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.

Fiz Presentation

Unit 3: Research Techniques for the Creative Media Industry

Assignment 3 -  Be able to Present Results of Research

Qualitative Research is when we use things like reviews or websites to help us in the design for a game. You would often look at these to see what your audience thinks of your games and how to improve on any game in the making.


Quantitative Research is all to do with figures and numerical statistics, it is a research style based around this premise. The most common figures that are included would be ratings and sales of the game, this is done both before and after the creation of a game. It is used before the game to gauge how well you think the game is going to do and is done after to see how well the game has actually done. The easiest way to do this would be by using surveys.

World of Warcraft.

Primary Data

Since World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004 there wasn't as much social media used to promote the game as there is these days. These days though there are many ways that World of Warcraft is advertised for example Twitter and Facebook. Interviews are also a way they can be promoted and in one with Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment he said, "We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch, once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We're glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone." This shows us how closely game companies monitor things like player figures as it can directly affect what they need to do.

Secondary data

The ratings that World of Warcraft received at released were very positive, the average score on metacritic was 93 and shares great scores across several rating sites. Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m., over 100,000 were playing the game. These two number were record-breaking and made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history. Within a single day, all of the original World of Warcraft servers were filled to capacity, and by the end of the weekend, more than 40 additional servers were deployed to meet the rapidly growing player base, as the number of new accounts and concurrent users continued to grow.

Borderlands 2

Primary Research

Borderlands designer Randy Pitchford, when asked about if the game would offend people he replied, "I'm talking about if a design feels outlandish. If somebody can look at something and go 'that's cool because it's wild and different', then there's value to it, and if it's not the obvious thing then that's why it's producing that result, and makes it more valuable because its rare, it's exceptional." The developers of Borderlands 2 held a social media campaign for the game on Behance, they released a new promotional image each day in the weeks running up to the games release.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/776864/Borderlands-2-Social-Media-Campaign

Secondary Research

The game was critically acclaimed by almost all sources, averaging a score of 90 on Metacritic and a 9/10 on IGN, with a lot of the sources praising the games sense of humour, world structure and RPG systems. The game has around 30 hours of gameplay and has quite a lot of replayability. The current price for Borderlands 2 is $19.99 however the price at release was roughly $40. The game was released on September 17th 2012 and currently has roughly  7,287,019 ± 76,845 owners according to Steam.

The Company I'd Like to Work For: Blizzard

The Company I'd Like to Work For: Blizzard

Blizzard serve as both developer and publisher for there games. Currently they have released six major titles, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch. The company was formed in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse, in 1993 they started producing they're own games with the Lost Vikings. The company has approximately 5,000 employees over 9 cities Irvine, Austin, Versailles, Cork, Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, and Sydney.

World of Warcraft

WoW's highest player base was around 12 million worldwide and has currently dropped to about 5.5 million. Blizzard has currently released six expansions on top of the base game, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Catacylsm, Mist of Pandaria, Warlords of Dreanor, and Leigon. Each of the expansions cost around £35 at release and come with new races, quests and level boosts. 

Diablo

The first Diablo was created in 1997, follwing with Diablo II in 2000 and most recently Diablo III in 2012. With a lot of people being disappointed with the third installment Blizzard released the Reaper of Souls expansion the following year which boosted its popularity. Its a role playing dungeon hack and slash, which as of 2012 had sold over 24.8 million copies. In the first Diablo there were only three classes however since then they have released up to 5, the Witch Doctor, the Barbarian, the Wizard, the Monk, the Demon Hunter, and the Crusader.

Starcraft

Blizzard have released 2 Starcrafts so far, the first coming in 1998 and the second in 2010

Hearthstone

Heroes of the Storm

Overwatch 

Music and sound for Josh

Level 3 Game Design
Unit 73: Sound for Computer Games
Assignment 2 - Creating and Applying Sounds to a Specific Game

Planning

The genre of my game is Si-fi and so we want the music to fit with this. I want to try o create a sense of exploration as well as tension whilst leading u to the bosses in the game. There are several sounds I want for my game and to help remember which one is which I will name them appropriately, for example Ship_shoot. The files will be saved as a WAV file because it is lossless format this means you wont be losing any audio quality when reproducing the recording. These days a lot of home audio interfaces offer up to 192kHz meaning you can get a high recording rate.

