptual depth found in Designing Virtual Worlds.
Collaboration in Knowledge Discovery and Decision Making
This book CCIS 2369 constitutes the proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Collaboration in Knowledge Discovery and Decision Making, DECISIONING 2024, held in Pereira, Colombia, during June 4-6, 2024. The 18 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. These papers explore recent advances in collaborative decision making and knowledge discovery, addressing topics including data analysis, artificial intelligence, decision models and industrial applications.
Podcasting and Education
Podcasting and Education: Concepts, Communities and Case Studies provides both theoretical frameworks and real-life examples to support readers in the use of podcasting as a medium in education.This edited collection brings together the collective experience of educators from around the world who use podcasting in their pedagogical toolset, providing a rich, diverse collection of practical insights for educating through podcasting. Readers will be able to gain a deeper understanding of the diversity of opportunities for embedding audio into the classroom, learn from practitioners and educators who have been using podcasting in education for years, and gather ideas from inspirational case studies that represent models which can be adapted, adopted or amended to suit a variety of contexts.This book will be of interest to both educators and podcasters with an interest in facilitating learning journeys in day-to-day settings, educational classrooms, and academia, as well as instructors of all kinds, including those teaching audio, media production and journalism.
Cinematic Worldbuilding
Everybody has a story in them. Some people lack the language and the tools to tell that story effectively. As an avid tabletop role-playing game player, I'm amazed at people's ability to tell stories on the spot. Both the players and the game masters are creating worlds in their minds and playing out the events, using improv, in real-time. Being an author and screenwriter, I know how difficult it is to create consistent and well-constructed characters, themes, and conflicts. I believe that storytellers looking to level up in the classroom, their hobby, or career could learn a lot from games like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and others. This book seeks to give people the tools and language to create and master their worlds and characters, using TTRPG mechanics and rulesets as foundational elements. This book will contain insights and interviews from some of today's most respected game masters, players, actual play actors, and we'll also hear from some of the people behind the scenes responsible for creating these games, and how they view worldbuilding and storytelling for their audiences.
Cinematic Worldbuilding
Everybody has a story in them. Some people lack the language and the tools to tell that story effectively. As an avid tabletop role-playing game player, I'm amazed at people's ability to tell stories on the spot. Both the players and the game masters are creating worlds in their minds and playing out the events, using improv, in real-time. Being an author and screenwriter, I know how difficult it is to create consistent and well-constructed characters, themes, and conflicts. I believe that storytellers looking to level up in the classroom, their hobby, or career could learn a lot from games like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and others. This book seeks to give people the tools and language to create and master their worlds and characters, using TTRPG mechanics and rulesets as foundational elements. This book will contain insights and interviews from some of today's most respected game masters, players, actual play actors, and we'll also hear from some of the people behind the scenes responsible for creating these games, and how they view worldbuilding and storytelling for their audiences.
Advanced Information Systems Engineering
The two-volume set LNCS 15701 + 15702 constitutes the proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2025, which was held in Vienna, Austria, during June 16-17, 2025. The 35 papers included in the proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 229 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: Modelling with LLM; Security; Sustainability; Chatbots and social networks; process monitoring; IS-development and usage; pre-processing and forecasting; Part II: Comprehension, explanation and recommendation; process discovery; system architecture and privacy; conformance-checking; cloud systems; extending process modelling; ontologies and knowledge graphs.
Advanced Information Systems Engineering
The two-volume set LNCS 15701 + 15702 constitutes the proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2025, which was held in Vienna, Austria, during June 16-17, 2025. The 35 papers included in the proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 229 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: Modelling with LLM; Security; Sustainability; Chatbots and social networks; process monitoring; IS-development and usage; pre-processing and forecasting; Part II: Comprehension, explanation and recommendation; process discovery; system architecture and privacy; conformance-checking; cloud systems; extending process modelling; ontologies and knowledge graphs.
