Guest Speaker Mike Bambury on Creating Ideas

Two weeks ago I attended a scheduled talk by Mike Bambury, an art director in Sony's London studio. The talk focussed on idea creation, and the methods one could use to create new untapped ideas.

Bambury began by showing us a quick introduction video, showcasing Sony games across different genres, and audiences. The diverse range of games previewed everything from, Little Big Planet 2, to Killzone 3, to several Sony Move titles like EyePet, and Sorcery.

Once the video was out of the way, Bambury began to talk about ideas and the different methods that exist to generate original ideas.

Bambury linked his talk to the author Edward Debono, and in particular, the books, Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step. Both of these books offer different tools for idea creation. Bambury talked us through three of these tools, random entry, concept extraction and lastly, provocation.

Random Entry

The first tool, Random Entry, is simple to explain but intriguing in premise. Firstly the user has to think of two to three random words. The next step is for the user to try to associate these words into a coherent whole, thus forming a random idea for a new game.

Here's an example from the talk. Bambury asked for single words describing a space station located on the moon. Members of the talk shouted out words like, "cold", "empty", "futuristic", and "cheese". The audience participant explained that the moon could be made of cheese, hence the association. Bambury said that the "cheese" example perfectly demonstrated the point of the exercise. He asked how many games are set on a space station, on a moon made of cheese, not many obviously, so the idea is original.

At this point, Bambury showed us the next tool, concept extraction.

Concept Extraction

The second tool, Concept Extraction, involves the user trying to guess the underlining theme behind a stream of words or objects. Bambury gave an example in the talk to demonstrate this. Bambury asked us to tell him the underlining concept of words he was calling out. "Van", "Car", "Plane", "Bus". In this case the underlining theme, the concept we had extracted, was transport. So the game idea would be to make a game based around the different kinds of transport that exist, and do something new with that.

Provocation

The final tool, Provocation, is to simply take an existing idea and turn it on its head.

Here’s an example from the talk. Bambury asked us to list the fundamental aspects of a typical FPS game. We responded with “weapons”, “enemies”, “killing”, “levels”, and so on.

Bambury proposed making an FPS without those fundamental elements, to create a new, original idea. As an avid gamer I have played many examples of the FPS genre, and I cannot think of a single game that tried to remove all of those elements. Games such as Half Life 2, and Halo have integrated near seamless level progression, but you would be hard pressed to find an FPS that at its core, doesn't rely on shooting enemies. (It could be argued that Half Life 2 makes some big strides in this direction, with its focus on puzzle solving and the clever uses of the gravity gun throughout most of the game. But that's a subject for another day, I'm aiming to play Half Life 2: Episode 2 over the summer, and then write a long review about the main game and both episodes).

A practical example of provocation that comes to mind, is the platform game VVVVVV. Now, the fundamental aspect of any platformer is the ability to jump from platform to platform. In VVVVVV, however, your character Viridian cannot jump. Instead he has the ability to reverse gravity at will while touching a normal ground or ceiling surface. This gameplay mechanic results in the player frequently platforming upside down, and changing the gravity constantly in order to progress through the game. To me, this seems like an obvious example of the provocation school of thought, taking an existing idea and reversing it, in action.

Screenshot from VVVVVV

Bambury summarised this section of the talk by saying "Using provocation game designers can come up with new ideas by reversing standard practises." I can definitely see the potential for this tool when trying to come up with new, appealing game ideas.

Overall I greatly enjoyed Bambury’s ideas talk. Best of all, it made me think outside of the box when considering game design, and reminded me just how important that is.

I've decided to buy both Edward Debono books via Amazon and attempt to read them over the summer. Hopefully after reading them I should gain a greater insight into the three tools covered in Bambury's talk.

As always, thanks for reading.

Bibliography

Debono Edward, "Six Thinking Hats", 1986

Debono Edward, "Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step", 1970

Games Referenced

Little Big Planet 2 (Playstation 3) , Media Molecule, 2011

Killzone 3 (Playstation 3) , Guerrilla Games, 2011

Eyepet (Playstation Move) , SCE London Studio, 2010

Sorcery (Playstation Move) The Workshop, 2011

VVVVVV (Steam) Terry Cavanagh, 2010

Half Life 2 (PC) Valve, 2004

Sound Workshops and Foley Sessions

This week our group sound workshop sessions with Mathew Applegate came to an end.

In these workshops Matt told us about himself, his life and his career. He explained sound concepts such as diegesis and non-digesis.

Diegesis and Non Diegesis

In a movie or game, diegetic sounds are caused by a sound source present on the screen. The characters in the world can actually hear the sound.

