Computer Game Platforms Unit 36
Friday 20 June 2014
Wednesday 18 June 2014
Tuesday 11 March 2014
Tuesday 17 December 2013
Hardware Tech
Hardware
Human-Computer Interface Devises-
Human-computer interface devises are the way the person interacts with the devise it can be something like a mouse & keyboard, or joystick. There are several key design points of these devises such as ergonomic design and button configurations as an example I will compare a ball mouse to an optical mouse.
Firstly how the manual ball mouse works, there is a ball in a piece of housing with two rollers that detect X and Y movement, these are connected to an optical encoding disk now the movement of this is read by a infrared LED sensor this then generates signals that are sent to the on-board processor chip that then feeds back and makes the cursor move. There however a few issues with using one of these mice, dust really likes getting into them and clogging up the rollers really reducing responsiveness and sensitivity which in comparison to the optical mouse is already very low, optical mice are pretty much a straight up improvement on ball mice.
Optical mice however work using a much different design feature, optical mice use a tiny camera that takes around 1500 pictures every second making it able to work on almost any surface, it uses a small red LED to bounce light of the surface it is on back into its CMOS sensor. It uses a digital signal processor to detect whether or not the mouse is moving or not and responds on screen.
Some advantages include:
Less chance of devise failure, due to no moving parts.
No mouse mat required.
More responsive.
Some mice like this Razer Imperator have a special user cantered design, during all of its development history tests where taken to find the most commonly used mouse grip style and built a mouse to fit around the ergonomics of that. This mouse in particular has varying height settings allowing the user to find the most comfortable grip possible hence why it has a £64.99 price tag...
Human-Computer Interface Devises-
Human-computer interface devises are the way the person interacts with the devise it can be something like a mouse & keyboard, or joystick. There are several key design points of these devises such as ergonomic design and button configurations as an example I will compare a ball mouse to an optical mouse.
Firstly how the manual ball mouse works, there is a ball in a piece of housing with two rollers that detect X and Y movement, these are connected to an optical encoding disk now the movement of this is read by a infrared LED sensor this then generates signals that are sent to the on-board processor chip that then feeds back and makes the cursor move. There however a few issues with using one of these mice, dust really likes getting into them and clogging up the rollers really reducing responsiveness and sensitivity which in comparison to the optical mouse is already very low, optical mice are pretty much a straight up improvement on ball mice.
Optical mice however work using a much different design feature, optical mice use a tiny camera that takes around 1500 pictures every second making it able to work on almost any surface, it uses a small red LED to bounce light of the surface it is on back into its CMOS sensor. It uses a digital signal processor to detect whether or not the mouse is moving or not and responds on screen.
Some advantages include:
Less chance of devise failure, due to no moving parts.
No mouse mat required.
More responsive.
Some mice like this Razer Imperator have a special user cantered design, during all of its development history tests where taken to find the most commonly used mouse grip style and built a mouse to fit around the ergonomics of that. This mouse in particular has varying height settings allowing the user to find the most comfortable grip possible hence why it has a £64.99 price tag...
Tuesday 10 December 2013
P1,M1,D1 Platforms
A gaming platform is a collection of hardware that is collectively designed to run games and applications an example of a complete gaming platform could be an Xbox 360, platforms can fall under various different category's.
The development of platforms:
First home console "Brown Box" |
PC Gaming:
A PC is a collection of hardware such as ram, cpu, gpu, psu, soundcard, optical drives and storage means all this is connected together inside a metal or plastic case, on the case may be several different things like fans for ventilation or LEDs for display. PCs are often connected to a output devise such as a monitor or television and have several peripherals such as mice & keyboard, PCs are common everywhere you look from home use to business.
First Home PC "The UNIVAC PC" |
Pro's:
Cheap Games
Better Graphics
More Features
Better Multi-tasking
No game is exclusive thanks to emulators
Con's:
Very high initial price
Unexplainable errors
Lack of pick up and playability
Some understanding of PC's is required
Console Gaming:
Games consoles are small plastic boxes filled with what is essentially a shrunken PC, consoles will likely be connected to a TV or monitor and will be common throughout a lot of households some pubs also have consoles like the Nintendo Wii set up on special nights. Consoles would not be seen in a business environment unless that is the specific industry.
The initial idea of a home console started of in the late 60's imagined by a Ralph Baer, however this was only a prototype the first purchasable console was the Magnavox odyssey back in 1972. Consoles have came a long way since then for example the xbone features, HD graphics and resolutions, integrated wifi play.
The most recent generation console "PlayStation 4" |
average gamer who doesn't have the world to spend on a new PC. Consoles are great for those who just want to play games because consoles suck at multi-tasking they simply don't have the platform design or the hardware only now are consoles beginning to be able to develop the basic functionality that PC has had for years.