Creation of my Sounds

We first recorded the sounds that we needed with a zoom H1 recorder and used an audio log sheet to keep track of what we had recorded at certain times. I then imported the sounds we had recorded onto Audacity, where I edited them into what I need for example when making a laser sound for my ship shooting I had the sound of a twang against a lamppost, I then used to phaser effect to increase the stats, the most important one to increase was the feedback. The frequency was also important as it created a high pitch laser sound.

 The music I did for the game was to continue playing until the player died and so I looped it in Game Maker. For the music I used a site called ButtonBass.com and merged different tracks to create my music.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2yiX7oXISHleVhIWkZiLTQyQ21pVFNqampsYXJ3NjQxOEZn

Putting the Sound into my Game

After making the sound in Audacity you now have to put it into your game to do this you would simply right click the sound tab and click create sound.










                                                      
Then when the new window opens click the little file and add the sound that you want. You should them rename the sound so you don't lose track of it in Game Maker, you can also preview it to make sure you have the right one.

Evaluation

Overall I feel that the music and sound effects I created fit very nicely with my space invaders game. The high pitch of the music really encapsulates the Si-fi genre and adds to the feel of the game. The first piece of music was roughly 4 minutes long and was looped in game maker so it would last for the entire game. Originally I thought it might be a little too repetitive but it turns out that when you're playing the game you don't really notice the background noise. In the end I was happy with this piece. The second piece was for the title screen and was called intro_music, the idea was to has it similar to the music going into the actual game but not exactly the same. The only thing wrong with this tack is the fact that it wasn't quite in time, however I felt like this added to it even more and so I kept it this way. The next three are simply sound effects one for shooting, one for an explosion, and one for the clicking of certain buttons like the start and restart ones. The laser beam turned out really well, however the sound effect triggers every time you shoot and this is quite quick and so the noise can get a bit over bearing, due to this I had to turn in down in Audacity and re apply it to my game. I kept the sound effect for the ships being destroyed quite raw, this is because of how metallic it sounded and I wanted to give that feel the ships as well. The last sound effect was simply for the clicking of buttons and so I kept it quite simple but tried to make it as relative to the game as possible.

Link to video where the sounds have been used. https://youtu.be/wg-eMEtGgE0

Faizaan's Work

World of Warcraft

Primary Data

Since World of Warcraft was originally released in 2004 there wasn't as much social media used to promote the game as there is these days. In an interview with Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard Entertainment he said "We were all extremely pleased with the success of World of Warcraft on its first day of launch, once we saw the numbers for the first day, we knew that we had to immediately increase capacity to accommodate the huge numbers of players joining our game. We're glad so many people are enjoying World of Warcraft, and we are dedicated to supporting a fun and smooth game experience for everyone."

Secondary data

The ratings that World of Warcraft received at released was very positive, the average score on metacritic is 93 and shares great scores across several rating sites. Within the first day, over 200,000 players created World of Warcraft accounts. By 5:00 p.m., over 100,000 were playing the game concurrently. These two record-breaking numbers made World of Warcraft the fastest-growing MMORPG in history. Within a single day, all original 40+ World of Warcraft servers were filled to capacity, and by the end of the weekend, more than 40 additional servers were deployed to meet the rapidly growing player base, as the number of new accounts and concurrent users continued to grow.


Target Audience

World of Warcraft was created for the new people to MMO's and for those who wanted to play MMO's but didn't have 9-12 hours a day to spend. When WoW was launched every Major MMO out was a huge time taker that majority of people did not have the time to play. Aside from this the target audience for World of Warcraft is pretty much anyone that is able to play a computer, the easy going questing or the intense raiding can appeal to everyone.

Market Audience

At the time WoW had several competitors one of the major ones being Guild Wars 2 which is very similar to WoW in many ways it has general questing and dungeon like encounters. Some of the advertisements for World of Warcraft were very odd, for example In China there was an advert in which Blizzard had a crossover advert with CocaCola in which both a man and women morph into an orc and fight over skimpy clothing, when she defeats him she is rewarded with a chest full of Coke. WoW was promoted heavily in China due to the vast amount of people living there, it simply means that it will be marketed to more people in the range of the target audience.

