Computer Games

1. Computer Games An in-depth look at the process by which Computer Games are Designed and Programmed.

2. Computer Games Brought to you by Zack Henkel, Justin Taylor, and Matthew Pinney

5. Most games have a plot or story which helps to push the action along and keep the gamer interested. • The group responsible for this, the team of story writers, consists of people who are very creative and can easily come up with good ideas which will be liked by the audience. • The group will use their skills to brainstorm ideas and then choose the ones that are best for creating the plot, setting, and characters.

6. The plot is considered to be the events that take place in the story which are normally arranged in a specific order . • Conflict • Exposition • Rising Action • Climax • Resolution

7. The setting is another important piece of the story which helps the audience to visualize the events that take place in the plot. • When dealing with video games the setting is expressed using visual and interactive environments. • The story writers must design the setting in such a way that it is just as appealing visually as it is interactively. • The story writer must have knowledge of what the level designer is capable of and what is possible to create.

8. The story writers are also responsible for creating the characters in the game. • They must create characters which are suited for their purpose. • If an ugly, scary monster is needed for the protagonist to battle, then the team must design a character which will be ugly and scary to the gamer.

10. History

11. Creating Characters Artist Rendering on Paper Scanning to Digital Exoskeleton Skin, Texture, etc.

12. Building Environments Artist Rendering on Paper Blueprint like drawing & planing Structure designed on computer Texture, details, etc.

13. Motion & Rendering Polygons & Textures 3D/Game Engines Technologies & Progress

14. Future

16. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the user interface • A long term goal of HCI is to design systems that minimize the barrier between the human's cognitive model of what they want to accomplish and the computer's understanding of the user's task • This work often revolves around designing graphical user interfaces and web interfaces.

17. Early Computer games were based in 2 dimensions, with limited control. • Asteroids, for example, gave the user only 5 options for controlling the space ship. • The gameplay consisted of shooting the asteroids into pieces until they were all gone. • The player of the game had little control of their ship and no control of what would happen next in the game…

18. Currently, The Computer Game Producers are working on: • New Game Consoles • More Intricate Joysticks • New styles of game play • More detailed plots with more choices

19. Today’s Computer Games use complicated interfaces that allow the player to have more freedom in game play • Modern Controllers use a large number of buttons to allow the user many more combinations of inputting commands. • It seems that with technology advancing the way it is, the next step would be complete virtual reality.

21. Physics plays an important role in the likeability of a video game. • For most gamers, video games offer a way to escape reality but still experience lifelike situations. • For this reason gamers prefer a game with a high amount of realism. • To accomplish this, developers add physics.

22. Gravity is a very important part of physics in video games. • Without gravity in videogames, the player would simply fall off the map. • This is similar to real life in the fact that without gravity here on earth, we humans would fall out into space. • The big difference in real life and video games is that in video games gravity can be changed. • An Example of this the game Mario Bros. Your character has the ability to jump five times his height because there is less gravity in Marioworld than in our world.

23. Lighting has become increasingly advanced in today’s 3D games. • Developers can now make ultra realistic lighting effects which enhance the gamer’s experience. • Lighting effect used in the game Doom 3 is the pinnacle of today’s technology. • The developers use lights and shadows to emerge the player in a horrific world.

24. Sound is one of our most important senses which we use almost every second of the day. • For this reason, sound plays a major role in the physics of our video games. • Who doesn’t like to hear the blast of their favorite weapon when fired at an opponent in virtual reality? • Being able to hear sounds from the environment makes the video game experience more realistic and enjoyable.

26. History • In 1952, A.S. Douglas created the first graphical computer game - a version of Tic-Tac-Toe. • In 1958 "Tennis for Two," was created by William Higinbotham and was played on a Brookhaven National Laboratory oscilloscope • In 1962, Steve Russell invented SpaceWar!, the first game intended for computer use • In 1967, Ralph Baer wrote the first video game played on a television set, a game called Chase

27. History • In 1971, Nolan Bushnell together with Ted Dabney, created the first arcade game. It was called Computer Space • The arcade game Pong was created by Nolan Bushnell (with help from Al Alcorn) a year later in 1972 • Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney started Atari Computers that same year. In 1975, Atari re-released Pong as a home video game. • In 1972, the first commercial video game console that could be played in the home, the Odyssey was released by Magnavox and designed by Ralph Baer.

28. Promotion and Marketing • According to the Entertainment Software Association, a blockbuster game like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City can cost between $3 million – $5 million to develop, with an addition $10 million for promotion and marketing. • Michael Cai of Parks Associates predicts that that in 2009 in-game ad revenue on PCs will crack $400 million--more than 10 times the revenue in 2005.

29. Costs of Production • Early on, development costs were minimal, and video games could be quite profitable. Games developed by a single programmer, or by a small team of programmers and artists, could sell hundreds of thousands of copies each. Many of these games only took a few months to create, so developers could release several titles each year • Now budgets can easily reach millions of dollars, even if middleware and pre-built game engines are used. Most professional games require one to three years to develop

30. The cost of producing games varies between 500k euros( around $650k) to 5/10 Mk euros ($6.5mil/$13 mil)depending on the type of game and the platform (console, portable console, PC)

32. Their Purpose • Drive the Game • Respond to Input • Save and Retrieve Data • Development Programs

33. Comparing Languages • Object Oriented vs. Non Object Oriented • Common Languages (C, Java, C++) • Custom Languages (Variations of C)

34. Differences From Regular Software Programming • Stuck in a while loop - the game loop • Require some “AI”

35. Future • Multithreaded Programming

37. The video game industry is a flourishing market with heavy competition. • The industry offers a variety of jobs, but limited opportunity for only the most creative and capable employees. • People interested in this field should look forward to a large salary and extremely long hours.

38. There are a variety of jobs available in the video game industry: • Concept artist • Level Designer • Modeler • Texture Artist • Animator • Programmer • Project Manager

39. The job requirements for most occupations in the videogame industry include mainly being very creative. • Video games require a person to be very dedicated to their work. This often includes working extremely long hours to get the job done, especially during crunch time. • Most employees in the videogame market should expect to make very good money and may be eligible for profit sharing through the company which they are employed

41. Bugs A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code When a game is completed, it must be tested to make sure there are no bugs before it is released.

42. Enter the Testers The job of the testers is to play the game repeatedly to find all the mistakes, or "bugs." Problems are prioritized in many ways, from "fatal" bugs which must be resolved immediately, to minor issues which may or may not affect the game's release. When a problem is discovered, a detailed report is sent back to the developers and the error is corrected.

43. Fixing the Bugs The first version sent to testers is called the "alpha" version, and it is tested to detect any major flaws in the game while they are still relatively easy to fix. Once all of the major flaws are addressed, a "beta" version is released, often to a larger group of testers that sometimes includes the public. The beta version is exhaustively tested, fixed and re-released until the developers are satisfied that the game is ready for primetime.

44. Paid to Play Games Despite the job's difficulty, game testing doesn’t pay a great deal and is usually paid hourly (around $9 - $12 an hour). Testing management is usually more lucrative, but this type of job usually requires years of experience and some type of college degree Most game testing jobs are taken as "foot in the door" positions, used as a stepping stone for more lucrative lines of work in game development