Game Pre-Production Techinques | Unit 1 | Assignment

Nathan Bolton

BTEC Extended Diploma in Computer Games Design

Unit 1: Pre-Production Techniques for the Creative Media Industries

Pre-Production and Planning for a Computer Game

In the pre-production of video games development, you must consider all the things you will need, like equipment, staff, financing etc.

Finance

Most important things in pre-production are finance and deadlines. You can finance you game in many different ways, such as funding the game yourself, and you can produce your game and put it on Steam Greenlight,  and publishers might want to sign it, but it does cost quite a bit to put on consoles and around £70 to get Steam Greenlight.

Indie funding is a popular way to fund a game, a company called “The Indie Fund,” helps independent game developers fund their games, and if the game sells, you can spend time making another game and earning more money. But if the game doesn’t do well, then you will have to try and make another game and fix the already sold game in your free time.

Crowd-funding is one of the most popular ways to fund a game. Crowd-funding is where you suggest an idea for anything, and then people all over the world provide a donation for it to be done. If the world likes the idea and goes over the amount of money you have set for them to reach, then you have to do the idea or else you could face a lawsuit. “Kickstarter” is a site that does this.

Using grants loaned to you can also help fund your game, it has advantages like being able to publish a game whenever and you can use funds without any restrictions. But if the game doesn’t sell, you might have wasted money and if the company who loaned you money has given you more money than they would often give to somebody, then they will ask for their money back.

Using a publisher to fund your game is very good for you, as the take financial risks, and they might sign you if you have a good enough demo for people to play. But if you do use a publisher, then that means that they will own your game and they might own a part of your company. Also, if you don’t have any experience with the industry, then the chances of them signing you are reduced.

Deadlines

Meeting deadlines is one of the most important things in games development as people aren’t going to just sit there waiting to play your game. Also, the more time that you spend making a game, the more money you will have to spend for production. To make sure that you don’t spend any more money on production, then the best thing to do is make a timetable, and set a deadline. You will have to pick days and times for you to do work, and decide what you are going to work on before you start working on it so it doesn’t start to delay you. Using this method with every game you make will help you make more money and will let people know that you’re a reliable company.

Personnel

There are several different roles in the production of video games.

Roles include:

·         Assistant producer – work with staff to ensure a high quality and punctual release.

·         Animator – Responsible for the movement and behaviour of characters and objects within a game, taking advantage of the games engine.

·         Assistant producer – work with staff to ensure a high quality and punctual release.

·         Audio Engineer – responsible for the soundtrack, music, sound effects, voices etc.

·         Creative Director – Responsible for overall look and feeling of the game, making big decisions.

·         External Producer – Ensures delivery of the game and gives publishers the important information for them to advertise.

·         Game Designer – works out what a game will consist of and how it plays.

·         Game programmer – Designs and writes the coding for a game.

·         Games Artist – Creates visual elements in games, such as backgrounds, characters, objects, surface texture and vehicles etc. and drawing concept art.

·         Lead Artist – Responsible for the look of the game, directing the production put into making the game. They also manage the art and animation team.

·         Lead Programmer – Leads the team which codes the game and manages the entire coding process.

·         Level Editor – Creates the architecture for the buildings in a game.

·         Product Manager – Makes marketing campaigns to try and maximise the sales of a game.

·         Project Manager – Makes sure that the game will be released on time and within the budget.

·         QA Tester – Tests, tuning and debugging a game and suggest improvements.

·         Technical Artist – A bridge between artists and programmers. Investigates new techniques and commuting and training the team.

Facilities

The equipment you will need are software such as GameMaker to create the game. When thinking about all of this, you must consider the costs, how much is the game going to cost you? And if all the equipment you need is available at the time of development. For my game it to be sold, Gamemaker costs around £100 and it costs around £70 to publish it on SteamGreenlight, other publishing services might cost considerably more and it might depend if the game sounds good or not.

Before starting the game you must have some idea about how the game will actually look, so it might be good for you to do some concept art, sketching the characters, backgrounds or objects, and a mood-board, putting a bunch of photos together to give yourself an idea or to tell the story in a different way.

