Personal Enquiry: Part Two
I've been pondering over just what to write for my personal enquiry for the past week or so, and I guess it's probably a good time to get it all down in writing. I don't want to bore you with another history post - which you may or may not find interesting - so I'm going to write about a topic that I find absolutely fascinating, in the hopes that you will too!As I mentioned in the final instalment of the history posts, I spent the majority of my childhood dabbling around in a variety of different games. Mainly involving purple dragons, but hey, I was having fun. Hours on end were spent playing Gateway to Glimmer, and as soon as Year of the Dragon was released, I was ecstatic to see how different the game would look and more importantly, how the lovely little dragon looked. I was five, give me a break! But let's not go off track, I need to talk about the technical side of things too.
Soooo...the technical stuffs. The evolution of graphics is something that I've always found really interesting and just seeing how games can change over a few years is absolutely incredible. *Rewind to 1970* The industry was taking off, and more home systems were becoming available. Many of the first games were text-based and were extremely popular until the 1990s - this was because they were easier to make than other games and required less processing power. This was also the introduction of text based games, no images, just text. This always reminds me of the console command menu in the Sims 2, where you'd type in motherlode and get 50,000 simoleons. Awww yisssss. You'd have the world described to you, and use certain commands to control what you were doing etc. Two of the most popular text-based games are 'Colossal Cave Adventure' and 'Zork'.
Colossal Cave Adventure is actually pretty awesome as it's based around a real cave situated in Kentucky! Cool stuff right there guys! [1]
In this era we also had MUD - multi-user dungeons - which were again, entirely text based, and the 'roguelike' sub-genre. [2]
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| Example of a MUD |
So fast forwarding a couple more years, we move onto slightly more advanced graphics, 2D! Firstly we've got the birds-eye view - I shan't bother explaining this as it's pretty self explanatory, I hope..? - instead of the first/third person angle we're used to in games today, the camera is positioned above the character, showing the world around them. This angle was used in popular games such as Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda and Grand Theft Auto.
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| The Legend of Zelda B-EV [3] |
Swiftly moving onto side-scrolling games. I can remember playing these as a child and oh how fun they were! I own Lemmings for my PSP which remains to be one of my favourite games of this genre. These particular games use the scrolling function of a PC, and help to increase the depth. One thing that bugs me a little bit about some of these games is that once you move to the right hand side of the screen and the camera follows you, you can no longer revisit a previous area. Welp.
Here's some cute little Lemmings for you to marvel over.
Now I guess we can move onto more familiar territory with the 3D side of things. First up we've got fixed 3D - this involved a real-time rendered character but against a static background. This was useful 'cause it meant you could have a lot of detail on a fairly simple object. Quite annoying really, seeing as though you can't explore the area as your view is fixed. [4]
This is when first-person perspective really started to hit it off. Like real life, you're playing as the character - obviously - but unlike third-person, you're unable to see the character in front of you. Often only hands/weapons are seen in this view.
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| First-person screen cap from the Elder Scrolls Online [5] |
So part two is over! I hope I haven't bored you too much with another timeline and more purple dragons.
References:
[1] - http://rickadams.org/adventure/b_cave.html - 'Colossal Cavern, Kentucky'
[2] - http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/12/26/a-history-of-roguelikes-in-6-free-games - 'Roguelike games'
[3] - http://www.zeldadungeon.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/220px-Legend_of_Zelda_NES.png - 'Zelda NES'
[4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_graphics#cite_note-2 - 'Fixed 3D'
[5] - http://camelotpost.com/2013/06/25/elder-scrolls-online-first-person-third-person-balance-an-impossible-task/ - 'First person'
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