Assignment 1: Key Aspects for a Games Development

Course: BTEC L3 Games Development

Start Date: 10/09/15

End Date: 29/10/15

Tutor: James, Tedder

Name: Wyatt, Chapman
Assignment 1 - Key Aspects for a Games development

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Software

Unity Engine – Unity is a games development kit that is used to make 3D and 2D games. This can also be used to build up a business or create good content.

Minimum requirements:

Game requirements

Desktop:

·         OS: Windows XP+, Mac OS X 10.7+, Ubuntu 12.04+, SteamOS+ - £7.99 for windows XP

·         Graphics card: DX9 (shader model 2.0) capabilities; generally everything made since 2004 should work. - £21.90 - £96.62

·         CPU: SSE2 instruction set support.

·         Web player supports IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and others.

·         IOS: requires iOS 6.0 or later.

·         Android: OS 2.3.1 or later; ARMv7 (Cortex) CPU or Atom CPU; OpenGL ES 2.0 or later.

      Developing the game requirements

·         OS: Windows XP SP2+, 7 SP1+, 8, 10; Mac OS X 10.8+.

·         GPU: Graphics card with DX9 (shader model 2.0) capabilities. Anything made since 2004 should work.

Cost – The Unity kit costs £75 a month if you have the professional edition, but there is a personal edition, which is free.

UDK (Unreal Development Kit) – The Unreal Engine 3 is a free game making software, which remains available for people still doing projects on UE3.

Minimum requirements for UDK:

·         Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7

·         2.0+ GHz processor

·         2 GB system RAM

·         SM3-compatible video card

·         3 GB free hard drive space

Recommended for Content Development:

·         Windows 7 64-bit

·         2.0+ GHz multi-core processor

·         8 GB System RAM

·         NVIDIA 8000 series or higher graphics card

·         Plenty of HDD space

Cost – UDK is a free development kit, which anyone can access.

Game Maker – This development kit allows new and professional game developers to create cross platform games and publish them, either over the google app store or some other means.

Minimum requirements for Game Maker:

GameMaker: Studio (Program)

Windows XP or above

 512MB RAM

128MB graphics

Screen resolution of 1024×60   

 Internet connection for some features

Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8

·         512MB RAM

·         128MB graphics

Cost – Game-Maker Studio is free, but there are other versions such as Game-Maker Professional which costs £149.99 and Game-Maker Master that costs £799.99

Maya – Maya is a 3D animation, modelling, simulation and rendering software which is mainly used by artists/Game Designers.

Minimum requirements for Maya:

·         Microsoft® Windows® 7 (SP1), Windows® 8 and Windows® 8.1 Professional operating system - £39.95 for 8.1 professional

·         Apple® Mac OS® X 10.8.5 and 10.9.x operating system

·         Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 6.2 WS operating system - £5,944.90 for the red hat

·         Fedora™ 14 Linux operating system

·         CentOS 6.2 Linux operating system

·         64-bit Intel® or AMD® multi-core processor - £114.01 for the AMD multi-core

·         RAM 4 GB of RAM (8GB recommended) - £25.31

·         Disk Space 4GB of free disk space for install

·         Pointing Device Three-button mouse

Requirement costs:

Cost – Maya is a free modelling and animation toolkit.

Personnel:

Animator - Animators bring life to a game. They are in charge of controlling how the characters move, how they interact with the world and the NPCs around them, an animator you will need to understand the timing and appearance of human and animal movement and facial expressions, and be able to lip sync, they must know how to make emotions through the characters movements and have knowledge of programming.

Game Programmers - Programmers are the core of a game; even though every member of the team is important, programmers are the arms and legs. They have to code the game, so that the character can move, so events will start etc. Game programmers need knowledge in C++ and other program languages, along with having good problem solving skills.

Games Artist - I'm sure most of us know about what this job entails, they create how the game looks by creating building, vehicles, characters, surface textures etc. Games artists are the bread an butter for a game, without them the game would have no textures, it would just be a horrible pink and black checkered pattern on every object and character. To obtain this role you must be able to draw from life; convey facial expressions and emotions; imaginative and creative and have strong observational skills.

Audio Engineer - Audio engineers are the people that create each little sound within the game, from wind blowing a leaf, explosions being detonated, character voices, to ambient sounds and with each little sound, changes the atmosphere of the game. if you're interested in the role you will have to be able to compose and perform music; posses aural skills and a sense of timing; have a feel for the atmosphere of the game and have knowledge of tools and technology that help with assisting you in the creation of sounds. 