Production Research

World of Warcraft was released to every computer that is able to download the battle.net launcher and buy WoW, the entire idea behind WoW is to make it as readily available to as many people as possible. World of Warcraft has always been a subscription based payment system and then a full price for each new expansion. To play the game it is around £10 a month and roughly £35 for an expansion at release, it has always been this way and probably always will. Apparently to originally create World of Warcraft it took $200 million dollars for upkeep and development of the game, which took roughly 4 years to complete.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/world-of-warcraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EONagej8Bu8

Undertale

Primary Data

Undertale owes a lot of its success to YouTube, as the game was picked up by many major Youtubers and the hype for it only grew from there on. They didn't use many traditional questionnaires but instead used the FAQs on Kickstarter, one of the questions asked was how long the game would be and the developer replied with 2 - 4 hours.

Secondary Data

Undertale got very good reviews all round receiving an average score of 92 on metacritic and 10/10 on IGN, with people saying "The biggest surprise of 2015, a unique masterpiece.". The game currently has roughly 2,491,632 ± 45,214 owners according to steam. These numbers are incredibly high for a simple indie game that came out just over a year ago in September 2015.

Audience Research

The target audience for Undertale is quite difficult to see as it feels like the game is targeted towards everybody however the story behind it is quite dark and the gameplay can actually be very difficult and so I would place the target audience in the age range of 15 to 30. It clearly wasn't targeted at a certain gender as the main character you play as 'Frisk' is gender neutral. 

Market Audience

Apart from being advertised on Kickstarter the main way that people were informed about this game was from YouTube the some of the major Youtubers picked up the game and it basically blew up overnight. Toby Fox the developer didn't really have a choice to advertise it here however it was probably the best things that could have happened to the game. There are competitors in the form of general indie games but none of the ones I've seen really hold a candle to Undertale.

Production Research

Since release Undertale has cost £9.99 which personally I feel is a very reasonable price for this great game. The game was originally being kickstarted and had a modest goal of $5,000. The campaign however raised over ten times this amount mainly due to one aspect of the game, the fact that you don't have to fight the enemies in order to defeat them. The final amount was $51,124 with 2398 backers. The game was released on steam and so is readily available to anyone with this software installed.

http://steamspy.com/app/391540
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1002143342/undertale

Borderlands 2

Primary Research

Borderlands designer Randy Pitchford, when asked about if the game would offend people he replied, "I'm talking about if a design feels outlandish. If somebody can look at something and go 'that's coll because it's wild and different', then there's value to it, and if it's not the obvious thing then that's why it's producing that result, and makes it more valuable because its rare, it's exceptional." The developers of Borderlands 2 held a social media campaign for the game on Behance, they released a new promotional image each day in the weeks running up to the games release.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/776864/Borderlands-2-Social-Media-Campaign


Secondary Research

The game was critically acclaimed by almost all sources, averaging a score of 90 on meta critic and a 9/10 on IGN, with a lot of the sources praising the games sense of humour, World structure and RPG systems. The game has around 30 hours of gameplay and has quite a lot of replayability. The current price for Borderlands 2 is $19.99 however the price at release was roughly $40. The game was released on September 17th 2012 and currently has roughly  7,287,019 ± 76,845 owners according the steam.


Audience Research

The game is stated to be targeted at an age range of 25 - 39 year olds I think that the main buyers of the game would range from 18 - 25 year olds due to the cell-shaded graphics and over the top violence. The majority of people that play Borderlands 2 are male, this is also shown from the over sexualise characters. I believe that Borderlands 2 is made for the A,B,C1 this includes people that have the money to spend on games however I don't think the game was made with a social class in mind due to the fact that the game doesn't take itself very seriously.


Market Research

One of the major competitors for Borderlands is Battleborn, this is mainly due to the wacky characters with different abilities and weapons considering the game modes are nothing alike. Both games however see you shooting stuff with a wide variety of odd weapons. The game was actually advertised in a slightly different way, in addition to the usual TV advertisements a four issue comic was released detailing how the four main protagonists came together in the first place.


Production Research

The game was obviously released on steam and in major stores quite globally, this is in order to get the game out to as many people as possible. According to an interview with one of the developers for Borderlands 2 the game cost roughly $30 - $35 million dollars to make.



http://uk.ign.com/games/borderlands-2/pc-94190
http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

The Binding of Isaac Rebirth

Primary Research

The developer Edward McMillan said in an interview that the game is so odd hes unsure why people find it appealing "But I don't think many people see the themes in that way. I mean, what's so appealing about a naked abused child crying on shit? I guess the real appeal is the fact that you can play it endlessly." Personally the reason i play the second game is because i enjoyed the first one so much, the advertisement for The Binding of Isaac Rebirth I actually find quite disturbing, as you can see ion the link below.
http://toucharcade.com/2016/11/01/binding-of-isaac-beta-testers/

Secondary Research

The ratings that The Binding of Isaac received were pretty great all round, receiving an average score of 86 on metacritic and a score of 9 on IGN. The game costs $14.99 and about $10 - $15 for the DLC. It was released on November 4th 2014 has currently sold 1,789,248 ± 37,858 according to steam.

