Unit 73: Sounds for computer games

Task 1: List a range of music/FX sources


1.   http://www.sfxsource.com/
2.   http://opengameart.org/
3.   http://www.indiegamemusic.com/
4.   http://www.freesound.org/
5.   https://www.jamendo.com/
6.   http://superflashbros.net/as3sfxr/
7.   http://www.freesoundeffects.com/
8.   http://www.freesfx.co.uk/
9.   http://www.freestockmusic.com/
10. http://acoustica.com/sounds.htm 

(i) Royalty Free Music sites
(ii) Asset Store
(iii) Producing your own sounds/music
(iv) Buy the rights to the music

Task 2: List 3 or more games and explain the purpose of the music within the game

Until Dawn:

1. Until Dawn

When you are playing the game and are being chased by an enemy in the game, the speed of the music increases as you are being chased. This is done to signify the fact that you need to move fast and adds to the tension to the game. Coupled with the ticking sound effect when you have to make a fast, important decisions, the game can very tense very quickly, especially in the dangerous situations where you have to react quickly to the scenario that you are in. Furthermore, when you discover an object in the game relating to the story or background behind the game, the game uses a sound effect to show that you have found a clue within the game in order let the player know that they have done something right, and are advancing the game. The intro song is called "O, Death" which is a fitting title for the game. This song has a slow tempo. The ending song called "Final Confrontation" is a soundtrack which is very tense and raises in pitch.

2. Super Mario
When you collect a coin, the game makes a sound effect which is like a coin drop that has become iconic within video game sound effects. The sound effect is there in order to signify that you have collected a coin and are therefore gaining points within the game. Furthermore, when you jump on top of an enemy it creates a sound that signifies that the enemy has died.

3. The Last of Us
In The Last of Us the game signifies that there are enemies present as you can hear the sounds that they make. For example, the clickers make clicking sounds surprisingly, and that lets you know that the enemies are around. Furthermore, when the enemy has noticed you, they begin to make a lot more noise, which helps to create an atmosphere of fear and panic. Also, the frequency of the sounds goes up, telling the player that it is time that they started running away fast else they are going to get caught and killed by the enemy. Finally, when all the enemies have been eliminated, the main characters in the game will either have a conversation, or say something that will signify that all the enemies have been defeated, which is done so the player can begin to relax and explore the area in safety without worrying about the threat of dying.
The main theme of the song fits with the game. The mix of the different guitar sounds, the low pitch and the high pitch, and the sound of the shaker percussion create an atmosphere of a wasteland.


Task 3: Legal considerations needed when obtaining or using Music/Fx

Copyright - Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator to receive compensation for their intellectual effort. Copyright law originated in the United Kingdom from a concept of common law; the Statute of Anne 1709. It became statutory with the passing of the Copyright Act 1911. The current act is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The law gives the creators of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic works, sound recordings, broadcasts, films and typographical arrangement of published editions, rights to control the ways in which their material may be used. The rights cover; broadcast and public performance, copying, adapting, issuing, renting and lending copies to the public. In many cases, the creator will also have the right to be identified as the author and to object to distortions of his work. International conventions give protection in most countries, subject to national laws.

Libel - Libel is a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person's reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession. Libel and slander are types of defamatory statements. Libel is a written defamatory statement, and slander is a spoken or oral defamatory statement.



Terms of use:
http://www.sfxsource.com/termsofuse.cfm
(For superflashbros.com/as3sfxr) https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Ofcom
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/

ASA - Code of Conduct
https://www.asa.org.uk/Industry-advertisers.aspx

CAP and BCAP
https://www.cap.org.uk/

PRS - Performing Rights Society
https://www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx

Survivor - Story Telling

(Summary of notes)

Characters:

Kate Abott
-Motivation: Her friends died in 9/11, she wanted to protect civilians

Lisa
-Kate's Friend

Sam
-Motivation: To protect Kate, She was a suspect throughout

Bill:
-Motivation: To keep his son alive, he got 5 different people working with gases into the country

Watchmaker (Assassin)
-Motivation: Money (Creating attacks to gain money)

Main Assassin employer
- Motivation: Money (From markets after attacks)

Beginning:
Started off in Afghan, there was a war going on and one person from the helicopter which crashed was saved due to his relations. A crew of people working in the airport was checking visas for anyone who worked within the science department. The crew kept getting distracted by bill and this allowed him to give access to the scientific gas people into the country. A bomb was made by the Watchmaker to kill the crew of people working in the airport (Kate, Naomi etc) and a dinner was reserved in a restaurant. The bomb went off in the restaurant, Kate being the only survivor and this ended the beginning of the story.

Middle:
The Watchmaker continuously tries to kill Kate throughout of the middle section of the story.  Kate begins to unravel the reasons why these 5 people were allowed into the country and what they were planning. She was also continuously being tracked down by the government as a suspect as they believed she was behind the attacks. Furthermore, Kate and Sam figure out why Bill was letting these 5 people into the country by going in a padlocked room which was the room of the soldier that was kept hostage in Afghan. Kate tracks one of the people that was allowed into the country (The one with the dead wife, who was killed by Americans) and followed him to New York.

End:
The end section started when she got on the plane to New York. She figures out by watching the news what the real plan was. The main guy working with the gases was making a gas to replace the cooling gas which is used to cool down the LEDs in the new years eve ball. After time, Kate makes her way to where the Watchmaker and the gas guy was and interfered with him about to shoot an explosive bullet into the new years eve ball. The Watchmaker falls over the edge and Kate saves Millions of lives.
{End of Film}

Plot:
The main plot was for the Assassin Employer and the Assassin to get billions of money from these explosive attacks.




