History of Games

History of games.

One of the first platforming games was Donkey Kong which was released in 1981/80 and it was on the arcade machine. Shigeru Miyamoto was asked to come up with a game idea for the arcade machine and his idea was Donkey Kong and from there it was a hit as it had a introduced a unique character known as carpenter. Donkey Kong was created buy Nintendo and originally they were a card game company before going into the electronic games business. Miyamoto was a strange Japanese bloke as most Japanese people didn't really like the idea of western products like clothes or music etc. This is why Miyamoto was different as he liked western products like the beetles.

This was the first part of the game you would see on the screen. The image on the right was the game play shot of the game.
They introduced a new character which was a carpenter character, but strangely enough the character design was originally a plumber.

 This is a link showing the game play of Donkey Kong, you were the little man climbing up the screen to find the women or item. This was the start of multi-levels and it was a good success.
The game has a simple goal, get to the end of the level and beat the enemies along the way. Donkey Kong shows you the item, or women that you need to rescue or collect. This is shown on the same screen as there is only one screen per level as it was a arcade game.
But finding the end of levels can be difficult to find but with the help of a big castle or area where you need to find is usually shown in some games like Zelda, as you can look in the distance you travel the path and it takes you there. Games with bigger open worlds use signs to show you which direction to go in. A funny thing about Donkey Kong is that the title was actually going to be called "Stubborn Gorilla" but none the less the game did very well selling up to 67 thousand units. With Donkey Kong, the multi-levels gave games a new look especially as it continued to be a success in other games, in Mario there are a few different multi-level game play levels as well as a lot of platformer games.

Another iconic platformer was Super Mario Bros(Nintendo). which was out on the NES and it was released in 1985, Super Mario Bros. was a game which had a lot of hidden gems hidden within the game. As you continue down levels the levels normally have secret hidden items that you can look for, this gives a sense of exploration. Super Mario Bros. was on the NES and with the NES if you was to make a game for this console you would need to get in touch with Nintendo before being able to start developing one and this means that Nintendo had license protection, and then Nintendo would test the games before releasing them. The strange thing is, that you was only able to make 5 games for the NES. When the NES was released it came with a gun and then ROB which was a small robot, it was also marketed as an entertainment system. With Mario it gives you a high score going through each level but Golden Axe never did even though similar style, especially as they are both platformer games, but with Super Mario Bros. The character changes size when find mushroom. The visuals of most early platform games are similar as they are bright and colourful. Even though the very early games were actually black and white with a gel screen in front of them which made them appear to be colour. The music can vary from the different styles of games. This link is to Super Mario Bros.
















In 1989 Golden Axe was released on the Sega Genesis. This game was a platformer fighting game. A thing with this game is that it you can ride beasts while fighting and commencing through the different levels, it is very similar to Super Mario in a sense as you explore the level and the level HUD shows you which way to go with arrows (the arrow is a golden sword with go above it). This gives you the direction you need to go in. The music of Golden Axe is dark as the theme of the game is dark, so with that they need to be similar. Other game points is that you have a choice to kill a enemy and then take his pet (or the beast he is riding)

 That link is video footage of Golden Axe and it shows the fighting and music etc. The fighting and music can relate to Jurassic park as it has the same style of fighting in it, just a couple of moves to kill the enemies, the music has the dark effect as I wrote before and in Jurassic park it has that same style theme.











Jurassic Park : Rampage edition was released on the Sega Mega Drive in 1994 and it was an action based platformer, the whole level design was tropical and had a distinct vibrant colour theme, It has bright blues and greens which have been related to the film which was based on a tropical island. The HUD design can relate to Prince of Persia in a sense as it only has a health and power bar at the top left hand corner which powers up when you kill enemies. This can be related to all games as most games incorporate this special power idea when you do certain stuff on a level. Other visual content was character and enemies which had a darker look to them, in the game there was only a few different enemies, weather it be a dinosaurs or a soldier. When you fight it only gives you a couple of options as the Sega Mega Drive only had a few buttons to push as shown in this image.



