Sunday 17 April 2016

Plan for my game sounds

Recording the sounds

One the first day i will be figuring out what i am going to record, note down everything i need to put into the game and go out and do it. this is maybe the easiest bit the only problem i see is finding the right sound that i want for my game of space invaders. for the shooting of the gun on the main character i guess i could hit a table with my hand or something just for a second and edit it highly and make it crushed and more 8-bit like. for when you destroy an enemy i could try to make a sound of something shattering maybe or a bang on something and edit that like the shooting. i will be recording the sounds with my phone mic (which is 20 hz) meaning that the preferred platform for this would be a mobile device due to the compressed format of the file made by the phone as the audio will be very lossy and crushed without a lot of compression on my end.

Mood

the mood i am going for in my game is a very atmospheric space kind of theme, this means a lot of bleeps and bloops to signify that it takes place in the future and that the technology is far more advanced and complicated than the technology that we have here in the present day. maybe even adding more abstract sounds just to break out of the norm of usual and typical sounds that come with a space invader clone, maybe mixing the formula up by adding in some other qwerky sounds into the game, maybe even adding some sounds that are iconic to me and actually mean something more than just a usual sound brought into a game only to serve one purpose and one purpose only.

background music

The sounds for my game would have to fit with a space invader type theme, like a space type fast paced track running in the background to add atmosphere to the whole game. this music would obviously be stereo to fit the whole theme of the game being stereo. i can make this in Soundation online by mixing some instruments together and making a tune. or i could use some software that i own at my own PC called FL studio which is a professional music making software. the background music will be on a loop, there will also be a challenge of making a minute/two minute long song on a loop without it getting annoying to the player and having them dislike the game because of this reason.

Adding the sounds to the game

The intro beat to my game



The main theme to the game
The begin noise when the game starts
The bullet noise

Summary

Here you can find a video of the sounds actually in the game and the iconography behind some of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-E4r6l5EWM&feature=youtu.be

How i would say i feel after the overall finished piece is happy actually, i originally planned to record the sounds with my iphone and then upload them to my computer but it turns out the mic on my headset (it being a razer kraken) it was actually far better than recording on my phone and allowed me to add just that little bit more professionalism to the finished product. i also was thinking about making the two beats for the game in FL studio but actually turned to soundation as it allowed me to do everything i wanted to do in FL studio but just ten times easier. lastly i planned to edit the sounds in adobe but ended up editting them in audacity which is a little less proffesional but allowed me to do the exact same things i would have ended up doing in adobe anyway.

Tuesday 12 April 2016

Black jack game

Blackjack Game

The game i was assigned to create is of course blackjack or pontoon, whatever you want to call it. the game is pretty simple, there are however many players (preferably three) and a card dealer. the aim of the game is to have the highest number of cards, the number represented on the card, without going bust and going over 21 if this is achieved you win and they move onto the next round. 

Now, onto the making of my blackjack game. The first thing i started of making was of course the sprites for everything in the game.


I very first started out by adding all 52 cards to the cards sprite. this was quite easy actually because i used a tool which would cut out sprites in a column like fashion and the picture of cards i got of the internet had already had them in a column way so it was pretty easy to cut them all out automatically without having to do it individually.




after i created the sprites i moved onto making them all into objects, apart from the cards. i also added a controller object with no sprite attached to it. this is neccesary because this object calls upon scripts at the start of the game and doesn't need to be seen within the game itself so it needs to be hidden.




This is what the room looks like while the game is live, this is how far my game has currently gotten at the moment as none of the buttons do anything but the cards are in fact randomly generated as i previously stated i used the scripts in the objects themselves.


This is the code in all of the players on the screen, it calls for the cards sprites and picks a random one then the code under the green text is the actual cards getting drawn in game and where they are placed, meaning each player has different places for there card placement obviously


Sunday 10 April 2016

What is manhunt:
manhunt is a survival horror video game developed by rockstar games and released on ps2 on November 18th 2003. in the game you take control of your character cash who is threw into a game show type of event where he has to make his way through 20 different levels murdering hordes of enemies in any way the player see fit. be it a hammer or even a plastic bag suffocating enemies. this sets the stage pretty much for the entirety of the game.