Audience Research

According to multiple sources The Binding of Isaac wasn't made with a specific target audience in mind however the game is rated for mature audiences so the game definitely not aimed at children. The story behind the game is actually based on a story form the bible and some of the aspects of the game can be quite gruesome, for example an item that you can pick up makes Isaac appear to have a wire coat hanger sticking through his head. For this reason I think that it is targeted towards ages 15 - 25.

Market Research

One of the major competitors for the Binding of Isaac is Enter the Gungeon, a very similar game on multiple levels. Both games have different characters that you can play as and see you moving from room to room fighting enemies and picking up items. Each game also has bosses that you have to fight at the end of the level. The Binding of Isaac was advertised in a very strange way, the advert was a fully animated version of Isaac running into various enemies with gameplay weaved in between.

Production Research

The main place the game was released was on steam, I don't think any hard copies of the game exist, however the game is also available on the Xbox and PlayStation store. I can't find how much the game cost to develop however due to it being an indie developer I imagine that the budget wasn't as much.

Unit 13 - Understanding the Game Industry - Contracts of Employment

Unit 13 - Understanding the Game Industry - Contracts of Employment

Contracts

Contracts are an agreement between two parties, in the game industry this is quite often the developers and the publishers. These are usually a written contract that require a signature to make the contract legally binding. There is a lot of important information that is often included in contracts, this includes benefits that you may receive with the company you work for, Inventions that you may have during your time working for the company, a confidentiality agreement and a non-compete depending on if you are high enough withing the company. Some of the benefits available are simple ones like the amount that you are to be paid or any bonus pay. Health insurances could also be included and occasionally a pension plan. There is normally one clause within the contract that states anything you create within your time working at the company automatically becomes property of the company, for example if you create the idea for a game whilst working at EA, the idea would belong to them even if they don't plan on using it. The confidentiality agreement is where the employee must agree not to share any of the companies secrets, this is mainly due to the fact that they dont want anybody to find out about anything the company may have in the works, especially a competing company, the penalties for doing so are also included. Higher level employees like executives are bound to know more about the company so to stop them from giving other companies the current information they sign a non-complete saying that they aren't allowed to work for another company for a certain amount of time.

The development agreement is a type of contract that includes the terms of a development deal, this will include several things, one of the first is the Whereas, this basically says that a publishing company and a development company will work together to make one product which is the published by the publishing company. The terms are what the developers have to work with, for example the money that the publishers will pay the developers and the amount of time that they will have to complete the game. There is also the matter of ownership of the game, in the contract it is decided if the the game(or IP if based on licensed IP) belongs to the development company or the publishing company. It is occasionally split between them, for example the publishers might own the game whereas the developers might own the code for the game. Warranties are are something that both the publishers and developers have to agree to in order not to get the other party into and lawsuits, for example the developers would have to swear that they had not plagiarised any of someone else's source code as to not get the publishers sued and the publishers have to have the right to ask the developers to make a game before they start to. The terms of termination will also be written out, this is what will happen if the deal ends before the game is fully complete.

License Agreements

A license agreement is needed when a game uses an IP that is already owned by somebody else, for example Star Wars being owned by Disney. The publishers need a license agreement before they can start production on the game, this is due to the fact that the agreement will have terms included that tell you what you're allowed and not allowed to add in your game. There are several different things that can be licensed for example maybe you wanted to make a game very loosely based on Star Wars and so only needed the rights to the characters or maybe a few story elements of the movies to be put into the game. The agreement can often be limited to certain platforms for example Xbox One and PlayStation 4, if the publisher wants to have the rights to publish on another platform. The territory is part of the license agreement that states where the game is allowed to be published, if they want it published worldwide then this normally costs more. The contract is bound to run out at some point, this is called a term, a game normally loses popularity from around 3 - 5 years and so this usually how long the contracts last. The cost for the license will be stated in this contract as well, the cost is usually paid upfront and then the royalties are based on the amount of units sold or occasionally percentage based.

