BTEC Level 3 Games Design | Unit 78: Digital Graphics for Computer Games | Understand Theory & Application used within Computer Game Graphics | Jakub Flis

BTEC Level 3 Games Design

Unit 78: Digital Graphics for Computer Games

Understand Theory & Application used within Computer Game Graphics

Jakub Flis

Introduction:

In this assessment I will be comparing differences between video games digital graphics. I will be taking about the different artistic styles of the games eg with the game was make with a pixel art style or a photorealistic style. The first two games I’m going to compare are Cuphead(hand-drawn) and The witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Artistic style:

Out of every game out there for sure Cuphead has one of the most unicue artstyle for a game. every asset, every animation was hand drawnd making the game look like an 1930's cartoon.

 http://gameranx.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Cuphead-4K-Wallpaper.jpg

This games art work uses thick lines and simple colour to make the game look and feel like an 1930s cartoon.

 

http://www.keyframeonline.com/piq/animprofile/1538_a.jpg

Also the game Cuphead uses alot of exaduration with the chracters eyes body hands feet and more this makes the game look very unique comparted to other games in its genre.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a story-driven, open world RPG (which stands for role playing game) set in a  fantasy universe.

https://images.g2a.com/images/1024x768/1x1x0/1306640fd16d/5912887a5bafe30c67147609 

 This game uses a photorealistic artstyle  to make it seem more believable and real this art style focuses on high detail (from every pimple on the face to the facial hair the character have as much detail as possible) and realism of the image this make the games look very realistic or more like an interactive movie its very immersive . The artstyle like potorealism is perfect for a game like the witcher 3 because the game is trying to tell a believable story for the main protagonists point of view.

http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-980-Ti-Review-483365-10.jpg

Both of the games art styles have much in common but also they have many differences such as photorealism uses as much detail as possible making the image look a real as possible when hand drawn still uses detail but not as much as photorealism also photorealism does for that film look trying to make the games look very realistic when hand drawn does for the more cartoony look for the games as shown in the example below
Hand Drawn:                                                                  Photorealistic: 

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Nim-C7qFc9w/maxresdefault.jpgthe witcher 3
http://www.museumofplay.org/blog/chegheads/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Scene-from-Cuphead-Studio-MDHR-Courtesy-of-Fair-Use-in-Research-and-Education.jpg cuphead

Computer game graphics and Types of Digital Graphics:

In this section I'm going to compare the computer game graphics of uncharted 4 and super mario bros im going to list all of the similarity's and differences. In the early stages of development of supermario bros the developers used concept art to see how the game would look. in super marios case the early concept art where just levels scached on a pice of graph paper as shown below:
https://images.eurogamer.net/2015/usgamer/MarioMakerBookSpot2.jpg

the scatches weren't very detailed they where just a rough idea of the levels and characters like mario, goomba ect.. also these scatches showed how the levels would look in game on that piece of paper. But in uncharted 4's case the concept art is much different the art is highly detailed and uses alot shadows, colours and human features like wrinkles ect.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.cgsociety.org/articles/2016/05/24/l_drQd0JHovf2maDoQAb89.jpg

also the concept art of uncharted 4 didn't represent the final image that was shown in the trailers because the art went through computer processing which changes the image and also both from uncharted and mario some of the detail was removed because of optimisation.


Super mario bros didn't use  that many textures because the it didn't need to and the hardware at the time did not allow that many texture to be displayed on the screen at once that's why most objects in the game don't have any textures.
 
https://www.spriters-resource.com/resources/sheets/49/52571.png
But uncharted 4 has a lot of highly detailed textures because the game uses photorealism and the detailed texture make the game look more realistic also now the hard ware is more capable than it was when super mario bros came out meaning that uncharted can use more highly detailed textures to make the game prettier and more realistic.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcbB3DzW0AAX2nS.jpg