Be Able to Generate Concept Art Ideas for Computer Games

Unit 78: Digital Graphics for Computer Games

P2: Be able to Generate Concept Art Ideas for Computer Games

Stimulus:

What is a brief? 

A brief is a set of instructions given to someone about a task and what they want in a game.

Client brief: 

A task given to someone else by someone who wants something specific in a game, e.g. genre, style, animation.

Own brief: 

What you draw as concept art. E.g. characters, locations, background, weapons, sprites.

Market research: 

Social and Opinion Research.

Ideas Generation:

Brainstorming:

Written ideas for games design.

Mood board: 

A arrangement of images to to present a style

Thumbnail sketching:

A quick sketch of characters, backgrounds etc.

Concept drawings: 

backgrounds, sprites, characters, weapons, location

Legal & Ethical Considerations:

What is copyright law?

The current act is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What is Libel? 

False statement damaging the reputation of someone.

How are female characters represented in games?

In a lot of games, women are seen in the traditional sense, mainly being underrepresented and stereotyped, seen as the weaker sex.

What is intellectual property? 

Refers to creations of the mind, e.g. designs, symbols, names etc.

Understanding Digital Graphics used within Computer Games

Nathan Bolton

BTEC Level 3 Games Design

Unit 78: Digital Graphics for Computer Games

Assessment 1: Understanding Digital Graphics used within Computer Games

I have done some research on different art styles used in many different kinds of games, such as cel-shaded and photorealism. I have also researched other aspects of games, such as pixels, files etc. Here are two games, one 2D and one 3D to differentiate between the two.

The 2D game is Corpse Party.

The 3D game is Life is Strange.

Corpse Part is a 2D game with a manga/anime kind of style for the PC. It is mainly an exaggerated version of humans and other beings. Mostly the facial features, just like most anime, shows characters with extremely large eyes, tiny noses, a weird shaped mouth and extremely sinister facial expressions. More exaggeration is shown specifically with the female characters are kind of over sexualised.

Life is strange is a 3D game with a photorealism/cel-shaded feeling to it. The game is for the PC, PS4 PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360. Though the characters look like they should be photorealism, it doesn’t fully look real, but more like a cartoon, a mix between the two styles.

No image capturing was used to design these two games, it is completely made from scratch on a computer.

Corpse Party probably doesn’t use as much pixels as they use in Life is Strange, as Corpse Party gameplay is quite grainy and you can see the little squares quite extremely.

In Life is Strange, because of the detail placed into every corner of the game, it would be easy to understand that this game uses quite a bit of pixels to create the atmosphere as well as the characters themselves. All the colours seem to merge together in an object to give it its 3D effect and you can’t see any graininess, like you do in Corpse Party.

Both games have been optimised for different platforms. Corpse Party has been optimised to work on the PC and their controls.

Life is Strange is optimised to work on the PC, PS4 and PS3, XBox One and XBox 360. The game is compressed for platforms such as PS4 and XBox One. It is less compressed for the PC. Corpse Party is also compressed for the PC.

Life is Strange uses Storage of Image Assets because they need to release 5 episodes in a year and they have to meet a specific deadline. Corpse Party might use storage of image assets as the game is also episodic. Life is Strange probably uses more as it has more pixels and therefore larger amount of space needed, and also because it uses vector images.

Corpse Party uses Raster images because it uses more pixels than Life is Strange uses. Life is strange uses more pixels and so when you zoom into the image, it still looks clear, making it use vector images.

Concept art for Corpse Party was basically drawing everyday anime characters with slightly different skin tones and hair.

Concept art for Life is Strange showed the two main characters of the game, the concept art was shown in colour.

Pre-Production techniques for the creative media industires: Finance Task 2

Unit 1: Pre-production techniques for the creative media industries

Finance: Task 2

Self-Funding:

Self-funding is making and financing a game by yourself, and then pay for it to be put on Steam Greenlight and consoles.

Advantages:

·        Rewards can be very good

·        Indie games can be easier to do

·        If good enough, publishers will want to publish it

Disadvantages:

·       Game might not sell well enough and no one will publish it

·       Costs a lot to put it on a console and Steam

Indie funding:

Most indie-funded games are self-funded and is usually made in a person’s free time.

Advantages:

·       If first game sells, then you can spend your time making a second game

·       The Indie Fund is a funding source to help independent game developers

Disadvantages:

·        If first game doesn’t sell, then you have to carry on working  part time working on the game  in your free time

                                                         

     Example of a game help published by "The Indie Fund"

Crowd Funding:

Crowd funding is when you suggest an idea, then, if people online like your idea, then they will help fund it by sending in money.

Advantages:

·        A lot of people might help fund your game

·        The more people who fund, the more people might buy it

Disadvantages:

·       If enough people have funded your game, then you have to make it or else you could face a lawsuit

·        You might not be able to get enough people to fund you and you can’t release your game

Grants:

Funding can be used via grants, no fee to pay and you can publish a game whenever.

Advantages:

·        You can publish however

·        Use funds without any restrictions

Disadvantages:

·        People might not buy your game

·        If you are loaned more than usual, you might have to pay them back

Publisher:

If you can’t fund a game yourself, then publisher funding is an option for larger games.

Advantages:

·        Publisher may sign you if you have a good demo, good team and good presentation

·        They take financial risks

Disadvantages:

·        If you don’t have any industry experience, the chances are reduced

·        They own your game

·        They might partially own your company in return for cash

Assignment 1: Researching Video Games

Nathan Bolton

BTEC Extended Diploma in Computer Games Design

Assessment 1: Researching Video Games

Unit 22

Unit 72

I know that I have done this before, but this is for an assignment for my college class.

Genre	Description	Example
FPS	Whilst in a first-person perspective, the player has to quickly shoot people in action packed scenes.	Call of Duty All the games in the COD franchise involves first person shooting, and is kind of a repetitive thing, walking around, following your team mates, shooting anybody that doesn’t look familiar, or going online and getting yelled at by people you don’t know, if you have just failed something.
Adventure	Adventure games, one of the first genres, are games where the player is given something to do and many different things happen.	Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom “Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom,” is one of the many kids games that feature adventure, though this game does have a little bit of action. The aim of the game is to save Spongebob’s town of Bikini Bottom from the robots that Plankton has made, trying to get rid of them by going to all the places from the show and comedy that we are familiar with.
Platform	“Platform games” are games where the player has to use timing and jumping to reach a destination and avoid getting killed by enemies along the way	Sonic the Hedgehog “Sonic the Hedgehog” is a game where you have to collect rings, get to your destination by doing some cool moves whilst trying to avoid enemies that get in the way.
Puzzle Games	“Puzzle games,” are games where you have to solve something to be able to continue to the next puzzle.	Tetris “Tetris,” one of the most popular games in the world that everyone has played, but it is also one of the most frustrating games in the world, even worse than Flappy Bird. The aim of the game is to fit blocks of different shapes and sizes and line them all up to fit perfectly within a time limit. The taller it gets, the more likely you are to have to restart the game.
Simulation	“Simulation” games are games where the developers have tried to replicate something from real life into a game to help people.	The Sims Maybe not the best example of a game about real life, but “The Sims” does make you form relationships with people with your sims, makes you do all the work for them as if you were that person. Excluding all the non-realistic stuff like aliens, ghosts and stuff, the game does have a life like experience for you to play with.
Sport	“Sport” games are obviously game which let you play a sport whilst lying down holding a controller in your hand, without you having to move around constantly. But some sport games can let you physically move, games such as Wii Fit.	Fifa 15 The “Fifa” franchise lets you play as players you know from real football, and gets you to play football without moving, and it can get quite competitive if you play with others, but it is still a lot of fun to play, if you are good at it at least.
Fighting	“Fighting” games, which usually have a bit of action most of the time, are games where you and another person or computer, go head to head in a death battle.	Mortal Kombat X “Mortal Kombat X,” probably the most graphic game, lets you attack your friends without the actual physical damage, and can actually be a lot of fun, when you don’t die that is. If you are one for extreme graphic deaths, then this is probably the game for you.
Dance/Rhythm	“Dance/Rhythm” games are games where you can either physically dance in front of a camera, Kinect, or by using a Wii remote, or by pressing the buttons on your controller in a time limit.	Just Dance The “Just Dance,” franchise, one of the most popular party games, lets you and a group of friends, or even people online, dance together, mirroring what they see the dancer on screen do. This is a very good game to play for maybe a few minutes, as it is very easy to lose your breath from just one song.
Survival/Horror	“Survival/Horror” games are games where you play a character who has to survive throughout the game, trying to avoid getting killed by usually a supernatural being.	Outlast “Outlast” is a first person game where you play a man named Miles, an investigative reporter who has stumbled across an asylum which has been taken over by the patients who were being tested on. This has got to be one of the scariest games so far, especially because 1) the music, 2) the fact that you as the character can’t attack enemies, you can only “run, hide or die” as the beginning warns you. This game is perfect for people who like getting frightened, but be warned that this game is very gory, and has some male nudity throughout.
Action	“Action” games are when you have to act quickly to attack/kill enemies. It not unusual to see other game genres mixed in with action games, such as adventure, horror, fighting, FPS.	Resident Evil Revelation 2 “Resident Evil Revelations 2” is a horror based action game, mixed with shooter. This game can be particularly entertaining and horrifying by the fact that your have to play several different characters, run away or kill deadly monsters. The most annoying part of this game is, if you are playing 2 players, player 1 dies almost instantly, whilst player 2 can get hit 20 times before actually dying. The creepiest part of the game is the little girl, and especially when you start playing as her. If you like horror, then this game is definitely for you.

