History of Games - 1840s to 1970s

It may seem a little odd journeying so far back in time to explain the history of gaming, but games didn't simply pop out of thin air. First the technology had to exist before the implication of using it for amusement, and also the concept of gaming had to originate from somewhere else - quite often arcade games.

Difference Engine No. 2

We were given a lecture covering the evolution of computers dating back to the 1800s, and it all seemed to start with a machine called the 'Difference Engine' designed by Charles Babbage. I was surprised to find I'd never heard of it before, considering it was designed by an intelligent man whose ideas were beyond his time. The Difference Engine was designed to calculate polynomial functions, and its second design (1849) could calculate numbers with thirty-one digits. It also functioned as a printer, producing hardcopy printouts of the result as well as impressions onto soft material in order for a printing plate to be made. Impressive.

Colossus at Bletchley Park

Although it is widely believed that the first computer was of American make, it was in fact the British who built the first modern computer during the Second World War in order to break the Enigma and Lorenz codes used by the Germans. 'Colossus' was a digital computer that could process digital data and also carry out calculations unrelated to code breaking. However, because of its secret creation and its purposes, Colossus was destroyed after the War, and its existence was only found out years later.

Before the 1960s, most computers were the size of a room and were solely used for business purposes. Until people began thinking, why not make them smaller and personal? Why don't we make them fun?

The first games were created a century after Babbage's design. In 1947 the earliest electronic game was made - the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device, inspired by World War II radar displays. However, due to its expense, it was never released to the public market.

Instead, many people consider Tennis for Two to be the first game. Invented by physicist William Higinbotham in 1958, it was a simple interactive game that mimicked table tennis and was displayed on an oscilloscope.

Russell's Spacewar

Then in 1962, MIT student Steve Russell created a two man combat game called Spacewar. Although successful, he held no copyright on it nor did he make any money from sales - the game was designed and developed simply to show that it could. However, once again, since computing equipment was so expensive at the time, making games for the general public didn't have much practical application.

A decade later, Atari, founded by Nolan Bushnell, released Pong. Though this caused a little fiasco when Magnavox released Odessey and got into a dispute with Atari over Pong infringing on the copyrights held by Ralph Baer. Nevertheless, Pong became very successful and Atari distributed games all over the US. Bushnell is quite an important figure in the history of game ideas. Other games her previously created included Tic Tac Toe, Fox and Geese, and Computer Space. Later in 1974, Atari designed the first racing game called Trak 10 and then later the first maze game Gotcha. If Bushnell had patented these ideas, games such as Pac-Man simply couldn't have been made, and the gaming industry we know would be very different.

Pong console

In 1975 Atari released Home Pong; a digital home console allowing Pong to be a consumer product as well as an arcade game. Although they sold well initially, it was then realised that people grew bored of consoles shortly after buying them - it needs to be refreshed in order to hold people's attention. It needs to read and process information like a computer instead of being hardwired with a single game. And so Atari designed the Video Computer System which was released in 1977.

Unfortunately there was a crash in the video game market in 1978 - products were sold at reduced rates and sales were low - something new was needed. Luckily this was about the time Space Invaders was released in Japan, and turned out to be so popular that it was introduced to the American market - Atari released the game for the VCS and sales were soaring.

This brings us up to 1980, the year Namco released probably the most popular and well-known game of all time - Pac-Man.

References:

Kent, S L. 2001. The Ultimate History of Video Games. Prima Publishing.

http://www.cs4fn.org/history/colossus.php

Image References:
atomictoasters.com, history-computer.com, hardcoregaming101.net, gamester81.com

Life Drawing

This week in life drawing we finally got round to working on A1 paper. (Not that I'm such a fan of it myself.. but that's probably because it always seems much more difficult drawing on a larger scale. Which is why it's important to practice!)

Warm-up sketches - 2 minute poses?

In the picture above there are also four (barely visible) figures to the right of the charcoal drawings which were drawn using carbon paper (which meant no peeking).

10 minute poses... I think

30 minute pose? Or was it 40?

Oh charcoal, why do you make my fingers so black?

Historic Walls

I have spent this week making a start on our four week project to model and texture a historic building. I figured it would be best to start modelling as soon as possible since I have a strong feeling that texturing it will be a beast...

First off I trekked around Leicester photographing buildings suitable to the specification. They're actually hard to find because although so many of the buildings in town are very historic, it's difficult to find ones where you can view all or most sides, or even the roof.

