Unit 6 - Critical Approach

Unit 6 - Critical Approach

How to find the market for the game 
To find the market for the game we will have to look at several thing, for example what are the levels of violence in my game perhaps if they're high then the age rating and therefore the target audience would start at 18, the same would go for swearing or sexual themes. We also have to think about what the game is based on, this being the film Big Trouble in Little China. The target audience for the film keeping in mind it came out in 1986 is around 18 to 30 and so this means people that would have seen the film back then would be around 25-50 today and so this also caters to what our audience is going to be.

Data
There are several different sources that both praise and criticise the film. Praise comes from IMDB which claims that the movie is an 7.3/10 and that 'This movie is magic'. However the estimated budget was around $25,000,000 and only looks to have made $11,100,000, meaning overall it lost profit. One person, who rates this a 3/10, says that the film simply isn't funny and tries too hard to 'explain the joke'. The film seems to have been more well received in America and we can tell this from the quantitative data that is provided by IMDB where it says the average score from America was 7.6 which is higher than any other country.

How did I conduct my research
I did my research by searching for ratings and reviews on the movie Big Trouble in Little China, there are several movie websites that provide that this data. By analysing the ratings we can see what age group, ethnicity and country enjoyed the films most.


How good was my research
I think my research was conducted well and was relatively accurate however I only had a few sources and so my data might not be as accurate as it could be. I do however feel like the information I extracted from the data presented was well thought out and precise. By expanding the range of my research I could get a more accurate representation of how the statistics show various data. Examples of this data would be which country the film was best received, where it made the most money, which age group found it most appealing and which gender preferred the film.




TASK TWO

How does the film target specific people
The country that gave the film  the highest score on IMDB was America and I believe this was the intended outcome when the film was being produced, as there are several aspects of the film that I think would appeal to the stereotypical American person. For example there are many over the top action scenes in the film that include many explosions and fight scenes. The film is also set in an American China Town something that the American population would be able to relate to. The main character Jack Burton is also played by an American actor Kurt Russell, a person who was a very big hit back when the film came out.

I think the film also specifically targets males, it does this through the actual story, by having Jack the hero trying to save a damsel in distress whom has been captured by another man. The film is saying that women are just around to be saved by men. The intense action sequences and colours included in these scenes also suggest that the film has been targeted towards men. For example one of the more predominant colours in this movie would be the colour red, which is more often a mans colour, can be spotted everywhere in China Town and all over Lo Pan's lair. I'd say the age group for the film would be anywhere from 16 to 40, the simple plot line and the humour of the film appeal to all ages and allows for a fun watch for everyone.



The Target Audience of My Game
My game has a very dark setting and the story involves many messed up demons and creatures. It will include violence, gore and swearing because of this I would rate at least an 18. The movie that my game is based on Big Trouble in Little China which came out in 1986 and so the audience of the movie back then would be around the age of 40 now. For both of these reasons the target audience for my game is going to be 18 to 40 years old, in terms of gender, I am going to make it so you can play as either a man or a woman and I hope these will be one of the main reasons that the target gender is both male and female. A game similar to mine would be anything from the Dark Souls series, its dark undertones match the themes of my game very well. The target audience is very similar to mine as well with most sources saying that its males around 20 to 40 years old. This is one of the main reasons that Dark Souls is such a successful series, its grounded and mature nature that appeals to this audience.

Unit 4 & 5 - Task Two

Unit 4 & 5

I first started off by getting ideas for 4 different games and planning them out in depth, going though things like how I would pitch them, the story and what mechanics they involve.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rx4VDeZGFTjQXr7GaYOpGj83pV-sCdfk


The game that I have decided to take forward is the first one Demons of the Crest, I am most passionate about, have to most ideas for and have developed the furthest out of the 4. To develop it further I have created a padlet fleshing out the game a bit more, you can access this via the link below. There is also a link to some of the concept art I have done and how I want the theme of the game to come across

https://padlet.com/sazzaviolin/m8mhbfqtlbnt
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1US9Tqa9BvOqiuEf3H0wG736vMuQxQKBK


To do research into what people have experienced in games similar to mine i have made a survey to try to identify my target audience and see what mechanics they would want in the game. You can access this survey and the results through this link.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/12Q2yiDkkXCuOUq5Mg41d0NzKW7-gur7q0_11JRJY2CE/edit#responses


This primary data will help me tailor my game to what my audience wants and try to avoid the things they thing might ruin the game. For example 100% of the people that answered my survey want to be able to relocate any attribute points that they spend and 60% of people wanted to be able to use a range weapon in the game, because of this I will try to implement these things into my game.
For the secondary data I have researched a similar game Dark Souls III to find out what people liked and disliked about these games. Things that where praised about DS3 included the dark atmospheric world and the tactical combat system. Some of the criticisms that came for DS3 included the fact that towards the end of the game instead of facing interesting new enemies, it throw cheap tactics and tricks at you to try to set you back.