Non-diegtic sounds are the opposite, the sounds don't exist in the 'world' of the movie or game, only the audience can hear them. These sounds are sometimes used to set the mood of a scene, so the character may have theme music, to clue the audience in on their future If this is sinister music, the audience will realise the character has a dark future ahead of them, but since the character can't hear the music, they have no way of telling that anything is amiss. Narration is another example of non-diegtic sound. Narration is a good method of explaining the situation to the audience without effecting the 'world' or characters in the game or movie.

Opening Shot

Matt taught us the importance of the opening shots of a movie or game. The opening shot is quite simply, the first 5-10 seconds of sound the audience hears upon starting the movie or game. This piece of sound instantly clues the audience in on the atmosphere and mood of the media they are watching or playing. Matt used the example of the Star Wars the Clone Wars animated cartoon, to show the effect of the opening shot. The opening of the cartoon contains a massive amount of information. Classic star wars music plays, along with marching footsteps, and a short burst of the Imperial anthem. The cartoon is aimed at both old and new star wars fans. The quick short, Imperial burst was clearly put there for long time fans, who will know that it signifies how the clone wars ends, and how the Empire begins.

Matt also taught us that sound can describe what size an object is. In Star Wars for instance, the bigger Star Destroyer like clone ship engines make a very deep rumbling sound, whereas the small one man fighter ships make a lighter higher pitched sound.

Other concepts Matt taught us include, room tone, how the size and materials of a room can drastically change the sound output in that room. A simple example of this is, in some FPS games, if you fire a weapon in an open space, say a large cavern, and then fire the same weapon in a small enclosed room, the sounds produced with be very different.

Thematic Music

Thematic music is non-diegtic music, which gives the audience an impression of what the character is like and how they act. In the Star Wars animated cartoon, Anakin Skywalker's theme music, sounds troubled and discordant, reflecting the conflict present in Anakin's future. Internal monologues allow the audience to see what a character is thinking. A reverb is usually added to these monologues so the audience is in no doubt that they are listening to the characters thoughts, rather than hearing them speak directly.

Willhelm Scream

An interesting aside that Matt taught us was about the Willhelm scream. The Willhelm scream is used in a staggering number of movies and games, for comedic effect. The scream sounds cartoony and very unrealistic, so directors and sound designers seem to like adding the scream in as a kind of inside joke. I was amazed at the sheer number of movies I watched that featured the scream. Everything from Star Wars, to LOTR, to Toy Story 3, to Inception. If you think of a movie, it's likely the Willhelm Scream will be present at some point.

Stepping Back

Matt also taught us that in order to properly analyse a movie or game, we as an audience, must step back from the story and sound, and experience it at an entirely different level.

This is particularly difficult in games, since it is extremely difficult to do well at a game without concentrating and being immersed in its world.

Matt recommended using video capture card software to record ourselves playing a game, and then watching it back to analyse it. I plan to try this in the summer, since I've always wanted to record some of my favourite moments in gaming so I can easily relive them.

Foley Sessions

We were privileged to have two Foley sessions with Matt. Foley is the process of creating sounds using everyday objects. It is extensively used in TV, movies and games.

Matt let us create sounds using a large variety of objects. Below I have attempted to list every object I can remember us using, and what sound it created.

Slinky and Plastic Cup = Various laser sounds.

Path Tiles = Scraping sound, sounds like a heavy and a light object being moved depending on which side of the tiles is used.

Frozen Vegetables (Carrots, Cabbages etc) = Bone crunching, bone breaking, alien pods.

Trainers = Very pronounced clear footsteps.

Cloth sheet, Crisp Packet, Bubble Wrap and Children's Toy = crackling fire sound.

Creaky Door = Loud creaking sound.

Normal Door = Quiet low creaking sound.

Movie Light rotated = Horrible creaking sound.

Vending Machine Motor = Loud sound of motor running. Edited to produce engine sounds of big spaceships.

Electric Light = Electrical humming/clicking sound.

Metal Ladder and Metal Pole = Metal tapping sound.

Cushions, Cloth Sheet and Punching/Kicking = Realistic punching/kicking sounds.

It was an awesome experience to both see how foley sounds are created, and to take part in creating those sounds. The Slinky and Plastic Cup left me speechless, when Matt first demonstrated it. Actual laser-like sounds coming out of a toy and a plastic cup combined is quite an experience. I'd heard that if the two objects were put together correctly they could cause the sounds, but I don't think I seriously believed it until I saw it happen.

Conclusion

It's a shame our sound sessions have come to an end so rapidly. Matt was able to bring his passion for sound into the lessons he taught, which made the subject both interesting and enjoyable. I certainly learnt a lot and discovered that sounds are much more interesting than I thought.

I will attempt to analyse the sounds in movies I watch and games I play. As I said above, so far I am mainly noticing the Willhelm Scream, but I suppose that's still a start. :)

As usual, thanks for reading.

