Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Produce a glossary of terms specific to the methods and principles of Video Game Design and Video Game Terms. Using a provided template, you must research and gather definitions specific to provided glossary terms. Any definitions must be referenced with the URL link of the website you have obtained the definition.

You must also, where possible, provide specific details of how researched definitions relate to your own production practice.

Name: Neil Rogero

RESEARCHED DEFINITION (provide short internet researched definition and URL link)

DESCRIBE THE RELEVANCE OF THE RESEARCHED TERM TO YOUR OWN PRODUCTION PRACTICE?

IMAGE SUPPORT (Provide an image and/or video link of said term being used in a game)

VIDEO GAMES / VIDEO GAME TESTING

Demo It is my opinion that a demo in games is a demonstration of how the game is played. It will normally tell you about how to go about playing in the game in detail and will normally take you through several boards of the game; this is normally used to give you a feel for the game and weather you might like the game and how it is played if you are purchasing it.

Source: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090423022627AA9nGkS

This shows the audience what the game is about and how you play it. An example of a video game demo that you are able to play some parts of the game but you are not able to play the full game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcMRkyoHKeA

Beta A beta is kind of like a teaser. Companies will release beta's to get people excited for a game, or to test a game (Like what Halo did a couple months back), and to see what people think about it before they mass produce it. Some betas are easy to get, others you may have to pre-order a game or know someone special.

Source: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100805174050AAuioAp

A beta is used to show other people an early teaser about a certain type of game and it shows the audience what the game will be like, some people might get access to some beta but not all people games companies do this to get the people hyped and excited on the game coming out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9D3jH964oY

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Alpha Well, an alpha test is performed by the programmers themselves to ensure they got everything right in their eyes.Source: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110119184650AAfwy7x

Game alpha is to test the performance of a certain game and they make sure that the game that they made is right and there’s nothing wrong with technical difficulties.

Pre-Alpha Pre-alpha refers to all activities performed during the software project before testing. These activities can include requirements analysis, software design, software development, and unit testing. In typical open source development, there are several types of pre-alpha versions. Milestone versions include specific sets of functions and are released as soon as the functionality is complete.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

Pre-Alpha is like a mega early version of the game and tests the game, before everything is finalized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0vpbQTRpQ0

Gold In software and application development, a gold version is the final stage of software development and follows the alpha and beta testing cycles of software development. The gold version is the final version of the software as it will be released to the public.

Source: http://www.webopedia.com/sgsearch/results?cx=partner-pub-8768004398756183%3A6766915980&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=gold

Gold is a beta-testing and it has been successful and passed, therefore allowing the game to be duplicated, produced and published around the world for retail sales.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXRyhGQ1OQo

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Debug Debug mode usually lets the user change many aspects of the game if you know how to use them properly.

Source: http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_debug_mode_in_gaming

Debug versions of games aren't just early versions. When you're actually developing the game, you typically have two main options every time you want to build the code into an executable program a Release build, which is as close to the final copy as you can get, and a Debug build, which is assembled in such a way that lets developers and designers step through portions of the code easier, to figure out problems de-bug remove bugs from the game.

Automation Automation is a tycoon-style game which put the player in control of their own auto company.

Source: http://www.giantbomb.com/automation/3030-37803/

Automation shows that you can see another person playing the game and what it’s like and what are the good and bad things about it.

White-Box Testing

Also known as glass box, structural, clear box and open box testing. A software testing technique whereby explicit knowledge of the internal workings of the item being tested are used to select the test data. Unlike black box testing, white box testing uses specific knowledge of programming code to examine outputs. The test is accurate only if the tester knows what the program is supposed to do. He or she can then see if the program diverges from its intended goal. White box testing does

It’s where a couple of people in a room when they test a certain type of game and it’s like a test data if the game is acceptable or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bJcvBLJViQ

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

not account for errors caused by omission, and all visible code must also be readable.For a complete software examination, both white box and black box tests are required.

Source: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/White_Box_Testing.html

Bug Sometimes called a glitch, a bug is just something wrong with the program. Sometimes it might be not serious and will be solved.

Source: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080622111127AAsXob5

A bug is where something is wrong with a video game and it becomes hard to respond and something happens with the game where everything goes weird.

GAME ENGINES

Vertex Shader

A Vertex Shader is also GPU component and is also programmed using a specific assembly-like language, like pixel shaders, but are oriented to the scene geometry and can do things like adding cartoony silhouette edges to objects, etc.

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/832545/what-are-vertex-and-pixel-shaders

Shaders are most commonly used to produce lighting and shadow in 3D modelling. This image illustrates Phong shading, one of the first computer shading models ever developed.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

GAME ENGINES

Pixel Shader A pixel shader is a set of program codes which is usually built into a video graphics chipset and drivers. Its purpose is to enable more lifelike lighting effects on 3d models, usually for gaming.

Source: http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_pixel_shader

A pixel shader is able to put lifelike effects on a model and that can be used for gaming some games uses pixel shader to bring lifelike lighting effects into the game.

Post Processing

The term post-processing (or postproc for short) is used in the video/film business for quality-improvement image processing (specifically digital image processing) methods used in video playback devices, (such as stand-aloneDVD-Video players), and video players software and transcoding software. It is also commonly used in real-time 3D rendering (such as in video games) to add additional effects.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_post-processing

Post processing is the process of changing the perceived quality of a video on a playback that could be used as a loading image screen on a game.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Rendering Rendering is the process of generating an image from a 2D or 3D model (or models in what collectively could be called a scene file), by means of computer programs. Also, the results of such a model can be called a rendering. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene. The data contained in the scene file is then passed to a rendering program to be processed and output to a digital or raster graphics image file. The term "rendering" may be by analogy with an "artist's rendering" of a scene. Though the technical details of rendering methods vary, the general challenges to overcome in producing a 2D image from a 3D representation stored in a scene file are outlined as the graphics pipeline along a rendering device, such as a GPU.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics)

Use a pre-image it’s usually a complete sketch and rendering is used that adds a bitmap textures and procedural texture lights.

Normal Map In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping, or "Dot3 bump mapping", is a technique used for faking the lighting of bumps and dents – an implementation of bump mapping. It is used to add details without using more polygons. A common use of this technique is to greatly enhance the appearance and details of a model by generating a normal map from a high polygon model or height map.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping

A Normal map uses lighting of a surface and from the shading point to the light source is dotted with the unit vector normal to that surface, and the result is the intensity of the light on that surface.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Entity Entity systems are growing in popularity, with well-known examples like Unity, and lesser known frameworks like ActionScript frameworks Ember2, Xember and my own Ash. There’s a very good reason for this; they simplify game architecture, encourage clean separation of responsibilities in your code, and are fun to use.

Source: http://www.richardlord.net/blog/what-is-an-entity-framework

An example of an entity system would be is that it’ll be used as many systems that uses larger games and renders physics, user control of a character and non-player characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FWULdNHqJE

UV Map This process projects a texture map onto a 3D object. The letters "U" and "V" denote the axes of the 2D texture because "X", "Y" and "Z" are already used to denote the axes of the 3D object in model space.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_mapping

UV texture permits polygons that make up a 3D object to be painted with colour from an image. The image is called a UV texture map.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Procedural Texture

A procedural texture is a computer-generated image created using an algorithm intended to create a realistic representation of natural elements such as wood, marble, granite, metal, stone, and others.Usually, the natural look of the rendered result is achieved by the usage of fractal noise and turbulence functions. These functions are used as a numerical representation of the randomness” found in nature.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_texture

Procedural texture uses solid texturing and process where the texture generating functions and evaluated over at an each visible surface point of a model. Some solid textures are an alternative to the tradional 2D texture images.

Physics A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, such as rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics, of use in the domains of computer graphics, video games and film. Their main uses are in video games (typically as middleware), in which case the simulations are in real-time. The term is sometimes used more generally to describe any software system for simulating physical phenomena, such as high-performance scientific simulation.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_engine

Physics generally is two classes of physic engines that uses real-time and high-precision and physic engines require more processing power to calculate a very precise animated or gameplay.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Collision Collision detection typically refers to the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. While the topic is most often associated with its use in video games and other physical simulations, it also has applications in robotics. In addition to determining whether two objects have collided, collision detection systems may also calculate time of impact (TOI), and report a contact manifold (the set of intersecting points). Collision response deals with simulating what happens when a collision is detected (see physics engine, ragdoll physics). Solving collision detection problems requires extensive use of concepts from linear algebra and computational geometry.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection

Collision engine is generally used in platform games to make the player actually hit walls and stuff and there’s the 2D type and the 3D type but they all accomplish the same thing.

Lighting The aim of this thesis was to study and implement advanced real-time rendering techniques for complex materials such as human skin. The project included investigation on how to adapt and simplify complex skin rendering models to fit current game engines. Also, the task included looking into recent research on spherical harmonics and wavelets. The goal was to determine whether they can be used to represent both diffuse and specular reflection from environment lighting in real time game. Subsurface scattering, Gaussian shadow mapping and representing lighting by the use of spherical harmonics and wavelets, are a few of the used techniques in this project. The results of this thesis show that it is possible to render realistic human skin in real time at a low cost.

Lighting is used to make a complex and simplify a character on a game, for example making it as real as possible.With the lighting effects on daylight time and night-time.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Source: http://dice.se/publications/lighting-and-materials-for-real-time-game-engines/

AA – Anti-Aliasing

The term Anti-aliasing refers to the level of image quality in 3D graphics. It is a vital process in producing high quality graphics that will ultimately be displayed. The main purpose of anti-aliasing is to smooth jagged/stair-cased edges (Jaggies) within pixel based images and the flickering/strobing of surfaces in an animation.

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1epqrHZkudz5X6XRAfpiaRXHpdUv8L0b34f6hlYOzNZk/edit?pli=1

Aliasing can occur at any stage during the rendering process. The problem stems from point is a process used in all computer graphics application that determines information about it.

