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Manjusaka

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Manjusaka

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Manjusaka

Zhen Zeng
CTIN-594B: Master’s Thesis
University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts
Interactive Media and Games Division
Professors
Peter Brinson
Dennis Wixon
William Huber

April 1, 2014

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Table of Contents
1. Concept and Thesis
...............................................................................................................
3

2. World Design
..........................................................................................................................
5

3. Mechanic Design
....................................................................................................................
7

4. Building the System
...........................................................................................................
10

5. Choosing Interaction
.........................................................................................................
13

6. Level Design
.........................................................................................................................
18

7. Conclusion
............................................................................................................................
20

Works Cited
.............................................................................................................................
23

Bibliography
............................................................................................................................
24

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1. Concept and Thesis
The intention of my thesis, Manjusaka, is to explore the phrase ‘Hell is other people’, and
the possibility of using a game as social satire. Manjusaka is inspired by Dante’s Divine
Comedy, and portrays the player as a traveler who has a magic map of Hell, as well as
other worlds. The game starts with him/her entering the world through the gate on the top
of a mountain and then seeing the gate closed immediately behind them with a force that
throws him/her downhill. As is instructed by the map, to the player’s understanding, they
need to find five keys and then work their way back to the mountaintop. Only then will
the gate open again and allow the player to visit Hell. But they will find out that everyone
in this world wants to take away the map they hold at any cost.
Unlike usual adventure games, Manjusaka is anti-heroic. The player is encouraged to
survive the journey by manipulating the residents within the world to fight each other
instead of chasing after them. The ending of the game will reveal that the player
themselves are the ones who opened the gate of Hell from inside, and that they have
become the biggest villain by using other’s desires, abilities, and lives to achieve personal
survival. Upon learning the truth, the player will exit Hell, only to be sent back and
become its dark lord. The world will then be reverted to the starting point, waiting to
deceive the next traveler. The game does not explicitly explain why the player was given
the map and led to Hell or why they misunderstood where they were. However, it
indirectly implies that the character was punished and forced to take this trip to pay for
unworthy deeds, never meant to leave Hell, whether they had survived the journey or not.
If the player loses the game, they will be consumed by Hell. By winning it, they become
the prime evil, bound to Hell forever, and becoming part of the magic map, guiding the
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next punished soul to their judgment day.
Manjusaka was named after a flower, which by Asian mythology (Wikipedia: Lycoris) is
a kind of flower that only grows in Hell. After a person dies, it presents them with their
memories, allowing them to see their rights and wrongs before re-incarnation. The more
someone did wrong, the redder the flower becomes. The social status of their next life
will be based on how red the manjusaka turned. It is said that there is a bridge between
the living world and the supernatural world, but manjusaka would never grow across.
Therefore, every soul sees the flower twice, once they enter Hell and once they leave it
for a new life. Thus Manjusaka also has another name, Higanbana, from Buddhist
scriptures, which means ‘the flower on the other shore’. The game intends to use this
metaphor. The only way of getting in and out of Hell is the gate, like the bridge, and the
keys to open it are manjusaka petals. The world itself is shaped like a giant manjusaka
flower, which by the end of the game will be colored with the blood of the residents who
were directly or indirectly killed by the player.

Figure 1 Manjusaka
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The phrase ‘Hell is other people’ was first used by Jean-Paul Sartre in his famous play No
Exit, which told a story of three damned souls being locked up in one room in Hell and
were forced to endure each others’ eternal company as means of punishment. The
quotation is a reference to Sartre’s ideas about the look and the perpetual ontological
struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object in the world of another consciousness
(Danto 1975).
I borrowed this phrase from No Exit as the core concept for Manjusaka, but meant to
stretch it further, depicting a Hell that looks very similar to a human world with a small
but complete social structure and division.