Effect of Additives/Admixtures on the Properties of Concretes and Cementitious Composites
Automated Detection of Media Bias
This Open Access book explores the automated identification of media bias, particularly focusing on bias by word choice in digital media. The increasing prevalence of digital information presents opportunities and challenges for analyzing language, with cultural, geographic, and contextual factors shaping how content is portrayed. Despite the interdisciplinary nature of media bias research across fields like linguistics, psychology, and computer science, existing work often tackles the problem from limited perspectives, lacking comprehensive frameworks and reliable datasets. The book aims to advance the field by addressing these gaps and proposing a systematic approach to media bias detection. It develops feature-based and deep-learning approaches for automated bias detection, including a BERT-based model and MAGPIE, a multi-task learning model. These methods demonstrate improved performance on established benchmarks, showcasing the potential of deep learning in detecting media bias. Finally, the author addresses the practical applications of automated bias detection, such as enhancing news reading with forewarning messages, text annotations, and political classifiers, and examines the impact of bias on social media engagement.
The Complete Guide to Videogame Performance Directing
This book teaches the complex, sometimes confounding, and often beautiful art of directing live performance for videogames. Starting from a clear and comprehensive introduction to the nuts and bolts of directing on the motion capture floor and in the voiceover booth, this book dives deeper with concrete examples from the author's 25-year career directing seminal games from the early years to today's blockbusters.Identifying the Place (What is the physical environment?), Time (What just happened?), and Action (What do the characters want?) of every scene empowers directors with essential tools to dive straight into the subtext, the life below the words. Through step-by-step instructions, this book shows how to make scenes and lines come alive. It offers real-world advice on everything from casting to table reads, rehearsal, and production days. In addition, readers can find valuable advice about self-care and sustaining a long-term career as a performance director.This book is sure to be an essential resource for directors, actors, voiceover artists, and game developers who want to master videogame performance.
Event-Database Architecture for Computer Games
Event-Database Architecture for Computer Games proposes the first explicit software architecture for game development, answering the problem of building modern computer games with little or no game design. In this volume, an example of a practical production process based on the software production process is explained, including examples of the game design, technical design, data design and tools design in that process.This volume includes a brief overview on how to optimise the results. This leads on to an exploration of how staff, especially Software Engineers, typically view optimisation. It also explains how the vision of the Engineers relates to the vision of the leadership of a project or company. It describes how this leadership can also affect the efficacy of a production process, including the Event-Database Production Process.This book will be of great interest to professional game developers involved in management roles such as Technical Directors and Game Producers and technical roles, such as Tools Programmers, UI Programmers, Gameplay Programmers and Engineers, as well as students studying game development and programming.Rodney Quaye is Senior Software Development Engineer in Test at Build A Rocket Boy. He has worked in the Computer Games industry for over 16 years. He has worked at several Games Studios, including Sumo Digital, nDreams, Supermassive Games, Traveller's Tales, Hotgen, Oysterworld, Second Impact, Flaming Pumpkin, Goldhawk Interactive, Jagex, Gusto Games, Criterion, Asylum Entertainment, Codemasters and Deibus Studios. The famous titles he has worked on include Burnout 2 and 3 for Criterion, LMA Manager for Codemasters, Runescape for Jagex, Lego Worlds for Traveller's Tales and Everywhere for Build A Rocket Boy.
