Game engines

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

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

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

Name: Stuart Preston

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

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

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

VIDEO GAMES / VIDEO GAME TESTING

Demo A game demo is a freely distributed piece of an upcoming or recently released video game. Demos are typically released by the game's publisher to help consumers get a feel of the game before deciding whether to buy the full version.

This allows our customers to play the game so that it proves the worth of the game proves their money as a consumer this is very important because if this is not here most would not mind but quite a few people would not consider buying this product if it did not have a demo

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

Beta Computers. A quality-control technique in which hardware or software is subjected to trial in the environment for which it was designed, usually after debugging by the manufacturer and immediately prior to marketing.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/beta+test

It is a label given to games which are not finished but in a playable development phase so you can catalogue your different versions under even more category’s so you find your latest version more easily

Alpha An early test of new or updated software or hardware conducted by the developers or manufacturers prior to beta-testing by potential users.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/alpha%20test

It is also a label giving to games which describes a functional game first stage because pre alpha is normally the dysfunctional stage where it is just being created and then alpha becomes the first stage where they can test a stable version of the actual gameplay

Pre-Alpha A development status given to a program or application that is usually not feature complete, and is not usually released to the public. Developers are usually still deciding on what features the program should have at this status. This status comes before the alpha version, and is the first status given to a program.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pre-alpha_version

Its normally the stage where the game has come of out of the design stage and is actually being made and this is where all the first creations of the game are made and how all the features planned balance out and actually work out and in envisioned in the game

Going gold is the fact that

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

Gold It means that the development cycle is complete. As well as the Bug Fixing cycle (doesn't mean that bugs can't be discovered later). And the Master Disc (gold) is off to the factory for replication and distribution

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/playstation-discussion-1000002/what-does-it-mean-when-a-game-goes-gold-26614050/

the game is now in master production and no more to be added to the game in the development area

Debug Debugging is the routine process of locating and removing computer program bugs, errors or abnormalities, which is methodically handled by software programmers via debugging tools. Debugging checks, detects and corrects errors or bugs to allow proper program operation according to set specifications. Also known as debug.

http://www.techopedia.com/definition/16373/debugging

Debugging allows you to refine your game into the smoothest experience you want it to be and possibly find game breaking bugs which will seriously hinder selling of the product

Automation automatically controlled operation of an apparatus, process, or system by mechanical or electronic devices that take the place of human labour

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/automation

This allows the production to be streamlined always and its good if you need something to be running always

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

White-Box Testing

Also known as glass box, structural, clear box and open box testing. A software testing technique whereby explicit knowledge of the internal workings of the item being tested are used to select the test data. Unlike black box testing, white box testing uses specific knowledge of programming code to examine outputs. The test is accurate only if the tester knows what the program is supposed to do. He or she can then see if the program diverges from its intended goal. White box testing does not account for errors caused by omission, and all visible code must also be readable.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/White_Box_Testing.html

This allows you to break the game to see how it responds so if certain problems only happen if you mess around with the internal game instead of inside the game simulation and then you fix the game so it can run more smoothly or fix certain objects and entities in the game

Bug A software bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from behaving as intended (e.g., producing an incorrect or unexpected result). Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's source code or its design, and a few are caused by compilers producing incorrect code Almost the same... It is generally used like this is a bug that is something that a player can abuse to improve his in-game resources, or make a game easier and simpler to him

http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_bug_and_glitch

A bug is an unwanted error created in the game due a mistake or failure within the system or a fault with the coding itself and these bugs need to be ironed out so that you can create a pleasant game experience in your game and make it run as smooth as possible and most enjoyment for the consumer

GAME ENGINES

Vertex Shader

A programmable function in display adapters that offers graphics application programmer flexibility in rendering an image. The vertex Shader is used to transform the attributes of vertices (points of a triangle) such as colour, texture, position and direction from the original colour space to the display space. It allows the original objects to be distorted or reshaped in any manner.

http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/53754/vertex-shader

This allows for us to be flexible in the way that we render our images and how it done afterwards and add effects to the image that just would cause the game unneeded performances hits if it was hardcoded into the game

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

GAME ENGINES

Pixel Shader

Pixel shaders are tiny programs that can do operations on a single pixel on the screen, as opposed to geometry shaders and vertex shaders which work on the geometrical primitives (triangles) that make up everything you see on the screen. The most common use for pixel shaders is 'shading', approximation to real world lighting. Commonly used shading model is Phong.

Pixel shaders are executed on your video card, so your video card needs to support them. Each new version provides more capabilities, so an older video card will not run newer shaders. A new version of the pixel Shader specification (e.g. Pixel Shader 3.0) is usually released for each new version of DirectX (more accurately, Direct3D).