References

Star Wars The Clone Wars (George Lucas). 2008

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (George Lucas). 1983

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson). 2002

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson). 2003

Inception (Christopher Nolan). 2010

Christmas Holidays & New Year

Well another Christmas has come and gone, coupled with the start to another new

year.

Christmas

Christmas generally starts to feel less and less special as you grow older, but this year's Christmas and the surrounding days still felt very special to me.

This was mainly due to two main reasons:

The first reason was that I spent the majority of the time with my family. To me the Christmas holiday doesn't really begin until the tree is put up as a family, with classic Christmas music playing in the background. (The Best Christmas Album In the World Ever! Which contains classic songs like 'Happy Xmas', 'I wish it could be Christmas Everyday', 'I believe in father Christmas', A Spaceman Came Travelling', and so on). Unfortunately since we've had the tree many years, some of the lights have begun to stop working. The overall effect of the tree, however, is still very impressive.

 

Christmas itself was a very festive occasion, all of the relatives came round, to eat and drink and be merry. We also played some new board games, beginning with Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and Harry Potter Scene It.

Friends

The second reason was that I met up with two of my good friends Mike and Ste, after not seeing them for months due to each of us going to different universities in different parts of England.

The three of us went to Cineworld to see the new Tron film, Tron: Legacy. I found the film to be enjoyable, although in hindsight I wish I'd have watched the original Tron film before seeing the new sequel. That would have given me a different perspective on the movie. I still knew of Tron, mainly from the popular Lightcycle game, which has been re-made in many forms.

After the movie we returned to my house to relax and play some video games. We played our traditional matches of Super Smash Bros Brawl, with me reprising my usual role as Kirby, Mike as Ganondorf, and Ste as Marth or Pit.

After a dozen or more matches we switched to playing Halo Reach, the newest game in the Halo series. Reach is a prequel to the rest of the series, and adds many new multiplayer features.

To begin with Me, Mike and Ste played some online games of Rumble Pit (a selection of free for all gamemodes). Mike had the advantage since he'd played Reach at University with his flatmates. It was the first time me or Ste had played Reach, and we did quite badly until we got used to the differences in Reach compared to the other Halo games. The most obvious difference is the addition of classes called, 'loadouts' in most game modes. Each 'loadout' comes with pre-defined weapons and a single special ability.

These abilities range from; sprinting, active camouflage, jetpacks, a radar jammer and temporary invincibility. Me and Ste really enjoyed trying out the jetpack. Flying around the map was an excellent way to traverse the map, and get the jump literally, on ground dwelling enemies. Unfortunately the jetpack is relatively slow, so the player flying around in the sky is a massive target, and is often picked off from afar for an easy kill.

After a few matches we switched to the new and improved Forge map creation tool, now named Forgeworld.

Forgeworld

Forgeworld allows the player to create custom multiplayer maps by selecting and placing developer created objects onto the game map.

The variety of the objects is truly staggering, the player has near limitless possibilities with the wide range of pieces Forgeworld provides.

To begin with me, Mike and Ste began by exploring the default blank map itself. We were all very surprised by the absolutely massive size of the map itself. Next we spawned in some weapons and vehicles and had a deathmatch of sorts, with Ste taking on the role of making a small base area for us to fight in. Soon the base began to take a different shape, a giant ramp leading to the heavens, an excellent sniping position, to prey on those players, far, far below.

Without me or Mike really realising it, Ste continued developing what soon turned into a racetrack, although not exactly the typical image of a racetrack. Suspended way, way up in the air, with no sides or barriers, it was a very perilous racecourse. Falling off meant restarting the entire course, which became an issue as the course continued to grow.

I hope to record a video of the finished racetrack using Reach's video editing features to be posted in a future blog post. (After the new year we made a second and probably better designed racetrack, so I'll try and post a video of that also).

New Year

I rang in the new year in a quiet way, with my family. We watched Toy Story 3, which I found to be a very entertaining, yet emotional movie, which definitely tugged on my heartstrings.

I don't want to spoil the plot of the movie, so I'll just heartily recommend that you buy the DVD and watch it if you haven't already.

Thanks for reading. :)

P.S. After writing this, I realise how far behind I've managed to fall with my blog posting. I also remembered how much I love the Christmas holiday, and how it's probably my favourite time of year, hence why I got so incredibly sidetracked. Well I plan to update my blog regularly again from now on.

Dig Dug 1500 Word Review WIP

Introduction

Dig Dug is a 2D Pacman-esque movement based game, developed and published by Namco in 1982. The premise of the game is for the player to dig tunnels into the terrain to gain access to enemies. The player must kill all the enemies in a level, using a bicycle pump, to advance to the next level. The game ends when the player loses all of their stored lives.

