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.

Unit 13 – Understanding the games industry

Unit 13 – Understanding the games industry - Financial Issues

This is a report about the financial issues around the games industry and what causes them. There are several reasons that cause a game to sell well or bad.

The Cost Involved in Creating a Game

There are several things that at costly in the development process, these things include staff, the development of software and hardware, the rent and bills, marketing and advertisement, legality.

In America in 2013 the cost of setting up and running an MMO games development studio for 12 months was roughly $618,000, excluding variable costs. The staff includes 2 programmers, 1 software engineer, 1 artist, 1 games designer, 1 PM/Team Lead, 1 QA tester, 1 systems admin. On average each person earns $73,000 per year, this approximately $584,000. The office space would be around $24,000 for 12 months. All of the equipment would cost $1,200 per person, so $9,600 for 8 people. Sometimes money ins't the only reason a game fails, Grim Fandango for example had several other factors some of these being the fact that the point and click genre just want popular at the time. Also other games like Half-Life came out at a similar time.

How Could a Game be Funded

The funding the developers get for their game comes in many different forms and can often decide how the developer will spend their budget. It used to be fairly limited when it came to getting a budget, your options normally being a bank loan, an investor, or a publisher. While these would help you stick to a set budget, they would be quite difficult to get, for example an investor would have to be quite sure that he was going to at least earn his money back and the bank would want collateral just in case the development didn't go well. It has recently become very popular to get funding though crowd funding sites such as Kickstarter and GoFundMe. It can also be quite hard to raise money this way since regular people have to bet on your game being good to decide to donate to you. Also it is quite regular to see the developer giving out rewards to people that donate a certain amount of money, these rewards can vary from IRL items, to access to the full game. The advantages of crowdfunding would be that genres that aren't often seen would get recognition and funding where in the past this wouldn't have been possible and example of this would be Exploding Kittens this is a card game that would have you trying not to draw cards instead of drawing them. Crowdfunding also allows indie developers to get more funding and following then they would normally get, this helps people get hyped for the game. This however can also be a downside as expectation may become too high, backers of the game may not get exactly what they were expecting, or may simply be disappointed by the end results. This happened with a game called Code Hero, a game that raised  $170,954 on Kickstarter, the backers were suddenly met with a comment from the developer Alex Peake saying he was quitting that was the last update in April of 2014.

Issues Affecting Small Companies

There are several reasons that a small company would have a lot more trouble then say a large company. One of these would be getting the funding to actually start the development of a game, there would be different reasons for this when compared to a larger games company. For example the bank would look at your current income, and since an indie developer plans on using their free time to make a game they probably don't have a full time job if they even have one in the first place. It is hard enough for a normal games designer to get one considering the state of their pay. There would be long periods of time where you are earning no money and then spikes every now and again. Another problem they would have is publishing, getting some one else to publish for you can be a good thing considering they would normally pay for the full development of the game, this covers all cost, however due to this they would take all the money the game earns until they break even and then the development studio would only get what was agreed upon in the deal, which usually isn't very much.

Conclusion

So we have learnt that it is important to not make your expectations too high and to set a budget as to not get off track. If you're under prepared, then you should take a step back and plan, to avoid too many financial issues. There are different ways of funding that are right for different businesses, these in turn would give different options to sell your game to the public. There are extra costs that you need to plan for in case any problem occurs during development. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-a-video-game
http://freshtechsolutions.co.uk/blog/advantages-disadvantages-crowdfunding/
http://kotaku.com/12-successful-kickstarters-that-never-delivered-1687019268
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-08-06-shovel-knight-devs-break-down-costs-sales
http://ukie.org.uk/research

Unit 20 - Computer Game Platforms & Technology - Software Technology

Unit 20 - Computer Game Platforms & Technology - Software Technology

An Operating System (OS) is software that basically allows the computer the run, it communicates with the hardware and allows other programs to run.

PC – Windows 10	Apple Mac – MacOS	Iphone/Ipad – IOS 10	Samsung Galaxy S7 – Android 7 (Nugget)	Playstation 4 – Unix-like Orbis OS	Xbox One - Hyper-V and Windows 10
You can browse the internet, download and run different software.	You can browse the internet, download and run different software. Make sweet music.	You can browse the internet and download apps to run them. You can also send text and answer calls.	You can browse the internet and download apps to run them. You can also send text and answer calls.	You can browse the internet and run games from a disc.	You can browse the internet and run games from a disc.

Windows 10 has probably the most functionality out of these options because other make game platforms that you can download for it, for example Battle.net.

Windows 10 isn't exactly built for games, however it has certain apps that help with this. For example Steam and Origin are separate things that you can use to play games. There is also a Windows store that you can buy or download games from. There is also a Xbox app so you can link up with you Xbox account to control it from your PC.

