AI and NPC’s

“Today NPC’s are blind men with a stick”

The Core tasks of programmers:

The three core tasks that programmers face are -

• Synchroniation of synthetic speech and gestures.
• The expression of emotion and personality by means of body movement and facial display.
• The coordination of the embodied conversational behaviour of multiple characters possibly including the user and the design of artificial minds for synthetic characters.

3D topology analyzer:

A 3d topology analyzer is a system that scans and looks at the 3d game world/geography that gives information.

An example of this is that the analyzer will dynamically identify all potential locations for someone to shoot at a VIP, you will then be able to place body guards at these locations.

Another example of this is that the analyzer will identify  different ways to reach enemies to organize an opposite flank assualt.

Emedia year 1 assignment 3

Key terms: Text: 

Text is when any media product is consumed by reading, listening to sound or looking at images. An example of text is a clip for a game/film showing how the game is going be and so this can attract different audience types.

 

Devil May Cry 4  Reading: 

Reading is how text makes meaning to the consumer and how the consumer understands a media product. An example of reading is how you know what a radio presenter is talking about and what is happening.

Preferred Reading: 

Preferred reading is how the producer wanted the audience to understand his meaning from text .It is when an audience agree with some text.

An example of this is Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, this film shows the effects global warming is having on the planet;  a preferred reading is when the audience agree with what Al Gore is getting across. The idea is that you leave the cinema concerned about global warming and carbon emissions.

 

 

Oppositional Reading: 

An oppositional Reading is when the audience of a text may disagree with what meaning the producer is putting across. An example of this is could be the audience for Inconvenient Truth viewing the film and not believing that global warming was caused by carbon emissions.

 Negotiated Reading  

A negotiated reading in the instance discussed so far could be a viewer of an Inconvenient Truth broadly agreeing with the producers views, but not feeling it was necessary to change their own lifestyle to reduce their own carbon footprint.

 

Cultural Competence: 

Cultural competence is when a person understands a particular culture or experience in a media product. An example of this is when a character in a film is very hungry, we all know what it feels like to be hungry so the viewer understands how this character feels.

 Cultural reserve:

Cultural reserve is how a person views certain lifestyles gained through experience.

 

 

NPC’s

An NPC is a coded character in a game that plays out certain tasks given to it. An NPC is a character that is not controlled by the player but by A.I.

Here is an example of an NPC, this character is A.I controlled.

The Core Tasks Of Life Like NPC’s:

The core tasks consist of synchronization of synthetic speech and gestures, the expression of emotion and personality by means of body movement and facial display, the coordination of the embodied conversational behaviour of mulitiple characters.

Data needed for NPC’s to move intelligently:

NPC’s must have data to move intellig:ently, identify hiding positions and more generally analyse 3d topology.

• Identify all potential locations from where an enemy can easily shoot and hide.
• The 3d topology analyser will dynamically identify all potential locations from where one can shoot at a VIP.You will then be able to position body guards in order to cover4 these threats.
• The 3d topology analyser will dynamically identify the different way to reach enemies to organize an opposite flank assault.
• To position your camera properly, the 3d topology analyser will identify the best perspective that gives you the best understanding of scene topology.

Accurate World Navigation Also Known As:

Accurate world navigation is also known as path-fiding.

This is an example of path finding.

The two different types of catergories:

There are two different types of categories, World navigation and local navigation. World navigation is doors, rooms and general geography and works out a way for the character to get from point A to point B. Local navigation is the detail what may happen around and to the character when getting from point A from point B.

Animation Systems

Disadvantages of using mesh based characters:

The disadvantages of using mesh based characters is that the vertices and polygon count stacks up very high which can eventually be alot of data once animated.Another disadvantage is that because there are so many vertices the animation of the character is much harder to produce because you would have to move vertex by vertex which would take a long time.

Advantages of using a skeletal animation system.

The advantage of using skeletal animation is that instead of the mesh representing each and every vertex they represent bones relative to the vertices.

1.2.

As you can see above these two pictures show a mesh based character system and a skeleton based character system. In picture one you can see the mesh based character, in picture the mesh is still there but a skeleton based character is over it.In both pictures you can see the weight curves on the vertices, the bigger the curve the bigger the effect it will have upon the vertices once moved.

What does “to ‘weight’ each vertex individually” mean?

Weight on a vertex is the effect the bone has on the mesh , the bigger the curve the bigger the effect the vertices will have.If the weight is done wrong the character will mutate and deform.

Lighting

API (Application Programming Interface):

An API is an interface that uses source code that a computer application will use to help with requests for services given by a computer program. Its basically a gateway between two programs that will use code to do different functions on one of the programs.

Examples of an API:

• Google search API
• Java API
• GoogleMaps API
• WebMail API

Lighting Offered By OpenGL:

There are three different lighting used in OpenGL, these are Vertex lighting, Polygon lighting and pixel lighting.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Vertex Lighting:

The advantage of using vertex lighting is that the hardware can normally help speed up the process using hardware transform and lighting  (T & L)

The disadvantage of using vertex lighting is that it does not support shadowing, e.g. when a actor has lighting on his body in areas where you normally get shadow, you dont.

Transform and Lighting:

Transform is the process when abit of world space is transformed into a 2d screen view.

Lighting is added after the transform has happened and is added to all the objects in view.

 Shaders:

Shaders are the algorthm that shows how lighting is used and how lighting responds to lighting on an object.

Light Maps:

A light map is premade static light used in games/programs.Light maps are still used today in games because they are a very cheap way to show some lighting.

Tron 2.0

Rendering – Fogging

Why Is Fogging ‘Handy’?

Fogging is handy because it fades the world in the distance so you dont see models and landscape popping up as they come in view.

What Is A Clipping Plane?

The clipping plane is the area where models and landscape come into view to the player.

Is Volumetric Fog Considered To Be An Object Or A Result Of Distance From The Camera?

Volumetric fog is considred to be an actual phusical object rather than a result of distance from the camera.

What Is Volumetric Fogging Like?

Volumetric fogging  is like walking through a big cloud.

What Is A Read – Modify – Write Operation ?

This is when a pixel may have to be changed or combined with another pixel, so the pixel is taken out and edited/combined with another pixel and then put back in the same place.

Name And Describe Two Blend Modes.

The first blend mode is straight Alpha blending , this just simply adds a percentage of background pixel to an inverse percentage of the new pixel.

The second is additive blending, this is when it takes a percentage of the old pixel and then just adds a specific amount of new pixel (rather than a percentage).

Rendering – Anti-Aliasing

What Does Anti-Aliasing Actually Do To Pixels?

When rendering a polygon the graphics card will look at what has already been rendered and then blur  the edges so you dont get jagged pixel edges that would normally be visable.

How Many Ways Are There For A 3D Card To Generate Anti-Aliased Images?

There are two ways for a 3d card to generate anti-aliased images, the first is an approach at the individual polygon level.This requires for you to render polygons back to front of the view, so each polygon can blend with what is behind it.

The second is that you render the whole frame at a much larger resolution that you intend to desplay it, and then when you scale the image down you sharp jagged edges tend to blended with the scaling.

Pro’s And Con’s

When using the first approach if you render out of order you can end up with all sorts of strange effects.

As for the second approach you can get nice results but requires a large amount of memory bandwidth because the card has to render more pixels than are in the resulting frame.

Media studies assignment 2

Genre is another word for type, it is the type of something. Genre comes in many different categories, and sub categories.

Genre is useful to both audiences and media products, when it comes to audiences people like different types of things so there are so many different types of categories of e.g. film. Genre is useful in media producers because if they know what people like then they can make money by producing something in that category, e.g. music or books.

Some examples of genre are:

Games

• Fps
• Rts
• Mmorpg
• Simulators

 Music

• Hip-hop
• Dance
• Pop
• Metal

 Magazines

• Game magazines
• Music magazines
• Car magazines

 Websites

• Gamer sites
• Property sites
• News sites

 Radio

• Key 103
• Galaxy
• Xfm
• Century

Codes and Conventions 

Codes:  Codes are basically ways of communicating meaning without words.

The news for example, normally we see the presenter sitting at a desk and talking to the camera, this is a code that shows us that it is the news because we all know how the news is produced. The starting intro to the news uses pacey yet important sounding music, in the main show many images are shown about what is going on around the world.