Positive and Negative Aspects of Video Games

In the media, they always seem to say bad things about video gaming and what it is doing to the next generation. But, just as there are negatives to gaming, there are some positive things that I think are worth mentioning.

Positive Aspects:

·         People are better at following instructions. In most games, people are given something to do and most likely you can’t continue playing the game unless you finish what you have been told to do, and this can carry on, out in the real world, especially when somebody has a job.

·         Problem solving and Logic. When playing puzzle games such as Angry Bird, a child can come up with new and imaginative ways to solve problems in everyday life as well as in game.

·         Hand-eye coordination, fine motor and spatial skills. Nowadays, a lot of people play shooting games, where, whilst running, they have to shoot somebody, who is also running. Not only shooting games though, it has been found that pilots are very skilful because they have played video game simulations that have helped teach them how to do something perfectly.

·         Planning, resource management and logistics. In real life, we have to find a way to save money for food, rent etc. The gaming industry have found a way for people to do that in a game, such as “The Sims” franchise, it teacher people to save money, look after children, all sorts of things that happen to actual human beings.

·         Multitasking, simultaneous tracking of many shifting variables and managing multiple objectives. In some games, something might suddenly occur, so they have to be able to change their objectives quickly to deal with a situation immediately.

·         Quick thinking, making fast analysis and decisions. Studies suggest that video games make people think faster than those who don’t play games. Surgeons can use simulation games to help them become better at their jobs and know what to do if a certain situation pops up.

·         Accuracy. Playing games can help people make faster decisions without losing any accuracy, which is more or less needed nowadays.

·         Strategy and anticipation. During most games, you are given a clear objective, but along the way, things are suddenly thrown at you which makes you act immediately to the situation, still thinking about the long-term goal.

·         Situational awareness. As I have already mentioned, several jobs, such as a soldier or surgeon etc. use video games to help them become better at the jobs they are doing. These games also requires the player to be aware of what is happening to them in game and be able to act quickly.

·         Developing reading and maths skills. Some games use maths and sometimes requires the player to read, so a game can include this and it makes the player become smarter in these two areas.

