Assignment 1: Understanding Digital Graphics used within Computer Games

Course: BTEC L3 Games Development

Unit 78 – Computer Games Graphics

Start Date: 28/09/15

End Date: 05/10/15

Tutor: Josh, Rai

Name: Wyatt, Chapman

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

Assessment 1: Understanding Digital Graphics used within Computer Games

Within this assignment I am going to discuss, compare, and review different types of games, from 2D to 3D.

The 2D game I have chosen to review is Mark of the Ninja, a 2D side-scrolling, platformer. All games that are 2-Dimensional have 2D sprites. A sprite is an object, scenery or character.

Mark of the Ninja is about a man that becomes engulfed in the pride and honour of his clan, but also becomes corrupt from the power that resides in the Jade Flower. By mixing water with the crushed flower, the clan can then harness incredible abilities, which have helped them to advance through the ages. Only recently the Jade Flowers have started to wither, so the clan leader resorts to new ways for the clan, but someone doesn’t agree with the choice.

The aim of the game is to get through each level using stealth as the key factor. You can choose to get through all levels without killing anyone, which provides you with more points, or you can go through the levels silently killing everyone. You want to avoid all light if possible and use tools to distract the enemy away from your line of path. Moving along the in the game you start to learn about the secret of your clan leaders choice.

I believe this game uses a cel shading artistic style, although it’s not clear because of all the dark (mostly black) colours, but when the character enters the light we can see quite clearly, the black outline around the characters and very cartoonish style. The game encourages stealth by making anything within a shadow black. Once your character is next to a wall, or crouches on the floor in the dark, he blends in really well, but when you’re in the light we see the colours of the character indicating that you have been exposed.

Even though this is a 2D game, it doesn’t have the pixilated style, which most platformers are associated to have. The characters are smooth and well designed, along with the animations being fluent. To compensate for the dark, gloomy look that the game has. The developers/games designers have created a beautiful background, with city lights that pierce through the negative appearance of the main platforms of the level.

The in-game interface is very simple and only consist of a health system, score, tools and a few indications of the controls at the top right.

Mark of the Ninja doesn’t have any obvious texture art. Most of it is just black colouring, but there are 3D textures, such as, bricks sticking out from walls.

Planning your character's looks and animations is extremely important, and by doing it step-by-step you have space to make any improvements on the next stage of the picture. This gives the developers some ideas on how they want the character’s design to be like. Just because they drew the character, object etc. out does not mean it will be in the final publish of the game.

The 3D game I have chosen to review is Skyrim. Skyrim is a 3D RPG. (Role Playing Game)

Skyrim tells a tale about a prisoner, which is given an opportunity to redeem themselves.

Within the land of Tamriel, there was a war between humans and dragons. The dragons were gods among humans, but that didn’t stop the rebellion. After decades of slavery and slaughter, three brave heroes, which wielded the power of the voice, sealed away Alduin, lord of the dragons, within a time loop. This could only delay Alduin’s return.

On the day of the prisoner’s execution, Alduin had returned. Coincidently, Alduin appeared before the execution, your execution. This created chaos, panic, desperation and your means of escape. After escaping it becomes your job to defeat Alduin and his rising army of dragons. You must master the power of the voice and become “dragon born”.

Although Skyrim is a fantasy game, the artistic style focuses around photorealism. A lot of the colours are dark and gloomy creating a negative atmosphere. (Depending on the season) For example, in autumn, the trees are “dying”, losing their beauty, with every leaf that falls and fog gathers, dimming the light, lowering saturation and vibrancy. Summer changes that atmosphere dramatically though; light becomes more vibrant, the grass, trees, the landscape in general are more saturated, the shadows become far clearer and help to add to the beauty of the game, by having the light beam through the tree’s leaves, and wild life appears majestic.

The in-game interface within Skyrim is quite bare, it consists of a stamina meter on the bottom left, a health bar in the middle and a magic (magicka) meter on the bottom left. Also, we can see the enemy’s health bar, and a navigation bar at the top of the screen.

In terms of background scenery, there isn’t really any. Skyrim uses tall mountains (which are not accessible to climb) to block off the area that has only a white, black or transparent plain. While on the subject of mountains, let’s talk about textures.

In this image we can see that it is a 2D texture, but that is hard to notice because the developers made the model with parts that stick out and put a few 3D rocks to add the feel that the texture is actually 3D. In-fact most of the textures within Skyrim are 2D. From the ground, grass, walls etc. the grass is a little less noticeable because of the small patches of 3D grass, bushes and trees, that steer your view away from the plain texture. Of-course the PC version of Skyrim can help to fix this by installing mods that create true 3D models of grass, or you can get 4k textures of trees and other objects to make it considerable harder to see through the 2D trick.

These are just two examples of the concept art created by talented developers. On the top we see a beautifully designed idea of a dungeon within Skyrim, and at the bottom we see an incredible amount of detail put into a design of Markarth. (One of the major cities) both of them have a an amazing amount of detail put into them, but you must remember that even though a lot of time and effort was put into these, they are still only ideas and can be thrown aside later on for a better design.

Both Mark of the Ninja and Skyrim are completely separate games. Skyrim is about exploration and freedom. Creating your own path, while still following what you must do. Unlike Mark of the Ninja, the stealth system in Skyrim is quite lacklustre.

While Skyrim uses a fantasy, RP setting, where you discover mysterious creatures, places, people and have multiple options of how you go about that. Mark of the Ninja is more of a platformer merged with an action-adventure because on the platformer side of the game you can only really go two ways, and that’s left and right across the screen. Usually right being backwards and left being the path where you progress. While on the action-adventure side if you want to stealth kill someone with your sword you must enter a quick time event, and then press the appropriate buttons, within a time frame. Do this incorrectly and it can devastating consequences.

In Mark of the Ninja there is no freedom, and you have no obligation to change how you progress through the story. Yes. You can be stealthier, by not killing anyone, or can you do the opposite and go on a riot. Either way you cannot become a vampire, criminal etc. Mark of the Ninja doesn’t have a levelling system, and you can only buy new equipment and upgrade that.

The art styles are even further apart. Skyrim using photorealistic to try and produce a new reality, instead of using photorealism to copy from the real world. Mark of the Ninja uses cel shading, a very cartoonish art style. The good thing about a cartoon styled game is that it requires less processing power than if you were to make an extremely detailed world.