Gates Of Horus
"Gates of Horus" is an educational game based on the Virtual Egyptian Temple. It is intended for one player, takes 45 to 90 minutes to play, and is based on a question and answer interaction between the player and a tourguide priest. The game contains a hard-coded lession on Egyptian Temples. For a complete description of the game, the answers, and the script see our chapter on it from our Jacobson (2008) and the game rules.
Gates of Horus was central to our immersive learning study described in Jacobson (2008) which compared the learning effect of gameplay on a desktop computer versus a visually immersive display. In short, students who each used the all-digital dome at the Earth Theater as their personal display appeared to learn more than those who used only a desktop monitor. In the image, below, a student used a hand-held controller to move a cross-shaped cursor on the screen. She uses the cursor and the controller buttons to interact with the temple and its priest (not shown).
This image shows the latest version of Gates of Horus in a simple "Corner Cave".
You can install Gates of Horus on desktop computer with the following requirements:
- Standard PC or equivalent MAC
- Three-Button Mouse
- Speakers or headphones for the Computer.
- Windows 7, XP or Vista
- Any 1 ghz CPU.
- 512 RAM
- video card with a minimum of 512meg video RAM.
Download an installation package. WARNING: these are very large! Run the *.exe file to begin the game. It starts up with the "help" menu visible which explains the basic controls. Press "h" to dismiss it. Look here for the game rules.
PC: Gates_of_Horus_4.114.zip 470meg
MAC: GatesOfHorus.app.zip 298meg
You can also open the temple in a web browser, but you will need to install the Unity plug-in which is nearly automatic. This beta version is 217 meg, so expect a long load time. We will post a lighter version, soon.
Gates of Horus Web Beta (217meg)
Credits
The current version has new Egyptology for the Temple by Robyn Gillam, ambient music by Asa Gray, new programming by David Heimann, and new artwork by David Hopkins. The project was supported and directed by Jeffrey Jacobson. The largest difference is the move to a new software platform, Unity.
The remainder of the credits refer to the older version reported in Jacobson (2009). The Egyptology for the game itself remains the work of Lynn Holden.
Jeffrey Jacobson, Lynn Holden, and Lowry Burgess collaborated closely to produce the game's dramatic structure, interaction design, and instructional design. Holden also provided all of the content, narrative phrasing, and kept the learning activities in line with the actual meaning of the material. The game had to satisfy the experimental design described in Jacobson (2008) which has its own list of credits
Jacobson developed all software requirements, drafted the logic design, and did the software testing. Corey Davis did most of the programming with expert assistance from Jonathan Hagewood; they conducted the work as part of a contract between PublicVR and Psyonix Inc. Also, Wrecking Crew Music provided the voice actor for the Priest and the sound processing. Under Kerry Handron's, direction, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History provided the Earth Theater for testing and deployment. Her feedback during testing was quite valuable. Derek Wahila produced the photograph, above.
Gates of Horus is based on older versions of of CaveUT and VRGL which have their own credits.