EcoRaft
Educational roleplaying meets technological innovation
Developed by the Social Code Group at UC Irvine,
the EcoRaft project is an educational restoration ecology game targeted towards
8 to 12 year old children. Each player assumes the role of a restoration ecologist working
in the Costa Rican rain forest. Using the resources from the national park, the ecologists
must restore a series of devastated ecosystems to a healthy, thriving state.
An individual ecosystem can support a variety of species. EcoRaft features heliconia plants, coral trees,
hummingbirds, and bahiagrass. At the beginning of the game, players are faced with 2 devastated
ecosystems and 1 national park. The national park maintains a thriving ecosystem that cannot be farmed or overgrazed.
Players can use the resources provided by the national park, or any other ecosystem that has been rehabilitated, to
restore devastated ecosystems. But players must be mindful of the order in which they bring resources over. A
hummingbird cannot live in an ecosystem without a food source. Likewise, heliconia plants cannot grow without
nitrogen in the soil. Players must discover the correct process in order to succeed.
Each ecosystem is represented by a large LCD monitor. Resources are transferred to and from ecosystems using
a set of tablet PCs. Each tablet PC is responsible for carrying a single species. Species are transferred automatically on or off the
tablet PC when physically brought in front of an ecosystem. For example, in order to transfer a hummingbird from the
national park to another ecosystem, a player must carry the tablet PC responsible for hummingbird collection to the national
park, wait for a hummingbird to fly onto the tablet PC, and carry that hummingbird over to the other ecosystem. Players must
collaborate with one another in order to successfully transfer all of the necessary species over to the devastated ecosystems.
The EcoRaft project demonstrates research in computer graphics, human-computer interaction, multi-device systems, restoration ecology, and knowledge transfer. A prototype of the project was showcased at SIGGRAPH 2005 in the Emerging Technologies program.
EcoRaft was my first research project as an undergraduate. I performed many general technological tasks, including animation tweaks, behaviour development, and game state management. I was also responsible for the graphical user interface and the feedback system. EcoRaft was playtested on several occasions, and I assisted in conducting qualitative evaluations of EcoRaft and its usefulness as an educational tool.
Technologies
EcoRaft was developed using a proprietary codebase written in Java. A custom C++ application was developed to interface with the infrared sensors, which detect a tablet PC's proximity to an ecosystem. Standard WiFi was used to perform the transfers to and from devices. Webcams located at each ecosystem detect player movement. Movement close to an ecosystem causes the plants to sway and the hummingbirds to pose close to the camera for the players. Accelerometers on the tablet PCs also cause the species to respond to movement as they are being carried.