LoD – Level of Detail

In computer graphics, accounting for level of detail involves decreasing the complexity of a 3D object representation as it moves away from the viewer or according to other metrics such as object importance, viewpoint-relative speed or position. Level of detail techniques increases the efficiency of rendering by decreasing the workload on graphics pipeline stages, usually vertex transformations. The reduced visual quality of the model is often unnoticed because of the small effect on object appearance when distant or moving fast.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail

The Level of detail concept of a discrete LOD and is to provide to various model to represent the same object. Obtaining those models requires an external algorithm which is often a subject of many polygon reduction techniques.

Animation Animation is the process of creating motion and shape change illusion by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion as in motion pictures in general is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon. Animators are artists who specialize in the creation of animation.

Encompasses a variety of techniques, the unifying factor being that the animation is created digitally on a computer. 2D animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation while 3D techniques usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact. 3D animation can create images that seem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83-T-bG2Ck

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation

real to the viewer and animations can be recorded on either analogue media, such as a motion picture film, video tape, or a digital media and used to display it from a computer or projector.

Sprite In computer graphics, a sprite (also known by other names; see Synonyms below) is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene. Initially including just graphical objects handled separately from the memory bitmap of a video display, this now includes various manners of graphical overlays.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)

The sprite engine is a hardware implementation of scan line rendering. For each scan line the appropriate scan lines of the sprites are first copied the number of pixels is limited by the memory bandwidth and the length of the horizontal retrace into very fast, small, multiple limiting the number of sprites on a line, and costly caches the size of which limit the horizontal width and as the pixels are sent to the screen, these caches are combined with each other and the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh4pTz1Lb9I

Scene  A Scene graph contains all of the geometry of a particular scene. They are useful for representing translations, rotations and scales (along with other affine transformations) of objects relative to each other.

Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5319282/game-engines-what-are-scene-graphs

Use of a scene graph for 2D may be useful if your content is sufficiently complex and if your objects have a number of sub components not rigidly fixed to the larger body. Otherwise, as others have mentioned, it's probably overkill. The complexity of affine transformations in 2D is quite a bit less than in the 3D case.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Library A game engine is made up of class libraries. They do not stop being class libraries simply because they are within a game engine. A library is a useful framework to tackle a specific need within a game engine. A framework that entails the needs for a complete game is a game engine.

Source: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/10770/whats-the-difference-between-a-library-and-an-engine

Library is a class of game engines like for example, Novodex (Physics),

UI The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is effective operation and control of the machine on the user's end, and feedback from the machine, which aids the operator in making operational decisions. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls, and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to or involve such disciplines as ergonomics and psychology.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface

The term of UI (user interface) is often used in the context of personal computer system and electronic devices.

Frames In computer networking and telecommunication, a frame is a digital data transmission unit that includes frame synchronization, i.e. a sequence of bits or symbols making it possible for the receiver to detect the beginning and end of the packet in the stream of symbols or bits.

In computer networking a frame is a data packet on a layer of the OSI model, a frame is the unit of transmission in a link layer protocol and consists of a link layer header followed by a packet.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_(networking)

Concept Every video game starts as a concept. From Super Mario Bros. to Half-Life, all of the world’s most successful games started as pen-and-paper ideas. Before you can start designing levels, you need to prepare a rough concept for your game.

Source: https://www.udemy.com/blog/make-a-video-game/

A Concept is the type of concept that you will need is to prepare the type of video game that you are interested in and developing and planning on what type of game it is.

Event A Game Event (will just call them Events) is anything of interest that happens while a Game is running. An explosion going off, the player being sighted by an enemy, an item being picked up – this is all events.Games often need some way to notify interested Game Entities when an event occurs and also make it possible for those entities to react to events of their interest in various ways. When this happens, we can say that a Game Entity is handling an event. The way a Game Entity handles and reacts to different events becomes a crucial aspect of that Entity behaviour.

Source: https://nicolasgoles.com/blog/2010/12/game-event-handling-part-1/

Game events are interesting things while you’re in a middle of a game something else happen for example like something you didn’t expect that got you surprise or maybe an explosion on the game some events could make a game interesting and maybe good for the audience.

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Salford City CollegeEccles Sixth Form CentreBTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGNUnit 73: Sound For Computer GamesIG2 Task 1

Path finding One of the greatest challenges in the design of realistic Artificial Intelligence (AI) inComputer games are agent movement. Path finding strategies are usually employed asThe core of any AI movement system. Path finding strategies have the responsibility ofFinding a path from any coordinate in the game world to another. Systems such as thistake in a starting point and a destination; they then find a series of points that togetherComprise a path to the destination. A games’ AI pathfinder usually employs some sortof recomputed data structure to guide the movement. At its simplest, this could beJust a list of locations within the game that the agent is allowed move to. Path findinginevitably leads to a drain on CPU resources especially if the algorithm wastesValuable time searching for a path that turns out not to exist.

Source: http://gamesitb.com/pathgraham.pdf

Path Finding is a design of a realistic artificial intelligence in a computer game. Path finding usually requires a system. This will be presently be in games and especially when dealing with real-time.

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