Computer Games:History and Content

Presented by

Barry Dean UWE

Game Genres

Shooters Strategy Sports Adventure World Control

Elements of Game Content

Environment Players and Enemies Animation Visuals and Textures Sound FX A.I. Deployment

Some Game History

Late 1970s saw the emergence of dedicated arcade consoles

Atari Games System

The 1980s gave rise to the ‘Home Micro’ Market

The 1980s

1980s - microcomputers

Atari BBC Microcomputer system Commodore 16 & 64

machines able to be programmed by user - many arcade games ported to 8 bit platform.

‘home micro’ largest selling item Christmas 1986

1980s

1980s:Sinclair ZX Spectrum

1980s: Commodore 64

1980s: BBC Micro

1980s: BBC Master 128 (1986)

1980s:Games: Chuckie Egg

1980s:Games:Felix

1980s:Games:Pole Position

1980s:Games:Frogger

Nintendo Game Boy (1989)

1990s- Technology Driven 16 Bit, consoles- Nintendo, Sega PC emerges as a gaming platform

(DOS) - Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 32 bit Sony Playstation - software now

in CD format - console also CD Player Microsoft develop DirectX in an attempt

to challenge the games console market Internet provides for on-line games

culture

1990s:Nintendo

1990s Nintendo Games

Nintendo Games: Tetris

Super Nintendo (SNES)

Sega

Sega Games: Sonic the Hedgehog

Sega:Batman

1990s:Sony PlayStation 32-bit + CD Player

Sony PlayStation games

1990s:Sega Saturn

Game Consoles

Know capabilities for developers Standard graphics environment Standard sound No deployment issues

But not scaleable

1990s What about the PC?

1990 still an ‘MSDOS world’ on the PC Game complexity increases and even

require start-up disc to load game. Windows 3.1.1 (1992) - no real gaming Mid 1990s sees move towards better

game support on PC under the new Windows 95 OS via ‘Game SDK’

Game SDK

Microsoft's solution to gaming for the Windows 32bit OS

First appeared in 1995 as the ‘Game SDK’

Renamed to DirectX where X stands for a number of related‘to the metal’ technologies.

DirectX

Direct3D (Real-time 3D) DirectShow (Media Streaming) DirectInput -force feedback joystick DirectSound DirectPlay (network gaming)

Principles of DirectX Fast low-level libraries Framework established by DirectX had

to shift the burden of hardware support from developers to hardware manufacturers

Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) Hardware Emulation Layer (HEL) Provides developers with a known,

dependable set of features they can use

Examples of DirectX

DirectX SDK (version 9.0b) http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/

PC Gaming provides for user -created content development so called ‘MODS’

Creating new levels, players, and game scenarios

The game Counter Strike developed as MOD of the commercial game Half-Life

Open GL (Apple Mac)

Introduced in 1992 Open GL = Open Graphics Library High performance cross-platform

graphics API Specification and evolution guided

by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board

Integrates with several languages Open source code for developers

21st Century:State of the Art...

21st Century:Sony PlayStation 2

21st Century :Microsoft X Box

21st Century :Nintendo Game Cube

21st Century :Mobile Gaming

21st Century :2005 Sony PSP

Suggested Reading

High Score

The illustrated History of

Electronic Games - 2nd Edition

DeMaria R. Wilson J. Osborne 2004

URLs

http://msdn.microsoft.com http://www.genesis3d.com http://www.openwatcom.org http://www.darkbasic.com http://www.brackeen.com/javagamebook/