The background graphics in super mario are very simple its just a sky with a couple of clouds and hills. this give the game a mood of happiness the back ground in this game sort of try's to tell a happy adventure and i think that that's what the developers where going for because super mario is about saving a princess the background also gives the level a theme of adventure starting of all nice and happy sort of telling the player hey look this level is going to be easy as show below:

http://cdn02.nintendo-europe.com/media/images/10_share_images/games_15/virtual_console_nintendo_3ds_7/SI_3DSVC_SuperMarioBros_image1280w.jpg
but quickly the background becomes dark and spooky which it signifies that this level is going to be harder it sort of warn the player of the level's difficulty.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hVyOLQz1XUo/hqdefault.jpg
In uncharted 4 the background serves more purposes for example in uncharted the background separates the player form reaching the end of the sandbox also the and also in the same case as super mario it set the mood( the picture below show that the mood is peaceful because there is nothing happening and the main character is admiring the scenery)  and the theme(the theme of adventure) of the level. also in uncharted's case the background show parts of the playable level ahead of the players some what letting them prepare for whats ahead of them.

https://www.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Uncharted4-1.jpg

Both uncharted 4 and super mario bros use a hud but the hud's display different information to the player for example the hud in super mario bros displays the level, score, coins collected and time and also the hud is always displayed on top of the screen.

https://fufmufuniwork.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/super-mario-bros-nes.jpg

but the hud in uncharted 4 shows different information. it shows the weapon, amount of ammo, your addicional acessories like granades and also the hud show your crosshair aswell.

https://static1.gamespot.com/uploads/original/490/4902600/2912479-y4+2.jpg


Pixel:
In this section i'm going to compare super mario and uncharted again.
super mario uses bit 8 and a low resolution of 256 × 224(4:3 aspect ratio) meaning that there isn't a lot of pixels being used compared to the 1920 x 1080(16:9 aspect ratio) of uncharted 4 this show that the modern games use more pixels to display the images of the screen also the higher resolution means that the image is going o be sharper and nicer to look at because looking at a low resolution image for a long time can lead to eye strain. Also higher resolution means that the image file is going to be much lager than with a lower resolution image because there are more pixels needed to display these high resolution images.Also uncharted 4 uses more pixel density than super mario this means that the image uses a more vast range of colours lighter and darker once. As you can see in this picture super mario has much less different colours than uncharted does


https://www.unchartedthegame.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/20160224-Uncharted-4-Story-Trailer-01.png unchartred 4
http://www.playretrogames.com/gameimages/3171-super-mario-bros-n.jpg super mario bros

Image Capture:
Super mario was realised September 13, 1985 and uncharted 4 was realised May 10, 2016 meaning that the image capture techniques differed in 1985 from 2016.
In 1985  people used cameras to capture images. also talented people just drawn the images on paper but in 2016 people use many more thing to capture images like a smart phones camera, a normal camera, draw and screenshot( screen capture or on screen recordings).
 
http://www.digicamhistory.com/Konica%20SV-CSmall.jpg old camera
http://keyassets.timeincuk.net/inspirewp/live/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/08/featured-300x200.jpg new camera
Also these days the image quality has improved by a big margin from 240,360 and or 480p to 8k thats 64 times the amount of pixels the a 480p image has.

Optimising:
Both super mario bros and the witcher 3 would be optimised differently for example super mario would be optimised only for one set of hardware which was the NES or the nintendo entertainment system this means that the developer knew how much they can go for with the game. One trick they used was how they used the same asset but with a different colour for the clouds and bushes all of this optimisation made the game only 32 KB instead of 400+ KB as it should have been.
But with the witcher 3 the developers had to optimising  the game much more because the game is out on ps4, xbox one and pc which allows for alot of hardware combinations this means that the developers had to think about all of these hardware combinations.
"Considering when the game was originally made, it’s hardly surprising that the original file size for Super Mario Bros. was only 32 kilobytes" reference - https://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/07/09/more-mario-trivia-than-you-can-fit-in-king-koopas-castle/

