unit 78

•Identify finance available

I have round about £2000 available to continue on my work to make my game and this effects my products avaliable and helps me with the creation of my game.

•Identify personnel needed and whether they 

are available

I will not need personal for this for i shell be working alone other wise I would need a programmer concept artist and a lead moddler to help me in the creation of my game and complete it smoothly.

•Identify resources available and book where necessary

resources that are available are game maker adobe Photoshop and paint plus more and we have a full video library we can use and book resources in the library.

•Prepare budget

if i had a crew i would split the budget between the team and the resources we need like in contracts i would place cost's., this also involves 

•Contract personnel

I will have no contracted personal in this job for I will be doing alll the work my self where is i was i would be hiring concept artists and programmers and texture artists to help in the making of my game.

•Prepare schedule

•Identify any Health and Safety concerns

health ans safety will include making sure the team is fit and healthy meaning good meals around and also that they are in shape so they do not get strains and impairments and also that they are sat right at the computers and that they are in a good rate in the operation.

•Identify legal aspects

the leagel aspects will be keeping to our bound contracts and out briefs so we do not fall behind and to make sure all prgi ratings are looked at and seen for the game made and we meet out set path

•Identify any other risks to your project
other problems mat link to things like dedlines not being meet and projects falling behind and the project loseing funding alll the risks of these problems will be looked in to so if it dose happen we have a plan on how to cope with it 

•

Unit 78 digital graphics for computer games

Artistic styles-This is the style of the game like if its cartoony or over exaggerated in the art work and character design this is a very important part of a game because for some this can make or brake the game.

For example:

Cartoony

The style of cartoony is showing the art a little over the top and colorful in its look may being still having a black line over a character model with it being brightly colored. and in games with this style I find it typical for the characters to be over the top with power.

Military

A example of a military style game is call of duty where your seeing military figure and its based around the aspect of being a trooper in a warzone fighting, this likes to focuse on weaponry and transports in the art design.

Abstract
This is a style  involving uses shapes and bright colors to make the player feel what they want to feel this is done well in games like geometry wars where it uses dark and light colored shapes and form to symbolize a war.

Computer game graphics-

Pixel-A pixel is a point, filled with a primary color and then multiple are out together to create a image with multiple colors in it.The typical resolution for a computer monitor would have 72 PPI (pixels per inch and printed images usally have around 300 PPI dependant on the size of the print. 

 In game design the resolution and pixel density is import depending on what devices (PC or consoles or handheld's) the game is going to be played on. 

Type of digital graphics-Two examples of  graphics are 2D and 3D the differences being a 2D game is normally a side scorller of a flat image normally pixelated and not many pixels being used in the process 2D games can sometimes have a slightly 3D back ground to make the game look better and more appealing to the player.A 3D games uses many pixels in the development thanks to its high Polly modules for the area and the character's 3D is what nearly all the games of this era are now making the games more realistic and more immersion is created in the way they are played.

File extensions- Unity imports all popular image file formats. Here are some of the most popular ones, and their benefits/drawbacks.

PNG: is a large file sizes, but maximum quality. PNG32 allocates 32 bytes per pixel, and saves images with the best quality. I recommend this file format over all others, but it's personal preference, really. PNG supports transparency, but you need to ensure that the "Matte" in some programs is set to "Transparent", otherwise your transparent image will be saved with a white background, and your transparency will be lost.

JPG/JPEG:the JPG file format, as it automatically includes compression that can ruin the quality of your texture. If you are using JPG, be sure to set the "quality" level to 100, or the max, this way, no compression is done on the image, and you retain the high quality. Anything lower than 100% quality, you will start to see a huge loss of quality.

Other examples of file extension:

mp3 music files

avi video files

txt text files

doc word document (Microsoft word-open office )

jpeg image/picture files

exe executable (programs)

wav sound files (sound effects)

Compression-Image compression may be lossy or lossless. Lossless compression is preferred for archival purposes and often for medical imaging, technical drawings, clip art, or comics. Lossy compression methods, especially when used at low bit rates, introduce compression artifacts.

Image capture-Image capture is done through things like taking a photo of some real elements to process to go into a game or to take a screen shot.

