The cycle of software development has six steps:
1. Analyze
A company may want a game for their product like Sunny Delight, so they send out an advertisement in this case to a media magazine for someone to make their game. A game company will see the advert and send in a pitch of their idea for the game and how much money they will need for the development and how long it may take. Another way of doing this is the product company want a specific game to be made and when game making companies pitch their design on the game they asked for they choose their favorite. More successful companies would pitch their own ideas within the company itself such as Epic games who thought up and made gears of war in their own studio.
2. Quote and Approved
If the company like the pitch the game company sent in they will fund the game company to make the game and approve the development of it. Companies such as Bungie who made Halo would pitch their ideas to the project manager who will approve the development team to produce the game if they like it.
3. Mockup
The game company will use the money they recieved to design the game and start making ideas for it. There would be no point to start the mockup earlier becasue the company may refuse their pitch so it's best not to spend to much time on the game before they have approval to make it. This is where the company starts the design and art style. 343 Industries who made Halo 4 had to re-design some enemies hundreds of times before getting the right stye.
4. Create
The development team will desgin the coding, art style and gameplay to make an Alpha version of the game. They will design all the character, models, buildings and play style. This will be done by Programmers, Scripters and Artists. Throughout all the creation of the game the Programmers will make versions of the game to be Alpha tested until they have a stable game which can be put into further testing by targeted public. Many of the game developers played with game testers during the creation of Halo 3 while the game was in Alpha and Beta.
5. Stage and Test
While testing the game they may keep going back to stage 4 as they find things wrong with the coding and gameplay and if the production manager looks at the final product and does not like it they will refuse to pay money for it and make the development team re-design it. When Alpha testing is complete the game will be put into Beta where the company may release an early version of the game for the public to test. E.A. Games released a free to play beta for battlefield 3 so they could get feedback from the public.
6. Release
Once the project manager and the company have approved the final version of the game they will allow the game to be released. There still may be problems in the game that testers missed but this is where day one patches come in to play and the game will finally be released to the public. Many players exploited glitches and mistakes missed out by game testers in Halo 4 until 343 Industries released an update stopping these exploits.
Monday, 19 November 2012
BTEC subsidiary diploma in interactive media 12/13
Job roles
Game designers
Game designers are responsible for the idea behind a game, how it plays and what the game consists of. Everything in the game will be thought up by the game designers and they often come up with the concept or premise of the game. They will design the characters, story, items in the game and what the play style is for the game. In larger projects there will often be a group of game designers with a lead designer, usually the person who originally thought up the game itself.
Game designers are responsible for the vision of the games world, setting, story and all the games elements, for example what vehicles and weapons would be in a first person shooter or what items can be placed in a building game and then communicate these ideas over to the development team. In groups we have designed a simple flash game based on internet memes and re skinned a game. While pitching ideas for the first Halo they orgininally made it a strategy game until they decided to make it an FPS (first person shooter) and make the story of master chief. After the game designers had thought up what game they wanted to make they pitched the idea to the development team to make it.
Programmers
Programmers are often confused with scripters but programmers are a step above them. Programmers create the game engines and tools for scripters to create the game. Programmers are the centre point for any game. They design and write the code that runs the game writing custom code and pre-set code to create the games engine. They often create the physics, AI (artificial intelligence), 3D engine development, interface and control systems. They may work with code other programmers have made and work in groups under the supervision of a lead programmer. They may create many builds of the game to work with the testers so they can identify any bugs within the game and coding so the programmers may fix it. The team of programmers will create custom tools for art and level designers. There are separate titles for programmers; Games, Graphics, Tools, AI and Middleware programmers. How everything works together, character control and how the AI works within the game is all created by the Programmers. We have created a game in GL BASIC where you must avoid and collect falling objects by writing in code. When programming Mario the programmers gave each 'panel' or 'block' their own properties and variables such as if Mario could break the block, use it, what enemies do and how they affect Mario when touched and so on. They create each item and the artists make the texture for them, then after the programmers had made level designing software, the scripters go ahead and make all the Mario levels.