2. World Design
The world was inspired by the seven deadly sins and other references to seven as a
magical number. The game world of Manjusaka consists of seven areas, each with a
theme word. These are: Belief, Power, Fame, Work, Nature, Poverty and Conscience.
Each area inhabits a non-player character (NPC) group with occupations or life attitudes
related to their theme word. For instance, people who have strong religious beliefs will
gather in the Belief area, while all the military personnel will gather in the Power area.
Each area is isolated from others by geological barriers and by social values.
Such divisions were based on a mix of various mythologies, social science and urbanism
sources. For example, Jati, a term used to denote the thousands of clans, tribes,
communities and sub-communities, and religions in India, is separated into five
categories by Brahminical texts: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras, and Outcasts;
Brahmins being priests (Belief), Kshatriyas the ruling class and military elites (Power),
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Vaishyas the working class (Work), Shudras the servants and slaves (Poverty) and
Outcasts who do not belong (Nature). Certain groups such as Dalit, are self-designated
Indians who are against the caste system (Conscience) (Sadangi 2008). Though Fame is
not included in this system, it is undeniably a part of modern day society and in turn a
necessary part in Manjusaka.
I find the following definition important and relevant in the way I categorized and
assimilated the ancient Indian caste system into Majusaka:
"Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they
occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation
(in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their
role in the social organization of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of
the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it.
Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another
owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy."
(Lenin 1919)
Reaching into various social values in cultures old and new, Manjusaka makes the
statement that such social structure is common and is a proof of ‘human torturing each
other’. The act of classifying and discriminating people based on belief, race, gender, or
wealth is of a greater harm to living humans than any threat of a torturous afterlife. Hell
does not necessarily mean a physical painful place; it could well be referred to as a
mentally suffocating place where isolated sub-societies practice evil on each other, which
ironically resembles our present-day society.
The isolation between areas is quite a common phenomenon in modern cities as a result
of rapid urbanization processes in recent centuries. As cities grow and more people
swarm in, the rich will occupy more favorable sections of the city while the poor are
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more likely to occupy the leftovers (Grant 2008), usually taking the form of rundown
dangerous spaces and slums (Todaro 1969). People also tend to gather by social groups,
like the Vatican City inside Roma and the Old City inside Jerusalem, which both have
concentrations of religious people. Each social group share common characteristics,
morals, values, and goals. Among different groups, however, there will be tension and
discord.
Through mimicking the human world, the social groups in Manjusaka are more absolute
and the conflicts between them are magnified and emphasized. In fact, conflicts are the
core mechanic of gameplay. The NPCs in each area have different action patterns and
abilities that they use against other groups, which the player is encouraged to instigate.

3. Mechanic Design
In order to build a system that could represent the society previously mentioned and
confront it in an acute but simple way, Manjusaka exaggerated certain qualities of a
given social group, mainly negative qualities, and ignored the others, which is the most
common technique used in satirical literature (Claridge 2010). Since the premise is
delivered through the actions and reactions of NPCs, all the qualities chosen need to find
their expression in either the movement or the attacking patterns.
Each area is given 2-3 verbs that are strongly associated with its theme word. They are
listed below in Table 1.
Area Theme Word Verbs
Belief Persuade, Pretend
Power Command, Analyze
Fame Follow, Lie, Distract
Work Dig, Repeat
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Area Theme Word Verbs
Poverty Beg, Steal, Hate
Nature Escape, Betray
Conscience Regret, Justify
Table 1 Theme Words and related Verbs
Breakdown of Verbs
Persuade and Pretend: Belief
Refer to hypocritical and intolerant qualities obsessed religious extremist share.
Command and Analyze: Power
Rigid hierarchical social order, where absolute obedience is required to the command
from higher levels.
Follow, Lie and Distract: Fame
Target characters are paparazzi and celebrities. The former swarms toward news and the
latter lies to get attention, both of which change their course fast when things of greater
interest or easier access appear.
Dig and Repeat: Work
Specific type of worker – the gold digger was chosen to represent, and iterated very
literally with a massive digging ground and a winding digging path that repeats itself. To
suit the incidence that has happened to this world, the diggers are not digging gold, but
maps like the one player has.
Beg, Steal and Hate: Poverty
They are straightforward for a slum or ghetto area in any city.
Escape and Betray: Nature
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These are social outcasts that have been labeled as escapists. Due to their lack of contact
with the majority, habitants in nature also emphasize on individuality and intimacy,
therefore could lead to a friend or foe, helping or betraying the player.
Regret and Justify: Conscience
Symbolic and metaphorical, it is a place where the player will return to for recovery and
for evaluation of what they have done. It is both a spiritual and a physical place.
Once the verbs were determined, the next step was to iterate them each through a
mechanic. Some of the verbs were very easy to prototype, like Follow, where NPCs
would chase after the player whenever they spot them. It worked especially interesting
when combined with Distract, when the player could make NPCs stop tailing them by
throw gold on the ground. On the other hand, the verb Lie was much harder to iterate as
an action and a dialog system was built to properly convey it.
Area Theme Word Successful verbs Unsuccessful verbs
Belief Persuade Pretend
Power Command, Analyze -
Fame Follow, Distract Lie
Work Dig, Repeat -
Poverty Beg, Steal Hate
Nature - Escape, Betray
Conscience - Regret, Justify
Table 2 Theme Word and Verbs Iteration
Escape and Betray both failed because neither is a persistent action and both requires
another verb to make a contrast. The player would need to stay before escaping and be-
friend before betraying. Regret and Justify are heavily personal and arbitrary, which
showed no cohesiveness with NPC actions.
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The prototypes of each helped us choose verbs that were more provoking and fun, but
they also demonstrated a dangerously complex system we would have to build and teach
the players to use. That means, the entire focus of the gameplay will be put on tuning the
interactions among different social groups and them with the player. This naturally led to
a tone. Manjusaka is not about a hero or a hero’s journey. The player does not seek to
fight evil or protect the weak. They will not learn new skills, grow stronger, or find better
weapons. The only resources they will have are the habitants of the world. As a victim
whose life is on edge because of the map they have, the player suffers the burden of being
labeled as just a ‘map bearer’. Because of this disassociation of value and emotions
connected with the human condition, the game pushes the player to lose empathy for the
people of the world and further objectify them as vicious weapons that could be turned
against each other. Winning the game isn’t a victory but rather a heavy statement, making
the player the worst calamity of the world, even to a greater degree than what was
inflicted on them throughout gameplay.

4. Building the System
It is rare to have NPCs be the main defenders and obstacles of a game at the same time.
The closest example would be “Let You and Him Fight”, which describes a triangle
relationship where two men fight for a woman (Berne 1964). It is a concept often used in
superhero movies, where a villain creates a misunderstanding between two heroes and
gets them into fighting each other instead of working together against him. So it is also
commonly called ‘Marvel misunderstanding’ (TVTropes: Let’s You and Him Fight).
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A small society of seven agents that a player can manipulate may resemble online
multiplayer games. But multiplayer games do not emphasize on computer programmed
NPCs. The agents a player is facing and playing with/against are real human minds. We
could never build a good enough AI system to support a full imitation of a multiplayer
situation. In fact, we had been doing the opposite – dehumanizing all NPCs until they
were only a few verbs or an action. In such case, we as designers need not to think about
human behavior patterns but instead treat each NPC group as a unit in a stable ecosystem.
Within an ecosystem, each component occupies a spatial area and maintains a
relationship or interaction with its neighboring units. Often there is a growth and
consumption cycle and a food chain, or food web, which keeps the system stable.
Treating Manjusaka’s NPC system as an ecosystem, we’d have to define its cycle as well
as its food web. We aim to point out the extremes and wrongness in each group to say,
“No one is innocent.” There isn’t an absolute exploiter and victim relationship, thus it is
like a grassland ecosystem with no predator. All major animals live off the same
organism in peace unless threatened to fight over resources. This principle is what makes
the player an intruder with great resource, which starts the chaos that breaks the world’s
balance.
An ecosystem handles intruders in two ways: 1. Accommodate and absorb it into the
system or 2. Failure to adapt and breaking of the system by the intruder. The result will
depend on the system’s resilience (Folke, et al. 2004). In the game Manjusaka,
accommodating intruder would mean the player is eliminated by the NPCs and surrenders
their resource, the map. But the player’s goal is to take the second route; to throw the
system out of balance, collapsing and eliminating NPCs. The resilience here would be
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how each group interacts, collaborates, and fights with each other. In order to design this
system, we had to map out a complete set of encounters between every two groups,
which is illustrated in Figure 2. Note that each group still needs to follow their verbs,
which means we had to arbitrarily define a result for every confrontation between two
verbs. This resembles the design of the Dungeons & Dragons system (Williams and
Winkler 2006).

