Mega Man being a classic game series and that is why it is a good game for analysis.

Mega Man game mechanics are:

• Movement – This is needed to move around.
• Particle movement affect – Makes moving him around more satisfying.
• Environment interaction – This is a common pattern for popular games and that is because, it works, it just works, it makes the character feel fun to play the game with and feels like it is a part of the game, however this is not the most important thing for a game, it just helps a lot.
• Multiple weapons – This spices up the gameplay and makes the player think before they fight that boss, but this is only good for slow pace or medium pace games, it definitely wouldn’t work for a Sonic game.
• Character development – By this I mean developing the ability to use abilities and accomplish things through the game and not just through dialogue, this in my opinion is massively important, especially if the game has a story, because you want the player to grow with the character and not make them feel overwhelmed by the amount of content.

 

The level mechanics were:

• Different rooms – The mixture of rooms makes the game feels more fresh than putting the same generic room over and over again, because even if it has different textures and sprites, it still feels the same. A game can get away with this, but not for long.
• Room patterns – This is a small detail (well big, but you know what I mean, I hope), but very affective, because it gives a sense of harmony or organisation of the levels, which makes adding in new things more easy for the player to digest, because they don’t need to memorise the level layout for every level, because it is the same or very similar.
• Re-introduction of events, but with a twist – By doing this, it allows you to reuse mechanics, but not making them bland, all this could be is, an enemy is now guarding the platform and you have to figure out how to beat it.
• Checkpoints – These not only let the player relax that they don’t have to redo everything if they die, but it also gives the player a goal to reach and then another and another.

 

Mechanics for the enemies are:

• Ranks – By this I mean, normal, mini bosses, bosses and possibly elites and others. This tells the player what they should expect if they try to fight the enemy.
• Reacting with environment – Even though this can be hard to do, it will give the enemies a extra level of threat every-time you encounter them or making by using the environment as a weapon or making the environment harder to use.
• Enemies as tools – This one I found very interesting, but cleaver, which makes me rethink how enemies work in games. Normally you see them as just an obstacle, but in Mega Man they become a tool, a vicious tool, but a tool, which makes you want to keep them alive.
• Abilities – More common nowadays, is abilities on enemies, these balance the playing field, because you are no longer the only one that can use abilities.
• Health – This makes enemies tougher and more variant between one another, which ends up making a good game.

The mechanics of Mario are:

• Movement – This includes the running, sprinting, sliding and jumping. This is important to make the character be able to move around the environment.
• Power-ups – With power-ups come great gameplay. Power-ups spice up the gameplay and aren’t needed, but if added makes the game 10x better, obviously exaggerating, but the game will improved if done right.
• Health – Health correlates to power-ups in this game, but health is shown in a different way than normal. Mario = 1hp, big Mario = 2hp, Power-up = 3hp, gigantic Mario = so many seconds invisibility.

 

The mechanics of the environment are:

• Platforms – Platforms start off basic, but gradually improve throughout the game, gradually becoming rotating with fire and enemies.
• Hidden areas – By adding hidden areas in the game, it makes thee game re-playable.
• Risk and reward – This is typically optional, but it involves risk of an item, life, currency, etc for a reward or continuation of a story. The reward is not always instant, but sometimes gradual, meaning a progress bar.
• Guide – There is no direct dialogue guide, but the coins are being used as a guide and feels less forced on the player, because it can be ignored.

 

The enemies mechanics are:

• Damage output – This is needed to make the game hard.
• Player shields – This is not a shield for the enemy, but a shield for the player as a reward for killing the enemy.
• Self friendly fire projectile – When stomped on why hidden, some Koopers turn into projectiles that can damage the enemy or you.
• Jump boost – Most enemies can be used to boost you jump height, this is handy to reach an out of reach edge and that edge could contain a reward, which is a risk and reward function.

Sonic being a classic game is a good reason on why we analyse the game mechanics.

Here is some of the game mechanics for Sonic:

• Sound effects – This makes the character more fun, because it adds juiciness in.
• Coin collecting – This is a mechanic gives you an extra goal in the game and gives you the sense of accomplishment when done successfully.
• Movement – This is required for your character to experience and interact with the game.
• Momentum with speed – This is done to make Sonic feel fast and make the game feel fast pace.
• Jumping – Jumping lets the character reaches new heights and allows you to get to places you couldn’t reach before.
• Collision – This is needed for the character to not just full through the map
• Health in form of coins – Health being coins is cleaver, because they make you want to collect them.
• Lives – Allows you to retry in the same place

 

Here is some of the mechanics for the level:

• Sprites – Sprites makes amerces you into the game experience.
• Platforms – Allows Sonic to stay static in one place.
• Rotating platforms – By adding this, it challenges the player, because they aren’t use to playing with a rotating platform.
• Physics – Physics are needed to make the game feel better, because it allows the player and enemies interact with each other.
• Hidden events – Hidden events can be enemies, items, currency or sometimes story. This is good for replay-ability, because it makes you want to find more.
• Timer – The timer makes the player want to mover fast.
• Score – Lets players compete with each other to see who is better.

 

Here is some of the mechanics for the enemies:

• Health – This makes the enemy allow to die and lets it withstand multiple hits.
• Projectiles – With this, it allows the enemy to attack in multiple locations at once, while not being hurt.
• Damage output – Allows the enemy yo attack back and be challenging.
• Animation – Gives the enemy life and not just a moving image (even though it is).
• Enemy patterns – Makes the enemy predictable and allows the player to defeat the enemy in a predictable manner.
• Sound effects – Tells the player they are about to attack, they have attacked or has been attacked, as well as letting the player though they are nearby.

Using semiotic and other visual language technique, I analyse Fallout 4 and Borderlands 2 trailers.

