Why Guitar Hero rocks?

The list below is an exercise done by all students (30 people) of the master with the supervision of design professor. The exercise consists in analyzing Guitar Hero and why it works so good and succeeds. Neither the graphics nor the kind of music are taken in consideration, only the gameplay aspects that make a good game. The list isn't made by order of importance.

• Body rhythm. Can’t play it on the sofa -do you remember body play?-.
• How are you doing it indicator. A thermometer that goes up with every hit and goes down with every miss. This produces satisfaction.
• A metronome on the reel show us the rhythm.
• To have point multipliers when you're doing it well, has sense in this game because you can memorize, and each time you do it better. Multipliers are a kind if recompense.
  
• But it isn’t only about memorize. There are ability components.
• Hands synchronization. To play a real guitar is very difficult because hands must play asynchronized. In guitar hero they work at the same rhythm.
• One button more than useful fingers. When playing with the guitar we only use four fingers of the hand. This is very interesting. Guitar Hero is a social game, where you can brilliant in front of friends or you don’t have any idea but can have lots of fun with friends. To play the fool inside video games context works, it’s fun. This is what Wii attained, people playing together and laughing at each other.
• Progressive difficulty with songs, the faster the reel goes the more difficult gets.
• Sound feedback, making you think you’re playing the guitar, and shows you if you got it wrong or not.
• The colors of guitar buttons coincidence with colors of the reel. Button order have the same order as the screen order. Trying this in reverse order, would be very difficult.
• The reel comes from far to near allowing you to get ready for the increasing expectations.
• Notes/second.How many notes per second are fun? Few notes could be boring. This can be the most difficult thing to find.

You may think that these are only little details, but these are the things that make the difference. It looks easy to find what works in a video game, but it isn’t. Our first homework was the analysis of a video game created before 1982 -MAME is an excellent emulator to play old games-. Why before 1982? Because until 1982, the video games were more or less simple and overall, the graphics are not important. A way of focus only on the game play. I’ve chosen Tank Battalion from Namco, 1980. It’s easy to find things which work but it isn’t to explain why.

Open Pandora

I read, again at Vida Extra, a news about a new platform -sorry Sergi, another platform on which we should to think of to develop games- called Pandora:

Pandora is an "opened" portable console. When being cradled in Linux allows any developer to program its applications and games for this platform. Their appearance and size are similar to the ones of a Nintendo DS.

An Open Source console, what a great idea! I can't wait to have one in my hands.

Technical comparative between Nintendo DSi, PSP-3000, iPhone/iPod
Touch and Pandora just below. The sources of the three first columns 
are from Vida Extra -whose source is Dandel, whose source is
 Joystick-. The data of the fourth and last column is from the Pandora's 
Spanish site.

	Nintendo DSi	PSP-3000	iPhone / iPod Touch	Pandora
Screen size	Two 3.25-inch displays	4.3-inch display	3.5-inch display	4.3-inch display
Screen resolution	256 x 192	480 x 272, 16.7m colors	480×320	800×480, 16.7m colors
CPU speed / type	One 67 MHz (ARM) and one 33 MHz ARM7TDMI2	MIPS R4000-based; clocked from 1 to 333 MHz	620 MHz ARM 1176, underclocked to 412 MHz	Texas Instruments OMAP3530 625 MHz, core ARM® Cortex™-A8
Form Factor	5.85 x 3.33 x 0.99 inches1	6.7 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches	4.5 × 2.4 x 0.48 inches (iPhone); 4.3 × 2.4 × 0.33 inches (iPod Touch)	5.5 x 3.3 x 1.1 inches
Camera	2 cameras: one VGA and another one of 0,3 megapixels	Go!Cam, 1.3 megapixels optional	IPhone has 2 megapixels camera	No
Memory	SD slot, internal storage (unknown size)	Memory Stick (up to 16GB)	8-32GB of internal storage	256 Mb FLASH NAND memory for internal storage. Two slots for memory cards up to 64Gb
Internet	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi	Wi-Fi (iPhone also has EDGE or 3G)	Wi-Fi
Touch Screen	Yes (single-touch)	No	Yes (multi-touch)	Yes
Browser	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Online Store	Yes (DSi Shop)	Yes (PS Store	Yes (App Store)	OpenSource

Notes:
1: Approximate size, based on Nintendo's assertion that DSi is 12 percent thinner than DS Lite

There are more technical aspects on the official sites. It seems to me that we're in front of the best portable console in technical aspects until now. You've lots of videos, they aren't of great quality. You only have to look for them on YouTube. My favorite is this one of Quake 2. Look at the high frame rate!

This afternoon, I start the master!

Video games history

I read in Vida Extra a news about history of video games. It's the first part of a documentary from Discovery Channel called in English, if I'm not wrong, Gameheadz: A Video Game History. I think it's only the first part of the documentary because it ends with Tetris and GameBoy, just when my history with video games begins -a long time ago, what times those!-. I haven't been able to find a continuation. I have read something about a DVD, but without success. If someone knows or finds anything, please write to me, I'm very interested!

The video is in Spanish:

Here below the links:

• The new on Vida Extra, here. It includes the video in Spanish and the sources where it was obtained.
• Here the documentary in English with subtitles in ¿Korean? -who knows!?-.
• The documentary in English without subtitles and divided in five parts: first, second, third, fourth, fifth.
  

