First Announcement and Call for Papers

CGAMES 2006 USA

The 8th INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER GAMES CONFERENCE

on the theme:



AI, Mobile, Educational and Serious Games

Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 24-27th July 2006

Venue: Galt House Hotel, Louisville http://www.galthouse.com/

Located on the waterfront, this hotel offers magnificent views of the Ohio River

and is within walking distance of many attractions in downtown Louisville.

Organised by the University of Wolverhampton, UK, in association with

the University of Louisville and the IEEE Computer Society

Welcome to CGAMES’2006. This International Computer Games Conference, now in its

7th year, is acknowledged as one of the leading research conferences devoted to

advancing the theory and practice of AI in computer games.

Details of last year’s conferences can be found at

6th Conference 2005 USA

<http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1822/cgaims05.htm>

7th Conference 2006 France

www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1822/cgames05.htm

This conference brings together an international community of experts to

discuss the state-of-the-art, new research results, perspectives of future

developments, and innovative applications relevant to games development and

related areas.

For further information, please read on or go to:

<http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1822/cgames06usa.htm>

On behalf of our conference sponsors and the conference organizing committee,

we hope that you will plan to join us in Louisville in July 2006.

Qasim Mehdi (General Conference Chair) q.h.mehdi@wlv.ac.uk

Norman Gough (General Programme Chair) n.gough@wlv.ac.uk

Stephane Natkin (Int Programme Committee Chair) natkin@cnam.fr

Adel Elmaghraby (Local Conference Chair) adel@louisville.edu

Dennis E. Jacobi and Donald Anderson (Local Conference Organisers)

djacobi@intellas.com; danderson@intellas.com

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PROGRAMME

Early registration begins on the evening of 24 July 2006.

The following two days are all day sessions and include a

conference dinner one evening.

The final day is a half-day session.

There will be an optional river cruise with dinner on Saturday if there

is sufficient interest.

HOTEL

The Galt House Hotel, Louisville <http://www.galthouse.com/hotel>

The hotel offers a reduced conference rates for hotel rooms.

Please refer to CGAMES 2006 when booking.

There are two conference rooms for sessions and a separate room for the breaks.

All conference rooms are in the hotel.

CONFERENCE FEE

US$450. This fee includes the conference registration, continental breakfasts,

breaks, reception, conference dinner and a CD of the Proceedings.

There is a reduced rate for students.

Organisations may apply for advertising space at the conference.

CALL FOR PAPERS

You are invited to submit a paper on any topic related to computer games design,

development and education, and particularly papers covering the use of AI for

modelling and programming "believable characters", mobile games, multiplayer on-line,

educational and serious games. We strongly encourage the submission of papers related

to the design and the experiments of original type of games, in particular in the

fields of serious games, ubiquitous, mobile, cross media platforms and

massively multiplayer on line games.

TECHNICAL PROGRAMME

The conference will cover, but is not restricted to, the following topics.

1. Tools and systems for Games and Virtual Reality

- games platforms, games engines, middleware, sound

- interfaces and controllers, speech, motion capture

2. AI Tools

- neural networks, genetic algorithms, case-based reasoning, fuzzy systems

- Markov processes, search algorithms, rule-based AI, finite-state machines

- fuzzy systems (FuFSM), adaptive Markov models

3. Mobile and Multiuser Games

- MUDs; MMORPGs; mobile communications, games for mobile phones

- programming web games in Java, net technology, scaling game content.

4. Games Design

- games genres, creative aspects, art and design, level design, modelling

- animation, 3dsmax, Maya, Silicon Graphics, Renderman etc;

- Interactive Story Telling, scripting languages, voice interaction

5. Intelligent agents and Gamebots

- believable characters, models, agent architecture, memory, game bots

- group behaviour, anytime algorithms, JACK, JADE

6. Learning and Adaptation in Games

- reinforcement learning, machine learning, case-based systems, BDI

7. Graphics & Visualisation

- graphics cards, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality

- collision detection

- contact resolution, closest point algorithms, 3D scalability

- level-of-detail rendering, image-based rendering, photo realism

- textures, illumination and reflections, bump mapping, anti-aliasing

- physics simulation, NURBS, skeletal animation, facial animation

- rendering skins, talking heads, particle systems

8. Social/humanities aspects of games

- gender issues, violence, usability, pervasive gaming

9. Games and Homeland Security

- defence applications; Crime scene investigation; Simulation of crowd scenes

- transport systems; AI techniques for improving security

10. Serious Games

- education for Games Design, Development and Applications

- teaching games programming, languages, .NET, C++, C# etc

- OpenGL, DirectX, learning & teaching aids, technology-supported learning

- . games for education and training

Special Sessions: Proposals for organizing special sessions should be sent to
any one of the programme chairs.