Game Mechanics

Dig Dug has many different game mechanics that influence the game. Below I have listed each game mechanic, given it a description and then discussed if I think it is a positive or negative aspect of the gameplay.

Digging

Digging is the primary method of moving in Dig Dug. Whenever the player moves underground, they automatically dig. In the player can dig in 4 directions, up, down, left and right. They cannot dig diagonally.

Rocks

Each level in Dig Dug contains large rocks that can be used as weapons against the two types of enemy. If the player tunnels under a rock, it will begin to tremble, and after a few seconds will fall downwards, destroying all terrain and enemies underneath it. The player gets a score bonus when they kill enemies by using the rocks, more on this in the score section.

Enemies

In Dig Dug there are only two types of enemy, the Pooka and the Fygar.

The Pooka is the basic enemy in Dig Dug. It moves through tunnels that the player has created and attempts to kill them by running into them.

The Fygar is a green dragon-like creature. It has the ability to breath a deadly, ranged streak of fire, which passes through terrain. If the player comes into contact with the fire or touch the Fygar directly, they will perish and lose a life.

Both the Pooka and the Fygar have the interesting ability to turn into a pair of evil yellow eye ghosts and float through solid terrain. This allows the enemies to reach and attack the player, even if they haven't dug a tunnel directly to the monsters.

Bicycle Pump

The Bicycle Pump is the primary means of destroying enemies available to the player. Once the fire button is pressed, the pump will fire directly towards the direction the player is facing. If the pump hits an enemy then the player must press the fire button 4 times in quick succession to fully inflate and kill the enemy. If the player pauses during this process, the enemy will quickly deflate, regain movement, and attack the player.

Levels

Dig Dug uses a simple level structure,

Each level in Dig Dug is divided into four coloured sections. These colours represent how deep underground the player has ventured. The deeper underground the player is when they kill an enemy, the larger point bonus they receive.

The game shows both a visual and text based representation of which level the player is on.

 

Score

Dig Dug features a score system that gives the player points for; killing enemies, digging through terrain and collecting fruit pickups. The player gets additional points if they dig under a rock and use it to crush pursuing enemies.

Dig Dug uses a high score system to remember the highest score the player has reached before dying. This score is permanently stored in the games memory, and is shown on the screen at all times. This prompts the player to try and beat their best score.

Lives

Dig Dug uses a simple lives system. The player begins the game with 3 lives, and gains an additional life every time their score increases by 10000. The player loses a life if they collide with; a Pooka, Frygar, Frygar fire, or a falling rock. When the player loses all of their lives, a game over occurs, and the player is sent back to the main menu screen.

Now I have described the basic mechanics of Dig Dug, I will discuss how these mechanics shape the game.

FADT (Formal Abstract Design Tools) (Church Doug, 1999, Page 3), can be used to break a game down into tools. Church finds three useful tools when analysing Super Mario 64, intention, perceivable consequence, and story. All three of these tools can be applied to Dig Dug to analyse the game and its mechanics.

Intention

Intention is the act of the "player making an implementable plan of their own, created in response to the current situation in the game world and one's understanding of the game play options.". (Church Doug, 1999, Page 4). When a player plays Dig Dug they must create a plan of action if they hope to achieve victory over each individually level in the game. This plan of action will change depending on: how many lives the player has remaining, the position and number of enemies on the screen and the pathway of tunnels dug through the terrain. The player must analyse all of these constantly changing game elements and make a plan to respond to the situation.

Dig Dug by its nature, is a fast, cruel game. One moment the player can be setting a new high score and have 3 lives remaining, the next, 2-3 enemies can pass through the walls and surround and kill the player.

Perceivable Consequence

Perceivable consequence is "A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player". (Church Doug, 1999, Page 4). When the player dies from touching the Fygar's fire, drops a rock onto an enemy, or begins to inflate a monster, the game gives the player a specific, clear reaction. In the case of the Fygar the player will lose a life, when dropping a rock onto an enemy it will immediately flatten it. When the player begins to inflate a monster, it will cease all movement and grow larger.

Story

Story is "The narrative thread, whether design-driven or player-driven, that binds events together and drives the player forward towards completion of the game". (Church Doug, 1999, Page 5).

The design-driven narrative of Dig Dug is almost non existent. The player controls Dig Dug and must venture underground and eliminate monsters. That's the entirety of the design-driven narrative, but it isn't the entire story. The story in Dig Dug is every tunnel dug, every enemy overcome, every cunningly set up rock trap, etc. The story of the game is entirely determined by the player and their actions, thus it is player-driven.

This allows a player to create their own unique story each time they play through the game if they so choose. The smallest decision, such as tunnelling to the left as opposed to the right, can have a profound effect on the story.

