Programmers are faced with many core tasks when scripting intelligent life like behaviour. The core task include the 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 behavior of multiple characters possibly including the user and the design of artificial minds for synthetic characters.

The 3D topology analyzer is the software that analyses the shape of the terrain and the objects, it then tells the AI where it is and tells it not to walk into or through it. The must cover the following tasks:

Identify all location where the enemy could easily shoot or hide. Identify all location where one could shoot the VIP, It will then position bodyguards in order to cover these threats. It will also identify the routes that the enemy could take and then organise and opposing flank assault. Finally it must pick the right position to place the camera so it can see the necessary topology.

Game developers are working hard to cure the blindness of NPC’s, they have used alot software to make them seem smarter and more human. They have introduced a trajectory computation into the dynamic world. This allows the NPC’s to take into account any modifications in the landscape, for example if a bridge was destroyed it would try to find another route to get to the other side. They have also improved the way the NPC’s react to enemy movement, they will now attempt to flank the enemy.

Scripting language is a very high programming language that it is interpreted by another program at runtime rather than compiled by the computer’s processor. Alot of games have used scripted language, here is an example of a game that uses scripted language.

Star Wars: Jedi Knight is a game that used scripted language, the reason the developers used scripted language because the game would be aalot more user friendly then games that had been made before.

Havok – Havok is a very robust physic engine which allows alot of objects on screen at a time.

Euphoria – Euphoria means that the NPC’s have true biomechanical AI.

DMM (Digital Molecular Matter) – The way of simulating the substances of objects.

Here is a video of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the video shows how HEDMM will be used in the game.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/29964.html

NPC stands for Non-playable character. NPC’s  are the characters in a game that are controlled by the AI. Here is a picture from the game Mafia, it shows a city populated with NPC’s. Here a screen-shot of the player in the enviroment with the NPC’s.

The ‘core tasks’  of NPC are to seem realistic in the environment. For example if the NPC was an alien it might react to a joke different to say the way a human would react to the joke. But in an action game they might be given the task of killing you and they would do that to the best of their abilities.

NPC’s require alot of data to perform their task properly. They need to identify hiding positions, analyse 3D topology (not walking into buildings), it needs to find away to flank an enemy if he is in cover and it needs to choose the correct position of the camera.

Another name for world navigation is called ‘path-finding’.

World navigation is broken down into 2 sub-divisions. The first division is called world navigation, the second is called local navigation. The only real difference between the 2 is the scope. World navigation handles the geography of the game whilst the local navigation handles rooms, characters and objects. 

I believe that the local navigation is more dynamic because it is having to deal with the characters and objects.

Flocking algorithms are the boundaries given to an NPC in a game that effect the way the NPC behaves. Basic flocking consists of three main rules.

Separation – Avoid crowding neighbours

Alignment – steer towards average heading of neighbours

Cohesion – steer towards average position of neighbours

Peter believes this because as time goes by our technology increases which means that the level of AI increases. He wants to make games that have people who think and have emotions. Also if the AI is good enough maybe we will begin to care about the NPCs.

Jess believes that balance is important because if a game is too realistic then fun will be removed. If a game is not fun anymore then the gamer will not want to play on it anymore. He also believes that variety and randomness are important aswell - variety in behaviors and some unpredictability within the believeable realm.

Chess can be considered “emergent game play” as it has a set of assigned rules that the computer must follow. But it can go about playing the game any way it wants as long as it stays within the rules.

Here is an example of an emergent game.

Star Wars Galaxies

And here is another example of an emergent game.

The Matrix Online

The War of the Worlds (Radio Play): The War of the Worlds was an episode on an American radio drama anthology series. It was performed as a halloween special on October 30th 1938. It was directed by Orson Welles and was an adaptation of  H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds. It was performed to sound like a series of news bulletins. People believed that the earth was really being invaded by martians, this caused mass panic within the towns and cities of the United States. This is a good example of how powerful the media can be.

Super Size Me:

The disadvantages of a mesh based character system is that it has alot of polygons and vertices to handle. Also that you have to position each point of the mesh for every frame instead of them moving all at once.

 The advantages of a skeletal mesh are that instead of moving all the points individually, you only have to move the skeleton. Considering there are only 50 bones, it is very easy to animate.

