Right now I am totally exhausted after having designed and coded in audio in the NGJ game Inglorious Skater.
There has been a lot of very interesting and funny games here at the Nordic flagship of IGDA’s Global Game Jam in Copenhagen.
There where a number of games submitted this year of which twelve went to through the first voting round:
There where also four juror industry / research representatives that had to pick their favourites (one of them got picked twice, I think… correct me if I’m wrong)
The theme of the Global Game Jam was deception and the local constraints for GMT+1 (based on timezones) was that the games had to incorporate the words monkey, donkey, or key (I’m afraid the art of subtlety has been lost; if I hear of a game including any of those within the next year, my head is going to pop).
I’ve noticed a few using XNA or GameMaker, a bit more using Flash but by far, the majority of the games here where created with Unity.
Our issue tracker, FogBugz, is not feature loaded, but the FogBugz XML API has quite a few possibilities to it.
I am learning Perl to get an easy and versatile tool to work the API with. Once I am on top of that, I will look into how the API can be used to fill in some missing features of FogBugz. Then, in a near future when I have tweaked FogBugz to meet the needs of Unity Technologies, I will put my interests and experience into extending the product itself to make life even more easy for game developers.
nicolaj.schweitz@gmail.com if you would like to read my thesis. Otherwise, read on and get an overview of my thoughts behind.
With a vantage point in the term Game Polish, I have proposed a simple method for designing games independently from any specific production methodologies.
The study was made in the spring of 2009 through correspondences with members of the International IGDA Game Design SIG and other forums dedicated to game design.
The main cornerstones of the study is Polish, Appeal, and Measures – all elaborated in the report.
The conclusion of the thesis proposes a simple methodology of designing games that is independent of software production methodologies.
My second production was called Exodroid and was made in Unity3D using C# and Visual Studio Express. This production took place in March 2009 while I was writing my essay and master thesis , so these are somewhat interconnected.
As game programmer on this project, I gained experience using C# with Unity3D. Furthermore, I took an active part in developing the design and the production itself.
I participated in the project while writing my master thesis, therefore much of the discussion and conclusion is somewhat related to this project.
// Put this script on the triggerbox that has to change the theme music publicclass AudioThemeTrigger : MonoBehaviour { // enable these controls in the editor publicfloat fadeTime = 5.0f; public ThemeFader themeFader;
void Update() { if(triggered) { switch(themeFader) { case ThemeFader.FirstToSecond:
CrossfadeAudio(AudioTheme1,AudioTheme2); break; case ThemeFader.SecondToThird:
CrossfadeAudio(AudioTheme2,AudioTheme3); break; default: break; } } }
privatevoid CrossfadeAudio(Transform t1, Transform t2) { if(t1.transform.audio.volume> t1.transform.audio.minVolume) { //fade out
t1.transform.audio.volume-= t1.transform.audio.maxVolume* Time.deltaTime/ fadeTime; } else {
t1.transform.audio.volume= 0.0f;
t1.transform.audio.Stop(); } if(!t2.transform.audio.isPlaying) { //start the new sound if it is not allready running
t2.transform.audio.Play();
// Get the first child transform with the speified name publicstatic Transform getChildByName(Transform transform, string name) { for(int i =0; i < transform.GetChildCount(); i++) { if(transform.GetChild(i).name== name)return transform.GetChild(i); } thrownew Exception("Cound not find child "+ name +" in "+ transform.name); }
// Returns a random audio clip from the specified array of AudioClips publicstatic AudioClip getRandomAudioClip(AudioClip[] clips) { if(clips !=null) { // Create a list with available clips
List<AudioClip> clipsToChoose =new List<AudioClip>(clips);
// Remove the previous clip from the list if it is there if(lastClip !=null) { for(int i =0; i < clipsToChoose.Count; i++) { if(clipsToChoose[i].name== lastClip.name) {
clipsToChoose.RemoveAt(i); break; } } }
if(clipsToChoose.Count>0) { int randomNb = UnityEngine.Random.Range(0, clipsToChoose.Count);
lastClip = clipsToChoose[randomNb]; return clipsToChoose[randomNb]; } elsethrownew Exception("At least one audioclip has to be passed"); } else { thrownew Exception("At least one audioclip has to be passed"); } }