Eventually I settled on using Guildhall house, but since it is a large building arranged as four conjoining buildings with a courtyard in the centre, I chose just to work on one. Since I was unsure of the measurements of the building I did a couple of sketches first to work out the basics for modelling.

During the modelling I came across a few minor problems which were then solved (welding vertices for the roof and making all 2nd floor rooms one object), it wasn't until after 3 hours steady work when I hit my first dilemma - figuring out how to re-shape the roof so that it doesn't intercept the windows.

I tried connecting edges multiple times, and changing the shape and angle of the centre of the roof (the part obscured by the 2nd floor rooms) but, although it worked, I was then presented with another problem - the horrible shaded triangulation effect thingy which I encountered similarly with my bin. Luckily, after posting a cry for help on the dmuga facebook group and making myself a cup of tea, I got advice from a 3rd year who suggested to press 'auto-smooth' since something probably messed up with the smoothing groups. One click and it was sorted!

Problem out of the way, I then continued modelling, discovering a few things along the way. The last thing I've done is spent time sorting out the back end of the roof with it's odd little chimney thingies on the side. And here is my building so far:

I'm starting to realise that when 3ds max is going well it can be rewarding and actually get quite addictive... but when something goes wrong or you hit a problem suddenly it becomes THE WORST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD DAMN IT.

But it's fine. Everything's fine.

'Oh the weather outside is frightful'

Here a few of the pages from my sketchbook after our cold and wet day visit to Bradgate Park. In all honesty it's a beautiful place - very scenic and middle-earth-y (so much so that a few of us couldn't help but hum the Lord of the Rings theme as we trekked over the hills).

Final for Bradgate Park

Standing at the Corner

Our focus this week was on two-point perspective, which meant keeping an eye-out for scenes and objects where there are two vanishing points.

Although at first I struggled with trying to sketch out the basic proportions of buildings and placing the lines at the correct angles, I ended up enjoying this week's sketches slightly more than the previous two simply because there was so much more to choose from! There are a variety of buildings to be drawn and I enjoyed tackling them and their differences.

My final Two-Point Perspective piece

Recycle!

I have now finished the bin project! (Just about, I think.)

Quality time with my guru third years was had this week, who gave me some good advice and words of knowledge. They also emphasised the importance of making sure there are no polygons with more than four edges - so I spent a lot of time making bridges between the sides of various polygons.

I also spent hours tackling a silly triangulation problem. I still have no idea what was going on (and neither did anyone else, it seems) but for some reason a dark shadow kept on showing up in the middle of one side of the bin, stretching diagonally across the corners, as if there was another edge there, that became even more prominent in smoothing. I played around with the layout of the edges and the connected vertices as well as the positioning of the vertices and ended up making a new main body for the bin in the end. All very strange.

The unwrapping took me quite a few attempts until I finally sorted out the plan for my texture sheet. I decided to show all four sides of the bin instead of overlaying the left and right side on top of each other because I thought I might as well make use of all four reference photographs.

I also chose not to 'straighten' most of the selections as this distorted their original shape; so although it'd look all nice and organised on the plan, there would be a higher risk of distorted texture on the final 3D model. And with the wheel present in the render sheet below, it's clear that I ended up ditching the alpha channel and chose to texture the wheel the normal way. I'll make sure to use alpha channels very soon.

Texturing in Photoshop wasn't too bad. There was a bit of a challenge in editing the images to make all of the colours match, and of course there had to be no seams or shadows. I worried that if I edited too much the final render would look too smooth and as if I hadn't added a texture at all!

Once that was finished all that needed sorting was the re-setting of the pivot and then arranging the polygons into smoothing groups which fortunately didn't take too long.

So here it is! My finished bin at 564 tris. Plenty of room for smoothing out some rough edges if I choose to... but I think I've spent enough time looking at bins for the past two weeks.

Life Drawing

I was a long but rewarding session of life drawing today! We started off with the usual quick continuous line and 'wrong hand' sketches before trying something new. We made marks on a sheet of carbon paper which then imprinted onto the paper behind. Since the carbon paper was so dark, essentially this was a 'no looking at the page' task.

2 minute poses (without looking at the paper)

We also used scissors and card to cut out silhouettes of the figure in 4 minute poses. This was definitely interesting and a little challenging (unfortunately I decapitated the model on two occasions).