Fallout 4 trailer: Video link
Borderlands 2 trailer: Video link

From watching the Fallout 4 trailer I noticed that their target audience was for adults and some elderly, because of the old timely music and the nostalgia scenery, while also being unique.

You can tell their has been a drastic event from the transition of the old, but peaceful environment to the new, but destroyed environment. Later on you can tell the cause of the situation; a nucular bomb. You also tell from the scenary shown afterwards that the game is an open apocalyptic world, which introduces it’s genre of survival and steampunk from the genre tropes shown.

Watching the trailer for Borderlands 2 you can tell their target audience is for young adults who still have their teenager behaviours, which can be seen from the high action, crazy story and loud music shown in the trailers, which is typically liked by the teenager audience and despised by the mature adult audience.

The scenery and gadgets used shown that this is an action game with a steampunk theme. The tone of the music shows that the game is a high pace action game, which is blended in well with the combat shown, but when the tone and pace of the music reduces it shows Handsome Jack, which tells the audience that this character is serious, which is further shown by the lack of saturation shown on Handsome Jack, the music further on goes back to an action tone, showing that the story can just like that.

 

The difference between these two trailers show massively:

• Genre – They both have the same theme, but two widely different perspective on them, one a dark tone of lost and survival (Fallout 4) and the other a upbeat and wacky tone, showing that anything can happen (Borderlands 2).

 

• Gameplay – Even though not much gameplay was shown in the Fallout 4 trailer, just by the feel alone you know it is going to be a survival and possibly even a lot of death, while the gameplay of the Boderlands 2 shows a high pace, die a lot type of gameplay with all the explosions and devastation.

 

• Feeling – The feeling of a game can be quite hard to send across, but these games do this well, showing that Fallout 4 will be a very upsetting game and will make you emotional, while Borderlands 2 shows the opposite of loads of death, but very little emotional scenes, but with a load of laughs and fun while playing. In short Fallout 4 feels like a solo emotional experience game, while Borderlands 2 feels like a social game to play with friends and just enjoy yourself.

 

The similarities of these games are also quite a lot:

• Combat – While the gameplay is different is a lot of ways, there are a few similarities in combat shown in the trailers, both display the use of firearms and show that both games will have a FPS type of combat, but focusing on two different themes.

 

• Open world – Both trailers indicate that the games are going to be open world, with Fallout 4 showing a zoomed out version of worlds and Borderlands 2 showing the multiple scenes next to each other, which is creating the feeling that you have a wide open world.

 

• Looting – The Fallout 4 trailers hints at this at 1:53 and 1:43, showing a city that looks like a marketplace and a cow with luggage on, which is an index showing that this game contains looting. Borderlands 2 is less subtle and shoves it in your face, basically saying that you will be doing a lot of this. With these two examples, one shows that it is optional and the other shows it is mandatory to me at least.

Going from promoting to demoting alcohol, this image makes you feel bad about drinking alcohol. It does this by shaping the can to look like a human face that is showing a sad emotion and looks drunk, this is effective because, it makes the audience see themselves as the can and will help make you feel bad when drinking alcohol in the future, however it could also be seen as an insult to homeless people, saying that they are only on the streets, because they are homeless, which probably will make homeless people feel worse about them self and drink more.

The blurriness of the background is very effective on creating the affect of drinking too much; having poor vision and being dizzy.  This can make the audience feel sick or dizzy, it symbolises the affect you feel when you are drunk. That being said, it could be seen as time going by at an accelerated rate and symbolising that you lose track of time when drunk.

The image above represents the person in the chair represents you by using a denotation of a human. The colours used in this image are indexing to the colour of the bottle so you will think of the alcohol SKYY when you see that colour of blue.

The colours of the lady and man are black which makes them stand out, because most of the image is using an analogue colour technique. The reasons these colours our important, is because it signifies that they are powerful and wealthy, but the colour black can also represent that they are mysterious, which makes someone seem more attractive and by using the a flow that includes the chair, lady and clothing, then leading it to the drink, makes you see that drink as such; powerful, high value, mysterious and attractive.

We are starting off this project by learning about Semiotics, this will help me to understand how things are perceived and things their meanings.

The things I went over are:

• What a semiotic is
• Denotation and connotation meanings and differences
• Icon meaning in depth
• Index and how it correlates to an image or scenery.
• Symbols and meta-symbols differences and uses

Afterwards we did a few practices to get us understanding semiotics at a deeper level.

After a long modeling process I have finished my 2nd model and I could refine it further, but I don’t know how to do it for plastic, because it would look weird if I used image textures or it would be a waste of space to just have literally just solid colours as images. I also want a break to get ready for my next project.

Here is the final render:

All in all I really love the way this came out and am not too mad at myself that I couldn’t figure out how to add worn marks on the lid, but there maybe a tutorial out there for plastic specifically.

This is half update, half tutorial on what I’ve learned. I went through this tutorial: Go to tutorial –>

In this tutorial I learned how to make more realistic plastic, I did this to make the lid of my model look more realistic and wanted to do something different to wood. I could have done metal, but preferred to learn plastic instead, because it just seem like it would work better, but I could be wrong.

Here is the result of the tutorial. Note that I might modify this further:

My only critique with this tutorial is that it seems slightly like rubber and not plastic, but it is better than nothing and I might in future projects pick a tutorial that produces a better plastic.

The 3D Blender model for the jar of eyes is on its way. The changes made from last time was:

• More realistic glass.
• Eye colour of 1eye changed.
• Improved lighting for glass with a Fresnel node and other nodes.
• Fixed cap of jar issue (solution: cap was slightly too small).

 

The next thing I am going to do is add some better textures to the cap and maybe add a bit of scenery to make it look like it isn’t floating.

Current look: