Unit 6 - Assignment 2 - Task 2, Analysis of a computer game.

A Critical Analysis Of Red Dead Redemption 

Red Dead Redemption is an third person, open world, action-adventure game that was released in May 2010 and was developed by Rockstar, the makers of Grand Theft Auto. The games setting is a wild west, cowboy-gunslinger game inspired heavily by movies such as The Good The Bad And The Ugly.

Analysis of the game

Graphics
The game runs on the RAGE engine, Rockstars powerful in house engine, this makes the graphical quality of the game very appealing at the time of it's release, providing superior graphical fidelity to other games released at around the same time such as Dark Souls. The environments and textures were outstanding and still today 7 years on it still looks fairly good as shown in the picture below, though parts of the character models look polygonal and blocky such as the hands and some facial features.

Sound
The sound design in Red Dead Redemption is incredibly detailed and layered which gives depth and density to the game environment. In the main menu there is no music, there is just a section of the world displayed on screen with only the various sounds you would expect to find in that area such as crickets, trees rustling, wildlife such as horses running about and the sound of rivers flowing with the occasional gunshot in the distance to give an authentic western feel. In the game the sound does a massive part in getting you immersed. This is done by blending obvious sound effects such as gunshots and horses hooves with not so obvious effects such as the little clicks of the gun when reloading, the jangling of spurs, links on saddles and trees moving in the wind.

Content and construction of content
The game world itself has a variety of content, these include things like wildlife (horses, cougars, buffaloes, etc), quests such as main quests and optional quests


The content of the world/quests/How you progress in the game
The game world is open meaning you can go wherever you like at any time and take part in various side missions known as "strangers", play in mini games for money such as "Five Finger Fillet" or "Horseshoe" and also go and hunt animals for pelts or break horses to get a new horse. Mainly there are main quests in the game dotted over the game world that unlock more as you progress through them, an open world with linear quests. these quests are how you progress the game forward and also unlock different guns and outfits for the main character John Marston to use in the game.

Codes and conventions.
This game uses some codes and conventions that can typically be found in other games. these include mechanics such as health regeneration, money, ammo, a familiar gun feel and even the 3rd person aspect popular among Rockstar games such as GTA with the over the shoulder firing.

Narrative Structure
The game is Set in the late 1800's America and follows the story of outlaw turned bounty hunter John Marston. He has been forced by government officials to hunt down the members of his former gang and either arrest or kill them in order to be absolved of his past crimes and get his wife and son back who have also been kidnapped by the government. The games story is very strong and interesting, there are barely any points in the game where you will get bored or lose interest, every character is intriguing and the missions are fun and challenging while also providing great story.

Representation of characters
The main character of the game is John Marston, who is portrayed as ruthless, cold, and short tempered, nut as the story goes on you learn he is actually a good man who has had a very difficult life to lead him to where he is now. At the start of the game he is just your stereotypical cowboy-gunslinger but quickly develops his own unique character.



Audience
The game is aimed at generally adult males who like action games such as GTA where there is a long campaign and a free open world to explore. It's generally meant to be played by men above 18 but has become popular with other ages and girls also because of its fun story and satisfying game-play.

Genre
The game is a Story-Driven, Open World, Action Adventure game. From games from this particular genre we expect a good, interesting story with a long campaign and a big open world to explore. Red Dead Redemption definitely delivers in both of these areas, making it widely regarded as one of the greatest games ever made. The genre has changed a lot over the years but has at its core remained virtually the same with a good story and and open world, what has changed is the detail in the worlds and the things we can do in them such as interact with NPC's and do side quests. largely pioneered by Rockstar, the company that made this game and the hugely popular iterations of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

3D modelling assignment

I started this model by making the torso out of a cylinder with 5 height divisions, I used the rotate, re scale, move tool and smooth tool to make the body. The arms were made the same way by making a cylinder and re shaping it to the size and proportions. I then duplicated it and made the scale to -1 so it would be flipped to match the other side and then i re positioned it accordingly. The legs were done the same way as the arms by making one leg and then duplicating and flipping it. This was made easier by adding to reference image planes of a front and side profile to make the proportions easier to make.

Unit 69- Concept Art

Purposes of concept art

Concept art is used to give a glimpse and a feeling of what needs to be in the game for the graphic designers and animators to work with so they know what they are working towards, this is everything from characters to levels and landscapes. They are used to portray the tone and feeling of the characters and levels aswell as what they should look like, whether that be light and happy or dark and gloomy. Concept art can also be used to market the game as they are usually striking and give a good impression of the feeling and themes of the game, while also showcasing the characters within the game.

What are the Stages of concept art?
There are a few stages of concept art starting off with the initial concept where they come up with the first design of the character, this is only the first rough idea and can change completely over the course of its design. Next they would refine the design by adding or removing features and adding colours to the initial sketches, finally they would add any finishing touches like small details.


Examples commenting on style, mood, look, feel and colour schemes. How does it apply to the stages of concept art?

This is a concept of the character Tracer from the game Overwatch made by Blizzard Entertainment. As you can see in this concept it's detailing the heads facial features and various expressions. These are intended to portray the characters personality, in Tracers case, fun, happy but also serious and fierce. It also gives the feeling that she is heroic and good. This applies to the stages of concept at as it is adding more detail to the face and fleshing out the character.


These are concepts of Tracers weapons, her pulse pistols and her pulse bombs. It details the side profiles and how they would look in first person. They are themed to suit Tracer with the blue pulses and the slick design. Also made with light colours to reinforce the theme of good and heroic.

This bit of concept art highlights a full body profile of Tracer showing the full details, colours and designs. It also shows the abilities she has and what they should look like such as the blink, recall and what the pulse bomb ultimate will look like. They all stick with the same theme of light heroism and stick with the same blue the give her a unique distinctive feel and look. In terms of the stages it is at the very end of the concept stage where all of the design features are finished and fully fleshed out and detailed, it would now be ready to go to the 3D modellers and the animators.

 
This is a concept of the map Kings Row which is set in a future London. It does a very good job of giving the perfect feel of an instantly recognisable London but also giving a very futuristic feel with the floating bus and the digital Big Ben. It has a very British feel with the high buildings and the iconic red buses and does a very good job of fitting it into the Overwatch universe. This is also at the end of concept stages and is ready to be made into an actual map.

Finally this concept is a full overview of how Tracer would look in game with all of her abilities, weapons and design features listed. It shows a full 360 degree model and details the colour pallet that will be used.It also gives the small graphic details such as the patch on her arm and how it should look and the "Tracer" logo that will be present on the side of her leg.















These pictures were all taken from Google Images and Are owned by Blizzard Entertainment

Assignment 1: Unit 70 Game Engines

What Is a game Engine and what is its function?

A video game engine is software that allows someone making a game to program and create the game. 99% of games will have a game engine and they all vary vastly, but the basic principle is the same, it's there to run a game. it will handle the graphics, mechanics, models and almost everything else. You can also have effectively a mini engine inside the main engine that handles the physics in a game.
It handles things such as the graphics rendering, the AI (artificial intelligence), animation, systems and middle ware.

The graphics rendering an be one of the most important things in a video game because it determines how the game will look, the graphics rendering handles all the models, textures etc in a game and the better the rendering power, the better the game will look, though getting highly detailed graphics and textures requires a lot of processing power top achieve.
The AI handles things like NPC's in the game, like how they move, if they chase or run away from the player, basically how they behave. This includes everything such as animals, other people and enemies.
Animation systems are responsible for the movement of things, this includes everything, from trees moving to faces as the talk, running, walking, jumping, everything that requires something to move. It can be done manually though this is difficult or it can be done with real actors through mocap in order to give the characters more realistic human movement, which then works in conjuction with the rendering to make an immersive realistic experience. Middleware are just things that simplify the game development to make it easier for the devloper, these include physics engines such as Havok that handle the gravity, movement speed, momentum and other physics based things.

Examples

Creation Engine

The Creation engine is Bethesda's in house closed engine. A closed engine means only they can access and use it. The engine was created after the release of Fallout 3 in order for their next project, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, to look and play better than the companies previous titles, that ran on the GameBryo engine. The creation engine is itself based on the GameBryo engine but it can render better and has more graphical capabilities, as well as real time shadows and the ability to give more detail to distant objects. The engines initial release was with the release of Skyrim on November 11th 2011, and more recently has gone on to power Bethesda's latest title Fallout 4, though it has been heavily modified and now has better rendering, dynamic volumetric lighting and more advanced character creation.There has been an add on to the creation engine called the creation kit that allows players to mod the game, a version of the creation kit was released previously for Skyrim and more recently in April 2016 for Fallout 4.

Unreal Engine

The Unreal Engine was made by Epic Games in 1998 and has gone on to become one of the most successful game engines ever made. it is an open video game engine which means that anyone can download and use the engine for free, the company gets their money by taking royalty fees from games that are published using their engine. The first console game ever made with the unreal engine was Gears of War which was released in November 2006. Currently there are 4 versions with the most recent version 4 being released in 2016 and is compatible with next gen consoles and PC. It was used to power the Unreal Tournament games which made great advancements in online competitive games, a new Unreal Tournament is currently being made in the new Unreal 4 engine. From the start the engine was made with the ability to be improved and adapted over different generations, which it has certainly succeeded in, and a large amount of marketing has ensured that it is one of the most used and well known engines, used by new developers and big studios alike.  