NDAs and Confidentiality

A Non-Disclosure-Agreement is when one of the company tells the other information, this could be plans for future games or new technology they have in the works. The other company has to agree not to share this information, if they do then the first company can file a lawsuit against them. Some of them go into more detail than others in specifying that the party that doesn't comply must pay all legal fees. But as long as you're going to keep the secret confidential, those clauses then they won't apply. 






http://www.sloperama.com/advice/article58.htm https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-disclosure-agreements http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/licensing-agreements.html
http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1577

Level 3 in Games DesignUnit 73: Sound for Computer Games

Level 3 in Games DesignUnit 73: Sound for Computer Games

By Ben Allardyce

The Last of Us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97u-U0nvJM#

I feel that Gustavo used this music to convey the emptiness of humanity throughout The Last of Us. The instruments that he used are very reminiscent of spaghetti westerns you can hear the similarities in this track at 1:50 -  2:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7z6zRbGhfg. This also fits well with the game play since in The Last of Us you can ride on horseback which is often associated with western style films. The music is important to set the tone of the game, The Last of Us is a very emotional game filled with tension, so this had to be put across in the music which I feel is done very well. Personally I don't think there is any Foley in this track, Foley is where you add sound effects into the track after it has been recorded. A great example of this is shown in this video at 2:40 - 3:20 where they show the creation of the sound effects for certain creatures in game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJyk5do5pq0
Timbre is what makes two instruments sound different even when they are playing at the same note and volume, timbre is made because the sounds resonate at different frequency. Waveform is the graphical representation of signal, this includes sound vibrations. The main theme from The Last of Us sounds like the wave length would be a lot longer and dragged out to create the slow tones in the background of the track.

I believe this sound isn't just to create emotion but also convey information, I believe that a lot of the tracks in The Last of Us symbolise loneliness, not just the main theme for example this track is also very sombre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYUErkvORWA
An audio environment is how the track is recorded and therefore listened to, for example surround sound is a system involving three of more speakers, this enables the listener to have a more realistic effect. For example in the main theme for The Last of Us at 0:34 to 0:40 there is footsteps in the background, when I listened to this with headphones it sounds as if the person is walking from one side to the other, this is stereo sound. Considering that Gustavo was hired by Naughty Dog and created the all of the music in house, I cant imagine there being many legal issues however the music would have to be copyrighted so no one else is able to use it without crediting the original artist. Gustavo would also have to be careful when creating the music, as to not use any copyrighted music or Foley.

Little Big Planet 3 OST - Dead Heat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HrZAK2lZ0g

Personally this I think that this music doesn't work very well, there seems to be a lot going on at once that kind of put me off the main theme of the track, however it doesn't seem to take itself too seriously which fits in well with the game.
 The track seems to give the sense of machinery and perhaps some sort of factory based level. From what I can hear there seems to be some Foley in this track in the form of beeping, especially at 2:49 to 3:00. This is a big part of what makes it technically different when compared to The Last of Us main theme. I can imagine that the timbre was a big part of this track as it would allow us to distinguish the different sounds created by the same notes and volumes. I think that the wave form of this track would be drastically different to the wave form of the main theme for The Last of Us. I think that the wave length would be a lot shorter for Dead Heat, as there are a lot of quick beats and drops.
I think the music symbolises the craziness of the game and how its not supposed to be taken as seriously as a triple A title like The Last of Us would be. The track 'Dead Heat' uses the audio environment of stereo sound to give the perception of natural sound your ears would hear. You can hear this at 2:47 - 3:02 in 'Dead Heat' when the beeping in the background is alternating ears, if you listen using stereo headphones. The sources of the music especially Foley can come from anything from professional instruments to garbage cans. They are then often edited in a studio to create the sound you are looking for.