Scripters
The scripters are the part of the team who uses the game engine and tools created by the Programmers to create the game. Modern scripters use a game editor made by the programmers to save time with coding and for easier editing. The game editor is also developed by the scripter/game developer. The scripters are responsible for level and map design for multiplayer and the story of the game. Level design includes mapping, detailed layout and building of the environment in which the level is played. With the use of a mega Mario editor we were able to easily place blocks, enemies, coins and objectives to create several Mario levels. The animators are responsible for how each AI, vehicle, object, weapon and character moves. The scripters will design how the AI act to situations around them and what characters and objects will do when something else happens in the game. For example when a grenade lands near an AI in the game 'Halo' they roll or jump away from it and in Hitman if someone catches you acting suspicious they will alert other AI companions to help hunt you down.
Artists
Game artists create the images in the game, all the objects, buildings, landscapes, characters and textures which make up the game world. In more modern games the style is a very important feature. Borderlands is a cartoon style first person shooter that originally had a realistic art style but they changed it in the last months of production which ultimately lead to their success and went on to make a sequel. Game artists often work with 3D design and modelling. Animators and Artists use 3D modelling and animation packages to create 3D models to be placed in the game and complete their animation with such software as 3DStudioMax. There often different groups assigned to design and make different parts of the game such as player models, buildings, skyboxes and texture artists however they usually take on multiple tasks, for example one person could be doing building and vehicle design. The work is usually watched by a lead artist or art director who takes overall responsibility. In Bungie who made Halo 1-3 there were lead art designers for vehicles, weapons, characters and levels who each lead a team of artists.
Sound designers
Those working in audio and sound design are responsible for all the sounds in the game from explosions and vehicle sounds to dialog. There are usually many sound designers working on large projects who work together to create all the sounds effects needed for the game. Many of them will go out and record their own audio like cars driving, people shooting weapons, running sound effects and combat noises. They will also record dialog from voice actors to place into the game. The sound designers will usually get a composer or musicians to create the music for the game. The Audio engineer creates the soundtrack for the game which is music and sound effects. For battlefield 3 sound designers went out to a fireing range and recorded actual gunfire, while Citeron games go out and record every vehicle they use in their games such as the Burnout games.
QA / Testing
The QA (quality assurance) are the game testers who play the game to test for bugs in game builds made by the programmers and they will be communicating these bugs in the game to the development team in clear ways after hours of playing the game. It is up to the testers to find anything wrong with the game and in later stages find anything that may exploit the game such as uneven maps/race tracks and weapons. Sometimes glitches are missed in testing like Crackdown 2 which had a few glitches such as AIs not acting correctly to situations caused by the player.
Producers / Project managers
The project managers are the overseers of the entire project. They are usually there to scare everyone into working hard towards the deadline of the project and make sure everyone is completing their tasks on time. External Producers will be more focused on the marketing and selling of the game. Both the project manager and external producer are responsible for budgets, schedules, milestones and reports.
Marketing
The marketing is controlled by the External producer who is in charge of the marketing for the game and to make sure the maximum amount of people will be reached to in the right places, for example if the target audience is young children they will try to get advertisements on children's television channels or if the target audience is teenage to young adult males the best place would be in magazines and advertisements on online sites such as YouTube. More successful games such as the Call of Duty franchise have a large enough advertising budget to put their adverts on daytime TV on channels such as Sky and BBC.
Information for each job was gathered from the site 'creative skillset':
http://www.creativeskillset.org/games/
Game designers
Game designers are responsible for the idea behind a game, how it plays and what the game consists of. Everything in the game will be thought up by the game designers and they often come up with the concept or premise of the game. They will design the characters, story, items in the game and what the play style is for the game. In larger projects there will often be a group of game designers with a lead designer, usually the person who originally thought up the game itself.
Game designers are responsible for the vision of the games world, setting, story and all the games elements, for example what vehicles and weapons would be in a first person shooter or what items can be placed in a building game and then communicate these ideas over to the development team. In groups we have designed a simple flash game based on internet memes and re skinned a game. While pitching ideas for the first Halo they orgininally made it a strategy game until they decided to make it an FPS (first person shooter) and make the story of master chief. After the game designers had thought up what game they wanted to make they pitched the idea to the development team to make it.