The first picture shows a character skeleton, this shows all the pivot points that character can bend and transform at. The second picture shows the skeleton inside the character mesh. The skeleton will combine with the mesh so that when the skeleton is moved the mesh will move aswell.

“To ‘weight’ each vertex individually” is the process of snapping the mesh to the skeleton. If the ‘weight’ is decreased then the mesh does not snap to the skeleton properly and the mesh looks deformed.

Here is a picture of a ‘Hierarchical’ skeletal system.

A ‘Hierarchical’ skeletal system works in a very unique way. Instead of all the parts being moved individually, they are connect. This means that if a parent bone is move for example a knee bone, then all corresponding child bones will move aswell like the foot bones.

If I were to animate a character I would use Inverse Kinematics because the movement would be controlled by the hand as that is the body part which is going to pick up the object. Also because the hand is in control the body will follow the hand in a proper fashion like a real body would.

The LOD (Level of Detail) system is the system that works out how many polygons need to be on screen at one time, for example if a building is in the background then it won’t need to be as detailed then if it was in the foreground. The LOD system is very important because it takes some of the strain away from your PC by reduceing the polygon count on objects that don’t need a high level of detail.

Mocap stands for Motion Capture, Mocap is the process of capturing the way a human would react and move in the real world and then transferring it into the game world. When mocapping, actor are dressed in suits that have small white balls placed all over them. Specials cameras that can only see these balls transfer the movements in real time into a computer. Eventually these movements will be use in a game. Here is 2 examples of games that use mocap.

The first game is Rainbow Six: Vegas. Here is an image of actors doing motion capture.

Here is a video of motion capture being performed for Rainbow Six: Vegas.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/11692.html

Here is a list of level editing tools.

Sandbox Editor – Crysis

UnrealEd – Unreal

Lunar Magic Level Editor – Super Mario World

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Call of Duty 4:This is the fourth title in the Call of Duty series. The series has been very well received with a huge fan following. The original games were set in World War 2 but this game has been set in the modern warfare age. The producer decided to do make the move to modern warfare because the video game market was over crowded with world war 2 first person shooters. They decided to keep all the traits that the series had but they added a new modern flare to it while adding new things as-well. They made it appeal to the audience by keeping the things that made the Call of Duty series what it is.

 Transformers: This is a film based on the very popular series of toys that started off as simple vehicles, then they would transform into robots. The film stays true to the toys with all the characters that we recognise from the toys. They made it appeal because they kept it as close to the toys and the cartoon series as possible, including all of our favourite characters. It also appeals to sci-fi buffs as it contains alot of breath taking CG.

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Saving Private Ryan: There are many codes that appear in Saving Private Ryan but the one I have chosen is from the start of the film where the men are trying to take the beach-head. Captain Miller finally reaches the beach but he is shell-shocked, the camera then goes into a first person viewpoint. This viewpoint is an example of a technical code as it has become the main character. When it is in this viewpoint we actually feel shell-shocked and we see all the carnage that is going on around us. There are also many symbolic codes in Saving Private Ryan, one of the main codes is the use of music in the film. They use music to enhance the mood of the situation or scene. For example, if they were in some sort of danger, they would use a fast paced, sinister type of music. They also have many historical codes. For example the historically accurate environments and sets that they use in the film. An example of this would be the opening scene of the Normandy landings, many veterans of the landing have said that it was almost exactly the same as it is shown in the film.

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Films: Some films use subtitles to tell us where the scene is set. The font will be different if the film is for example an action movie. If it was an action movie then the type would be very blocky and serious. But if it was say an historic film then the type would be from that period.

TV: Subtitles in a TV show would have to get across the mood of the scene or situation. For example, if there was an argument and there was shouting then the subtitle might use alot of exclamation marks and capital letters to get across that it is an argument.

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Here is an example of a complaint from an anonymous man to the Press Complaints Company, “A man complained to the Press Complaints Commission that a video published on the Northwich Guardian website on 14 July headlined “Teenagers torch moving train” and an article accompanied by images from the video published on 18 July headlined “YOBS ON FILM” identified his fifteen-year-old son in breach of Clause 6 (Children) of the Code”. This complaint was not upheld sue to the fact that the website that the video was posted on was a video-sharing website and was uploaded by the children themselves. Therefor they were no in any breach of clause.

