NCCollab: collaborative behavior tree authoring in game development

• Published in: Multimedia tools and applications 2023-01, Vol.82 (3), p.4671-4708
• Main Authors: Hossain, Md. Yousuf, Zaman, Loutfouz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animation; Augmented Reality; Collaboration; Colleges & universities; Computer Communication Networks; Computer Science; Control tasks; Data Structures and Information Theory; Distance learning; Games; Multimedia Information Systems; Programming languages; Prototyping; Special Purpose and Application-Based Systems; Track 4: Digital Games; Track 4: Digital Games, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality; Virtual Reality
• ISSN: 1380-7501; 1573-7721
• DOI: 10.1007/s11042-022-12307-2

Game development is a collective process in which a variety of different professionals from different backgrounds collaborate together not only by means of conversational interaction but also collaborative participation, one of which is programming. While collaborative and pair programming solutions exist for text-based programming languages, visual programming has not enjoyed as much attention. These solutions would not only address advanced forms of business communication among team members but could find their use in distance learning, which would have been useful during the pandemic. In our work, we propose a solution for collaborative behavioral animation of NPCs using behavior trees through synchronous and asynchronous modes of collaboration. We conducted a user study with 12 moderately skilled game development university students who were placed in groups of two and engaged in joint fixed behavior tree development tasks using the synchronous and asynchronous modes and auxiliary features of live preview, access and restoration of previous states from behavior tree history, conflict resolution, and instant messaging. Participants also completed a control task where no collaboration was involved and auxiliary features were not available. Feedback form Creativity Support Index, a self-developed questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview were collected. Additionally, task completion times were logged. The results indicate that the two collaborative modes provide expected improvement over the control condition. No significant differences were found between the two collaborative modes. However, the semi-structed interview revealed that the synchronous mode could be useful for quick prototyping, while the asynchronous mode – for most other situations.