By Kenneth King Ko and Dominique Manahan
BAGUIO CITY, PHILIPPINES – On May 8, 2025, the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences (ALLS) through the VAMR project team representatives led by Dr. Didith Rodrigo, Dr. Eric Vidal, Kenneth Ko, and Alvaro Pato went to the University of the Cordilleras, Baguio City to conduct a workshop on the AVRE Framework in conjunction with the PCSC 2025. The title of the workshop was “CREATING VR ESCAPE ROOM GAMES USING THE ATENEO VIRTUAL REALITY ESCAPE (AVRE) FRAMEWORK,” which had the goal of showcasing the game engine that enables developers to create virtual reality applications, and design VR experiences that aim for an escape-room approach. There were a total of 15 participants.
Dr. Eric Vidal (middle) welcomes the workshop participants.
The workshop included discussion of the history and involvement of ALLS in many undergraduate and graduate studies in Ateneo, focusing on learning from varying methodologies such as games, as well as its endeavors in collaborating with departments in other fields, such as in health. Afterwards, discussion on the technology track record of the laboratory, followed by the frameworks for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality implemented by ALLS took place, including its applied uses. One notable example was the Igpaw series of games, which made use of the Mobile Augmented-Reality Games for Instructional Support (MAGIS) framework, a precursor to the currently being developed Ateneo Virtual Reality Escape (AVRE) framework.
The AVRE Framework was discussed in relation to its subsystems, particularly the inventory system, the object interaction system, the event authoring system and the teleportation system. Each system was discussed by the lead developers and its use and implementation was demonstrated to the workshop participants. Finally, the games making use of the AVRE framework were showcased to the participants, namely the Heritage Hero: The Villa Escudero VR Game, as well as the work-in-progress build of Heritage Hero: The Secrets of the “Golden Era”. Some workshop participants also managed to test out the games for themselves.
One of the workshop participants volunteered to try out the VR game developed using the AVRE Framework.
During the playtesting session, participants were offered to raise any questions they had. Questions from the participants included the functionalities of the framework, such as whether or not they were optional (e.g., is the teleportation system required), optimizations needed to be taken for different platforms such as mobile and PC (e.g., triangle count reduction, texture compression, mesh decimation), as well as general workflow discussions with regard to game development, all of which were answered by the team.
A group photo of the VAMR team along with all the participants of the workshop.
After the question and answer portion, the participants were invited to participate in the upcoming AVRE Framework workshop, which was set to be held in June 2025, after which the workshop concluded.
For announcements of future workshops, please follow the Facebook page of ALLS: https://www.facebook.com/ALLS.ADMU