45 minutes of video games history that I recommend to everybody. I think it's very interesting to know how things were born and grew. You'll find peculiar anecdotes, and maybe some inspiration. I suggest watching it in English -without subtitles-.

Final Projects of a Master

On Tuesday 23th of September, I went to the presentation of the final projects from the Master of Design and Creation of Video Games. A master of the UPC that also takes place in Barcelona. There were 6 video games. But I'm going to write only about two of them. The two I consider are more remarkable.

Agedya

This team starts the presentation with the game trailer. As you see, it is a third-person genre with a graphic style like Fable . It take place during Napoleon's era. The game is for Xbox 360, it has been done with XNA, which means that the graphic engine was made from zero. They continued with a technical demo, where they showed aspects such as:

• Dynamic Day/Night
• Long Range View
• Dynamic GPU GeoMap Mapping
• Dynamic Shadows
• Bloom Post-Process effect
• Custom Material Shaders
• Object Instancing
• Advanced Frustum Culling
• Realistic Particles System
• Animated Vegetation

I suppose I will write about these technical terms in future posts. When I was watching it, I though of the technical demo of Crysis. They have done a great job. The only defect was the animation of the main character when he walks or runs. Strange movement. But I don't understand why, because the other animations, specially the fighting ones, are very good. I remark one where the character makes a final attack that looks like one in the film Troya. It's a handmade animation done with XSI Softimage.

Anyway, I was very impressed, thinking how would I be capable of doing something that looks similar to this. But, when I saw the next game, I realized my self that the story and characters are more important than technology -what doesn't mean that it isn't important-. You can have the best technology, but without a cool main character, charismatic secondary characters or a good story, you can forget about success.

The Teddy Incident

You're a little boy who is sleeping. You see how your teddy bear wakes up and goes through the corridor. At the end of it, a door is opened. Suddenly, a horrible shadow captures you teddy bear. You hide in your bedroom. You take courage and decide to go and save it.

Now, add to the story and characters the 3D platform genre with Nightmare Before Christmas style -not so dark-. You'll obtain The Teddy Incident. In the previous link you can download the game and some tools. Perhaps, apparently it's not a technical wonder, but it's the best finishing. A video game I would buy. Appealing and colourful graphics, funny story and characters with lots of personality. An awesome game.

One of the people behind the video game is Pau Novau. He has worked as programmer and artist. He has also created a useful tool. A tool to animate the characters. It's based on the Animation Blending. Explained in a simple way, joining basic and simple animations you obtain a complex animation as a result. You can find more information about his animation system here and the runtime on Sourceforge. In spite of being written that it's only for Ogre 3D Engine, Pau has told me that it works with any 3D engine. What a master!

Congratulations to all the teams and please excuse me for not having time to write about all of them!

Big expectations

Some days ago, I went to the offices of the Master in Video Game Development, to give my university title. The person on charge is a cool guy that showed me the temporary facilities. Temporary because the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) is building new facilities, but not any facilities. UPF is building the communication campus in Barcelona innovation district, 22@. A place were we'll have all the tools to create anything from video games to animated films.

Returning to the guy, when he took me to the classroom, he explained things we would do. Apart of the Master agenda, the most outstanding things were:

• Some Xbox 360 to play.
• Edge magazine, Spanish edition -I would prefer the English edition because the Spanish one has a month of delay-.
  
• Close contact with the people from Master in Animation. Because interactive movies are a new tendency in video games. See The Bourne Conspiracy, Heavy Rain, or Splinter Cell Conviction. -I will talk about this tendency in future posts-.
  
• Video games conferences with people from video game industry. They're trying to bring the creators of Gears of War to the UPF, for example.
  

But the thing most awesome was the idea to choose the two best video games projects, and join all teams to improve these two video games and participate in contest around the world. See the game Galaxy Scraper, finalist in the Independent Games Festival '08. The new in Spanish here. This game was create with only 5 people. Think what could happen with a team of 15 people.

Another good news. The guy said companies as Konami and Codemaster were coming to Barcelona to open offices. That means a close contact with the Master. But I haven't been able to find anything on this for the moment.

Anyway, big expectations. We will see what happens.

First post

Welcome to the blog!

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a Engineer in Computer Science who is going to begin a Master in Video Games Development -or Master in Creating Video Games as they say-. I need a place to share and to explain what we do. Because, if you're capable of explaining something and others understand it, this proves that you've understood and assimilated this knowledge.

The course begins in October 2008 and ends in November 2009 for only 30 persons: 15 artist and 15 programmers. I feel very lucky to be included. The course has two big blocks, in the first one, artist and programmers work together, because it is important to know the role and the work of the other. In the second one, you go to the specialized branch. Finally, you are in a team of two programmers and two artist -more and less- where you get to develop a video game.

I have many expectations with the course. I love technologies, animation, cinema, and overall, video games. In the future I would like to work in the business. But I'm going to take this course along with other project: eventuo. It's a big project, my partners and me are very involved in it. Take a look at our blog (Spanish).

I hope this post will be the first of many and that you will enjoy all of them.