Pro's:
Initially cheaper
Simplistic design
More people play console
Not as much can go wrong
Games will always work/no system requirements
Cons:
More expensive games
Membership fees
Worse/no multi-tasking
Worse graphics
Hardware limitations
Arcade Gaming:
Arcade machines are large sized metal, wooden or plastic boxes that are often roughly as high as an average sized person, the arcade machines will have a coin slot/door, a change slot, some form of interacting with the cabinet and a screen with the monitor that the display is shown on whilst being protected by the bezel sort of in the same way as the speakers are protected from vandalism. Arcade cabinets are common in places like pubs or seaside attractions arcade machines use their brightly coloured marquees to attract customers. Again these devises are used purely for gaming and wouldn't be seen in office use, also it is very rare that an individual would own an arcade cabinet due to unit cost and size. The games would often in the early days come preloaded on their PCB (printed circuit board) this has all the components on it and kept things compact, nowadays the games can be swapped around to improved cost effectiveness.
First Coin operated game system "Computer Space" |
technology known as LaserDisc was introduced to allow for greater storage, however this limited some aspects interns of actual gameplay, the disks were also very large and very expensive, they saw rare usage outside of Asia. The most known release that used this format is arguably Dragons Lair.
Nowadays you can expect at the amusements to see things like the 2p machines along with things like House of the Dead and Time Crisis. There are also things like emulations that allow games that were meant purely for one platform to be able to be played on a totally different system, this effectively works the same for the arcade systems as they are just PCs that emulate being a separate system.
Pros:
Unique gaming experience
Often more social
It is possible to get hours of entertainment of £1
Penny machines offer prizes
Great to just kill some time
Cons:
Lack of portability
Never yours, always owned by the business
Often feel like money is wasted
Often incredibly hard (to make you pay more if you fail)
Prizes often suck
No saves/often very short
Socializing again (it's both as not everyone likes people!)
Mobile Gaming
The first mobile phones to hit the UK were in the mid 80's along with the first mobile phone network Vodaphone. The first text message was sent on December the 3rd 1992. The first camera phones appeared in japan in the year 2000. In 2008 the HTC Dream was released, this was the first Android phone.
First mobile game "Snake" |
Apps that allow for free messaging, are destroying the usefulness of the text message. |
Pros:
Portable
Great for when you need to kill some time
Cheap games
Millions of choices
Calls & Texts
Multi-tasking
Cons:
Games are often basic
Requires payment to use phone once its bought
Limited battery life
Requires a modern phone for mist games
TV
The first home TV was made in 1927 by Philo Farnsworth all it could do at the time was display the shape of a dollar sign using 60 lines, he clearly knew how much money TV would make. Colour TV was first broadcasted in Britain in 1966, it was predicted that when it was first introduced that only 5% of the TV owning population would watch in colour. The first HD TV surprisingly came out in 1974 with a Japanese prototype that could display 1125 pixels where as the current standard was 480. The first HDTVs to hit the consumer market came out in 1998
TV gaming was an idea that never really took of, the whole idea was to have a TV that also worked as a console the problems with this is that licensing was complicated due to the console company's license and the TVs company license had to be issued. This lead to the units being very expensive, almost burying them from the start. Obviously there would of been benefits to this also television had a very appealing feature, being a television!
PS2 TV hybrid |
However TV took a separate route into the "Smart" direction introducing interactive TVs that can connect to the internet save data about the individual user to remember programs that the user likes and all sorts of other life invading features. For the most part TV will remain what it always has been, because that's what it's best at doing...
This is similar to an i-TV that lets users do things like online shopping, check emails and other basic things that a computer has been able to do for years. It also shares some traits with multimedia home platforms (MHP) these are also just basically combined devices that can be a PC along with many other things.
TV in terms of actual broadcasting has a few different things about it such cable or satellite, with cable the TV is directly connected into a cable that runs into a cable box that is in turn connected to the cable company that provides the programs. Where as with satellite TV the installed dish receives the signal from an orbiting satellite. There are 3 main TV providers Freeview, Sky, Virgin all these such as public broadcasting witch are things like the news, and religious television.
TVs have some pretty serious limitations compared to the other devices, TVs have to get thinner and thinner otherwise no progress is being made in the eyes of many, meaning that any realist chance of a hybrid device.
Pros:
Plays TV
Nothing can really go wrong
Good for web services like Netflix
Cons:
Not used for much else...
Somewhat expensive.
Links
Fig 1 http://www.thegameconsole.com/ralph-baer-brown-box/
Fig 2 http://pc-museum.com/gallery/rcm-001.jpg
Fig 3 http://www.dazeinfo.com/2013/08/21/ps4-release-date-announced/
Fig 4
Fig 5 http://cdn10.mixrmedia.com/wp-uploads/wirebot/blog/2011/08/snake-game.jpg
Fig 6
Fig 7 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2538488/SMS-takes-seat-IM-number-texts-sent-Britain-falls-time.html
Monday 2 December 2013
Introduction
I would consider myself a fairly avid gamer I game most nights if not everyone, I play a wide selection of games providing my friends have them, as everything is better with friends, i play games from a lot of different genres such as RTS, MOBA and FPS.
Mainly I play games to meet new people and spend time with the ones I already know, I actually have little incentive to play a game on my own if it is a weaker game in terms of story. I don't play games solely for game play anymore if im on my own its mainly for the story.
There are some games that break this, I have a few select games that i play competitively such as StarCraft 2 and League of Legends. These games appeal to my competitive side.
Over my life I have owned, All playstations except 4, Xbox original and 360, A N64, Gameboy B&W to Advanced, Nintendo WII & DS and a PSP, I currently use my PC and my Ipod touch.
My
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