1. find and review links on Game Engine Technology
2. write your blog entry considering the following questions:

What does a game engine do? What are the key engine technologies? What is meant by subtractive and additive? What are the advantages and disadvantages of buying into proprietary technology? What seem to be the key issues for 'next-gen' game engines?



game engines are basicly a bunch of code putting all the fine gamplay and details together. it regulates things like say ragdoll effects or simple animations. it turns your polygon lifless characters and objects into an interactive element capable of creating an interactive universe were a story can progress. its the morter to the wall. game engines can also vary for example a game engine can be made to make simple game charectersistics work like a flame in the unreal engine it has the coding to implament that but if you want say many moving treas that are interactive you would need a new engine to do that for example the cryengine designed for farcry it was made to implament key charecteristics that the game needed to make it unique. game engines can run the basic elements to make it playable but as we are starting to see now more games are become unique requiring specialised game engines another one of these is the fear engine helping you have that slow motion effect with particles flying everywere more like a matrix film than the matrix games lol. the technologies are becoming more specialised but all game engines need things like 2D 3D renderers or there would be no visual elements they need to be able to implament animation sound basic script to detail charecters or objects acts and speach.

well i watched the vids to fear a while ago and one guy said it was being able to see your body in real time first person, to look down and see your feet is a good thing its in many newish titles like fear, condemned, dark massiah, but at the moment im guessing better phyisics and better graphics if things look real and things act real then youll get a better imersive game, totally a next gen quallity i would like to see also more inteligent ai is a big thing with game engines and with new technology coming out offering bettter proccesing power then the AI in games is set to skyrocket. i would also love to see things like being able to do anything you want in an enviornment, if a tree is infront of me i want to be able to climb it if a flower is next to me i want to be able to pick, in other words interactivity needs to get better and this leads back to the new processing power which should broaden the horizons of interactivity and inturn gameplay itself.

http://www.knowledge.hut.fi/projects/games/gamelinks.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?toplevel=2
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?toplevel=3

Tasks:

1. review some of these links and
2. write your blog entry considering the following questions:

What game cultures are you part of? How much of your life does it occupy? Do you have friends who you know only through MSN for example?

game cultures well i think to be honest ive been part of many over the years the biggest game culture ive been part of is the mix of many game cultures known as the online gaming comunity i play many games online from 1st person shooters to beat 'em ups to strategy they all have tere own culture i was part of a modding culture that exploded from half-life 1 i fooled around with the hl1 editor but rarly came up with much just me and my friend making cube rooms full of loads of monsters and loads of big guns i never got round to the technical side of it ie coding as i did not know were to start now i fool around with the TES4 engine for oblivion which ive now found an exporter for 3ds max were i may be able to import things like my bin or new monsters. it rarely takes up my time as iam to busy doing work for uni or drawing or getting drunk as i have found out iam taged with the party students who dont do much work lol. it used to take up alot of my time as i would finish school at 4 and me and my modder friend would go round his house as i did not have the net at that time and we would mod half-life while eating fast food just like the sterio typical computer geek except ive taken it further and he is just on the dole maybe that A in maths did set us apart.

there are people i only know through msn as i find on games like rpg's you stand around alot and talk its like a giant chat room were sooner or later you will get the odd friend. it also sometimes happens to me on fps but maybe its just me but does anyone realy talk nicly on fps's because i mainly just get the words noob, hacker, cheater shouted over a low signal mic from an american that cant take it when i pawn his ass at counter-strike the moronic noobs hehe. msn is a large culture if your not part of it there is alot of the world and alot off people your missing out on yeah maybe there are many idiots but thats just mainly americans(yes i hate em) with no social lives, i just use block and delete work for me.

How is the industry doing? What are employee?s views of working in the industry? What are the biggest challenges facing the industry at the moment? How might these challenges impact on the industry in the near future?


the industry is doin well appart from a few mistakes on the hardwares side i.e. ps3 price and the wii's low stock but apart from that the industry is still coming up with new games axcept not many ar original they are relying on the hardware for more originality for example using new and better graphics to make there game original or for the wii there is the style of interactivity which to me seems very stupid. There isn't much new and exciting ideas out at the moment for exaple i will take the new game gears of war yes sure its fun but its over done, its just a mix between the coman aliens vs huumans scenario mixed with a war time scenario whats new, everything in that game is old news again the only good thing thats reasanably new is the online play with split screen were you and a friend can battle together but this again is relying on hardware nothing to do with the game creation. these days originality is more focust on graphics and being able to play with people in other players via the net. there is hope however as the new hardware is getting to the point that we will soon be seing better more officent A.I. for example the quad core proccesors were spoken about in conjunction with half- life creators and they spoke of the use of multiple proccesors to give more random acts for people I.E if morgan freeman sat down with a zombie and they both started to play chess each proccesor acts like a brain for each charecter, so they would actually have a real game of chess fighting to beat each other or even cheat if they wanted, more proccesors means more brain power for our upcoming AI these proccesors were even said to be making graphics cards obsolete but obviously thats a stupid remark because a processor could not create the realistic visuals as well as a graphics card i mean when i buy a sound system or an aplifier for my guitar i try to get seperates as they seperate parts are designed to fullfill 1 function no more meaning they would not be overrun with alternate proccessors, (were do they get there ideas from, the morons).

