Sorry I've been away for a while but my comp was broken, finally got it fixed though.
I know they say that the library is there so that we don't miss out on any work but I just couldn't concentrate on writing the blogs,
Damn I have a lot of catching up to do better get started.
Friday 28 November 2008
Tuesday 18 November 2008
The 21st Century, Next-Gen Gaming and Beyond
Next- Gen Gaming. Let’s have a look at the major issues facing the games industry.
The first issue I’m going to have a look at is the publishing of new games. Sequels to big selling games, or licensed movie game are guaranteed to sell, whereas new games most of the time don’t even get off the drawing board, this is because of the way that publishing works, if I’m correct the publishers invest the money into the project for funding, and I’m not just talking a couple of hundreds, therefore they need to be sure that they are making a good investment and that there not going to lose out on money, plus they will make a nice little profit.
The next issue that I’m going to look at is, cross platform gaming. Originally the game company would make their game for a specific console. The publisher of the game would later higher a programmer, to enable the release of the game on other consoles. Now cross platform gaming is almost an essential part of games design, this is because is targets as wider audience, and it also helps to intrigue publishers.
Well I could go on talking about the way that the new consoles are but of course you’ll be sick of reading about another person rabbit on about how they think the Xbox 360 is better than the PS3, or how the Nintendo Wii is their favourite. Personally I can’t really say that I have a favourite
Well there we go I think that’s about most things, but wow its finally within the 300 word limit, but i cant help feel I’ve got a lot to add, but I’ll come back to it soon.
Monday 17 November 2008
First ever Digital Painting
Like the title suggests this is a look at my first ever digital painting (even though Ive had a graphics tablet since September). This is also one of my pieces for my Organic Character Project. For this project i decided to use minerals as my organic substance. Not the best choice but i wanted to try and choose something different, try to think of something other than plant life was tricky. This Guy though, is supposed to be some kinda powerful being that is encased in a gigantic Mineral/Crystal. I'm definitely going to have to practice more.
Oh, and by the way the colours seem to have got messed up in this image ill try to sort it out shortly. (when i can figure out how)
Friday 14 November 2008
I didn't mean to, it was an accident
Ok well i just wanna say sorry about the lenght of the last 2 entries i kinda seemed to waffle on a little long than expected.I should probably be banned from writing on these things but still, ill find a way to let you know if i do ;)
I know the aim it is to make it feel like less like writing a essay but i get so caught up in it I forget myself, and then when I try to condense it down to a reasonable amount it just doesn't seem to work out, so I end up posting the whole thing anyway. The worst part is all this work so far covers two tasks, each split into two sections.
I know the aim it is to make it feel like less like writing a essay but i get so caught up in it I forget myself, and then when I try to condense it down to a reasonable amount it just doesn't seem to work out, so I end up posting the whole thing anyway. The worst part is all this work so far covers two tasks, each split into two sections.
My Personal History of Gaming
Where to start, I think the beginning is usually the best bet. Believe it or not the first game I can remember playing was ‘Pong’, can’t really remember that much because it was a few years ago.
It really all kicked off for me with ‘Sonic Adventure 2’, for the Sega Mega Drive. My parents wouldn’t let me have it set up all the time though when I was younger, so I was limited to how much I played. God knows how I coped if I go more that 3 days max without playing a game I think I’ll go crazy. Several other games for the Sega mega drive really sparked my interest, including ‘The Lion King’ and some form of space game, can’t remember the name of it for the life of me.
2 years after the Playstation 1 was released, my parents went out and invested in one, and what an investment it was. I really got into gaming around that time, watching my dad play ‘Tomb Raider 2’. At the time to decided to stick to ‘Crash Bandicoot’. After a while I moved to the harder games, this included ‘Metal Gear Solid’, I got so addicted to this game I’m sure my parents started to worry about me. I didn’t stop playing it until I completed it about 4 times, damn I could probably go back and do it again now, that game just doesn’t grow old.
The Gamecube was the next investment made, after playing ‘The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time’ briefly and being blown away by it, I was overjoyed when I found out I had my own version, along with ‘LOZ Windwaker’. I grew fond of RPGs very quickly, there was always something new around every corner, keeping me glue on the edge if my seat.
