The Advantages and Disadvantages of Gaming Platforms

Mobile Gaming:
Mobile gaming is where a person plays a video game on their mobile phone or tablet computer. It has many advantages, as well as a few disadvantages, as shown described below.

Advantages:

One advantage of mobile gaming is that the games can be taken anywhere. Once the game is downloaded on the phone, it can be played whenever, even without an Internet or phone signal.

Another advantage is cost, as many games on app stores are either free or very cheap. This allows gamer's to save money or try out many different games. Also, people will usually already have their phones before they buy the game, compared to computers or consoles, as users will have to spend a few hundred pounds buying the platform.

Creativity. Mobile games are very diverse and ,because they are cheaper and easier to produce, developers can take more of a risk when trying out new ideas and concepts. They don't stand to lose much, as most of the games are free anyway.

Disadvantages:

Constant use of thumbs, fingers, wrists and eyes can lead to RSI, eye strain and other physical problems.

They can take up a lot of time, thus potentially isolating users from friends and family, or stopping them from doing productive tasks or socialising.

Console Gaming:
Console gaming is where people play video games on a home console. There are some advantage sand disadvantages, as shown in the paragraphs below.

Advantages:

Consoles are usually quite cheap, compared to PC's, as they specifically built to be used for gaming, as well as easily accessible. This allows console makers to shed unnecessary costs. Games will also work for the console, on PC you may have to do some tweaking to get it to work.
Socially, consoles still offer great communities for gamer's to play with one another, although Steam and other PC communities are catching up. They are also very good for local multiplayer.
Portability is a very good advantage over PC's, as you can simply disconnect a console, pick it up and reconnect it in a different location.

Disadvantages:

Some game genres are completely absent from console games, as they work much better on PC. Console technology will also be a bit outdated a few years after you buy it, thus meaning you have to buy an entirely new console, as the hardware is locked in consoles.

Arcade Gaming:
Arcade gaming is the use of arcade machines to play simple video games. The disadvantages generally outweigh the advantages. Advantages:

Arcade machines have a wide range of controllers to use, such as guns, joysticks and foot pedals. They are not too costly to produce and make the money back that it cost to make them. 

Disadvantages:

Requires money to be able to play them, thus making them quite costly for players, especially if you play it a lot. They are not as popular as they used to be, which results in fewer people playing them. Also, they are large, taking up lots of space, as well being difficult to move.

PC Gaming:
PC gaming is the use of Home Computers to run video games. The advantages significantly outweigh the disadvantages. Advantages:
Customisation is a big benefit of PC's; the user can choose what type off hardware and software they want, they can surf the web whilst gaming, free online capabilities and online marketplaces such as Steam. They have backwards compatibility with games way back to the 1980's, although a lot of tweaking may be necessary. Hardware can be changed/replaced at will if something goes wrong, without having to buy a completely new PC. There are also many more PC exclusive game titles, compared to other gaming platforms.
Disadvantages:

Quite expensive, especially for higher-end ones, although hardware usually lasts a long time. It is also quite necessary for the user's to be somewhat tech-savvy, due to all the hardware and software, unless the user is happy to pay someone to do it for them, which can be somewhat costly.

Unit 78: Digital Graphics for Computer Games.

P1 Understand theory for computer game graphics.

File Extensions:

BMP: BMP(bitmap) files are used to store raster images. It is most commonly used on Microsoft and OS products. The images are stored as pixels and assigned a colour without any compression. This method allows for higher quality images but increases the file size.

GIF: A GIF(Graphics Interchange Format) is a collection of moving bitmaps to create an image or animation, such as sprites. GIF's use lossless compression that does not degrade the quality of the image. However, they can only use indexed colours, meaning standard GIF's can only include 256 colours.

TIFF: A TIFF(Tagged Image File Format) is used to store raster graphic images all in one file and for exchanging raster images from one application to another, most commonly those used for scanning images.

JPEG: A JPEG(Joint Photographic Expertise Group, the company that created it) is the most commonly used method of lossy compression for images produced by digital photography. How compressed the image will be can be adjusted, allowing images to have different degrees of image quality and storage size.

PSD: A PSD(Photoshop Document) is the default format used to save Photoshop data. It allows users to work with the files' individual layers even after the file has been saved. When complete, the image can be flattened and converted into JPEG's or GIF's. However, one the image is converted, it cannot be reverted back to a PSD file, with the user no longer being able to work with the images' layers.

WMF: A WMF(Windows Metafile) is a type of file format designed for Microsoft. They are intended to be portable between Microsoft applications such as PowerPoint, Word and Publisher. It can contain both vector and raster images.

FLA: A FLA(Flash) file is the file used when using Adobe Flash. They store animations or images used with the program, which when saved is converted to an .swf file, these then can be used on the internet.

AI: An AI(Adobe Illustrator) is used in Adobe Illustrator to represent single page vector images in a PDF format.


Compression
Image compression is generally used to reduce the size of the image file and make it easier to store or transmit the data efficiently. There are two most commonly used types of image compression: lossy and lossless compression. Lossy compression is used to reduce data size for storage and transmitting data. The higher the compression, the lower the quality will be. Also, much more data can be reduced using lossy techniques than through lossless techniques. Lossless compression is were the original bits of data are completely restored after decompressing the file, with all the information being restored to its original quality.