Programmers
Programmers are often confused with scripters but programmers are a step above them. Programmers create the game engines and tools for scripters to create the game. Programmers are the centre point for any game. They design and write the code that runs the game writing custom code and pre-set code to create the games engine. They often create the physics, AI (artificial intelligence), 3D engine development, interface and control systems. They may work with code other programmers have made and work in groups under the supervision of a lead programmer. They may create many builds of the game to work with the testers so they can identify any bugs within the game and coding so the programmers may fix it. The team of programmers will create custom tools for art and level designers. There are separate titles for programmers; Games, Graphics, Tools, AI and Middleware programmers. How everything works together, character control and how the AI works within the game is all created by the Programmers. We have created a game in GL BASIC where you must avoid and collect falling objects by writing in code. When programming Mario the programmers gave each 'panel' or 'block' their own properties and variables such as if Mario could break the block, use it, what enemies do and how they affect Mario when touched and so on. They create each item and the artists make the texture for them, then after the programmers had made level designing software, the scripters go ahead and make all the Mario levels.
Scripters
The scripters are the part of the team who uses the game engine and tools created by the Programmers to create the game. Modern scripters use a game editor made by the programmers to save time with coding and for easier editing. The game editor is also developed by the scripter/game developer. The scripters are responsible for level and map design for multiplayer and the story of the game. Level design includes mapping, detailed layout and building of the environment in which the level is played. With the use of a mega Mario editor we were able to easily place blocks, enemies, coins and objectives to create several Mario levels. The animators are responsible for how each AI, vehicle, object, weapon and character moves. The scripters will design how the AI act to situations around them and what characters and objects will do when something else happens in the game. For example when a grenade lands near an AI in the game 'Halo' they roll or jump away from it and in Hitman if someone catches you acting suspicious they will alert other AI companions to help hunt you down.
Artists
Game artists create the images in the game, all the objects, buildings, landscapes, characters and textures which make up the game world. In more modern games the style is a very important feature. Borderlands is a cartoon style first person shooter that originally had a realistic art style but they changed it in the last months of production which ultimately lead to their success and went on to make a sequel. Game artists often work with 3D design and modelling. Animators and Artists use 3D modelling and animation packages to create 3D models to be placed in the game and complete their animation with such software as 3DStudioMax. There often different groups assigned to design and make different parts of the game such as player models, buildings, skyboxes and texture artists however they usually take on multiple tasks, for example one person could be doing building and vehicle design. The work is usually watched by a lead artist or art director who takes overall responsibility. In Bungie who made Halo 1-3 there were lead art designers for vehicles, weapons, characters and levels who each lead a team of artists.
Sound designers
Those working in audio and sound design are responsible for all the sounds in the game from explosions and vehicle sounds to dialog. There are usually many sound designers working on large projects who work together to create all the sounds effects needed for the game. Many of them will go out and record their own audio like cars driving, people shooting weapons, running sound effects and combat noises. They will also record dialog from voice actors to place into the game. The sound designers will usually get a composer or musicians to create the music for the game. The Audio engineer creates the soundtrack for the game which is music and sound effects. For battlefield 3 sound designers went out to a fireing range and recorded actual gunfire, while Citeron games go out and record every vehicle they use in their games such as the Burnout games.
QA / Testing
The QA (quality assurance) are the game testers who play the game to test for bugs in game builds made by the programmers and they will be communicating these bugs in the game to the development team in clear ways after hours of playing the game. It is up to the testers to find anything wrong with the game and in later stages find anything that may exploit the game such as uneven maps/race tracks and weapons. Sometimes glitches are missed in testing like Crackdown 2 which had a few glitches such as AIs not acting correctly to situations caused by the player.
Producers / Project managers
The project managers are the overseers of the entire project. They are usually there to scare everyone into working hard towards the deadline of the project and make sure everyone is completing their tasks on time. External Producers will be more focused on the marketing and selling of the game. Both the project manager and external producer are responsible for budgets, schedules, milestones and reports.
Marketing
The marketing is controlled by the External producer who is in charge of the marketing for the game and to make sure the maximum amount of people will be reached to in the right places, for example if the target audience is young children they will try to get advertisements on children's television channels or if the target audience is teenage to young adult males the best place would be in magazines and advertisements on online sites such as YouTube. More successful games such as the Call of Duty franchise have a large enough advertising budget to put their adverts on daytime TV on channels such as Sky and BBC.