 

 

Symbolic codes: Symbolic codes are the choice of content in something e.g. How the colour red is used in something such as the colour can suggest danger in a vampire movie because it is the colour of blood but it could also suggest passion or love in another thing.

Technical codes:  Technical codes are the use of images, lighting camera angles, special effects in something .E.g. the images they use in the news for the different news.

Historical Codes: Historical codes are how a film/TV programme has to be shot and set e.g. the film 300 is set in 480 B.C. so the director must make sure he uses items from that time era and not have anything from our time period.

  Conventions: 

Conventions are the accepted and expected ways of doing something e.g  the news, originally news readers sat behind a desk and read with scripts but now news readers move about and use laptops.

 

Content appeal in games:

 

Half-life 2

 Half-life 2 is an action fps with a good firm storyline and is based at 15+ year olds, this has abit of blood but not too much and is mostly all action.

The first half-life sold millions so the media producers have seen this and decided to make a second because they know they can make money off it.

Big companies such as EA do a vast range of different genre of games and this is how they can make money easy. We all know that people like different things and EA have made games that people want.

  Content appeal in music 

It is the same in music, the media producers sell different types of music for people who like different genres, and this is how they make money.

 

 Different Codes In Media

 Games: 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Shadow Of Chernobyl

 

 

In this picture you can see that the lighting is dark and eerie, this sets the mood for the atmosphere. In parts of the game there are meant to be scary sections and this is one of them, the use of freaky characters and industrial location this all sets the mood when playing.

This falls in to two of the code categories, symbolic and technical. Symbolic because there is abit of blood but also technical because of the dark lighting.

At the same time there is also a historical reference in this game because it is based upon Chernobyl and what happened there. It shows how pipryat is after what happened many years ago.

 

 

 

Conventions in media products

 

When reading a readers questions in a game magazine you would expect the writers to get back to the readers about what they asked/talked about, but if you had a writer get back talking about something completely random then you would start to lose readers.

 They could also review cars even though it is a game magazine but that is not what you would expect and so from the front cover you know what to expect.

 

 

 

Modes Of Address:

 

The way media products speak to their audiences.

 

Over the years modes of address have changed, in the 1980′s news and radio were spoken in proper standard english unlike now there is more slang e.g.

 

Galaxy fm

 

Galaxy presenters all speak in a slang talk because its the type of speech the listeners use and know, and the music they play is also within that style.

 

 

Classical fm

 

As for Classical fm presenters they mostly speak standard english in a very mild tone, which again is how most of the listeners would speak.

 

 

Audience feedback:

 

• Focus groups – made up of representatives of the target audience.
• Audience panels – members of panels provide feedback on a regular meeting of the panel.
• Trialling and testing – samples of the audience give feedback on short ‘pilot’ extracts of what the complete product will be like.
• Reviews – somtimes, ordinary members of the audience provide reviews about new media products for newspapers, magazines, websites.There are also professional reviewers who write for newspapers:they can sometimes provide the cruellest feedback of all.
• Complaints – can be recieved directly from members of the audience, or they may complain to an official body, such as Ofcom for broadcasting, the ASA for advertising and the Press Complaints Commission for newspapers and magazines.

 

 

 

 

Unreal Engine Research

The first Unreal engine came with integrated redering, collision detection, A.I, visibility, networking and filing system all in one. With the level of intergration used, performance levels had to be maintained to fit hardware around that time.

On the first Unreal and Unreal Tournament,Epic (games company) decided to use

James Schmalz:

Founded in 1993 by James Schmalz, Digital Extremes has become one of the world’s top interactive entertainment development studios. Digital Extremes partnered with Epic Games to co-create Epic Games’ Unreal and its counterpart Unreal Tournament, which has garnered critical acclaim globally and numerous awards including the coveted Game of the Year award from top media outlets Computer Gaming World, CNET, Gamespy and Gamespot. To date, the scope of games in the award-winning Unreal franchise, including Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Unreal Championship have sold more than 9 million units worldwide. Digital Extremes ranks as one of the world’s top independent development studios in the interactive entertainment industry. The Canadian based developer is best known for its co-creation of Epic Games’ Unreal, the multi-million unit selling franchise which includes the award-winning PC series Unreal and Unreal Tournament as well as Xbox hit Unreal Championship. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=13574