National Space Centre Trip

The National Space Centre... what can you say... except NEVER AGAIN!


It's waaaaaaaaaaaaay to far away for my liking, it was good exercise and we kinda got lost, at one point we went up from the canal and stopped not knowing where to go, I heard someone say something along the lines of: "I bet the Space Centre is at the bottom of the Canal." At which point I thought Jack was about to unlock Thunderbird 4 to take us down underwater!

Which would of been f*cking awesome!

We continued to walk as I had images of Jack dressed in one of them puppet suits and the Thunderbird's theme played on in my head. Enough was simply enough after over an hour of walking we could see the Space Centre but the path was split into two routes and our group took the longer and WRONG way round making the journey about an extra half an hour longer.

When we got there it was filled with hundreds if not THOUSANDS of little school children. In the end we didn't even go in (too expensive for my liking) so the exterior of the building it was. We stayed for like an hour and then left knowing that it would get dark earlier with the clocks going back and it being such a long way to go, there was a few dodgy people hanging around on the way back which was a bit nervy, but it was easier going home.

ALTHOUGH on the way back I realised when we got lost if we had just kept walking further up the street instead of sticking to the canal it would have cut out about 30-40 minutes out of the journey. What a suckish day...

Y1 S1 T3 - A History Of Computer Games - Part 2 - 1980's - 1990's

I wasn’t around during the nineteen eighties, but from what I can see and read, this was the best decade to live in for video games. You only have to look at old TV adverts on the internet, or even watching old TV shows or films from the nineteen eighties (typically teen ones) to know it was truly the golden area.

Film ‘The Wizard’ (1989) about three children who travel to compete in a video game tournament.

Games such as Pac-Man, Mario, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Defender, Frogger, Joust and Moon Patrol were popping up all at the same time, Japan and Nintendo were also on the rise. One of the great things about this age is it did not only provide the world with all these amazing addictive games to play but inspired people to make games, simply because the technology was advancing and we had all these different job roles in the industry now ranging from programmer, to pixel artists to music roles to with companies flying high and practically competing against each other for who can make the next big game.

From what I’ve learned the world entered an new age of gaming, the graphics got better, the game play improved and people constantly asked the question “what’s behind the next door?!” ‘Cause no one could wait. One of the biggest developments of this time was the fact that the games were not just ‘coin hog’ machines, because they were being developed to play at home on your TV set, something making it more entertaining, a way of sharing with friends and family and not spending every coin you have at the arcade. It definitely shows the rate, at which the technology is getting better, but I think it also shows how at the times companies were making so much money that they could afford to make home consoles and market them as well; of course it’ll bring them even more money and ways to improve... right?

In the U.S.A, nineteen eighty four they was many vide game companies at the time, the second generation was over and they was ready to release the third generation with the Odyssey3 and Atari 7800 however the companies that had started up to make the new games for these consoles were rushed and not cared about too much, I think they were just thinking all about the money and that they may have thought ‘whatever we throw on the market now, everyone will buy’ so they wanted to make the games for Christmas releases etc, but because everyone was expecting better behind the next door, no-body wanted to buy them when they found out how poor they was, the next Pac-Man game would only sell just over half of the cartridges they had manufactured. Lots of companies went bust because of this and Atari workers left to set up their own company ‘Activision’.

Later on the Nintendo would go on to release its ‘Entertainment System’ in nineteen eighty five, a major hit in the U.S.A and puts the boom back into video games with many of its historical titles still remembered today. Lots of games around this time were based on board games such as dungeons and dragons around this time and this was the time for elf’s, wizards and magic which started up a whole range of games even still to the present day. A lot of different game genres were presented in this age such as: Adventure, fighting, maze, racing, sport, side scrolling, platform and adventure platform something not seen before, making a whole new revolution of companies wanting to make these types of games.

Castlevania (NES) 1986.

From all of this what I think is significant is how the games have gone from being as simple as Pong, to now being a bit more complicated but definitely more challenging and entertaining, they way they have done this is through the use of the technology they have because this time they don’t have to make a game for a machine they could now create a separate piece of software for the console instead of making machine after machine in arcades were everyone wants to play, now people could just buy their consoles and play at home, it’s as if it was an age of solving problems, but they have only solved so many of them and there is bigger and better problems out there to solve, but no one could wait to see what was in store next. Gaming was on the rise and the expectation of greater things to come, and because people’s expectations were so high when they made E.T (based on the film) for the next generation of consoles, nobody wanted it because it was simply shit and didn’t for fill the tick list everyone had in their minds because they hurried it.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600) 1982, One of the first known bad video games.

I think the crash of 1983 was a big lesson to learn in the industry, it told companies to think about the quality that makes a good video game rather than the quantity of what they produce, because what I think is different from the start of this golden decade to the end is the quality, just looking at the graphical elements they’ve produced is one notable thing, the things that the games can do and calculate now shows how the programming is advancing, the music they’ve added and the different styles of art they was producing. They were working things out, solving problems and producing things we never thought would have before, like in nineteen eighty-nine Nintendo released its ‘Power Glove’, a glove to put on the users hand and play a game with!

