1 st Semester Project Introduction Mohammad Zikky, M.T

Syllabus

Rule of Lecture  Must be attend the class 5 minutes before the lecture is begun.  The door will be locked 10 minutes after the lecture is begun  Grade Persentation:  20% Quis  30 % UTS  50% UAS

Overall Lecture Topics  Video Game History  Programming Disciplines  The Game Implementation Process  The Present and the Future of Gaming 4

What Do You Think Goes Into Developing Games?  Consider a video game you want to build (or, one you like that has been built)  Assume you are inspired (or forced or paid) to engineer the game  Take 3-4 minutes to write a list of the tasks required  Chronological or hierarchical, as you wish  Include your name and name of game  What do we have? 5

Video Game History  The Origins  The 1960s  The 1970s  The 1980s  The 1990s  The 2000s

History - The Origins  Disputed origins  1950s, 1960s, 1970s  William Higinbotham  1958  Entertain guests at Brookhaven Ntl Lab  Oscilloscope & Simple Computer  Tennis For Two

History - The 1960s  Tech Model Railroad Club - MIT  Developed Spacewar!  On a PDP-1  9KB  Firsts for industry:  Game to be shared over a network  Widely available  $120,000

History - The 1960s - PDP-1 Paper tapePDP-1 replica

PDP-1 Demonstration

History - The 1960s  Ralph Baer  Developed a couple of games:  Tag  Volleyball  Ping Pong  Together with Bill Harrison  Created the Light Gun

History - The 1960s - Light Gun  How does it work?  Photodiode  Senses light on screen  Screen blacks out  Diode begins reception  Portion of the screen is painted white - typically the target you are aiming for  If diode senses black then white - hit!

History - The 1970s  The first wave of Magnavox Odysseys were sold  ~ $100  Quickly sold 100,000  Sales quickly diminished after

History - The 1970s  Nolan Bushnell & Ted Dabney  Turn Spacewar! Into a coin-op arcade machine  They found a manufacturer in  Nutting Associates  Coin-op manufacturer  1,500 machines  To complex!

History - The 1970s  Bushnell & Dabney  Leave Nutting  Start up a new company  Atari  Simple tennis game  Pong  ~ $1,200  First units on sale  ~ 8,500 units in first year  ~ 19,000 total

History - The 1970s  Atari reluctantly decides to test the home market  Magnavox Odyssey  Atari sells the idea to Sears  $100 version of Pong  Sears’ biggest selling item  Home version of Pong  Atari “on the map”  Household name

Magnavox Odyssey Demonstration

History - The 1970s  1972  Steve Jobs joins Atari  Technician  Exposes Steve Wozniak to Atari and Pong  They later form Apple in 1976

History - The 1970s  1975  Midway  Gun Fight  Two firsts in the industry:  First video game to utilize a microprocessor  Intel 8080  Random events  First video game to be imported from Japan

History - The 1970s  1976  Apple founded  Steve Wozniak  Created Breakout  Two firsts for the industry:  Software was used to run a video game  Breakout was programmed in a computer language  Previously, machine code

History - The 1970s  Namco  1974  Bought the Japanese division of Atari  1979  Developed the first color video game  Galaxian  Instant success

History - The 1980s  Pac-Man  Shows the industry two things:  Innovation is important  Merchandising!  Cereals  TV-Shows  T-Shirts…etc

History s  1985  Nintendo Entertainment System  Bundled with Super Mario Brothers  Dominated the North American market  D-pad now became standard

History - The 1990s  Shareware becomes popular because of:  Doom  Wolfenstein 3D  Demo  First portion of the game  Good way to show off their game  Many companies mimicked id Software

History - The 1990s  1996  3dfx releases the Voodoo chipset  Quake was among the first to utilize standalone graphics cards  Devoted 3D rendering cards  Allowed CPU to handle other computations

History - The 1990s  3D era  32 bit era brings 2 major consoles to consumers  Sega Saturn  Sony Playstation  After many delays…  Nintendo 64  64 bit system  Revolutionary system

History - The 1990s  Nintendo 64  1.5 million units sold in three months  Many critically acclaimed games  Super Mario 64  Goldeneye 007  The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time

History - The 2000s  Current Generation  Microsoft  XBOX  Nintendo  Gamecube  Sony  Playstation 2  DVD capability  PS2 & XBOX  Backwards compatibility  PS2

Current Generation- HD  Popularity of HDTV  Red - Green - Blue  Instead of Yellow  HD offers:  Improved textures  Improved character models  Higher pixel count

Current Generation  Microsoft  XBOX 360  HD-DVD  Nintendo  Wii  Motion sensing technology  Sony  Playstation 3  Playstation 4  Blu-ray

Current Generation

Disciplines  Game Physics Programmer  AI Programmer  Graphics Programmer  Sound Programmer  UI Programmer  Input Programmer  Network Programmer  Game Tools Programmer  Porting Programmer  Lead Game Programmer

Disciplines - Physics  Developing the physics in the game  Processor cycles are at a premium  Efficiency is key  FPS games typically demand large teams of physics programmers

Disciplines - AI  Develops the logic that the game uses  Has developed into a specialized area as of late  Pathfinding, strategy, and enemy tactics  According to Game Developer Magazine - 60% of time  Real time strategy and first person shooters

Disciplines - Graphics  Programmers who specialize in developing and modifying complex 3D graphics  2D graphics abilities are still useful though  Cell Phones  PDAs  Scarce in industry  Demand high salaries

Disciplines - Sound  Full musical scores - been around  3D positional sound - recent  First person shooters  Programmers try to include the newest technologies  Games with large soundtracks or advanced audio, demand teams of sound programmers

Disciplines - User Interface  Very important!  Must be intuitive, useful-feature, clean, and easy to use  Most user interfaces are 2D  Some interfaces are developed with the same 3D technology as the rest of the game  Advanced interfaces allow custom scripting

Disciplines - Input  Writes code that determines how the player will use the input devices  Controller  Joystick  Keyboard & Mouse  Wii controller  Motion sensing technology

Disciplines - Input  Programmers must recognize and adhere to controller standards  WASD  A (X) - accept // next  B (triangle) - back // cancel  If standards are not followed, gamers will be confused

Disciplines - Network  Writes the code that allows players to play the game on a LAN and or on the internet  Very important in Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO)  Latency control is especially important  Programmers cannot assume all consumers have broadband  Must be efficient  Might be dial-up gamers

Disciplines - Game Tools  Write code to handle tasks like scripting, converting art, batches, modifying the game and levels  Half-Life 2  Source SDK  Create levels (Hammer)  Facial animations

Today’s GameTools Alternative 2D Games GameMaker Multimedia Fusion 2 Construct Flixel FlashPunk Stencyl Game Salad 3D Games (&2D Games) Unity UDK XNA BlitzMax jMonkeyEngine Torque First, we wanna try this in workshop..

Disciplines - Porting  Porting is very important, especially for companies like EA  Games available on almost every platform  May involve the tools programmer to help convert content  Some code may have to be re-written to utilize different hardware

Disciplines - Lead  Keeps the programmers focused, and on track  Quite often a middle man between the client and programmers  Should have a general base knowledge of all aspects of the game  Sound  Graphics  Networking  Etc.

The Game Implementation Process  Prototyping  Game Design  Language  API & Libraries  Production  Crunch Time  Maintenance

Process - Prototyping  Very similar to normal applications  Test ideas and algorithms  Give the customer and early glimpse  Early screenshots  Good way to gain early popularity

Process - Language  What language to use?  Many dependencies  Staff  Platform  Language of the game engine  Most popular  C++

Process - API & Libraries  Which API & Libraries to use?  Tons of libraries out there  Sound processing  Input  Graphics rendering  Pathfinding  Also depends on target platform  Libraries for PS2 may not be available for XBOX360  Graphics API?  DirectX  OpenGL

Process - API & Libraries  A collection of APIs  Direct3D  The 3D graphics API  Not portable  Designed specifically for Microsoft products  Pocket PC  XBOX  Windows  Revised more frequently then OpenGL  Utilizes the latest features of 3D graphics cards

Process - API & Libraries  Portable 3D API  Easily ported to and from  Windows MacOS Linux  Revised infrequently OpenGL Tutorial Recommendation:

Process - Production  Bulk of the time  Code…code…code  Design documents are constantly changing  Lead regularly reports status to supervisor  Develop game tools

Process - Crunch Time  Towards the end of the production phase  Productivity is not proportional to extra hours  2x hours != 2x productivity  Adding extra staff may not increase productivity  Quality decreases as time increases

Process - Maintenance  Console  Pre-current generation - next to impossible  Hard drives and online- now possible  Patches and new content  PC  Numerous hardware / software combinations  Patches are inevitable  MMO Genre  Extensive maintenance phase  New content is always required

The Present and the Future of Gaming  Multithreaded Gaming  HD Gaming  Next Generation

Present & Future - Threading  Split up processes  Games w/ multiple threads  Run more efficiently on HT or multicore processesors  XBOX 360 and PS3  Multiple processors

Present & Future – Game Interface  Smart TV  Motion Capture  Etc.

References  Computer and Video Games   Game Programming   History of Computer and Video Games  o_games  Game Programmer   History of Video Game Programming   How does the light gun for a video game work?   History of the video game industry 