The link below shows the player as the Raptor, and with this you start at the bottom of the level. The platformer shows how the multi-level gameplay has come forward since Donkey Kong, There is multi-platforms rising up and down in the levels and it gives you the option to choose how to get up the level.










In 1997 Oddworld : Abe's Oddyee  was released on the PlayStation 1 and this game was a platformer. It had cinematic shots in the game.

Abe's Oddysee was a game released in the late 90's and the game was based on Abe rescuing his native friends and kin, along the way, you see many different enemies. You are a slave and aim to get away from the bosses and the main boss was Molluck the Glukkon.
Oddworld : Abe's Oddysee was a very basic game especially when it came to the HUD side of it, as the HUD wasn't really there. It had no heads up display, the screen on the game was what you saw. The attack system was different especially when you are Abe as you hold two of the trigger buttons to take control of enemies, but when you are in control of other species they have different attacks.

The visual feel of this game was dark, it had a slight humour to it in cinematic, but the overall look and feel to it was dark, one species slaved one in charge.

there are so many different levels with different environment designs and they go from dark buildings to bright orange levels like in the image.

The game I have chosen from the past few years is Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands. This game is a platformer hack and slash adventure game and it has features which you can see that have come from older platform games. Prince of Persia is a game which has monsters from the dead and huge creatures from the past. The enemies you encounter can be seen in games like Golden Axe which was released in 1989, enemies like skeleton soldiers with ranged attacks like swords and ones with bow and arrows.

As in both images you can see similarities to the enemy design, the classic sword and shield and the sword has a slight curved tip with the sense of a Arabian sword style.



To the gameplay of the game. The platformer genre has been around for years, it has been seen in a simple arcade machine game known as Donkey Kong which had you following a path up a series of levels to rescue the women or item and even though you don't rescue anyone like you would in Donkey Kong it has been used slightly as you progress through the levels you find secret doors and boxes with items in like health, Health in games has been used massively through out the history of games. In 1984 health bars where used, and the two games that used it was Dragon Buster (1985 Namco) and Gemstone Warrior(1984 SSI), and these two games where the first to represent the health bar in a game.
Other game play features that are used in Prince of Persia are the ability to jump up walls and climb onto different levels.The link shows what I mean, at 1:04 it shows the character climbing a wall and jumping across different surfaces. The use of multi-levels in games has been around for years, it has been around since Donkey Kong the multi-player levels which allow you to progress up different levels, it has been used in that and has been used through out different games, not just platformers. A game called Super Mario Bros. and Abe's Oddysee These two games were made years a part. These two games allow the character in the game to jump on to different levels by pressing one button. This has been used in Prince of Persia as it allows you to do the same thing by running and jumping. The HUD (heads up display) is very very basic as it just displays the health bar on the top left hand corner. Most platformer games don't have a huge complicated HUD. Some have a target count like Super Mario Bros. which shows you how well you are doing, they may have a special skill, time limit or what stage you're on.
The Prince of Persia character design has a standard look and feel about it. The fighting system is complex in a way that you can get perfect combo's when fighting several enemies, this wasn't done in early games from the 70's or 80's or some games even in the 90's. This was because of maybe the game engines or consoles, but games these days all have combo's.

The character concept has a prince feeling to it, the character looks like a Persian/Arab prince, the dark hair and complex, the weapon and armour you wear is dark filled with white highlights. The characters from other platformers that I am comparing to has a different style approach. Mario is a small Italian guy wearing overalls, Abe is an alien, Golden Axe characters are quite different as they are basically naked. Then Dr. Grant is a palaeontologist, so you can see that there is a huge difference in the character designs even though they have a lot of similarities in other areas such as game play features like the multi-levels or game visual styles.

One feature that was in Prince of Persia was that you had been given the option to solidify water, you also had wind dash and earth memory recall. Each power gave you a different option you can freeze water, to get to places, like if you needed to climb up, wind dash was to jump across long distances and earth recall gave you the power to see the environment what it was like before. This is how it relates to older games because most games give you powers. For example in Oddworld : Abe's Oddysee as you chant and have a magical force when then lets you control the enemy,

Prince of Persia design

Golden Axe Character design.