Nintendo's Power Glove 1989.

But above all they were very different and showed that the entertainment a game provides is from how good it works and plays.




1990's

In the Nineteen nineties we started to evolve into a whole new way of playing video games, it was the PlayStation that changed a lot of things. We now could play 3D games, everything went to 64 bit, and even Nintendo named their new console the Nintendo 64. There was many 3D games before the PlayStation was created but the systems they were programmed for couldn’t handle the textures and models you could create for the PlayStation. Sony had made such a huge hit with the PlayStation and some might consider it to be the next biggest step up from other 3D games such as 3D Monster Maze,  Wolfenstein 3D, Battle Zone, Hovertank 3D and Doom.

I sort of think of it as a time when the graphics on the likes of the Nintendo Entertainment System couldn’t really get any better within the limitations of the consoles that were out then. So along came a new one... the PlayStation more or less bringing the best graphical interface ever seen to date (for a 3D at least) but even games in 2D had a much cleaner, crisper, clear quality to them. Years later we saw a whole library of games upon us, so many that no one could possibly own them all (right?). Nintendo released the N64 (Nintendo 64) in 1996 and like the PlayStation everything was made out of polygons and textured. As similar as it sounds, it does also show how we’ve gone from 8bit to 16bit to 32 and then 64, they say computer power doubles every 18 months and yes that’s clear that it was doubling, but what was next? (128bit?) It also shows how better the consoles were rapidly becoming as the PlayStation was capable of playing CD’s as well as games, again another and probably the first step on the road to consoles being able to handle many types of media.

From left to right, Hovertank 3D, 3D Monster Maze and Doom.

 

 Nintendo 64 1996                                                                           PlayStation 1994

Only 4 years later Sony would then release the PlayStation 2, this console could not only play games with even better graphics than the PS1 and play music CD’s but also could play DVD’s. At around this time the DVD was very new thing and it could store films on them and display them in a much higher quality than that of the VHS video cassette player thus eventually making the VHS now obsolete. However like the VHS at the time of it, it was extremely expensive and the DVD/Player also found the problem of that nobody wanted to buy it simply because it again was to expensive. I think personally Sony wanted to be the first to do something creative and new to add into their new PS2 console so people would want to buy it more, as if it was a marketing scheme and to also show off what it could do and what other consoles could not. They then found more marketing through making add-ons such as the DVD remote control for the PS2, so if you wanted to watch DVD’s then you had to buy the remote (but really what’s wrong with just using the controller instead?!). I think Sony are based on making as much profit as possible, however they aren’t afraid to invest and try to make things that didn’t exist before and with all the work and time it paid off, they did plan to make the original PlayStation in around 1986 and it almost took 10 years!

1998 PlayStation2 (PS2)

Along with all this new technology in video gaming I think the Nineties was all about building on what they all created and played in the 80’s, the computing power by the start of the nineties (according to Moore’s Law) would of been 6-7 times as better than it was at the start of the 80’s so could only go in one direction (turning 2D into 3D) and things getting more realistic cause that was the main difference by the end of this decade. I also think another difference was how far the programming within technology has come, for example PC games would have a whole bunch of options available to you to control teams and armies within them and N64 and PlayStation you was able to press a whole combination of buttons to make something happen such as a combo move in a fighting game or enter passwords and cheats that when entered correctly the game would know what you have just done. As well as this we was now able to program many more options in games, weather it was compatibility of the software and hardware, the game engines that were more advanced, making better game play, producing animations and even audio in games to. At the start of this decade we had a powerful PS1, by the end of the decade we had a PS2 that was something like a 1000 times more powerful than PS1.

Y1 S1 T2 - A History Of Computer Games - Part 1: 1950s - 1970s.

From what I’ve read about video games, it all started with the use of building computer parts together. In example the game known as ‘Tennis for Two’ was made through the use of lighting as was tic-tac-toe. The technology involved really limited them to producing these simple games however it all had to start somewhere. “If I hadn't done it, someone would've done something equally exciting if not better in the next six months. I just happened to get there first" A quote by Steve Russell.

Steve Russell made the game ‘Space war!’ taking him over 200 hours to finish the most simplest of games, the machines back then were as big as cars making it very complicated to produce the games, compared to the technology we have now-a-days it would take an expert no more than an hour to create such a game with a computer that’s about 5% the size of a car. What’s simple now was complicated back then, but working at it and testing his ideas would only give an actual answer if it really could be achieved.

Ralph Baer while working for a TV company was asked to create the world’s ‘best’ TV, however he went along with designing something new his boss and probably the world would be amazed by and with the knowledge of making TV’s for a living he could very well do it. As far as I can tell however Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr and Estle Ray Mann were the first people who wanted to use computers and technology for fun. They based the idea on a missile simulation of the radars used in World War II using a Cathode Ray Tube. 

They are many people around the same time who could claim to have made the first ever game like Claude Shannon and his chess program or Alexander S. Douglas creating the tic-tac-toe game, however I do notice how all of these people come from a background relating to science within machines and I think that’s where it has mainly started like in gaming today you need to know what console your making a game for and how it will work else what’s the point in software without hardware? Hardware is the bricks and concrete in gaming, without that the rest wouldn’t stand, you need to build a computer before it can do anything.