Task 2

Due to The Last of Us being a massive game, and both that and Little Big Planet being developed for a very popular platform, the tracks can afford to be uncompressed, which therefore means its a higher quality of sound. On Windows it would be saved as a WAV file, it is designed to store a lot of different audio formats, including lossy  and lossless. Since WAV can store PCM, this makes it suitable to store the original recording. The audio files are probably passed around to been edited quite often and so there would have to be a naming system as to not confuse the files. An example of this would be Chapter1_Cutscene2.WAV. The bit depth is the number of bits in each sample, and they correlate to resolution of each sample. An example of this is that audio in DVDs can store up to 24 bits, so would have a bit-depth of 24. The bit depth affects the bit rate and so the higher the bit depth, the more information can be sent or received per second, therefore the higher the bit-depth the higher the file size. There can be several constraints on what the file size is for audio, a major one being RAM obviously there is a specific amount of RAM on the PS4 and this cannot really be changed and so the developers have to take this into consideration. If it were on PC however this wouldn't be some much of an issue for the developers and more of an issue for the gamers as they would have to up the amount of RAM they have to be able to hold the games data. It also takes more data to output the audio in different ways, for example mono sound is only one channel of sound and so the file sizes wouldn't be as big as if it was outputting as surround sound. PCM is a form of sound that has been decoded from audio sound before it is outputted. It has to be uncompressed and has a high bit-rate and so will be a large file size. Gustavo has a very particular sound so it is easier to identify when Foley has been used in his tracks.


There are several different ways to record the audio, one being multitrack, this is where you record from multiple sources of sound on different tracks or at different times. DAT is a digital audio tape that is used to record digitally on tape at a relatively high level of quality. Its also quite a low cost and so is great for gathering several recording on one device. A sequencer is a piece of software that puts together a from a sequence on MIDI events. MIDI itself allows digital music to communicate with each other, advantages of MIDI are that it is compact meaning that an entire song can be in a couple hundred MIDI messages whereas audio data has to be sampled thousands of times a second. MIDI is also very easy to change, for example the pitch and duration can be edited without having to rerecord. MIDI also only describes the notes that you play meaning you send these notes to almost any instrument thereby creating any sound. The game can also be put onto a blu-ray disk which would allow for HD graphics and surround sound, you can tell it is ready for Blu-Ray because it is already on quite a large platform not on mobile. Doing this improves the quality of the game tenfold, this is especially true for The Last of Us. Its genre fits around this type of sound very well as it complements the environment and game play elements. It adds tension to the game by sending you sounds from different areas for example if there was a noise from the left you would hear it in your left ear and none in your right. Mono sound is where it comes from just one source making it sound very flat and two dimensional, stereo sound is where it comes from multiple sources and surround sound is where the sound will come from whichever direction it should do giving it an almost three dimensional effect and help immerse you in the game.

UNDERSTANDING THE GAMES INDUSTRY - INDUSTRY AND MARKET TRENDS

UNDERSTANDING THE GAMES INDUSTRY - INDUSTRY AND MARKET TRENDS - By Ben Allardyce

This is a report about industry and market trends. Industry trends are the trends of large companies and the software that they develop, whilst on the other hand market trends are the trends the gamers follow, for example what the majority of people want to play right now.

Market Trends

As of 2014  the leading country for games development is the UK, and according to a poll from several games professionals across Europe, the UK also the best source for games 10 years ago. Its strange that the people that are most playing games are over 45 year olds. And oddly the most used format for are applications on a mobile device, this is probably due to how easy and cheap they are to buy most ranging anywhere from free to around £2, with the odd few being more. This has also made the most popular genre puzzle type games often played by older women. Most of the puzzle games are free on an app store. Also according to the IAB the majority of the British gaming community now consists of women. According to Creative Industries in 2014 the amount of people in Britain that were gaming was around 69%, compared to 49% of people in 2011. and women made up around 52% of these people. The reason women and older people have begun to get into games is because they have been made so easily accessible via places like the app/google store. People however can spend too much time gaming, for example children aged 8 - 15 spend an average of 20 hours gaming a week, compared to people aged 16+ that spend an average of 11.

The digital market for games has grown in recent years to a point where physical copies of games are rarely bought. Around 48% of the population in the UK use digital stores to purchase games, 55% purchase mobile apps and 40% still purchase disk copies. The main things that pus the digital market in the UK is when new technology in developed. The UK has a very high end market for smart phones and has around 30 million phones in use, this is one of the major reasons the UK's app stores are the biggest in Europe. The fact that we have so many smartphones also drives the social media market up. Market trends suggest that mobile users send about 50% of the time on their on social media site like Facebook or Twitter. Social media does however boost the use of games due to easy access to other that play the same games. The PC download market is also growing exponentially due to online stores like Steam and Uplay. The UK is currently the best place in Europe to invest in the mobile market, a large part of this is because the UK has the largest network of WiFi hotspots in Europe. Games have to effectively market there products to gamers to draw them in.

