Current Trends and Approaches in Games Industry - The Computer Game Design Course

Starting the design process

• Development of an existing story or concept is quite common. 
• Trips to court happen often
• Similar theme's - company A may make a racing game that sells good, then company B will make a better version of the game but change enough to avoid copyright infringement. Thought some may criticise this as lack of imagination etc, sometimes the second game is better then the first. This may urge the manufacturer to make a better game and so on....
• Mix & Match - good example lego star wars, taking two great things and mixing them together. The conversation of 'what if' - ask yourself 'what if i did this...'
• Brand new ideas - these are very rare and risky as the companies don't know if the public will like them and accept them. Always a risk but hey, theres only one Mario, one Tetris. 

add more from the book here...

Idea's and Concept Materials - The Computer Game Design Book

Design Inspirations

• Real life and Literature

'The best practise for any would-be designer is to seek out as many different kinds of experiences as possible.' 

Don't play loads of games - you will only end up making more of the same.

Look far and wide into other cultural activities such as literature, art, philosophy and history.

Deus ex designer's Warren Spector and Harvey Smith used classical and modern literature in the games, some of the environments are real places in the world and there is the feature of giving the controller moral choices. This freedom of choice made the game seem more real. 

Another two example's of real life is Pokemon - (Satoshi Taijiri) and Mario/Zelda (Shigeru Miyamoto)

Satoshi used to collect bugs when he was a little kid, this enthusiasm caused him to try collect as many as he could in many different ways. This later on in life lead him to the idea of pocket monsters (pokemon) when he discovered his love for games

Shigeru used to explore the countryside when he was young, seeing all the striking natural features, lakes and concealed caves. This later on in life lead him to provide material for landscapes in things such as mario and zelda. Then later on in life he was gardening and the inspiration for Pikmin came to him - the idea of exploring a microcosm. 

• Sketchbooks and Notebooks 

It's good practise  to keep a sketchbook or notebook on you at all times. Then you can jot your ideas down as they come. Collect snippets of things and images you find interesting. Use photographs of things from real life wether it be a facial expression of someone to sketch from or a building's shape you may like - use these photographs as inspiration. Also sketch real life, if you see something quickly you like or see sketch it down so you don't forget it. use your sketchbook as a place to work out hidden structures, designs will be more credible if you know them inside out.

REMEMBER - a sketchbook is a place your imagination can run riot - don't feel pressured into finishing a design or sketch - just experiment and see what happens.

• THINK LATERALLY

It's all too easy to give up on a good idea too fast - with the 'seen it before' response, to counter this force yourself to think of different responses to familiar situations - to think laterally 

COD 2 - for example call of duty two had 'magical' heath packs. You'd get hit then pray there was a 'magical' heath pack somewhere soon. This healed your character straight away, moving over the green first aid box - this wasn't very realistic. But then being incapacitated would be too realistic and become boring every time you got shot. So they created a solution - that if i player was shot the screen would flash red, player vision would blur and his ability to aim would be decreased. Add in a sound effect of the played in pain gasping for air the controller would know that they were in trouble. If the player received no further damage health would return to normal - personally i know that i much prefer this type of game play to old style picking up heath packs - it's so much more fun and realistic to have to wait and think about strategy instead of just rushing straight in.

This solution was made form the designers thinking laterally and asking the questions -

 'what if there weren't any?' - 'why are they there?' 

the answer is an innovative approach that wasn't seen in other games at the time. 

Learn to ask these awkward questions - then seek to answer them. 

• Independent games developers 

these are small companies dedicated to exploring subjects that big games companies don't have the time to do cause there busy making big hits. Smaller companies creating indie games can explore concepts and themes to their hearts content. Such as Beautiful Katamari - a game i absolutely love on the xbox, you roll rubbish around picking up more and more getting bigger and bigger - it sounds a little boring but it's really not. you end up being able to roll cities together and you just keep growing and growing - great game. 

