Okay I watched a video with my classmates on this program that involved sticking a remote control on a rat and making it move randomly left to right. In a way I see their trying to make a huge discovery but I also see cruelty to an animal which aint right, it makes me want to stick a brain box on them and see if they like being moved around not on their own free will! Makes me laugh though the fact that if they do start to test on humans there would be many failures and deaths and eventually people will be saying “oh hold on a min, your killing people even if they did volunteer your still killing em” and soon after there would be massive complaints/protests and it would get shut down, so what would be the point? Oh in case some of you were wondering “brain box” is off the Dino Riders cartoon which the bad guys use to control the dino’s and makes them attack people. God I miss that cartoon it was class haha http://www.hgunn.com/dino_riders_site/DinoRidersSeries1Picture.gif
Oh and you could tell how bananas some of these people were, one scientist thought that a robot would eventually kill him (well done terminator) and a man who kept laughing like he was on some form of drugs or had too much caffeine in him! I mean come on I don’t see my Playstation 3 strangling me in the middle of the night using its HD cable as a garrotting wire and beating me across the my head with its plug socket! People take computers too seriously and need to relax; they’ll be long dead before the PS5000 wipes the planet out and even then I think if computers can do that, humans would have found a way to travel to other planets and it’ll take a long time to kill everyone anyway.
Unless it becomes like titan A.E now that’s a good film haha!
My rant over unless my PS3 has got something to say about it...
...
...I thought so!
Monday 15 December 2008
task 9 week 9
There have been a lot of gaming platforms I have used in the past and the one with the easiest interfaces I have ever used was on the Megadrive and the game was Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonics interface was just a simple life counter, ring collection, timer and point collection. Ah I remember the simpler times where games didn’t allow you to save and all you needed was three simple buttons, ah good times haha!!
The nicest looking interface I’ve seen would have to be God of wars with the nicely made health and “magic” bar which is sat upon a sword picture and has your special ability where you can see it in the top left corner. Also in god of war it counts how many hits you strike the enemy with and gives you a rating on how good it is so it’s communicating with the user and encouraging them to do better, also to kill each boss you need to complete a button pressing sequence which pop up during the fight smack bang in the centre so you can see it clearly.
I think that interacting with games consoles is still as simple as the very old consoles back in the day, I think there’s only been a few changes like wireless in controllers and that you can tilt them and they react but the buttons are still pretty much the same hehe. I think in the future it will stay the same, unless they actually introduce proper VR gaming which I think will be rubbish due to its limits, try playing Prince of Persia on one of them and watch you fall and break your ankle now I think that would be repetitive haha!!! The person might as well go outside and jump up walls if he wants a proper reality game. Oh and if you fall you will most likely die, which is a game over I do not want hehe.
The controller and joystick will never die I think it will last as long as video games do, because as I was writing this I imagined from the film Minority report where Tom Cruise is controlling a screen with his hands and even then I think that’s a controller because it would still be button pressing either way. If games were to be controlled with the mind ill take that statement back but then I would have to admit that you’d need to be telepathic and I don’t see that happening at all even with all this brain controlling gizmos on rats etc, total nonsense I think and thatll lead me to my next rant on the next blog.
The nicest looking interface I’ve seen would have to be God of wars with the nicely made health and “magic” bar which is sat upon a sword picture and has your special ability where you can see it in the top left corner. Also in god of war it counts how many hits you strike the enemy with and gives you a rating on how good it is so it’s communicating with the user and encouraging them to do better, also to kill each boss you need to complete a button pressing sequence which pop up during the fight smack bang in the centre so you can see it clearly.
I think that interacting with games consoles is still as simple as the very old consoles back in the day, I think there’s only been a few changes like wireless in controllers and that you can tilt them and they react but the buttons are still pretty much the same hehe. I think in the future it will stay the same, unless they actually introduce proper VR gaming which I think will be rubbish due to its limits, try playing Prince of Persia on one of them and watch you fall and break your ankle now I think that would be repetitive haha!!! The person might as well go outside and jump up walls if he wants a proper reality game. Oh and if you fall you will most likely die, which is a game over I do not want hehe.