Score and Lives

"One Definition  of endogenous is 'caused by factors inside the organism or system'. "Just so. A games structure creates its own meanings. The meaning grows out of the structure, it is caused by the structure, it is endogenous to the structure." (Costikyan, Greg, 2002, Page 22).

Both score and lives have endogenous meaning in Dig Dug. When the player plays Dig Dug they will attempt to get the highest score possible, this is the overall objective in Dig Dug, since the player can never "win" the game. Players start the game with a stock of three lives. Since death can happen very quickly in Dig Dug, lives are extremely precious. The player needs to have lives remaining to keep racking up the score; thus the more lives the player has in stock, the more likely they are to get a higher score.

The key point here is that although score and lives are literally a matter of life and death within the game-space of Dig Dug, they are meaningless and inconsequential in the real world. As Costikyan says "It has no concrete, real-world expression and no value in any context other than the game"(Costikyan, Greg, 2002, Page 22).

Word Count - 1319

Bibliography

Costik.com - A website run by Greg Costikyan that contains academic articles on game design and game analysis that he has written.

Author: Greg Costikyan

Article Name: I have no words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games
Article Year: 2002

Address: http://www.costik.com/nowords2002.pdf

Checked: 2nd December

Gamasutra.com - A website that contains both gaming news and many academic pieces on designing and analysing video games.

Author: Doug Church

Article Name: Formal Abstract Design Tools
Article Year:  1999

Address: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal_abstract_design_tools.php

Checked: 2nd December

To reinforce what I said above, I'm not at all sure I'm on the right track with the review so far.

I would greatly appreciate feedback on what I've done right, and what I've done wrong and need to change.

If I've completely missed the point of the assignment then I still have time to re-write it from a different perspective.

Thanks for reading my WIP review, hopefully I'm on the right track.

Guest Speakers John Wagland from BBFC and Johnnie Ingram on Machinima

Last Wednesday I attended two different talks from two different guest speakers. Below I will recount my experience of listening to the talks, and discuss the issues they raised.

Intro on the British Board of Film Classification Talk

The first talk was from John Wagland one of the examiners from the British Board Film Classification (BBFC), and was about their purpose, methods and how they classify films and video games. The BBFC have been around a very long time, the organisation was set up in 1912 under the original name of the British Board of Film Censors.

The talk focussed mainly on film classification, but did briefly talk about games.

The BBFC is composed of 16 examiners from wide ranging backgrounds. These are split into two separate teams, one team examines films, and the other examines video games.

Film Classification

Near the end of the talk, Wagland showed us clips from various films, and asked us what age rating we would classify them as, based solely on the clip.

One such film clip was from Disney’s Rocketman film, which was aimed at all audiences (U rating). The clip we were shown was the original intro to the film, in this intro a child is pretending to be an astronaut… using a washing machine as a fake spacecraft. The washing machine starts and the child gets slightly knocked around before it opens. His parents seem to think it’s perfectly normal for him to be doing this.

The BBFC felt that this scene could be harmful to children if they copied the actions from the film. Some of the examiners felt it might have been suitable if the parents had reprimanded the child for the behaviour, since children watching would realise it was a “bad” thing to do. Part of the problem then was that the parents treat the incident so normally, barely even commenting on the child’s dangerous behaviour.

The BBFC ordered Disney to remove the footage, in order for the film to be re-assessed and later re-classified as a U rating. I wholeheartedly agree that child safety must come first, but I also think its a shame they had to cut such a humorous scene. Almost every person in the room seemed to be laughing at this particular clip, which shows that the humour did in fact appeal to all ages.

Game Classification

John Wagland also talked about games and how they are classified.

When examiners play through any game, they are given access to cheats/save states that allow them to easily and quickly experience everything the game has to offer. In this way, they do not play through the entire game from start to finish; instead they sample the mechanics of the game being examined.

Wagland admitted that games sometimes seem to receive harsher examination than film. He attributed this to parents being very concerned with the interactive nature of games. He also cited the repetitive nature of games, since this allows the player to freely repeat violent or offensive sections of the game, whereas in a film, a specific violent action will likely only be seen once in a single sitting.

Interestingly, the BBFC will lose their authority and ability to classify games on April 1st 2011. This change was prompted by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, after they ruled in favour of solely using the PEGI (Pan European Game Information) system to rate games and other types of software.

Intro on the Machinima Talk

The second talk was from Johnnie Ingram and focussed on machinima.

The word machinima stems from, machine & cinema. machinima uses games as a tool to tell a story, in this way machinima is essentially the act of making a film within a game world.

Sometimes machinima is created directly within a game engine, with game players acting out different characters in the film in real time. An alternative is for machinima to be created using developer tools such as Half Life 2's model viewer, to view and manipulate character models. A limitation of this method in the case of the HL2 model viewer, is that anyone that has played the game will know all the original HL2 characters being used in the machinima, and so it may feel odd when they see the same character models, acting completely differently to the role they played in HL2.

Brief History of Machinima

The initial machinima videos took the form of recorded instructions within a game, such as a replay. This greatly limited the potential audience for initial machinima, since only those people who owned the game the machinima was made in, could recall the recorded instructions and thus view the film. The very first machinima movie was Diary of a Camper. http://machiniplex.net/classics.php?id=6

In the present day machinima is usually saved as an ordinary video file such as a AVI file. This allows any computer user to view the file as long as they have downloaded the latest media plug ins for their chosen video playing software.

Examples of Machinima

After explaining what machinima was, Ingram showed us two lengthy examples of it in practise.

Firstly we watched "A Warriors Dream", which according to Ingram, was filmed entirely using in-game footage from World of Warcraft (WOW). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5JuypAbBH8

The films premise is that a WOW warrior character falls asleep and has a dream that they are in fact, a shape shifting shaman character. The shaman travels across the world, shape shifting each time he meets a new enemy. Eventually the dream ends, and the warrior wakes up and continues his day to day business of killing monsters.

The second example we watched was a film called Clockwork, which was created using the HL2 model viewer and HL2 assets. http://machiniplex.net/?id=22

Clockwork was made in the style of old black and white films, this really gave it a film noir vibe. The film focuses on a group of gangsters and how one particular gangster decides to attempt to redeem himself as a human being after sinking so low. To say much more would spoil the plot of this excellent piece of machinima.

Moviestorm

Machinima can also be created using specialist software such ash, Moviestorm, Iclone, Muviu, Voovees, Xtranormal and Zencub3d.

Ingram gave us a quick demo of his Moviestorm software. Firstly he loaded up a basic park-like scene, and then created a quick character to be the 'star' of the film. Next he used a microphone to record a basic sentence for his character to say in the software. When Ingram tested the sentence, he demonstrated that Moviestorm featured automatic lip syncing of recorded voice lines. Next Ingram used the Moviestorm interface to make the character give some simple gestures such as waving. Finally Ingram modified the camera settings to create two shots, the first shot shows the character from a distance, the second shot is a close up and allowed us to see the character speaking.

This brief demo showed us that basic scenes could be created very quickly and easily using Moviestorm.

Career of Johnnie Ingram

The final part of the talk focussed on Ingram's career. By his own admission, Ingram has had a very interesting career path. He began by studying Drama and English, dropped English, and then abandoned drama and decided to study films and media. Eventually he applied to a local company via email, and worked with them for a number of years, before applying to Moviestorm. He joined Moviestorm as a software tester, and ultimately he worked his way up the company to a very senior position. One of his new duties is to give talks about; machinima, his career and Moviestorm to universities and students.

Conclusion

I'm glad I attended both events. Each event offered something different, the BBFC talk taught me a lot of interesting information about movies, games and how and why they are rated.

The machinima talk was also very entertaining. Ingram's method of timekeeping was amusing; since he kept overrunning the set period of time each segment of the talk was supposed to last.

Before attending the talk I knew almost nothing about machinima. I'd watched a few episodes of Red vs. Blue a Halo machinima, and a few other random videos online, but that was my entire experience of it. I left the talk with more knowledge than when I entered it, realising that some videos I've watched in the past were actually machinima without me realising it.

This concludes my recount of both talks. Thanks for reading. :)

Films Referenced

Rocketman (Walt Disney Pictures, Caravan Pictures).

Machninema Referenced

Diary of a Camper (United Ranger Films).
Available online at: http://machiniplex.net/classics.php?id=6

A Warriors Dream (Slashdance).
Available online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5JuypAbBH8

Clockwork (Amorphous Blob Productions).
Available online at: http://machiniplex.net/?id=22

Red Vs Blue (Rooster Teeth Productions).
Available online at: http://redvsblue.com/archive/?id=88&v=trending

Formula 1 Sportswheel GUI Mock-ups & Adobe Illustrator Practise

I am now halfway through the development time period for my Formula 1 sportshweel re-design.

At this stage I am required to have started creating some basic mock-ups for my re-design. Below I have posted images showing each mock-up, and explained how the interface elements are positioned.

Mock-up 1 - as you can see, the track is positioned at the bottom of the screen. All other interface elements, the betting chips, the grand stand and the traffic light, are positioned above the track.

Mock-up 2 - this is the only design where the track is placed on the upper portion of the screen. I thought this would be something interesting to try in my design. I positioned the betting chips around the bottom left edge of the track.

Mock-up 3 - in this design I have positioned the track in the centre of the screen. I like this design since the various elements fill most of the screen-space which stops the game screen feeling empty. Visually I like the position of the betting chips, but the spread out nature, might make the game difficult to play.

Mock-up 4 - in this design I decided to try something different. I decided to move all of the interactive elements in my game, betting chips, traffic light play, reset and quit buttons, onto a single horizontal row. I think this will facilitate the making of bets, when players play the game.

Colour Scheme Grid - this is the colour scheme grid I created. I chose red, yellow and orange to be the predominant colours in my game. I feel that these colours complement each other well and lend the game a "warm" feeling.

 

Adobe Illustrator Practise

This Thursday Phil gave us a quick introduction to Adobe Illustrator. The interface of Illustrator is very similar to Photoshop, many of the same tools and options are in both programs.

The biggest difference between the software is Photoshop is a bitmap program, while Illustrator is vector based. Vector based images can be resized infinitely without 'pixelation' occurring and blurring the details of the image. Similarly lines don't become jagged when enlarged.

I spent the majority of Thursdays lesson having a play around with Illustrator since I had never used it before. Andre challenged me to draw a video game character, and eventually I decided to try and draw Nintendo's Kirby character, since design-wise he is fairly simplistic.

Needless to say, drawing Kirby proved to be much more challenging that I'd have imagined. I didn't realise how much effort went into even a simple character design such as Kirby before trying to draw him.

Eventually, with a little bit of help from both Andre and David, I was able to create the below image. Mainly I used the pen tool, combined with ellipses to form Kirby's body, feet and hands. I used the convert anchor point tool to move the various sections of the ellipse to create the shapes I wanted.

Kirby - This is my attempt at Kirby. I'm pretty proud of it. I might edit it sometime to add light and shadow to the image, this should make Kirby look much more 3D.

 

Kirby Reference Image - I based my attempt on this picture of Kirby.

It's not perfect but I think it's pretty good considering I'd never used Illustrator until earlier that day.

Overall it was a very enjoyable lesson. I learnt about the program while doing something that interested me, creating a video game character using various tools in the program. Thanks for reading. :)

Natural Funativity

This week we were asked to read an article titled ' Natural Funativity', an interesting title to be sure. (The title is a pun on natural selection). In this blog post I will summarise and discuss what I think are the important points of this article.

Intro

Fun in itself is not a useful term when critically analysing a game, the term 'fun' is too subjective and not specific enough. This article written by Noah Falstein attempts to remedy this by looking back at the past of our human existence to determine why we like to partake in certain activities and find them 'fun'.

In the article fun is broken down into 4 distinct types these are; physical fun, social fun, mental fun and blended fun. Below I will describe what each type of fun involves and where it likely evolved from. The article also mentions something the author calls, refined sugar syndrome, below I will explain what this means, and how it relates to the different types of fun.

RSS - stands for Refined Sugar Syndrome. It is the act of wanting more of something, even though we know it is bad for us. It is the act of refining something to make it more extreme, e.g. a person’s love of fast cars may date back to when we needed to move faster and faster to escape hungry predators. The modern car can be seen as a more refined version of that original love of speed, which helped us to survive. It's the same principle, but taken to a much greater extreme.

Physical Fun - is very likely to be linked back to the pure survival skills, such as hunting and gathering that our ancestors possessed. Hunting skills can be seen in a large variety of games, including but not limited to; racing games (chasing down the 'prey', or escaping from the 'prey'), FPS games, where the player physically runs after the enemy player in an effort to destroy them, or conversely, when low on health, attempts to escape from the enemy player. Physical fun is not just limited to tool use. The mere act of interacting with the game itself; whether it's by using a game controller, mouse and keyboard combination, or one of the various new motion sensing technologies, (Wii, Kinnect and Playstation Move), this interaction and manipulation of the input peripheral is in itself an act of physical fun.

Gathering skills can also be seen in many different types of games. This type of skill likely dates back to our time as berry and cherry pickers, once again an essential part of our survival. Here are some examples of collectibles from a variety of different video games; Pacman - dots, Mario - coins, stars, Zelda – heart-pieces, weapons, tools, Final Fantasy - different weapons, potions, etc. Collecting is also a large part of MMORPG's (massively multiplayer online role playing games). In most MMORPG's the player must acquire better items in the form of progressively better 'loot' as they continue to fight monsters which get increasingly more difficult. The new loot keeps the player powerful throughout their time playing the game. The Pokemon video games were entirely based around the idea of fighting and catching hundreds of different monsters, as the games catch phrase, "Gotta catch em' all!" states. As you can see, the act of collecting is crucial to many video games.

Social Fun - can be traced back to our need to survive as a species, via reproduction and living as part of a larger tribe or clan. Just as important is our development as a species with our love of storytelling. The earliest form of story was a way of imparting information and lessons to future generations. Stories can impart knowledge even if the author of the story has long since passed away. Stories then, are one way we record events throughout the ages.

