What is game design mean to me?

When I was asked to write something about game design, I remember what I have been working in the past, what I have learnt and why I choose to become a game developer for my lifetime job.                        In definition, game design is the process of designing the content and rules of a game [1]. To me, game design is not only an ideal job for every dreamer to express their ideas and visualize their imagination with a higher level of enjoyment, but it is regarded as a fusion of entertainment and human life.                      Generally speaking, game design is about creating and ruling many aspects related to human experience and activity. From past to present, human spends time for fun with some simple rules and they are eager to get achievements and enjoyment from that. For example, kids like playing hide-and-seek which is regarded as a tactical stealth FPS game [2]. This concept of entertainment is applied to the digital technology nowadays which game designers have a platform to produce a new form of entertainment with various game rules and users’ experience. Apart from generating simple ideas and follow the existing rules, the higher underlying concepts is to nurture the users and motivate the development of high technology of play.                      These days, game design is taking a role to teach users how to experience and/or create a virtual space. Dialogue, story, characters, lighting, graphics are contents that fill these spaces but game design requires more on the gameplay and core mechanics for interacting with players. A good gameplay model can trigger users’ emotional sense and let them to engage in the media while a bad one with poor core mechanics may distract users and discourage them to play. With a little objectives or some inspiration from elsewhere, game design is to modify the existing ideas, refine it and present it with more fun or more attractive way. It requires a team work and spends about years to make a good rating game with high quality graphics and joyful experience. Therefore it is revealed that game design is a toughest task to entertain with audience.                      On the other hand, the key of game design is motivating the development of high technology. Over the past decades, game design use limited capabilities to generate unlimited thoughts. From Atari home console to Nintendo Wii, the technology behind is the evolving of ideas from many designers in order to meet the expectations for the players. Compared to the old days, 2D 16-bit pixels, low interacting console have been evolved to high quality realistic 3D scenes with different types of game handheld devices and the gameplay experience is kept evolving to the next stage of using voice command and motion detection. At that point, game design is a process to break the rule of physical limitation of present technology to generate new amusement to users.                      Since game design is not an easy and lightly tasks, game designers are persons who should have a creative mind with special talented. In my views, game designer is like god, a scholar and a adventurer. It may sounds adorable that game designers has the full power to create their worlds, to set the rules and to manipulates their teams to accomplish the game, but in fact game designers are restricted with limited resources and try their best to make something possible. Take accounting of Guitar Hero, the designers generate an idea of new digital musical input controller which let players feel like playing music which is a new footsteps to the game industry.[3]                      As a game designer, the one should have high responsibility and translate their story and experiences into a media with joyful experiences to communicate with the player. It is required to gather a lot of information ranged from scientific research to life stories and brainstorm ideas endlessly. Arts, literature, science, history, psychology, culture and even daily life are potential elements that game designers should have the background on that. Like Will Wright, the original designer of “The Sims” series, who did a lot of research, reading books and study on many aspects of human and finally came up a very famous title. [4]                      “A coin has two sides” – being a game designer is a risky job. A good game designer can help their company to survive while the bad one will let company face bankrupt. It is obvious that game design is like a gambling and everyone is hunting for the jackpot, which means that if the game design is a great success, the reward is fascinating. That’s why many people would like to take an adventure, looking for uncertainty, trying to explore and take every challenge in every move in order to achieve their dream and goal, including myself.                      To sum up, game design is not fun and the process is full of tears and blood. However, the achievements is much higher than expected if success. It is not only that game design is a cashcow which the intellectual ideas can be a product for customer to enjoy, but it is a methodology to impact the majority’s minds as well as nurture the audience our cultures and experiences for our next generation. Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_design http://bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/a-students-question-what-genre-is-hide-seek/ http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2801/book_excerpt_inside_game_design_.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_(game_designer)

淺談網絡科技 與 網頁製作

清明時節雨紛紛 今天拜山後跟表弟討論過Google 記得6-7年前Yahoo仍是主流...但轉眼間 Google每月的搜尋率突破"31億" 除此之外,還有其他很強大的Proprietary Tools Google Map Google Calendar Google 翻譯 ... 現在還自製Nexus One力撼iPhone 真感慨這短短10年內的網絡科技發展一日千里 亦令我想起這就是一個活生生Globalization的例子 網頁製作紀事錄(1) 說起設計網頁, 我並不是這方面的專家 不過都略知有關HTML5 vs Flash, Firefox vs IE等等的資訊 回正題, 今日想介紹有關做"靜態"網頁layout的方法 1) 利用Photoshop直接輸出網頁格式, 再用dreamweaver直接更改 2) 利用Photoshop局部製作網頁配件, 再用dreamweaver改原始檔 (要知道div及css的用法) 經過多次做網頁的經驗, 現在多數人傾向用<div> 跟css這兩個東西來做網頁的layout的! 1) Photoshop slices tool      做網頁一定離不開繪圖, 在Photoshop設計好後, 利用slices tool就可以根據你自訂的規劃分割出按鈕, 文字框架等等. 當轉換成html檔後import入dreamweaver就可以更改了!  例子 : 任天堂Game Boy advance每個遊戲網頁正正是用這個方法做layout的! 其實用Photoshop轉換成html是有跡可尋的, 當打開網頁的原始檔, 就不難發現有"spacer.gif"的縱影了!     Reference     PSD to HTML Slicing Tutorials   2) <div> & CSS 另一個方法是用div, div實際上是DHTML的一個標籤, 用來打包網頁任何的物件 ( 文字, 圖片...), 你亦可以想像為Photoshop的Group功能. 最強大的是 : div可以任你放置你的物件到任何地方, 不用怕傳統html的td, tr所限制 e.g. <div style="position:absolute; top:200px; left:100px;"><img src="images/pic.jpg" /></div> 在這個div中, 我固定了這個image檔的位置為左上方, 跟網頁的邊界有少許距離. 如果以座標方式去想, 其實 left是x-coordinates, top則是y-coordinates, 而圖的座標為(100, 200) 開始貼上 至於什麼是CSS? 它其實是一個超方便的樣式表, 可以改變文字,格式,顏色等. 用法就是給一個樣式名稱再定義特性 用上述的例子, 今次把原始碼改成<div id="mystyle"><img src="images/pic.jpg" /></div> 再到css檔或中間加入 #mystyle {     position:absolute;     top:200px;     left:100px; } 心水清的朋友就會明白這個名為"mystyle"的東西, 內容其實跟之前style= "...."沒有分別, 那這個東西就是所謂的CSS了!! 看穿只不過是把一些屬性包起來給一個名稱而已, 那為什麼要這樣做呢? (大家想一想吧!) 順便提供以下simple的html製作

復活節~ 我的Blog復活了!

已經有4年沒有寫blog了! 真係有太多事發生, 轉眼間我成為Polyu MIC的學生, 轉眼間我加入了佛光青年團, 轉眼間我又要準備踏入社會了...! 其實我好想再寫Blog, 不過次次都以"忙"為藉口 我打算在此除了記下自己的日常經歷之餘, 都希望記下一些有關做Game的種種 今日跟Derek同Cord brainstorm到sound design的idea, 找Snake來惡搞可能係不錯的提議 ... 拭目以待 XD P.S.有興趣到我的舊blog參觀? 可以 按我