{"id":3897,"date":"2020-08-28T10:57:34","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T14:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/?p=3897"},"modified":"2020-08-28T11:33:46","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T15:33:46","slug":"new-release-sailing-with-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/new-release-sailing-with-the-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight Pirates and Learn about Ancient Greece in New Release of the Game \u201cSailing with the Gods\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/digitalscholarship.emory.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Emory Center for Digital Scholarship<\/a> (ECDS) is excited to announce a new version of the game <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/samothraciannetworks\/the-game\/play-the-game\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Sailing with the Gods<\/em><\/a>.<em> Sailing with the Gods<\/em> is a \u201cserious game,\u201d offering both a classroom resource and a scholarly framework for bringing the human experience of ancient seafaring to life. ECDS has supported the <em>Sailing with the Gods <\/em>project since its first launch in October 2016. In Spring 2020, the Emory University Department of Classics and ECDS partnered with the Kennesaw State University (KSU) Department of Software Engineering and Game Design course \u201cEducational and Serious Game Design,\u201d led by professors Joy Li and Rongkai Guo. The work this past semester between Emory University\/ECDS and KSU has been an extremely productive partnership for training Kennesaw students in game design while building an open source <a href=\"https:\/\/news.kennesaw.edu\/stories\/2018\/serious_gaming.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">serious game<\/a>. <em>Sailing with the Gods <\/em>can be used for research and as a classroom resource in high schools and colleges to teach about the ancient world.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Play the new version Alpha 5.3 of <em>Sailing with the Gods<\/em>: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/samothraciannetworks\/the-game\/play-the-game\/#AlphaVersion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>download here<\/strong><\/a><strong>!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The ancient Greeks were master seafarers in a Mediterranean setting that was as full of risk as it was of promise. Storms and pirates, fluctuating political regimes, and rocky coasts comprised the risks; robust trade, networks of allies, and reputations that would stand the test of time were among the gains for those who put out to sea. The centrality of seafaring to Greek identity translated into the sea\u2019s central position in ritual, myth and the cultural imagination. No Greek hero failed to try their luck on the waves; no Greek ship was unmindful of epic tales, helpful nymphs and angry gods. Digital tools afford robust new frameworks for teaching, researching, and exploring this maritime world.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3902\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3902\" style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3902 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/pirate_illustration_crete.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/pirate_illustration_crete.png 1600w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/pirate_illustration_crete-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/pirate_illustration_crete-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/pirate_illustration_crete-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/pirate_illustration_crete-1536x864.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3902\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot showing a bout with pirates from Crete. Figures include pirates Eurybotas and Kourete (illustrations by Emory undergraduate student Phoebe Han) and crewmembers by past Kennesaw students: Megakles, Lysias son of Lysias, and Aethalides (illustrated by Eloisa Gallegos), Admetus and Zeno (Julee Davis), Orestes (Brooke Barrett), and Asterion (Jason Volk).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Sailing with the Gods<\/em> positions its players on the deck of the Argo, assuming the avatar of Jason, the mythic hero who led his Argonauts into the Black Sea.\u00a0 Our players take up the heroic quest for klout and a hunger for reputation based on wealth, involving bravery and monuments that announce the great deeds and networks of associates invested in sharing the tale.\u00a0 The game\u2019s main character Jason embodies the drive for fame that every Greek sailor could share, from the pirate queen Teuta to a sailor on the humblest vessel, carrying the goods that held the ancient world together. Players find themselves in the geospatial and astronomical world of the Mediterranean in 2<sup>nd<\/sup> century B.C.; they must manage the physical demands for food and water, counter dehydration and heat exhaustion, execute the rituals that protect them from storms, and negotiate, fight, and conquer the real human risks of port masters and pirate bands.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3903\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3903\" style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3903\" src=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/storm9_play.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1600\" height=\"900\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/storm9_play.png 1600w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/storm9_play-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/storm9_play-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/storm9_play-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/storm9_play-1536x864.png 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3903\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The player\u2019s first ship sailing through a storm.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/samothraciannetworks\/introduction-2\/credits\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">project team<\/a> includes Dr. Sandra Blakely (Associate Professor of Classics at Emory University) as project director; Dr. Joanna Mundy (ECDS Digital Projects Specialist) as project coordinator; and Kevin Dressel (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shinydolphin.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shiny Dolphin Games LLC<\/a>) as lead programmer and designer. Under KSU professor Joy Li (Assistant Professor of Computer Game Design and Development), three students in the aforementioned Spring 2020 course created mini-games that maximize interactions with the gods of storms and with bands of pirates: Donovan Fain, Kylie Gilde, and Timmy Hawkins have made these digital interactions a reality, and helped launch a new phase in the game\u2019s experience.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3904\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3904\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3904\" src=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/Day_view_1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"746\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/Day_view_1.png 1200w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/Day_view_1-300x187.png 300w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/Day_view_1-1024x637.png 1024w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/Day_view_1-768x477.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3904\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sail with the Argonauts! Still from the Sailing with the Gods game.