The Xbox was next on our list shortly after the death of the gamecube, which has only recently been replaced *wipes eyes*. If I remember correctly the first game that came with that was ‘Arctic Racer’ or something to that effect. During school i was always hearing people going on about a game called ‘The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind’. After constant enquires and nagging I found out it was an RPG, where you had almost total control of what u did as a character. The Moto for this game was, ‘To live another life in another world’ and damn it was right. I fell in love with this game in the first instant; I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the game, along with the total free control.
Playstation 2 was very late in arriving into my gaming experience, but that was soon made up for with the addition of ‘Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty’. Just like its predecessor I just couldn’t get enough of it, completing it with a very short space of time. The Prince of Persia series was also very griping. I have developed a taste for RGGs over the years and are to this day a personal favourite. This might sound like a crime to lot of people but i have only recently got into Final Fantasy, a woah what a collection.
About 3 or so years ago my best mate introduced me to my now personal favourite game to this game ‘World of Warcraft’ also known as ‘World of Warcrack’ because it is so addictive. ‘WOW’ is the world largest MMORPG, with around 10 million player, and just released its second major expansion. I pretty much owe where I today to that game, I became inspired by blizzards Warcraft series as a whole. I have been studying blizzard for a while now and I would actually like to work for them as an artist, of course I feel like a have a long way to go before then though.
I feel like I’ve missed quite a lot out but there you go that is a brief overview of my gaming history.
It really all kicked off for me with ‘Sonic Adventure 2’, for the Sega Mega Drive. My parents wouldn’t let me have it set up all the time though when I was younger, so I was limited to how much I played. God knows how I coped if I go more that 3 days max without playing a game I think I’ll go crazy. Several other games for the Sega mega drive really sparked my interest, including ‘The Lion King’ and some form of space game, can’t remember the name of it for the life of me.
2 years after the Playstation 1 was released, my parents went out and invested in one, and what an investment it was. I really got into gaming around that time, watching my dad play ‘Tomb Raider 2’. At the time to decided to stick to ‘Crash Bandicoot’. After a while I moved to the harder games, this included ‘Metal Gear Solid’, I got so addicted to this game I’m sure my parents started to worry about me. I didn’t stop playing it until I completed it about 4 times, damn I could probably go back and do it again now, that game just doesn’t grow old.
The Gamecube was the next investment made, after playing ‘The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time’ briefly and being blown away by it, I was overjoyed when I found out I had my own version, along with ‘LOZ Windwaker’. I grew fond of RPGs very quickly, there was always something new around every corner, keeping me glue on the edge if my seat.
The Xbox was next on our list shortly after the death of the gamecube, which has only recently been replaced *wipes eyes*. If I remember correctly the first game that came with that was ‘Arctic Racer’ or something to that effect. During school i was always hearing people going on about a game called ‘The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind’. After constant enquires and nagging I found out it was an RPG, where you had almost total control of what u did as a character. The Moto for this game was, ‘To live another life in another world’ and damn it was right. I fell in love with this game in the first instant; I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the game, along with the total free control.
Playstation 2 was very late in arriving into my gaming experience, but that was soon made up for with the addition of ‘Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty’. Just like its predecessor I just couldn’t get enough of it, completing it with a very short space of time. The Prince of Persia series was also very griping. I have developed a taste for RGGs over the years and are to this day a personal favourite. This might sound like a crime to lot of people but i have only recently got into Final Fantasy, a woah what a collection.
About 3 or so years ago my best mate introduced me to my now personal favourite game to this game ‘World of Warcraft’ also known as ‘World of Warcrack’ because it is so addictive. ‘WOW’ is the world largest MMORPG, with around 10 million player, and just released its second major expansion. I pretty much owe where I today to that game, I became inspired by blizzards Warcraft series as a whole. I have been studying blizzard for a while now and I would actually like to work for them as an artist, of course I feel like a have a long way to go before then though.
I feel like I’ve missed quite a lot out but there you go that is a brief overview of my gaming history.
Why!!
Please can someone tell me why!
I'm sure this is a curse.
Every time i try to concentrate on my work there is something that distracts me, and this time it was a damn fire alarm (it is 2:21 in the morning as well, although it isn't the best time of day to be working).
I've been trying to come up with ideas for my Organic Character. almost ready to start on my final piece, i have high hopes for this one, ready got stuck into it.
And now I've lost my rhythm. Damn it!!!
If anyone has any pointers to help get back into the rhythm of work please by all means let me know.
I feel slightly better already, I've definitely got use my blog for a good rant more often.
I'm sure this is a curse.
Every time i try to concentrate on my work there is something that distracts me, and this time it was a damn fire alarm (it is 2:21 in the morning as well, although it isn't the best time of day to be working).
I've been trying to come up with ideas for my Organic Character. almost ready to start on my final piece, i have high hopes for this one, ready got stuck into it.
And now I've lost my rhythm. Damn it!!!
If anyone has any pointers to help get back into the rhythm of work please by all means let me know.
I feel slightly better already, I've definitely got use my blog for a good rant more often.
1990’s – The Maturing of the Games Industry
Once again I just cannot seem to fit in all the information within a 300 word limit so I’m writing a separate entry for the 90s.
As the title of this blog suggests, the 1990s were about the maturing of the gaming industry into a mainstream form of entertainment. Because of the success of the gaming industry within the last several years, more publishers took an interest; therefore there were increases in the budgets. There were larger production teams, and a connection with the music and film industries were formed.
The 1990s saw the rise of the 3D graphics, first starting off with flat shaded graphics, and moving on to simple texture mapping, a good example of this would be ‘Wolfenstein 3D’.
Shareware distribution gave the consumers the chance to try a small portion of the game before they invested in buying the full game. The main format for these was floppy disks. At the increasing size of games in the mid 90s publishers and developers began to mimic the shareware games and replace them with short demos on free CDs with gaming magazines and over the internet.
1992 saw the release of ‘Dune II’ this was not the first game in the RTS genre but it set the standard game mechanics for future releases such as ‘Command and Conquer’ and Blizzards ‘Warcraft : Orcs and Humans’ and ‘Starcraft’ and still very popular series of games to this day.
‘Alone in the Dark’, like ‘Dune II’ was not the first in the first game in its genre, but it set the stage for the survival horror genre. With games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill the main blockbusters of today.
Adventure games continued to develop with ‘King Quest’, ‘Monkey Island’. The creation of ‘Myst’ developed a new style of puzzle-based adventure games and was the first to take full advantage of CD-ROMs.
Maxis began to publish the successful ‘Sim’ games starting with ‘Sim City’ and continuing with ‘Sim Earth’, ‘Sim Ant’ and ‘Sim Tower.’
The 90s also saw the start of Internet gaming, with MUDs (multi-User dungeons). Quake was created with this in mind, and has now caused most FPS to have a main requirement of Inline play. But other games also started to offer this feature, such as RTS games, ‘Age of Empires’, the ‘Warcraft’ and ‘Starcraft’ series. MMORPGs such as Ultima Online and EverQuest became very popular, removing the play from solitude when playing games, and opening a whole new aspect of gaming.
Damn this has turning into quite a list of games and I’m already nearly 150 over the limit so ill make this quick.
Because of the popularity of home video games, arcade games quickly became “old Fashioned”
These were replaced by gaming systems that were not available for home use such as Sport games like skiing or cycling, rhythm games such as “Dance Dance Revolution”. Of course even these game style games are now being released for home use with the release of ‘Nintendo Wii’ and ‘Wii Fit’
The 1990s saw both the Fourth and Fifth Generation of Games Consoles.
The main consoles of the fourth generations (1989 – 1996) were the Saga Mega Drive and the Super NES (also known as ‘SNES’)
In the Fifth generation (1994- 1999), Sega released the Saga Saturn and Sony came on the scene with the Play station, both using 32-bit technology. After numerous delays Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 (as u can guess from the name it was a 64-bit console). ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ was the 3D debut for the Legend of Zelda Series. Nintendo's choice to use cartridges instead of CD-ROMs for the Nintendo 64, unique among the consoles of this period, proved to have negative consequences. In particular, SquareSoft, which had released all previous games in its Final Fantasy series for Nintendo consoles, now turned to the PlayStation; Final Fantasy was a huge success, establishing the popularity of role-playing games and making the PlayStation the primary console for the genre.