Fox Engine

The fox Engine is a closed engine created by Kojima Productions for his Metal Gear Series primarily. It is named after the in game special forces unit Foxhound from Metal Gear. It began production in 2008 after the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 with the goal to create "the best engine in the world". Some of the games made using the fox Engine are Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Kojima stated that the engine is very efficient and it allows them to make games in a shorter time frame. With the dissolution of Kojima productions the engine went to Konami who own the engine. While it was being made there was consideration for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the engine was designed primarily for use on the next gen and PC consoles. The graphical and game play capabilities of the Fox Engine are among the best ever seen as evidenced by the Metal Gear games and the unfortunately cancelled Silent Hills.   

Gamemaker

Game-maker is another example of an open game engine that is free to use but gets its money off royalty fees. It is an easy to use basic game engine designed to be used by first time game designers by using an easy to use drag and drop command sequence. It was published by YoYo games 16 years ago in November 1999. It primarily runs 2D games but it has a limited capability to run 3D games. Some games made with this include Spelunky and Hyper Light Drifter. It also supports particle effects such as rain or snow though this is also limited. It is also different to most engines because it runs with it's own scripting instead of the usual C++ that other engines such as game maker use, one of the reasons for it is that it makes it easier for first time game designers, which is who the software is aimed at. 





References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameMaker:_Studio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Engine
http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Fox_Engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_Engine

Gaming Questionnaire/ Motivations

Gaming Motivation

I sort of agree with this chart, i agree with most of it except the social and immersion, I would personally say i am more social because i play games like Destiny with friends a lot and i love immersion because i play games such as Elder Scrolls and Dark Souls a lot which are meant to be as immersive as possible.

I think proper gamers as a whole are motivated by the desire for entertainment and to escape from the everyday world and immerse yourself in a game in order to enjoy yourself.  

Personally my preferred genre of video games are RPG games because i enjoy the freedom of an open world and making your own character, but i also enjoy online games such as Destiny and Overwatch because they are fun to play with friends.

Different people will obviously score differently on the chart because they have other preferred play styles and game preferences, and the chart cannot be totally accurate as there are other factors that it does not consider such as the variety of games you play or how often you play them. 

I think i compare abit differently to other people who play games such as Jack because he goes more for 100% completion on certain games and plays less socially then i do as he prefers playing alone most of the time. 

In most basic terms the thing that drives gamers is the desire to have fun, though there are also more specific things gamers enjoy. People enjoy action games for the fast paced, destructive, chaotic nature of them. these generally include fps shooters like Battlefield. Immersive games are mostly enjoyed by gamers that like to sit and play alone for long periods of time such as me, they enjoy the escapism an immersive game can give you, games such as this mostly include RPGs such as Skyrim or Dark Souls. Immersive games usually tie in very well with creative games because of character creation aspects, so people who play immersive games generally like creative games as well.

Achievement players mostly like playing games to unlock every secret and get all the achievements in a game in order to show off or for self fulfilment. 

Mastery gamers are the type that like to play a game until they become extremely good at the game, it can make players feel good that they are better than other players or can beat very difficult games with relative ease. Such as Dark Souls.

Finally the social players enjoy to play online games such as Overwatch or Destiny because they get enjoyment out of playing with friends or random people. Most gamers generally enjoy abit of social play every so often.

The video game 'Destiny', created by Bungie, the makers of the popular video game franchise 'Halo'. And produced by Activision Blizzard under a 10 year contract, caused a huge phenomena in the gaming community and media before it's worldwide release on September 9th 2014. The game holds the record for the most expensive game ever made at a cost of $500 million or £310 million.
The game began development in 2010 after the release of 'Halo: Reach' under the code-name "Paper Tiger" under a scheduled release date of September 2013, which was later pushed back to the September of the following year due to the first story-line of the game being rejected by the high ups of Bungie after they had already been fully made, requiring the development team to start over.

This picture is from one of the game-play trailers from a few months before Destiny had be released, there were a number of thing that you can see in the trailer that differ from the game, even in this short trailer you can see how they changed the game drastically before release. for example, im a complete homo i suck on massive black cock there were a few abilities that the person playing the trailer showed of that didn't make it into the final game, there were seamless animations of players loading into the game in the form of their ship dropping them off, which was replaced with a far less fun animation of them just phasing into the game world. In other trailers they showed off various different characters that they promised would have a massive effect on the story, only to cut them entirely from the final game. Also, they intended to have 3 separate campaigns, one for each race, human, exo and awoken, but 2 were cut and only the remnants of the exo campaign remain.