There's also two main events for indie developers - 

The independent games festival 

Indie Game Jam 

many of games at these find their way to mainstream - i'm gonna look more into this, i'm very interested in indie games

Gathering Materials

• The internet - use all kinds of search engines and a variety of search topics
• Wikipedia - yes it can be unreliable but through this you could find related topics you never would have thought of before - use wiki!
• Gamasutra website - post-mortems of game productions written by games designers
• Game design site's - not only review and fan sites but also sites dedicated to discussing the profession, nature and sociology of games design. 
• First hand material - gathering information from your local surroundings and capturing images. 'Does that roof look like a ufo? maybe the old memorial in the centre of town looks like a pillar in a dark dungeon' 
• Use the environment around you - se how things may look turned upside down, put into different contexts, enlarged or reduced in size, things put in water. 
• Real life inspirations - travel if you can - see texture's, environments, meet people, different times of the day - sunset's, night time etc... get out into the world - it's there for your inspiration!

more UNITY - let's figure out how it works

So, to create a particle you need three bits to make it work. 

But, first you gotta create an empty to put the particles into.

1

2

3

Hello particles!! :)

click the little symbol to change the style of the particle 

messing around with the particle emitter you can change size, energy and emission to name afew

 squashs it kinda changes the size. makes it all the same level.

tangent velocity - like explosion out kinda - look at screenshot

local velocity - like rocket grenades it will be attached to the axis - you must parent the particle together with an object. 

angular velocity - makes things rotate such as for smoke and magic effects. as it gets bigger it rotates at the same time looking more realistic 

 one shot - like it says one particle shot like a grenade 

Colour - You can change the colour of the particles, for example FIRE - red's to yellow's and everything else in between creates a balanced colour for the particles making them look more realistic.

World velocity- 

a force thats pushed upon the particle system - im pushing those particles up horizontally down etc…

rnd velocity - like fire for example pushes it out to the left and right sides a little bit

force - does what it says forces the particles out

size grow - want something like fire to get larger - constrains it in every direction

below - you can create like a bounce for like waterfalls and add water splash to make it more water like

ALPHA CHANNELS

 Using an alpha channel to animate small things such as fly's buzzing and wings of a seagull far away...

make your photoshop more professional first -
when working with textures in game make sure colour mode is rgb.

resolution should be 72 

width and height should be the power of 2 (divisible by 2)

background contents - theres a little button you can make it come up with the grid thing to create alpha channels with straight away. or delete the background so it's transparent and the grid appears. 

you can change the rulers to read in pixels - which is what we need for unity

now change the grid unity style - change to pixels as well

also change the guild line every into 32 then change it to pixels

if you can't see the grid, maybe thats because it's not turned on

 When your ready to go draw whatever you want onto the four faces 

make sure you have it over the box layer then hold alt and right click - 

then save as into your asset folder - make sure you save as 32 bits because its an alpha channel as save as a targa!!

Now to import the asset into UNITY to use

create a new material -

change the shader for your material to what you see below. 

import the new asset. drag it onto the little box on the right or you can select and find it in the box thing that opens

then from the project folder drag it onto the actual particle 

VIOLA!!! :D 

Note's - after you've done all the stuff to make an alpha channel in photoshop then saved it sorted out the shader etc...

make sure you drag in from the project file onto the actual particle.

4096 x 4096 - maximum texture size in unity

TIPS

explosion fireworks starting point of a camp fire pixie dust effect - emitter 

mesh particle - set cottage on fire use this launches off fire

sleeted in editor make sure tick in emitter is on - if you cant see a particle 

wanna make something like lingering fog you'd have it on for 60 seconds energy. 

space ships landing lights - particle system in games

the more particles you render the lagyer it gets

refresh - stop play come back again

One more thing - if you wanna keep something to use in another level like a lamp for example - create prefab then drag it into project part. 