Well now I think it’s time for me to apologise to you all. This went on a little longer than I expected.Thursday 6 November 2008
A history of Computer games 1980 – 1990.
Within those ten years the computer games industry was like one hell of a rollercoaster ride.
At the beginning of the 1980s a lot of computer games were just clones of previous ones, but the low publishing costs aloud for the creation of many bold and unique games.
The ‘Golden Age’ of computer games reached full steam in the early 80s, with many genre defining games. ‘Defender’ was the first scrolling shooter, and it also was the first to have aspects of the game outside to players view such a radar view. ‘Battlezone was the first to use wire vector graphics to create the first 3D game world. It wasn’t the best but it was a start.
Then in 1985 it happened, like the big bang of the gaming industry. The NES was invented with Super Mario Bros, instantly becoming a god amongst the gaming world. They were followed closely by the Sega Master System, along with the gamepad, finally. This is where it really kick off, the major release of the time were: (1986) Dragon Quest, (1987) Legend of Zelda , Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Series (oh my god what creations, they all go down in book of gamin legends), (1989) Sweet home (this was the start of the survival Horror genre)
These were significant changes from what the industry had been only 6 years before, but there was still more to come in the 90s.
At the beginning of the 1980s a lot of computer games were just clones of previous ones, but the low publishing costs aloud for the creation of many bold and unique games.
The ‘Golden Age’ of computer games reached full steam in the early 80s, with many genre defining games. ‘Defender’ was the first scrolling shooter, and it also was the first to have aspects of the game outside to players view such a radar view. ‘Battlezone was the first to use wire vector graphics to create the first 3D game world. It wasn’t the best but it was a start.
Then in 1985 it happened, like the big bang of the gaming industry. The NES was invented with Super Mario Bros, instantly becoming a god amongst the gaming world. They were followed closely by the Sega Master System, along with the gamepad, finally. This is where it really kick off, the major release of the time were: (1986) Dragon Quest, (1987) Legend of Zelda , Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Series (oh my god what creations, they all go down in book of gamin legends), (1989) Sweet home (this was the start of the survival Horror genre)
These were significant changes from what the industry had been only 6 years before, but there was still more to come in the 90s.
A little Bit I Missed Out
The Arcade era
Ok then, the first arcade game known as 'Computer Space' was made in 1971 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. (Based on Steve Russell’s earlier game Spacewar)
A year later Nolan Bushnell along with the help of Al Alcorn decided to create an arcade version of ‘Pong’. In that same year Nolan and Ted started Atari Computers.
In 1972 Ralph Baer designed ‘The Odyssey’ and was released by Magnavox. This was the very first commercial video game console that was designed for the home. It also came programmed with 12 games.
Four years on and Fairchild released the first programmable home video console, the called it (wait for it..........)
Fair Child Video Entertainment System (what the hell were they thinking) luckily they changed the name to Channel 7 (still who the hell would call a computer console Channel 7). This was the first computer games console to use the microchip.
In June 1980 Atari’s ‘Asteroids’ and ‘Lunar Lander’ were the first two games to ever be registered in the copyright office.
Ok then, the first arcade game known as 'Computer Space' was made in 1971 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. (Based on Steve Russell’s earlier game Spacewar)
A year later Nolan Bushnell along with the help of Al Alcorn decided to create an arcade version of ‘Pong’. In that same year Nolan and Ted started Atari Computers.
In 1972 Ralph Baer designed ‘The Odyssey’ and was released by Magnavox. This was the very first commercial video game console that was designed for the home. It also came programmed with 12 games.
Four years on and Fairchild released the first programmable home video console, the called it (wait for it..........)
Fair Child Video Entertainment System (what the hell were they thinking) luckily they changed the name to Channel 7 (still who the hell would call a computer console Channel 7). This was the first computer games console to use the microchip.
In June 1980 Atari’s ‘Asteroids’ and ‘Lunar Lander’ were the first two games to ever be registered in the copyright office.
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