CIS 350 – I Game Programming Instructor: Rolf Lakaemper

Part II: Game Genres

Genres ADVENTURES

Genres Adventure Games cast the player as the protagonist of a story in which the player participates Solving of puzzles, finding various artifacts Sub-genres: Textbased Graphical Action

Genres Textbased Adventures: First adventures Typical use of verb-noun phraser Earliest titles: ‘Hunt the Wumpus’ (G. Yob, 1972, Basic Game) and ‘Adventure’ (W. Crowther, 1972)

Genres ‘Hunt the Wumpus’ Essentially, you're wandering through a network of numbered caves, looking for the Wumpus; when it's nearby, you'll smell it, and you can try to kill it by shooting into one of the caves that's near you. If you wander into the same cave as the Wumpus, you die. Other hazards include bats--which pick you up and dump you somewhere else--and pits, which kill you. source code !

Genres …or ZORK (1981)

Genres Hybrid Text / Graphic The Hobbit (1982) spectrum emulator

Genres Graphic Adventure Graphical (point and click) Interface Introduced by Sierra Online’s King’s Quest 1984 Lucas Arts: Maniac Mansion 1987

Genres King’s Quest I (by Roberta Williams)

Genres Action Adventure The only commercially successfully remaining action genre Reflex Based as well as puzzle solving Most prominent: The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo, 1986 (US: 1987 on NES)

Genres Legend of Zelda, NES 1987

Genres Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Game Cube 2004

Genres Educational Games Attempt to teach the user using the game as a vehicle Mostly target young users Growing market ! …can also teach programming on a very high though entertaining level, e.g. ‘Robot Wars’ Best known: ‘Carmen Sandiego’

Genres Example: ‘Alpha Beth’ 1985 PLAY

Genres Fighting (Beat’em Up) Emphasize on one-on-one combat between (two) players Usually focus on martial arts Usually as dramatic and physically impossible as comical Sophisticated interfaces ! Early title: ‘Way of the exploding fist’, Melbourne House 1985 PLAY!PLAY!

Genres ‘Way of the exploding fist’, Melbourne House 1985, Sinclair Spectrum Version

Genres ‘Mortal Combat: Deadly Alliance’, Midway,2002, XBOX

Genres First Person Shooter Emphasize shooting and combat from a specific perspective, most of them place player behind hand/weapon Tend to be scaringly violent 3D effect is usually enhanced by 3D-sound Most prominent: DOOM, Quake, HALO First title: …

Genres SPASIM, 1974 Space Simulation 3D 32 person network multiplayer game Written for Champaign Urbana University of Illinois PLATO network The PLATO system had hundreds of plasma panel terminals (512*512 graphics displays) around the US with 1200bps connections into a CDC Cyber 6400 mainframe

Genres Battlezone, ATARI, 1980

Genres Rescue on Fractalus Activision,1986, Spectrum VersionSpectrum Version

Genres DOOM Id software,1993

Genres HALO Xbox,Bungie Studios,2001

Genres FPS introduced a new technique to game programming: 3D engines, independent from game rules, logic and final graphics are utilized for multiple games FPS are the most controversive games, due to their realism and violence, e.g. the Columbine Highschool Shooting was put in connection with them The combination of AI, real time graphics, physical modelling makes them the most sophisticated programs the gaming area

Genres MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Games) Subscription based virtual worlds for thousands of players to interact together Titles: Ultima Online, Everquest etc.

Genres Everquest

Genres Platform Games Probably the best known genre, ‘the’ computer game Running, jumping etc. on 2D or 3D platform ‘Side-scrollers’, usually (2d) from a side perspective. Most prominent: Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong, Lode Runner, Sonic, …

Genres Jumpman 1983, ATARI 400

Genres Donkey Kong Nintendo, 1981

Genres Mario Bros Nintendo, 1983

Genres Super Mario Bros Nintendo, 1985

Genres Mission Elevator Micro Partner/Magic Bytes 1986

Genres Mission Elevator (Graphics by Bettina Wiedner)

Genres Donkey Kong Country 2 Game Cube, 2003

Genres Super Mario Sunshine Nintendo Game Cube, 2002

Genres PUZZLE Games Require the gamer to solve logic puzzles or navigate complex locations such as mazes. Genre crosses frequently with adventure and educational games Titles: Tetris, Sokoban, Boulderdash,…

Genres Tetris 1985 Alexey Pazhitnov, Vadim Gerasimov

Genres Boulderdash 1987 Databyte

Genres RACING GAMES Place player in the driver seat of vehicle Emerging in early 80s Extremely popular Various input devices Titles: OutRun, MarioKart,…

Genres OutRun SEGA, 1986

Genres MarioKart Double Dash Nintendo, 2004

Genres Role Playing Player acts as adventurer who specializes in certain skills Emerged from board (pencil&paper) role playing games Usually science fiction or fantasy setting Titles: Ultima, Diablo, …

Genres ULTIMA Written in basic 3000 lines of code Memory takes less than one texture in current version…

Genres ULTIMA 1, 1980

Genres ULTIMA 9, 1999

Genres Fixed Shooters The classic 2D shooters Space Invaders, Galaga, R-Type, …

Genres Space Invaders Galaga

Genres Simulation Aim to simulate a specific activity (e.g. flying an airplane / running a company) as realistically as possible Usually time consuming to play, huge manuals etc. Titles: Little Comp. People, MS Flight Sim., The Sims, Medieval,Warcraft,… The SIMS is the most popular game ever !