Creative Director - The role itself is fairly new, but as creative director you must see to the quality and feel of the game, ensuring that artwork, music and audio assets that make up the final product. to achieve the role you must be able to inspire artist, programmers, producers and marketing staff the to the peak of their ability; make tough decisions that effect the schedule and budget if the game; understand the bigger image of development; posses imagination, creativity and problem solving skills and have a good understanding of financial and managerial aspects of the games development.

External Producer - Working away from the publishing team they ensure that the game is commercially successful. They handle the co-ordination of releasing screenshots and demo disks with the marketing manager, while also handling outsourcing of audio, cut-scenes or language localisation with the developer's internal producer and running tests on the early stages of the game. To acquire this role you must be able to handle multiple projects at the same time; have good project management skills, including scheduling, budget and risk management and be able to manage people, time and resources.

What i am currently working on

While creating my game there are alot of problems and i have to solve them all by myself. Being able to create a game without assistance means you must have experience in all roles, coding, designing, animating, you must be equally adept at all of them. Of-course there will be a certain role that you excel at more than others and for me that would probably be designing.

At the moment i am currently juggling two games. One of them is a simple maze form of game where you will have to solve puzzles, by hitting switches to get through locked doors, and with each level being completed the harder the game gets. The second game is a 2D side-scrolling platformer where the character "Bob" must go and save his burger shop from turmoil, when a crew of explosive experts attempt to destroy it.

Hardware:

Computers – A computer is a console/device, which can be used to access certain items, such as: films, games, internet, shopping etc. They are also used to store information/data.

Peripherals – Peripherals are used to import or export data to or from a device. An example of input items would be your keyboard and mouse, while if you were to export data you would use a printer or monitor.

Dev Kits – Dev Kits or SDK are used to create applications for different software packages, like; software framework, hardware platforms, computers or game console.

Publishing:

Steam Greenlight – Steam Greenlight is a brilliant idea, which allows the public to browse through a variety of games and then rate them. The highest rated games then have a chance to be transferred to steam’s market place, for the steam audience to buy.

PSN (PlayStation Network) – This is a program that was made by Sony as an entertainment service that can be downloaded on smartphones, tablets, games consoles etc.

IOS - ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is an independent, non-governmental membership organization and a developer of voluntary International Standards.

Android – Android is a mobile operating system that was made by Google. It’s mostly installed on smartphones and tablets.

ID@Xbox – This program allows qualified game developers to self-publish games on Xbox One.

Self-Finance – Self-financing is when an organization has enough money to fund for itself. A pros of this is that it require no approval for your money and is the quickest way to secure money. The cons are that you may have limited resources, this can reduce the size of the business and you may not have the skills, knowledge and experience to be successful.

  

Indie Funding – this is independent developers creating small games and making money off of them. One of the advantages of this is that the developer can create almost any game they want (if they have the skill), the disadvantages of being a sole developer or a small company is that not many people know of you, so your games don’t get a lot of attention. A project named indie fund helps these small developers to become the next generation of game developers.

Crowd Funding – a project to raise money by getting a lot of people to donate small amounts of money within a long period of time. (Usually over the internet).

Grants – Unreal Dev Grants is a project to help developers using unreal engine to fund for their early stage of the game by donating up to $50,000.  https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/new-round-of-unreal-dev-grants-fund-education

Publisher – a publisher is the company making the game and selling it. So EA made battlefield 4 and sold it to millions of people, but they sold it earlier than they wanted to and consumers were given a broken game, causing people to be dissatisfied with the product and company, this is bad publishing. Giving a game a deadline can put a lot of stress on staff especially when people are expecting a game that tops the last one.

Time Constraints:

Deadlines – A deadline is a set date where you must complete your task and hand it in, on a specific date. If you don’t then there is usually a punishment/penalty. If you miss a lot of deadlines this can lead to you being fired.

Availability of Equipment – This is how much the developers can afford to buy. They may need 30 monitors, but they may not be able to afford it, so the game will have a later release due to lack of equipment, developers will have to test their game, this can prove to be difficult if the computers don’t have high end, CPUs, GPUs etc.

Availability of Personnel – To make a game you require skilled applicants, but getting the people needed for the specific task is harder than expected. The company has to think about the wages of the staff, how qualified they are, how many staff they need on one task, voice actors, game designs, programmers; all of the people within the categories have to be skilled at what they do.

Timescales for Clearances – How long it will take to get the game to be official, how long it will take for the game to be reviewed and given an age limit, reviews from “judges” to decide the rating of the game, and for the developers to decide if the game will have any delays to extend the development to fix any bugs, this would increase the date for it to be released.