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/22286/what-is-a-pixel-shader

When you need to create shading to make a game look up to standard with the industry these days and games these days have tons of shading went it comes to the outdoor part of games when you got to make it look natural outdoors in their games and that is what shaders are mainly used for

Post Processing

The term post-processing (or post process for short) is used in the video/film business for quality-improvement image processing (specifically digital image processing) methods used in video playback devices, (such as stand-alone DVD-Video players), and video players software and transcoding software. It is also commonly used in real-time 3D rendering (such as in video games) to add additional effects

This allows us to process the image into a higher image quality and adjust the image to add may not have been in the original image when it was taken and post processing allows you to add this

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

Rendering Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model by means of computer software. Rendering is used in architecture, simulators, video games, movies and television visual effects and design visualization. Rendering, the last step in an animation process, gives the final appearance to the models and animation with visual effects such as shading, texture-mapping, shadows, reflections and motion blurs. Autodesk develops industry-specific software with rendering capabilities. Many rendering programs by Autodesk can be processed and output to a digital image or raster graphics image file.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=17940930&siteID=123112

Rendering Is generating the image that has been created by the design team and is now being put into this game and rendering allows you to do this with such customisability for the final product

Normal Map

In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping, or "Dot3 bump mapping", is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents – an implementation of bump mapping. It is used to add details without using more polygons. A common use of this technique is to greatly enhance the appearance and details of a low polygon model by generating a normal map from a high polygon model or height map.

Normal maps are commonly stored as regular RGB images where the RGB components correspond to the X, Y, and Z coordinates, respectively, of the surface normal.

This is way to create more realistic impacts of bumps and dents by using lighting and enhancement and greatly enhances the details of the game objects by creating as it called a map

Entity An entity is something that exists in itself, actually or hypothetically. It need not be of material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate.

Sometimes, the word entity is used in a general sense of a being, whether or not the referent has material existence, e.g., is often referred to as an entity with no corporeal form (non-physical entity), such as a language. It is also often used to refer to ghosts and other spirits.

The word entitative is the adjective form of the noun entity. Something that is entitative is "considered as pure entity; abstracted from all circumstances", that is, regarded as entity alone, apart from attendant circumstances

An entity is what going to make up most of the games content because say you pick up a gun which is an entity if entity was not there everything would not be interactive it would set movie set in a game

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

UV Map This process projects a texture map onto a 3D object. The letters "U" and "V" denote the axes of the 2D texture [note 1] because "X", "Y" and "Z" are already used to denote the axes of the 3D object in model space.

UV texturing permits polygons that make up a 3D object to be painted with colour from an image. The image is called a UV texture map, [1] but it's just an ordinary image. The UV mapping process involves assigning pixels in the image to surface mappings on the polygon, usually done by "programmatically" copying a triangle shaped piece of the image map and pasting it onto a triangle on the object. [2] UV is the alternative to XY, it only maps into a texture space rather than into the geometric space of the object. But the rendering computation uses the UV texture coordinates to determine how to paint the three-dimensional surface.

The uv map is programming colours or textures onto a 3d object and used to take certain colour made by other people their images and then assign that to your texture

Procedural Texture

Procedural texture is a computer-generated image created using an algorithm intended to create a realistic representation of natural elements such as wood, marble, granite, metal, stone, and others. Usually, the natural look of the rendered result is achieved by the usage of fractal noise and turbulence functions. These functions are used as a numerical representation of the “randomness” found in nature

This is a computer generated image which creates realistic Representation of natural elements even in the smaller parts of the model since it is computer generated environment and it saves the time of the actual workforce to work on something else

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

Physics Computer animation physics or game physics involves the introduction of the laws of physics into a simulation or game engine, particularly in 3D computer graphics, for the purpose of making the effects appear more real to the observer. Typically, simulation physics is only a close approximation to real physics, and computation is performed using discrete values.There are several elements that form components of simulation physics including the physics engine, program code that is used to simulate Newtonian physics within the environment, and collision detection, used to solve the problem of determining when any two or more physical objects in the environment cross each other's path.

A way to introduce real life physics in games mainly used in simulators because they need to be very realistic in how you go about doing the games physics and how you deal with what will happen with the entity the player is controlling

Collision Collision detection typically refers to the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. While the topic is most often associated with its use in video games and other physical simulations, it also has applications in robotics. In addition to determining whether two objects have collided, collision detection systems may also calculate time of impact (TOI), and report a contact manifold (the set of intersecting points).[1] Collision response deals with simulating what happens when a collision is detected (see physics engine, ragdoll physics). Solving collision detection problems requires extensive use of concepts from linear algebra and computational geometry.

