This perhaps belongs more in the designers forum however i feel it could be crucial towards obtaining funding.
During my last meeting with Stuart, i was telling him of an excerpt from my course notes explaining that one of the tenents of game design is that it enables the user to experience otherwise dangerous scenarios in a consequence free environment, hence the massive success of the flight simulator genre.
This concept then got the gears in my brain turning, and i was thinking of other scenarios for which no one has developed a simulator for. The one that immediately came to my mind was surgery, which could have direct marketability for universities, hospitals and students as a target market. To my mind, no one has touched on this with the exception of Trauma center for the Wii, and certainly no one has ever attempted to create a serious operation simulator that could be used as a study tool for trainee surgeons.
Stuart agreed with me that this is an excellent idea and we should begin preliminary development work on this immediately upon completion of rotasphere. We should therefore look towards building a technology demonstration of afforementioned simulator, and look towards contacting the medical authorities and universities to guage their interest for potential funding.
I agree that this is an excellent idea and have done a little research around it. There are extremely high level operation simulations available at the moment which also simulate touch (as in how it feels to cut through tissue etc) however this seems to be still in the experimental stage and way beyond what we would be hoping to deliver. There also seems to be some basic Flash style operation games but again this is not something that would worry us.
Essentially what we would want to make is a high quality working 3D model of the human body which could be used to simulate a number of operations for entry level medical students to help them with their coarse. I have already discussed the idea with a friend of mine who is currently a consultant radiographer and who was previously a heart surgeon. He thinks its a good idea as previously medical students all got a dead body to play with in college which they could cut up and put back together for practice. Unfortunately less and less people are leaving their body to science which means that real life hands on experience of carrying out operations is now very limited and also very expensive. Our solution would be to create a virtual 3D software package which could simulate a number of operations and teach the basics of how to go about them. Basically the most we can hope to achieve is create a visual and interactive aid to teach a student the correct order in which to go about carrying out an operation and show potentially what could go wrong if this process is not carried out correctly.
We would then market this to medical colleges worldwide as a teaching tool. It would require a lot of research however there could be potential for funding from various health organisations or even the government if we could show that it was within our ability.
Now you may be saying to yourself that this is not a game and is actually just boring software development however I think that it also has real potential to work as a game as well. We would use the same models but just have of a game like interface and add bonus' and cool music, we could even make a Frankenstein type game where you get to cut up bodies and put them together to make new people and then hit them with a loads of electricity to wake them up. We have the potential to basically create a whole new biomedical gaming genre which could be pretty controversial and huge. Would it be cool to bring your mates round for a few beers and have a head to head heart transplant race? It would certainly be different and probably worth downloading just to check it out.
Maybe we should actually go for the game version first and then look at the training software? I don't know, but its up for discussion so let us know your thoughts.
If we did the training one we would need major research for accuracy unless it was a basic education thing for kids.
However the game version wouldn't need the this kind of accuracy so that one would get my vote..
look at this:
http://www.aeonity.com/ab/games/simulati...urgery.php
Stuart, the sensory limitations you described surrounding the user interface are not unique to this idea nor should we be disuaded by them; in real life flying pilots undergo g force and the cramped conditions of a cockpit that cannot be replicated in anything other the most expensive of flight simulators yet there is still a market for home flight simulation on the software that is not only used by home enthusiasts but accredited by real pilots. I used to have a copy of F-22 lightning 2 from Novalogic which was officially recommended by the United states air force.
What we should be looking to do with this project, is to do for surgery what Microsoft's Flight Simulator X has done for aviation. Then there is the educational debate at large. We could argue that by developing this software, it will raise the profile of the medical industry, and inspire youngsters with an interest in medicine and science in general. Its no secret that militaristic games such as call of duty, medal of honour etc have been in some way instrumental in surges of army recruitment.
Besides which, the home user interface technology has made big bounds forward in the last decade. My hope is we could one day develop a version of this software that could be compatible with X box Kinect or Playstation Move.
Yeah I think a game version is more within our ability. The surgery squad website is quite interesting. I am trying to work out how to make a fun game out of this. Should we go for a 3D version of surgery squad that is a fairly accurate account of an actual surgery?
I think a medieval/Frankenstein type surgery game could be more fun with a cool old Gothic style lab and potions bubbling about in the background and the player can use chain saws and stuff and do impossible operations such as brain transplants or even full head transplants.
(11-03-2011 10:18 AM)Stuart Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah I think a game version is more within our ability. The surgery squad website is quite interesting. I am trying to work out how to make a fun game out of this. Should we go for a 3D version of surgery squad that is a fairly accurate account of an actual surgery?
I think a medieval/Frankenstein type surgery game could be more fun with a cool old Gothic style lab and potions bubbling about in the background and the player can use chain saws and stuff and do impossible operations such as brain transplants or even full head transplants.
I think a more true to life, educational project would be more likely to loosen the purse strings of medical authorities and other parties of concern.
I would worry that with the simulator we could risk getting bogged down in medical procedures, and if the authorities decided our simulator wasn't advanced or medically accurate enough they wouldn't be interested then we'd have trouble finding an alternative market. If you're after a real pro medical learning tool you'll need to be prepared for months of research. If we did go the simulator route I'd recommend someone talk to some people in the medical authority to confirm they'd be interested in software of this kind and what features they would want to see in it, us speculating on what they'd like would be a risky idea.
Stuarts idea sounds like fun. This could also teach basic anatomy of the human body so teenagers could learn something while playing so we might still get some interest from an educational point of view (Gore off option for younger children).
(11-03-2011 02:00 PM)Rodney Wrote: [ -> ]I would worry that with the simulator we could risk getting bogged down in medical procedures, and if the authorities decided our simulator wasn't advanced or medically accurate enough they wouldn't be interested then we'd have trouble finding an alternative market. If you're after a real pro medical learning tool you'll need to be prepared for months of research. If we did go the simulator route I'd recommend someone talk to some people in the medical authority to confirm they'd be interested in software of this kind and what features they would want to see in it, us speculating on what they'd like would be a risky idea.
Stuarts idea sounds like fun. This could also teach basic anatomy of the human body so teenagers could learn something while playing so we might still get some interest from an educational point of view (Gore off option for younger children).
This really serves to highlight the importance of the mini projects. This game (or simulator) would be like an FPS but with sole concentration on close quarters activity. What we need is a basic, rolling tecnology demo to act as a feasibility study for ourselves and to prove to any potential investor we are capable of the undertaking. Once we have the necessary assets and finance it will enable us to spend more time.
Both stuart and I have friends and family in medicine, whom we can call upon to fill in the knowledge gaps. If we can attract the interest maybe of Queens medical science campus I would hope for their active participation anyway.
I like the idea of creating the educational simulation software however Rodney is correct in that it would require a huge amount of research and possible many months before we could even realistically think about moving on to the actual development stage. Also having friends and family working in the NHS in both medicine and administration I know how long it can take for decisions to be made and we could be waiting around a while to get any sort of funding especially considering our current state which is unfortuantly just a bunch of lads and computers working under an unregistered name with nothing yet to show anyone. It would be a hard sell to get funding from anyone at this stage.
Having now discussed our position with Invest NI and Enterprise Ireland I think we need to really take on board the fact that we may be on our own financialy for a bit and we really just need to make a few cool, interesting games as cheap as possible that we can distribute as cheaply as possible in the hope of raising some capital.
If we can show that we can do this and have a portfolio of a few completed games we will be in a much better position to ask for funding. Aslo if we have already shown a basic understanding of anatomy and modeling at a game level we are much more likley to be taken on to create a teaching simulator in the future.