publicstaticfloat adjustVolumeToDistance(GameObject soundSource, float distanceToZeroVol) {
GameObject player = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player"); //getting distance to camera float distance = Vector3.Distance(soundSource.transform.position, player.transform.position); //calculate newVolume float newVol =1-(distance / distanceToZeroVol); //scale according to maxVolume
newVol *= soundSource.audio.maxVolume; //make sure volume is positive or zero if(newVol > 0.0f) soundSource.audio.volume= newVol; else newVol = 0.0f; return newVol; }
// Sets layer for a given transform and for all its children recursively publicstaticvoid setLayer(Transform t, int layer) {
t.gameObject.layer= layer; for(int i =0; i < t.GetChildCount(); i++)
setLayer(t.GetChild(i), layer); } }
The game was made in Unity3D using C#. My contribution was a little programming, part in the game design and virtually most of the sound design and implementation.
Go check out the game at the Global Game Jam website. There are tons of other experimental games there as well.
My approach is grounded in the academia but moving towards the real deal, the practical implementation, or you might say, the geeky know-a-lot-but-haven”t-really-tried-it-properly-yet approach. That is except for my experimenting in my spare time and at the university not to mention my recent internship in a game company called Titoonic in Copenhagen.
In short the paper categorizes terms of “casual” in relation to games into the following:
Casual Games:
The games that are casual or designed to belong to a subset of games, meant to be played casually. Mostly defined as having “generally appealing content, simple controls, easy-to-learn gameplay, fast rewards, or support short play sessions” [Kuitinen et al.].
Casual Game Player:
A person that plays games labeled or designed to be Casual Games. The stay-at-home wife 35+.
Casual Gamer:
A person who play ANY games casually (notice the difference from above).
Casual Gaming: The general attitude or approach towards gaming. (Hardcore gamers do not play for leisure).
Casual Playing:
Describes the way a casual gamer would play a game. “… in small time bursts or in a low cognitive state” [Kuitinen et al.]. Playing without effort.
In my humble oppinion it is nice to have a clear definition eventhough some people think it is waste of time and goes “no speak – make game”. I wonder where the cultural and technical evolution would be if everyone thought like that when they discovered the wheel.
Anyway… I want to give my support to the guys in Tampere that like to explain the buzz. Kudos!
Spending time in “the real world” was a great lesson for me. Besides the academic work, described below, I gained first hand experience in what it takes to deliver production quality flash games. Go see the cases Jul i Sonofonhuset and Tron – Light Cycles.
This was a project where I took part as game design and programming intern in Titoonic a/s in late 2008. The production time was one month. My main tasks on the project was game design, sound design, and sound programming (where the sound engine was added to the company’s codebase).
In the early days of computer games the sound was created using simple synthesis techniques, but as the development of better processors and larger storage media, the development lead towards the use of wave-table synthesis, which has become the most used technique in current computer games. Since the introduction of the wave-table synthesis the development in audio creation and playback in games has stagnated.
One of the latest fields within sound synthesis is physically modelled, which holds great potential, within games and interactive environments, because of its more dynamic nature. An area in which very sparse research has been done is measuring the impact of physically modelled sound in computer game environments. This has lead to the following problem statement to be formulated: To which degree does physically modelled sound enhance physical immersion in first person computer games?
This project has analysed theories proposed by several authors within the fields: immersion, narrative and gameplay in computer games, audio in computer games. These fields and their different theories have formed an ontology for the project, upon which an application has been build. The application consists of a Half Life 2 modification, which makes use of the Nintendo Wii controllers, together with a modal sound synthesis.
In January 2009 I attended