Information for each job was gathered from the site 'creative skillset':
http://www.creativeskillset.org/games/
Thursday, 15 November 2012
What preproduction is needed for Website Design and are the elements important?
When given a task to create a website the first thing you immediately want to do is start creating the website straight away, this is what I did and it did not end well. If you and your group works like this then the project is going to fall apart. Before you do anything you must sit down and do extensive planning for the focus of the website. If you do not plan how you are going to do the project you are going to be unorganized and confused as you get closer to the deadline.
You must decide what the purpose of the website is going to be and what you want to focus on in the project, plan out your goals and make a way to know you have reached these goals like a tick list. This is where you can look back at the focus of the project and build from the ground up instead of trying to put the icing on the cake straight away. You must think about who your audience will be and everything about them, what are their ages, geographical location, learning styles, specific interests and do they have special needs? It's good to focus on your timescale at this point and plan out how you are going to do thing, what point it has to be finished by and if you are in a group then plan out what everyone will do, have plenty of deadlines before the actual deadline. You don't want to be cramming in all the work in the last few days.
You should plan ahead and have specific dates to finish tasks by and if you are working with a budget then base your plan around when you will be paid and how expensive it will be to do specific tasks and how much you can spend on them. You should get a timetable set up as soon as possible and write down everything you want and need to do and make sure to note what can be done at the current time with the current budget until more funding is acquired.
Things to think about with the budget are:
- Copyrighted material
- Purchasing software
- Hiring web/ graphical designers
- Purchasing website templates
- Hosting companies
- Computers for making the site
- Materials for designing the site
While thinking about your budget you should think what materiel you are going to use so you can make sure not to accidentally use copyrighted materiel or if you do want to use certain copyrighted content then you should try to get permission and/or look into how much it will cost to use.
Do some research on other websites with similar content to what you are making for inspiration for your project. Examine what content is in the websites, the structure and animations of the websites and the details they have used. You should not directly copy these sites but it is always good to get an image in your head of what your kind of website should look like. You should, however, go far away from the other styles of those websites and make your own but keep in mind what it is you are making. While designing the website think about how long the site will take to load, make sure to keep it light or users will get bored and skip your website if the loading times are too long for each page. Also make sure you keep the right size as many users may be on slow and/or small computers.
The next step is to start planning out specific features in the website once you have decided the purpose of it. Think of what animations you will have, what pages, login page, shopping cart for an online store, search bar and anything specific to the what the project is whether that is a web store, game site, branding website and so on. The more detail you have the better. Not everything may make it into the project, think about what is really necessary and what will not fit in.
After planning specific features about the website and what you want to have in the website you should start mapping it out. Before you get straight in with building the site think about how it will be organized and structured, what information, video, visual elements, what guidance will be provided for the users and what level of interactivity is necessary, which was a big factor in the last project I did. When thinking about your design its important to think about the accessibility of your website; how will visually impaired users access the flash website and are there suitable instructions and easy to use layouts for new users? This is where it can get difficult as Flash websites do get a lot of criticism for not being accessible to everyone because the text in Flash works differently to standard websites and alternative text can not be given. You can, however, use the accessibility panel to incorporate text equivalents for any graphical images on the site like buttons, animated text and navigation otherwise those with poor site will not be able to navigate or read anything on the site normally. When thinking about those with special needs you may need to create an entirely different copy of your website or build accessibility into the Flash project.
Once accessibility has been thought through you can start planning the website with paper and pencil then move onto photoshop to map out the structure of the major sections of you website. Draw a sketch of the home page and design and incorporate any animations you want. Its important to have an image and style already thought and planned out and have a vision of what the website will look like. Web pages are usually 800 wide by 600 pixels in height. Plan where the header, footer, navigation buttons and main content will be. Make sure the navigation in the site is clear and easily accessible. It's debatable whether you need a homepage on Flash websites but it is always good to have one so users are familiar with the layout of the site. On the homepage should be all the buttons with links to subpages.
The final content for the project is the most important part and the site is always based around it and the content makes the website effective and successful so when it is left to the end, the structure often has to be changed, that is why it should be done early into the design. So think about and write out what text, images, videos and other content are going to be put into the site and how you are going to incorporate it into the websites structure. It's better to make these changes early on rather than making changes close to the deadline.
