Year 2 - Week 21 - March 19th - 23rd

Finished my text project. Thing about this is I had to get the help of a friend to find me a book and a piece of text that describes a setting. As explained I don’t read that much and struggled to find a book with a descriptive piece of text, but eventually found one describing a scene from a book with no visuals/illustrations which was perfect.

The text (top left).

I wanted to go for the illustrated look/style that you would find in sort of fictional book, maybe more to that of a children’s book as the book is based on a child.

Anyway the assessment is coming up, I really don’t want to think about it but however I will predict what I may get like last time:

Game Production - Inadequate

Visual Design – Inadequate

Blog – Adequate /Good?

I’m not being as optimistic about this one, all I’m going to say for now is I don’t know if I have completed all the work and if it is to a sufficient standard but I do plan to do a ton of personal work over the Easter holiday to submit.

 

Without text.

The year is coming to an end now and I want to make sure I’ve done everything I can and set out to do.

 Green Apple.

Year 2 - Week 20 - March 12th - 16th

Finally finished my cultural project. In development of this I looked at parks and looked at some existing parks first hand.

Basically I got my inspiration from the clock tower in the centre of Leicester itself. It’ a proven ‘miniature landmark’ if you will that has brought people together. I wanted to have some sort of path or symbol around it to make it more of a memorable place that people would come together. I wanted the image to appear bright and colour so it would be more attractive to people as a place to meet which would turn it into a popular area.

I made it in colour however decided I would grey scale it, thus sort of learning from the mistake of the Paris Project.

In life drawing I was told that I need to be faster when doing blind contour work etc, now the problem with trying to work fast is that the quality of the work tends to be poorer in that case and to be honest I’ve learnt from that in the past. I can’t work fast, I can only work at my own pace in which if I take my time the better pieces of work are produced.

My ideas for the project.

Personally I prefer line drawings/outline drawings, I don’t mind rendering but it’s certainly not my strong suit, I want to possibly try work on my textures over the next month, not just in 2D but 3D as well with personal work which I’ll post soon.

Y2 S2 T17 - Elements of Game Design - Part 6 - Documentation

1 - For my game, I would like (for this task) to create an adventure based RPG, this kind of game would be for a Nintendo Wii or 3DS for a younger audience aged 3+.

Technology to create the game would be 3DS Max, PhotoShop, Crazy Bump and UDK to help create game assets and textures etc.

The game will work in the way that the player would be able to choose from a young male or female character to play as (so it isn’t gender biased) and basically the game would work in a similar way to a typical Zelda title but would be turned based (as in battling). So obviously the young adventurer would have to make his or her way through a world map exploring things like caves and buildings etc to finally reach the end of the game where they would fight the final boss in an attempt to save the land (let’s say). They would have to make their way through puzzles, by moving and destroying objects etc in order to unlock new things, collect money, upgrade weapons to become stronger and take on each enemy as they get progressively stronger throughout start to finish.

Obviously the land would be full of other people that you would meet, enemies, bosses and assets for weapons and props for objects etc where needed.

2 – Lead character is obviously who the player chooses, in this case it can be either male or female.

Male_Character.max/Female_Character.max

9000 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

3- None player character. Would probably be the lead characters mum or dad for starters, obviously there would be many of these throughout the course of the game.

Main_Character_Mum.max

9000 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

4- Vehicle would be a bike for the main character; this could be something the player acquires mid-way through the game to navigate easier through the game. As it is a young character it couldn’t be anything more than a bike.

Bike.max

2500 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

5- Environment would probably be a level in itself like a cave that the player explores. It would have to be look cluttered, possibly dusty, cracks on the walls, holes in the ground, doors to pass through and final/sub boss room.

Cave.max

100,000 Triangle limit.

Texture budget: using either 1024x1024 for small rooms or 2048x2048 for larger areas. D/N/S

6- For a prop, one of them would be a house that is not enterable just to decorate the environment, for example the starting area of the game could be based in a village and have different variation of the same house.

House.max

Texture budget: 1024x1024 D/N/S

2000 triangle budget.

All in all if this were not a hypothetical game I would go into further detail about everything, but for the purpose of this task I don’t want to ramble on, as I’d go on forever. There is much more to explore such as all the props, the Art style, the world of the game itself, characters, levels and other vehicles, weapons and things the player would collect not to mention the story etc.