The controller and joystick will never die I think it will last as long as video games do, because as I was writing this I imagined from the film Minority report where Tom Cruise is controlling a screen with his hands and even then I think that’s a controller because it would still be button pressing either way. If games were to be controlled with the mind ill take that statement back but then I would have to admit that you’d need to be telepathic and I don’t see that happening at all even with all this brain controlling gizmos on rats etc, total nonsense I think and thatll lead me to my next rant on the next blog.
task 8 week 8
I think that computer games should have a great strong storyline otherwise you wouldn’t understand what’s going on and you wouldn’t have cool cinematics because that normally helps start off a storyline. An example of a beginning cinematic would be Onimusha 3, I love this game! Even when I watch the beginning it still amazes me.
The scene involves a character named Samanosuke, who takes down a demon army warmachine (and army!) using his magical weapons and ogre powers to blow the army to pieces also it stars Jean Reno (Leon, Godzilla, Ronin) who is a French cop which is given powers to help Samanosuke on his quest to destroy the demon empire. What I love about that game also is its puzzles and gameplay, button bashing won’t work unless you’re fighting monsters.
In a way I think that the storyline follows your character because the storyline is usually follows around the main character of the game which would normally be you. Like for example, all the Lara Croft Tomb raider games follow a direct path which you have to steer your character through it to complete the game. But in some games you can choose your own path, like become good or evil an example of this would be Star Wars: Jedi Knight Series where if you killed innocents you would in the end become evil or if you saved them you would become a good Jedi. Another example of this would be Fable 1 and 2 with the whole “good and evil” plot.
World of Warcraft has a huge story base in each of its expansions and is the follow up story from the Warcraft RTS series which is about an ongoing fight between the Orcs and humans until the Burning Legion come and try to kill everyone which ends up having everyone against the legion. The story does follow a certain character named Arthas which is a human prince sworn to protect his king, until one day he is driven mad by the demon sword known as Frostmourne. He betrays and kills his farther and friends and becomes the Lich king of the burning legion and is the final boss you have to fight in the new expansion called The Wrath of the Lich King. If you haven’t noticed I had to shorten the storyline otherwise id still be writing this after Christmas haha! I mean WoW has its own Wikipedia!!! www.wowwiki.com
The scene involves a character named Samanosuke, who takes down a demon army warmachine (and army!) using his magical weapons and ogre powers to blow the army to pieces also it stars Jean Reno (Leon, Godzilla, Ronin) who is a French cop which is given powers to help Samanosuke on his quest to destroy the demon empire. What I love about that game also is its puzzles and gameplay, button bashing won’t work unless you’re fighting monsters.
In a way I think that the storyline follows your character because the storyline is usually follows around the main character of the game which would normally be you. Like for example, all the Lara Croft Tomb raider games follow a direct path which you have to steer your character through it to complete the game. But in some games you can choose your own path, like become good or evil an example of this would be Star Wars: Jedi Knight Series where if you killed innocents you would in the end become evil or if you saved them you would become a good Jedi. Another example of this would be Fable 1 and 2 with the whole “good and evil” plot.
World of Warcraft has a huge story base in each of its expansions and is the follow up story from the Warcraft RTS series which is about an ongoing fight between the Orcs and humans until the Burning Legion come and try to kill everyone which ends up having everyone against the legion. The story does follow a certain character named Arthas which is a human prince sworn to protect his king, until one day he is driven mad by the demon sword known as Frostmourne. He betrays and kills his farther and friends and becomes the Lich king of the burning legion and is the final boss you have to fight in the new expansion called The Wrath of the Lich King. If you haven’t noticed I had to shorten the storyline otherwise id still be writing this after Christmas haha! I mean WoW has its own Wikipedia!!! www.wowwiki.com
Saturday 13 December 2008
task 7 week 7
An Art director has many different responsibilities and things to do such as keep all the artists on schedule when getting their work finished and teaches lesser artists in the group etc.
There’s a lot that Art directors do and I think it would be an extremely hard job to have from what I’ve read on the articles given, I bet that’s why they get paid a lot haha.