Here is another complaint from a woman to the Press Complaints Company, “A woman complained to the Press Complaints Commission that an article, published in the Wigan Observer on 29th May headlined “Teacher found electrocuted” contained excessive detail about a death by suicide in breach of Clause 5 (Intrusion into grief or shock) of the Code”. The complaint was upheld because even though it was an accurate report of the inquest, the story caused the family distress and discomfort. 

Producers want feedback that can help them to increase the appeal of thier product. They can get feedback in a number of ways:

Focus Groups – These are made up of a group of representatives of the target audience.

Audience panels – Representatives who give feedback on a regular basis.

Trialling and Testing – Sample of the product would begiven to an audience and they would give feedback.

Reviews – Ordinary people who review a product for a magazine, newspaper or website. There are also professional reviewers that provide the cruellest feedback.

Complaints – Complaints can be sent direct from the audience or it can go through a complaint centre like Ofcom or ASA.

A lightmap is a light data structure that is used in 3D games engines which contains the brightness of all the surfaces in the enviroment. Quake was the first game to use light mapping for speed rendering so that the floors did not look distorted.

Codes

Codes are signs that have a meaning, they can be distinguished into 2 catgories – technical and symbolic.

Technical – Techinical is the way equipment is used to tell a story. For example, the way a video camera is used in film.

Symbolic – Symbolic codes show what we can’t see. For example, a characters actions reflect the way the character is feeling.

But some codes fit both technicle and symbolic. For example, music falls into both technical and symbolic.

Conventions

Coventios are the generally accepted ways of doing something. There are general conventions in any medium, such as the interviewee quotes in a print article, but conventions are also genre specific.

How codes and conventions apply in media studies

Codes and conventions are used in the study of genre – it’s not enough just to say how the technical code is used such as how a camera is used, without saying how it is conventionally used in a genre.

Shot 1: The first shot is a chase shot which shows Joe running down a hill towards a statue and myself following. I increased the speed of the shot to make it seem more comical. I chose a running fade which instead of fading in and out it fades directly from one shot to the other.

Shot 2: Shot 2 is another shot of Joe but this time he has his arms flailing and he’s is running towards some children, I am briefly seen in the shot walking. Again I chose to speed up the shot to make it look funnier. The transition that I chose this time is what I like to call a burn transition which gives the illusion that the first shot has burns away to reveal the second.

Shot 3: The third shots show Joe performing to the camera. It is a very humorous performs of Joe lifting a branch off the ground pretending that it is very heavy. Once again I have sped up the shot to make it seem even more humorous than it already is. The transition I have used shows the first shot break into small dots which eventually disappear to reveal the next shot.

Shot 4: Shot 4 begins with me climbing into a statue and pretending to get stuck, hearing this Joe tries to get me out in a comical way. We then continue to talk about the sculpture. Just like the previous shots the speed has been increased. The transition for this shot is just a simple fade to black transition.

Shot 5: Shot 5 shows a simple zoom onto a sculpture before panning and fading. The speed of this shot was kept the same as it didn’t need any comical value. The transition is the same as the previous dot transition which the shot breaks into small dots which disappear showing the next shot.

Shot 6: This shot show myself doing a funny walk. The speed of the shot was kept the same because it would have been too short if the speed was increased. Again the transition is just a simple fade to black.

Shot 7:The seventh shot shows a still shot with a slight  zoom on a sculpture of a face. The speed has been kept the same as it did not need to be increased. The transition was just a simple fade to white.

Shot 8: Shot 8 shows an upward pan on a sculpture to reveal it’s face. The speed has been kept the same as it did not need to be increased. The transition was what I like to call the checkerboard transition where the look of a checkerboard cuts out the existing shot to reveal the new one.

Shot 9: This shot shows a sculpture then it zooms out and pans left. The speed has also been kept the same here. The transition is just a simple fade to black which lead into the text that follows.

Text: The text simple says “Well That Was Weird”. I chose this because it will add to the humor of the video.

Shot 10: Shot 10 is the final shot, it shows myself, Joe and Matt walking along a path with the words “Yorkshire Sculpture Park” appearing underneath. The speed of the shot has been increased considerably to end the video. The video ends on a simple fade to black.

Music: The piece of music that I have chosen is called “Improper Dancing” by Electric Six. I chose this particular piece because I felt that it also help the video to be more humorous.