To be honest after researching and writing this I want to develop this idea further into a fully working game!

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3384/the_anatomy_of_a_design_document_.php

http://www.dwgames.net/Files/Run/Run%20Design%20Document.pdf

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1709/design_document_play_with_fire.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_design_document

Y2 S2 T22 - Creativity, the talent myth and craft

Creativity is something that allows us to solve a problem or make up something that is new as a form of entertainment etc. Creativity is the way we perceive something, ideas generate from things round us or what’s just in our heads (on the mind). I believe that talent doesn’t exist; maybe people are just lucky at what they do or just have their own way/style of doing something that is good. Just because a person is said to be good at something doesn’t necessarily make them creative. When we look at Art for example, people can just pick up a paint brush and colours and make something, weather it is good or not is judged by others around them, a person that knows nothing about Art should not be looked at in the way that they could not ever do it, because anything is possible. It wasn’t so long ago we looked at the ‘talent myth’ and hard graft, and what you have to look at is that a so called ‘talented’ person is producing a piece of work that is to a ‘high quality’ where as a person that works hard will achieve the high quality outcome but however it may take them longer and they may take another route about it.

Look at our course for example; it is set up in a way that it teaches you about perspective straight off the bat, immediately from learning about perspective I became better drawing, drawing objects and environments and even organic shapes that I may have struggled with in the past. I believe anyone who doesn’t know a thing about Art could easily come onto this course and succeed with a degree by the end of it weather they have college and school qualifications or not. Building your skills from level 1 to 100 can be done in no time as long as you work hard.

Building up skills to create things is the way forward to get better at something, take 3DS Max for example, I had barely touched a 3D program in my life before it and now I can pretty much make anything I want and throw it into a game engine. Once you have a basic knowledge of something it’s all about taking the time to learn the advanced techniques, once you become better at something the possibilities start to open up more of what you can do and thus stimulates the creativeness that can be brought about by it.

Gaming is an outcome of creativity; you only have to walk into a entertainment shop to see what creativity is, whether it’s through gaming, music or film etc.  What’s displayed on the shelves is the outcome of creativity. Creativity is allows you to either limit yourself to something or enhance what it is you have, for example you can build upon what you’ve got for example a video game can be made better by fixing, adding or taking out things within it, so I wouldn’t say it’s limited. The whole team that works on a video game has got a creative job, because each person whether they are a designers, Artist, programmer, musician etc has a creative job on at hand to produce (or in other words make up) something that is going to be a part of the game itself, so ideas (creativity) come about to make it happen.

I think creativity in gaming is not just about how it’s made however I think that even the players themselves can have an impact on creativity in the actual gameplay themselves. I remember once watching something on TV about the game Spore. Spore is basically a monster creator (as far as I’m aware) and basically they had millions of people all over the world creating monsters that the actual designers of the game couldn’t even think of themselves. In which proves games allow the player to be creative just as an example it shows how games are creative.

http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/02/75-creative-uses-of-the-spore-creature-creator/

Like I explained in one of my previous blogs I said how Super Mario Galaxy used that odd physics engine, Nintendo never cease to amaze me by what new thing they can come up with next, looking at how they used a touch screen to play games and now we have motion plus to play them they really have always shined above the rest to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeru_Miyamoto

Miyamto the creator of Mario, Donkey Kong and Legend of Zelda etc have all been hugely successful and show different ideas and styles throughout which is extremely creative, you could say that Nintendo are a company that experiment on video games and they do it right.

I think that being an Artist, you are creative in the way that you express your ideas through drawing them which is a creative process. When you think of an idea you convey it on paper or to a canvas, I would like my ideas or creativity to be acknowledged by other in that they are possibilities in a development process to a final outcome or to see a meaning behind it. I am definitely skilful and not talented as I said it doesn’t exist to be successful in the gaming industry I would say that you need to have ideas and put them into practise as it’s essentially all about development and of course be hard working. 

Year 2 - Week 19 - March 5th - 9th

Finished my Paris project. Problem was that I wanted to do a grey scale final piece in Photoshop, however it didn’t go as planned.

I don’t know what went wrong it just didn’t go as I had imagined in my head, so I found myself rendering the final sketch I had drawn.