Andy Peers - The BIG Issue

WE had a guest speaker Andy Peers who came in to tell us the importance of not losing who you are in your specific industry and that appearances do not matter. No matter what background you are for example he works with people from the big issue and because of this some people treat him and everyone else differently. He basically talked about his life and experiences there all the jobs he had in his life and how he over came difficult situations such as a newspaper taking advantage of one of the big issue people taking drugs. He explained from this that he used it to his advantage he showed people that it was this newspaper that was fighting an argument with a homeless man and got through to some people this way but in the big picture thats all people see -  a homeless big issue man taking drugs. He told us to actually see the big picture and think about the things you do and how you would like to be treated. Go out in the world and fight for what you believe in but do it the way that you want to see the world. With respect and manners. He showed us a very inspirational speech by Charlie Chaplin, it really got to me, i think him coming in to talk was a great idea

Sectors and Services

Social Media & Communication

Visual Communication

Communicating visually can be in a number of different ways whether it be digital, art, a photograph, advertising, the list goes on. But what people can get from it is a feeling and an opinion from the other person. People use visual communication all the time and its a brilliant thing, showing a picture and you having to make your own assumption about what has happened or what its trying to get across. For example charity adverts use visual communication to try and get you to give money by explaining a horrible story through photographs and saying that you can help them. Vis Com is everywhere and everyone uses it all time, this lecture taught me to look around more and notice more in depth what things may be trying to say.

A History Of Advertising

What i learned from this lecture is that - 

The aspects of advertising what companies will do to make you buy a product, they will appeal to everything and use political statements and things going on in that point in history to make you buy something. For example -

the one above uses entertainment to sell a product - a monkey playing the drums and you know it's cadburys because of the purple straight away they use colours and other kind of 'tags' so people remember things subliminally and this causes you to have faith in the company and want to buy products from them all the time - cause you trust them, you know what they are.

The one below tells you that you need the product cause your ugly, so people buy it cause everyone 'cares' about there appearance and definitely care about growing old.

Here's my notes from the lecture :) -

Communication

Fashion as Photograph

Distant future animation studios

First upload of unity

Media Specify

Title sequences - essay

So we have to pick from one of the essay questions all my attention went to the title sequence question purely because i really like watching them. I find them interesting already so might as well find out more about them and write the essay! I think this will be the strongest question for me to pick.
So i'm starting out by doing a web graph and writing down any ideas i have to do with title sequences. From here i'm going to research research research!
Here we go... -

Avant - Garde/High Culture Vs Low Culture

Taking about avant-garde and high culture Vs low culture - 

Avant-Garde basically means to question everything, question the way art/design education relies on the concept of the avant-garde, question the notion of genius, the notion of being original, question art for art's sake and much more. 

Dictionaries link Term – ‘avant-garde’  with terms like
innovation in the arts or pioneers

-         idea of doing art/design work that is progressive – innovating

-         but also it refers to the idea of there being a group of people being
          innovative –


-         1. being avant-garde in the work you do  - challenging,
              innovating etc.
-         2. being a part of a group – being a member
              of the avant-garde 

In education theres a lot of pressure on students to be 'original' but then they say it's ok to copy and work from and experiment with others work to get knowledge. So how can anything really be original these days? Everything is just copied and recycled ideas. So that ask's the question, is there really something you can do that's Avant-Garde. Can you say to someone you know that's very Avant-Garde of you? 9 times outta 10, no, no you can't.

End of the 19th /early 20th C

two approaches to avant-garde art
 

1.     art that is socially committed [artists being the ‘avant-garde’ of   society, pushing forward political objectives]

2.     art that seeks only to expand / progress what art is (in itself
        and for itself) / art for art’s sake

This is about how people just recycle art. Art for art's sake, that people don't create original ideas they take someone else's art and make a different statement with it for example -

Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875)

James Abbot McNeill Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold (1874-78)

-It's not Avant-Garde it's just recycled. 

WHAT IS KITSCH?

Kitsch is basically art thats been taken and put onto something else for the modern eye. Such as a famous painting or a commemoration mug. Here's some pics to understand further - 

KITSCH

KITSCH?

DEFINITELY KITSCH!

Simplification of style – repainted masterpieces for the modern eye

Commemoration

(Animal Themes) This is true kitsch as it aims to be taken seriously as fine art!

So yeah you don't have to try to be avant-garde cause your uni or college will tell you to copy anyway, what i learned from this lecture mostly is to just be yourself and try not to care too much about what others think because to be honest everything's already been done before :)

Here's my notes from the lecture-