Figure 2 Theme Word Relationships
While the concept of seven areas was very promising and meaningful, mapping it out
turned out to be very difficult and teaching the system to a player was even harder. As
designers, we want players to be able to understand what they should do and the message
we mean to convey in the game. Therefore, a less complicated system with less
information to remember would allow the player to gain a better understanding of the
premise and define a clearer strategy for gameplay. In order to do this, we had to cut
down the numbers, making fewer NPC groups than seven. But in turn, that created
another problem and questions. How many areas should be kept and which ones?

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5. Choosing Interaction
We revisited the successful prototypes we built, combining the verbs of the areas and
play testing them. Based on playtest feedback, we arranged them in the order of players’
favor in Table 3.
Rank Area Theme Word Successful verbs
1 Belief Persuade
2 Work Dig, Repeat
3 Fame Follow, Distract
4 Power Command, Analyze
5 Poverty Beg, Steal
6 Nature -
7 Conscience -
Table 3 Theme Word Ranking Based on Verb Successfulness
The prototype that players found most interesting was the one for Belief. In this
prototype there are three groups of cult fanatics who will try to chase down and
persuade/consume the player. Though the three groups seem to be in harmony when left
alone, if they ever run into each other, they will fight and disregard the player. Each
group features a different specialty: agility, higher damage (persuasion) per second, or
bigger attack (persuade) range. The design requires the player to lead fanatics that are
following them to a differing group, so they may enter a ‘heated discussion’ and leave the
player alone until one side is lost. If the player was ‘persuaded’, then the game is lost.
The number of surviving fanatics should always be kept roughly equal. Because if two
groups finish off each other and the third group remains strong, the players might not be
able to eliminate the third by themselves.
We put three groups here because two groups did not require the player to maintain a
balance; it simply led them into each other and the player was free to go. Four or more
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groups, the interaction and gameplay stayed the same while the complexity increased.
Since we preferred the player to have an effective and enjoyable experience, where they
were able to manage all the resources and understand the concept, we decided that three
groups was an efficient combination for the purpose of the gameplay.

Figure 3 the Belief Prototype
Since three groups worked well for the Belief prototype, we assumed that the same idea
could work for the entire game. That is to say, we could try picking three most interesting
areas from the seven original ones, and focus on improving the interactions between
them. That way we may also gain the designers more time to polish the narrative, making
sure players would understand the theme of the game while playing it. We also found out
that there is a theory of triangle stability in social groups. ”Exploratory analysis of data
from the global steel industry revealed firms' tendency to form transitive triads, in which
three firms all have direct ties with each other, especially within blocks defined by
geography or technology.“ (Ravindranath, Gnyawali and He 2004)
Since the game’s core mechanic will be based on triangle relations, as inspired by the
Belief prototype, we decided that Belief should not be one of the three areas in the main
game, because it is self-contained. We instead decided to make Belief the tutorial. We
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then evaluated the other four successful areas and picked the three we want to keep the
most.
In the Poverty prototype, NPCs will surround the player and block their way. If the
player helps them by giving certain percentage of their life, they will in turn fight the
trailing enemies for the player. If the player chooses to attack them, they will die under
one blow and will not fight back. If the player refuses to do anything for a certain length
of time, they will leave but with a possibility of stealing a percentage of the player’s life.
This prototype did not work out well because it caused much more confusion than
expected, and it was hard to utilize the NPCs help, since the player did not control them.

Figure 4 the Poverty Prototype
In the Power prototype, NPCs are divided into four groups in a hierarchy. Each group
will analyze the strength of the upcoming enemies and deliver enough force to strike. The
lower numbered group is in the outer circle, will attack enemies first, and will not end the
battle until either side is eliminated. The only time that a lower numbered group will
change course is when higher numbered groups are under siege. We managed to have
some interesting puzzles created around this concept, but generally it was hard to
balance.
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Figure 5 Characters of the Power Area
The Fame prototype featured NPCs who will call on all members of their group and
chase down the player together. The player can choose to fight back and kill a few of
them or lead them to another place. It later becomes a base of starting the NPC
interactions and needs to be combined with other prototypes for fun gameplay. The
player may also throw an object to distract them and buy themselves time to get away.

