LudoScience

Some news froms Ludoscience Ludoscience | 05-30-2016 | 20:11

As you may have noticed, these last months have been quiet for Ludoscience. Don't worry, the lab is still running, it's just that we have all been so busy with our current projects, that nobody had the time to actually update the website!

As these projects near completion, in the upcoming weeks we will have new projects to share with you, including... a new book written by all the Ludoscience members!

In the meantime, here is a selection of our activities during the last months:

• Our book "PlayStation VS Saturn : war of the 32 bits" (in french) that tells the history behind these two popular consoles is now available in all bookstokes.
  
  
• One of our (french-written) articles about the advantages and limitations of Serious Games for education has been published on the French Governement portal for innovation in Higher Education.
  
  
• Julian gave a lecture about "A model to design a course using games as pedagogic tools" during a conference about "games and learning" organized by Université Paris Sorbonne and Centre de Recherche Interuniversitaire.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Damien gave a lecture about "Serious Games for education" during "3rd workshop on educational technology" organized by the Montpellier School District. A short 3 minutes video summarizing this 50-minutes conference was shot by Ludomag:
  
  
  
  
  
• Damien also gave a lecture about "Serious Games : using video games to express yourself" during the Climate Game Jam, a game design competition centered on games about ecology, organized by the Hakatah association.
  
  
  
  
  

And that's all for our main "events" of the past months. Stay tuned for bigger news very soon!

The IDATE Serious Games Study now available for free! Ludoscience | 01-06-2016 | 11:28

Growing Ties, a new game added to our website Dr. Ludos | 12-29-2015 | 14:50

To end this year in a good mood, we offer you a new little game: Growing Ties.

The challenge is simple: You run a tie shop. Patrons want to get custom ties. Can you cut a tie at the right size for each one of your patrons?

Hold Right Arrow key to grow a tie.
Press Left Arrow key to cut it.
The tie will fall down, and hopefully reach a patron.
(Alternatively, you can use Up Arrow / Down Arrow or Z / X or D / F keys if you prefer)

Be careful to cut right-sized ties! A perfect-sized tie matches the height of the patron’s shirt.
You'll get 10 points for such a perfectly fitting tie, but less points if the tie is too long or too short. Of course, Patrons varies greatly in size and shape!

Cut several perfect ties in a row to get bonus "combo" points.

This game was made for the Ludum Dare 34 Jam (game creation in 72h), under the themes "Growing", "2 buttons control" (and the bonus theme of "It's a tie!").

The game is also freely available for Android over the Play Store.

Enjoy! 

Evaluating teaching using games Julian Alvarez | 12-04-2015 | 10:16

Edutainment is the idea of using games for training. But is it possible to evaluate edutainment? Here's a proposed model, based in particular on the initial work of Freitas and Oliver (2006). The following table summarizes our proposed CEPAJe evaluation model:

This model is a double-entry grid. Vertically, there are 5 dimensions: Context, Teacher, Pedagogy, Learner and Game (CEPAJe). Each dimension is analyzed in relation to the key stages of training: introduction, progress and debriefing of the game activity. We propose to add two aspects: knowing the levels of culture and practice of the game. All in all, with this table of 25 boxes, we believe we have a first basis for evaluating a edutainment-type training course. Of course, this model needs to be tested! 

If you use games in your courses, training or activities and would like to tell us whether this CEPAJe model meets your needs, we'd love to hear from you! We welcome your comments, suggestions and criticisms.

While we're waiting for your feedback, here are a few links:

Download a PDF version of the CEPAJe grid 

Read the Scientific paper

X-PO 2089 : An unreleased PlayStation game discovered Ludoscience | 11-02-2015 | 14:34

The history of video games if full of forgotten titles. Most of the time, they are game projects cancelled before completion. But, sometimes, full and complete games are cancelled just before their commercial release. We call them "unreleased games", as they are waiting to be be discovered by historians or collectors who can reveal their existence to the world.

Today, Ludoscience is proud to present you an "unreleased" PlayStation game called X-PO : 2089 Cyber Revolution. This game is also available on PC, in French and Japanese. You'll find links to download the three versions of the game at the end of the article. Meanwhile, we would also like to tell you the history of this unique game.

X-PO : 2089 Cyber-Revolution

At first glimpse, X-PO looks like a traditional 3D platformer game. In 2089, you are playing as Koji, a hero tasked with the mission to protect Internet from an evil entity. You'll explore many levels in search of several objects and information that will guide you through the story. The player character can jump and punch, but the most efficient method to get rid of the enemies is to jump over them, like a famous italian plumber!