Hate Excel? Workbook. Learn to love the software that can tranform your confidence and career
Event-Database Architecture for Computer Games
Event-Database Architecture for Computer Games proposes the first explicit software architecture for game development, answering the problem of building modern Computer Games with little or no game design. An archetypal software production process, based on this architecture, is also introduced.This volume begins by describing the formal definition of software production processes in general and the production process of Computer Games in particular. It introduces the two basic principles behind the software architecture that addresses the communication and productivity problems of a degenerative production process. It goes on to describe the archetypal software production process and outlines the role that the Game Designers, Game Programmers, Game Artists, Sound Designers and Game Testers play in that process.This book will be of great interest to professional game developers involved in programming roles, such as Tools Programmers, UI Programmers, Gameplay Programmers and Engineers, as well as students studying game development and programming.Rodney Quaye is Senior Software Development Engineer in Test at Build A Rocket Boy. He has worked in the Computer Games industry for over 16 years. He has worked at several Games Studios including Sumo Digital, nDreams, Supermassive Games, Traveller's Tales, Hotgen, Oysterworld, Second Impact, Flaming Pumpkin, Goldhawk Interactive, Jagex, Gusto Games, Criterion, Asylum Entertainment, Codemasters and Deibus Studios. The famous titles he has worked on include Burnout 2 and 3 for Criterion, LMA Manager for Codemasters, Runescape for Jagex, Lego Worlds for Traveller's Tales, and Everywhere for Build A Rocket Boy.
Game Design Deep Dive
Game Design Critic and expert Joshua Bycer is back with another entry in the Game Design Deep Dive series for a look at one of the most popular, and confusing, genres out there. Metroidvania is a genre of high-highs and low-lows, and Josh is taking up the task to explain what a metroidvania is, the very long history and variety of it, and what you need to do to create one yourself.- A look at the history of metroidvania design- A primer on 2D platforming UI/UX- Explaining the design and specific elements that make a metroidvania orcould be applied to other genres- Perfect for designers and students alike
Algorithms and Complexity
The two-volume set LNCS 15679 and 15680 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Algorithms and Complexity, CIAC 2025, held in Rome, Italy, during June 10-12, 2025.The 44 full papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 110 submissions. They focus on all aspects of important venue for researchers working on computational complexity and the design, analysis, experimentation, and application of efficient algorithms and data structures.
Animation Craft
This book is for those who want to learn the craft or mechanics of animation, how to actually animate a scene from start to finish, or take their animation to the next level. Using over 600 examples, this book answers the questions about the craft of animation that are often not taught in schools or books.Each chapter contains step-by-step examples explaining the principles of animation and how to avoid common problems that occur when animating. This book also teaches you how to critique an animated scene objectively, rather than subjectively -- then fix what's wrong with it.Animation Craft for 3D and 2D Animators will be a great resource for any beginner looking to learn the fundamentals of animation, or more experienced animators looking to hone their craft.
Algorithms and Complexity
The two-volume set LNCS 15679 and 15680 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Algorithms and Complexity, CIAC 2025, held in Rome, Italy, during June 10-12, 2025.The 44 full papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 110 submissions. They focus on all aspects of important venue for researchers working on computational complexity and the design, analysis, experimentation, and application of efficient algorithms and data structures.
Navigating the World of Multimedia - Innovation and Applications
Effective Serious Games Development
This book showcases the entire lifecycle of a serious games project and guides the reader through different phases step by step. It follows a narrative approach, telling the story of a young game developer in a fictitious near-future setting who overcomes the challenges of a typical development process. The narrative is enriched by 15 short contributions from multinational experts on relevant topics for the development process of serious games.This book describes a holistic approach to serious games development and follows a project from its very beginning to its end. It covers planning, creation, implementation and evaluation of a serious game. It does not cover technical details on how to write code or graphics for video games but rather focuses on the conceptualization of serious games and coordination between different roles and team members.This book will be of great interest to beginners who want to use serious games to solve their problems. It will appeal to students of game development and also project managers who want to gain a better overview of the process as a whole and learn about tools and frameworks they can apply in their own context right away.
The Pocket Mentor for Game Production
Want to work as a producer in the video games industry? Then this is the book for you. This book provides all the essential information and guidance you need to understand the industry and get your foot on the ladder.This book covers everything from basics you'll need to understand, how to look for and apply for job opportunities, as well as the studio interview process itself. It also includes advice for what to do once you're in the role, with chapters covering the day-to-day of working as a game producer, how to set goals for future career progression, as well as interviews with top tips from experts in the industry.This book will be of great interest to all beginner and aspiring game producers.