I went for the typical street café scene you usually find in Paris, or pretty much around France itself. I looked into Art Nouveau, in which is something I had studied back in college. 

Everything with Art Nouveau or even Art Deco is that everything is over decorated. Basically when looking at Art Nouveau inspired designs you’ll find that everything is form over function. Everything is made to look pretty and not do what it should as good because of it. Paris itself is probably the ‘prettiest’ city on the globe, with everything based on ‘romance’, ‘love’ and fashion etc. Everything must look beautiful almost, just like watching the film Angel-A. Everything in that film is designed to make it look good, everything is expensive and over priced and everyone and everything is based upon looks.

This brings me to a sort of question about Game Art and Design, I personally believe something should do what it is meant to do rather than look amazing good. But it sort of asks the question of do you go for something looking great by focusing more on textures or go for something just doing its job, via modelling? We learn both, we want to make models but we also texture them, it’s like we’re constantly asked to balance things out which is difficult and makes our work hard enough.

I go for function more, but as an Artist you should be looking at your form, but because we’re making in game assets we’re forced to try and balance it out in a way, sometimes it’s asking to go more with looks and sometimes function. What makes things more appealing to us is when an object hits both of these things at high detail.

Take the iPhone for example, everybody wants one because it can almost do anything but also looks sleek and smart, it’s almost a stylish and is a part of ‘hardware fashion’? Maybe I’m getting way to ahead of myself. I think understanding these really help within the gaming industry because we’re essentially working together to produce a product to sell to the world.

I want to be a game designer and work on level design hopefully and I think that knowing these types of things is a sort of fundamental skill that helps in the process with coming up with ideas for games. We’re looking at how a game works (function) but also what it is going to look like (form/aesthetics) as the two combined together. 

Queens Project - Week 8 & 9

Finally all assets are now finished. We’re in the ending process of throwing everything together properly. Now I’m not the UDK guy so I’ve not got much clue about what’s going on with the level, I just sort of keep updated via screen shots and file updates of the level itself.

My final assets:

The assets haven’t been too hard to make, the light maps are easy to make once you’ve done it once. It’s now time to piece everything together and check for bugs etc. I’ve seen a lot of concept work but not much of the final thing, but seen some prototype images of what the final thing will look like. There’s not a lot to say again because it’s been just a matter of time of piecing things together, making up the rooms, adding final details, a few extra assets where needed and lighting.

Personally I’m not an expert on lighting especially in 3D, I’m still getting to grips with UDK, but when you look at game levels now-a-days you see game engines being able to handle all kinds of lighting conditions. Game levels are a lot more complex now-a-days so I think it’s fair to say we needed a bigger level with a touch more complexity, especially since this is a horror level based on a first person shooter. I’ll finally be able to lay down more thoughts on the level after next week once it should be finished.

The reason why I’ve pieced together 2 weeks on this entry is because again it’s just been more asset making, we’re at the final stage so they’ll be a lot more to talk about once it is complete.

Y2 S2 T23 - Life Changing or Career Building?

When you look at education, I believe that a subject or a course should teach what it title of it states.

When trying to get into the gaming industry I think it’s becoming increasing popular to get a qualification/degree in a relative field of gaming. For example you want to be a game animator, then you study animation, you want to be a programmer, you study at a programming course. However this is not always true, back in the earlier days of gaming there we’re really any courses that could get you straight into gaming, only in recent years gaming has found its way into education as a form of entertainment such as music or film making. Basically back in the day if you wanted to work on Art for games, then you would probably need some sort of degree in fine Art or graphics etc, for programming then maybe a computer programming degree etc.

A lot of games companies want people to be good for the job they maybe applying for, and some may want to see that a person has good soft skills. Communication in games companies is important since it is essentially one massive group of people working towards making a finished game, so soft skills is good however you may argue that you’re not being face to face with your target market/audience because you’re selling the finished product to the world without really meeting the consumers themselves. I think soft skills come packaged within a person themselves, which is good to have, but in which I don’t believe education can really teach that.

Education can teach the technical skills needed to do a job however. I think what we should be doing is concentrating on what we have in front of us but however plan for the future so in the long run we can prepare for what possibly can be ahead of us. What I mean is in the gaming industry you’re always trying to keep update with the latest thing. Technology is constantly always improving and so is software, therefore we must understand it how it is. Games companies are always going to be constantly changing by bringing in newer technology and updating their hardware and software used. It’s kind of an argument; in example does a games company want someone highly trained in an area or someone is creative and understanding?