Optimising- Image optimization is when an image is compressed to the most visually acceptable, image for saving memory.The power of two is when the width and height of a image is at the same value.These values are import to make sure when 3D MODELING textures fit and render properly. When the size of a texture is stretched to fit a model by the program this is called interpolation.

http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/ collected some information on png here

http://dvd-hq.info/data_compression.php info for compression on this link

comparing 2D and 3D games.

3D Games

Destiny

Now how do i put destiny , firstly to me it art design gives it a slightly serious and more realistic look it gives you that feel and look that you start to feel like you are there as the player and you can sometimes lose sight of reality and really feel like you are there in the game others may disagree but this is my view and experience,the music in some points doesn't really fit in my view it doesn't give you the feel your on mars when you get there , you start to feel out of place because of it sometimes because of it , with the other sound features like with the warp sound and the shoot sounds and ship flying this is where they excelled in the sound they seemed to have put more effort in to these and to me that was a really good thing as i want to feel like its really there like your really firing some sort of a weapon no just some 3D creation and the ship has that low but satisfying sound of you tearing through the air going the speed of sound, then the ships warp this one was ok its gave you the feel it opened in front of you but inside it was a mixed sound i couldn't tell but we don't know how warp sounds so it could have been spot on or well off we will just have to find out in the future , the animation i think worked its part but it was really repeated in the weapons they were not unique they were all the same in a blur to me the movement from first person was really smooth and it was juat as smooth looking when you watched another player using ability's and running and warp jumping looked amazing you saw the blur movement as they traveled, the weapons art was the same in some places but the armor had a lot wide range in its look in each stage of armor so at my level on the game i have a really cool look that I don't want to get rid of and i bonded with the player through the look making it more me and adding to my Emerson. this games uses millions anpon billions of pixels in the art design with the constant changeing shadows and light and dark shading on the character models and the weapon models.

 Star wars the old republic (SWTOR)

 SWTOR is a massive multiplier online game, in this games you create a character and chose one of eight class's in the creation menu you change how your character looks too fit your personality with multiple hair styles and body sizes and scars etc this alone has millions of pixels getting used in this cartoon like style and then on the changing and texture the the body's and this only increases and you enter the in game world where you can have hundreds of players on screen at once and they all have their own differences and you can see all the details, in comparison to a 2D games the difference is massive in scale from the high Polly models in swtor to the detail on a buildings , a 2D game cant compair to it in its way.

2D Games

Risk of rain 

Risk of rain is a side scrolling platformer that you chose a character to platy and you then fight mods on each level finding new characters and items to play with in that game. This game the pixels are shown to make it more fun to play but they are really still using quite a lot of detail on the characters the graphics are fairly basic in design with the characters being pixelated but the back ground is fairly 3D in design, the art style to this game is from how I see it fairly cartoony in design it isn't meant to be realistic giving it that fun and joyful feeling in the playing of the characters and fighting the mobs.

what would I do for pre-production for Wayne's maze game?

Since this is a in collage project I will not be using a budget but if I were I would round it to £500 too pay for the photo shop for the creation of the sprites and to make the backgrounds for the game this alone (Photoshop) costs £499 for a hard copy disk, then I would download game maker for free to make my simple 2d game , so once I have got both needed bits of software it will take me a good amount of time to make each sprite where I would make multiple versions of each sprite and make a range of concepts of the sprites to finalize them and put them in the game, I would judge that it would take my up too 2 weeks to create all my sprites and my backgrounds should be ready to put together.

Finance- for the money situation im paying £190.55/yr for photo shop on a subscription according to the adobi siteand to get a full games maker its about $99.99 so it would cost in pounds £61.77 and a decent computer to run this would cost about £1200 ,if I was given a bugget I would need round £2000+ to gather all the software and gear for my computer.

Time- in theory I believe at the moment I would need about 4 weeks to make all the sprite and backgrounds and put them in to objects and put them in the sound would take me about a week extra maybe because of my inexperience in using sound creation software.

Personal- if i was doing this in a big project i would require multiple people but in this area the personal will be me alone doing the design coding and creating where in a big project i would have many coders and programmers and modellers like in borderlands.

Facilities-as mentioned before i would need software like Photoshop , games maker, and maybe paint for some sprites to then be edited, i believe i would also need a 2d animating software to make my sprites look like they are moving.