I think an Art directors position is creative because he tells the artists what he needs and tells them if he wants any changes to any piece of work and also helps artists with their drawings etc, so I think it has a huge effect in the company.
The job of a Games Art director I think is similar to an Art film director because they tell what the artists needs to do/improve on their work and help out with any timeline issues or any other bits that a normal artist couldn’t do.
If I wanted to become an Art director for games I would need a lot of experience in game design and general game concept art drawing, which is about 5 years worth of being in the industry and also needing at least 2 games making it to the market! To be honest it would be a long time before I become an Art director haha!!
There’s a lot that Art directors do and I think it would be an extremely hard job to have from what I’ve read on the articles given, I bet that’s why they get paid a lot haha.
I think an Art directors position is creative because he tells the artists what he needs and tells them if he wants any changes to any piece of work and also helps artists with their drawings etc, so I think it has a huge effect in the company.
The job of a Games Art director I think is similar to an Art film director because they tell what the artists needs to do/improve on their work and help out with any timeline issues or any other bits that a normal artist couldn’t do.
If I wanted to become an Art director for games I would need a lot of experience in game design and general game concept art drawing, which is about 5 years worth of being in the industry and also needing at least 2 games making it to the market! To be honest it would be a long time before I become an Art director haha!!
Monday 8 December 2008
task 6 week 6
Gameplay is something that the player/s can interact with or use within the game, this includes buttons on a controller, using an interface within a video game or using something like dice in a board game. An example of this can be a recent game im playing called the "prince of Persia", you move your character around using the controller and the character can jump onto walls, run across things and fight monsters using different buttons depending on the situation you’re in.
This question I don’t understand very well "Who are the leading lights in Game Design?" does it mean who runs the designing in each company, or is it the companies themselves? Well in each company, the heads of each department’s artists, programmers, interface makers and modellers each have their say on what content goes into a game and then when they’re all in a agreement the chiefs turn around to the staff and tell them what to make to help make the game unique and interesting.
As for the companies themselves, it depends if we’re talking about third-party companies or the head companies such as Nintendo, Playstation and Microsoft because they are the company’s that demand their games from the third party groups such as Ubi-soft and Activision and would get a hell of a lot of money out of it!
I say all these reasons above are important when I play a game, I mean I would hate to play on a blank screen with nothing in my hands while dreaming of actually having a console to play on haha! I say that different Genres would need different designing and why of thinking because it helps to create the atmosphere for the player like for example I wanted to make a horror but my artists drew out happy fluffy bunny rabbits, it isn’t gonna be a scary game! Well to anyone who’s afraid of cute things and fluffness!(yes I made that word up haha).
This question I don’t understand very well "Who are the leading lights in Game Design?" does it mean who runs the designing in each company, or is it the companies themselves? Well in each company, the heads of each department’s artists, programmers, interface makers and modellers each have their say on what content goes into a game and then when they’re all in a agreement the chiefs turn around to the staff and tell them what to make to help make the game unique and interesting.
As for the companies themselves, it depends if we’re talking about third-party companies or the head companies such as Nintendo, Playstation and Microsoft because they are the company’s that demand their games from the third party groups such as Ubi-soft and Activision and would get a hell of a lot of money out of it!
I say all these reasons above are important when I play a game, I mean I would hate to play on a blank screen with nothing in my hands while dreaming of actually having a console to play on haha! I say that different Genres would need different designing and why of thinking because it helps to create the atmosphere for the player like for example I wanted to make a horror but my artists drew out happy fluffy bunny rabbits, it isn’t gonna be a scary game! Well to anyone who’s afraid of cute things and fluffness!(yes I made that word up haha).
Sunday 7 December 2008
task 4 week 4 and pretty much task 5 week 5
The art of game writing
I was reading one of the articles in a link that Mike sent us and I thought it was like reading a script, but when I tend to read articles they normally tell the person whether its just crap or not like in a magazine called PSW a while back said that a certain game was s*** just pure utter s*** and that’s all he put. I mean I can’t stand writing like that because the person isn’t describing what’s wrong with the product, he just blabs on how rubbish something is and hasn’t put any thought to it. Later that guy got sacked, I noticed a staff change in the next issue haha.