Destiny was made under the agreement of a 10 year contract with Bungie and Activision Blizzard. It meant that Activision would pay for the game but would then get at least 65% of the profits with Bungie earning anywhere from 25% to 35% depending on how well Destiny did.  It also meant that Activision held the exclusive right to publish the Destiny titles while Bungie owned the intellectual property, meaning Bungie owned the idea of Destiny and were allowed to do as they see fit with it. Activision pumped 500 million Dollars into Destiny, a lot of which went into marketing for the game, under the brief set by Bungie to make an adventure MMO game set in space and different planets in the solar system including Earth. The game was scheduled to take 3 years to make and would release by September 2013 but about a month before the release it was  announced the game would be delayed to September 2014 going against the contract with  Activision that the game be released in Q3-Q4 of 2013. Also stated in the contract was that Destiny had to receive a PEGI 16 rating in Britain and a mature rating in America which the game stuck to achieving the rating in both Countries.
There was a lawsuit filed against Bungie by the previous composer who worked for Bungie for a number of years, creating the scores for multiple Bungie titles including many of the Halo games. He was fired by Bungie under the grounds of "unacceptable conduct" by failing to produce sufficient music for the game.

-Paul McCartney and ex Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell working on the Destiny soundtrack before the latter was fired.


He won the lawsuit because it was concluded he was unfairly dismissed after proving that he had completed and fully composed ten years of music months before hand in collaboration with former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, as a result he a share in the company and a share of the profits for the game. In a separate but related case also put forward by the previous composer to get back unpaid wages from overtime the court was again in his favour and awarded him $95,000.
Destiny and the Destiny logo remain copyrights of Bungie and Activision whilst the actual game remains as intellectual property of Bungie which means that they get to do whatever they want with it, it's DLC, and subsequent sequels.
Through the PEGI rating it earned a 16 rating meaning the level of violence in Destiny's case reached what would be expected in real life.
There were ethical concerns about the game because even though there was a lack of content the game became very addictive, it's even still being played by millions of players daily over a year and a half after it's release. The game content itself doesn't exactly raise any ethical concerns because it's  not overly violent but because of the loot system implemented in the game it encourages players to spend more time on the game in order to get the best gear in order to one up other players and make gear oriented pvp easier. So players end up investing a lot of time into the game in order to get the best weapons and armour, and do it again on 2 other characters. even after achieving this a new update is released that introduces better things for the player to get.

The game itself on average earned a rating of about 75%. being critisised for it's lack of content but praised for its game-play and gun-play. upon release Destiny made massive amounts of money, earning over 500 million dollars on its release and peaking at around 20 million players. overall it has earned around 1 billion dollars for Activision.

Shapeman assignment

Rules:
Kill all enemy shapes
Dont touch a shape different to you
Pick up shape drops to change your shape.

Bugs:
Can sometimes glitch into walls
Death wont register

Friends opinion:
When Matt played he it he said that he liked the level design and the fact the game wasn't too difficult. He also liked the different enemies. He did however say that there needed to be some orb pickups and some more levels.

Sprites:
The sprites are simple 2D models made in Game makers sprite editing function. They are regular shapes with various patterns in them and then a blue square starting block. The walls were also simple squares with a pattern.

sprite0 is the wall sprite that makes up the walls and structures in the game.
As everything in the game the colour scheme is red and black.

circle sprite is one of the enemies in the game that if you come into contact with you will die and restart. Again it has a simplistic design and was made in the Game Maker editor.

pentagon is another enemy that was made in the Game Maker studio with a red and black design

cross uses red, white and black and was made in paint because i found it easier.

triangle is made to look like an Illuminati triangle and was made by getting a JPEG image of an Illuminati triangle and then pix elating it in Photoshop.

and player_square was done with a blue center and acts as the starting sprite for the player who can then turn into different shapes with the pick ups.

Codes:

Object_controller controls the basic functions of the game which includes things such as game restart and the scoring mechanism.

Object_player controls the players actions so that means it changes its sprite when touching a pick up, getting killed when touched and how it is controlled with the mouse.











Map Layout:

The map layout is simple with narrow corridors and cut off points which can make it fairly difficult at times if trapped.
each different enemy type starts in a different corner protecting their various pickups and the player starts at the center. the controller for the game is in the box at the top which controls the score that is displayed.