Dr. Alan Grant.

Abe.

Mario

Conclusion.


To conclude this essay platformers have been a success will be around for a lot longer. The early ones that i have wrote about have built small foundations on this genre, Donkey Kong and its mulit-level design has changed the way levels are designed now as the play doesn't just have to go forward on one level, he can jump on to a few more levels and finish the level on a hgher ledge. Games which have included slash and dash fighting in them like Golden Axe has been put into so many other games like Devil May Cry (2001 Capcom) even though this isn't a platform game it still uses similar features, like progressing down a path or fighting enemies. Super Mario Bros. has created a huge open succession in platformers, since the 80's they have only got bigger with littlebig planet (2008 Sony). The killing the enemy way by jumping on them has been used in sonic and rayman for example.
So I think that they willl only go forward and they are still being developed and released today with a recent one called  Rayman Origins (2011 Ubisoft). It was given a 9.5 my IGN, So maybe platform games won't ever stop, they may just keep getting better and more realistic with re-makes of old games like Rayman Origins which was out in 1995 and was just called Rayman and it was out on PS1, Atari Jaguar and the Sega Saturn.









References websites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park:_Rampage_Edition


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddworld:_Abe's_Oddysee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Axe


http://uk.ign.com/games/rayman-origins/xbox-360-77706

3DS Max and Animation

3DS Max

The start of modelling in 3DS Max, the first objects i ever did was model a box and a barrel.


The basics of 3ds Max are learning the standard primitives which are the box, cone, sphere, geosphere, cylinder, tube, torus, pyramid, teapot and plane.

These are the standard primitives that you use to create buildings, cars, weapons, and loads more. you go from a simple box to a high detailed building in a few hours if you are good enough.

The small square in which says front is to rotate around the scene or you can hold alt and the mouse wheels down to also rotate.

These are the basic shapes of each primitive, from the left is the box, and then cone, sphere, geosphere, cylinder, tube, torus, pyramid, teapot and then the plane is on the right. that is the order of all the shapes that you can use.



 
 I will now show how the vertex, edges, border, face and element effect a shape you are using in editable poly. Before i start editable poly is something that we use to edit faces and points on a model which then allow you to change stuff.

1st part of editing is learning what this is the red selection tools are this one is the vertex and this allows you to edit all the points of an object and then you can move them up and down and side to side just like if you was moving a whole model.

 This is the edge tool and it allows you to edit the edges of objects and you can move up or down to get the right shape you may need.

The border allows you to fill a whole in a model, you can click on the button on the tab which you can see is called cap and that caps the hole so it is a solid face again, you can only use this if there is a hole as the border option isn't something you would use because if a face was there you would click on edge and "ctrl" to add over edges to the selection.

This is the tool which is the red square on the tab bar which i haven't included in this image but this allows you to pull it out and make it a bigger shape without making a new edge. To make a new edge you can click on the button in the image below called extrude and this does the same thing but you create more edges and faces and this then allows you to do so much more.



The final primitive is the element button and this hightlights the whole object that are are selecting and then with this you can it around and see all the faces. The dark faces and the light faces are different, this is because it shows you the faces that are on the outside and the and inside, the bright red faces are all around the object and will be able to be textured but then the dark faces show where can't be textured. To be able to texture the inside you can use the button on the modifer list called shell and it creates a slim edge but creates more polly's and tri's but it gives you an option to have a a different texture in the object as they are new faces. The shell tool is one option that you can use.

This is the final outcome from the task of creating a box and barrel.
https://sketchfab.com/show/a95b5546d86c4c86b75de8fe82b51566 link to box and barrel.