I think that gaming within education could cater to both these, if it gives you the option to, so basically students would have the freedom of picking an area they would want to specialise in, in education, so for example in the first year of study they would be learn the basic skills in everything as a generalist, then second year, go into a more specific area by giving them the option of choosing eventually building up to a final project or their chosen area perhaps? Almost an alternative of what we’re doing right now. By the time you get to industry, your confident with the job you’re applying for a you at least have a basic idea of other areas and can be creative?

Looking at this as a whole I think games companies should be solving the problems that are in front of them but looking towards the future and planning ahead of what they are and will be looking in applicants of the future. We can’t exactly predict the future so I think that we should wait for what kind of technology is being developed to be actually produced and then possibly set up methods of teaching about this new advanced technology so students can become updated in the ways in which they work, therefore keeping updated and also prepare to cope with the future?

http://www.rit.edu/gccis/gameeducationjournal/

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/video-game-designer1.htm

Year 2 - Week 18 - February 27th - March 02nd

So basically this week, we’re continuing with projects. One project given to us is the text project, were we’re designing whatever we want based on a book. The book of choice has to be something that doesn’t have too much illustration involved in it; else you’re basically just copying what has already been done.

Personally I never read books, I’ve always learned better by looking at things visually. So I work better by drawing things and looking at how something is done practically rather than reading a bunch of text. I think this is what makes me more creative, this will be a good challenge however I’m struggling for ideas on what book to go with, because I don’t remember reading any book that meant something to me or inspired me, so more thought on that at this time.

We got given a project based on cultures to, it doesn’t seem anything like it would be related to gaming however it’s quite interesting because it challenges us to be imaginative and construct together a final piece that can affiliate with different walks of life. At this time I’m thinking of something like a small park that possibility be centred in the middle of Leicester that people would walk into and by every day of the year. Leicester seems to be a city where many different types of people from different walks of life and all over the world seem live in, so embedding the idea directly here would seem the best idea. I’ll be definitely looking at an environment as you know I like environments the best.

I think that’s pretty much it for this week, I’ve done a bit more still life in the meantime and obviously done some life drawing, which seems to be getting better. I’ve been using coloured pencils in my still life work recently. I think it’s definitely working, I need to vary my work a bit since I’m constantly just using pencil and working in greyscale, you can argue that it’s basically all still made up of one colour but however gives it variation with greens, reds and blues etc. Other than that, I’ve been looking at how these objects maybe designed in 3D, and making polygon drawings of them and how they would fit together in a mesh flow to further my understanding of objects.

This is a very good technique that if you’re struggling in 3D, your 2D can allows you to works things out. Much like concepting, it’s another way of getting things on paper to help you apply it to 3D.

Y2 S2 T21 - An introduction to the Game Industry

Games are basically made by people in different jobs roles of specific areas. When we first started out on the course, we were basically learning how to model, texture, put a document together and draw. Now it’s more about finding your specific route into gaming, finding the best things that you’re good and that is right for you, in other words this year we’re discovering our specialist areas.

So basically games have different departments where people work together in different roles, to develop and put together a game. These can vary from Artists, Designers, programmers, musicians, hardware and software specialists, technical Artists and even marketers etc.

Here is an example of a technical Artist description and what is done in the role.

http://www.skillset.org/games/careers/profiles/article_5287_1.asp

From something like this you can get a great idea of what is required in a specific job role, this one in particular, you can see that communication between people is essential, you would be constantly understanding hardware and software throughout developing a game and solving problems as they arise. Basically communication is essential; gaming basically comes under I.C.T which says it all really. A company will produce a game by making job roles available, so basically they want to lay down the mere basics of what a game required to create, this would be as described, Designers, Artists, Programmers, Animators, Musicians and market researchers on knowing how to sell a game for a platform.

Basically the way I see it, from each one of these headings comes the branches that feeds off of them that make up the headings. For example Artists would have, lead Artists, Directors, character/environment/weapon/vehicle/prop Artists, technical Artists and maybe photographers etc. These will work together in a department I imagine to produce the Art work for the game. On the other hands the designers and Artists will all be working with each other etc? For example you’ll have a game designer(s) producing the rules of the game, other(s) developing a story and then there’ll be level designers working with Artists to help produce the levels themselves and getting them into a game engine.