Image Capture
Image capture is how an image is taken. This can be done in a number of ways, for example: taking a picture with a DSLR camera, using a camera-phone, or taking a screenshot on the computer.

Optimising
Optimising is were you create a program that works at its maximum efficiency and speed during its execution and storage. This is done to make each program as useful as possible for different platforms, for example, a program written for Windows would have to be optimised to work at its fullest potential on Mac-OS. 

Unit 78: Digital Graphics in Computer Games
Pixels and Resolutions

Image Resolution:

Image resolution is, to put it basically, the quality of an image on a screen. As the resolution increases, the image becomes clearer, more defined and more detailed. This is because there is more information in the same space. All screens have image screen resolutions, with a certain number of pixels in that space. If you put more pixels into that space, the higher the resolution will be. The less pixels, the lower the resolution. 

In this example, we see that as the amount of pixels in each square increases, so does the quality of the image. In squares one and two, there are not enough pixels to distinguish what the image might be. With the other squares, the increase in pixels allows us to see the R image much clearer. There is also a technique called anti-aliasing that smooths out the jagged edges of the pixels in text or on images. 

Picture Resolution:
Picture resolution is how the image will look when it is printed out or displayed on screen. So when you take a picture with your camera, the amount of megapixels it has will determine what size the picture can be printed at. For example, a 2MP camera will only be able to print A5 sized pictures before losing its quality, due to pixels being larger and less defined, even though there will be the same number of pixels per inch.

Pixels
A pixel is a point on a raster image, with each point being a sample of an original image. The more samples there are, the more accurate the image looks like. They are also the smallest controllable picture elements on the screen. Colours in the pixels are generally represented by RGB; red, green and blue. Cyan, magenta, yellow and black are also often used. Pixels are often represented using dots and squares. However, they are not actual squares or dots, they are just rendered that way.
In this picture we can see that the pixels are represented by coloured rectangles.
Pixel Intensity
Each pixel has a pixel value that describes what colour it should be and how bright the pixel is. With greyscale images, the value is a single number between 0(black) and 255(white). The values in between show different shades of grey, as well as the intensity of the pixel. With coloured pixels, each pixel has to be specified a different colour, which means the pixel value is made up of three numbers, each with a different intensity.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

Characters

Hero: Donatello, Rafael, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Splinter, April O’Neil

Villain: Shredder, The Foot Clan, Scientist Sacks

Plot

Beginning: A reporter by the name of April O’Neil is in investigating stolen cargo, with the mysterious Foot Clan behind it. She witnesses the foot clan at the docks. The docks and containers provide a good dark and effective ambush area. Shredder first appears but is kept in the shadows to keep up the suspense. Change in pace as action increases. Many people running away from foot clan attack in the underground metro. Reporter investigates and is taken hostage. Lights go out so the turtles cannot be seen as they beat the clan. Reporter finds and confronts turtles. The turtles are quite comedic and their attitude counters the previous serious tone of the hostage situation. April realises she knows the turtles as they used to be her pets and they were experimented on. April tries to get her boss to follow up on the story, but is rebuffed and fired. In the sewers Splinter, master of the turtles, remembers April and realises she is in danger. He then orders the turtles to find her and bring her to the sewers. April goes to the scientist that created the turtles. A bit of backstory about the scientist living in Japan. Invitation by the turtles to meet, they take her to their sewers. Splinter tells her about how they survived and mutated in the sewers.

Middle: We find out about the scientist working for Shredder, which is quite ironic as April initially trusted Sacks. Splinter informs us about Shredder being Sacks’ master. The underground lair is compromised as April had a tracking device on her person. Shredder and his henchmen attack the lair, with Shredder severely wounding Splinter and three of the turtles being captured and taken to a scientific facility. The atmosphere is quite dramatic and emotional when Splinter is being beaten up, and Rafael is trying unsuccessfully to help Splinter. Rafael and April travel to the scientific institute to rescue the other turtles. Rafael confronts Shredder in a boss type fight whilst April sets the turtles free. They then proceed to Manhattan, as Shredder has released the toxin that will poison New York City. As they do this they fight with the clan down the side of a mountain. When they arrive at the tower, the turtles go to confront Shredder at the top of the tower whilst April confronts the Scientist Sacks. The turtles try and fail to take on Shredder one-by-one. Eventually they all attack him together and with their combined talents, defeat him. Meanwhile, April takes the mutagen and stops the virus from being spread in New York City.

End: Shredder, April and the Turtles all fall off the tower as the top of it collapses, with Shredder landing particularly hard, with his fate left ambiguous, whilst he is surrounded by police and civilians. April and the Turtles go back into the sewers where they heal Splinter revel in their victory.

Setting

Set in New York City, specifically Manhattan.

Gamification:

I think that a third-person 3D action-based game would fit with the theme of the film quite well. It would be photo-realistic with cut-scenes to help progress the story along. The game would be both single- and multiplayer based, with AI controlling the turtles that the player is not controlling. Other players can join and take control of the AI turtles. The player would also be able to switch between characters, with different parts of the game only being accessible to certain controllable characters. For example, there could be an area that can only be unlocked by Donatello. It would be kind of similar to the LEGO series of games, character-wise.