But in some reviews people write on what’s good and what’s not good on the certain product, like in PC Gaming magazine they have a "hot or not" or in some cases a plus and minus system. for example i am reading at the moment an article on Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 the hot/plus side that goes up says "Incredibly balanced, even with the new faction,""An imaginative selection of units.""Multiple strategies for a more diverse game" and the not/minus side says that "matchmaking needs a lot of improvement,""lag is a major issue,""graphics don’t live up to expectations which makes sense and doesn’t try to rip into the hard work that companies put into it even if may be not very good, the reviewer should always give a reason why this is bad or good and I think they should be polite about their work also. I hate morons they make real reviewers look bad.
Anyway back to the article I read, it was about saving Private Donny which really isn’t a review but reading it was interesting. The writer explains how he and his friends tried to put off Donny from joining the army and facing an injury like his brother had while fighting in the terrorism war. Even though Donny didn’t need convincing in the end because he wanted to be a vet or fireman (which made the whole "lets mass kill Donny" pointless) but the way it was written was clever and I enjoyed it.
I was reading one of the articles in a link that Mike sent us and I thought it was like reading a script, but when I tend to read articles they normally tell the person whether its just crap or not like in a magazine called PSW a while back said that a certain game was s*** just pure utter s*** and that’s all he put. I mean I can’t stand writing like that because the person isn’t describing what’s wrong with the product, he just blabs on how rubbish something is and hasn’t put any thought to it. Later that guy got sacked, I noticed a staff change in the next issue haha.
But in some reviews people write on what’s good and what’s not good on the certain product, like in PC Gaming magazine they have a "hot or not" or in some cases a plus and minus system. for example i am reading at the moment an article on Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 the hot/plus side that goes up says "Incredibly balanced, even with the new faction,""An imaginative selection of units.""Multiple strategies for a more diverse game" and the not/minus side says that "matchmaking needs a lot of improvement,""lag is a major issue,""graphics don’t live up to expectations which makes sense and doesn’t try to rip into the hard work that companies put into it even if may be not very good, the reviewer should always give a reason why this is bad or good and I think they should be polite about their work also. I hate morons they make real reviewers look bad.
Anyway back to the article I read, it was about saving Private Donny which really isn’t a review but reading it was interesting. The writer explains how he and his friends tried to put off Donny from joining the army and facing an injury like his brother had while fighting in the terrorism war. Even though Donny didn’t need convincing in the end because he wanted to be a vet or fireman (which made the whole "lets mass kill Donny" pointless) but the way it was written was clever and I enjoyed it.
Saturday 6 December 2008
task 3 week 3
"The next generation consoles" are what people are playing on in our time like the Playstation 3, xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii which are the very best consoles to buy on the market so far, because of their high graphics and different gadgets and unique interaction in games. For example the Wii uses wireless (pretty much television remotes) controllers to play games like Mario kart Wii where the player has to tilt the controller to turn around corners etc.
My thoughts on these consoles is that even though they are expensive, they are alot of fun to play like Little Big Planet for the PS3 for example where you can push your mates into firepits or all four of you are hanging onto each other dangling over firepits and trying not to fall in!
The big change in games so far for developers is that it is costing more and more for each new game that is being released to make due to so much time and effort the staff needs to put in to create bigger and better things for their companies.
My big little timeline cont...
After the N64, i swapped it for a playstation which had alot of games that came with it such as Oddworld: Abe's Oddessy which was a fantastic game to play because it made the player think on how to get out of situations and how Abe would save as many slaves as he could.
was great fun but later I sold that to help buy a Playstation 2 which my dad bought for me and my brother Andrew in the year 2000. The first game I played for that was a Metal Gear Solid 2 demo and Tekken Tag (which was pretty much a button basher), then after having and completing those games i ended up buying over 19 games in total but traded them in to help buy a Nintendo DS in 2008.
My thoughts on these consoles is that even though they are expensive, they are alot of fun to play like Little Big Planet for the PS3 for example where you can push your mates into firepits or all four of you are hanging onto each other dangling over firepits and trying not to fall in!