Figure 6 the Fame Prototype
In the Work prototype, NPCs are focused on digging and will ignore the player by
default. However, if the player or NPCs from other areas stand in their digging path, they
will attack ferociously. The basic operation for the player is to avoid their path as much
as possible. This turned out to be a good action packed puzzle system. When combined
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with the Fame prototype, the player can also attract and lead the Fame group into the
Work group’s deadly blows.

Figure 7 Characters of the Work Area
Judging from analysis, Power, Fame and Work all had better feedback than Poverty. So
we came to the following conclusion:
Manjusaka consists of three areas: Power, Fame and Work. And Belief will be the
tutorial level. The other three areas – Poverty, Nature, Conscience – were combined and
simplified to several individuals who are social outcasts that are in charge of healing,
selling and explaining.
Each of the three chosen NPC types will inherit one specialty from the three fanatic cults.
This was based on the property of each group. Power has higher Damage per Second
(DPS) because they are trained military personnel. Fame has faster movement speed
because they always chase after something. Work has the biggest attack range because
they have digging tools that can reach far distances. Each group still functions as they did
in the earlier prototypes. This consistency is to tie them with their ethics.
Since some of them move faster and farther than others, the basic elimination triangle
looks like this, as shown in Figure 8:
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Figure 8 the Elimination Triangle
The player character may confront some military personnel in the Power area, then lead
them to the Work area, and have the blocked diggers consume the soldiers. The
followers in the Fame area also can be led into the Work area, or they can be led to the
Power area by the player or by a thrown distracting object. Balancing the three types of
NPCs is still the key to winning the game.

6. Level Design
Besides tuning the number of NPC data, where to place them and how each of the
sections are connected and divided, also will affect the player’s strategy. Level design of
this game largely depends on the urban planning of the world. As mentioned previously,
this world had a stable social structure before the player broke the balance. Their balance
relied on what is commonly seen in our society: social stratification and classification of
people into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions, which often results in
urban spatial segregation. In his book The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848, Eric
Hobsbawm's states:
"Urban development in our period [1789–1848] was a gigantic process of class
segregation, which pushed the new labouring poor into great morasses of misery
outside the centres of government and business and the newly specialized
residential areas of the bourgeoisie.”
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Given that in modern Western societies, stratification is broadly organized into three
main layers: upper class, middle class, and lower class. Though real life segregation is
mostly horizontal, a common sci-fi setting is to take the classes literally, developing a
vertical urban segregation with upper, middle, and lower layers, each inhabiting the
according class: the poor live at the bottom in smog and darkness, while the rich live in
the upper levels with sunlight and fresh air. A famous example is the 1927 film
Metropolis by Fritz Lang, set in a futuristic dystopia that wealthy industrialists rule the
vast city of Metropolis from high-rise tower complexes, while a lower class of
underground-dwelling workers toil constantly to operate the machines that provide its
power (Lang 1927).
The four remaining groups in Manjusaka cannot be simply classified as rich-medium-
poor, but they do follow a certain descending order of power and wealth. Especially since
the world is Hell, the very central desire and resource is the access to the gate of Hell,
both spiritually and physically. Therefore, we placed the gate itself on the highest point of
the world, with the Belief group on the same level. We also made certain to start the
tutorial immediately and familiarize the player with the core mechanics. The Power
group, slightly lower on the elevation, will guard a squared and disciplined four-layer
tower. The Fame group, completely over-shadowed by the gigantic tower, is an
‘Everbright City’ lit by countless artificial lights and does not have day-night cycles.
Lastly, the Work group, whose habitat is half on the ground and half under, brings in
dark tunnels as an interesting puzzle element.
The separation of each group is realized by placing them on separate Manjusaka pedals,
which spread out horizontally and are connected to the center stamen by narrow alleys.
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7. Conclusion
The famous MDA framework breaks the consumption of games into three distinct
components: Rules, System and ‘Fun’; and establishes their design counterparts:
Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. Players will normally understand a game in the
order of Fun, System, and Rules, while designers approach it the other way around. It
also points out that a designer should consider both the player and design perspectives
when making a game (Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek 2004).
The design process of Manjusaka adopts a player’s perspective. It starts with Fun or
Aesthetic and meaning, holding on to the phrase 'Hell is other people’. Then the System
(Dynamic) came forward, a social structure with seven areas each bearing qualities that
could reinforce the concept. Last but not least, Rules (Mechanic) were established; the
verbs for each area and how they should interact with each other.
The development process, however, followed a designer’s perspective. Once the design
was formalized, we built several prototypes around each verb, to build and test the
Mechanic. Once we knew which mechanic would work and which would not, building
an understandable Dynamic that the player could use led us to the important decision of
cutting seven areas down to three. When the system design was finalized, we came back
to the name of the game ‘Manjusaka’ and the thesis base ‘Hell is other people,’ making
sure they were represented through interactions, narrative and symbolism in objects and
in the environment, thus completing the development with our desired Aesthetic.
There were several pros and cons we found out with our framework.
Pros:
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a) We started with a strong concept and were able to hold on to it, iterating on it
throughout development. It often happens in game development, that an initial
concept is underrepresented so the developers can devote more time fulfilling the
mechanic. With Manjusaka, we refused to adopt any mechanic before we could make
sure each step further in the design was emphasizing ‘Hell is other people’.
b) We were critical about the mechanic and innovated on rarely seen ones: triangle
relation and making NPCs fight each other for the player. It took social structure
research, a complete world map design and sixteen prototypes to find the best option.
If we had started with a core mechanic, this game would have been completely
different and highly possibly not resonating with the thesis concept we had in mind.
Cons:
a) We were not able to enter production until design was done. Since the development
happened after we knew which prototypes we would build, the engineers couldn’t
start working early. The artists couldn’t start either before we were certain about the
qualities and personalities of NPCs in each area. It took us a long time to finalize on
the seven areas and then each of their verbs, thus greatly shortening our production
time. Once engineers started working on prototypes, designers couldn’t progress
anymore until they could see and test each one. This cycle happened again when we
were cutting down the number of areas. It limited the team’s productivity and
restrained the engineers from building a healthy system early.
b) Neither the concept nor the core mechanic we chose was commonly used in games,
which made our design process incredibly difficult. There were hardly any previous
works we could refer to in order to avoid pitfalls. We had to imagine how the system
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could work, and almost every lesson we learned was through trial and error. To
present, the designers are still making attempts to balance the triangle relationship.
In general, making Manjusaka was an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. By trying out a
new idea, we successfully followed the MDA framework and achieved a meaningful and
fun art game. Manjusaka is proof that a game can touch on social satire with a suitable
carefully chosen mechanic.

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Claridge, Claudia. Hyperbole in English: A Corpus-based Study of Exaggeration. 2010.

Danto, Arthur. "Chapter 4: Shame, or, The Problem of Other Minds." In Jean-Paul
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Folke, C., et al. "Regime Shifts, Resilience, and Biodiversity in Ecosystem
Management." Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 2004: 557-
581.

Grant, Ursula. Opportunity and exploitation in urban labour markets. 2008.

Hunicke, Robin, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. "MDA: A formal approach to game
design and game research." AAAI Workshop on Challenges. Game AI, 2004. 04-
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Metropolis. Directed by Fritz Lang. Produced by Erich Pommer. UFA, 1927.

Lenin, Vladimir. A Great Beginning. 1919.

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TVTropes Contributors. "Let's You and Him Fight." TV Tropes.
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Bibliography
Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming: Essays on algorithmic culture. Vol. 18. U of
Minnesota Press, 2006.

Goldstein, Harvey, and Philip Noden. "Modelling social segregation." Oxford Review of
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Swink, Steve. Game feel: a game designer's guide to virtual sensation. CRC Press, 2008.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Zeng, Zhen (author)

Core Title Manjusaka

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 04/23/2014

Defense Date 04/17/2014

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag game design,Hell,MDA framework,OAI-PMH Harvest,social satire

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Brinson, Peter (committee chair), Huber, William (committee member), Wixon, Dennis (committee member)

Creator Email zhenzeng@usc.edu,zzorlando10@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-383062

Unique identifier UC11295356

Identifier etd-ZengZhen-2404.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-383062 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-ZengZhen-2404.pdf

Dmrecord 383062

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Zeng, Zhen

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA