Potatoe Run

Liam Roche
Potatoe Run

Potatoe Points are the currency of the game, the potatoes are worth the same amount of points as the level your on, if you're on level 7, the potatoes will be worth 7 points each. Potatoe Points are used to upgrade your Trolley, the upgrades you can get are style, and boosts, which will assist you later on in the game, the following Boost Upgrades are as listed below
- Speed * * * * *
- Stability * * * * *
- Jump * * * * *
- Rocket * * * * *
- Spud Gun * * * * *
Upgrades have Tiers.
- Below Average Trolley Tier (One Star)
- Average Trolley Tier (Two Star)
- Better Trolley Tier (Three Star)
- How Is This Possible Trolley Tier (Four Star)
- Holy Trolley Tier (Five Star)
The tiers are shown as stars, which are grey when they've not been purchased, but upon purchase they become a rainbow color.
- Style
Style is the customization of your trolley, you can choose its handle bar color, and the metals color, you can even buy BONUS customization tools, with Potatoe Points, such as giving your trolley a halo, or making the ghost of Frederick Skausor appear sitting in the trolley, even better... YOU CAN CUSTOMIZE FREDERICK SKAUSOR HIMSELF, want him to have a ghostly Afro? No problem bro, with them slick Potatoe Points you gathered in the game you can get it! Worrying about wasting Potatoe Points on customizing? No need to fear! You can reply a level from earlier on in the game and recollect the Potatoe Points, so technically speaking you could play until you had over 9000 Potatoe Points!

The Story!

One day Frederick "Potato" Skausor, commonly referred to as the "Potato Maniac" was on his way to his favorite shop, "Potatoes R' US" to buy a whole new batch of Potatoes so he could make his favorite food, Potatoe on Toast. On the way out of "Potatoes R' US" his trolley of potatoes was about to be hit by a car, so Frederick valiantly saved them by pushing the trolley out of harms way, unfortunately putting himself in danger, the car tried to brake... But it was too late, Frederick was lying on the floor of the car park, his lifeless eyes staring at the trolley of potatoes that he had saved. But he had not been forsaken by the Lord of Potatoes, he had been reborn, his soul was transferred into the trolley he had saved. In his new found body, Frederick had a mission, to venture the world, whether it be the mountains or the ferocious seas, or even the entire galaxy, Frederick was out to collect every single potatoe he could find... He wanted the title "Lord of Potatoes" it gave meaning to his new life... "Frederick the Lord of Potatoes" sounded so rad that he set off right away! But soon after the government caught word of the Trolley "stealing" potatoes, so they had to take initiative... They got JANETTE, the old lady from next door, and cloned her... creating EVIL JANETTE's, which endeavored to stop and destroy Frederick.

UNIT 78 : Digital Graphics for Computer Games

Pixel Art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, which means the images are edited at pixel level. Graphics in most old computer, console,and mobile phone games are mainly pixel art, because pixel art doesn't require a huge memory, meaning that most old pix-elated games would've been 8bit. Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, and Pearl are all games with pixel art because it was played on a Nintendo DS which is a hand held device, meaning they couldn't have a massive 32bit game, making the game 8bit. 

Concept Art

Concept art is a form of art used to convey an idea for use in films, video games, animation, and comic books before it is put into the final product. Concept art is also known as visual development or concept design. Concept art is usually high detail art work of a certain game making the game look incredible, which would make people want to buy it, although concept art is usually never actually a scene from the game, it is completely new and is used only for this purpose of luring in customers.

Texture Art

In the visual arts, texture is the perceived surface quality of a piece of art. It is an element of 2D and 3D designs and is prominent by its perceived visual and physical effects. Use of texture, along with other elements of design, can represent a variety of messages and emotions.

Background Graphics

Background graphics refer to the ground, or parts of a scene, situated in the rear, common examples would be the walls, and the clouds. So for example, in the game Super Mario Brothers, you run along the path jumping up, and beating bad guys, whilst trying to save a princess, in the background you can see the clouds, a blue sky, and a few trees and hills in the background, these are the background graphics in this certain game.

Print Media Art

Print media art is important to games, this is because a lot of people are attracted by colorful art designs for game, whilst others might think they look pretty rad, this applies to posters, and packaging etc. The box cover for the game has to relate to the game itself, otherwise when people buy it and its nothing like its media art, they'll be extremely disappointed, it must be eye catching, it also has to have the title of the game on the front, box art is never game play of the actual game, else it might ruin some of the game play or what not, however it is usually a form of concept art, this is to make the game look rad, so people will buy it.

Digital Graphics

Raster Images

In computer graphics, a raster graphics image is a dot matrix data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, view-able bydigi monitor, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats. A bitmap, a single-bit raster,  corresponds bit-for-bit with an image displayed on a screen, generally in the same format used for storage in the display's video memory, or maybe as a device-independent bitmap. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel (a color depth, which determines the number of colors it can represent).

Vector Images

Vector graphics uses geometrical bearings such as points, lines, curves, and maybe polygons to represent images in computer graphics. Vector graphics are based on vectors which are basically paths, which lead through locations commonly referred to as  control points. Each of these points has a definite position on the x and y axes of the work and determines the direction of the path; also, each path may be assigned a stroke color, shape, thickness, and fill. These changes don't increase the size of vector graphics files in a substantial manner, as all information is inside of the document itself, which describes how the vector should be drawn. Vector graphics can be zoomed in on without the loss of the image quality, while pixel-based graphics cannot be zoomed in on without losing some of the images quality.

Pixel

Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster images and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail, and possibly a larger file size.

Image resolution can be measured in a few ways. Resolution quantifies how close lines can be to each other but can still be visibly determined. Resolution units can be tied to physical sizes to the overall size of a picture (lines per picture height, also known simply as lines). Line pairs are often used instead of lines; a line pair incorporates a dark line and a bordering light line. A line is either a dark line or a light line. 

Picture resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. Resolution is identified by the width and height an image as well as the total number of pixels in the image. For example, an image that is 720 pixels wide and 360 pixels high which is 720 x 360 contains 259,200 pixels in total, although it could be simplified to 0.3 megapixels.

File Extensions

File extensions consist of BMP, GIF, PNG TIFF, JPEG, PSD, WMF, AI, etc. File extensions let the user know what program made a certain file, for example, if you made an image in Photoshop you would usually save it as a .PSD file, although that might be inconvenient so you may save the Photoshop photo as a different file instead, such as a .JPG because a .JPG file is a lot smaller than a .PSD photo, in a folder the file would be seen as Example.PSD or Example.JPG, the photo being called "Example" and the file extension being added on at the end.

Compression

Compression means compressing the file, which ultimately makes the file smaller, there are two forms of compression there's lossy and lossless. Lossless is a compression algorithm that allows the data, in this case an image, to be perfectly reconstructed, meaning that although the image file has been reduced, the image hasn't lost any of its quality. Lossy on the other hand when the file is compressed it removes some of the information. Lossy is mainly used for sound and video, because humans cannot hear or see everything, and lossy compression removes all of this unnecessary information, so while it loses some of its information, the average person wouldn't notice a difference, because they couldn't notice it in the first place.

Optimizing

Target Image Output: If you're aiming to get the best possible image quality you can, you should try and get the best image output. For example, if you're watching TV and your TV is a HDTV the best image output you can access is 1080p, if you're on a computer and watching Youtube, the best image output is 720p.

Image bit Depth: Image bit depth refers to the color information stored in the image. The more bit depth the image has, the more colors it can access.

Image Resolution: Image resolution is the detail a certain image holds. The higher the images resolution, the more detail that image has, so if you're trying to get a top notch quality image and have no regards to the size of the image file, you'll want the highest resolution possible. However if you're considerate of how big the image file is, you might want to lower the image resolution slightly so that the image file isn't massive.

Image Dimensions: The image dimensions refer to the height and width. The dimensions are usually pixels, however some software does allow you to measure the height and width in mm, cm and inches. If you're creating a small image and want the quality to be extremely high, you would want the images dimensions to be small, perhaps 360 x 180 if you're creating a logo. 

Compression: As stated earlier, there are two types of compression being Lossless and Lossy. I'm sure there's no reason for me to go through them again.

Image Capture

Scanner: A scanner ultimately scans, whether its writing, images, or printed text, and turns them into digital images. Scanners are commonly used in businesses, especially those that involve office work.

Digital Camera: Digital Cameras are possibly the easiest way to capture an image, just the press of a button and the image is took, and the image that you desired, is now yours. There's a variety of camera types, the main one being DSLR which usually cost the bomb. A DSLR camera is what the professionals use, its big and bulky, but takes some incredible photo's with incredibly high graphics.

Graphic Tablets: A graphic tablet is an input device which goes into one of your computers USB ports. Graphic tablets are a great way to draw digital art, because you draw on the pad with a pen, and that is then shown on your computer and whatever art application you're using, its a lot easier than using a mouse to draw professional art. Another type of Graphic tablet is where you draw the image on the tablet itself, and then upload it onto the computer.

Storage of Image Assets

File Size: Image file formats are the easiest and most normal way to store and organize digital graphics. They consist of pixels and vector data, or perhaps a mixture. Image file sizes are shown by the number of bytes it is. The more pixels it has and the higher its resolution, means it has a lot of bytes, meaning the file size will be large.

File Naming Conventions: The most image common image file formats are JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF. JPG is the most commonly used image file format. Digital Cameras and Webpages usually use JPG files, this is because JPG files compress the data, making the file a lot smaller.

Asset Management: Digital asset management is made out of managing tasks and makes decisions, perhaps for a catalog, or the storage and distribution of certain assets. Digital asset management systems have certain computer software and perhaps hardware systems that assist it.

UNIT 78 : Digital Graphics for Computer Games Exercise 1

Abstract

The art style abstraction focuses more on colors, shapes, and quirky designs, as you can see to the right. The colors it uses are a light blue, green, a golden yellow, dark purple, and you can also see the background is light purple, with large dark purple squares scattered on it, keeping to the abstraction art style, by making use of the shapes. You can also see that the spikes are triangle, and you have the blue foamy looking cloud on the floor below. You're the spiky looking ball. The game isn't just making use of the normal shapes, as you can see the game has made the circle (you) have a funky design too. This is just one level of the game Geometry Dash, each level has a different shape/color theme, on a different level the background might be light pink with dark pink circles scattered on it, or a green background with red triangles on it. The color also changes during the level as you progress further. https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=hRJatj8IC7s this link is a perfect example, it shows you someone playing Geometry Dash, through levels 1 to 12, if you pay attention you will notice the colors change during every level, as you can tell from watching the video, each level has a different color theme and shape theme, one of the levels may focus more on circles than it does triangles. Geometry Dash was developed by Robert Topala, it was designed in 2013 for mobile and Steam and it was published by his company, RobTop Games, it can play on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Microsoft Windows, and OS X. The games genre is Arcade and Music, and is a single player game. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometry_Dash

Cel-Shading

The art style cel-shading, which can also be referred to as toon-shading is a type of non-realistic rendering, which is designed to make 3-D computer graphics appear to be flat. It has a more comic look too it, the concept art such as characters, vehicles and weapons, even the environment, looks like a colored in comic, a prime example of a cel-shaded game would be Team Fortress 2, and the Borderlands game series.

As you can see to the right, the image is very cartoon like, if you look closely at the image, you'll see almost everything is outlined in black, the woman, the rocks, and the robot. Cel-shaded games usually try and stick to more simpler colors, and try to avoid the bright neon colors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzGYm7H3tig If you watch this video you'll see that the artwork is fairly simple, and nothing too extravagant, everything has a fine black outline around it. The in-game interface, such as the mini-map in the top left corner of the video is also very simple. You can also see the experience bar and his level at the bottom of the screen which have a very simple design to it, and to the right of the experience bar you can see how much ammo he has in his weapon, which has the same design as the experience bar, in the left corner of his screen you can see a health bar, this looks identical to his weapon bar except they're both different colors. The combat in the game isn't over the top and the animations are fairly simple. As you can see in the image, the sky is just the color blue with no clouds in, even in-game seeing clouds in the sky is definitely not a common occurrence, meaning the game is pretty simple in the sky department. The game Borderlands 2 is only 32bit, meaning it's made to be played on the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.

Exaggeration

Exaggeration is a playful art style that is used in various games. The art style concentrates on using very over the top graphics, which usually sends a message to the player that this game is NOT meant to be taken very seriously. Anime is also a widely used art style that is considered over the top and exaggerated. A game uses the exaggerated/anime art style is Catherine.

The image to the right is a screenshot of the game Catherine were the man has woken up to find a girl in his bed, as you can see his reaction is exaggerated and also priceless, his jaw is gaping and his eyes have widened in disbelief. You can also see how this game follows the anime art style because of how defined he is, check out that collar bone for example, and his jaw line is amazingly perfect. The concept art of this game is definitely very anime like, as you see in the background he has books or DVDs on a shelf, which is also very defined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIWw3nuuADU After watching the video you can see the game is extremely anime like, and also unrealistic, like when he's asleep and views everyone as a sheep and has ram horns himself? Yeah not real kids. Almost all the reactions are very over the top, and especially when something "shocking" happens and his face gives you the most ridiculous look ever, like seriously, how does he do that? 

Photo-realism

Photo-realism is the style of art in a game, where the artist's are attempting to make the scene so realistic and defined, it could be mistaken for a real photograph. A great example of Photo-realism would be the new next gen game, 'Until Dawn' were all of the characters in the game, look just like their voice actors, (except the monsters of course).

The girl on the right is one of the main characters in the game, as you can see the in-game character has an uncanny resemblance to the voice actor. All the concept art in 'Until Dawn' whether it's a weapon, a vehicle or the environment, they look incredibly realistic compared to most other games. Until Dawn is a 64bit game due to how massive the game itself is, and can only be played on next generation consoles, or PC's that are made for gaming. The in-game interface only appears when given options, which you would then choose, you do not have a stamina bar, health bar, or an experience bar. Photo-realism helps add that feeling of immersion in a game because of how realistic the style can be.