The big change in games so far for developers is that it is costing more and more for each new game that is being released to make due to so much time and effort the staff needs to put in to create bigger and better things for their companies.
My big little timeline cont...
After the N64, i swapped it for a playstation which had alot of games that came with it such as Oddworld: Abe's Oddessy which was a fantastic game to play because it made the player think on how to get out of situations and how Abe would save as many slaves as he could.
was great fun but later I sold that to help buy a Playstation 2 which my dad bought for me and my brother Andrew in the year 2000. The first game I played for that was a Metal Gear Solid 2 demo and Tekken Tag (which was pretty much a button basher), then after having and completing those games i ended up buying over 19 games in total but traded them in to help buy a Nintendo DS in 2008.
Friday 5 December 2008
task 2 week 2
The 1970's was meant to be the golden age of video arcade games with games like Galaxy Game which was set up at a university in stanford and it was the first coin operated video game. I never knew that, I always thought that pong was the first video game but it looks like a game i missed out on!
In 1972 when Atari was founded the company decided to make a game named Pong. It was the first well known successful arcade game that was released the same year as the Galaxy Game.
I still remember the Atari that my step brother used to have with games like James Pond and Chuck Rock! man they were great games, so very colourful and frustrating to complete haha but hours of fun!
Later on in the 70's such great titles came out such as Asteroids, Space Invaders and Pac Man which became hugely famous and are still played on today. These arcade machines were in most super stores/malls and arcades across the globe, button bashing games were at their peak.
In 1979 Activision was created they were the first third-party developer of video games. Activision were well known for their Tony Hawk Skateboarder series.
In 1972 when Atari was founded the company decided to make a game named Pong. It was the first well known successful arcade game that was released the same year as the Galaxy Game.
I still remember the Atari that my step brother used to have with games like James Pond and Chuck Rock! man they were great games, so very colourful and frustrating to complete haha but hours of fun!
Later on in the 70's such great titles came out such as Asteroids, Space Invaders and Pac Man which became hugely famous and are still played on today. These arcade machines were in most super stores/malls and arcades across the globe, button bashing games were at their peak.
In 1979 Activision was created they were the first third-party developer of video games. Activision were well known for their Tony Hawk Skateboarder series.
my big little time line :)
I have been playing games for the past 18 years which is around the same age as most of the game art students, not only does this makes me feel old but shows some of my dedication to games haha.
From what i remember my first game was Dizzy, a small egg man that you had to find objects to help you progress through the game which was on the old spectrum console. For example you needed a snorkle to go under water or youll drown and a knife to cut a rope attached to a goat to knock down the troll on a bridge etc.
Around that time i think it was 1990 when i was 3 years old and it needed tape cassettes to play (my dad bought two very large black bin liners full of cassettes!) and it took an aweful long time to start, me my dad and two brothers would go down and make a cup of tea, go play outside for abit and have our dinner to come back to the game nearly fully loaded and thats if it didnt crash on us!
My next console would have been the very awesome megadrive. I picked it out of a curry's store back in 1993, the reason i picked the megadrive because Sonic the hedgehog looked far cooler then super Mario did. Alot of fun the Sonic series was that i kept my megadrive till this very day in a box in the spare room.
My console after that was the Nintendo 64 with Mario Kart and Mario 64 which again i kept because of retro brilliance.
I ended up owning numerous consoles such as the spectrum 1990, megadrive 1993, n64 1996, playstation 1 1997, playstation 2 2000, classic gameboy 1996, gameboy advance sp 2003, nintendo ds 2008, xbox 2006 and the playstation 3 which i bought last week haha. All the consoles i have owned have been of great fun so its hard to pic the best console out of the 10 but if i was made to choose i would have to say the megadrive, because of its many hours of pure button bashing goodness! street fighter was a great example of button bashing fun.
This as a whole is pretty much why i still play games, its because all through the consoles its discovering new ideas and gameplay also watching graphics which looked liked that they were made by cavemen (virtual fighter ha!) to the very beautiful artworks such as gears of war and to look at how games are becoming more and more realistic is fasinating!