·         Perseverance. Sometimes as a player gets further along in the game, it becomes harder for them and they have to restart the level again and again until they have finally completed it, giving the player a time to be happy and to relax a bit before the next thing comes along top stress them out even more.

·         Pattern Recognition. Quite a lot in games, they make you do the same thing over and over again, which makes the player recognise and complete objectives faster and a bit easier.

·         Inductive reasoning and hypothesis testing. When a player is in a situation where they have to kill all the enemies around them, then the player has to come up with something to do, and if it doesn’t work, then they can think of something else to do instead that might help them complete that part of the game.

·         Mapping. Some games require a player to know where they are and where to go, memorising where everything is.

·         Concentration. In some games, it helps a person be able to focus on the game, which can help some people who have difficulty focusing on things in the real world, as well as helping improve their reading scores.

·         Improved ability to rapidly and accurately recognise visual information. Being able to find links between things, remembering details of environment, being able to notice things others can’t.

·         Taking risks. In some games, being able to take risks lets the player have a reward, as little to pretty much no game gives rewards for people who play a game in a way that makes them feel safe.

·         Responding to challenges. When a challenge has been presented to a gamer, they might be able to do that challenge in quite a fast way, if they are used to what they are being told what to do in a game.

·         Responding to frustrations. When a player gets frustrated, it isn’t because of the violence presented to them in the game, but for the fact that they have lost something makes them angry, and that quite a lot of gamers are sore losers.

·         Teamwork and cooperation when playing with others. Most of the times, when people online play with each other, it seems to be a lot of screaming at each other and hurting peoples feeling, but it actually does help people work together more and think of ways for them to all cooperate, even in different situations.

·         Management. In some games, you are given limited resources to use and you find a way to be able to use that in an uncostly way,  in other games you are given control over peoples lives, such as in the Sims. This can help people in the real world be able to help others and be able to use techniques to help keep resources.

·         Family. Some games let the entire family play along, bringing parents, siblings closer than they were before.

Negative aspects:

·         Violent games and children. In a lot of games, there is a lot of violence, and parents let their child play them for however long they want, but it has been proven that video games can affect the way a child sees the world, as in these games they are being rewarded for providing violence, and the younger the child is, the more effect is has on the child’s brain. Some theories are that the only reason a child would have violent after playing a game is because the child had aggressive behaviour before playing the game, but not enough evidence backs this up.

·         Link between violence and violent video games. A lot of research has been done to try and prove that video games are not the reason as to why a person acts in a way that causes harm or stress to people, but nothing has been proven yet. It can be shown that a lot of teenagers play a video game and forget about the violence they just saw and can carry on with their lives, but there have been cases where somebody has committed a crime and just so happened to have played a lot of violent games, but whether or not the two things are connected need to be proven.

·         Social activity. As children of this century are becoming more and more addicted to games, we can see that some children stop doing what is needed of them, such as talking to actual people, playing outside, reading, doing homework etc. But research has been done that playing online games in fact makes the child more social than before and that not talking to others is a weird thing to do.

·         Values. As said before, some children see violence in games and get rewarded for causing it. Quite a lot of games, mainly games from a few years ago, presented female characters to be over sexualised and weak. It has been said that violence in video games could help a person become more “human” in a way that they feel bad about what they have done etc.

·         Reality. It has been noted that some people who play games a bit too much, do start to confuse fantasy and reality, and eventually lose their minds.

·         School. Because of video gaming, a lot of children have started to change the way they do things for school, for example, they don’t do their homework and instead decide to play games, they often have lower grades than those who don’t play as much games, they argue more with teacher and friends. A good thing is that some of the children who do this do acknowledge their gaming habits.

·         Concentration. As we know, video games can help a person’s concentration, but it can also damage it, it does help with short term concentration, but it can damage concentration in the long run.

·         Health. Though games have many good aspects, there are a lot of health problems people who play games can get, such as obesity, seizures and muscular and skeletal disorders like tendonitis.

·         Online Dangers. Whilst online, a child can pick up a lot of bad language and behaviour that they have gotten from other people online, and they might become vulnerable to online dangers.