Legal issues and controversy:
In many countries it was completely banned right of the bat, and when it was originally released, Canada refused to give the game a rating meaning that it could not go on sale in that country. In New Zealand possessing the game was actually a criminal offence

The game also caught flack from a murder in Leicester after a 17 year old boy killed his 14 year old best friend. His friends said that Stefan Pakeerah was obsessed by this game and the murder was heavily  influenced by the game as he killed the boy with a claw hammer just like in the game the main protagonist kills with a hammer.

The victim's mother released a statement saying: "I can't believe that this sort of material is allowed in a society where anarchy is not that far removed. It should not be available and it should not be available to young people." During this many retailers pulled the game of the shelves such as Game and Dixons. Rockstar themselves came in and released there own statement about the matter: "We have always appreciated Dixons as a retail partner, and we fully respect their actions. We are naturally very surprised and disappointed that any retailer would choose to pull any game. We reject any suggestion or association between the tragic events and the sale of Manhunt. Rockstar Games is a leading publisher of interactive entertainment geared towards mature audiences, and markets its games responsibly, targeting advertising and marketing only to adult consumers ages 18 and older."

In Russia they banned the game from being on sale on PC after a young man named Dmitry Vinogradov killed 7 of his co-workers at the pharmacy he worked at. According to friends and family he was a fan of violent video games including Manhunt. Dmitry had no history of violents but according to friends he had been heavily drinking when the attack happened. There was no solid evidence that Manhunt were too blame for the killings but the game was still banned.

In my opinion i think Rockstar milked this game for all it was worth. maybe when they started work on this game they had a vision of making an intensely violent game and attempting to really push the boundaries when it came to art in video games. but once press caught wind of just how violent it actually was they blew it completely out of proportion trying to ward parents away from the game. but any publicity is good publicity when it comes to game sales.

Manhunt 2

while the whole controversy of manhunt 1 was going on Rockstar decided to get working on a sequel to the original. taking no note to the full on tsunami of hate coming from a large amount of parents around the globe. The game surprisingly is very similar to the original with all the blood and gore intact meaning companies like Sony and Microsoft not allowing adult only exclusives meaning Rockstar had to go back and edit out and blur some of the gore and violence in the game to just get it out on the shelves to sell. the game was then given an M rating in america but in England they still refused to give the game a rating but was eventually released as an 18.

Story:

after the story of Daniel Lamb and Leo Kasper. It begins in a mental asylum and after a huge thunderstorm the security systems at this Asylum temporarily go down and the inmates cells are opened. Daniel and Leo are able to escape the Asylum and Daniel takes some medication that is meant to help with Daniels memory of his life before the Asylum. During these events they are pursued by a gang of Bounty Hunters going by the name 'The Project'. Daniels learns he was once a top scientists in a project thats main aim was to make a brain implant that would make triggered assassin who in theory would be activated, carry out the assassination and then be deactivated with no memory of what has just happened, cancelling out the problem of interrogation. After learning more of his past they go to track down Dr Whyte who Daniel believes was a co-worker during the project.
They are captured and awake to find Dr Whyte who explains to Daniel that they had tested the implant on Daniel, it had malfunctioned and he was able to speak to his alter assassin ego. This alter ego turns out to be Leo Kasper. Dr Whyte explains that Leo is dangerous and that he took over Daniels mind before he was admitted into the Aslyum, turning him physcopathic, stemming a rampage in which Daniel killed police officers and his own wife. After capturing him, The Project erased his memory and admitted him to the Asylum whilst they could try and fix the brain implant.
After learning this Daniel enters a hypnotic state in which he will face off against Leo within his mind. He is finally allowed to let go of the guilt of killing his wife and is able to defeat Leo and assert control. After doing so, Daniel awakes in a deserted place, his mind wiped once more, he is holding an envelope explaining that explains his name is David Joiner and his address wishing him the best of luck.

Controversy


On February 23, Jack Thompson tried to have the game banned, saying: "I have been asked by individuals in the United Kingdom to help stop the distribution of Rockstar's hyper-violent video game Manhunt 2. The game will feature stealth, murder and torture. The last version allowed suffocation of victims with plastic bags. The original Manhunt was responsible for the bludgeoning death of a British youth by his friend who obsessively played the game. The killer used a hammer just as in the game he played. On March 10, Thompson said he planned to sue Rockstar in an effort to have both Manhunt2 and GTA 4 banned as "public nuisances".

Later on this debate was settled and Jack Thompson said he will not attempt to sue or make any further threats. Rockstar agreed to dismiss a court case they had against Jack for a previous debate over another one of their games, Bully.