You should always have a style in your head that really suits the website and users will find easy to use and read by making your own design. However it may be beneficial for the quality of the website to hire a graphical designer or a web designer but it is also an option to buy a website template and save time and money. If you do design your own website you should create your own graphical content to avoid copyright infringement.
Once you have the style and the structure planned and saved somewhere easy to find you can actually start building the website. This should be at least a week into the project if not two weeks depending on how much time you have. If you have done all the planning and made the foundations for your website it will be a much easier process to build and do the coding for the site and there will be a much lower chance to need to go back and make changes.
Once the website has been made the pre production is still not over, you still need to test the website and make a lot of changes from the data you will receive. Test the website by getting at least 10 people to use it and write down what they think of the website. Make sure you have made the website accessible for the visually impaired and those with special needs. It is a good idea to collect data in graphs and lists of changes you should make. In the pre production document you should write down any quotes that made you make visible and coding changes such as the design being changed or faulty coding being fixed or made to look smoother/ better. You should always be doing primary and secondary research for each project.
Once the website is built leave it for a couple of days and come back to evaluate what testers have said about it so you can apply the changes. It is hard to notice anything wrong with your website if you do not take a step back and let others tell you what they think about it and look into it yourself then make the changes.
All the pre production should let you easily make a website with:
- Clean easy to update design/structure so you can return to the website and make changes to make it more accessible and so you can update any content on the site in the future.
- Good usability in the design so it is easy to use and accessible for those who are visually impaired and those with special needs
- Fast loading 'light' pages, or the users will most likely skip your site because it does not load fast enough
- Intelligent use of technology, use the site for correct purposes not just to make fancy introductions and animations
- The website ability to convey the meaning/message and purpose of the website quickly if not instantly, make sure the website has no unnecessary content
If you have planned your budget carefully you can get to a good hosting company to upload your website and register a domain name with leftover money.
Sources for pre production planning:
Website Production Management Techniques
Producing for Web 2.0
The 8 steps of web design
Website Publisher.net
How to build Flash Web Sites
How to build a website with Adobe Flash
Building Flash Websites.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Production Research
What is production research?
When creating a game it is vital to do a lot of research. When making call of duty 4: modern warfare the production managers, animators, designers and more staff went to the middle east and watched actual soldiers practice warfare with tanks and makeshift towns. They did a lot of location research and saw for themselves exactly what the place they would base the game on looks like. While talking to the soldiers and watching them do training excercises they did both content and technical research, by watching how the men worked they were doing authenticity research like how do they talk, what would they do, what would they use and their tactics. Animators and writers took pictures and filmed them working and put their movements, gear, equipment, actions and communication into the game. This research by actually going out and watching first hand lets the game designers and animators make better AI (artificial intelligence) and realisitc and immersive animation and warfare.
Other games like call of duty 1 and 2 and brothers in arms have to do historical research to find out what the towns looked like, what the soldiers did and looked like, what the warfare was like. They must do a lot of research to make the game as historically accurate as possible.
Every company needs to focus on their organizational research, which includes:
When creating a game it is vital to do a lot of research. When making call of duty 4: modern warfare the production managers, animators, designers and more staff went to the middle east and watched actual soldiers practice warfare with tanks and makeshift towns. They did a lot of location research and saw for themselves exactly what the place they would base the game on looks like. While talking to the soldiers and watching them do training excercises they did both content and technical research, by watching how the men worked they were doing authenticity research like how do they talk, what would they do, what would they use and their tactics. Animators and writers took pictures and filmed them working and put their movements, gear, equipment, actions and communication into the game. This research by actually going out and watching first hand lets the game designers and animators make better AI (artificial intelligence) and realisitc and immersive animation and warfare.
Other games like call of duty 1 and 2 and brothers in arms have to do historical research to find out what the towns looked like, what the soldiers did and looked like, what the warfare was like. They must do a lot of research to make the game as historically accurate as possible.
Every company needs to focus on their organizational research, which includes:
- Defining their goals
The company must gather together and look at every idea they like and what they want to do with the game. They have to talk about the style of the game, the music they want, the gameplay.
