Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Produce a glossary of terms specific to the methods and principles of Video Game Design and Video Game Terms. Using a provided template, you must research and gather definitions specific to provided glossary terms. Any definitions must be referenced with the URL link of the website you have obtained the definition.

You must also, where possible, provide specific details of how researched definitions relate to your own production practice.

Name: Luke M. Sullivan-Corbelle

* = link to source

RESEARCHED DEFINITION (provide short internet researched definition and URL link)

DESCRIBE THE RELEVANCE OF THE RESEARCHED TERM TO YOUR OWN PRODUCTION PRACTICE?

IMAGE SUPPORT (Provide an image and/or video link of said term being used in a game)

VIDEO GAMES / VIDEO GAME TESTING

Demo A demonstration of a game and how it will play, giving a clear idea of how the graphics will look, the controls will feel like, how the story will be told, what skills you’ll need and many more options.(*)

This can be useful when trying to sell a product to a consumer who wants to play before they buy it, whether at a convention or in their own home.It’s also useful when you want to give an idea to a company (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc.) and need a functioning version of a game to show them before development continues.

* This is a screenshot of the Xbox (Microsoft)’s Xbox Live Marketplace, in the demos category.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

* This is a list of all the demos available on the Digital Distribution site Steam(Valve).

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Beta Beta’s are near to finished (but still incomplete) version of a game, with a lot of bugs and glitches, like misbehaving AI (if they’re even doing anything at all) and possible times you can go through a wall.(*)

This is a good step in having a complete build, not using this can result in games being broken and, in turn, receive bad publicity, impacting sales.

* This is a promotional poster for Destiny (Bungie and Activision), saying you can get beta access if you pre-order the game.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

* This is a screenshot of Minecraft in beta.Alpha An alpha is an early version of a

game that is made to the developer’s intended vision.(*)

This is important so that you receive feedback from testers, so you can fix them before you start adding extra features to the game.

* This is a poster/promotional art for the Legend of Lore Alpha Test.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

* This is Minecraft in Alpha; this is a world bug where you can randomly see through the floor.

Pre-Alpha A version of a game, rarely given to the public and rarely feature complete. Developers use this stage as a thinking stage, thinking of the features that’ll go into their game when it comes to the alpha.(*)

* This is an image of a leaked pre-alpha version of Star Wars Battlefront III (3)

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Gold This is when a company publish the game, putting it in places like Game, Steam, Asda and so on and so forth. This can be prevented from happening by the main publisher.(*)

* This is the Uplay (Ubisoft) logo. It’s a digital distribution service for Ubisoft related games. It’s required to own a Uplay account in order to even progress into Ubisoft owned games even if you didn’t buy it from Uplay.

Debug Debugging is when you, the developer, has to find a bug inside coding and try to fix it.(*)

* This is a Debugging process happening while the developer is playing the game in Valve’s Portal. From the looks of it, it looks like they’re trying to port Portal to Linux, something Valve is looking to as a legitimate gaming platform.

Automation

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

White-Box Testing

White Box Testing is a method that tests the software’s internal structure of software.(*)

* This is a photograph of the process of White Box Testing.Bug A bug is something in a game

that is an unintentional “undocumented feature”, also known as a glitch, in a game that is a flaw in the game’s coding.(*)

In the image, the soldiers neck is obviously too long for a realistic shooter like Battlefield (Electronic Arts)

* This is a video of a bug that was in Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts). The video, however, doesn’t contain the bug at all; it only uses it as a thumbnail.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

GAME ENGINES

GAME ENGINES

Vertex Shader The Vertex Shader takes one point and can/will adjust it. It can be used to work the complex “vertex lighting” calculations as a setup for the next stage and/or teleport the point (wobbling, scaling, etc.)(*)

* An image of the same scene (in development) with and without Vertex Shader.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Pixel Shader Calculations of colour of a pixel on the screen, based on what the Vertex Shader tells the Pixel Shader, bounded with textures and additional data that’s user-added.

This can’t read the screen, just work out what colours should be where and the transparency of them.(*)

* Here is a comparison of the same area/scene with and without Pixel Shader.Post Processing Post processing is a setting that

enables Bloom, Motion Blur and Antialiasing.

* This is the bloom effect

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

* This is the motion blur effect

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Rendering When you process an image or video.

Render times vary, depending on the optimisation and weight (as in, how stressful it is) of the game.

* Images of the new Cry-Engine, showing off its hyper realistic visuals.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Normal Map Normal Map is a technique that simulates non-existent polygon count. For example, you can either make a character that has 4 million polygons or make one with 500 polygons and use Normal Mapping to simulate what it’d look like with 4 million while keeping the render time low.

* An image from a Kickstarter for a sprite maker.Entity An Entity that the player has no

control over.

Examples include:☞ Enemy☞ Sand and gravel (Minecraft)☞ Boxes (Amnesia: The Dark Decent)

UV Map UV mapping is when you try to put a 2D image on a 3D entity, object, player model or anything else.

Procedural Texture

A computer made image used to create a realistic representation of natural resources, such as:☞ Wood☞ Metal☞ etc.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Physics Physics are an element that adds gravity (or the illusion of gravity) in video games. They can be adjusted for cartoony or realistic movement.

Collision Briefly, collision detection is the process of detecting when two shapes are about to collide or have already collided.

Lighting Lighting is to brighten and bring light to an area. It can be used for atmospheric reasons; the less light is good for a horror game where bad things will happen.

AA – Anti-Aliasing

This is used when trying to make things less pixelated, and give objects and everything in the game a smoother look.

LoD – Level of Detail

Level of detail is a general design term for video game landscapes in which closer objects are rendered with more polygons than objects that are farther away. Generally speaking, the level of detail is dictated by the game's system requirements. Given the power of modern processors, very little degradation in the level of detail is noticeable anymore.(*)

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Animation Animation is when you move a character, realistic or not, it makes the player feel like the world around them is alive, and not in a dull environment.

* This is an animation test of a person running to cover, preparing to fire, then getting killed. Made by Mark DeRidder.

Sprite A sprite is a bitmap graphic that is designed to be part of a larger scene. It can either be a static image or an animated graphic. Examples of sprites include objects in 2D video games, icons that are part of an applicationuser interface, and small images published on websites.(*)

Scene Many games have something called a scene graph. This is a big data structure that contains all of the objects in the world. The rendering engine uses this to determine where to draw stuff on the screen.(*)

Library A software library is a suite

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

of data and programming code that is used to develop software programs and applications. It is designed to assist both the programmer and the programming language compiler in building and executing software.(*)

UI UI, or User Interface, refers to the methods (keyboard control, mouse control) and interfaces (inventory screen, map screen) through which a user interacts with your game. UX, or User Experience, refers to how intuitive and enjoyable those interactions are.(*)

Frames Meanwhile, the player’s actual clock is ticking. If we measure how quickly the game loop cycles in terms of real time, we get the game’s “frames per second”. If the game loop cycles quickly, the FPS is high and the game moves smoothly and quickly. If it’s slow, the game jerks along like a stop motion movie.(*)

Concept The first stage of designing a game is coming up with a concept. This is the idea you will base your design and development activity around. Picture your game and try to give it a category: is it a platformer, an adventure game, or a shooter?

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

(*)Event In computer

programming, event-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the flow of the program is determined by events such as user actions (mouse clicks, key presses), sensor outputs, or messages from other programs/threads. Event-driven programming is the dominant paradigm used in graphical user interfaces and other applications (e.g. JavaScript web applications) that are centered on performing certain actions in response to user input.(*)

Pathfinding Pathfinding or pathing is the plotting, by a computer application, of the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes.(*)

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