In games social fun can take many forms, here are a few of the most common ones; in most MMO's; especially those that discourage or disable player vs player killing, the impulse to help out other players especially if they are new to the game, exists. Players often travel around the world in clans, to complement each other's individual skills, and stand a better chance against the majority of monsters and quests throughout the game. This type of play is very reminiscent to how we as human beings behaved back thousands of years ago when we lived as part of a larger tribe, in order to stand a better chance of surviving.

Mental Fun - can be traced back as an alternative to always hunting. Instead of instantly going outside again after returning from a successful hunt, one of our ancestors could have taken a break from hunting, and played a simple game using a piece of wood and stones. The single piece of wood would be balanced on a stone, and the ancestor would throw other stones at the wood to try and overbalance it. In this fashion the ancestor is improving his mental abilities, whilst in a safe environment. This also has the added benefit of helping his muscle tone, since he is getting a miniature workout by throwing the stones, even when not actively hunting for food.

Intelligence itself is sometimes defined as the ability to find and manipulate patterns. Imagine if you will the importance of our ancestors recognising the difference between a normal field of grass and a field of grass occupied by a Sabre-tooth tiger, lying in wait. It's not difficult then to see how mental fun would have been essential to our ancestor’s survival.

In games mental fun can take many forms, puzzle games such as Bejeweled, are perhaps the most obvious example in video games.. Jigsaw puzzles and the ever popular Rubix Cube are two common examples of non-digital mental fun. I imagine most people will at some point in their lives, have completed a jigsaw puzzle or grappled against a Rubix Cube.

Blended Fun - Most modern entertainment is made up of a mixture of the above categories.

A common sport such as football for example, uses elements of; physical fun - kicking, throwing and catching the ball, social fun - team work, communication throughout the game, and mental fun - the actual overall game-plan and tactics throughout each minute of the game, e.g. when to put more of an emphasis on attacking, when to shift that emphasis largely to defence etc.

Rayman Gold

Video games also use a blend of the different types of fun listed above. Consider the 2D platforming game Rayman Gold. Rayman contains a large element of collecting. In Rayman the player must collect all 100 'tings' (balls of light), in order for the exit to the next level to appear. To accomplish this, the player must practise playing the game, learning the controls as they go, along with learning how to execute certain moves effectively. This is another aspect of physical fun.

Rayman Gold also contains mental fun. As the player plays through the game they will encounter a variety of different enemies, based on each environment in the game world. Many of these enemies use specific attack patterns which need to be memorised, in order to effectively defeat them. This mechanic is most prevalent in the many Boss stages throughout the game. The player must fight each boss several times before they will be able to effectively recognise and exploit the weaknesses in the attack patterns that each boss utilises. Only then will the player be able to triumph and move onto the next environment of the game.

Rayman Gold: Mr Skops Boss Battle

Rayman Mapper

It could also be argued that Rayman Gold contains social fun through the use of the built in Mapper. The Mapper program allows the user to create complex, 2D single player levels, much like those that were included in the game. The player is, in fact, given the exact same tools that the Developer (Ubisoft) used to make the levels in the game, and so can create levels nearing or even surpassing the quality of the Ubisoft levels.

The learning curve of the level editor is almost non existent, I should know since I was able to make fairly complex levels back when I was only around age 7-8. The level editor is comprised of two main screens; the first screen is the 'level' being constructed itself; this will start of as a completely blank background.

The second screen is a 2D template image containing all the individual elements of one of the 'themes' from the game. The themes are, Dream Forest, Band Land, Candy Chateau, Picture City, Blue Mountains and The Caves of Skops.. To start creating a level, the play simply needs to drag a box around an element from their chosen template that they want in their level and then use the ‘Ctrl C’ and ‘Ctrl V’ hotkeys to copy and paste the element onto the other screen. (Fun fact: The Rayman Gold level editor taught me those two extremely common hotkeys. Before playing the game, I didn't know of them).

Rayman Mapper Dream Forest Template

Anyway, back to how it could be classified as social fun. After a level has been created, it can be uploaded to the internet to allow other Rayman Gold players to experience it. Sometimes the players may give the level author feedback, thus communicating with them. This is a simple form of social fun. The author can use this feedback to improve their level, and then re-upload it to get more feedback. This iterative process of improving the level may overtime produce something of great quality that many people will enjoy playing.

Conclusion

In conclusion I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article. The possibility that fun can be linked back to our evolution as a species, and can then be broken down into four sub-categories is an intriguing one.

Bibliography

Falstein Noah, "Natural Funativity", 2004.

Available online at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2160/natural_funativity.php

Games Referenced

Rayman Gold (PC, Playstation) Ubisoft