The convergence of training simulations with serious games can incite trainees to a more active participation, improving their learning experience and involvement. Games are difficult and expensive to develop thus, methodologies that support both reuse throughout the M&S lifecycle and interoperability are critical. There are different M&S methodologies proposed to facilitate the development of new serious games for training. However, these methodologies typically do not provide support to the whole M&S life cycle, from behavior modeling to communication and 3D presentation and interaction. In this paper, we introduce an M&S methodology to create, reuse and interoperate 3D serious games for training. We refined and validated this methodology by applying it in a practical undergrad discipline, in which students modeled dozens of emergency management training simulations: from START triage and fire fighting to emergency command and operations system. As results, we present a few developed scenarios.
INTRODUCTIONThe Modeling and Simulation (M&S) of serious games for emergency planners and first responders training, involves the collaboration of different actors, from domain experts (commanders, trainers, first responders), to developers (engineers, designers, programmers) and project managers [1, 2, 3, 4]. Each of these actors has different visions (for what?) and missions (what? and how?) of the training that will be created, as well as different responsibilities, goals and activities during the development process [1, 3, 4]. In the literature, several papers describe the M&S life cycle for large-scale, distributed simulation environment, serious game and artifacts that are part of M&S lifecycle, such as the conceptual model, and storyboards [1 -8]. However, these methodologies do not address the full cycle for creating training scenarios with man-in-the-loop simulations, interaction and 3D visualization interface. This cycle includes from the requirement analysis to modeling of objects and characters to their rendering and animation, including features such as collision detection and physics simulation.In the first semester of 2012, our WINDIS lab created a discipline "Distributed Interactive Simulations -DIntS" for undergraduate students, to be used an observation laboratory for the life cycle of M&S of serious games for training. The students followed methods reported in the literature for the M&S process. However, in practice, the process was much more complex, especially modeling, verification and validation considering reuse, interoperability and presentation. The students designed a number of emergency response training procedures using Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA), Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) and Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS) as formalisms. We built reusable components to process the formal models. The students implemented the simulations using RTI/HLA (Runtime Infrastructure/High Level Architecture) multiuser support integrated to the Unity3D engine (a powerful 3D graphic game engine ...