- Defining their scope on the project
After deciding what they want in the game they must highlight the ideas that will make the final cut and scrap tons of ideas and keep making improvements on those ideas until they know exactly what they want so they can make a good game. The halo franchise often spends most of their time making storyboards that go off in hundred of directions for the games story until they find the right path, and every game usually makes hundreds of designs for player, AI and character models until they find the right design, especially in Halo 4. They have to think how expensive will it all be to make including marketing, staff and copyright materiel and if there are any cheaper options. The most important part is knowing what platform(s) the game will be on, for example most Halo games are Xbox and Xbox360 and Little big planet 1and 2 are PS3 only, whereas most games like modern warfare are on most consoles and PC. The company should decide how much of their funding they can put into marketing the game and how they should do it, most games are putting adverts online, some more successful companies are making live action and gameplay trailers for TV.
- How long it will take
After planning what they will have they will need to know how long the story will take to write, how long the scripting will take for linear and non linear gameplay, who they want to voice act and how long the script writing and audio recording will take for them and how long it will take to design the game levels and game maps for multiplayer. Games like the more recent Halo games also use body model capture so they can implement actual movements and facial recognition into the game, so they have to thing about how long this will take as well. They have look into how long game testing will take, where it will be tested?, who will be testing it?, how will the gameplay be altered? How long will marketing take? Looking at sonic the hedgehog, they designed the character in Japan and the American sega team changed the design of the game and the character which people, especially in America liked much better. They must plan how long it will take, often so they can make a better game and release it before their competition. Like the call of duty and battlefield franchises who go head to head and try to beat each others sales.
- What staff they need
When planning everything about the game the company have to think who can do what and how many people it will take to do specific tasks. They will need researchers, technicians, artists, writers, scripters, map creators, production managers, game testers, musicians, music composers and advertisers. Many bigger game companies like Bungie, 343 studios, Activision and Epic for example have staff ranging up to the hundreds.
- What skills are needed
The number of staff hired is also decided by the skills required to make the game. Many companies hire many people to do one task, like creating 3D character models, designing levels, making the music, motion capture actors, marketing and so on. It would be extremely difficult for only one or two people to do such huge tasks.
- The timescale
It's important to plan ahead and heave deadlines for certain parts of the game to be finished by certain dates so the game can be finished on time and released before their competition. The faster they finish the game the more time they have to polish it. The game Borderlands had a complete art re-design in the last few months before release and this change made the game so much more successful. The company should always keep their work organized and make sure they get tasks done in time.
Friday, 9 November 2012
Understand principles of digital video technology in interactive media
Understand principles of digital video technology in interactive media
The Internet has evolved from 1950s electronic
computers to the ARPANET in the 1960s to the 1982 World Wide Web. Using this
technology people have become connected all over the globe with the use of near
instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, blogs, social
networking and YouTube. With this kind of technology people’s lives have
changed drastically in a good way and when YouTube was launched in 2005 people
have become empowered to make a stand and be heard and everyday people have
become famous. The Internet gives people a voice; anyone can now be seen and
heard by thousands, even millions by posting a video on YouTube or a blog on a
popular website. Site people use to talk and connect to people around the world
and friends are:
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Facebook
·
Twitter
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Tumbler
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Bebo
The website that has had the most drastic impact on
culture, commerce and entertainment for the lives of millions is YouTube.
Before YouTube, normal everyday people would not be heard or seen by the masses
without using more unconventional methods such as holding signs at busy roads
but now they can use a camera, make a YouTube account and post a video for free
on the Internet for everyone in the world to see. Normal people can become Internet celebrities
and have millions of fans without ever having to be on television or be in any
other form of advertisement.
Many businesses struggle to be know and seen in the
media but now they can by having their adverts places on YouTube videos. If
someone has over a million people watching their videos that means a million
people will see that advert. It can be highly beneficial for a company to
sponsor a ‘YouTube star’ to advertise for them. Before the Internet and websites
like YouTube it was very hard for the media to get seen and thousands of jobs
have been created online.
Many people have chosen the Internet and YouTube over
newspapers or television because anyone and everyone can give instant feedback
and give their own views on the subject at hand in comment sections or they can
upload their own videos and blogs talking about subjects that are on the news.