Basically all these jobs require you at least have a basic understanding of how games work and communication skills to work with other people in different areas as every role is part of a huge jigsaw that fits together eventually creating the final product.

Storyboard on here explains the process of how games are developed:

http://www.skillset.org/games/overview/#

Here’s another about labour in industry:

http://www.skillset.org/uploads/pdf/asset_16891.pdf?2

Basically creativity makes games. It all starts with an idea, possibly an idea that you like or others like, which then starts to develop into something bigger. You start to come up with a concept for a game, how it would work, how it would play etc, draw your ideas down on paper, maybe do some research into whatever the idea is you’re developing. Ideas will be pitched forward where developing and designing begins. So, so far the designers have an idea which will then be passed onto the Artists, who will start to story board and put together ideas visually giving personality to characters and environments, from this animation can start from the Art assets which then allows music to be added to the game for things like collisions etc and understanding the genre will help develop and produce audio. Once you have all this you then need to put it altogether in a working order, which is where programming comes in. This helps the game run and load, which then can be tested by game testers where they can report the bugs and problems that need fixing if they arise. A game will go through a series of prototypes until the desired finished product is produced. Once it’s done you can then finally leak the game, make demos available to play, advertise and finally release the game, considering you’ve reached everything through all the deadlines given in development. Once it’s marketed you can then ask for feedback on the game itself, ask players what they do or do not like, what could be improved on for the next title. Sometimes bugs are still found by players after the game is put on the market, in today’s world we have the ability to create patches for these small glitches and make them downloadable via the internet to fix things, so development still continues even after the game is sold.

Companies can be based all over the world and may have places in various parts of the world or just in one country and they all can develop a game, which again proves it all a communication thing, cause your constantly creating things, testing them, scraping them and solving problems constantly wherever role you're in.

Y2 S2 T20 - Elements of Game Technology - Part 03 - Interaction Design

Games have come a long way in the past ten years. As far as I can remember, I was playing a Sega Master System with its 8bit graphics, a controller consisting of a D-Pad and 2 buttons and it was all very basic simple interfaces but effective! Now a days we have these fancy new Xbox’s and PlayStation 3 HD graphics, all kinds of fancy menu interfaces, gameplay and wireless controllers with multiple buttons, in fact we don’t even need a controller now!

Basic wired controller.

So how did we get there? Well technology has advanced, to simply put it. We’ve gone from basic wired controllers, to wireless controllers, to motion sensitive controllers, to motion plus, to not even needing a controller at all (with the Xbox Kinect) were you are the controller yourself. So as you can see, this changed the way we see and play games altogether. Take the GameBoy for example, it was a fun addictive little handheld, but in 2004 Nintendo released its DS console with a touch screen, the way we play games was changed forever, you can even talk to some games for interaction and blow into a mic for some games to.

Touch Screen Dual Screen.

So since then, more and more handhelds are being produced such as mobile phones with the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad etc, even the new PS Vita is touch screen, but that’s just Sony catching up. So as you can see game design has changed, because now they are producing so many games and applications that use the touch screen, so they are taking advantage of it. Nintendo was the first to introduce the new types of ways to interact with games. Their Wii console in 2006 revolutionised gaming forever. The controller consists of having a remote that is connected to a sensor bar where you can point it at the screen to interact with things within games. In 2010 Xbox released its connect console, basically a piece of hardware designed to eliminate the need for a controller, proving it can be done. In which these consoles and add-ons where designed really to get more people active all over the world rather than sitting down all the time.

Wireless controller.

These designs have been the inspiration for a lot of new games. Take Super Mario Galaxy for example that game almost single handily revolutionised gaming, but why? I remember watching a video (can’t remember where) but it all apparently started with the idea of Mario running around on spheres. In which provoked the idea of basing the game on the universe itself. Within the game you can run around on spheres in full 360 degrees and not fall off of them.

Maybe these explain things better about the game design:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/SmoboHash/162201
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3593/games_demystified_super_mario_.php

It introduced the idea of, spinning the controller and pointing the cursor at things, to active various elements within the game as well as having this game where you can literally run anywhere on these spheres (or planets) and almost not worrying about losing a life. I guess it put more freedom into games which made it more enjoyable as rules of physics within a game engine were basically thrown out the window, proving anything is possible!