(Notes taken during the film)

Beginning:

afghan
War – One guy is a survivor the other gets killed
Looking for anyone with scientific expertise (Applicants)
Checking passports – Recently processed scientists
Package passed on to someone
Package delivered to restaurant which is where the visa checker people are dining – (Bomb)
Bomb Went off in restaurant – Katie only survivor out of the visa checker people

Middle:

Guy trying to kill Naomi with pistol
background check on Katie
Bill tried to shoot kate – Kate shot Bill
Guy took Bills ID
Paul suspects Katie
Bomb guy can now track everyone’s visa checker ID cards
Bomb guy used a sniper to shoot a barrel thing, exploded quarter of building
They suspect Katie did the stuff
“The Watchmaker” – Potentially bomb guy name
lisa meets kate at train station – bomb guy there too
paul Anderson and his peeps chasing Katie in the underground
small explosive pushed Katie over – bomb guy about to kill but she hit him and ran off
Sam finds Katie –apartment – Watchmaker (Bomb guy) Tracks her
Bills son – padlocked bedroom- Survived guy from the start,
The watchmaker exploded the door – sam injured
people think kate tried to kill sam
Security breech at main place – she took a hard drive?
Trying to stop one guy from getting on the plane
Way for the main guy to make money – not acts of terror or political statement

One suspect (wife died guy) working with gases

End:

Katie at airport – managed to get a flight –searching the 5 suspects
Katie being tracked in U.S
Potential bomb in times square – Uses cooling gases
Guy attacks kate
Kate tracks down the main gas guy
Watchmaker with the gas guy (Making a sniper again)
Watchmaker kills/hits gas guy
Katie interferes with watchmaker guy (About to shoot ball)
Katie saves the day by putting the watchmaker assassin over the edge
She saved a million people – roughly speaking -


Plot:

Guy at the beginning was Bills son
They used bills son because bill was head of the visa checks thing at the airport
Bill managed to get 5 people into the city
These people work with gases
The watchmaker is an assassin and tried to kill all the new visa check people including kate so that they were able to get into the city easier
The watchmaker has continuously been trying to kill kate
- Main event is the bomb at times square – new years eve ball
{Not acts of terrorism – all for market money – Also for revenge on the Americans (guessing for killing his wife}

 

Story Telling

Task One and Task Two:

COD: Ghosts Campaign (Story)
The Ghosts campaign was the first Call of Duty campaign that I had bothered to play out of the many Call of Duty games I have player. The reason why it interested me was the setting of where you play your first mission and the things you get to do throughout the campaign such as climbing down the side of a broken building. The setting of the first mission was in space. I absolutely love space so this was a great start for me. You had to kill the federation soldiers whom hijacked the ODIN to destroy many cities in the south of America. As you are in space, there is no gravity inside of the ODIN so it makes it that bit more fun shooting the enemies within the ODIN.
The campaign revolves around a “super” government I guess you could say in which is called Federation. Federation are a large group of countries from South America in which invaded all of U.S.A. You play as a “Ghost”. The Ghosts are a bunch of people who were a part of the elite U.S Special Operations who are trying to capture Rorke. Rorke is the guy in which was part of the Ghosts elite team however he was captured, tortured and brainwashed and now works with the federation. He is pretty much the main enemy here. You spend most of the campaign trying to capture Rorke but you do it in style.

ARK: Survival Evolved (No Story)
This game has no story line to it. This game is still an early access game until June 2016. However, what made this game really interesting for me was that, you play as a female or male with absolutely nothing to start off with. You have to survive on an island full of dinosaurs and you either try to survive on your own or make a tribe with other players. It is possible to play single player or you can play on multiplayer however that then makes two enemies in which you need to fight against, people and dinosaurs. You can tame the dinosaurs and put saddles on them, you can level up yourself to become stronger or better at doing things and you can level up your dinosaur to become quicker or deadlier. What makes this game so interesting is that there is a lot of the map that you can explore, you can tame dinosaurs, build amazing bases, explore the different biomes and find ways to deal with the ever changing weather, create armour for yourself, paint your structures, play on war drums, scuba dive and do so much more.

Black Ops 2 (Zombies) (Story)
The zombies’ mode in COD: Black Ops 2 is very interesting to me. If you complete the Easter eggs in which are contained in all of the DLC maps and in the maps you get for free, you really understand how the zombie apocalypse started and how Samantha became in control in the first COD: Black Ops zombies. The final DLC map in Black Ops 2 (Origins) contains a really lengthy Easter egg in which the players need to complete. When you finally finish the Easter egg you are presented with a cut scene. The cut scene shows that it was all just a game that was being played by two children. One of those children was Samantha. You see that she has toys of the zombies and the characters that you have played in the previous DLC maps, she has chalk drawn on the wall to show where you would usually purchase a gun, she has a toy box which has a question mark on it which shows the random box in which you would usually pay to gain a random chosen gun in the box and so on. One of the DLC maps do not connect to the main story behind Zombies however, it has a story of its own. This map is the “Mob of the dead” map. This map is set in Alcatraz and the characters are four famous people who were in Alcatraz. You first start of as a ghost I guess you could say and you can revive yourself. You figure out that after you have completed the Easter egg, you realise that you kept being brought back to life and going through the same cycle over and over again. When you complete the Easter egg, it ends with the text “The cycle is broken” and this means that you have finally stopped the characters from experiencing the cycle over and over. The cycle is that they would be fighting off the zombies, dying and then coming back to life.

I AM BREAD:(Story)
I AM BREAD has a story mode in which you can play. I haven’t played much of the story mode however I believe it is a really fun game to play (but very difficult). The story is that you play as a slice of bread and you have to become toast, however the owner of the house you are in begins to figure out that you are no ordinary slice of bread. Mr Murton (the owner of the house in which the slice of bread is in) goes to the Therapy Barn often to deal with his stress. However, his therapist thinks he is crazy as Mr Murton tells him that his house is being trashed every day due to the slice of bread (which is you as you are trying to become toast).

Sims 4: (No Story)
Sims 4 is a game in which you create your own story if you wanted to. You play as a character that you have designed and you can either create a group of people to live with in a home that you have created or you can live on your own. You can decide what relationship they have with you too. Once you have created your character or group of people, you have to look after your sim, you feed them, make them go to the toilet, have a bath, stimulate a mood for them and so on.

Pokémon Sapphire (Story)
Pokémon Sapphire has two stories in it. The first main story is how you are trying to stop team aqua from reviving the ancient Pokémon “Kyogre”. You start off the game in a moving van as you are moving to a new little town in the Hoenn region. You gain your first Pokémon by saving the Professor from a wild Pokémon and then he asks to choose a Pokéball which contains your life long buddy. You meet Team Aqua on a number of occasions and you have to battle them to win over what item they are trying to retain or to stop them from completing a certain event. You gain items such as a meteorite from Team Aqua as this is actually a mega evolution stone for rayquaza in which you find out in the special episode after you have defeated the elite four. The special episode called the “Delta” episode involves the character of Zinnia. We find out a back story of Zinnia. It turns out that Zinnia is a LoreKeeper who is someone who has to protect the world. She tries to summon Rayquaza so that she and Rayquaza can destroy the meteorite that is heading towards the region. You also find out about Aster, who is her dead daughter. We learn that Zinnia is an emotionally strong character too.

