Grant... working hard
This Last picture has to be my favorite. It shows off the three ages of rail. The steam and deisel in the forground, and the Electric main line train carrying passengers in the background. I think it holds some significance. It's almost like the Tornado is showing off to the others, saying ''Steams not dead''.
g with the sound on. You come up to the corner, the ambience suggests you’re in hostile territory. Music starts, ominous music, you know something’s going to happen. Then you hear a faint rumbling sound, and the creak of metal. It’s getting louder in the right speaker by your screen. All this information goes together and informs you that a tank is approaching fast from the right and by the music and ambience is telling you that you don’t stand a chance if you stay where you are. So you move back behind a rock and hide. The tank rolls past without seeing you. This is just an example of the importance of sound in a game, but it plays many other roles too. I will always play through games with the sound the game’s makers intend you to hear. I always find that listening to your own music while playing through a game will ruin the overall experience. This however is not true for multiplayer. I personally love playing fps’s whilst listening to fast paced music, like rock music or drum and bass.
I find that it takes away the fear of death. I run in guns blazing, like a mad man high on adrenaline. It intensifies the gaming experience. This brings me to my favourite sonic moment.
cts couple with the visual game play so perfectly. The game comes with about 40 music tracks from modern rock/metal/dance ECT. artists. I start up the game for the first time and play the first level. I’m driving through a track called Motor City, the music blaring and the sound of a 12 cylinder Ford engine coming is coming from my car. I hit a ramp accompanied by the sound of metal scraping on tarmac, fly though the air past the horns of lorries as I whip between two of them in the opposite direction. All the while the sound of the air is whooshing past me, like some western film. Then after my sonic flight of glory, I crash down on top of another car and the game goes into slow motion. Suddenly the volume of the music is drastically decreased to a barely audible level, the camera angle changes to an overv
iew of the crash. There is the sound of screeching tires and crushing metal and glass. The victim car career’s off to the left and hits an oil tanker, making it explode. The accompanying sound sounds like a tiger growling. Flames lick round the side of my car and the force of the explosion propels me further forward though the air. Words pop up onto the screen displaying ‘vertical take down’ with a sharp metallic sound effect. I notice my boost bar is full! Suddenly allot of things happen at once. The game comes out of slow motion and the camera angle goes back to the normal behind the car view, my car lands back on the road, tires screeching, sparks fly and crackle,
I press the A button on the controller, activating my boost, which sounds like a harrier jet taking off. The games sound track is restored to its normal volume, just as the chorus kicks in, resulting In a masterful crescendo of visual effects and sound, that leaves me sitting there, mouth agape and my heart racing like I’d just ran a Marathon. The game doesn’t let up for the rest of the race. It hits me again and again with a wide range of amazing sonic and visual events. Have you ever put down a controller after playing a game and your hands are actually shaking!!!
ll three halo games. Sound track albums were released for both halo 2 and halo 3. Almost every part of the halo games are accompanied by variations on the games sound track. The music tells the story just as the game does. The games score is one of the reasons why the Halo trilogy stood out from all other games. One of my favourite tracks from the halo 2 sound track is a track called ‘Peril'. Game engines play a vital role in every game. They hold everything together and make everything work using complex code. All the assets made for a game don’t just work when you put them together. They need the game engine to understand each other.
Game engines perform complex tasks such as, physics, lighting, rendering and A.I. Havok is a famous game engine first utilised in the game Half-Life 2. It makes realistic physics, such as Rag-Doll physics. Objects react with each other considering factors such as weight, distribution, density, buoyancy and hardness. Valve incorporated it in their main game engine ‘source’, which has been used for games such as Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2. Proving its success many other companies have used the Havok engine in their games, such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which takes full advantage of Rag-Doll physics. It is much more cost effective than making and coding your own physics engine. If you want to see what the Havok engine can really do, play a game called Garry’s Mod. It is a game that allows you to mess around with the core principles of the ‘Havok’ and ‘Source’ engines.
Another famous, more recent game engine is ‘cryengine’. This engine was developed by a European team called Crytech mainly for other companies to use. It is the most advanced game engine yet made. Crytech made a game called Crysis, which utilised ‘Cryengine’. The game was more of a showcase, as most computers at the time where unable to run it. Crysis showed off new advanced technologies such as advanced dynamic lighting. Each asset in the game even individual leaves react to light caused by the sun, the moon, explosions, even muzzle flares. The cryengine set a new standard for games developers everywhere, just as the source engine did.
Subtractive and additive editing are terms referring to the construction of in game assets using a game engine. The Unreal Editor uses subtractive editing. This means that you carve out the scenery from a solid block. An easier way to put it would be; you subtract from what’s already there.
An example of additive editing would be the Hammer editor, a program that allows you to make games using the Source engine. I have prolific knowledge of how to use this engine as I have made plenty of maps/levels for the mod Counter-Strike: Source. Instead of subtracting from what is already there, you add objects to an empty void, much like 3d Studio Max. One of the main advantages of using subtractive over additive is the lack of leaks in the game work. If you were to create a map using an additive editor you would have to seam the edges of the game world, so that the engine knows the limitations of what it has to work with. One advantage of additive is that it is easier to create large complex outdoor scenery. Subtractive is more suited to confined, or indoor scenery.
I would say that the key issues facing Game engines in the future, are creating physics based sound (all the sound’s in games are pre recorded), creating more realistic, spontaneous A.I programs and creating a proper physics engine for water. Water had always sucked in games, for one reason or another. I reckon in the future we will see some amazing new technologies emerge that will blow our minds.