What makes this game stands out from the others is the nature of the objects you'll collect in the levels. For example, the first level tasks you to develop a photo, and explains you how photography was invented in 1827 by the French scientist Nicéphore Niépce. Later in the level, you'll find a film roll, and the game will then explain you how the French Lumière brothers invented cinema. During a water level, you'll have to find the missing propeller of a submarine invented by French diver Commander Jacques Cousteau. In another level, you'll meet Lucy, one of the oldest fossilized human skeleton, discovered in 1974 by Americans and French researchers. Among others examples, you'll also have to avoid getting hit by a Foucault pendulum, and to help a TGV (french type of high-speed trains) stuck on its rails.

Long story short, this game, while being quite fun, is also educational. This dimension is perfectly presented by one of the sponsor of the project: the then-President of France, Jacques Chirac. During the speech he gave for the official announcement of the game, he said: "It is an action game, mainly aimed at children, to talk about France: the role of our country in the great discoveries throughout History, but also how the country is participating in the recent technological innovations."

An educational game sponsored by the French President

Developed by the French studio Kalisto, X-PO is scheduled to be released in Japan in 1999, during a major cultural event: the Year of France in Japan. 

In order to present France to Japanese people, the Year of France in Japan took place between April 1998 and March 1999. It gathered a high number of cultural events (more than 500 in a year), such as several art shows, an agriculture expo dedicated to goods produced by French farmers, and several conferences by French Nobel Prize winners. Meanwhile, Kalisto is tasked by the organizers of Year of France in Japan to create a video game to be released during the event.

The original plan is to release the game to retail stores in Japan, on PC and PlayStation. Unfortunately, Sony quits the project during its course, thus cancelling the release of the PlayStation version, although its development is fully completed. The PC version is planned to be published by NEC, via its NEC Interchannel subsidiary. Sadly, NEC changes his mind and, instead of selling the game, it decides to give it away during some kind of promotional event, and also through some games magazines. Therefore, the Japanese PC version of the game, the only one to be actually released officially, is very rare today! Last but not least, a French PC version of the game is also developed. Kalisto seeks to get it published in France, but, unfortunately it never happened due to the crash of the "Internet economy" in the beginning of the 2000's. Alongside many other IT companies, this financial crisis sadly forced Kalisto to close doors in 2002. Kalisto was then one of the leading and largest French video game studios, with over 300 employees all over the world (France, USA, China).

Download X-PO : 2089 Cyber Revolution

You'll find below links to download the different versions of the game we are currently aware of.

PlayStation version

Download the PlayStation version of X-PO 2089 [French Version - February 10, 1999]

Extract the content of the .zip file to find a CD image of the game in cue/bin format. You can play this CD image in any PlayStation emulator you want. Beware, some emulators may suffer from graphical glitches or problems to run this game. For example, ePSXe is unable to display the "question" screens at the end of each level: if you encounter a black screen, the game hasn't crashed, you simply need to press one of the gamepad button (circle or cross) several times to answer the questions and go to the next level.

However, the game is first and foremost designed to be played on an actual PlayStation. You simply need to burn the game onto a CD and insert it in your console. If your console has a "mod-chip", or if you are lucky enough to have a "debugging Playstation" able to read CD-R, you'll then enjoy X-PO the way it was meant to be released!

PC version

Download the PC version of X-PO 2089 [Final French version - March 03, 1999]

Download the PC version of X-PO 2089 [Final Japanese version - March 03, 1999] 

Extract the content of the .zip file to find a CD image of the game in .iso format. You'll then have to burn the game to a CD, or to use a virtual CD device, to install it on your computer. The game is originally designed to run on Windows 98. It also runs on Windows XP and Windows 7, but may have some compatibily issues.

To play the game on Windows XP, Windows 7, and above, you'll certainly need to do the following actions:

- Copy the content of the "WinXP & Win7 Compatibility Patch" folder (included in the .zip file) to the installation folder of the game.
- Add the parameter -D3D when running the game .exe (create a short-cut, it'll be easier).
- [Windows 7 only] Change the name of the file "dbghelp.dll" located in "C:\WINDOWS\system32", AND in "C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64" (if are on a 64bit system). You can change its name to anything you want, just make sure the game can’t find it.

N.B.: Please note that none of the two PC versions of the game have ingame music, while several music tracks have been developed for it, as you can hear in the PlayStation version. This is obviously due to the PC version using CD-Audio tracks, that are missing from the versions of the game we managed to uncover so far (but it should be possible to convert the music tracks from the PlayStation version to add them to the PC version, if anyone feels up to the task).

More information about the game 

If you want to learn more about the history of this quite unique video game, we have interviewed seven persons who participated in the project, and wrote an in-depth article (in French) that you can find inside Pix'n Love magazine #28. Available online for 9.90€, this issue also tells the history of some famous games, such as Pokémon, Virtua Fighter and Nightmare Creatures. Our article is only available in French for now, but if anyone is interested in it, we might translate it into English (contact us if you're interested).

 Enjoy!