i read an article on a major artis/developer and his views were to not bog yourself down with how much money your getting or whether your company is talanted its about learning use what they have and the knowledge they have to improve your own skills, if there is a talented well developed company that wants you but there small and have not shipped many titles and a low talented company that have shifted many titles go for the one you will learn most from especially if your new in the industry. its all about improving your own skills not the portfolio of the company your in because your not always going to be working for that company.

the biggest chalenges for companies these days is compatiotion by far as there is so many games consoles out there and so many games titles that games developers find it hard to choose the best console for there game and same on the other side if say sony didn't have games like silent hill, resident evil devil may cry 3, METAL GEAR SOLID, ps3 would not sell well. the new titles make the consoles sell and that is the biggest problem as the consoles are at war to pitch for new games. another challenge i see is age groups because there is only a small portion of older gamers out there compared to say kids. if i asked you what was the most sold game last year ou would probably say somthing like final fantasy or metal gear, but no it would be on the lines of pokemon as this is played by more game cultures, kids and adults play it making it more universal all over the globe neiches are all good and well but it doesn't make money. in the near future this could lead to more childrens games being developed we've seen it before, for example the digimon series and famous cartoon games they all came out after the boom of pokemon because people saw the profit. dont get me wrong they still will make games for us with gorre and stuff becuae that gets them awards they dnt put high poly models of sponge bob or pikachu because kids dnt notice but games for us do as we notice and its more appreciated.

gamplay im sure we have done this...week 11 :-)

Gameplay? game play? play, game. What exactly is this thing? And why is it important? Does it exist as a definable set of rules? Can it be designed into a game, or is it the random convergence of several interacting factors? Is it even important?

for game play iam going to just copy and paste what i have already said because my veiws have not changed since i wrote this peice.

"Game play is large area of gaming, it means the feeling of the game or it can mean the way a game plays, if a game plays badly its game play for example the movement system is to complex then the game play would be poor but much like a car it can be fast pace and exciting as well as sluggish and boring. It depends on the game you are playing. Different genres have different game play styles. Game play is in the name, its how the game plays, moves, feels and flows."
id like to take a moment out to tell you something one of my friends informed me of , this little thing called nintendo, the creations of nintendo against the creations of sony show cclearly how gameplay works for instance sony create psp yeah a good handheld console with lots of stuff like dvd's internet and good graphics but then you look at nintendos dual screen very interactive and good graphics guess who sold more yep nintendo, because the gameplay was better it was more fun and involving than the psp. so gamplay is an invisible force that shows how good a game is to play.

it is very important as it gives the state in which the game works and fits together, if there is bad gameplay when im driving down a street but its all an animation and im playing a driving game then that takes all the fun and meaning out of the game. if a game is meant for one perpose yet it doesnt fit that then its a bad game, gameplay makes the game work without it it falls apart just like a cog in a machine or a lightbulb in the christmas tree lights. its that one thing that holds the integraty of the game together its VITAL!

it can be a definable set of rules in some instances like a driving game if the steering isnt realistic the gameplay is bad or if the movement of the car relative to the movement of the steering is bad then the gameplay is bad. so there can be one big rule for certaingames but most of all this only works in games that need to be realistic for example if you take a fantasy game you could always blame certain aspects on its not real its fantasy but it still comes down to does it work well and to me that is a rule IT HAS TO WORK WELL like a finly tuned machine to get good gameplay and that is the rule.

it can be designed into a game if the game makers work hard but sometimes you just get that little unpredictable factor that crushes all hope of good gameplay that misstimed animation duplicated for all charecters or that rigid rag doll attept that failed at the first hurdle. gameplay can be very unpredictable when unsupervised but if averything in a game is designed perfectly then it should work just fine, but this could be the reason why games are just to fake and boxed in holding the games industry back. making a game work well needs it to be controlable and tame but to do this it needs to be on the scale to be controled serverly deminishing the options a game maker has. you cant have a massive realistic size world without a few gameplay probels because it cannot be policed and checked its just a to big task.

nintendo f***king WII

id like to make a brief acount of my anger towards the nintendo wii, yeah it looks cheep and cool but whats with the price of the contol pads it sucks and the limited amount surely they must of realised the demand for this console yet they still insisted on sending only a few out this blows bad i hate the way these companies work, usually if a console sells well you put more out but not nintendo they think totaly different from sane people. i cant get this godamn console anywere so how and if i could it probably would have increased in price. take for instance this well known shop gamestation, in my home town of derby, after the first rush of sales the day it came out they only had 3 left guess what they did..... yep they boomed the price to nearly 300 quid. sigh i hate this money hungry culture. ill stop now before i say something i'll regret about nintendo.