4 minute poses

I found that I was quite happy with the drawings I was producing today - I seemed to be grasping the proportions better and I wasn't having too much trouble sketching the figure in general. However a very good point was made by the tutor - that one must choose between a line sketch and a shaded one. Lines flatten the image whereas adding tone tries to make it more 3-dimensional, and the two styles end up battling against one another. I'll remember to consider this next time.

10 minute standing and 3 minute sitting poses

3 minute and 10 minute sitting poses

20 minute pose

Personal Work - Hiddles Portrait

Since I'd finished modelling my bin and drawing my archway final I thought I'd treat myself to a portrait! (I know I should have been looking up tutorials on texturing but I just gave in to myself...)

So here's a Hiddles. Reference photo.

Medieval Archway

The medieval archway that leads to the courtyard by St Mary's church is a beautiful area with its small cobblestone street and old brick walls - I was really looking forward to drawing it actually.

Until we discovered that due to repairs being needed for the church's spire, the archway itself was blocked by metal fences and large orange road blocks. The same was for the other side of the archway, in fact you couldn't even get close!

So, not ideal for exploring different angles and distances since we had a very small area to work with.. yet we sketched.

I quite enjoyed this (despite the lousy weather) and towards the end of the week I had drawn the archway so many times I could now sketch it accurately from memory.

In terms of the final piece, it all seems to be rather dark. I'd taken on board notes from my canal drawing and tried to emphasise the darker areas more. Unfortunately I feel as if it all seems to blend together - the walls in the foreground and background, the hedges and the trees.. it's difficult to tell them apart without giving them a black solid outline (which, of course, would be silly.. unless the archway was from Borderlands).

I also tried to shade in and add depth to the sky which proved to be tricky because it can make the whole image look dark and gloomy.. it also meant that the trees don't 'pop out' as much as I'd have liked.

My final Archway piece

Either way I feel I've made progress since our drawings from last week, and I'd be happy to move on from this archway!

Bins, bins, bins...

Things have been rather odd over the past couple of days.. People have been greeting each other with 'How's your bin?' instead of 'How've you been?' *sigh*.

Speaking of bins I have finally finished modelling mine. I spent the first couple of days of the week attempting to start before panicking and moving onto visual design instead. But I then knuckled down, and with a bit of help from fellow students I learnt a few new things and pushed through making my first bin.

It doesn't look too bad but there are quite a few modelling/structure errors that I decided to ignore..

So I then made another one and this is it finished.








It doesn't look like much and it makes me wonder why I found it so hard to make.. even harder than the Dalek (which you'd think is really odd).

Next stage: Texturing.

Life Drawing

I seem to be having trouble uploading some of the scans which is frustrating...

Back in the life drawing room today! We started off with quick sketches similar to last week to loosen ourselves up, and then we did a few longer poses.

10 minute poses

I've noticed that even when I'm measuring and trying to make the body as proportionate as possible, I always tend to allow much more length for the upper body than for the legs.. something I'm going to have to keep an eye out for. I saw some beautifully accurate sketches done by other students - maybe it'll give me something to work towards.

25 minute pose

Artist: Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

Upon searching for pre-1950s traditional life sketches, I came across this fellow. Prud'hon was a French artist who lived during the 18th to 19th century and studied for some time in Italy.

La Source

As well as the numerous amount of oil paintings he produced, Prud'hon also did many life studies, most likely to practice and gain knowledge on form and lighting. 

Bathing Venus

I love how detailed these drawings are and how incredibly soft he's managed to make the skin appear. It's almost as if you can feel the flesh beneath your fingertips.

Seated Man, Seen From Behind

Exterminate 2

I spent the hours of this morning working on another dalek and am quite happy with the result. I started out differently - using the line tool to convert a 2D shape into an editable polygon to create the base, and found this made the shape much more accurate.

I used square-based pyramids for the balls (there's meant to be 64 of them!) and didn't quite manage to cover all of the panels within the tri limit, but I'm happy with how much I've done.

Compared to my first attempt, the overall shape of the dalek is very different (which is good) and it took slightly less time to make it this time round (though placing those pyramids took much longer than I'd preferred!) Definitely an improvement.

Down by the Canal

Our Visual Design project for this week was based on one-point perspective which, surprisingly, I've never actually been taught. It's one of those things everyone hears about and it crops up in books sometimes but I've never been actually told to go out and practice it.

So we were sent down to the Canal to do a bunch of sketches, and after feeling a little rusty at the beginning I found drawing from life getting a little easier. Below are a few..

My final Canal piece