From what i remember my first game was Dizzy, a small egg man that you had to find objects to help you progress through the game which was on the old spectrum console. For example you needed a snorkle to go under water or youll drown and a knife to cut a rope attached to a goat to knock down the troll on a bridge etc.
Around that time i think it was 1990 when i was 3 years old and it needed tape cassettes to play (my dad bought two very large black bin liners full of cassettes!) and it took an aweful long time to start, me my dad and two brothers would go down and make a cup of tea, go play outside for abit and have our dinner to come back to the game nearly fully loaded and thats if it didnt crash on us!
My next console would have been the very awesome megadrive. I picked it out of a curry's store back in 1993, the reason i picked the megadrive because Sonic the hedgehog looked far cooler then super Mario did. Alot of fun the Sonic series was that i kept my megadrive till this very day in a box in the spare room.
My console after that was the Nintendo 64 with Mario Kart and Mario 64 which again i kept because of retro brilliance.
I ended up owning numerous consoles such as the spectrum 1990, megadrive 1993, n64 1996, playstation 1 1997, playstation 2 2000, classic gameboy 1996, gameboy advance sp 2003, nintendo ds 2008, xbox 2006 and the playstation 3 which i bought last week haha. All the consoles i have owned have been of great fun so its hard to pic the best console out of the 10 but if i was made to choose i would have to say the megadrive, because of its many hours of pure button bashing goodness! street fighter was a great example of button bashing fun.
This as a whole is pretty much why i still play games, its because all through the consoles its discovering new ideas and gameplay also watching graphics which looked liked that they were made by cavemen (virtual fighter ha!) to the very beautiful artworks such as gears of war and to look at how games are becoming more and more realistic is fasinating!
task 1 week 1
Just a quick note before i begin on how video games and how awesome a vacuum can be used to fire missiles just to say that i havnt been able to access blogger untill pretty much today (finally!) and so ill be sticking my blogs on with different dates hopefully not to confuse you.
p.s dont add this to the word count :P
Technically the first video game was called the cathrode ray tube (awesome name) and it involved firing missiles out of a vacuum at a target and this was created by two men named Thomas T Goldsmith and Estle Ray Man (just reliased that Ray Man is a character off a Ubi soft game called Rayman raving rabbits, funny thing that heres a picture)http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/rayman2.jpg
I find this greatly interesting because I imagine using a Henry Hoover to fire paper missiles across the room and how fun it would be, because i dont think that games nowadays allows you to use your brain abit and its pretty much follow a storyline or fail which is boring unlike the mindless firing of paper missiles at your friends which can be hours of fun, well untill the hoover breaks.
Another interesting game would have been the Tennis for Two game which was created in 1958 by a man named William Higinbotham, which was a tennis court (from the side view) on a oscilloscope where the player would have to turn nobs to use trajectory and a button to bash the ball back to the opposing player. I think this would have been an amazing thing to see back in the day, it would have been like a cave man discovering fire for the first time a discovery which would one day lead to the games we have now.
p.s dont add this to the word count :P
Technically the first video game was called the cathrode ray tube (awesome name) and it involved firing missiles out of a vacuum at a target and this was created by two men named Thomas T Goldsmith and Estle Ray Man (just reliased that Ray Man is a character off a Ubi soft game called Rayman raving rabbits, funny thing that heres a picture)http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/rayman2.jpg
I find this greatly interesting because I imagine using a Henry Hoover to fire paper missiles across the room and how fun it would be, because i dont think that games nowadays allows you to use your brain abit and its pretty much follow a storyline or fail which is boring unlike the mindless firing of paper missiles at your friends which can be hours of fun, well untill the hoover breaks.
Another interesting game would have been the Tennis for Two game which was created in 1958 by a man named William Higinbotham, which was a tennis court (from the side view) on a oscilloscope where the player would have to turn nobs to use trajectory and a button to bash the ball back to the opposing player. I think this would have been an amazing thing to see back in the day, it would have been like a cave man discovering fire for the first time a discovery which would one day lead to the games we have now.
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