Elder Scrolls Online (Story)
You start of the game with a tutorial on how to play the game. However, this tutorial is the start of the story too. The tutorial starts with you in Coldharbour and you have been set free from a cell, you free the prophet and he tells you that Molag Bal has your soul (Molag Bal is the villain). When you have finished the tutorial, you are set out into Tamriel to explore the lands, complete quests and save those lands from Molag Bal's minions. As you progress throughout the game, main story quests will pop up and you have to save 2 out of the 4 companions from Cold Harbour. You can choose whether to do these main story quests or not, is it not forced upon the player. However, if you want to explore the rest of Tamriel than you do have to do the main story quests, fighters guild quests, mages guild quests and be level 50.

Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer (No Story):

This is a game which is made for those who love interior design. You choose what your character looks like from the limited choices and then you go outside and pick a customer to work with. You do this repeatedly and each time you have a different design to follow. As you progress you can start to design places in the town which will be used by all of the animals. The reason behind why this game does not have a story to it is because it is a sub from the other animal crossing games. I think this game was made for those who have previous experience with the animal crossing games or have a general interest with designing things.

Games with stories usually grab the players attention more than games without stories. However, games such as ARK: Survival Evolved hook players in with no story and it is still an early access game.The reason behind why this game is so popular is due to the sheer amount of leveling in which is involved which allows your player to progress. Also it is an open world game filled with unrealistic ideas of people being able to tame dinosaurs and ride them. Survival/Open world games are very popular, one of the most popular survival games is Minecraft. It is only till recently they have decided to make a story mode for this game. Other games with no stories are casual games. Casual games are games such as Candy Crush Saga, Tetris, Pac-Man, Angry Birds etc. These games are most commonly found on mobile devices and engage the player for roughly 5-15 minutes. 

Task Three:

The difference between stories in games and films is that in games you are able to play out the story and be involved. Also within story games you have choices to make so this then manipulates the story. A popular manipulative story game is until dawn. The way the story plays out is due to your choice, the game uses the butterfly effect.
Many games have been developed into films; Hitman, Halo, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Max Payne etc. Some of these films are very successful whereas others seem to not create the same atmosphere. I believe that the Resident Evil films are very successful, they stick to the main theme of zombies and the films story is interesting. 

Task Four:

Linear stories are stories in which start right at the beginning, move slowly to the middle and then finish where it is suppose to end. It follows a straight line.
Non-Linear stories are stories where the reader/viewer/player is thrown into the middle of the story and then thrown back to the beginning or just put into different parts of the story. A book which follows a non-linear storyline is English Passengers. The chapters within the book are monologues of different characters from different time periods however their stories link with a larger story. 

Psychology of Sound

(1) The Outlast:
When you have caught the attention of the enemy, the music changes to something tense and it basically tells the player to run or hide. When you hide or run away far enough the music then changes back to the original background music. The music change tells the player whether they are in a safe position or not in the game.

(2) Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited
Once you have picked up a certain item it will make a sound effect of you putting that item into your bag or if you have picked up water it will make the sound effect of you collecting water in a bottle. This tells the player that they have definitely picked up the item then have just found.
Furthermore, there is a sound effect for when you have started/completed a quest which lets the player know that the quest is in play or has finished (text is included) and for when you have discovered a new town which will now appear on your map.

(3) COD series (Black ops 3)
The hit marker sound effect. We as the players know that we have shot bullets into the enemies when we hear the hit marker sound effect. We also know when we have hit a head shot as the hit marker noise is different from the generic hit marker sounds. It is a very distinctive noise. This sound can be very irritating for some players. For example, when a player considers the enemy to be dead because they have heard a certain amount of hit markers, when actually the enemy is still alive.


Mono: One Channel, output the same signal through both speakers.

 Stereo: Two Channels, output different signals to the left and right speaker.
















Surround Sound: Multiple signals to multiple speakers




















3D Audio: Sounds from speakers all around you, including above and below. The more of speakers you have placed around the room, more immersed you are.

Unit 73: Sound for Computer Games

Understanding Sound Design theory

(A)
1. Animal Crossing New Leaf - 1am (Music)
-Calm
-Fitting for the time period
-Fitting for the game
-Would not use different music

2. Uncharted 2, Breaking and Entering
-Adventurous
-To suit the genre of the game

3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
-Calm and Mystical
-Title screen
-Fitting for the game
-Very atmospheric

4.Final Fantasy X HD (Luca)
-Happy
-Atmospheric
-Would use as background music for a city

5.Animal Crossing New Leaf - Roost Cafe
-Relaxing
-Nice mood
-Suited instrument for the area

6. Minecraft - Collect XP sound effect
-High pitch (Usually resembles a good thing)
-

(B)

The reason behind why music and sound FX are important within game development is to create a fitting atmosphere for the game and to also lead the player throughout. Some of the sound FX which are used in a game help the player understand whether they are on track. For example, in the outlast, a sound effect is played when the player has achieved their objective and is ready to move on to the next one. Other sound FX are used to create atmosphere. In Amnesia: The dark decent, there are sound FX which are used to create tension. Such as the heavy breathing of your character or the hyperventilating when your character is scared.
Music is very effective when it comes to creating an atmosphere too. For example; Animal Crossing New Leaf is a calm, easy-going game. They have different music for different times of the day and each piece of music reflects the time of day really well. They use calm and happy music. For other games, music is used for different circumstances. For example, when you are battle, the music changes to something tense and then when you have won the battle, a sound effect will play which symbolise achievement.
This is a quote from the Game Audio Development book written by Aaron Marks, "Sound effects exist specifically to give feedback to players, immerse them inside the virtual realm, and provide an entertaining experience—all of which are key ingredients to a successful video game." 

What is Waveform?

· The wavelength of a wave is the distance from any point on one wave to the same point on the next wave along.

· Amplitude is the size of the vibration, and this determines how loud the sound is. We have already seen that larger vibrations make a louder sound.

· Frequency is the speed of the vibration, and this determines the pitch of the sound. It is only useful or meaningful for musical sounds, where there is a strongly regular waveform.

Frequency and pitch describe the same thing, but from different viewpoints. While frequency measures the cycle rate of the physical waveform, pitch is how high or low it sounds when you hear it. This is directly related to frequency: the higher the frequency of a waveform, the higher the pitch of the sound you hear.

Hertz is the standard unit of measurement for frequency, with it being equal to one cycle per second.
Decibel Level is the degree of loudness of a sound.

Foley is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added to film, video, and other media in post-production to enhance audio quality. These reproduced sounds can be anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass. Jack Foley was the man behind the art of sound effect techniques. He first started off working in the silent film era.

Timbre is the quality of the sound made by a particular voice or musical instrument

“Music can capture pretty much the entire spectrum of human emotion. It can cause one to experience profound sadness, extreme joy, anger, fear, longing or triumph. And it does all of this without relying on any external knowledge or concepts, which makes it even more powerful as a unifying agent for people from a wide variety of backgrounds.” - Oliver Sacks

Assignment Trends and Future Trends

Current Trends:

Amiibo:

Amiibos are made by the company of Nintendo and they are made for Nintendo platforms. Connecting figurines or cards to the Nintendo 3DS/Wii U and using them characters in games, collecting special items, customising the characters and unlocking “new adventures”. Amiibo uses NFC and RFID (Near-field communications and Radio-frequency identification) The Amiibos are there for the players to enjoy collecting figurines and to add more content to certain games. Before the name “Amiibo” was used, they were originally called the “Nintendo figurine platform”. They were released in Novemeber 2014, tying in with the release of Super smash Bros. for the Wii U. What makes the Amiibo idea so great is that you can use the Amiibos across Nintendo platforms. These being 3DS, 2DS and Wii U. It is not just dedicated to one game either. You can get Amiibos for a variety of different games.


Competition:
I guess you could say the competitors in the market with Amiibos are the Disney Infinity figurines and the Skylanders figurines. All 3 have some appeal to everyone. Amiibos are considered to be great for kids and adults, the reason for this is that everyone can recognise the Nintendo characters. Furthermore, the Amiibo line has figurines which are fit for a variety of games. Skylanders is very different to the recognisable figurines Disney infinity and Amiibo has, especially to the adults. Skylanders would be more fun for the kids to play with due to it being marketed for kids and the interesting troll-like designs the characters are featured as. Disney Infinity on the other hand is very similar to Amiibos but different from Skylanders figurines. Disney Infinity uses figurines which are very recognisable to adults and children however, the game actually is marketed for children so it has a very easy play mode that it lives by.

Sales:
It is said that Nintendo sold up to approximately 21 million units being shipped worldwide since when the Amiibos were released in 2014. Apparently the US accounted for over 60% of the Amiibo sales, Europe accounted for 20% of the sales and then japan only accounting for 11% of the sales. These two charts show which Amiibos are most popular in the market in certain places and the other shows where most of the Amiibos have been shipped to. All of the figures which come in individual packs sell for $12.99.



IP:
Nintendo have said that they “respect the intellectual property of other” and what they will do is that if they see anything which appears to “infringe the intellectual property rights of others” they will be able to remove it due to the policy. They have also made themselves contactable in case you see anything that infringes on any “intellectual property right” that you own or control.



Secondary Screens:

A great example of second screen play would be the Wii U GamePad. The Wii U GamePad features a built-in touchscreen. As quoted by Nintendo, the Wii U GamePad “removes the traditional barriers between games, players and the TV”. The Wii U sold up to 9.2 million units in 2015. As the Wii U is a Nintendo product, the IP is the same as what it would be for the Amiibos.



Products and Services:

Nintendo overall offer great support and services to customers. One of their services is “Club Nintendo”. Being a part of club Nintendo allows you to stay up to date with all of the latest Nintendo news, reviews, release dates of games and consoles and more. They help with any error codes that you may have been experiencing, give out parents’ info, have tech support forums and help with repairs (such as give you Warranty Info and Repair Order FAQ). They also offer many other products such as 3DS and 2DS, Wii , Wii U and Wii U GamePad and more.



Financial Problems:

According to Nintendo’s earnings report, it demonstrates that Nintendo had an annual operating loss of £268.9 million towards March 31st 2014. The year before, they had an expected loss of £202.8 million. When the Wii U was released, it moved from 2.72 million units to 6.17 million units sold since its launch in 2012. Compared to Sony, PlayStation sold more than 7 million PS4 consoles just after its release. To conclude, since the Wii U has been out, along with the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, the Wii U selling performance was still poor.

Competition:
The competition that the Wii U GamePad has got is the PlayStation 3 and the PS vita secondary screen. However, PlayStation has used the secondary screen in a different way. What Sony has done has introduced the “Cross-Play” feature. This feature allows the gamer to stop playing on one of the devices and allows them to continue playing on the same game on a different device. Compared to the Wii U GamePad, it doesn’t interact with the game at the same time you are playing it on the PlayStation.

Outsourcing:
When it comes to outsourcing, Nintendo plans to outsource Wii components so they can increase the output of the Wii U. The two companies in which Nintendo has approached are SunPlus Technology and Wistron Corp. Wistron will report idly assemble the console whilst SunPlus Technology will concentrate on the controller chips.





Next Generation Consoles:

Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Wii U are all considered as next generation consoles and they are all competing against one another. However, it seems that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One pull the lead a lot stronger than the Wii U does. As previously talking, I have already compared the sales between the PlayStation 4 and the Wii U, the PlayStation pulled a strong lead from the start.
Next generation consoles have a lot to offer. They offer higher end graphics, bigger hard drives such a 1TB, better connectivity with applications and software such as Twitch TV (Live streaming now available), cross game chat (Skype and Party Chat with the Xbox One) and much more. It was said that after a certain amount of time the Xbox One had been released, they reduced the price of the console due to the sales of the product.

Financial Trends:

The Xbox One sold up to 11,638,701 units, the PlayStation 4 sold 20,215,802 units and the Wii U sold 9,329,635 units in February 2015. You can see that the PlayStation came out on top in February 2015 and the Wii U was at the bottom of the list. It also said that the PlayStation 4 was able to be purchased by up to 72 different countries and regions whereas the Xbox One was only available in 13 countries.



GeoDemographics and Demographics:
It is said that Sony looks to attract women and casual gamers with the PlayStation 4, “I think the key is to have people — and increasingly women — with different sensibilities creating different games. It is not all about shoot ’em up games”. However, in the image below, you can see that more females are interested in purchasing the Xbox One more than purchasing the PlayStation 4.





Augmented Reality:

The technology for augmented reality has been around for a while now. Augmented reality is where computer-generated images interact with your physical surroundings. AR seems most popular with mobile apps. A great example of an enchanting AR mobile app is Google Ingress (which is free to download on Android phones). This app is a MMO game that puts the player into two factions. What happens is both factions fight against one another and you have to control them, the AR kicks in when you have gain a material called Exotic Matter and you do this by simply walking around with your device. The more matter you have the more portals are created and the game progresses and so on. An AR app which you have to pay for (£2.50) is called SpecTrek. What this game is, is a AR game in which brings ghostbusters to life really. It populates your physical surroundings with ghosts you have to capture.

People believe that AR apps may affect the way that mobiles are advertised. AR apps makes the phones more interactive with your surroundings. There are many AR apps which interact with your surroundings by you using your camera and labels begin to pop up telling you what the buildings are or how far away a certain building is. These AR apps are very useful, if android for example had more of these apps they may be seen more popular due to the availability of the apps.

Players are the designers:

A classic example of this would be the game “Super Mario Maker”. This is a game which is available on the Wii U and allows the players to create their own Mario levels. The players can also interact with the game by using Amiibo’s. The Amiibo’s allow Mario to change character. Nintendo announced that the game Super Mario Maker had sold over 1 million units since its release, over 2.2 million courses have been created and the game has approximately been played nearly over 75 million times.

Organisations Plans:
It was part of Nintendo’s plan to release Super Mario Maker in 2015 due to it being the 30th anniversary of Mario. It was also their intention that, from the Nintendo development team to inspire the player’s creations.

Financial Trends:
Nintendo have said that Super Mario Maker has boosted the sales of the Wii U by over 110% compared to august sales. Nintendo have also made the claim of the game selling more than 500,000 combined units over the past month (so over the month of September 2015). Since then, Super Mario Maker has reached its 1 million units sold milestone.

Industry Trends:
Due to how successful Mario is and it being the 30th anniversary, they released Super Mario Maker. It is said that the Super Mario franchise has sold more than 310 million units and counting, so with the Super Mario Maker release, this would sure push the series units sold number even higher.
Nintendo have said that they “respect the intellectual property of other” and what they will do is that if they see anything which appears to “infringe the intellectual property rights of others” they will be able to remove it due to the policy. They have also made themselves contactable in case you see anything that infringes on any “intellectual property right” that you own or control.

Future Trends:

The Oculus Rift
Palmer Luckey was the man who came up with the idea of the Oculus Rift. Apparently the Oculus Rift was a Kickstarter project with an intension of only creating and selling 100 Oculus Rifts. In one of the VR forums a man named John Carmack asked if he could have a prototype and so Palmer agreed to give him one. John then announced the Oculus Rift at an E3 event and from then on, a lot more people were interested in the Oculus Rift Kickstarter Project. When it came to the Kickstarter’s project end, they had raised up to $2,437,429.
In 2014, Oculus VR was bought by Mark Zuckerberg for 2 billion dollars. Both companies believed that they were sharing the same vision and that by combining with one another meant a higher success rate for VR.

Background information of two main people:
Palmer Luckey: VR enthusiast, self-taught engineer and an electronics enthusiast. Palmer lucky was very interested in virtual reality from a young age. It was said that he had his own personal collection of VR headsets. He managed to obtain a variety of different VR headsets by attending industry liquidation sales and government auctions. When Palmer Luckey was 16, he had an interest of building his own headsets.

John Carmack: American game programmer and the co-founder of ID Software. He now works with Occulus VR. He was also the lead programmers for ID video games such as Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

Customers:
Customers can currently buy the Oculus Rift developers version for around $350/£400 however, they will need to continually update their headset with the new updates Oculus VR send out.

Competition:
HTC Vive: Created by the company Valve which teamed up with the mobile company HTC. This HTC Vive will be shipped when the Oculus Rift and the PlayStation VR are shipped.

PlayStation VR: Created by the company Sony. What makes this good contender is that Sony already have tons of loyal gamers to its name and a lot of money which means they won’t find it difficult being able to fund for hardware.

Microsoft HoloLens: Created by the company Microsoft. What makes this a good contender is that Microsoft could pair this up with its console making the headset incredibly versatile with non-gaming and gaming apps. (AR)

Gear VR: Created by Samsung but powered by Oculus. Costs only $99 and is compatible with the 2015 Samsung GALAXY flagship smartphones. This has recently been released and is now available to buy from places such as Amazon and BestBuy.com.




Risks:

The organisations attitude towards the risks are rather positive. Especially towards the VR sickness. On the Oculus Rift website there is a section which is dedicated to how they are going to try and solve VR sickness. What the developers have done have shown and explained different ways of how they are going to change some of the hardware/software to make sure that the customers who are purchasing the Oculus VR will have an enjoyable experience.




VR Sickness: This VR sickness is basically motion sickness and it can occur when the brain is not use to the VR experience. However, developers have said that if you expose your brain to VR quite frequently and over a long period of time then the brain will begin to ignore the previous unusual visuals.

Wasting Money: Facebook paid $2 billion for Occulus VR and its project of Occulus Rift. Considering that this project is still in development they are unsure of its success. If people do not use the products in which Occulus VR are selling then Facebook would essentially be losing out on money.

Behavioural Risks:
The Oculus Rift comes with an avatar. However, people believe that people using the Oculus Rift will treat the avatar as a mask and use the avatar to “channel more destructive behaviours”. The VR environment in which people will be involved in will offer “the same potential rudeness, harassment and stalking as any other communication channel, whilst also making the interaction seem even more real and personal”. In my opinion I find this rather troubling if the interaction would seem a lot more “real and personal” but then again, most platforms which involve communication includes rudeness towards other players/people so I guess it is hard to steer away from rudeness and harassment when the device offers communication.
http://www.rmmagazine.com/2014/10/01/the-real-risks-of-virtual-reality/



License Agreement:
You can currently buy the development kit for $350. There is a license agreement which comes with the development kit that you buy from Oculus VR. Oculus VR have gave developers the license agreement for them to agree to under terms and conditions. The license includes a non-exclusive license with the right to use the RIFTSDK to make the desired applications, games, content and demos to run on the Oculus Rift. You are able to “use, modify, and distribute the Oculus VR Rift SDK in source and binary form with your applications/software”. However there are a few restrictions to what you can do.
“You can only distribute or re-distribute the source code to LibOVR in whole, not in part.
Modifications to the Oculus VR Rift SDK in source or binary form must be shared with Oculus VR.
If your applications cause health and safety issues, you may lose your right to use the Oculus VR Rift SDK, including LibOVR.
The Oculus VR Rift SDK may not be used to interface with unapproved commercial virtual reality mobile or non-mobile products or hardware.”