Platform dependency is where software is made for only one platform and so can only be used on that one. Examples of this would be PlayStation games and Xbox games, they each wouldn't be able to run on the other console. There are also several games that are platform independent for example Bloodborn. Platform independence is where you can run a program and it isn't restricted by the OS. An example of this is the language Java, this is because when we execute the code it generates a .class file which comprises of the bytecodes. These bytecodes are easily interpreted by JMV which is available in every OS we install.


A device driver is a certain program that can control a device that is connected to your computer. There are several device drivers for example, they have one for printer, displays and CD-ROM. The device drivers are usually built into the operating system.

Application Software

Interpreted Languages

 An interpreted language is where the program that has been written is being executed line by line, this can be done on any operating system, however it is often slower than a complied language. Examples of these are Java, Python and C#. The reason Java can run on most operating systems because when the machine executes the code it generates a .class file which is comprised of bytecodes. Examples of games made in Java are Wolfenstien: RPG and Minecraft. Bytecodes can be interpreted by JMV which is available in ever OS. An example of a game made in python in Civilisation IV this is because most of the tasks are quite simple.

Complied Languages

A compiled language changes the  source code into machine code, that is directly specific to the target machine, before executing the action. This code will be specific to the given processor and OS. Advantages of this is that they will run faster because there area already in the native code. However the code isn't very portable and it is impossible to write in machine code. C/C++ are both compiled languages and an example of a game made in C++ is Doom 3.

Game Engines

The code for GameMaker didn't want to be too complex for new people and so has its own in built language called GML or Game Maker Language. Example of a game made in GM is Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2. Unity uses C# and a Javascript like code called Unityscript, which are supported by the source code in C++. Examples of game made in Unity are Pathfinder online and Cities:Skylines. Unreal is coded in unrealscript which is made to be a simple yet high level language. Unreal 4 however is coded in C++, this is because it is the base to add other languages like C# and Javascript. Examples of games made in Unreal are Batman:Arkham Knight and Battleborn.

Graphical API

API or application program interface, are the tools we use when building software applications. The API specifies how the software should be used in conjunction with each other. A good API provides all of the materials needed to make developing a program easier. Some examples of API are Google Maps API this lets developers embed Google Maps on their webpage, it is designed to work on both mobile devices and desktop browsers. One of the most used graphical API is called OpenGL, it is used for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. It is also used for achieving hardware-accelerated rendering by interacting with the GPU.











http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1326071/is-java-a-compiled-or-an-interpreted-programming-language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Java_platform_games
http://www.programmerinterview.com/index.php/general-miscellaneous/whats-the-difference-between-a-compiled-and-an-interpreted-language/
http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/114882/
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-stellar-examples-of-games-created-with-Game-Maker
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/604180/what-type-of-coding-does-unity-use.html

Task 3

The genre of the game would be rouge-like, dungeon crawler in which you have to guide Jack through each level by defeating sets of randomly generated enemies each with different attack patterns, skills and health. The layout for the rooms would also be randomly placed from a set of pre-generated rooms as to make each run though as different as possible. There would be several different playable characters examples being Jack, Wang and Egg Shen. Each different character would have different stats for example Jack would be the most well rounded character, whereas Wang would have do more damage but have less health. There would be random items that spawn throughout the levels that'd give different effects to the character you're playing. Some characters would even start with items, for example Wang could have something that increases the spawn rate of items.

There would be several significant differences when compared to the story I wrote for example there would be a transition level in which you get Jack from one place to another on his truck or motorcycle, this was taken out of the story due to it being a bit boring and considered filler. We would need sprites for all of the characters, enemies and objects in each room. As well as sounds you would need them for the characters and enemies, as well as sounds cues for picking up items and breaking objects. There would be about 5 levels, however you would be guaranteed to never get the exact same floor layout or items, so the game would have massive replayability. The other mechanics would include things like Jack's projectiles ricocheting off of walls, making them explosive and increasing movement speed.

This is the screen you find when you first enter the game after clicking it it will bring you to the character selection screen. It is designed around the walls of the bar, as if someone has pinned it up.




This is Wang's bar from the story and it serves as the hub of the game in which a new characters show up they would stand in several positions around the room, an arrow would hover over their heads and their stats would show in the bottom right.

This is the layout of the floors, however in other rooms there would be objects like pots and rocks that you could break with certain items. As you can see there is a possibility for four different rooms to be adjacent to the starting one however there are occasionally dead ends and special themed rooms one being a bar in which jack can regain health. 

What the Customer wants

Before finding what the customer wants you have to find who the customer is, this is called a target audience. To find the target audience you first need to think about the game, in this case it is a game based on the movie Big Trouble in Little China. Since this movie came out in 1986 the people that would have seen it would now be around 45 years old, however it is also a video game so I would put the age of the target audience from 15 - 40 years old. The main gender that I think would be playing the game would be male due to the characters and how they were portrayed in the movie.