Electric Box Demo

Heres an electrical Box that we had ran through a demo with, the general idea was to create an electric box and animate its doors. We had started out with a basic box and had insetting and extracted each side, creating the general shape for it. on top we had extracted and stretched out the top, then used the move Line tool and created an angle to the top. other parts of creating a reasonable shape was just touching up each of the corners and the general shape of the box. from here we continued on to animate it using the animation line at the bottom of the program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39QDqqwP8a4&feature=youtu.be

Car Demo

During our demo stages we also had been shown how to create a car using only blocks, by reshaping it and extending it and using extrusions we were capable of making a general shape of a car.

one of the main tools for doing this demo is the line tool, which from this you are able to draw whatever shape you wish and extend it. by using this method we were able to place door shapes on the car and push into the car, cutting out the insides.  from here I was able to cut down the shape I used for the car insides and replicate a door. from this point I was able to place 2 doors on each side of the car.

After doing the insides of the car and the doors, I decided to design seats for the car, I downloaded a image of a car seat off the internet and drew round it as a template, this extruded gave me the general shape of a seat. from here I attempted to twist and reshape the seat so it would have a better outward appearance.

After everything had been completed that I had set out to do and as I was going for an apocalyptic theme in my street I was designing at the time so I attempted to colour the car in dark and grey colours to give it a burnt and destroyed appearance. 

Comparing Game Engines

Game Engines Report

Our task for today is to take several game engines and compare their abilities and their limitations, to use examples to define why companies will be particular in picking their while developing their game, or even creating their own game engine.

CryEngine

Cryengine was originally built as a tech demo for Nvidia, using the demo Farcry, to demonstrate the engine’s ability to create graphics which would include different bits of lighting and effects, so Nvidia could market their graphics cards on them and show the potential of their work. It was shortly after this that Crytek the german developer of the cryengine, realized that farcry had a great potential to be a game using the cryengine. So they decided to develop Farcry.

Farcry became a commercial success with both its beautiful looking game engine, and well worked story and warranted a sequel eventually, which Crytek went on to develop.

With this knowledge they also felt they needed to upgrade their engine, and eventually they had engineered Cryengine 2.

Cryengine 2 enabled developers to have the game render buildings and interiors before they came into visual range, and enabled them to create much bigger landscapes and areas within the game environment.

This created a great success for crisis as it was capable of having large scale vehicular warfare in its multiplayer component, which resonated amazing amounts of success and modifications through its fan base.

Sadly Crytek wanted to again, advance its graphical capabilities on their engine, so they had upgraded their engine to Cryengine version 3, which had sharpened up every aspect of their engine, including adding support for Direct X 9, 10 and 11, which focussed the power of the engine on its graphical capabilities rather than its open world free roaming abilities, this was demonstrated in crisis 2 and 3. During the launch of cryengine 3, crisis 2 came along, which was a significant change compared to its predecessor.

As you can see from the above image, the graphics have been significantly improved compared to crisis 1, but this was at a cost and sacrifice to what you can do, which included vehicle combat in multiplayer, and sacrificed the free roaming element in both single player and multiplayer.

Crisis 2 was still a fair success, but due to its massive change in design it wasn’t as successful as crisis 1.

Crisis 3 was a little more successful than the second, as I think Crytek understood taking away elements of the first game was a bad idea, they reintroduced some of the elements including abilities, larger areas and vehicles, which showed that cryengine 3 was capable of providing incredible graphics, while retaining elements of gameplay.

Unreal Engine

Making its debut in 1998 with Unreal developed by Epic games creators of the gears of war series, the first generation of the Unreal Engine with its intergrated rendering, collision detection, AI, visibility, networking, scripting, and file system management into one complete engine.

Unreal engine 1 provided an advanced software rasterizer and a hardware-accelerated rendering path using the glide API, specifically developed for 3DFX GPU’s and eventually was updated for openGL and direct3D. Large parts of the game were implemented in a custom scripting language called unrealscript. The initial network performance was also very poor when compared to its biggest competitor, Quake 2, which at the time had incredible graphics on the engine ID Tech 2 engine, developed by ID Software. Epic used this engine for both unreal and unreal tournament. The release of unreal tournament marked great strides in both network performance and drect3D and OpenGL support.

Unreal engine 2 saw significant upgrades compared to its predecessor, including incredible graphical advancements, and the ability to create ragdoll effects with extra support for many different consoles and design elements. It created a bigger depth in its graphical quality, it also had much better vehicle physics which enhanced the gameplay of unreal tournament, resulting in a much better critical success for the game.

The Third and current generation of the unreal engine is version 3, it was designed for directX versions 9-11 for windows, Windows RT and the xbox 360, as well as systems using OpenGL, including the playstation 3, playstation Vita, Wii U, and several handheld operating systems and other scripting programs. It’s renderer supports many advanced techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows. It also builds on the tools available in previous versions. In October 2011, the engine was ported to support Adobe flash player 11 through the stage 3D hardware-accelerated API’s. Epic has used this version of the engine for their in house games. Aggressive licensing of this iteration has garnered a great deal of support from many prominent licensees. Epic has announced that unreal engine 3 runs on both windows 8 and windows RT, making it a valuable asset to companies and designers everywhere.

In addition to the game industry, UE3 has also seen adoption by many non gaming projects, for instance – Lazy town, which is an animated childrens program, animation software, and the FBI, where they use UE3 for simulation training.

Heres a quick demonstration of the advancement level of the Unreal Engine and the differences in display.

Frostbite Engine

Frostbite is a game engine developed by EA digital Illusions CE, otherwise known as “ DICE “ which is a games development company responsible for the development of the battlefield series. The engine is currently designed for use on Microsoft windows, playstation 3, playstation 4, xbox 360, and the xbox one platforms and is adapted for a range of video game genres. The engine was first used by DICE to create first-person shooters, but it has been expanded to include various other genres such as racing and real-time strategy and is employed by a number of EA studios. Thus far, the engine is exclusive to electronic arts with all titles being published by EA.

The first version of frostbite was used in Battlefield Bad company, and that enabled the designers to use the engine to develop a game environment which would enable players to hear bullet shots from over a distance, and to make the environment more audible, it also allowed developers to create destructible walls in battlefield.

The first major update to frostbite engine debuted in 2011 with battlefield 3, it took full advantage of its ability to utilize direct X 11 API and 64 but processors, with no support for directX 9 nor therefore windows XP.

It also featured enhanced in-game destruction with destruction 3.0 creating more refined physics than its predecessor which enabled players to bring entire buildings down, adding a huge improvement to the gameplay.

The first major upgrade to frostbite debuted in 2011 with battlefield 3. It takes full advantage of the drect X 11 API and 64-bit processors; with no support for direct x 9 nor therefore windows XP. it also features enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0, creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-realtime radiosity using geomerics enlighten technology. Additionally an important distiction on its naming is that fristbite 2 is not called frostbite 2.0. 

Then came the introduction of frostbite 3, which significantly improved the physics and overall look of the engine, as you can see there is a significant difference in the engine development of each one used, each engine offers different perspectives as its upgrades are applied.

Some engines offer more physics, some offer more graphical capability, and some offer different effects, which makes the decision of choosing an engine extremely important when developing a game and project within the industry.