Everything I cook is orange.

I discovered this when I decided to defrost something I'd previously cooked from the freezer. Only problem was, I - in all my infinite wisdom - had not labelled it.
"Well," I thought. "It's orange, so it must be spaghetti sauce or bean chilli." Easy.
Six hours later and said object is defrosted. And is in fact chicken tikka. Good job I like chicken tikka.

I had a sitdown and a think about these events and I came to the conclusion that EVERYTHING I cook is in fact orange. Or at least turns orange when you freeze it. I shall dazzle you with a list:

Bean chilli
Chicken tikka
Spaghetti bolognese sauce
Bacon pasta sauce
Chicken fajita mix
Sweet and sour anything
Sausages in barbeque sauce

The one exception to this rule was when i tried to make a stew of my own invention and it froze grey. Which is really not a very appetising colour, and just goes to show that I should not try to be creative in the kitchen ever.

What is it? Nobody knows.

OK, I felt I should blog about something, simply because I haven't done so in over a week.
I achieved some, but not all of my holiday objectives. I did work at playschemes and earnt myself some cash by playing in glue and dealing with children on a sugar high. I also went round London a lot and returned to some of my favourite places. Canary Wharf, the Natural History museum and Covent Garden.
I didn't quite make it to Turkey. The flight costs went up too much so we went on a day trip to France and Belgium instead. It was lots of fun and I returned with crateloads of cheap alcohol. All the bottles are currently lined up on top of my shelves like an identity parade.
Welcome to sunny Belgium!

It's nice to be back, it seems like I've been here weeks I've already done so much. Night out at Liquid sporting a top hat, surprise birthday party for Alex round Caz's (a big surprise as it was 3 weeks after his actual birthday), lots and lots of Lord of the Rings and two house viewings. Phew!
And I have actually done some work. I should really get over to the library and try to scan all my sketchbooks in, but I might give up and just take photos.

Being ill is really quite pants.

I have grossly swollen tonsils which makes swallowing food and drink very painful, achy ears which has also thrown off my balance, achy joints, a raging headache and when it gets towards evening time I go very hot and cold and need 2 blankets and a jumper.
Needless to say I'm not particularly thrilled about the situation. It's always my luck that I fall ill at the start of a weekend so it's impossible for me to get to a doctor's and get any medicine, so I've had to make do with homeopathic remedies which one of my mum's friends does. To be honest, I'm not sure if I even believe it works but I have no better options right now.
I was warned that it might make me feel worse before it makes me feel better, but this morning I have woken up feeling just the same, although the headache seems to have got a bit worse. Fantastic.
Mum's friend is making me another remedy at the moment but I'm not sure if I want to take it. The other one didn't exactly do any good, who's to say this one will?

It's not like anyone I know even has a nasty cold thing! Where has this come from!? I seem to have a magical ability to pick up slight traces of an illness and magnify it, causing myself misery. I managed to do it last year by catching shingles, although having read that article it seems it just comes from dormant chicken pox. Surprisingly, that doesn't make me feel much better.

So, what's going down in Louiseworld?

Right this second I am listening to all my utterly terrible cheese music that I found on all my CDs at home. You know the ones. You buy them when you're about twelve and S Club 7 ARE the best thing ever. You discover them a few years later, feel disgusted with yourself and bury them under a pile of Basement Jaxx and Artful Dodger (or bands of choice). Then you rediscover them a few more years later and accept that yes dammit, S Club 7 WERE the best thing ever and rip them all to your PC.
I don't care what you all say about it, I am going to be happy in my little pop bubble.

So, what's been happening? Well, I dragged Alex, Tim and my friend Chris to the Tate with the plan of hurling ourselves down the slides, but it didn't really happen because of the queues. So we went round the Tate and chilled out in the park in Canary Wharf instead. I may also be furthering the 'London Ducks' series of photos. Yes it's now a series.

I have also been working at playschemes, where I get paid to eat chips and make mess. Well, it's not quite like that. I also have to help manage a load of kids, endure a lot of humiliation from doing stupid dances and get sat on by small children at high speed. Small kids are boney.

I am also practically exploding with delight at the sight of this marvelous trailer. Yes it's the new Ratchet and Clank, Tools of Destruction. It looks like Insomniac is having a true return to form. No more generic dark and grungy FPS, no more stupid arena combat, trying too hard to be badass Ratchet and Clank. A fun, brightly coloured, humour-filled, lovingly crafted Ratchet and Clank.It has crazy enemies, it has grindrails, it has boss fights, it has Ratchet's poofy tail. What more do I need? I cannot wait for this. The only problem will be finding a PS3 to play it on. I don't even want one, I just want to borrow one so I can play this game.

Well, I'm home again now. Been up to London today and eaten sushi, yum! I am definitely planning on going on the slides at the Tate modern before this holiday is done.

We also had assessments Tuesday and Wednesday which went very well for me. I got an A- for the van which I am very pleased with, and if I fix the errors I identified with it (namely the shape of the bumper and the amount of polys on the roof) then I could make it an A.

The art assessment was interesting for me to say the least. I was really happy that all the tutors were so positive about my work, and it's really inspired me to crack on and keep doing crazy stuff like embossing and ink blowing and stuffing things in packets full of hair gel. I'm happy that I got some positive reaction from people in the class who didn't even realise that we could do stuff like that, and I hope that a lot more people do go and just have a play with different materials. The worst thing that can happen is that it goes wrong and even then you've learnt something.

In a way, I'm also pretty happy I got some negative reactions. People don't see the point, people think I'll get laughed at, but I don't really mind. It shows that I'm doing something different, and (to quote Cool Runnings) "People are always afraid of what's different." I also got defended by all four tutors, which was pretty cool.

I think the crowning glory for me was Mr P's comment (paraphrased)." I told you all to do a blog task about the definition of creativity. This is creativity. "
I think it's possibly the most huge compliment I've ever recieved about my work. Let's hope I can keep this up.

The Final Blog task

I came to this course from an illustration focused art foundation, which turned out to be nothing like I was expecting. I was expecting to be taught different skills in different media to help me establish what I wanted to do in my art based future. Before about year 12 I wasn't even sure I wanted to do art. Art was just something that happened in my spare time and in art classes. It was part of me, but not necessarily who I was. As I specialised further and further in my school career, dropping things for GCSE, dropping things for A level, I began to realise that I couldn't just let art go.

I'd had the idea of drawing concept art for games for quite a while, I think since Ratchet and Clank 1 where one of the secrets you could unlock was the concept art for the game. I was inspired and the idea lodged in the back of my head along with my other vague plan - illustrating books.

So I moved on to the art foundation, where I was given vague ideas and comments. 'Produce a final piece on the idea of a votive object.' 'Draw without drawing' 'This is wrong but we will not tell you why'. When we came back after the Christmas break and were told we had better be damned confident in ourselves if we were going to be illustrators because we would have to sell ourselves every second of every day I broke down. I knew I couldn't do it. Couldn't compete with the egos and strange dress sense and overwhelming confidence in something I didn't even understand.

So I explained to my Mum what had happened and I bunked the next day and spent the entire time trawling UCAS searching for my two ambitions: Game Design and Book Illustration. I hadn't even realised you could do Game Art as a degree! I'd been planning on trying to get my foot in the door after finishing an illustration degree. I phoned round for some open days and suddenly life seemed a lot better.
As you can guess, I had an open day and interview at DMU and got on the course.


So why did I write all that? I don't think I've forgotten since I've been here that I have battled through a course that I truly didn't enjoy, and where I didn't learn what I wanted. Here I have felt settled and like I belong on the course, something I never felt on my foundation. I've also learned a lot, and it was stuff I was expecting and hoping to learn. So basically I am grateful for what I have here, which is something to keep in mind when reading my whiny complaints!

So do I have any suggestions for next year? Well I felt that the first project really flung us in at the deep end. While it did make us learn quickly, it was also pretty stressful. I know that Joel did his best with so many people who had no idea what they were doing, but I think we could have done with more one on one help. So for the sake of the next first years, I'm going to suggest a buddy system. Teaching other people how to do things that we already know how to do will ease the stress on Joel, help the first years feel more accepted and also re-enforce what we know.
Also having PCs that don't die every few minutes would be wonderful. We were all so impressed with their shiny newness at the start of the year but now you're lucky if half of them will run Max.
Other than that I feel like the 3DS Max stuff has been going well. I've really enjoyed making the street furniture and trees because you can see how it's directly relevant and ready for a game environment. There have been grumbles that it isn't interesting enough but we have to be able to walk before we can run. Group work should be interesting for next year, and maybe for after Easter if people still want to model animals from the zoo.

As I said before I've been really enjoying the drawing module. I surprised myself at the tutorial with just how much I've done. 3 full sketchbooks, one A5 sketchbook from the zoo and a big fat texture book. As well as a hand, wire man, chimney and arcade cabinets.
The formal drawing lessons have been really useful and not something that I've really had before. I had picked up various rules and tricks but the perspective stuff really helped. Shame we didn't get round to colour theory. That would be nice for next year.
I'd love for there to be more focus on the hand made 3D stuff next year, I've felt like it's been really beneficial. More time with Chris in classes would also be really good. I know he wants to be a full time tutor and I think it'd be really useful for us to have his direct input on our 3DS Max work.
I'd love if we could have our own studio space where we could work. I'm running out of space for all my 3D junk and my room is littered with the results of my artistic experiments.

The blogs have become a lot more fun for me, and I think I'll do my best to keep them up. God knows what Mr P thinks of all my days/ nights out but I like posting about them. It's a fun way to communicate with everyone and it's far better than essays would be. It would be nice if the blog tasks would link more closely with the lectures we have but I know that's not always possible because people are unpredictable.

The lectures have been really interesting and have provoked a lot of discussion. I think the inclusive gaming was probably the most hard hitting one for me because it made me analyse my own habits and preferences and examine what they're affected by.

I think I'd like to comment on the amount of notice we get for some stuff. In my experience Art departments are always slightly shaky on the organisation front. Deadlines and criteria changing, sudden field trips, unexpected tutorials, and timetable mess ups have all been annoying simply because they are all so preventable. Notices on the VLE would solve most of it.

Finally, the VLE itself. Could be a very useful tool but people just don't really check it now apart from for briefs and project deadlines. At the start of the year it had a bustling forum which has now sadly stagnated. Perhaps having a link to a separate Vbulletin messageboard or similar might be better?

Wow, the final blog task is pretty hard.

I've had a pretty cool week this week, Tim's been down, we've all finally viewed a house, played drunken guitar hero, saw 300, had a smoothie from the nice milkshake place in town and eaten chinese food. It seems far too early for the term to be over.

Plans for easter:


Catch up with all my friends from home.
Dress up like a pirate and go boating on a lake with my friends. Did this last year and it was brilliant.
Work for playschemes. It's basically a day camp for kids during the holidays. We do stuff like ourdoor sports, art and craft, drama, whatever. It makes you never want to have kids. EVER. Ah but the money is good.
Go round London lots and lots. Enjoy the extortionate prices, stupid tourists and tube bogies.
Go to Turkey. Oh god I need a holiday this will be sooooo nice if it happens.
Maybe some work will fit in there somewhere.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if your life took another direction? If at some point in your life you made a decision that changed how you are today? This may sound like it's going to become all philosophical and deep, but it really isn't. It's just an excuse to post pictures of me dressed as a chav.
For those of you who don't know what I look like or need reminding here is a photo of me and Tim, who for some reason looks like a ska musician:

And here is a photo of our bizarro universe chav counterparts. We were actually very scared of one another for a while that night, especially when Tim decided to name himself Darren, or 'Daz' and continually ask people 'if they were startin'?!' .Someone actually told us that we were so convincing that if they saw us in the street they would cross the road. High praise indeed.
So in conclusion I'm glad I'm not a chav.

All Hail the Zoo!

I went to the zoo today along with Caz, Alex, Nikki, James and Joel. Getting there and back was quite an effort as we had to get a train to Nuneaton and then a bus which only came once an hour and took an hour to wind its way through the countryside to the zoo. But it was definitely worth it. We got the bus fare and zoo ticket together for just £6.50 which was a nice surprise, and we all took tons of photos and did loads of drawing.
Quote of the day:
Alex: 'I only eat solid waste.'

The whole idea of this is to model loads of fun animals and make a first person mauler, where they all run around slicing/ goring/ trampling each other to pieces. Should be fun!

Week 22: Games Design Conference

I had free rein on this one so I just decided to look around the site until I found something that sparked my interest. This lecture looks really interesting, about knowing your target demographic and knowing who plays games. It seems similar to the lecture we had about inclusive gaming, if you make a game more inclusive, it will appeal to more people and therefore have more potential sales. This part in the description especially interested me:
"Analyze This! - Players Live On Stage" a live player study on the Wii provides insights into players' minds.

It's incredible when you think about it how many different ways people will come up with to play the same game. This is especially apparent in multiplayer versus modes, where different tactics will have different advantages. When we play Lord of the Rings in the lab, we all seem to have settled in to our chosen races. If there is a choice, I am usually Goblins, Tom the Elves, Sophia the Men, Alex the Dwarves and Darsh Mordor.
I prefer the Goblins because I can make lots of mountain giants, big rock throwers, and then spam cheap basic units to act as a meat shield for them. But why do I like to play like this? I could easily go a different route, but yet I don't. Why do I play the way I do?

What kind of factors most affect how we play games? Is it to do with our personalities? How we solve problems in real life situations? How we've played games before? I'm not offering any answers because I can't go to the lecture but it's interesting to think about.

Another slight tangent I went on from the lecture description was here. Facts and statistics about computer games and who buys and plays them. The pie charts for the best selling genres really surprised me. Action and sports games had the highest percentages for console games and strategy and children's games for PC games. If you'd asked me what I thought sold most I probably would have said shooters and maybe racing. But is that because I'm currently in an environment where those genres are more popular? Lots of people play CoD and Gears of War in the lab and any adverts on TV tend to be more shooter and racing game orientated, although I have seen some for Final Fantasty XII and Wario Ware.

Let's draw retarded Pokemon

So I did.
Ah how I love somethingawful.com :)

Week 21: Where do you want to go and how do you want to get there?

OK, so it's time to reflect on the course so far and then think about what I want from it in the future. Let's break it down into modules for what I've done so far.

Drawing: I would say drawing is my strongest area. I do work hard at it, but I also really enjoy being able to just play and know that it's helping me get somewhere. I've ventured into photoshop for colouring things which I was hesitant to do before. My media usage has become a lot wider because I'm not hampered by project deadlines like I was in art college.
Hopefully in the future I'll go more into the sculpture and plastics side of things and try making some 3D characters. I think it'd help me a lot and show potential employers that I'm pretty versatile.

3D Studio Max: I've found Max pretty tricky to get to grips with, but I am learning something with every project we do. I get a little worried sometimes because it doesn't come as easily to me as it does to others in the class and because I'm not as enthusiastic about it as I could be. I think I'm afraid that I'm not good enough when really I've been progressing a lot and have a lot to show for the past year.
I think my personal confidence is what's holding me back in this module, so I need to sit down and do some tutorials on the K drive as well as some from my 3D Studio Max Bible. Quite looking forward to the group projects to see how well co-operation and management works out, as they will be important skills for the future.

Art Style Guide: I'm going to lump the schedules and specifications in here too, as it's all document management. Although a bit tedious I can see the need for these documents in the industry. I don't feel like I've had a proper crack at the specifications having seen a second year example, but I'm going to try and do them in an instructional style for the van and resubmission of the tree. Timetables I feel have gone well and I have stuck to reasonably.
Obviously there will be a lot more focus on this area next year and I feel I do need a few more goes at it before I can really say whether I know what I'm doing or not, but I don't think I have any specific problems so far.

Blogs: Some of the blog topics I have loved, some of them I have found confusing and/or hard to write about. I don't think I have trouble with the blogs, but I wouldn't say I excel at them either. I like the way that I've started using it as a more social and fun thing by posting whatever pops into my head and by adding the blog to my facebook. It makes it easier to write in.

So there we go. I'd say I'm doing pretty well, although I need to give myself a kick up the bum with regards to using Max more. Now for the future:

When I leave here I want to have a strong set of valuable skills appropriate for the games industry. I'm currently really happy that if I keep working hard in all aspects of the course that I can achieve this. I'm happy on the course and feel like I know what is expected of me and that there are achievable goals I can work towards. The only thing I would say I want from the course is more focus on 3D sculpture in the drawing classes as I feel that this could help broaden my portfolio and provide more research for the Max work. But Chris has already mentioned all this so hopefully it will be in the pipeline for next year.

I went to see Hot Fuzz at the weekend!

Truly cinema cannot get any better than Simon Pegg drop kicking an old woman.

Brilliant film with some great references to Shaun of the Dead. Everyone go see it now!

Week 20: Creativity

What is creativity? Creativity is the ability to think of new and different ideas that are also useful and applicable to something. For me creativity always seems to manifest itself at about 2 in the morning when I am trying to go to sleep. My mind wanders as I fall asleep and stumbles on things that I always need to get drawn pretty immediately or I forget them.

Creativity is all around us. Every man made object we see was designed or planned by somebody at some point. It's easy to forget about.

I don't think creativity is necessarily hindered by technical constraints, it just helps to shape it. In the sound lecture Pip mentioned that it was a pity in a way that games now had a more wide ranging musical voice as they had lost the identity the music had in the NES era. Limits can force you to a conclusion you might not have otherwise reached, and doesn't always mean the work has to suffer.

I think everybody in a game 'does' creativity, although some may be more limited in how they can express it. A good portion of creativity for the game has already been done in the design document and it's up to artists and programmers to interpret their individual briefs as creatively as they can while staying within its boundaries and making sure it achieves what it needs to.

As an artist I'd think that most of my creative exploration would take place before drawing or modelling anything. I've been having a lot of fun in the plastics lab and print room lately so perhaps I might have a play with ideas in different media before properly beginning a project. In drawing I could use different types of media to convey an idea or be creative with the ideas themselves. At the moment I'm pretty fond of mashing together two different project ideas like hands and bits of heated up foil and seeing what comes out.

What does creativity look like? This is such a tricky question because as I said earlier absolutely anything produced involves creativity. However the quality and breadth of creativity is a varied thing. Creativity can be housed in a brand identity as it encompasses the setting, characters and art style of a game. It can also be found in the art style, programming and the gameplay.

I really like the creativity found in the Sly Cooper series by Sucker Punch. The characters are anthropomorphic animals, using the idea of familiar attributes that can be easily related to by a wide audience. Animal characters are often found in fairy tales or fables. The idea of playing as a thief is also creative and makes a change from the fairly standard fighter character.
Creative programming can be found in FarCry, where enemies use military tactics to surround the player and try to kill them.
For creative graphics and visual style I would give the example of Psychonauts. Wacky character designs with definite shapes and also a very lateral way of representing abstract concepts (actual baggage for emotional baggage and small men screaming "NO!" at you to destroy errant thoughts) make this a very unique game to play.
Finally for gameplay I would give the example of Guitar hero. Being creative in taking the idea of rhythm games and the secret dream of just about everyone to be a rock star, and combining them to make a great game. Games which come with their own standard control system like Eyetoy or Donkey Konga always seem that little bit more novel.

I feel like some of my posts lately have been slightly controversial and have made people disagree with me. Which is fine really, a debate is a good thing to have. But to counteract this argumentative tone, I have decided to post pictures of kittens!


Awwwww

Week 19: Life changing or career building?

This week's task is a pretty tough one to get info on. The main questions is whether games companies want fresh arts graduates with open minds who can be taught things or whether they want graduates who have taken games orientated courses and have learnt modelling, texturing, animating or concept drawing skills.

I've searched through the jobs postings on gamasutra and all of the arts ones are asking for experience in max and photoshop, as you would expect, but they do also want traditional art skills.

I found a pretty good interview on gamasutra with Doug Tennapel, the creator of Earthworm Jim.
Tennapel says he likes everything Insomniac does, as well as the game Psychonauts which I am inclined to agree with. I liked the way Psychonauts was pushing the exaggeration of the characters, but I did feel that this meant that some looked like they were in a different style to others. Some of the campsite kids have a wildly different look to other ones, but on the whole the designs are brave and work well.

One of the main messages from the interview was that videogames companies need to be hiring artists who have more of a broad art background with experience in skills like colour theory and anatomy. He claims that instead many are being blinded by the details that artists can achieve

"Like for instance, if a guy maybe renders with his pencil really well, puts good shading on a creature, but his anatomy is completely wrong…they hire him because he tricked them with his cool detail, even though the foundation of his drawing is weak."

It's good to see that a message like this is coming from someone within the industry, asking for all round applicable art skills. I feel that the balance between art and modelling is a delicate one, and one that this course handles well. The art skills we get taught by Chris in the drawing module are applicable to all types of art. Perspective, colour theory and anatomy are universal skills which perhaps are not as prevalent in the games industry as they should be.

But perhaps neither is original and creative thinking, which would be more likely to come from art course graduates. My art foundation certainly taught me how to think outside the box and redefine words like 'drawing'. A drawing is not pencil lines on a piece of paper, it is any type of information about anything presented in any kind of way. So if I were studying oranges for example then yes I might do a traditional drawing but I might try cutting it up and printing with it, rolling it in paint and then on paper, casting it, trying to replicate its colour, warping its shape, measuring it and writing down its stats, rolling it and recording how it moves or smashing it on a canvas.

All these are legitimate drawing techniques, which I don't think some people on this course really understand, perhaps because they weren't expecting to have to address them. It would explain the slighty underwhelmed response to the exhibition the other week, which was full of interesting abstract work.

So I've basically come the long way round to saying I think this course has it right. The industry is asking for specific skills like 3D Studio Max and Photoshop which we can deliver but hopefully with some prodding we can deliver a more broad understanding of artistic techniques and skills which can help expand the horizons of the games industry as well as providing the more immediate benefit of accuracy and understanding.

I have a new hobby. It's called papercraft.















Expect to see my print budget disappear very rapidly

Week 18 Sound for Games

I thought it was a bit of a random addition to the bottom of the list of questions to get you started, but it seems that 'Good Times' by Nile Rodgers/Bernard Edwards could actually be one of the most influential pieces of music from the 20th century. Wikipedia informs me that it is one of the most sampled tracks in musical history, and gives a long list of artists who used it, including Queen, Blondie, The Clash, the Beastie Boys, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul and of course DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince (hee hee). The song is also ranked #224 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. So there you have it. So it is of course very important that someone as influential as Nile Rodgers says:
'That's when I got hooked, and then I got involved in some other titles and the next think you know, I decided one day that I was taking all the things I had on my walls in my office down and replacing it with all the video game media that I had.' That's some pretty heavy stuff. One of the musicians who produced one of the most sampled tracks in music is giving a big thumbs up to video games and all media assosciated with them.

So, game music. I have the odd game song on my playlist, and I also have the entire soundtrack to Final Fantasy 9, by Nobuo Uematsu. Uematsu is a very important game music composer, and has worked on many of the Final Fantasy games ranging from 4 to the latest one, 13, although his work on 9 was the last soundtrack he did alone. The music for 9 is fantastic, the musical styles and feels change depending on where you are and what you're doing in the game. One of the most satisfying sonic moments for me was when you first get the airship in FF9, and you are suddenly free to explore the entire map, no longer hindered by sea or mountain ranges. The music that starts up as you begin to fly your airship is fun and uplifting, with lots of guitar riffs to remind you just how cool this is.

Another notable game musician is Martin Galway, who began his career in 1983 making music for his friends' games. They approached Ocean Software who liked the game and were also impressed by Galway's music. Galway was lent a state of the art composition unit and proceeded to work for the company. His work spanned many games and genres and was pushing the boundaries of technology wherever it could, using multiple instruments in themes for examples. Galway remained on top of new technology for the rest of his career, introducing sampled sounds on the Commodore.

I found a great article on Gamasutra about the music composition for Myst III: Exile, done by Jack Wall. The article is a reflective diary about the production, and how the composer immerses himself in the atmosphere and music of the previous two games before attempting his own version. It really made me think about how much work goes into game music and how similar it is to art design. You have to have a united, yet varied sound which enhances the game experience without distracting the player.

I also have some music directly influenced by games, be it fan music or a band's tribute to certain games, such as the Legend of Zelda theme by System of a Down. I also can't remember where I read this, but artists are also starting to make music using old gameboys and old video game sound chips to produce tracks, as well as manipulating the chips to produce sound they normally wouldn't be able to. It's called Bitpop.

The Game

I have decided that it is time to explain The Game. I have already begun spreading it around uni teaching it as it was taught to me by Chris and as was taught to him and so on and so on.

The aim of The Game is to forget you are playing The Game. If you remember you are playing The Game, you have lost The Game. You cannot win The Game. No one can. Everyone in the world is playing The Game, just that some of them might not know yet. If you remember you are playing The Game, and lose The Game, it is your duty to inform everyone around you, and irritate them by making them lose too. There is a five minute grace period after someone loses in which no one else is allowed to lose, in order to let everyone fully forget about The Game.

You will find after a while playing The Game that certain things will trigger losing. These can include: seeing the person who taught you The Game, certain objects - for me bananas, melons or cheesecake, seeing Lost on TV, hearing a song by rapper The Game or talking about any kind of game.

Enjoy :)

Week 17: Game Engines

A game engine is the core software of a game with real time graphics. They will control tasks such as rendering the graphics, physics, animation, scripting and networking, and can help make game construction easier, faster and cheaper.

Developers can choose to construct their own game engine to suit their needs or can purchase an existing engine such as the Unreal engine. Developers can also purchase 'middleware', engines which can be tacked on to an existing engine to provide a different function. Examples of these are the Havok physics engine, which can be used to control ragdoll physics, and SpeedTree, which can procedurally generate trees once given examples or specifications. Both of these examples of middleware can save developers time.
Developers can also develop their own middleware and swap and share amongst each other. I seem to remember Naughty Dog and Insomniac sharing their weapon engine and environment creation engine.

Subtractive and Additive are terms used to describe the way a level is created within the game engine. The Unreal Editor for example uses subtractive creation. The game level begins as a solid block and the user uses brushes to carve away shapes. The brushes have many different qualities, and can add solid, semisolid or nonsolid objects to the game level. However this method can cause problems and lead to crashes in the editor due to the way the brush effects are memorised. Using mesh objects such as those created in 3D studio max can help to solve the problem as they are easier to process.
An additive level editor begins as a blank space and is then built up rather than being carved out.

The advantages of using an existing engine are that you know it works, it's ready to go and only needs minor adjustments, and you can focus on the artistic elements of your game. However, the engine may not do exactly what you want it to and your game will have to work around the limits of the engine with its gameplay. If you build your own engine, you can focus on exactly what you want your game to achieve, can make the code as complex or simple as you want and have the option of selling the engine later, ensuring more money from the game.

The key issues for next gen engines appear to be based around light and shadow. New dynamic shadow and light mapping is being developed for the Source engine, and the Unreal 3 engine site boasts of its support for four methods of shadowing techniques .