File Extensions:
In this section I'm going to compare super mario bros(files size:32KB) to the witcher 3(file size: 54.4GB + downloadable content with the proper conversion 1GB  = 1024MB).
For super mario the best option for the developer was to use raster images to make the files smaller to optimise the game to run better of the hardware of the Nintendo entertainment system the file extensions they would have used are files like JPG. I think they would have used JPG because its a lossy compressed file format this means that the file is small but its still relatively high in the pixel count. this file the jpg would allow the developers to use high quality images for that time but also keep the file size small allowing for better optimisation of the game. Also super mario bros would have used some kind of .exe because of the NES's operating system, the .exe would be used to lunch the game on the console by inserting the cartridge.

In witcher 3's case the file extensions would have been different because the game got shipped of blu ray which allows up to 50GB of storage this means that the developer had more freedom while choosing the file formats. The witcher 3 is a highly detailed game meaning the the images have a lot of detail this would suggest that the developers might have used vector images which are better/higher quality than raster images because vector images are uncompressed files  meaning that the images can be of a very high quality but they would have a very large file size compared to raster images. Most likely the developers used .PSD files because this file is excursive to Photoshop and Photoshop is an industry standard also Photoshop allows you to turn poor quality images to very high quality images and this makes it perfect to use on a photorealistic video game like the witcher 3. Also the witcher 3 uses .exe as well to lunch the game on the device when the icon/shortcut for the game is clicked.

The file extinctions in both of these games differ because super mario is heavily limited by the available storage of the cartridge and also the game is vary hardware limited but the witcher 3 is limited too by the console hardware and the amount of storage on the blu ray disc the game would of had much more detail if the game wasn't of bluray and if the consoles were more powerful.

Compression:
In this section i'll be comparing super mario and the witcher 3. Most likely super mario would have used lossy compression to optimise the game for the NES's (Nintendo entertainment system)  hardware this is most likely because the file size needed to be very small because the storage size on the cartridge wasn't that big it was only capable of storing maximum of 6 mega bits which is very small compared to what the Blu ray disc can do now. But still super mario was compressed a lot thanks to Nintendo amazing compression methods. super mario got compressed that much because it was sharing space on the cartridge with another game called duck hunt.

But the witcher 3 got compressed a lot as well because it needed to fit on a Blue ray disc and also it need to download quick for people that decided to buy the game digitally. for the digital versions the developers probably used zip files to make the download size smaller and once the file downloaded onto the computer or console the file unzipped and installed the files full size amount. To compress the game for the Blue ray disc the develop[er may have used lossless compression to still keep as much details as possible this way the game would have looked as good as possible and still fit within the 50GB limit on the disc.

Storage of Image Assets:

While developing a video game choosing the right name for an asset is very important because you don't wasn't to be clicking on every sprite1 or sprite2 to find what your looking for by naming your assets appropriately you save time and effort trying to find them later in development. for example naming a tree asset in your game tree1 would be bad because if your using a lot of different trees finding the right one would be difficult for example naming a tree, small tree or massive tree would be good because you can distinguish them just be the name of the asset.

In super mario bros there wasn't that make assets to name and this made it easier for the developers to work. pictures below shows all of the assets in super mario bros.
 
http://cdn02.nintendo-europe.com/media/images/10_share_images/games_15/virtual_console_nintendo_3ds_7/SI_3DSVC_SuperMarioBros_image1280w.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/04/0c/c4/040cc4a8cf3b86a1076035c5b242a518.jpg

http://martindrapeau.github.io/backbone-game-engine/super-mario-bros/super-mario-enemies-2x.png

Compared to the witcher 3: wild hunt super mario bros doesn't have that many assets because super mario is a small game when the witcher 3 is a 100+ game with a vast open world to explore this means that the game will have also of assets to fill that open world and thats why cdprojectred the developers behind the witcher game must have picked names for the assets very carefully to make it easier for them self to create the sandboxes which these assets.