On TV or in newspapers the people take in the news and have to accept it. The
trouble with this is the owners of such newspapers are very powerful and they
can control what people are told only what they allow and we only hear the
viewpoint on the papers or new stations take on the subject. “I believe in censorship. I made a fortune
out of it.” -Mae West. The media is very easy to control, except the
Internet. On the Internet everyone can discuss their own views and talk to
other people around the world, talk about their views and their knowledge on
the subject. On the whole, Internet sites like YouTube and BBC News make the
world much more interactive and offers real time response from people paying
attention to the subject at hand.
Many people are now opting for YouTube over Television
as a source of entertainment because you can choose exactly what you want to
watch and watch it immediately whereas television has adverts or commercial
breaks and its on a schedule so you would have to wait for what you want. There
is now Netflix and many sites like it where you can download entire TV series
and watch it on your computer, tablet, phone and even entertainment system. YouTube
offers a huge variety of entertainment from YouTube celebrities and standard
videos and there are now exciting new high budget series’ that are exclusive to
YouTube. Many famous ‘YouTubers’ choose to stay on YouTube rather that getting
on Television as YouTube offers them a better pay for making videos.
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Picture from Google images
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YouTube has also given everyone his or her own voice.
In many countries the Government don’t like outsiders to know exactly what goes
on inside, like China for example. The Chinese Government tries to stop all
media from filming and talking about the Earthquake that happened this year but
the locals used hand held cameras and their own mobile phones to film
everything going on and despite Government efforts it was all on YouTube and
social networking sites for anyone to see in only a few hours. Anyone can now share their videos and stories
and higher powers can do nothing to stop this. Even if videos are taken down
there is re-blogging, re-posting, re-uploading, there is no possible way to
‘control’ the Internet, despite many powers trying to like SOPA and ACTA acts. There
are no laws and no restrictions, which is why people are being heard who
normally would not have a chance to even cry for help without access to the
Internet.
The ability to film anything at anytime means that it
is no longer necessary to have a large expensive camera with you whereas a
camera phone is practical and people will generally have it on them at all
times. This also means governments are going to have a hard time trying to keep
information confidential, such as wars that go on in third world countries and
dictatorships in which the local governments will try to keep under covers and
censor everything, because people can film everything that goes on with their
mobile phone and upload it onto the Internet where people will find it. Despite
governments banning and blocking websites, people still find ways around this through
other web sites and URLs. It really shows how powerful technology and the
Internet is when we see entire forums, websites and videos from countries in
trouble. “The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.”-John Perry Barlow. It is true, however,
that this would mean nothing if nobody would look it up. “You affect the world by what you browse”.- Tim Berners-Lee. Recent
videos have shocked the world like the video of Dictator Colonel Gaddafi being
finally found and killed by Libyan rebels and filmed on a small camera phone on
October 20, 2011, Sirte – Dates from Google search. Despite higher powers trying to keep the
video hidden the video was leaked and was posted onto many websites which
inevitably lead to news stations posting footage of the colonel in a bloodied
state being dragged by rebels, but still censored anything too graphic.
YouTube has brought people together
as many people who make videos end up talking to each other online and becoming
good friends, like a group on YouTube who go by the name of ‘the creatures’.
|
Picture from Google images
|
It is a growing
concern that powerful companies like Apple
and Google that have maps of the
entire world, phone numbers and personal details on millions of people are
becoming too powerful. But in today’s modern day society we cannot simply put
down our phones, stop using technological communication and avoid computers.
Our society has adapted too easily into using all this technology so fast that
new generations don’t even know what it is like to not have the ability to
phone your friends in a seconds notice, or talk to someone across the world on
applications like Skype which is an
online video chat application. “People
are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.”-Ralph
Nader.
Technology now allows anyone with a camera on their
phone to film low budget, anytime and anywhere because mobile phones are so
portable. Users can now compete and distribute their own videos online with
ease. It is ridiculous how much
technology has advanced over the last few decades. Now anyone with a camera can
film and compress their videos on their computers, even on their mobile phones
now, edit them in software such as adobe
premier pro or windows moviemaker
and upload them onto website such as YouTube. These videos can be uploaded in
formats such as mpg,
.mp4, .mov, .avi, .wmv, .flv, .swf, .3GP and .ASF.
