What a Journey (Week 1-3)

Hello Friends,

My name is Troy Martins, and welcome to my Game Development Blog!

This blog post will concentrate on my Intermediate Computer Graphics class, and more specifically my first 3 weeks of classes.

Well lets start from the beginning...
When class first started, I was very intrigued as per what we would be learning and taught, I mean we have heard a number of these terms before, but I never really know the amount of things you could do with them. My best example is shaders, when I normally think of shaders, before taking my Game Dev. courses I believed shaders, were only used for visual alterations, such as color grading, and basic screen alterations/ effects. However that is not the case, shaders are used for so much more, all I really knew about was fragment shaders, when they're so much more to shaders, than just that.

My character "JenniferStyle"-  from the game APB Reloaded

Bump Mapping, is one of my favorite concepts and technique, because you can do many things with it. The idea to have something appear 3-D, and have "bumps" or indents, when in fact the object doesn't have it. In the picture above you will see my character "JenniferStyle" on the game APB Reloaded developed by Reloaded Productions and Gamersfirst, in APB you are allowed to apply symbols, that the user creates, similar to the emblems you can make in various Call of Duty games, and you can apply these symbols to your character as a "tattoo" which anyone can view, because the symbols are applied to the characters texture map, which is then updated on the server so everyone can see, and I used symbols, to give the illusion that my character had a robotic arm, and has various indents, and plates, when on the actual character model they aren't there. This isn't a true bump map, cause it was done on the texture map itself, however the concept, and idea was used to create it.

Lighting is another big subject, and can make games, look glorious, by adding effects like bloom, HDR, God Rays, and much more...

Types of lighting used in games:
-Emissive (A light source)
-Ambient (Worldly light without an origin)
-Diffuse (Light interacting an object)
-Specular (Glares, reflections)

Taken from the game: The Last of Us

Things I really am looking forward to is majority of tricks to do something without losing performance, or making thing look better without losing performance also. Like applying a bump map, on a low poly model, instead of using a high poly model. Using a vertex shader to animate models, using fragment shader to alter the overall color of the game and mood, instead of doing it on the textures themselves.

Example of normal/bump mapping

I really can't wait to learn more, and the tutorials we have had with Dan have been really interesting, we have been making a framework, for our games, and in the process we have learned much, and we have learned the value of creating a framework, and the importance of what does what in OpenGL (such as the FBO).

I can't wait for whats next!


-Troy