·         Depression. If a child becomes addicted to gaming, it can be shown that they become more depressed and become much less social when speaking to people in the “real world.”

·         Attention. It has been shown through studies that a child’s attention span weakens as they become more of an addict to gaming.

Recommendations:

·         Monitoring. You should monitor the amount of game time your child has, just as you should with TV and social media sites.

·         Parenting. As a parent, you have to discipline your child correctly, without any bodily harm or unneeded language, because this could cause a child to become more violent in their later life, and could possibly commit crimes, cause fights etc.

·         Activities. Make sure your child is doing more than just playing games all day. Make sure that they play with friends, play sports, read books, and watch TV etc.

·         Time. Try making you child play at least one hour per day of gaming.

Visual Styles

This is a sketch of a game idea. I know this doesn’t look like much of a game, the first giant square would be the first level, and the box underneath it would be the final level. The graphics on the game won’t be the best, but hopefully fun to play, it might even be cheaper to do a game like this than to make a full on side-scroller game. The places will be more detailed than what is shown on the sketch, but it won’t be too detailed as to look real.

The apartment building in the background shown in the first box is interactive as you have to jump on them, the black box in the middle is meant to represent an alley way, which is why it is dark. The houses in the second box is also an interactive part, the white background is the sky. The space in between the two houses is an open space which neither of the houses own, and so is open to be able to kill the flying monster.

The game is going to be an exaggeration/cel-shaded game.
Each level will be a still image background of different neighbourhoods and shops from the TV series. All items will have a 2D appearance, but characters will be a much more detailed than that of the objects like the scalpel.
There will be a cutscene in 3D at the beginning which will be around 4 minutes long, and at the end, which will be around 4 minutes long as well.

Game concept

The main character is Buffy Summers, who lives in Sunnydale. Several years ago, the Gentlemen took all the voices of those who lived in the town so that they could steal people’s hearts without the victims being able to scream as they cut out their hearts. Now they are back and Buffy needs to stop them. She needs to collect the jar of hearts, and break the box which the Gentlemen has on their persons. When Buffy manages to weaken the Gentlemen, she can smash the box and be able to scream and make the Gentleman’s head explode.

Buffy has a stake, which she usually uses to kill vampires, but the stakes are no match for the Gentlemen. The Gentlemen have footmen, who are covered in bloody bandages and a loosened straight jacket, stakes can kill them. The jars of hearts are covered all over the place, some are hidden behind windows or underground, which Buffy will have to either dig through or smash windows to be able to get. The more hearts that Buffy collects, the easier it is to defeat the Gentlemen and their footmen.

Throughout levels 1-3, there will be one footman, so you will have to try and collect the jar of hearts which are either out in the open, or hidden behind windows or inside objects. If you get hit by the footmen 4 times, you will have to restart the level. Level 4 and onward, there will be more that one, some with 3 some with 4. In all levels but the final level, there will be only one Gentleman, but in the final one, their will be 2. If you get hit by it 3 times you will be forced to restart the level. Buffy will have to hit the Footmen twice, and she will have to hit the Gentlemen 3 times.

In the final level, there are more hidden hearts than before, so Buffy will have to try and find them all to weaken both Gentlemen. The Footmen will be harder to defeat in this level because they have collected so many hearts that they have more strength, so it will take 3 hits to kill them, same with the Gentlemen, they will take 4 hits to kill them in this level. It still takes 4 hits to get killed by the Footmen, and 3 hits to get killed by the Gentlemen.

To collect the hearts out in the open, you have to walk up to it, but to collect the hidden objects, you will have to attack the windows, barrels, etc. like you do with the enemies, the heart will come out and you will be able to collect it. Whilst attacking the objects with the hearts in it, you may be attacked by one of the Footmen. Windows break after 2 hits, barrels break after 3 hits. Sometimes hearts will be trapped inside cars and trucks, so Buffy will have to hit it 5 times to be able to get them out.

Friends from the show will make an appearance in the cutscenes as well as some trapped in the actual game play.