The best video formats for YouTube are MP4, MPEG, MOV
or FLV. The first video ever to be posted on YouTube was a video called ‘me at
the zoo’ and it is the third creator of YouTube in an 18 second video
explaining what he Is seeing at the zoo. The video is only in the resolution
240p which is very poor quality, however over the last few years HD has been
introduced and YouTube has adapted to 360p, 460p and in HD 720p and 1080p
resolutions. This allows anyone to make their own movies, show the world
exactly who they are and show everyone what their life is like. There are more
and more ways being made to make your videos in better quality visually and in
audio for virtually no cost at all. Camera quality is improving drastically as
we can now film in full HD 1080p with professional cameras and on certain
smartphones and then upload these videos onto free to use websites.
Ways of recording can be:
·
Video
camera
·
Phone
·
Web
camera
·
Capture
card
·
Recording
software
There are three main frame rate standards in the TV and
movie-making business: 24p, 25p, and 30p (as progressive formats). However,
there are many variations on these as well as newer emerging standards. This video
is a split comparison of 30fps and 60fps (frames per second):
In gaming the
frame rate only affects the game itself in tow ways, one being low FPS does not
give the game the illusion of smooth motion and this may effect the players
interaction with the game, the other way being that animation is uneven and
choppy. Most games keep their frame rate around 30FPS where it can hold a
consistently smooth animation.
In the film industry amazing advancements have been
made. Before digital storage and filming people had to manually ‘cut and paste’
the film reel together to edit parts. Now they can edit and use software such
as:
·
Adobe
premier pro
·
Adobe
after effects
·
Windows
Moviemaker
·
iMovie
·
Final
cut pro
·
Sony
Vegas
They can easily
edit digital videos with ease and then make multiple copies in seconds. These movies
can then be sent out digitally or stored on a memory stick or burnt onto a DVD,
saved onto a phone or removable hard drive. Films are now being shot with HD
and 3D cameras; we can use motion capture and digital editing to create amazing
visual effects like the film Avatar.
Many TV series today use the same technology as movie making companies do and
they can add filters and special effects to the series to really give it the
desired atmosphere, like the bleak gray scale feel of the walking dead.
But it isn’t easy to make such good quality videos and
use large files, let alone many copies of them.
In order to run such software users will have to have a good fast
processor and lots of RAM otherwise you would be stuck on a very frustratingly
slow computer. Over the last few decades our digital storage has gone up from
something using a gigabytes of RAM being considered a ‘supercomputer’ to a
computer in today’s modern media using several gigabytes of RAM as a
requirement to run a lot of files. Today we can carry around vast amounts of
data in our pockets, on USB memory sticks or even smart phones.
Bit rate is a lot like download speed. It is the bits
per second using kilo, mega, giga or
tera as measurements. Bit rate is the number of bits processed per certain unit
of time
While compressing a video the compression can be lossy
or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating
statistical redundancy which should always be done when uploading a video to a
website such as YouTube. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy
compression reduces bits by identifying marginally important information and
removing it. The process of reducing the size of a data file is popularly
referred to as data compression, although its formal name is source coding
(coding done at the source of the data, before it is stored or transmitted). It
is optional to use lossless compression so no vital parts of the video are
removed which is possible in lossy. –information
gathered from Wikipedia.
Overall technology advancements in the interactive
media have changed the way the world works and working with digital videos much
faster and easier.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Button smashing game
Once over it goes to an endscreen:
This is done with variables.
The blue circle is a movie clip called circle and any boxes where the time or score is is in a dynamic text box.
The whole main code looks like this:
stop(); --- Makes the frame stop on frame 2 after 0
var score = 0;
var time = 30; ---This sets the time to 30
var time = 30; ---This sets the time to 30
circle.onPress = function (){
score +=1; --- This sets the scor up 1 by each click
}
score +=1; --- This sets the scor up 1 by each click
}
onEnterFrame = function (){
if(time <1){
gotoAndStop(2); ---Makes the game go to frame 2 (the 'Times up' screen) once the time hits 0
}
}
For the timer there is a square off the screen that is a movie clip. I went into that shape (double click), set a frame to 24 (as its 2 frames per second) and in the coding I set this:
_root.time -=1
The _root. makes the coding here go to the main scene (action script). The time -=1 makes the time count down which would pass 0 and go into negatives but with the coding above it goes to frame 2 once past 0.
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