Unwrapping - when you unwrap a box or barrel, it comes out like so. it is a net which you paint over with a texture and then when the texture is complete the 3d model will have the texture placed on the model in 3ds max

This is the start of the unwrapping process, you click editable poly and then Unwrap UVW, and then open UV editor and then you get that pop up and then you get this image where you have to click and drag and re-scale to fit in the small checked box. The image shows a red box which show the faces and then you have to save it and then bring it into photoshop to edit and make into the texture for what ever it needs to be.



To do a cylindrical unwrap you need to select a cylinder primitive and then follow same instructions as unwrapping a box but you click on cylindrical unwrap instead of planar map.



 You then do the same process but the unwrapp is a cylinder and will unwrap like if you cut down the centre of a can of coke and pulled it apart it would be a long rectangle when it is open.

For this task we had to unwrap the back to the future car. The delorean already had a pre-made texture, our task was to match the care faces to the unwrapped texture.

Texturing is a vital part of the 3D process, you need to be able to unwrap to get the most out of the models you create, a single texture can give a model so much more depth and character, so it is vital to make sure that the textures are correct and tidy.

 In this image you can see the texture map which is already been applied, you then have the faces sized and made to fit each area, for example all four car wheels, will be on top of one and other as they all look the same so there is only need for one wheel on the texture.

 This image shows us which areas are highlighted and which are not, the highlighted areas will not have the correct texture on as the unwrap is not in the correct place so it will look strange and of balance.

The image shows us that all of the textures are in place on the unwrap and the car textures look in place so it now looks complete.






Another part of this task was not just to have the textures in the correct place, but we also had to build other parts onto the car, I did the large rockets and power supply on the back of the car which was a unique part of the car from the films.



https://sketchfab.com/show/73df3f6f714944b6b3f52388759986a7 link to the model of the car.


Tile Texure

This method works well for buildings, stand alone walls and floors, i have taken this stand alone image of the floor. i then took this image and put it into photoshop. I then used the spot healing button and content-aware button. With this i took off all the leafs and rocks to make it flat so it looked like a tile texture and can be doubled and dublicated to fit any region size.

The model is the bottom image and shows how the texture is tiled, and how it has tiled itself over a number of planes,

this image shows the floor with the texture on it and how it shows off being known as a tiled texture.

Alpha Map, this method has been used in the imdustry for years, it is used for many different uses from chain fences to trees and grass. The first step is to get you piece of grass or fence and then put it in photoshop and then make it black and white which is the alpha map, the piece that is seen is the white part and then the other bit is black which wont be seen as it becomes see through. You keep the colour copy as well as that is the defuse copy and with that you put it into 3ds max on the material editor and choose bitmap and then put the defuse copy in first and then click on go to parent and then click on opacity and then choose the Alpha Map which then makes it see through when you click on show in viewport. The image shows the viewport selection tabs.

The two photoshop images show how doing alpha maping in 3ds max looks. The images i have here are two different shots of a fence but it could be anything, it could be a red blop on one background which would be the colour image and then a pure black background with white blobs and then the colour blob is goes behind the alpha map image and then you can only see the white blobs, but in 3ds max the bounding box will still be there as it is still a square plane even though the plane has maybe a fat blob. This is shown well with my fence alpha map and you can see the fence and the holes that are see through, but this is because the black spaces are see through and the white bit is part of the object that gets seen in 3ds max.

The project that i was doing and have been working hard on today has been the bin design. With this project I have included the use of ambient occlusion which basically creates shadows and makes it seem and look more realistic. This is step one, the first step is in Photoshop and you need to make sure that you have all of the layers that you have been using flattened until its one layer.

This image shows the UV-unwrap, as a normal Photoshop file. Then the next step in Photoshop is to give it a sense of realism and depth, this is created with the help of ambient occlusion.

 When the file is imported into Photoshop from 3DSmax the image is black and white, this is then placed above the colour image and you click on multiply which is on the layer selection tab where it normally says normal. you click on that drop box tab and then this list pops down with the different options. You click on multiply and then you get the final look for your object. You now put this saved file into 3DSmax and put it in the material editor like normal and then place this image link in the defuse section.

