Samuel Watts Unit 72 - Computer Games Design: Task 1A

Terrain:

Terrain in a video game is the outer shell of the project, it is one of the first steps when considering the setting or the environment of the game. When a person mentions the terrain of a game they have to think about lay of the land and this overall aspect. An example of a terrain would be within the first mission of black ops, the environment is set in Cuba and so the terrain of the mission looks quite like a jungle that has been chopped down in certain areas to make room for different types of man-made architecture.

A different type of terrain can be seen in the evil within when looking at chapter 5, the chapters terrain could be seen as the hospital building itself instead of an exterior terrain like the Black ops one. The terrain of this is quite closed quartered and looks has a man-made layout compared to the natural layout of the black ops Cuban mission.

Architecture:

Architecture in a video game is the next step after terrain, it is the inner filling with the terrain being the outer shell. Depending on the original terrain can alter the outcome of what the architecture will look like. Anything that cannot be manipulated by the player and is within a room would be considered architecture to a gamers view. If we look back at the black ops mission the architecture featured in that level would be the buildings that are placed for exploration. The houses look quite cheap and run down due to their setting except for the mansion which looks quite wealthy due to Fidel Castro living there.

Comparing that to the evil within, we can’t call the architecture the hospital as that is the main setting for the chapter 5 mission. Instead the architecture featured in this game would be the different room that the player can walk through. This is a huge contrast to the black ops architecture as these bigger areas of architecture have been shrunken down to be closed quartered areas. Items included in architecture that wouldn’t usually seem like it are beds, hospital chairs, sinks etc. With this knowledge we could also say that there are sub architectures featured in the black ops 1 mission as there are multiple room for the player to walk through, the difference between this will be the attention to detail though as the evil within will attempt to place more details on a smaller scaled piece of architecture to compensate for not having a huge architecture whereas black ops will concentrate on how the exterior and interior look for their architecture making for a bigger scaled object to be worked on.

Objects:

Objects are items in a game that can be manipulated by the player, this means that anything that can be interacted with by the player is an object. This can range from items that are able to be held by the player to items in a room that can be changed by the player. In Black ops the objects used would be the arsenal at hand able to be used such as the guns, grenades, flash bangs, knife etc. Other objects that are intractable are items such as fruit, paper, plant pots, cars etc. but these objects have to be shot to be interacted with and changed. The video posted at the top of the blog will show you objects being interacted with as the player fights through the mission.

As for the Evil Within there are both similar and different intractable objects, the similar objects would be the arsenal the player has, as guns work the same in both games. As for objects not held by the player, the evil within has a more intricate design than black ops as the player can walk into objects to interact with them instead of having to shoot them for a change to happen. This can involve IV’s and wooden chairs. Objects can also be moved using the gun to interact with it such as TV’s and Crates. The difference between these two games are that The Evil Within has more intractable objects with a better mechanic of interaction allowing not just objects to interact with one another but for the player to interact with moveable objects too. To see objects being interacted with check the video above.

Characters:

Characters in a game are people who make an impact in a story and add emphasis to it. The protagonist will be the character(s) the player will control. As for other characters there is a fine line between calling them characters and NPC as the player may not be able to play as them which, by definition, would place them in that threshold. However, the way to determine whether a character should be categorised within the characters or NPC sections should depend on their impact to the story and how they add to it. These characters would include people like friends, the antagonist(s), family/loved ones etc. Looking at Call of duty Black ops the characters implemented into that would be Mason (the protagonist) and people such as Resnov, Woods, Castro, Dr Steiner or maybe the characters from the zombies game mode which are hugely recognised.

As for the Evil Within it takes a similar approach except without having the player through the eyes of the protagonist and instead looking over a detective known as Sebastian who is teamed up with Juli Kidman and Joeseph Oda. It also doesn't feature any extra game modes with a branching story arc meaning there are a lot fewer characters involved with this game than Black Ops.

NPC:
NPC stands for Non-playable character, in video games it is basically a character the player cannot control. NPC usually refers to the common folk within in a game such as merchants, towns folk, minions etc. There is a fine line between this category and the previous one as stated because sometimes characters in a game who are a main essential will not playable but they will not be categorised as a NPC but instead just as a character of the game. An example of a game with a huge amount of NPCs would be the Witcher 3, this game is an open world game and so thrives off of using NPCs for a lot of its content, these NPCs will usually give the player quests, trading options or be used as a background prop to bring an area to life and make it feel more realistic instead of a barren and deserted land.

Feedback:
Feedback is used in video games to tell people how well they are doing at the game they are playing, they are usually presented in a numerical fashion and appear on things such as leaderboards or another scoring system. The call of duty multiplayer has a great feedback system which tells you numerous amounts of information such as kills, deaths, assists etc. Another game with a feedback system is fifa as above the screen it shows the total goals for both sides and when they score a goal that total will increase. It will also display stats when the game is paused or the match has finished, this gives the player information which can help out to win future games.

Interface:
A HUD (heads up display) is an example of one method used in video games to relay a visual pieces of information to the player through the use of it's users interface. The interface has to be one of the major parts of a video game as it includes a lot of important information for the player to see. Taking Call Of Duty as an example, the interface for that game shows the amount of ammo the player has in total and in the gun, a mini map, any score/kill streaks they have, the score of the team for the objective they are playing to show if they are winning or losing and so on. The interface will change for each game though as not all of them will be portrayed in the style of a Call Of Duty game an example of this would be a fighting game as their is a health bar shown at the top of the screen for the player and their opponent.

Perspective:
The perspective of games will change from one game to the next, depending on the experience the developer will want the player to have will depend on the perspective they are presented it. Sometimes it will also depend on the genre and can differ into different perspectives as the years go by, an example of this evolving perspective can be found in the horror genre. A great franchise to analyse which shows of this transition is the resident evil series, originally a 3D perspective that had a sub perspective of fixed camera angles, it has morphed into having a behind the shoulder camera angle to a first person camera perspective for its upcoming resident evil 7 game.

There are many unique perspectives found in all types of games and developers are looking for ways to create even more so the player can have a different and more varied experience instead of having to play within the same perspective that is always done. Some examples of different perspectives are shown below.