Materials-i don’t know what real materials i would need other than computer , and a musical instrument help with sound effects in the digital realm though i would have my sprites to make (player ,mobs walls ect.) backgrounds and such.

Contributors-in reality i won’t really have any contributors but myself , but in the teams of having a big project i would need modelers, programmers, designers, and more to work on a big project , but like i said here i will be mostly working alone.

Locations-i don’t believe that i myself will be taking things from real locations to put in my game i will mostly be putting if anything , locations from fictional places in my game because it is not meant to be realistic.

Codes of practice and regulation-i will follow the codes and regulation like with every game for i do not want problems with this games like age ratings and such if i believe it good enough to release to the general public.if creating this game i would have to go through asa to be able to tell if my adds were suitable for the age range,then through pegi to have it rated for age of which i think my maze game would be a pegi 7 game.

 https://www.yoyogames.com/studio url to the price of professional game maker.

https://creative.adobe.com/plans url to Photoshop yearly payed sub.

floor layout drafts

this ia the basic sketches of my levels /rooms the arrows represent movement and is colored to red=mob green=player and blue =exit, the 'T' shapes are the targets before the exit and some walls have two lines to represent a fading wall.

 

room 1 draft

 

 

 

 

room 2 draft

 

 

 

 

room 3 draft

 

 

 

 

room 4 draft

 

 

 

 

 

room 5 draft



visual style of games

 

what's is a visual style of games.

A visual style in games is what it looks like in basic , for example borderlands visual style is cartoony where it looks really un realistic but has a really good feel to it where in another game like maybe destiny its style is more realistic and futuristic with its style and it makes you feel you could see that time coming and it may happen but the style also gives the vibe of its more of a suggestion of a possibility of what could happen.

 

some games may have different genres but will have the same visual style because this style dose not effect the genre, this is the look of the games the genre is what type of game it is,

 

for a example of the similarity's in some games there is swtor and wow both are cartoony but one is set in the star wars universe and the other in a fantasy realm.

cartoony

the style of cartoony is showing the art a little over the top and colorful in its look may being still having a black line over a character model with it being brightly colored. and in games with this style I find it typical for the characters to be over the top with power.

 

 

 

military

a example of a military style game is call of duty where your seeing military figure and its based around the aspect of being a trooper in a warzone fighting, this likes to focuse on weaponry and transports in the art design.

abstract
this is a style  involving uses shapes and bright colors to make the player feel what they want to feel this is done well in games like geometry wars where it uses dark and light colored shapes and form to symbolize a war.

realism
realism is where the creators make it look as close to real life as possible to the point in a photo you will find it hard to tell the difference between the two at a first glance, a game that uses this are games like gta or call of duty where you play as characters in a 'realistic situation

black and white

a good example for a black and white game id limbo where you are in a game abusing black and white making a good set and have good story with it making it work more for the player and making them picture a little what this would look like if they were there.

 

 

Unit 1 Pre-Production

pre-production is used in things like film, television, advertising, game development, internet, radio and the press. preproduction is highly used in these areas mentioned and all used the same main activities like the cost and time used and available.

in production for games you have to look at the money the cost you are given a set amount of money in each area of the production this is given in sections the designers will be given a fairly large amount of money to do one section and they will be given a set date for the review called the deadline once this deadline is meet the investors and contributors look into what they are putting their money into in each area they decide if the given products are up to their scratch and then continue to the next step like maybe they would ask for the scripts and story made then the concept art to be made.in each of the areas they require the personal to do the job so this takes time to gather the people to work on the project and then start their own job in the project so this time for both gathering and the creation is set by the investors and the contributors, the contributors could very from people investing in the project of the voice actors and other fetchers used in games development like sound and as I have said the voice them selves.

  

finance-the finance is judged by the idea and creativity of the draft and how much and how big the game may be , finance is the money used in the product.A good financial plan when in pre-production is very important as it could be a problem in the development of your project.In order to make this somewhat easier, you should plan out and think of what your funds will be needed for.for example of the funding in total for the biggest game of 2014 GTAV was £170 million but this game made a profit of £1 billion in the first 3 days . you should think out what your money will be needed to pay for in the project for example software, the pay for designers and artists etc.

 the personal use of funds would involve the pay and insurance on the personal .

the finance may effect the time available for making a game you could be given a set amount of money and a short period of time to work with it to get a game out fast.

time constraints-this is the dead line for the first drafts and the final drafts of the product this can also involve the management of time over the project. you should think out what your money will be needed to pay for in the project for example software, the pay for designers and artists etc. this is very important and can involve an array of things that will have a big part in the development of your project. It is also not specific to the development of games. Time can include things like; deadlines, scheduling  and milestones. these can be to insure the game or other project is going at a steady pace and not falling behind.

personnel-personnel is the amount of the people in the team/involved in the full production and are payed for their ideas for the final product.The video game industry requires many different hired personnel to make up a game design team. within the pre production stages of a game design aswell The size of the team can be something to take into consideration.Stability between each working member of the design team such as art designers, programmers and lead designers will all have to manage their time for production stages in the pre production stages. Some roles in the personal would be lead designer , programmers, 3D modelers, animators , ect.  

facilities-the facilities are the soft wear and equipment you have to make the game and also the area you have this effects your work rate and also speed.Within the pre production stages of designing a video game, the company or team need to check they have the correct software and equipment before furthering into production stages. a company was designing a 3D game that would have realistic visuals and top end graphics, then the company needs to ensure they have the availability to a 3D engine, 3D modelling programme and 3D animation software.

materials-The materials are for what I believe to be the ideas and the materials used for the concept art before the modeling and creation of the game. in a pre  production stage there is a clear difference between physical and digital content. When designing a game the physical components can be anything such as archive material, objects which can be realistically replicated within the game for example actors, existing objects such as drink cans and guns.

contributors-contributors can verity to being the people paying for the product to the people actually designing making and testing it during the creation and after. sections of personnel such as directors, artist and programmers.Having specific mini teams within a whole team helps personnel and external contributors such as specialists, distinguish jobs and deadlines in the pre production stages.

locations-the location can be in a big area like the building EA has for their studio to a place as small as a basement the location depends on the amount of people on the project.the location of where the media product will be set, such as production studios, offices and sets. This will differ depending on the kind of media product. For a film production there will be many locations and filming rights on outdoor sets  would have have to be considered. Also editing studios, visual art and sets would all have to be accounted for.

  codes of practice and regulation-these are the rules , code and regulations you have to work around the whole time while making a game or any milt media product , the rules can involve copyright , if your found for copying another developers content this can lead to a straight out fine losing you money and valuable time in production a example of this is 'flappy bird' in this game they good took down for the pipes on their game linking to the pipes on Mario ,this game was taken off the market and bought back at a later date. this also involves a health and safety check being required and to be insured for any accidents  with equipment or the other people working on the set.

PEGI or pen European game information  is a video game content rating system for customers , so when they are looking to get a new game a rating is there for age to inform that children may not be able to play the game or it may be mature.TIGA (The Independent Game Developers Association) is an organisation which promotes game creation within the UK and promotes the industry through the power they have at the British parliament. Also there are things called trade unions that you can play a weekly or monthly subscription to, to have people on your side if you are not payed or are miss treated in a job.

The Advertising Standards Authority is the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media. they apply the Advertising Codes, which are written by the Committees of Advertising Practice. their work includes acting on complaints and proactively checking the media to take action against misleading, harmful or offensive advertisements.

information on the development on a personal game.

the main pre production in a personal game is all done by you this will not require the contracts and finance and such needed in the mainstream production where they need to contract each person involved in the creation where in the personal develop meant this isn't really needed unless your using someone's appearance a example of a once personal game was a mod for arma 2 called dayz this game was later too on by a bigger company and the mainstream methods were used ill look more in to how it was later developed as a full game when I am on mainstream development 

the image above is of dayz when it was still in its mod format before this was made by dean hall and later he was contacted and this mod was made into its own stand alone game

mainstream development

in main stream development you need contracts for who is involved and you would find it easier to join a trade union for insurance details and to make life easier in general but with mainstream development you don't have the freedom of personal development you have to maker the contracts and the additional details with the people how's material you are using

'dayz after making it as a full standalone game it sold 1million copies with in four weeks of being released on steam early access.'

'dayz after making it as a full standalone game it sold 1million copies with in four weeks of being released on steam early access.' taken from http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dayz-sells-1m-dean-hall-says-so-much-for-the-death-of-pc-gaming/1100-6417116/

http://www.pegi.info/ 'used for what  pegi means '

http://www.asa.org.uk/About-ASA.aspx asa information found here.

Computer Game Genres

 

Genre	Genre description	Genre example
FPS	Fps is a first person shooter game in this you play as a character seeing through their eyes, all you can normally see from this view is their weapon and hands. This genre is normally fast pace and is highly played and popular, Highly played worldwide.	An example of a fps is cod call of duty, in call of duty you play as one person in a squad of people using a variety of weapons and you have a fairly large amount of enemy’s to kill before you complete a mission. Cod uses the id tech 3 engine.
RTS	A rts is a real time strategy game in this type of game you play as a general or a war leader as such and command a large force from a Arial view and move them to tactical passions to attack the opponent .	supreme commander 2 is a rts where you play as a command unit and you have to build your base and also your force to defeat your enemy you can build artillery which I personally like to do to demolish the foe from a range or build land units air or naval to attacking the forces can depend on map or how much room you have to build.
MMO	Mmo is a massive multiplayer online game this is a game where you can have hundreds of players on your screen at once and also have a massive open world with multiple locations	World of Warcraft is a mmo where you select a class and play it in a player vs environment situation when making your player you have a large choice in the race and the class of your player then after you have chosen at a certain level you have the choice of an advanced class for the player.
MMORPG	A mmo rpg is basically a mmo but with a role play element where you act as your character and make decision.	.An example of a mmorpg for me is swtor (star wars the old republic), in swtor you get the option to create a certain character out of 4 classes in each faction in this you get 2 extra classes in the prim class you chose which can make you more diverse to the other players and also give you a advantage in combat in pvp these characters can be used to rp ,pvp or  pve in the game making fun and quite entertaining
SANDBOX RPG	A sand box rpg is is a game where you create a situation and can create a new player and give them or it movement.	Gmod is an example of a sandbox rpg where you can have models of character and give them a position and give them life you can also create a new object putting multiple together and create a transport. Also in this game you have your own player which you can rp with and create with also to use the creations.
Survival horror	A survival horror is basically you have to survive a horror environment.	Slender is a good example of a survival horror in this game you play as from my opinion an overweight female looking for notes attached to trees and walls and other objects losing your breath every 3 seconds after finding the first note you start to get chased by a figure known by Germans as them wood cutter now known as the slender man because of his figure as he gets close your screen becomes static and a high pitch sounds starts to play , even when you complete this game slender gets you, giving you a fright this game has led to its own sequel of slender games.
MMOFPS	A mmofps is a mix between a mmo and a fps this is a good combination of shooting and with large groups .	An example of a mmofps is destiny in this game you are partly 3rd person but mostly 1st in this way your first person in combat and 3rd when you are back at the tower, in combat you can end up in 3rd person but only if you use some special ability’s, the combat is very good in this game and you are really pulled in by most of the story the end in my opinion and some others could be improved, destiny uses the in house engine.
STELTH GAME	A stealth game is a game where you are required to avoid the enemy and not be caught or seen.	Thief is a series of stealth video games in which the player takes the role of Garrett, a master thief in a fantasy/steampunk world resembling a cross between the Late Middle Ages and the Victorian era, with more advanced technologies interspersed
ROUGUE RPG	A rouge game is a game where if you die the game resets and you start from the beginning with nothing as you started like that.	Rogue legacy is a game where you play as a member of a rouge family recreating they home castle by finding gold and gems in a evil castle and when they enter they must die to get the money and leave where you become another member with different features like maybe being colour blind or only seeing in 3d or 2d.
MMORTS	A mmorts is a massive multiplayer real time strategy where you guild and upgrade your base over real time hours and days to attract other players.	Battle nations is a mmorts where you wait in real time for things to build and to upgrade so you can fight others and do missions to fight a large enough ai force that is a tiny bit weaker or a lot  stronger than your force .
Adventure game	An adventure game can sometimes just be you exploring as a character or you could be fighting ai’s in an open world environment.	Overlord is an action adventure game where you play as a overlord over your minions the reds, browns, blues and greens. In this game you explore towns and the areas around them you also fight multiple enemy’s and such.