Genres Little Computer People Activision, 1985, C64

Genres The SIMS Bill Wright,Maxis, 2000

Genres Sports Well, sports simulation, of course.

Genres Winter Games EPYX, 1983,C64

Genres Strategy Focus on careful planning and skillful resource management Thinking games Often turn based Usually war strategy Titles: M.U.L.E., Civilization, War Craft,…

Genres M.U.L.E EA, 1983

Genres Civilization 1 Sid Meier, Microprose,1991, DOS

Genres WarCraft III Blizzard, 2003, PC

Genres Traditional Board Games Card Games ETC

Genres Requirements of Genres: Hardware Computational power Graphical abilities (color, resolution) Graphic. comp. Power (Co-processing graphic cards) Memory Sound Input / output devices

Genres Software AI Physical Modelling Sophisticated Data Structures

Genres Design Story Playability User Interface Realism

Genres Comp. power Graphic. abilities Graphic. Comp. power Memory Sound Special I/O devices AI Physical Modelling Sophisticated Data Structures Story User Interface Realism XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXX? XXXXX XXXXXXX? XXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX? PLAYABILITY AD T AD G AD A Ed u FI G H T FP S MMOGMMOG PL A T F PU Z Z L E RA C I N G RP G FX D S H SI M SP O R T S ST R A T TR A D

Genres Which genre is the easiest to design and program ?

Game Industry Some numbers out of the world of the Game Industry (source:

Game Industry Mission Elevator Publisher: Magic Bytes Number of full-time developers: 0 Number of part-time developers: 3 Length of development: 14 months Release date: 1985 Target platform: Amstrad CPC, C64 Development hardware: Amstrad CPC, C64 Development software used: Paper and Pencil, selfmade assembling help, some BASIC tools Project size: 48kB Budget: $ (for conversion to diff. Systems)

Game Industry Grand Monster Slam Publisher: Magic Bytes/Rainbow Arts Number of full-time developers: 6 Number of part-time developers: 1 Length of development: 8 months Release date: 1989 Target platform: AMIGA, ATARI ST, C64 Development hardware: proprietary: ATARI ST connected to AMIGA Development software used: Graphic Tools, SEKA Assembler Project size: 4MB Budget: $

Game Industry SPLINTER CELL Publisher: Ubi Soft Number of full-time developers: 76 Number of contractors:18 Length of development: 5 months Release date: March 28, 2003 Target platform: PlayStation 2 Development hardware: PS2 dev tools, PCs avg. Athlon dual Development software used: Unreal Warfare, Code Warrior, 3D Max, Photoshop, Ubi's animation tools, Optpix, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe Project size: 3.47GB Budget: ?

Game Industry STAR WARS: Rogue Leader Publisher: Lucas Arts Entertainment Number of full-time developers: 30 Number of contractors: 2 Estimated budget: $3.5 million Length of development: 9 months Release date: November 8, 2001 Platform: Nintendo Gamecube Development hardware used: GDEV & 1GHz PC, running Windows 2000 Development software used: SN Systems for Gamecube, Slickedit, Maya Notable technologies: MusyX 2.0 Project size: 14.2MB of source in 859 files, in- game source data 6.4GB in 10,075 files

DIABLO 2 Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment Full-Time Developers: 40 Length of Development: 3 years. Release Date: June 28, Platforms: PC and Macintosh. Hardware Used: Typical programmer workstation: 500 MHz Pentium II running Windows NT with 128MB RAM and 9GB hard drive. Typical artist workstation: dual 500 MHz Pentium IIs running Windows NT with 256MB RAM and 14GB hard drive. Software Used: 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Microsoft Developer Studio/Visual Studio and SourceSafe Game Industry

DIABLO 2 From “Diablo2: what went wrong”: ( “We developed the original Diablo with almost no proprietary tools at all. We cut out all the background tiles by hand and used commercial software to process the character art. Spells and monsters were balanced by verbal estimates ("Hey, lets make the lightning about ten percent weaker."). Diablo II's vastly increased scale required much better tools, and we made some, but not enough. “

Game Industry What’s in for YOU ?

Game Industry Salary Survey 2003 (from GAME DEVELOPER Magazine) websource: Questioning among GAME DEVELOPER subscribers About 2750 responses used for survey Excluded: $

Game Industry Programming

Game Industry Art & Animation

Game Industry Game Design