It seems as soon as computers where created the idea began to expand into what we could do with them, for example using a radar for planes in the World War, I guess bombing and trying to kill each other with a plane is sort of like a game? (Not a fun one however). I think boredom and the ‘fun’ factor played a big role in the creation of games simply because we play them when we have nothing else to do and these guys had the time on their hands to invent these machines capable of challenging humans when no one else is there to play against. It sort of defines how inventors and science works, you have to make something by investing time and understand what it is you are making, to then understand how to make something else out of what you already have like layers in time from the past to what we have now for example look at Pong from the 1970’s and then look at an Xbox 360 game today, how did we get from simple 2D Pong to complicated and sophisticated hardware, software and graphics we have now? They have developed but they all had to start somewhere and in this case gaming was derived from computers, meaning as the technology advances so will the games we play, increasingly becoming better and that to me is where all of their backgrounds are so significant because you can’t just make a video game out of nothing, you have to know something first before you can create something.

I think it’s all about being creative and having ideas and experimenting with them from what you know already, because that’s what all these inventors who wanted to make games seemed to do in the late 1940’s through to the 70’s. I mean if someone never invented computers, Gaming wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t be writing this Blog because Game Art wouldn’t exist.

Y1 S1 T1 - Set Up Your Blog And Introduce Yourself.

I feel like I’ve always been extremely lucky in life, since the age of 5 I picked up a PlayStation controller and nervous as I was I didn’t lose a life I am still almost that same way today at that same time I picked up a pencil and started doodling, detailing everything but worried I’d do it wrong and have to try again. Like applying for University I wasn’t sure if I would be good enough to get on a good gaming course, but I was lucky enough to end up on the only Skill Set accredited Game Art course in England. I’m Lewis, I come from Hull, it is a real hellhole though, it’s the 2^nd worse place to live in England. I come from one of the biggest housing estates in Europe and where education is very poor to, so I haven’t done to bad right? I am the first person in my entire family to go to University, sometimes I feel like the difference between me and the rest of them is that they all give up, but I don’t, I want to prove them wrong and that I can do it, that following my path in life wasn’t a mistake.

Games are the only thing I’ve ever had, I had always found myself quite good at Art though and in this new developing world, good Art skills are essential to enter the industry, but I’d have never thought that back in the day, but combining the two seemed like a dream come true when I found out about the course. All I ever thought was that Games were made by Game Designers, but there’s actually a whole team of people with different job roles, I’d love to one day see my name pop up on the ending credits when I complete a game. Jobs in the industry require a lot of skill in not just drawing but 3D skills to that go far beyond a basic understanding. I’ve never been too interested in anything 3D but a part of the course is to learn and understand which I have adapted to quite well so far and hope I can get better although one thing that concerns me is that technology is developing and getting better, but this isn’t a Skill Set course for nothing as Michael said: “This isn’t a Mickey Mouse course!”.

http://www.gamesrecruit.co.uk/GameArtistJobs.aspx

I was sure of what my dream job was by the time I was around 8, making Games of course, although once I found out about this new Game Art course I couldn’t decide whether to apply for Game Design or Game Art course, I understand that a Game Designer needs to be good at understanding 3D programs and have a good basic drawing ability but one thing that puts me off is the fact that you need to be able to make up stories etc and English is my weakest of subjects. I hope by the end of this course I will have gained enough confidence to progress to Game Design because I definitely do need a bit more inspiration and creativity, however if something comes up and I’m offered a job then we’ll see what happens. Expertise in 2D and 3D and having a good team attitude are all key in the real world job roles and this course has exactly that! When I tell people what I am studying, they just think I’m playing games or they pause for a second to think ‘what is that?’ no one thinks about how they are made much and I think that’s a massive example of how most people consider Art and design subjects not as popular. By the end of this year I hope to have improved in my drawing ability and get to grips more with the 3D software.  

I am here to chase a dream, one that lies within the gaming industry, at the moment I am probably rock bottom of the group in the first year of how good I am in 2D and 3D, I find it quite depressing how when I look on sites like Deviant Art or ConceptArt.org you find all these made up images that people have done with dark gloomy looking settings and castles, mist and women with...well find out for yourself, it’s so cliché, like watching Lock, stock and two smoking barrels, everything is just about money, guns, girls and respect ALL THE TIME! And that kind of world doesn’t seem nice to live in. I am very lucky to be here and it would be stupid for anyone, let alone me to throw it all away now.


Nintendo are my favorite game company of all time, when you look at the big bright beautiful colours of the games they produce such as Mario, Pokemon or Sonic etc on the shelves of game stores, it makes you forget about all the horrible stuff, you feel like a child in a candy store and when you play them it feels like there's nothing you can't do while having fun, what ever happened to the simple happy games we used to play? I just hate all these new ones for Xbox and PlayStation that just keep trying so hard to be as realistic as possible. I am very lucky to be here and it would be stupid for anyone, let alone me to throw it all away now when it is closer than ever for my biggest dream ever to one day to work at Nintendo and I know I can do it because I really want to...