GEA-P1

(1.2)What is Game?

In his excellent book, A Theory
of Fun for Game Design a game to be an interactive experience that provides the player with an increasingly challenging sequence of patterns which he or she learns and eventually masters.

游戏：一个交互性的经历提供一个玩家学习或将要学习的技能的挑战集合（持续提升的）

soft real-time game & hard real-time game
soft 意味着deadline不影响玩家，hard往往造成严重的后果。

(1.4) Game genres

FPS

first-person shooters aim to provide their players with the illusion of being
immersed in a detailed, hyperrealistic world

First-person shooters typically focus on technologies such as:

efficient rendering of large 3D virtual worlds;

a responsive camera control/aiming mechanic;

high-fidelity animations of the player’s virtual arms and weapons;

a wide range of powerful handheld weaponry;

a forgiving player character motion and collision model, which often
gives these games a “floaty” feel;

high-fidelity animations and artificial intelligence for the non-player
characters (NPCs)—the player’s enemies and allies; and

small-scale online multiplayer capabilities (typically supporting up to
64 simultaneous players), and the ubiquitous “death match” gameplay
mode.

高效渲染3D虚拟世界
有响应式的相机控制与射击目标指向机制
高质量的玩家手臂和武器控制
丰富的装备选择
丰富的人物动画库和碰撞模型
非玩家（NPC）的高质量动作和人工智能
小型的多人同屏（<64）和频繁的角色死亡重生的游戏机制

Platformers and Other Third-Person Games

Technologies specifically:

moving platforms, ladders, ropes, trellises and other interesting locomotion modes;

puzzle-like environmental elements;

a third-person “follow camera” which stays focused on the player character and whose rotation is typically controlled by the human player via
the right joypad stick (on a console) or the mouse (on a PC—note that
while there are a number of popular third-person shooters on a PC, the
platformer genre exists almost exclusively on consoles); and

a complex camera collision system for ensuring that the view point never
“clips” through background geometry or dynamic foreground objects

移动平台，楼梯等模块
场景的混淆视听的组件
第三人称使用的相机跟随
复杂的相机机制以显示当前游戏所需的空间

Fighting Games

Efforts on:

a rich set of fighting animations;

accurate hit detection;

a user input system capable of detecting complex button and joystick
combinations; and

crowds, but otherwise relatively static backgrounds

State-of-the-art fighting games:

high-definition character graphics, including realistic skin shaders with
subsurface scattering and sweat effects;

high-fidelity character animations; and

physics-based cloth and hair simulations for the characters.

丰富的对战性的动画集
精准的碰撞检测
连招所用的组合键设计
观众相关的人群背景设计

高质量的人物画面及皮肤shader支持
高质量的动画
头发衣服的模拟

Racing Games

Some of the technological properties of a typical racing game include the
following techniques:

Various “tricks” are used when rendering distant background elements,
such as employing two-dimensional cards for trees, hills and mountains.

The track is often broken down into relatively simple two-dimensional
regions called “sectors.” These data structures are used to optimize
rendering and visibility determination, to aid in artificial intelligence
and path finding for non-human-controlled vehicles, and to solve many
other technical problems.
*The camera typically follows behind the vehicle for a third-person perspective, or is sometimes situated inside the cockpit first-person style.
*When the track involves tunnels and other “tight” spaces, a good deal
of effort is often put into ensuring that the camera does not collide with
background geometry

背景元素的各种2D的以假乱真的方法
赛道的设计，使用2维的Sectors的数据结构，用于优化渲染和视觉效果，也可辅助设计AI的寻路等
相机的视角以塞车后方的第三方人称或驾驶室的第一人称角色

Real-Time Strategy(RTS)

Include the following techniques:

Each unit is relatively low-res, so that the game can support large numbers of them on-screen at once.

Height-field terrain is usually the canvas upon which the game is designed and played.

The player is often allowed to build new structures on the terrain in
addition to deploying his or her forces.

User interaction is typically via single-click and area-based selection of
units, plus menus or toolbars containing commands, equipment, unit
types, building types, etc.

每一个单元都占有相对少的资源，以便支持更多单元的同屏
高地的地型常用于场景中
玩家可自己支配自己的势力在地图，如创建一些建筑等
交互模式传统上来说是用单击或区域选择

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMO)

An MMO is defined as any game that supports huge numbers of
simultaneous players (from thousands to hundreds of thousands), usually all
playing in one very large, persistent virtual world (i.e., a world whose internal
state persists for very long periods of time, far beyond that of any one player’s
gameplay session).

Hence, perhaps the most important
role of the central server is to handle the billing and micro-transactions which
serve as the game developer’s primary source of revenue.
MMO：支持超多在线在在一个虚拟世界中游玩的游戏
分类有MMORPG,MMORTS, MMOFPS
核心在于服务器的强大。

Player-Authored Content

以玩家为主的游戏模式，代表性如我的世界，Little Big Planet2

Other Genres

sports
RPG
God games, e.g. Populous
Social simulation games , e.g. SimCity
puzzle game , e.g.Tetris
non-electronic games
web-based game

(1.5) Game Engine Survey

The Quake Family of Engines

1992 Written by Id Software.

Quake , Quake II source code is freely available!

The Unreal Family of Engines

Major competitor to Quake from 1998 written by Epic Games, Inc.
2004 UE2.

Unreal is an incredibly powerful prototyping
tool and commercial game development platform, and it can be used to build
virtually any 3D first-person or third-person game (not to mention games in
other genres as well).

Epic now offers full access to Unreal Engine 4, source code and
all, for a low monthly subscription fee plus a cut of your game’s profits if it
ships. This makes UE4 a viable choice for small independent game studios.

https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine

The Half-Life Source Engine

Source is a high-quality engine, rivaling Unreal Engine 4 in terms of graphics capabilities and tool set.

https://www.moddb.com/games/half-life-source

DICE’s Frostbite

寒霜

DICE’s efforts to create a game engine for Battlefield Bad Company in 2006! Frostbite boasts a powerful unified asset creation tool called
FrostEd, a powerful tools pipeline known as Backend Services, and a powerful
runtime game engine.
https://www.ea.com/frostbite/engine

CryEngine

Crytek originally developed their powerful game engine known as CryENGINE as a tech demo for Nvidia.

Sony’s PhyreEngine

In an effort to make developing games for Sony’s PlayStation 3 platform more
accessible, Sony introduced PhyreEngine at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in 2008.
It is available free of charge to any licensed Sony developer as part of the PlayStation SDK

为了针对sony ps3平台更好的开发游戏，2008年在GDC大会上推出

Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio

VS. C# and CLR.

Unity

2D Game Engines for Non-programmers

These toolkits emphasize ease of use and allow users to employ a graphical user
interface to create a game rather than requiring the use of a programming
language.