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Kevin Dressel has been working on the game since 2018, providing programming and design expertise. Kevin describes the students\u2019 work, saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThis is the first build that shows off the work of the students from KSU. They&#8217;re involved in an ongoing effort to make the moment-to-moment gameplay richer. A major goal for this game is to get players engaged in the role they are playing \u2013 of being an ancient sailor. In past versions of the game, we\u2019ve had random events that pop up a simple dialog box saying \u2018There has been a storm. You have lost 3 crew members,\u2019 or \u2018Pirates have appeared and have stolen 5 kg of cargo.\u2019 Now, those two random events have been expanded into full mini-games, completely designed by the students based on input from the team. The games both feature flavor text compiled by Dr. Blakely from historical sources, and they capture the experience of storm and pirate encounters in ancient Greece.<\/p>\n<p>On the architecture side, this involved adding a new high level mini-game system and an expansion of the random event system. Now events can each have a weight, and are filtered by the state of the world. For example, now you must be in a zone that was historically populated by pirates in order to get that event. The students made modifications to the random event system to support this.<\/p>\n<p>The students have also been working on improving the game&#8217;s support for multiple resolutions. This included adjusting the UI [user interface] scaling behavior, and creating a new resolution settings menu that reads the monitor&#8217;s available resolutions and allows the user to choose. This can form the basis of a menu to allow the game to run on less powerful hardware.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Kevin added that \u201cit has been great working with the students, and I can\u2019t wait to show what they\u2019re working on next! Their ideas for the storm and pirate mini-games have influenced a larger focus on interacting with characters across the entire game, which they are working on now.\u201d<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3>More about the students who built the mini-games<\/h3>\n<p>Kylie Gilde\u2014newly graduated from Kennesaw State University with a degree in game design\u2014worked primarily on the user interfaces for both mini-games. For the pirate game, this involved creating the cards and allowing the player to drag and drop them around the screen. The storm game was more involved, requiring her to turn the idea of performing rituals to affect the difficulty into a game mechanic, complete with costs, success chances, and consequences. She also made informational screens that are consistent between the two mini-games and helped load in all the text that is displayed as part of the mini-games. Kylie is primarily a C# programmer, although she is also comfortable with Unity\u2019s shader graph and UI system and is always eager to pick up new languages and skills. You can see more of her work on <a href=\"https:\/\/gamesbykylie.weebly.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">her website<\/a>\u00a0or download some of her other games at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/games-by-kylie.itch.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/games-by-kylie.itch.io\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Donovan Fain focused his development on the code behind the storm game, spawning in clouds, boulders, and barriers for the player\u2019s ship to traverse. Donovan says: \u201cI have loved getting to know my team members and having the chance to grow and learn from each of them. <em>Sailing with the Gods<\/em> might have come into my life as a part of a course assignment, but it has become an aspect of my days that I genuinely look forward to working on and being part of. My favorite parts of working on the project have been learning about historical accuracies, learning new coding\/programming concepts and practices, and working with my team in a collaborative manner to turn paragraphs of text into interactable mini-games that anyone would enjoy. There is never a dull moment with this project, and I never find myself losing interest in its presence.\u201d \u00a0You can find out more about Donovan on <a href=\"https:\/\/donovanpanian.wixsite.com\/donovanfainportfolio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">his website<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/donovan-fain-324011184\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Timmy Hawkins\u2014who also graduated from KSU in 2020 with a degree in game design\u2014focused his work on the development of the pirate mini-game code. This turn-based card game allows players to battle pirates who attack as they sail the Mediterranean. Timmy comments: \u201cI worked on designing and implementing the pirate mini-game for <em>Sailing with the Gods<\/em>. This game was great to work on, with only a few challenges along the way for us to overcome along the way to help make this game even better. I mainly focused on the design on the pirate mini-game, as well as implementing it in a way that it was easily usable and replayable, which made for a very fun project.\u201d You can find out more about Timmy on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/timothy-hawkins-dev\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This build also includes the artwork of Emory University undergraduate student Phoebe Han (Art History and Integrated Visual Arts), who illustrated the Pirates of Crete, Kourete, Eurybotas, and Brotachus of Gortyn.<\/p>\n<h3><em>Sailing with the Gods <\/em><strong>in Recent Scholarship<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Scholarly articles about <em>Sailing with the Gods <\/em>have been included in such journals and books as <a href=\"https:\/\/thersites-journal.de\/index.php\/thr\/article\/view\/90\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>thersites<\/em><\/a> (Journal for Transcultural Presences &amp; Diachronic Identities from Antiquity to Date), <a href=\"https:\/\/thedigitalpress.org\/datam\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>DATAM:<\/em> <em>Digital Approaches to Teaching the Ancient Mediterranean<\/em><\/a>, and <em>Data Science, Human Science, and Ancient Gods: Conversations in Theory and Method <\/em>(forthcoming, December 2020).<\/p>\n<p>If you plan on using the <em>Sailing with the Gods <\/em>game in your classroom, we would love to hear about it! Email us at: <a href=\"javascript:secureDecryptAndNavigate('2KpVvNnmq7i\/S81aufkjsWe8bQjUA3t3DQzEIDx36dvkRT4z7SZ5jb15SARqpcyEFRc2NN5SOFpvMGVUyjYCP1\/8H\/0c', '36ebef40ce8d7c504895afb4ea5382fffe30fbcd7459e0c152e8de037093d98f')\">ecds [at] emory [dot] edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) is excited to announce a new version of the game Sailing with the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5452,"featured_media":3899,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[67],"tags":[382,380,7,296,384,392,391,381,187,146,383,53],"class_list":["post-3897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-ancient-greece","tag-computer-games","tag-ecds","tag-educational-resources","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-ksu","tag-open-educational-resources","tag-programming","tag-sailing-with-the-gods","tag-samothrace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/files\/2020\/08\/sailingwiththegods005.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3897"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3948,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3897\/revisions\/3948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/ecds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}