Cameras role in effecting games.

"Discuss a good or bad example of camera in a game and how it effected your experience, also discuss the camera view you would like to use in your game."

Cameras are one of the hidden elements of video games but play a crucial role in their development, one that if done badly, can ruin the game entirely. Many games try and concentrate on making their games camera work effortlessly so that the users don't even notice their involvement. However some games have taken a step in a different direction when dealing with their camera movement by giving the player more of a role in establishing how and where the camera is used, this gives the user an extra aspect of the game to concentrate on and another aspect for someone to excel at. This is a main feature of the RTS style of games and especially in one style of game, one of the most competitive online and LAN games in history, Defence of the Ancients, better known DotA. This is the game which i personally believe highlights a good and creative example of camera in a game.

DotA and its two current successors, League of legends, also known as LOL and Heroes of Newerth also known as HON are highly regarded for their ability to play on a competitive online scene and competitive tournament style. The use of camera is one of the key features which gives the game its competitive streak. The ability to use the camera effectively takes countless hours to master and has an extremely high skill cap. (The skill cap is how well the action can be completed, a higher skill cap means although the action could be easy or hard to do, to complete perfectly it takes a lot of skill and practice.)

While i have experienced all three games of the what is being called, Real Action RTS genre, i currently play LOL the most, therefore i will refer to that for example.

League of Legends uses a standard RTS camera view which is free to move wherever you like within the level, the camera can be either moved by using the Up, Down, Left and Right keys on a keyboard, clicking a section in the minimap in which you wish to view or what is the generally more used method, by panning your mouse to the end of the screen in the direction in which you wish the camera to go. Their is also hot keys to make the camera jump straight to certain positions on the map, space bar will send the camera to automatically position your character in the centre of your screen. f2 through f4 will cycle through characters on your team positioning each character in the middle and f5 will put the camera on top of your base. The camera view reveals a small segment of the map, the section will either be clear with the ability to see any activity going, this means an allied unit is within range, or it will be shaded out, this means no allied units are close by. This requires an ability to make sure your awareness of the entire map is alert but that also your character is being constantly watched and played. This comes from your ability to position the camera well and ability to move the camera quickly and accurately. I believe this feature greatly increases the experience of League of Legends and highlights their method of making an easy to implement camera style which is still seen as a great element of the game.

Although the method of our camera is undecided for our game so far, I would like to implement a similar style as League of Legends in the way they have made the camera an additional aspect of the game and not just something that is only focused on in a negative light. I personally like the idea of being able to observe many areas to a lesser extent, whilst keeping focus on one area mainly but having the ability to shift the camera for an instant to the others. For example using reverse in a car racing game. An idea for our game was to implement a secondary item, similar to a flashlight in many FPS games, a kind of mirror which can be used to give the central character the ability too look around corners by changing the camera view.

I greatly enjoy the freedom that skill involved in camera usage in League of Legends and really want to take some of those elements in too thought when developing our own game.

Game Balancing Design

The gaming industry is often seen as a hybrid of industries in the world, due to the fact it tries to cater to so many different elements in each game in produces. Games must tell a compelling story and narrative, they must have interesting and innovative game play and finally, something that is regarded by many as less important, but for others, it's seen as the most important feature of games today. Their competitive side, where the ambition of being ranked number one in the world can control someones life, or when defeat can cause complete disarray and astonishment. This is the world of competitive online gaming.

Online gaming is a world that is expanding rapidly. Originally confined too PC's, the accessibility to online features with the latest consoles means that more and more people have become involved in competitive gaming. Online gaming however, requires different presets than single player or co-op games. One of the toughest parts of creating and maintaining an online game, is making sure the game is balanced. Making sure that there is noway in the game to have an unfair or over powered edge against other people. This takes a delicate balance of many many factors and is something that must be watched continuously.

For my Design Document i'm going to talk about something that is crucial too balancing games and that is an issue for many Australian gamers, ping. Australian gamers are generally at a disadvantage due to the location of servers for most online games, this contributed with the low quality of ISP's in Australia can create less than ideal balancing and can in fact ruin some games. Our game will have a secondary service available for players outside of the optimal playing area, this service will have an in game client with the ability to create a secure shell connection which will streamline the packet handling by forcing it out straight away instead of bundling each packet with additional data packets. This will decrease ping significantly for users with high ping but lesser to people with stable connections in a good zone making it not a requirement therefore making it hog less resources.

