assignment 1 Josh level 3 in Games Design

Level 3 in Games Design

Unit 78 Digital Graphics for Computer Games 

Rhys Williams

Understand Theory an Application Used for Computer Game Graphics

For this assignment I will be comparing the theory and application of the computer game graphics for a 2D and a 3D computer game of my choice. The video games that I have chosen are my 2D game is Donkey Kong  and my 3D game will be FIFA 17.

Donkey Kong   

File extensions

Donkey Kong  is an 8 bit game and was made to be played on the giant arcade machines and it really set the tone for arcade machines and donkey Kong so much that later on it would be made and compressed for the Nintendo entertainment system.  The Nintendo Entertainment system  and its file format is a NES file as all games that was made for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) are a NES file.  At that time in history Nintendo did not want other companies to share their files for the games so Nintendo made their own type of file extension to make sure no other company would take the games and make copies of it.



Artistic Style of Donkey Kong 
The artistic  style of the game of Donkey Kong Country is a very well made pixel art game as in the game the artists who made the game have used 2D sprites to make the game. the entire game e.g the main characters Mario and Donkey Kong are simple 2D sprites and the objects e.g the hammer that Mario uses and the barrels that Donkey Kong throws are also in 2D pixel art. there was no vehicles in the game but the environment e.g the metal beams and the ladders that Mario had to climb up was also 2d pixel art.

Concept Art

As you can see in this image (concept art for Donkey Kong ) the artists who made Donkey Kong tried to base it of a drawing that they drew of a gorilla and they have used pixel art to create it into a pixel formed Donkey Kong. They tried to base the main characters movements like a real gorilla like the way he looks and he walks is just like a gorilla only child friendly as it was a family game.

Texture Art

The texture art in the game would probably be more focused on the metal beams and the ladders of the game as the creators have had to give the platforms a realistic look but they have had to keep to the 2D pixels art style. as you can see in the right  picture it shows the level of the classic Donkey Kong game and you can see the texture that they have put in the metal beams like the little triangles in the spacing of them that is to make them look like real beams but keep them in the same artistic style that they planned for. also the ladders they have just kept the texture to the ordinary looking ladders with two straight lines going up and straight lines going across too.

Background Art

To be perfectly honest the background art is just black and that's it. the game does have some occasional background shakes when Donkey Kong jumps in the air but that is it really on background art cause in the time that this game was made. background art in video games hadn't really progressed like it has today.

In Game Interference

In game interference is basically like a head up display ( HUD ) which gives you the information that you need to know in order to play the game. in the Donkey Kong game you have about three thing that was important to you  1 the score that you had was in the top of the screen and when you added to your score it would pop up with a little animation and it would float to the score in the top and add it up for you to give you and update your score. 2 was your lives so as you progressed through the levels you would start with 3 lives and if you git hit by a barrel then you would die and you would lose a life.And 3 was the bonus score. so if you would acquire the hammer then you became invincible to barrels and you would start gaining a score. in order to make the score bigger you had to hit more barrels. when your hammer ran out the score that you got for destroying barrels would light up and it would be called a bonus score and that like the normal score would add to the high score at the top of the screen.

Print Media

Print media is the way to sell the game to make it known to the audience that your looking for and letting them play the game and get more money from it. The Donkey Kong games print media would be the posters that they advertised and the giant arcade machines. this image represents the art that used to be on the arcade machines. this and a occasional advert on TV and posters on windows was the way to advertise this game and since the game is so popular as nearly everyone has played it it obviously worked.





Raster Image

In game graphics raster images is mainly rectangular pixels or points of colour view able by a monitor. this game does use many raster images as the art style are raster images as they are 2D sprites which use rectangular pixels.








Game Graphics for FIFA 17 

Artistic Style of fifa 17 

the artistic style of fifa 17 is definitely photo realism as EA and Frostbite have tried to make the game as real as possible so the player can feel like they are actually playing football. fifa 17 is so realistic that they actually use real footballers faces to make animations of players emotions by using a face scanning process called the star head thread. the star head thread is when EA producers ask real footballers to come into EA company and let them scan their face in all different angles to capture the image of there facial expressions and put them into the game and make it as realistic as possible. in the game EA have optimized to make this game as realistic and to give the user a real feeling of what it is like to be a footballer and to make the sport a lot more fun by letting the player play the game how they want to.
there are 3 types of faces in the fifa 17 game

1. Scanned
this image shows a famous football player ( Paul Pogba ) in the process of the face scanning for the new fifa 17. this will capture all of the facial features including his eye movements and also it will capture his hair patterns on his head. the picture below is in game footage of Paul Pogba as a game character and as you can tell it is as photo realistic as possible.

 2. Star head

Star head is when EA send a team to watch a certain players movements and facial features and take pictures of them and transport and compress them files into the game and optimize for a good attempt of a gaming replica of that certain player. the image below is a picture of the most iconic football player Leoniel Messi and this is the captured image of Messi running in a game and what they have done is they have taken a picture of it and they have transferd it into the game.



