gamer moments

I'm Lara, a Games student from the UK! I've just started my course and I'm keeping a track of it here so whoever's interested can learn along with me.

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little living room as a box modelling test!

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coloured ver. (missing a shelf)

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little living room as a box modelling test!

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Blizzard Entertainment

(And their impact on the gaming industry)

Notable games;       World of Warcraft       Overwatch       Diablo

Blizzard Entertainment, founded February 8, 1991, is a game developer and publisher with a huge impact on the gaming industry as a whole. They began as a small company with an aim of porting pre-existing games to new consoles, and in 1993 started the development of their own games for the first time. 

They started relatively small, releasing games such as Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings, but the first great success was Diablo (1996), released along with Blizzard’s new online gaming service, Battle.net. Diablo was the highest-selling computer title of the first six months of 1997 in the US, and by the end of the year in the US alone 670,155 copies of the game had been sold. It found critical acclaim thanks to its graphics, infinite replay value due to random level generation and intense music. Riding on Diablo’s success, two sequels were produced, and found a similar reception.

While Diablo set the standard for the point-and-click style dungeon crawlers of the time, Blizzard Entertainment also became the biggest name in MMORPGs in 2004 with the release of World of Warcraft. WoW was incredibly well received, and was highly anticipated. Upon its released it was praised for its questing, balanced and distinctive classes. The scenery and experience of traversing WoW’s landscape was described as “breathtaking”, and the clever graphic design made the UI simple and accessible. In 2010, World of Warcraft peaked at 12 million monthly subscriptions, and is the world’s most subscribed MMORPG to date. The game alone holds 62% of the MMORPG’s subscriptions, winning it an Emmy and a Guinness World Record. As of January 2014, over 100 million accounts had been made for the game.

Now, Blizzard are known for Overwatch, the team-based FPS. Overwatch uses a system where users play online split into two teams, as pre-existing characters that fit into classes. The array of skins and animations available for purchase add an element of personalisation to the game, and it has grown in popularity to the point where it is the face of modern Esports, and there are worldwide leagues for the game with teams having large followings.

Overall, Blizzard’s impact on the games industry has been huge. Having set standards for entire genres of games and produced some of the current biggest titles, they’re one of the biggest names in gaming, and I think that companies will continue to follow in their footsteps for a long time to come.

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Games Theory; Developers vs. Publishers

Developers

Developers are the people who actually create the game. They could be self-publishing, or could develop for a parent company/third party. A third party is a separate company, who will pay the developer for the rights to publish, market and profit from the game. A good example of a third party company is Microsoft, as while they do have original games, they often pay for the rights to publish games by others on their platform. If the developer creates a game for the publisher it is owned by, or for its own platform, it is first party. 

Publishers

A publisher releases a game to the public, and takes control of marketing and funding. They will buy out or hire developers in order to have games created for their platforms. For example, Nintendo (a publisher) pays Game Freak (a developer) to make the Pokémon games. These are exclusive to Nintendo consoles, making them second party to the publisher.  While a developer can be committed to only one publisher, publishers almost always work with several developers for their platform.

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3D Modelling   Week 1, 09/09/19 – 12/09/19

Monday

Skills learnt;

Move (W)

Rotate (E)

Scale (R)

Selection modes (Right click + drag) > Edge > Vertex > Face > Object 

Multiple selection (Shift)

Extrude (Ctrl + E)

Insert Edge Loop 

Change perspective (Space)

The first lesson served as an introduction to the 3D modelling software, Maya. This is software I have had experience with, although very limited. We began by exploring the basic three tools; move, scale and rotate, using them to manipulate primitives into a model of a toy train.

We learnt the shortcuts for the move, rotate and scale commands (W, E and R) respectively. 

When we had a good grip on move, scale and rotate, we were introduced to the “Extrude” (ctrl+e)  and “Insert Edge Loop” tools. While we did not go into a lot of depth regarding the extrude tool, we used the insert edge loop tool to create windows in the carriages of our trains.

To create bumps in wheels and the half-cylinder of the engine, we also explored the use of perspectives, accessed with the space key, in order to select half of a shape easily. 

This lesson I feel went very well in terms of learning and understanding what I was being taught. I am pleased with the final product of the session, and I plan to practice the skills I have been taught in order to use them to their best potential. There’s always more to learn!

Tuesday

Skills learnt;

Insert Image Plane

Export to Unreal

In this session, we used a sketch made earlier in the day to create a collectible item of our own design. This was made possible thanks to being able to insert an image plane into our workspace. You do this by pressing space, and navigating to “Image Plane” in the “View” dropdown.

Importing an image of our earlier sketches allowed us to model our pickups against them. Using a combination of the tools we learnt from our first lesson, we created our models and exported them as FBX files in order to put them into Unreal. I found that using the image plane made the whole process of modelling a lot simpler! I did make a couple of mistakes (e.g. way too many polygons) but after tweaking, I had a workable model that I was happy with the look of! I can’t wait to get to texturing it.

Wednesday

Skills learnt;

Extrude

UV Editor

Assign New Material

Wednesday was the last day of the week for any 3D modelling work. The main goal of the session on Wednesday was to cement our knowledge in the extrude tool. We started with a singular box, then using the extrude tool we manipulated it into the shape of a spaceship. We took inspiration from games like F-Zero for the shape and low-poly feel. Within the extrude function we used the basic move, scale and rotate tools to truly create whatever shape we desired.

When we were happy with our knowledge of the extrude tool, we tried our hands at texturing. Using the UV editor and the “Assign New Material” option in the dropdown upon holding right-click, we played with using 512x512 textures to map onto boxes and barrels. The box was achieved with Planar mapping, but the barrel was done entirely by editing the UV Map.

(Texture borrowed from Christina Donald !)

Wednesday’s session really helped me to feel secure using the extrude tool. While I still have a lot to learn with texturing, and as I learn more i will cover it in more detail, I am happy with what I know and look forward to developing the skill.

When I have time, I will be making separate posts about the skills I have learned in modelling over the week to explore them in more depth. This week has been very fun, and a brilliant introduction to the course. I’m excited to spend the next two years here keeping updates and helping other beginners along the way.