This is the beginning before the Photoshop steps, you need to make sure you make the material editor a mental ray and then you can proceed forwards by clicking off this.

 The next step is making sure that you have all of the items attached, then you make sure that all of the little bits like element type the height and width is all set to your points, for example the height and width needs to be the same size as the Photoshop file, mine is 1024 in Photoshop so I have made sure that it is the same in 3DSmax.

 This step is the next step and with this you need make sure that the file is outputting to the correct file path. then you can go down and click on render and then you go back into Photoshop to proceed forward.

 

https://sketchfab.com/show/c359ccc5306f4c7da38da53d7a178eaa

This is a link to my final bin.

Animation 

In animation there are 12 principles set by Walt Disney animators Frank and Ollie (Insert surnames) that are important to create a realistic animation.

One of these and perhaps one of the most important is squash and stretch. Squash and stretch is something that is used in animation, it is used to give it character.

In the case of a bouncing ball:
Squash = ball hitting an object
Stretch = Ball moving fast or falling 

The purpose of squash and stretch is to show weight and volume /mass of the ball.

Lots of squash and stretch = it would be something like a bean bag, or stress ball, if you through it it will squash because of the material.
Minimal squash and stretch = items with minimal squash and stretch could be a ball like a bowling ball which if dropped it would not have a lot of stretching or squashing because it is a heavy item with a lot of volume unlike a stress ball which would have less as its lighter.

Here is my example of a bouncing ball.

Start with a round ball, as it falls the ball stretches to show the mass of the ball and gravity 'pulling' on the ball. At the point it hits the floor it squashes... showing.....

When the ball is falling it will also have it applied as it will become a bit thinner and longer as its falling, but this only applies to balls that will be at a quick speed and if they are light, a bowling ball for example wont have much of a different shape because it is a heavy ball with a lot of volume. 

 Then timing and spacing come into effect as well, a if an object is going to hit the floor fast for example, the image below shows an animation bar line from animating in 3ds Max, if there is more numbers being used like 5 - 10 the animation will be slower compared to if an object was using 1 - 3, if the object was using 1 - 3 it would be a lot faster. So if the movement is quick it will use less frames, but if it is using more frames it will be slower. 

This image shows timing and spacing, it has a timing of 20 frames and then the spacing shows how fast it will be the more, the bottom one is very robotic and has even spacing, and then if it has a large spacing between frames it is fast but then if it has a shorter spacing the animation will be slower.

Overlap and follow through.

Overlapping and follow through is something that is used in animation a lot. In the images below show what this principle is, it is something that gets used in items that swing like this ball on the string, the weight would have a certain effect, but in my animation the ball would be quite heavy so the exaggeration of the swing would be a lot, the timing of the drop has effect on realism so you need to make sure that it is all correct. 

This diagram shows overlapping and follow through, one example is there the bar is the parent and the drag is the child, if the parent moves the child will drag behind but when the parent stops, the child will overlap and then when it s curves it depends on weight, then it shows how fast or slow it is.

 The 7 images shows how from when the animation comes down the tail is behind at a high point and then when it stops the tail swings right to the opposite side with speed and then it will slowly stop before continuing along the course. 

Anticipation 

Anticipation is something that is used in animation greatly, it is used in a moving object like this image of the ball bouncing round the obstacle course, the ball will use anticipation when it is about to jump up from the floor.
One example 

This shows anticipation, in a image from a book, the anticipation is where the guy gets ready to jump and the movement he does just before he does jump, like when he kneels and the jumps up, so it uses timing as well as other components like squash and stretch.  









Staging

Staging is a presentation of an idea, it will include personality, and then the expressions of the character will represent a mood, in my image the mood is bad as the one man is getting strangled and being threatened while the other one is in pain and scared, you can see this clearly with the hard movements









Idle

Idle is where an object will be stood still be will still have a slight animation to it, whether it be just a foot tap. The model can have a breather animation which gives the character personality instead of it being a dull dead still character when stood still.   













Walk Cycle 

Dying Animation 

Killing Animation