The main reason Demons of the Crest is being taken forward as my final game idea is that I am passionate and excited about creating it. It was the one I preferred from the very beginning, I love the idea of Big Trouble in Little China being mixed with something dark and sinister along the lines of Dark Souls or Bloodborne. I also love the boss battles in these games and wanted to see if i could make something just as challenging and rewarding. This game has a better balance between achievable and optimistic in terms of work load. The research that I have done shows that these types of games are very popular and this is cemented by the sales figures. Overall i feel this game will be the best for me to create in many different aspects of development.

Unit 66-67-67: Understand theory and applications of 3D

Unit 66-67-67: Understand theory and applications of 3D

Applications of 3D

There are many different types of uses for 3D not just modelling for games, it can also be used for television and films, one of the most famous uses on TV must be the dragons from Game of Thrones. The team at Pixomondo used modelling software such as ZBrush to design the dragons but also took real life aspects like a chicken that the animators played around with and work out muscle movements. One of the most impressive things i have seen was created in the Unreal Engine 4 is an architectural walk through of a house, its shows just how photo realistic 3D modelling can be.

https://youtu.be/E3LtFrMAvQ4?t=118
3D is also used for animation for anything from television to education.



An application programming interface or API, is used for different things. In Microsoft Direct3D the API renders 3D objects, most graphic cards these days support it due to how much it speeds up 3D rendering withing windows. One of Direct3D's competitors is OpenGL or Open Graphics Library which is a cross platform and language API.

What is a Graphics Pipeline

This is what we use to convert the 3D images in the program to the 2D images we see on our screen so we don't have to render the entire thing when we can't even see it. At the start we have the bus interface which basically tell the entire pipeline what to do. The vertex processing comes next and this gathers the information on where every vertex is on the shape and converts that into a 2D position on the screen, sometimes the vertex is given a colour based on the light hitting it. The parts of the image we cannot see are then remove completely, this is so we do not have to render them when we cannot see them and is called clipping. The vertices are then made into triangles and filling in with pixels to make them whole, these newly filled triangles are called fragments, this is known as the triangle set up and then rasterization. Occlusion culling then removes the pixels that we cannot see due to other objects for example if a rectangle was in front of a square, the pixels behind the rectangle would not be rendered. A value is then assigned to each pixel that was rasterized , this is the parameter interpolation. The pixel shader then determines the final colour and texture of the pixel. The pixel engine then takes the previous 2D object and applies the fragment colours to it to create a whole object on the screen, the thing that stores all of the information throughout this process is known as the frame-buffer controller.

Ray Tracing

Rendering Techniques

There are several different types of rendering techniques, one is known as ray tracing and this provides some of the harder effects to achieve such as shadows and reflections. It creates the object by tracing the path the light takes and showing it as pixels, then showing the effects it has when interacting with objects. To the left you can see the ray tracing of a sphere as it shows the shadows and reflections. 

As you can see radiosity has been applied onto the second image as it is diffusing the light correctly whereas direct illumination has occurred on the first image. However unlike ray tracing specular reflection has been ignored.

There are several types of lighting as well indirect light is where the light is reflected off of certain surfaces in the room and tries to mimic how it would look in a real life situation. For example light bouncing off of a mirror. Local illumination is where the light is coming directly from a light source, such as the sun that just shines right down on us. To help the performance of your PC when rendering you don't always have to render the entire model for example in the picture below the sphere is less detailed based on how close it is to the camera. This can be set in Maya by using groups.

Geometric Theory

All shapes will have certain aspects to them the main ones for modelling in programs like Maya are the vertices which act as the corners of the shape; the edges, which serve to join the vertices; and the faces that fill in the gaps between them. There are also different application for these for example the edges do not have to be straight they can curve. All of these put together make a polygon which we can them manipulate into whatever shape we need for our game, however only polygons that have been triangulated may be used this way. NURBS take up less data however are extremely heavy for your computer to run in video games since the shape is defined by mathematics. They are however used in cut scenes that have been pre-rendered. Primitive objects are mainly used to start off a design you can the move, rotate and scale the shape by using the coordinates given in most 3D modelling programs, X Y and Z. X being the horizontal, Y the vertical and Z the depth. 

There are several types of modelling the first of which being box modelling, where you use a primitive object to make the rough shape of the model you want and then sculpt more detail on top of it. Another type is box modelling this is where you import a front and side view into Maya and use shapes the trace the outline and end up with a 3D model.

Constraints

There are many constraints that come with 3D modelling. You first have to consider the platform you are creating for as this will have a big impact on what you can and cannot do for example the amount of polygons per model will have to be lowered if you were creating for mobile when compared to PC. If there are too many polygons the game will become slow due to how much it is trying to render, this is also where file size comes into play. People don't want to fill up loads of space on there machine/phone with one game they often want many and if you are using large models and detailed textures to file size will increase. It will not only take you a long time to upload but will also take ages for the players to download it as well. By reducing the polygon count you can lower the file size. 3D modelling programs often have an optimisation option built in allowing the program to cut out all of the bits it knows it isn't using. There are two types of rendering time, one being real time this is where models and textures are rendered on the go, in game. This often uses the GPU and can slow your game down if there is too much information to render at any one time. The other, pre-rendering, is when the model is rendered over time, this could take a varied amount of time based on the size of the model and/or animation. Companies often use several machines to render at once to lower the time it takes to complete.

Unit 4 & 5

Unit 4 & 5 – Creative Media Production Management Project & Working to a brief in Media 

There are many different types of briefs the most famous of which would be the contractual, this is due to how often it is used in TV shows and movies. The reason it is a contractual brief is simply because the recipient will have to sign it. It is very similar to a formal brief as it will include very structured detail of everything that is required of you. I personally had to sign a contractual brief when starting my apprenticeship, it had outlined things like the length of time i would be working for, what my roles at the company would be, the pay i would be receiving and the amount of holiday I would be able to take per year. When signing one of these briefs you are locked into the terms and breaking any of them could land you with serious legal issues.

A negotiated brief is almost always changing up until the start date. Every aspect of this brief can be discussed until both parties are happy with the end result however most of the time things are left up to the employee whom is probably happy to be able to use more creativity and own initiative. The detail will most likely be very general for example "I'd like you to make me a cool website, use whatever you think best.". As you can see it is left very open to different ideas.

A competition brief is one that anybody can view and work to. All of the finished products are then normally judged and one will win with perhaps a few being runners up. All of the competition will strive to out do each other and then you will hopefully be left with the best piece of work possible. The possibility of a prize for winning will entice many people and therefore have many different ideas to choose from.

A formal brief is clear, concise and well set out. It will tell the recipient exactly what they need to do, normally in different sections. It will contain headings, sub headings, dates, addresses and quite often the companies logo in the header. An informal brief is often not even a official document, it could just be sent through a text or an email. It can even be agreed in a conversation, however this can be incredibly risky as it has no standing in court if the client doesn't give you what was agreed upon.

A commission brief is one where a large company hires an independent company to create there product for them. This type of brief is negotiable between both parties as opposed to an external party who would receive the product after its done. An advantage is that the independent company will receive the pay for creating the product and then might even get some profit that is generated by the product once it is out.

A co-operative Brief 

Similar to a competition brief, a tender is open to clients who will then have to compete for the work. The best will then be selected and then their ideas developed, and due to the competition the parties will be more motivated to create a better product however my be disheartened if they do not get the work. It can be very hard for people to earn a living this way.

A co-operative brief is, like the name suggests, a brief in which multiple parties work on the same thing. One of the main reasons this is done is because different people are better at different aspects of the work. Over the course of the work hopefully the companies will learn to communicate and work together which creates a lasting bond for the companies in the future. However if any of the employees disagree it may cause the project to collapse.


We have also been given a brief, and the first step when receiving one is to identify what kind of brief it is from the ones we have listed above. The main objectives we have to achieve are to plan and develop a story for a video game, which will be based on the game Big Trouble in Little China. After developing the story we will have to adapt it into a video game for a Windows PC. We will have to start off with 4 original game ideas and then use them to create one final game design document. This will have to be pitched before production will begin. I would say that this brief is informal due to the nature of how it is presented. It is in a PowerPoint as opposed to being on paper and set out neatly with a header, address date and title. Also in a formal brief the employer will set out exactly what they want the work to include where in this one a lot is left up to your imagination.

When following a brief there are many different skills we can develop on for example in the games industry, for example you may learn different 3D design tools and develop your skills on them from different people. There many self development and communication skills you can pick up, if the brief requires that you work in a group it will help improve things like leadership and teamwork. The good thing about working from briefs is that you will work for many different companies meaning you have a lot of chances to gain contacts in the industry. It may also require you to travel to different places to work which only adds to your experience and gives you several good aspects to add to your CV.