Another thing wanting to implement into the game to make increase balancing is UI that takes into account all game play into player matching with other players. This means that instead of a first game determining your player matchmaking statistics, the game matches you with equal opponents easier and makes the game much more enjoyable for those whose abilities increase quicker than those and removes as such a grind feeling to a lot of the game.

Disney Exhibition Reflection

"What inspired you in this exhibition and why?

How might what you have seen influence your work?

Choose a theme, for example it might be colour and develop your writing

around this theme.

Think about the settings in relation to your dioramas.

Think about the Disney style and what reasons might there be for this style."

To be successfully at the forefront of an industry is difficult to do. To sustain your position at the forefront of an industry for continuos decades is an even greater feat and something that makes Walt Disney one of the most impressive and successful companies in history. The Disney exhibition highlights many of the reasons why their company has become successful, such as their innovative use of developing tools, such as going the digital era of animation, their ability to adapt well known stories and characters with out ruining their original counter parts and even their artistic ability to give less than life like characters a life like feel. However i believe that the core of their accomplishments come from something that holds all the other elements together and is something that the Walt Disney company does better than almost any other company in the world, and that is the way that the company has formed itself so that whenever anyone sees a disney production people already have predictions of what to expect from the overall tone and feel of the film. This gives Disney a huge edge on other companies and is personally something that i think contributes too their success greatly.

Watching movies and television is a pastime that almost every person today takes part in, hence why the industry is one the biggest in entertainment and many companies strive after the advantage that Disney has obtained after many years, the advantage that they already know the mind set of the average person who is going to be viewing their movie at a time. People have such a strong expectation of what a Disney movie feel is going to be, which means that the choice too watch a Disney movie often only occurs when someone is in a mood that suits the movie. For example if your in the mood for a thrilling movie too make you think, generally you would past straight over a Disney movie, not because you dislike it but simply because you are not in the mood. The same works in a way that if your looking for something to cheer you up or where you see a good triumph over a evil you know that a Disney movie will do it even without knowing the story beforehand. Disney revolves around this and it is reflected by the pieces in the exhibition.

Disneys whole production work around making sure that their "feel" stays within peoples minds without making their films seem like repeats and completely predictable. It stems from using characters that are already well known, such as Cinderalla. Most people already know these characters which means that generally when people begin the film, they feel as if they have a connection with the character from a level outside of the film, this greatly enhances peoples sympathies with the characters, so when a good outcome happens, the feelings of happiness are relayed back to the viewer much stronger than if the characters was unknown before the film.

The Disney exhibition personally was most enjoyable to me because i believed that it showed a lot of the thought process which went into the way that their company was shaped and the way it showed how Walter Disney had a vision for his company and the way he built his company too mean more than an animation studio, but create almost a Disney emotion.

Graphics Resolutions Affecting Character Perceptions.

Many industries are often expected to produce work with many different flawless qualities that make up the whole package, if one of these qualities is lacking, often regardless of the quality of the end product, it is still doomed a failure. The games industry is one of the leading industries with this issue.

Gamers all alike expect certain things from a game, but two of the most crucial areas are Graphics Resolution and Character Perception. Personally i believe that the two don't always run hand in hand with each other and in fact, they can even harm each other.

Too make a character someone can easily connect with is no easy challenge and can be something that can make a good game great or even a good game average. The core of this challenge is split into a few characters and whilst graphics resolution does play a role, it is not the most important. One of my personal favourite games is Conkers Bad Fur Day, (released on the Nintendo 64, 2001) the games central character Conker, is so likeable that it made me feel connected with the character, making me care more what happened to him and generally more engaged with the game. These feelings were strongly affected by character dialogue, using other characters behaviour to contrast agaisnt the main character to increase his like ability and finally the artistic design of the character. However as the ability to upgrade and upgrade the graphics resolution of our characters increased, our other elements that made us enjoy our older characters stayed at the same level and infact, with more and more resources being needed for graphics resolution, it could be said that the other elements started to decrease. So many games now have a kind of "yeah my character looks awesome, but what makes him so awesome?"

So personally i believe that while graphics resolution does play a crucial role in your perception of a character, there is a simply a lot more than just looks.