Collison also referred to as hit boxes I used mainly for fps games to entity the bullet and the players connect in the right way if they connect off body or after they hit especially are game breaking

Lighting Introducing lighting into your game is potentially a step towards realism. In OpenGL you can introduce multiple light sources that are either static or dynamic. You have a large amount of control over the characteristics of the light sources at the expense of speed. It is important to realise that a scene can still have the effects of lighting without a light source. More about this at a later stage.

http://relativity.net.au/gaming/java/Lighting.html

Lighting I used in almost all games they can be used to create more realistic environments and more graphically intense games that want to create the next benchmark

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

AA – Anti-Aliasing

Antialiasing is a way of smoothing edges. Computer monitors display pixels, but real objects have curves and lines. In order to display these on a computer monitor, the edge is often jagged. Antialiasing helps reduce the problem by slightly blurring edges to the point where jagged lines don't show easily or at all.

http://compreviews.about.com/od/PC-Gaming/a/What-is-antialiasing-in-PC-games.htm

Anti-aliasing is way to smooth edges and blurring edges so that certain parts of objects so that it tricks the consumer into believing it’s a more detailed then it is

LoD – Level of Detail

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

http://www.techopedia.com/definition/11791/level-of-detail-lod

Level of detail is used in to determine the fact what graphic quality it is in the game and the higher level of detail is used the higher performance Is used by the computer playing it

Animation Computer animation, or CGI animation, is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer-generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images while computer animation only refers to moving images.Modern computer animation usually uses 3D computer graphics, although 2D computer graphics are still used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and faster real-time renderings. Sometimes, the target of the animation is the computer itself, but sometimes the target is another medium, such as film.Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques used in traditional animation with 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations. Computer-generated animations are more controllable than other more physically based processes, such as constructing miniatures for effects shots or hiring extras for crowd scenes, and because it allows the creation of images that would not be feasible using any other technology. It can also allow a single graphic artist to

Animation is a way to move still objects created in a computer design software it always used in game to move the character which has been created by a design team and it always put in games and is needed for a successful creation of a game

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

produce such content without the use of actors, expensive set pieces, or props.

Sprite A computer graphics, a sprite (also known by other names; see Synonyms below) is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene. Initially including just graphical objects handled separately from the memory bitmap of a video display, this now includes various manners of graphical overlays. Originally, sprites were a method of integrating unrelated bitmaps so that they appeared to be part of the normal bitmap on a screen, such as creating an animated character that can be moved on a screen without altering the data defining the overall screen. Such sprites can be created by either electronic circuitry or software. In circuitry, a hardware sprite is a hardware construct that employs custom DMA channels to integrate visual elements with the main screen in that it super-imposes two discrete video sources. Software can simulate this through specialized rendering methods.More recently, CSS sprites are used in web design as a way to improve performance by combining numerous small images or icons into a larger image called a sprite sheet or tile set, and selecting which icon to show on the rendered page using Cascading Style Sheets. As three-dimensional graphics became more prevalent, sprites came to include flat images seamlessly integrated into complicated three-dimensional scenes.

A sprite is a 2d object which is an old school characters onto games but it is still used in games today mainly to create indies game and wait to create a small budget game where the graphics and be easily done by small number of people instead of 3d animating entire characters

Scene A cut scene is a short cinematic clip in a video game to describe a circumstance the character is involved in, also used for entertainment purposes or no real purpose at all. Girls enjoy cut scenes because they are visually stimulating and help to explain the plot of the game. Guys usually prefer to skip cut scenes even though they can contain useful hints and tips towards completing levels and earning special achievements

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cut%20scene

A scene is a more of cut scene is normally used to create plot points within a game and create tension and excitement with plot twist and realisations of certain characters in the game

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

Library A game engine is made up of class libraries. They do not stop being class libraries simply because they are within a game engine. A library is a useful framework to tackle a specific need within a game engine. A framework that entails the needs for a complete game is a game engine.

http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/10770/whats-the-difference-between-a-library-and-an-engine

Libraries are what game engines are made up of they help specify something within the game engine and they construct the framework needed to complete the engine itself

UI The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is effective operation and control of the machine on the user's end, and feedback from the machine, which aids the operator in making operational decisions. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls, and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology. Generally, the goal of human-machine interaction engineering is to produce a user interface which makes it easy self-exploratory efficient and enjoyable user friendly to operate a machine in the way which produces the desired result. This generally means that the operator needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output, and also that the machine minimizes undesired outputs to the human.

A user interface is what you need to have to make the user understand what the game mechanics in the game and how to understand the situation in the game and effectively beat the situation you have handed them in your game

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

Frames A graphic panel in a display window, especially in a web browser, which encloses a self-contained section of data and permits multiple independent document viewing.

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=define+Frames

Frames are what designed by the studio one by one mostly repeated because there is normally hours’ worth of content in a game

Concept A general idea derived or inferred from specific instances or occurrences.Something formed in the mind; a thought or notion. See Synonyms at idea.A scheme; a planhttp://www.thefreedictionary.com/concept

An idea a company has thought up and now need to push it up the chain to see if management will accept this idea and then start work on the title

Event Something that happens or is regarded as happening; an occurrence, especially one of some importance. the outcome, issue, or result of anything

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/event

Event is normally a quick time event I normally used to create interactive cut scenes so you can be part of every part of the game

Path finding Path finding or pathing is the plotting, by a computer application, of the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the shortest path on a weighted graph.

https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=Define+Path+finding

Path finding is for the ai used in the game since it is not player controlled there movement need to be an ai controlling the movement too so path finding allows you to create paths the ai teammates will use in different situations

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