Microsoft Illumiroom

“RoomAlive builds on the familiar concepts of IllumiRoom, but pushes things a lot further by extending an Xbox gaming environment to an entire living room. It’s a proof-of-concept demo, just like IllumiRoom, and it combines Kinect and projectors to create an augmented reality experience that is interactive inside a room. You can reach out and hit objects from a game, or interact with games through any surfaces of a room. RoomAlive tracks the position of a gamers head across all six Kinect sensors, to render content appropriately”

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/5/6912979/microsoft-roomalive-research-projector-system

The IllumiRoom works with AR (Augmented Reality) and it basically highlights the edges of games beyond the TV. What happens is it will project game footage on the areas around your TV. So if you have just passed something in game, you will see it pass on your wall too. The best example I have seen so far of the Microsoft IllumiRoom is the bounce feature, snow feature and the star field feature. This bounce feature is where you see a ball rolling towards you on the screen and then it drops off the screen and is projected to fall from your TV and onto the floor. The snow feature works well when playing driving games. When you drive forward, the snowflakes that fall are pushed against the objects in your room and when reversing, the snow is moving away from you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2w-XqW7bF4



Financial Problems, visions, objects and plans of organisation:
It is said that this project would be too expensive for an average customer to afford. According to the head of product planning for Xbox, Albert Penello, he says that “It’s super-neat if you’re in the lab and you’ve got Microsoft money and you could totally set up this awesome lab, but… we looked at, but for an average customer it’s, like, thousands of dollars”. So their problem would be that this projects is just too expensive to put on the market and it will unlikely be released soon. This also proves as a risk to the company. Placing too much money into working in the project and then not being able to sell the product due to the sheer amount of money you need to purchase it. This is probably the reason why this project is seen as just “research” and a “proof-of-concept” project. The Xbox One was one of Microsoft’s next-generation plans which came to life. The IllumiRoom is one of Microsoft’s projects which work with AR. Although, Microsoft do stress that this is a “proof-of-concept project”.


http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/2/4685178/microsoft-illumiroom-xbox-projector-unlikely-to-be-released

Cloud-Gaming:



http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/future-of-gaming/

Cloud Gaming helps reduce the wait for gamers to get updates for newer, high-quality games. “It’s all in the cloud and all we have to do is connect to it with a stable Internet connection and play to our heart’s content. Games will also be cheaper and more easily accessible via computers and even tablets. How much longer need we wait for this? In August 2012, Sony has purchased Gaikai the world’s largest and most widespread cloud gaming service for $380 million and is expected to incorporate it into PlayStation 4. So, not long, fingers crossed.”

Background Knowledge on Gaikai (includes funding and milestones):

Gaikai was founded in November 2008 by Andrew Gault and Rui Pereria. Then in February 2009, David Perry gives a speech to the industry leadership about instant access games. In June 2009, Gaikai presents a live demo of the instant access AAA games at the E3 2009. Towards the end of 2009, Gaikai raided $5 million in a Series A funding, then in Series B funding they raided $10 million in May 2010. They finally launch a live service on the internet of open gaming cloud in February 2011. In July 2011, they raised up to $30 million in Series C funding. A year after they were awarded the “most widespread cloud gaming network” by Guinness World Record and a month after Sony buys Gaikai for $380 million.

Organisations vision and plans:

Gaikai had a vision of solving difficult problems “to create exceptional experiences”. They wanted to achieve what people thought was impossible. An example of this would be, people believed it was impossible to stream a game at high quality with low latency, Gaikai managed to solve that problem and now you can stream games at high quality with low latency. There plans now are to focus on future game streaming and working with PlayStation on the PlayStationTM Now project.



360 Gameplay:

360 Gameplay is where someone plays a game which involves interaction across many platforms. This include a game which is also conceived simultaneously as movies, animated TV series. A game which sort of blurs the line between gameplay and movie cinematics is a game called Quantum Break. This game is yet to be released in April 2016 however it is one of Microsoft’s experimental TV/game titles. This game allows you to manipulate the cinematics to save people and kill the enemies within the game. Other types of 360 play are games such as Angry Birds. Angry birds is a game which includes digital gameplay, board games, toys to play with and other types of merchandise.



The Angry Birds company is worth 5.5 billion (2012). Angry Birds first started out as just a make or break project. After 2 years of the game idea coming to mind, Angry Birds became the iPhones most popular app. After the success of Angry Birds on all phones, Rovio no longer described itself as a games developer, but instead saw itself as a media company. With that in mind, the soft toys, phone case and comics were already considered from the beginning.



The game Quantum Break in which includes manipulative cinematics has that movie-like appeal and feel. The difference between this being a game and being a movie is that, you can change what has happened in the cinematic if you feel fit to change it, whereas if it was a movie, you don’t get the chance to decide what has just happened to the character and you have to accept what has happened.



Sensory Technology:

EEG headsets like the NeuroSky and Emotiv’s headset can detect player’s emotions and facial expressions already. The CEO of neuroengineering company Emotiv, Tan Le already has future visions for what he wants to achieve. What he wants to achieve is, the players currently facial expression translates into their avatars facial expression and other in game avatars expressions are recognised by other players and respond accordingly. They believe that being able to convert facial expressions in a game would create a level of game immersion that doesn’t exist yet.

Emotiv is a bioformatics company which offers a platform for crowd-sourced brain research. There are two headsets which are for sale, there is the Emotiv Insight Brainwear $358.95 and the Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset which starts at a selling price of $399.00. At the moment, the insight headset can interpret basic metal commands such as push, pull, levitate and rotate certain objects, it can also detect facial expressions such as blinking, winking, surprise and smile and monitor your performance by measuring and tracking your focus, engagement interest, and excitement, affinity, relaxation and stress levels.

Emotiv is the market leader within this field (neuroengineering) and have won numerous of awards for its products. They also have a community of developers and researchers whom span over 100 countries. According to Emotiv, they may use contractors and third part service providers but they reassure that they are required to protect any information given.





A competitor against Emotiv would be NeuroSky who apparently has the world’s smallest ECG chip within its wearables.

Assignment 2: Unit 1/Unit 72/Unit 22: Computer Games Design

Task 1 (1.1): Initial Sketch

Task 1 (1.2): Sprites 

My sprites consist of the shapes that are involved within the game, the invisible walls which let the enemies out, the moving walls, the shop animation, walls, collectible and background. The screenshots above show the editor that I have used to create the sprites and they contain a number of tools in which I have used. Tools such as the circle tool, the pen tool, the fill tool etc. The screenshots which show the image index of the sprite shows how the animation works. Each image has something different about it. This could be a changing glow colour or blinking eyes or it rotates and so on. The other sprites such as wall, wallmove, push, wall invisible all have only one image in their image index. 

Task 1 (1.3) Objects:

Object Player (obj_player):

The object player has a lot of events in. The keyboard events “Left”, “Right”, “Up” and “Down” all control how the player moves the object player in the room. There are many collision events associated with the main player. Within the collision events for the different shapes the player can change into, are 3 actions which are played through; Change sprite, code and then alarm. The change sprite action allows the player to change into the shape sprite of which it has collided with, the coding includes code of the vspeed and hspeed which created when in contact with the shape object and the alarm is an alarm which is set to turn on after 1 tick. The coding, which includes a set vspeed and hspeed is there so that whatever vspeed and hspeed the player is moving at will then be reversed and the player will be pushed away from the object. The reason why I have done this is so that the player does not get stuck within the shape object. The alarm is then set after the code has been executed and then the alarm will turn on. In the first alarm which is set is friction and then another alarm which is set to turn on after 10 ticks. The friction slows down the player and then once that has been executed, after 10 ticks alarm 1 will turn on. Alarm 1 contains a drag and drop which turns the friction off. The reason for this was so that it wouldn’t be buggy. The bug was that leaving the friction on would mess up the movement of the player. The collision event with the walls, invisible walls, moving walls and the “push” objects is there so that the player can’t go through them. The final event is the collision with the enemy. Inside the enemy collision event is an action which executes a code. Within the code, are two if statements. The first if statement defines, if the object player is the same sprite as the enemy sprite then what happens is the enemy sprite is destroyed and then 20 score is added onto your score you have got. Otherwise you die (the player). The second if statement happens when you die. So, if the player dies then your lives are reduced by 1, an explosion is then carried out, your player gets destroyed and then gets spawned back in the original spawn point. Within this second if statement is a nested if statement which defines what happens when you have less than 0 lives. What happens is that a message pops up and the game restarts. This including a fresh set of lives, new score and the game ticks are reset.

Object Enemy (obj_enemy):

Within the create event are two actions. The first action is the “start moving in a direction” action and I have set this so that the enemy moves in a certain direction on its own. The code action after the direction one includes code which links in with the “frozen” element I have within my game. (The code is setting “frozen” as a variable). The step event has only coding tied in with it. The code has 3 if statements in and a switch statement. The first if statement is defining what happens when the frozen variable is 0. Within this if statement is a nested if statement which explains, if the moveto variable and the player does NOT have the same sprite as the enemy and the enemy doesn’t move towards the player then moveto is false. The next if statement is similar however if the variable moveto and the player is the same sprite as the enemy and the enemy doesn’t move towards the player then moveto is false again.
The switch statement is set to work with the variable “spriteto”. The sprite_index is the list of sprites I have. Therefor what the switch statement is doing is going through the list until it has found what it is meant to equal to. So if it is “case 0” then the sprite will flick to the “Circle” sprite I have. If the case is 3 then the sprite will change to the “Square” sprite and so on.
Right at the bottom of the code is an if statement which basically means if the variable “freeze” is set to 1 then perform a specific event which has been defined within the enemy and then turn the global variable freeze off (to 0). The specific event which is being called within the if statement is actually calling the user defined 0 event. Within this event are 3 actions. The action stops the motion of the enemy, it puts it to a complete standstill. Then an alarm 2 (another event) is set to go off after 200 ticks and then a piece of code is executed after the second action has been carried out. Within the code is the global variable “frozen” being set to 1. Alarm 2 activates after 200 ticks. What alarm 2 does after 200 ticks is allows the enemy to move again and then the code sets the variables “freeze” and “frozen” to 0 which essentially means turning them off.
The next events are collision events. The collision event with the player is the same as the player collision with the shapes it can change into. What happens in the code is that the player is flung reverse to where it was going. For example, if it was hitting the enemy from above (so going down) it would be flung back up. Then an alarm is set to go off after 10 ticks. What this alarm does is sets the friction of the player down to 0.5 and sets another alarm to go off after 5 ticks have gone by. In the next alarm it sets the friction to 0 and then allows the player to start moving in any direction.
The collision with the first “obj_wall” allows the enemy to bounce off of the wall object and then move in any random direction. This the same for “obj_wall_1” however advanced bounce is set to true. The collision with the push objects basically pushes the newly spawned enemies out in a certain direction. So for the “push_l” they get pushed in the left direction and for “push_r” they get pushed out in the right direction. This is the same for the invisible wall collision. When the enemies collide with the invisible walls they get bounce back dependent on which wall they are colliding with. If they are colliding with “obj_wall_invisible_r” then the enemy get pushed in the right direction as they were currently moving in the left direction.



Controller:

The controller only have 4 events within the object. The create event holds a execute code action. Within this action are a bunch of global variables which have been set. In the alarm 0 event is a code which has set another global variable. However the reason why it is in the alarm event is so that it can be called upon at a certain time.
Within the step event there is only 1 action event, execute the code. There are 5 if statements and 1 switch statement within this action. The first if statement defines if the variable “frozen” is set to 0 and a random integer is equal to 1 then the countdown is reduced by 1 each time instead. The next 3 if statements work together. The first “cycle” if statement basically means if the cycle is equal to 0 then a lot of the invisible walls are created in specific locations and then 1 is added onto the current cycle count which at this point is 0 so it will equal to 1. Then in the second if statement, if the countdown is less than around 5/8 and times the amount of gameticks and the cycle is equal to 1 then what will happen is it will destroy the invisible walls and then create a lot of walls in a specific location and then 1 is added onto the current cycle amount (thus equal to 2). The final if statement which links with the cycle explains that if the countdown is ¼ of the gameticks and the cycle is equal to 2 and there are only 2 or less enemies alive then it will spawn in 6 enemies in specific areas. Then 1 is added onto the current cycle value. Those 3 if statements sum up how the enemies spawn in, how the walls work with letting the enemies get out and how the game knows when to spawn in more enemies. The last if statement has a nested if statement involved. If the countdown is less than 2 then, if the gameticks are more than 50 the gameticks will be reduced by 5, the countdown will equal the gameticks (which means that will also be reduced by 5) and the cycle is reset back to 0. Other than that, if the gameticks are not more than 50 then countdown equals what the gameticks are currently are and the cycle is still set back to 0. Then the spriteto variable will equal the spritenext variable. What the spritenext variable is equal to is a random integer which it selects a number out of 5. The final part of the code is the switch statement. What this switch statement does is basically works as a playlist. The cases work in pairs. So case 0 and 1 works for one sound that is created. The first case plays the sound which is has been set to play and then the second case checks whether song is still playing. If the sound is not playing then it will play the second sound (or in this case the second song) and then so on.
The last event is the draw event, within this event are 3 actions. The first action draws the score on the game, which at the start is 0. Then the second action draws how many lives you have, which at the start of the game you have 5. The last action is executable code which has 15 if statements and few other pieces of code. The first 5 if statements cover how the numbers appear in the middle of the room and it associates the numbers with the shape of what is going to show next. Then the next if statement is the checking whether the backspace key has been pressed. If the backspace key has been pressed then the variable “menutoggle” will be set to -1. Then the menutoggle if statement checks whether menutoggle is more than 0, if it is then it will create the sprite of “obj_shop”. The sprite “obj_shop” is an animation of a purple dropdown. The “draw_set_halign” and “draw_set_valign” sets the positioning of the sprite and then another if statement is carried out. If the variable of “shopdraw” is equal to 1 (so turned on) then font used, white will be the colour of the font that is drawn and used and 4 lots of text appears on screen. The rest of the text that is on screen is set to the colour red and uses a different font. Then another menutoggle if statement is carried out. If the menutoggle variable is less than 0 then the shopdraw variable is equal to 0. What this means is that shopdraw will be turned off. The next few keyboard if statements all link in with shop and buying mechanism. The keyboard check, checks whether numpad 1 and the score is more than or equal to 100, if both of those conditions are met then the 100 is took away from your current score and life is added to your current amount of lives and the menutoggle = -1. The next keyboard check, checks whether the numpad 2 has been pressed and whether the score is more than or equal to 100, if both of these conditions are met then the global variable “freeze” is turned on (changed to 1) and menutoggle is equal to -1. The following keyboard check, checks whether numpad 3 has been pressed and the score is more than or equal to 50, if both of these conditions are met then 50 score is taken away from your current score and you will gain double the amount of speed that you have (in this case, your playerspeed is equal to 6) and then an alarm is set so that after 100 ticks the menutoggle is set to -1 and the effect is turned off. The final if statement within executable code action is a menutoggle if statement. If the menutoggle is less than 0 (in which its usual state is -1) then the number is drawn in the middle (the one that changes), the gameticks show and the countdown shows.

Object Wallmove 1 and 2:

Both of the object wallmoves have similar coding but both working in the same way. The only difference in the coding is the positioning of where the wall is being moved to and the score they are set to move on. Obj_wallmove only has one event in which is a step event. Within the code of the step event are 3 if statements. What the if statements do, they check if the score has reached a certain amount and then once it has reached a certain amount the path starts to stop. However, once it has reached certain co-ordinates, the path ends. Then when the score has reached a higher number, the path starts again, reaches a point and then the path ends.

Object Collectables:

Similar to the wallmove, it only has one event. The only event this has is a collision event with the player. Once the player has collided with the collectible 2 actions are played through. An additional 5 points is added when the player has collided with the collectible and then the instance is destroyed.

Object Menu:

The object menu is the menu that you first encounter when you load up the game. This object consists of 3 events. The create event holds some code which is run as soon as soon you have loaded up the game. The code is set out as a list (an array) and to whatever number is set text of what will appear. Then the amount of space between them is 64 pixels. In the step event, it holds the code for the movement of your arrow keys. The variable move is set to 0. The “+=” and “-=” both either increase or decrease from 0. Every time you either press the up/down arrow or the W/S key then each time it will add 1 or – 1 from 0. This then sets off a chain reaction for the next if statement. After that, if move is not equal to 0 then the next piece of code explains that if you move up it will curl back around and appear at the bottom and vice versa. The final piece of code is that, if you push the enter key, the shift key or the spacebar key then the script menu is used. The “scr_menu” contains a switch statement that works with the variable “mpos”. Basically, it checks through what you have pressed enter, shift or spacebar on. The case numbers link with the menu array list that I set up at the beginning in the create event.

Object Shop:

The object shop consists of 2 events, a create event and a step event. In the create event is code which defines the variables of “yup”, “nope” and “image_speed”. What happens in the step event is how the image_index appears when global variable shopdraw is turned on (equal to 1). If the image_index is equal to 7 and the nope variable is equal to 0 then what happens is the speed is equal to 0 and the image_index is equal to 8 and it plays the animation and the shopdraw is turned on (equal to 1). However, if the global shopdraw is turned off and yup equals 1 then the image_speed is reduced to -1 which means reversing the animation and making it close. Then in the nested if statement the image_index is destroyed, this making it disappear.

Object Pause:

There are 2 events in object pause, create and <any key>. In the create event is a piece of code which declares the global variable “pause1” to 0. Then in the any key event is code which contains 2 if statements. The first if statement check whether the variable pause1 is equal to 0 and the spacebar has been pressed and it deactivates the controller, the enemies and player. By deactivating those means removing them whist the variable is set to 1. Then the code is executed. Then the last if statement checks whether the spacebar has been pressed and the variable pause1 is equal to 1, if both conditions are met then the player, enemies and the controller are all activated again and you can continue the game from where you left off. Then the variable is set back to 0 which means turning it off.

Object Pause Draw:

This object links in with pause object. What happens in the draw event is that when the variable pause is equal to 1 (turned on) then text is drawn.

Object Background:

An object background was created so that I could have an animated background. In the draw event is a piece of code. It just stretches the sprite to fit the room height and width. Otherwise it just plays through the image index the size it is.


Task 1 (1.4) Rooms and Task 4: Improvements : 

Task 5: Game Manual (Documentation):

Task 2 and 3: Testing the game

https://youtu.be/wqZpCIOOFMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5CgCNkUK9g&feature=youtu.be