Wii Nunchuck (left) & Remote (right) uses a sensor bar placed on your TV set connected to the console.

Really controllers have been designed in a way that they make everything more convenient, so in the old days you do something by moving the d-pad and selecting something, now you can just touch a screen or simply point the controller at the screen and select and drag stuff around. I should point out that back in the 80’s and 90’s etc they introduced all of these gaming machines in arcades that have things like seats for driving simulators and guns for shooting games, however these games are only one thing, in which I mean is you can only play that one game the device is designed for. You can still find these however now you have add-ons made for consoles which are similar but can be used on multiple game titles, thus making it more convenient and in which we can design games to support these new controllers specifically.

Typical machine found in arcades to support specific games.

3D technology has been affected in the way that we now have to think about how a game plays and pay more attention to it. This is because they way we play has changed in which game designers now are almost limitless to the ideas and possibilities that can exist in games. Therefore when creating a game you have to decide almost immediately what platform it is for so you can get an idea for how it will play and therefore get an idea for what assets will be needed for the game in its levels. Game engines such as UDK etc have been pushed probably almost to their limits of what they can achieve just because of new physics and interactive that now exists within games, which is making it more complex and challenging but more exciting and fun to play. Gaming has come a long way in a very short amount of time and its evolved quite a lot, but now we start to wonder how can we make it better?

Kinect... you're the controller!

Maybe it’s getting to a point where we don’t even need a console in the distant future and we can literally just think of a game. In a hundred years we’ll probably look back at the current present of gaming and think of it as a golden age if the 80’s already were’nt.

Y2 S2 T19 - Elements of Game Technology - Part 02 - Sound for Games

Music is a big part of games; it’s surprising how much space sound takes up within a game. I guess music within gaming is defined by animation almost. Basically what I mean is that you’ll in pretty much every game you’ll play, things move, collisions happen and events take place which cause sound to happen and therefore to make it more realistic the sound is in time with the things that go on within the game itself.

For example if you’re playing a game such as Halo you’ll find that when the character moves you’ll hear the noise of footsteps, when a character is swimming in water, you’ll hear the sound of the rippling water etc. Not only this but even in menu interface you’ll probably find that most games have sounds when navigating through different screens. That’s basic stuff however then comes the background music in different parts of the game. Now based on the events and the scenes that happen within games, can vary the outcome of what’s needed as background music. What I mean is you want the background music to be fitting with the situation or cut scene of the game and possibly have it stylised to fit in with the theme of the game’s music.

I remember back in the day, playing a game for the PlayStation called Medievil, the game has really great music. The theme basically is horror/Halloween type of feel and scenery about it all the way through. It’s set in 18^th century England, as you could imagine, graveyards, cemeteries, and haunted castles. Playing through most levels the music is so fitting.

You can just imagine this being a real life scenario wandering through lonely haunted ruins with darkness throughout the land. It may sound a bit cliché and something that I wouldn’t play, but that’s irrelevant for now, but you can see how they captured the feel for that particular level, it’s fitting and it works. The genre of game, effects the music, the style of the music must be fitting with what is going on in the game where it will be used. The soundtrack to this game in particular has an orchestra theme to it throughout which I think is really fitting towards the old country of England, where you would think of thing such as castles, dragons, swords and other cliché things related.  

I remember a moment at the end of the game Super Mario Galaxy there is this quite emotional music that plays, you sort of think back to the time you spent playing and everything you went through to reach the end and story makes you gain this emotional bond to the characters throughout. It also plays throughout the back story that is told once you unlock it; it makes you feel connected and is perfect to fit the story.

It’s very fitting to the end and again it’s an orchestral style they used in the game. I’m not too sure of many key composers for video game music, but this game in particular had an actual orchestra to perform the music for it. This piece of music from the game was composed by Koji Kondo:

I don’t know if this was composed by the same guy, but this was used in the second Mario Galaxy game:

I think Good Times by Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards is a very popular song and yes I do believe it is very influential, because a lot of people or music Artists I should say tends to steal the bass line from it. It’s definitely a song I’ve heard many times whether it is on the radio, TV or videos on the internet etc, it is much overused.