3. Generic
when a player has a in game face that is based on the,m but has not gone into to much detail. this is a image of as football player named Naingolan who has a in gamer face that has not really been taken seriously and the picture is a real picture of Naingolan and you can see that there are some simularites in the two but not really as much as other players.













Background Art 
The background of fifa 17 is actually beautiful and they have used some amazing texture art and photo realism and it is mainly the backgrounds is the stadiums and the crowds in the football stadium.as you can see in this image this football stadium is so realistic you would think it is a photo graph of a real football stadium. they have also added very good animations of the crowd moving up and down some are standing some are sitting down and when you score you can see the camera shaking and the fans jumping up and down so it feels like you are actually there in the stadium.


In-Game Interference
The In- Game interference of fifa 17 is not like other games when it shows you lives and score but it actually relates to football so stamina and power meter so how hard your shot/ pass was and of course the score and the time remaining in each half of the match. it also gives you the name and the kit number of the player that you are and the player that the other team is.


Print Media
The difference between games like Donkey Kong in the old days and FIFA 17 in now a days is that there is a lot more ways to use print media in order to sell the game and advertise it. there is now the game case itself as you see below that is print media and there is also more posters that can be put on the internet which everyone uses now a days.

Gaming History - Consoles

level 3 in games design unit 20 computer game platform and technology 

Gaming Machines 

Arcade Machines 

Arcade Machines are the old school version of the Xbox 1 and the PS4 and it actually came out a long long time before these new consoles did. 

the first coin operated video game was Galaxy Game and it was made in 1971 at Stanford university in September. galaxy game cost 1 quarter as it was made in America and it was a quarter for 3 games the game then with the machine cost $20,000 back then but now its inflation cost $115,000 which is a bit of a increase in price . Though this was the first game ever made for arcade machines the first commercially successful coin operated video game was the classic game "Pong" which was released in 1972 and it sold around 35,000 units. after pong all of the company's well 15 of them started making video games like PAC Man and space invaders and Donkey Kong and all the classics.

consoles 

games consoles are very different to arcade machines as arcade machines can only function one working game or rarely even two games while games console now a days can play as any games as you want no at once but there are a unlimited amount of games for the new consoles and there are still loads more being developed. the first functional games console that was made was in 1967 with "The Brown Box " with the  games of pong and volleyball and chase games and a light gun game. then in 1977 Atari introduced the world to the first joystick that was compatible with a games console with the Atari 2600. travelling to 1978 and games consoles was looking very strange a prime example of this is the Coleco Telstar Arcade (1978)  then in 1983 the games company SEGA decided to make there first game console called SEGA SG 1000 followed by the game company Nintendo making there first console of the Nintendo entertainment system which was a revolutionary console for Nintendo. the most common consoles now are the play-stations and the Xboxes which started in 1994 with the very first instalment from Sony with the Playstation 1 with classic games like Crash Bandicoot and  Tom Clancy's rainbow six. and then in 2000 they made a second addition called the Playstation 2 with great games like Battlefront 2 and resident evil. finally Xbox came in with the Xbox in 2001 which started the battle with Sony and Xbox which to be honest Sony was winning until Xbox in 2005 made the Xbox 360 which took over Sony's Playstation  in my opinion. now in 2016 you have the next gen consoles of Xbox 1 and PS4 and now they are both very even in the terms of better console.



PC

The amount of time i have heard people who play PC who have called them The Master Race and as much as i hate them for it i can kind off see where they are coming from. the benefits of a PC is that you can do a lot more than you can do with a games console as they have their limits but to be fair to a PC you can change the limits and you can improve the game play of a video game massively by buying a better graphics card which improves the graphics of a PC as the processor of a computer cannot contain 3D files like photos and games which is where the graphics card comes in which is made to produce 3D quality  so all the games that PC players play they all need a decent graphics card to even think about playing good games. The first main graphics card in my opinion was the
Monochrome Display Adaptor which was made in 1981 and it didn't actually produce 3D quality so some people wouldn't call it a Graphics card but it still let the monitor produce videos so it still did something. OK so the main graphics card that actually did make produce 3D functions is iSBX 275 which was the first graphics card to produce game functions on the PC which was in the times of gaming in the 1980s so it was quite revolutionary. now we have graphics cards like the Nvidia Ge Force 1080. GTX graphics cards harness the power of groundbreaking gaming technology including GPU Boost, to deliver outstanding performance. GTX delivers the most intense performance and broad feature set for users who demand the very best. Play the latest games at blistering frame rates with extreme special effects. as a conclusion the limitations of the PC world back then was making 3D images and content. now the limitations of PC is well unlimited if you have the right amount of money. i guess in a sense a limitation is money because being able to play video games on pc is very expensive

Mobile 

FIRST MOBILE GAME - TETRIS Tetris appeared as the first mobile game in 1994 aboard the Hagenuk MT-2000, a phone designed and manufactured in Denmark by the Hagenuk corporation. Tetris is the wildly popular video game based on rapidly stacking tetranomial shapes. three years later Nokia in December 1997 created the worldly known Snake which is a game where you start off as a little snake and you gradually eat food to grow your snake but you are not aloud to touch the walls or yourself. this game revolutionised Nokia so much that Nokia actually installed the game on every Nokia phone they made. now a days the main competitors for mobile gaming are made from Apple and Android. there are a massive variety of games like fps and platformers and now they are in development on making Super Mario Brothers from the Nintendo Wii on to the mobile phone. the limitations on the mobile phone is mainly it does not have enough storage and memory to hold good quality games on there phone so you wont be seeing call of duty any time soon on your phone. also the ways that you interact with the phone back then you only had a d pad of up, down, left and right . but now you have a touch screen so you can ave more variety of games to play

Research Exercise

Unit 78 Digital Graphics For Games Design 

Research Exercise 

File Extensions 

A file extension or a file name extension is the ending of the file that confirms what type of files it is. for example if it was My report.JPEG the JPEG means that at it is a JPEG file same with a TXT (Text) or a EXE (Explorer). there are many different types of file extensions and the image on the right shows a lot of them.

Compression 

File compression is a data compression method in which the logical size of a file is reduced to save disk space for easier and faster transmission over a network or the Internet. it still keeps all of the saved data on it but it just makes it easier to transfer and uses less disk space. 

Image Capture 

Image Capture is basically the term for capturing a image or a picture using a vision sensor so like a camera. another way of doing it is to capture a screen shot on a phone which is a simple way of doing it but to really capture a image you need to use a camera with a good lens on it.

Optimising 

The definition of Optimising is to start of on any given task and is to make that task and complete it as the best that it can be and make sure it is at its finest and making sure it is perfect. there are many situations in gaming that you need to optimise for example when you are creating a background for a video game then you will need to optimise in order to create the best quality background that you need/ want.

Storage of Image Assets 

Storage of image assets is a very useful way to store things like textures, graphics and text styles so that others can easily access them and assets. This is very useful within the games industry as most company’s have lots of different teams who all need to access the same stuff. Being able to transfer files between colleges really speeds up production as you don’t need to wait around for the files to transfer. Being speedy is very very important in the gaming industry as company’s need to meet deadlines. the image on the right is showing the certain folders that this person has made to let his colleagues be able to use his work.

Pixels

Level 3 in Games Design 

Unit 78 Digital Graphics in Games Design 

Understand theory and applications of digital graphics used for computer games


PIXELS 

Most people would say that the terms Image resolution and Picture resolution are pretty much the same thing but this is in fact wrong as they are two completely separate things and in this blog i am going to explain what are the difference between Picture Resolution and Image Resolution.

Image resolution 

 Image resolution has absolutely nothing to do with how your image looks on screen. It has everything to do with how it will print. so it has nothing to do with the shading of your image that you are creating but it is actually the Pixels Dimensions and File Size.lets use Photoshop as a example. When you take a image on Photoshop you can actually see how big the image is by going to the image menu at the top of the screen and choose the Image size which will bring up the Photo shop size menu like the image on the right.

The image is set into two category's Pixel dimension and Document size, Pixel Dimension dose not mean the size of one pixel but it actually means the size of the image from left to right and from top to bottom, and it also tells us Document Size. when you put a picture in Photoshop and go to the Document size you have the power to change the amount of pixels that is in the image and adjust it to your liking  . Basically  How many of your image's pixels left to right and how many of the pixels top to bottom will print in every inch of paper. what you will see is like the second image on the right.

Picture Resolution 

The resolution of an image is measured in dots per inch (dpi), also known as pixels per inch (PPI). The dpi determines the amount of detail the image has.If  the final image is to be displayed on a computer the resolution should be 72-96 dpi. but when you are going to print your image the best thing to do is to have your image as the maximum amount of PPI as you can if you want to enlarge it it would be best to use software like Photoshop but make sure you have imported the image at 300 PPI  basically the more pixels you have then the better quality the picture will be.

Pixel Intensity 

Each pixel has a value which means how bright and what colour it should be. like for example with grey scale images the value of the number is a single number  between 0 (black) and 255 (white). the numbers between shoe different shades of grey which is a higher or lower intensity. Coloured pixels have three different colours  Red Blue and Green  and coloured pixels are made up of the three colours  with each colour having a different amount of intensity for example a pixel with a higher intensity of green would be a green colour but if you had a pixel with green and red the the colour would result in being yellow. 

Histogram 

In the histogram the bottom line represents a range of grey tones numbering 256 starting from black and ranging to white.Each of these steps ( or at least those whos corresponding tones are to found in the image ) may have a number of pixels stacked above it, which creates the shape of the histogram.
The number of pixels stacked above any one tone is the pixel intensity of that tone.