First Year at Uni

A year at Uni, it seems like it's been far longer than that since i finished college.
Has it been worth it?
Hell Yeah.
It's been a blast, i've enjoyed it, i don't always get on with some of the lecturers and sometimes the work can be tough and getting out of bed for lecture at 9 doesn't seem worth it somedays but it's all been good. I've met new people, some who have similar intrests and those with less similar intrests, it all works out, no one really cares who you are, it's more about what you can do and what you know, there's about 8 of us that play Yu-Gi-Oh, Its a kids cardgame and no one cares that we play it, we just have a blast, there are times that we stay overnight doing work... and sometimes not doing work.
It's all good fun and my time has been well spent, the time i spent at college has been so worth it, i've remebered so much and it's helped out a lot.
Fortunatly i don't need to worry about my drawing skills, i dont really need them.
Switching from Max to Maya has been an expeience... one that i don't like, i prefer Max.
Using the UDK is awesome, it's a free program and is so easy to use with a good online community and no shortage of people that can help online.
The Work I've done in the UDK is easily the best.

That's what my Level looks like... i got killed after taking the second screen shot.

It's been a fun year and I'm glad i decided to come to uni, it's been an experience that i hope to see through till the end.
Alright, i'm done.
Later.

Showcase

The showcase was a brillant sucess and worked really well, everything was done on time, the boards were all put up and looked really nice, the one of the big screens had the trailers playing whilst the other had a showreel of work on it, students on the course were about the room, some did some work on computers, other talked to prospective students and some did demos of the software and the teachers were around talking to everyone and showing work. most visitors were parents or prospective students.
the software demos didn't work that well because not enough people came to do it really, most likley because of the foot ball game.
I enjoyed being there and helping setting up.

Teams Trailer Reflection

There were four diffrent teams that each made a trailer-

Production company - 42

Game name - Zero G

Pros- The lighting was really good and set a good tone for the trailer
The logo for the team
The soundtrack used

Cons- The splash screens for the game name and credits could have been better, more stylized with bigger letters for the game name and slowed down on the team members names.

Production company - Paradox

Game name - Dark Shock

Pros - Very good environment for dark shock splash screen
Very good sound
Had VA in it

Cons- transitions could have been better

Production company - Lazerbaby

Game name - Tempus limit before which

Pros- fantastic modelling
Brilliant sound
brilliant effects

Cons- Lighting was too dark in places

Production company - Negative one

Game name - Desolate

Pros- Brilliant environment with awesome effects
Good fantasy style music that suited the environments
Good splash screens

Cons- would have been nice to have seen some character modeling

Trailer Evaluation

The original idea for our team's (42) Trailer was to have a more desert wasteland style of racing game similar to that of the game motorstorm but that quickly gave way to something more futuristic along the lines of WipeOut and F-Zero. The trailer doesn't meet our original intentions but it fits the criteria of a more futuristic style.
The trailer meets our target audiance and in fact probably covers more than the intended audiance of teens due to the fact that it was suitable for all ages although it does focus more on a male teen audiance.
For my part in the trailer i used 3D Studio Max to create the team logo, i used two texured boxed one inside the other and animated them to rotate around with the camera located inside the first box and looking at the second. For the other two splash screens i used fade in transition effects and explosion effects.
I think that if i did it again i would use a bigger image file for the game name and for the credits i would slow down the team members names as well as use something a little bit fancier, something like a styleised font with a drop shadow.
I quite liked the look of the finished trailer, it had the look of the F-Zero and WipeOut games but it was diffrent enough to give it it's own feel whilst giving it a bit of retro feel.
We didn't really enounter that many problems doing the actual work but i think we could have worked better as a team as none of us really did our fair share of the work although we still met the deadline despite having poor time manegment even though our team leader forgot the final version for the showcase and so we used an earlier version oof the trailer.
I would like to think that during this project my skills involving teamwork, storyboarding and planning have improved.
I think that should i do this project again i would do a diffrent style of game for the trailer, something more along the lines of an adventure game with cell shaded graphics similar to that of the game Jet Set Radio Future as well as doing more about creating characters.

Unit 19

For part of Unit 19 i have to show how to set up a games console, i have chosen to use a PS2 for this.

Setting up a console is a very easy process.

The back of any console will have two main ports, the arial cable which differs depending on the console, The arial cable for the PS2 is reletivly and goes in where the above picture shows in the bottom right hand corner of the bottom left if the console is stood on its side.
The power cable is a figure of 8, named so due to shape of the casing around the connection points that line up with the Pins in the port just below the power switch at the top right, a figure of 8 power cable is a fairly common cable, my CD player uses a figure of 8 cable, one that i have used for my PS2 at times.


The front of the PS2 has the contoller and memory card ports, both of these are unique ports, the conroller has a connection that is a flat 9 pin sperated into three segments, this plugs into its corosponding port beneath the flap that actually says memory card, the port on the left is for player one and the one on the right for player 2.
The memory card is a flash card similar to that of an SD card and is containd within the plastic casing, it goes into the memory card slot which is covered by a flap.


The other end of the aerial cable ends in a Phono connection with three seperate one pin connections, these three pins are colour coded as red, white and yellow, two are for video and one for Audio. the connection on the back of the TV usually will have these colour coded although the yellow audio cable is sometimes slightly off to the side


Some TV's such as my own use a scart connection, in this case there are converters for this, the Phono cable is pluged into the Phono to scart connector, again colour coded, which is then plugged into the scart connection in the TV. In the cases of both Scart and Phono the picture is usually access through the AV channel.

FMP Splash Screens

My job for the Final Major Project was to create the Splash Screens - This is the Credits splash screen


This is the Team Splash Screen


Game Name Splash Screen

Objectives and possible interaction

The environment i have created i would use as a trading town and main area of the game for a racing game.

For the buildings in the top three pictures and the top bottom picture as shop with the one on the top bottom that is also shown as in the top bottom picture could have a possible anouncement billboard on the front. The building at the very bottom i would use as the players base where the player could customize their character with the things already bought. I would imagine the Interactivity as the Player interacts with the door and the screen darkens and a shop menu appears over it with a picture of the shop keeper.



For the game i would use this monument like object as the place where the player choses which race they wish to participate in.


I would use the area around the arch as a 'reward' area, when the player qualifies for a reward by doing ingame objectives the gate would open and allow the player acess to the area where a reward would be located.


In the picture i would the billboard on the left hand side as a sort of high score and fastest lap where the player would check to see fastest lap times and such whilst the part in the back i would use as a sort of podieum.


For the Game i would use the large structure, on the left in the above picture, it would be something the player wouldn't directly interact with but it would be used as something like a power source which is why a town was built by it and possibly have electricity arcing from the crystle like object to the ring.