Thursday 17 February 2011

Game Design; Add 1 milli0ns en3m1es and expl0sion all tiem, plzlzzllz


Frankly people have an absurd notion to want and expect ridiculous amounts of everything in a game no matter what you deliver. Game developers will always be just under the bar for an acceptable level of detail in a game. It will be your personal problem and all the internet will be spamming you with how 
you’ve ruined their favourite game, or made a game that’s sh*t and go jump of a bridge and die. Hmm?


Well the truth is everyone thinks it, including me that most games have missed the mark when it comes to being great. They could all offer so much more to the playing field. Or if a developer actually does get a game right, they butchered the sequel with things that have ruined what they’ve become so accustomed too. Well I did think that too a certain degree, in till I joined the course and realised that games do have realistic boundaries that they have to fall within. Blindingly obvious but overlooked. Developers are in a constant battle to reach equilibrium of having the awesome lipsmackingly good features vs. time vs. space vs. the people. 
Every game has something that doesn’t make it too the final print, in fact the majority of what they set out to achieve will be redesign, reworked or removed entirely in order to actually make a functional game. If a developer set out to achieve all of its goals it wouldn’t succeed in making a profit or even realising the game in the first place. The process of making a game is trying to balance the key concepts and ideas and making them work in a very constricted way that will ultimately make the publisher money. It must be very degrading seeing people destroy the work that you spent two years making as good as it can be in the time and space given. 
Of course not all games released are actually good. There are exceptions where the developer could have been a lot more efficient or could have picked a completely different and much better direction. But the majority of the time when people dislike a game, it’s because there not used to it, it’s changed, or it isn’t as long or as complex as the consumer wants it to be. People are generally picky and hate change that they don’t agree with. The reasons why this happens are because games development is driven on profit, the people making it want to be innovative and more efficient and those playing it want it to be beyond the limitations that it can. Frankly these ideas cannot work together.
 An idea is crafted by management and directors rather than from what the people want.  In order to make a successful games title, you need a great simple idea, a fast and very efficient team, a reasonable time scale and put a lot of hours into it. Actually moderation, actually just copy call of duty that seems to work well. You’ll never conquer 100% of the market share but develop a game that’s simple exciting, fun and put a lot of hours behind it and you can do pretty damn well. There is no “Game Designer” instead an idea that is given more and more focused direction in till it becomes the finished title. Working with entire team based on this original design. It’s very important that the original idea that’s drafted is expanded and crafted into a vast resource that will allow all the members of the team to adhere too and for the game to have a set direction. E.g. a Design Document. It will allow the money to continue to flow in from the publisher and for the people in your team to have enough information to get on with what they need to do without constant referral.

Update

It’s been a while since i last posted anything to the blog, the task are under way but i thought i would just tell the world what's been happening with me. First of all the end of the transit project just passed, i was pretty impressed with my time management being that it was the first time that i had time to spare on a modelling project. The end results too, were effective and i can personally see that i have made improvements too my modelling. Mesh flow seems to be very important and with help from Mike I’ve really found a fondness to scrutinise every detail, I’m happy with it and there are a lot of things that I have learnt that will be useful on future modelling tasks.



The next task is the gladiator project, again we have roughly 4 weeks to produce a final model, however considering character building, drawing and in general are my weakest subject this should be a challenge. I’m really aiming to be super-efficient with my base model so that I can maximise the detail I can put into the character and he’s affects.  Yesterday, about half way through modelling the face I learned that loops are very important in faces allowing expressions and deformations to occur so this is my personal target for this project, so that I understand how a body deforms so that I have better understanding of mesh flow and rigging. Oh we also have to rig..Yay?

Yeah I know they don’t look the same yet, I have a lot less to work with, also as aforementioned I suck at people. I need to add in some more loops around the mouth and curvature around the eyes and nose. It will look better, promise.
Life drawings getting better, I seem to picking it up again after a substantial break what did I expect? I’m using a lot more vertical lines when it comes to shading and this really helps when it comes to facial rendering. That’s my update. Byes.