CREATORS of a video game wherein the players explore a 3D virtual model of St Barnabas’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Nottingham, hope that it is going to teach younger generations in regards to the importance of protecting local heritage.
The game, Pugin’s Revival, is a component of the cathedral’s Restoring Pugin project, which seeks each to revive the unique early Victorian decorations on the east end and to have interaction the broader public with its story.
The video-game project is led by Professor Benachir Medjdoub, a specialist in digital architecture, at Nottingham Trent University (NTU). It is a component of a wider £120,000 research project with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and involves game-technology research at NTU. It was designed with help from pupils on the Loughborough Schools Foundation.
“The children we’ve worked with were instrumental in designing this game to make it engaging for the following generation in order that they’ll appreciate and understand how and why our historic architecture should be saved,” Professor Medjoub said.
“For example, it was the kids’s idea to put Pugin because the narrator. They learned how he was a outstanding architectural figure within the early Victorian period and that he was the mastermind behind the design of Nottingham Cathedral.”
Players of the sport must save the cathedral from break by the hands of “structural monsters”. They face threats from the crack, humidity, and mildew monsters who damage the constructing’s fabric. The game also features riddles hidden in secret chests, and a map to guide the players. At the tip, a quiz tests the knowledge that they’ve gained.
Professor Medjdoub said that the kids “also wanted to incorporate the monsters as metaphors for the various ways in which damage occurs to heritage buildings, making it a more engaging technique to learn”.
He continued: “It’s vital that we not only raise awareness, but additionally give children the knowledge from a technical point of viewpoint of how these buildings must be maintained.”
A 20-minute version of Pugin’s Revival is being provided for schools and community spaces across Nottinghamshire, while a one-hour version is on the market for more serious gamers. NTU has said that a smartphone version can be created.
The project manager of the Restoring Pugin project, Jane Hellings, said: “Pugin’s Revival is a brilliantly engaging and unique tool for young people which can form a part of a careers pack rolled out to varsities — eventually on a national basis.”