PAPER SUBMISSIONS

In Word or Adobe pdf only. Submit by E-mail only.

CGAMES published format (similar to IEEE style), 2 columns at least 10 pt font,

including abstract, keywords, background, development, diagrams, results,

conclusions, references, author photo and short biography.

Extended papers and state-of the art reviews: 8 pages.

Regular papers: 5 pages.

Short research student papers on work in progress: 3-4 pages. 1-page posters.

The final paper must be submitted in pdf format for inclusion in the Proceedings.

File sizes of images should be kept small using compression (e.g. jpeg)

All papers will be subject to peer review.

Final decision on paper length will be made by referees.

For further details of the format see: http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1822/author.doc

****************************************************************************

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission 31st May 2006.

Notification of Paper Acceptance 19th June 2006

Final Paper Submission and registration 3rd July 2006.

Papers received after this deadline will not appear in the Proceedings

BEST PAPER AWARDS

The best papers will receive an Award and are refereed for possible inclusion in

The International Journal of Intelligent Games & Simulation.

Students are encouraged to attend at a reduced registration fee. They may show a

poster and/or demos of their work to the companies present at the conference.

Companies wishing to hire exhibition space for marketing/recruitment purposes

are invited to contact the organisers.

Registration and payment in advance is required for all authors.

*****************************************************************************

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

General Conference Chair:

Dr Qas Mehdi, University of Wolverhampton, UK (q.Mehdi@wlv.ac.uk)

General Programme Chair:

Professor Norman Gough, University of Wolverhampton, UK (n.gough@wlv.ac.uk)

Int Programme Committee Chair:

Pofessor Stephane Natkin (natkin@cnam.fr)

Local Conference Chair:

Professor Adel Elmaghraby, University of Louisville (adel@louisville.edu)

Local Conference Organisers:

Dennis E. Jacobi and Donald Anderson, Intellas Group LLC (danderson; djacobi@intellas.com)

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Professor David Al-Dabass (Nottingham-Trent University, UK)

Professor Marc Cavazza (University of Teesside, UK)

Dr Darryl Charles (University of Ulster, UK)

Profess David Adrian Cheock (Mixed Realities Lab, Singapore)

Professor Peter Cowling (University of Bradford, UK)

Dr Mostafa El-Said (Grand Valley State University, USA)

Professor Pascal Estraillier (University of La Rochelle, France)

Dr Colin Fyfe (University of Paisley, UK

Dr John Funge (iKuni Inc, Palo Alto, USA)

Dr Julian Gold, Microsoft Research Centre, Cambridge, UK

Dr Stefan Grunvogel (NOMADS Lab Cologne, Germany)

Professor David Kaufman, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

Dr Daniel Livingstone (University of Paisley, UK)

Dr Steve Maddock (University of Sheffield, UK)

Professor Ian M Marshall (University of Coventry, uK)

Dr Fred Mtenzi (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)

Dr Stephen McGlinchy (University of Paisley, UK)

Professor Ratan Guha (University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA)

Professor Stephane Natkin (CNAM Paris, France)

Professor Yoshihiro Okada (Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan)

Professor Mark Overmars, (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

Professor Carlos Cotta Porras (University of Malaga, Spain)

Dr John Purdy (University of Hull, UK)

Dr Jason Rutter (University of Manchester, UK)

Dr Pieter Spronck (University of Maastricht, The Netherlands)

Professor Leon Rothkrantz (University of Delft, The Netherlands)

Professor Yangsheng Wang (Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China)

Dr Ian Wright (iKuni Inc, Palo Alto, USA)

SPONSORS

University of Wolverhampton, UK

University of Louisville, USA

IEEE - Computer Society (Louisville Chapter)

IEE - Institute of Electrical Engineers

BCS - British Computer Society

SCS - EUROPE: Society for Computer Simulation

DiGRA - Digital Games Research Association

CNAM-CEDRIC, Paris, France

CNBDI (Ecole Nationale des Jeux et Media Interactifs Numériques (ENJMIN.)), Angoulême, France

Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland

Grand Valley State University, USA

Kyushu University, Japan

Microsoft Research Centre, Cambridge, UK

Mixed Realities Lab, University of Singapore

University of Maastricht, The Netherlands

Nottingham-Trent University, UK

Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany

University of Bradford, UK

University of Central Florida, Orlando, USA

University of Coventry, UK

University of Delft, The Netherlands

University of East London, UK

University of Hull, UK

University of La Rochelle, France

University of Malaga, Spain

University of Manchester, UK

University of Paisley, UK

University of Sheffield, UK

University of Teesside, UK

University of Ulster, UK

Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

Intellas Group LLC, Louisville, USA

NOMADS Lab, Cologne, German