Y2 S2 T18 - Elements of Game Technology - Part 01 - Game Engines

So basically game engines are needed to test out 3D assets made in programs such as 3DS Max and Maya etc. UDK is the main one we’re using currently; some of the disadvantages to using this program can be that you may not have the right hardware to use it on. For example Unreal has a minimum requirement of Windows XP and DirectX 9.0c and graphics card of 3.0 as a shader model, if you don’t at least have this, then you immediately have problems. Another disadvantage can be that you may not have a 3D program such as Max or Maya that supports the engine and you may not know that the engine cannot read .max files in which you maybe come stuck figuring out how to get them into your game level and make them work.

Another thing is that you may be looking to create a game level, you may have a basic knowledge of making models however when it comes to texturing them things may become too complex and you’ll need to figure out advanced techniques such as unwrapping assets and making an applying light maps to them to game them work in your level. So as you can see you need to quite skilled in handling a game engine because you’ll need to be skilled in handling not just one program but up to about 3 or more to get everything right, if you include Photoshop and Crazy Bump for making normal and specular maps, plus the price of these programs doesn’t come cheap!  

Some more disadvantages would be installing drivers if need be and an internet connection to download the latest ones to also some engines run slightly different on 64bit PC’s. Some may require animations as well as coding skills to make things how you want to properly, However going onto advantages, bearing in mind you have all these programs and you’re set to make a game level you’ll find that the possibilities are almost limitless to what you can design. Gaming is a creative thing thus why it comes under IT/Art, so combining the two allows you create Art digitally and then the engine allows you to test your assets out and animate them if need be. Another advantage is that because basically the engine is used to test out 3D models you can keep testing all along the way to finished product, so basically you can test for bugs in the game that need to be fixed, by making prototypes you can determine almost instantly weather your ideas work or not, so you can scrap altogether or edit them so they work correctly.

It’s like what we’re doing right now, we’re looking at ideas, making them, testing them, either get rid of them because they don’t work or tweaking them or changing them altogether into something else. You’ll notice as you go along a lot of things can and mostly will be changed due to the fact you’re testing them, so to sum up, they are a major help to game development, in fact they are mandatory.

Another thing is that they help you understand platforms, when building a game, a game engine such as unreal can help you work out what you need to put together in a documentation of a game itself or just a level, but also when building any game you have to establish what platform it is for. For example Xbox, Wii, PS3 exclusively or is it going to be an all format title, and obviously the settings to run the level on these different platforms is going to alter between each one as the hardware of them is different. So it helps you understand the relationships between different hardware the consoles use and the software they require for them to play the games they are designed to run.

Engine can help in the way that you can play the level itself you’re developing. Unreal 3 supports ISO games on:

• iPhone 4
• iPhone 4s
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad
• iPad2
• iPod touch 4th generation
• iPod touch 3rd generation (except for 8 GB 3rd generation devices.)

Now as you can see Unreal is good for handheld portable devices as it supports them. So a target audience you would be aiming I believe is the gamer on the go. In which I mean these devices are as I’ve just explained handhelds in which you can take them anywhere with you, they all have touch screens to so you’d be looking at developing a game in this case uses the screen itself as a controller, so immediately establishing what platform your going for kicks off the generation of ideas of how it’s going to be played and what audience are you going for. 

Typically games for iPhones sell for cheap on the app store and since apps are cheap you don’t want something too expensive and along I don’t think you’d want to game the game too complex or long as handhelds are more limited than consoles themselves. So in this case you can determine what kinds of gameplay elements will be involved, obviously having a touch screen, you want to have touch screen gameplay and mini games to play throughout. 

The graphics are limited on handhelds typically, so again you start to know the direction which you’re taking in terms of Art assets you’re producing on the game engines and knowing what the iPhone’s capabilities are and what it can do, if a iPhone can’t handle something that’s maybe too advanced for its technology, you obviously can’t put it in the game.

Last thing is the audience, I say gamers on the go because, and typically an iPhone or an iPad is used by business people (I would say) since it is capable of handling many things through different apps, it’s used as a smart phone for many different things, in which you want to be creating something that’s short, simple to play, possibly easy all round, cheap enough to buy an download fast, because that’s what games are like on that format.

Links:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/GettingStartedMobile.html

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/GettingStartediOSDevelopment.html

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UE3Basics.html