Industry Trends

Technology is slowly advancing in video games, and one of the newest developments is the idea of VR. These are devices that let the player immerse themselves on another level of the game. However one of the biggest criticisms is that you can only do it alone. Currently the leading developers are working on social versions of VR. Compared to normal gaming VR is more of a physical experience and more attuned to the Nintendo Wii as it puts your whole body into the game. Augmented reality is where a game puts things into the real world, in a game. An example of this is the game Pokemon Go this game put Pokemon in real life locations that you could go out and find. This was a massive game at the time, however this may not have been due to the AR but the fact that it was Pokemon related. Every couple of years the current edition of consoles get an update, sometimes its just a slimmer version of the previous console however, there can be major updates as well, for example the Xbox One S also supports 4K movies. A recent development,especially in apps, is freemium this is a way the free games that attract thousands of downloads get make money other than ad revenue. Ads actually play a large part of it as one of the main purchases is normally no ads. A lot of games often include in game currency that is available to purchase with real money, the cost of this can range anywhere from £2 - £99, from what I've seen.

In conclusion, the trends of the gaming industry are quite varied. Market trends are what is popular within the community, like genre and console. However the trends of the industry are more focused around the development of new technology and how this impacts upon the market trends.

Design Brief

Design Brief

This is a rogue-like dungeon crawler game sees you play as various characters from the movie Big Trouble in Little China. Your character will constantly shoot in a direction when the corresponding arrow key is pressed, the movement will be set to the WASD keys. There will be 8 different floors, filled with randomly generated rooms, each with a set of enemies in it. These enemies will be increasingly harder as you traverse further though the levels. At the end of each level there will be a boss, there is different option for which boss you will fight and this is randomly picked in the last room. The option for the boss you get will increase in difficulty each floor down. There is an item room on each floor, containing one item, there are hundreds of items that change or modify the weapons and bullets you have.

P1 Understand the use of Sound and Music in Games.

P1 Understand the use of Sound and Music in Games.

The Dark Night Rises
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9neFAM4uZM     2:42 - 3:30

An example of a bad use of music would be the opening scene where we are introduced to Bane as the plane is being hijacked. Before the plane is even hijacked, we are bombarded by the music that is overbearing and completely drowns out any suspense that the visuals were trying to portray.

HEROES OF THE STORM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmX7GRpNwPw

This is the game from the main menu, its choir type sound along with the digital music put in builds up to the peak. Its sole purpose is to pump you up before the game and it does this to good effect.

Music in video games is by far the best way to set the tone and mood. For example, this is music from Fallout 3, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JKVanqVvVw. Fallout 3 is often described as “desolate” or “isolated” and “dreary” and it is shown in this score that is specifically aimed to make you feel so.

Another reason to have good music in a game is addiction. For example in the original Super Mario Bros, not as much music could be added back in those days. Due to this the music had to be repetitive and addiction in order to convince people to keep playing, however not irritating at the same time. People would then associate positive outcomes with that music, which will in turn make people more likely to keep playing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhscMsBhNhw

Waveform

A waveform is how we represent, the shape of a wave and how it travels. First the wave length is the distance between the peaks of the wave, the frequency of the wave is the number of waves produced by the source every second. The amplitude of the wave is how far the peak of the wave is from its undisturbed position. The Rubens tube shows a standing wave by using sound and fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynqzeIYA7Iw

Foley

Foley is when you use real life sound effects in films, video games and other media. These sounds can include things like rustling paper, to glass breaking.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJyk5do5pq0  1:24 - 1:30  2:39 - 3:15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKa4A-oas74  1:49 - 2:00

Timbre

Timbre is what makes two different notes sound unique and stand out. This is because every note has certain vibrations, made up of the fundamental frequency and then inner ones as well. These are harmonics or undertones. The fundamental is the frequency that all of the wave vibrate. To be able to identify the tone it needs more than three harmonics.

Psychology of sound



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCAqDMfPcRA

This is the death sound for a unit in Civ V, for this reason the sound effect symbolises death.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ8z9FQEQiQ

You can hear the in the video above the instructions that Peppy gives you, this tells the player what they need to do.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfx6yf8pux4

This is the sound effect for picking up a coin in Mario, I believe it symbolises happiness and success when you hear it.