Dota 2.

Aside from posting our work on these blogs we can also use them to discuss what we're playing, reading or watching, what is influencing us really and I've decided to write about Dota 2, a game I've been playing for about 6 months now. If it hasn't been made obvious yet, it will also become clear that I am a bit of a Valve fan-boy, but who can blame me, have you seen the Steam sales?! If someone asked me what Dota was at the start of the year I'd have just shrugged, if asked now I'd reply "Probably one of the best competitive games out on the market."

[1]

The Game

Dota 2 is the sequel to a very popular Warcraft 3 mod called DotA (Defense of the Ancients) and in traditional Valve fashion they hired the creators of the mod to create their own game. The game is completely free to play and is at the moment played on just the one map, but I will look into both of these in more detail later.

The objective of the game is simple, 2 teams of 5 must battle it out to destroy the opposing team's Ancient, or for the uninitiated, the big glowie building sitting in each base. You however can not just assault this building right from the start, you first must take down the enemies tiered defences. At the start of each match you pick a Hero from the ever-growing pool of 105, each with their own set of unique spells and during each game you can buy items to add another layer of choice and strategy.

The Ancients

So that's over 100 Heroes, each of them can synergize with other Heroes, each of them counter different Heroes with the chance to change what items you buy and what skills you build. This makes each game unique, no matter who you chose to play.

One Map to Rule Them All

Like I said earlier Dota 2 is played on mainly one map. There are other maps released on occasion, like currently there's a new game mode and a new map out for the Christmas holidays, but the core game is one map and one map only.

The Dota 2 map, without the team structures [2]

Whenever I tell people the game is played on one map, they always reply with "How do you not get bored?", I always answer by mentioning Counter-Strike and despite being around for almost a decade all people want to do is play de_dust. I feel games don't need 15 maps with another 20 coming in DLC, a hand full of maps that have been thoroughly designed with tactical depth will last much longer and this is exactly what the Dota 2 map has.

The map seems simple at first and the basics can be learned quickly, but hidden all over are paths hidden in the trees, because of player vision too there are even more, smaller, hiding spots that can be used to get out of a sticky situation. This is just a small example of the depth of this map, because once you begin to factor in the effects items and spells can have, the entire thing becomes like a complex chess board.

Free to Play, not Pay to Win
I've never been a big fan of Free to play games, the majority of them are either lacking in polish, feel way too grindy or are simply pay to win. However Dota 2 doesn't contain any of these negatives, as soon as you download the game you're on the same playing-field as everyone else. There's no must-have stat to grind away, no rubbish starting weapons to try and replace and there's certainly no limited-hero pool.

Dota 2 makes its' money from cosmetic items and that's it. If you like a hero enough you can buy items to make it stand out from the rest, or you can buy a fancy courier or maybe just a different HUD skin. None of this is required though, you could play for a year and never need to throw money at the game. The free to play model has been on the up lately in general, with games like Path of Exile also offering a high quality experience with no need to put money in it.

Left: The standard Warlock   Right: Warlock with a cosmetic set

The World has Weight... mostly
The visuals are, for me anyway, one of the biggest highlights in Dota 2. Everything in the game carries a weight, from the simple trees in the forest to each hero, everything feels like it has purpose and it is all textured in a vibrant, painterly style.

Each hero have had some serious design time dedicated to them, each with a unique look and silhouette and when considering how many heroes there are this is quite an achievement! A number of heroes have had multiple redesigns too, while some are currently waiting, but each of them have great personalities and are animated beautifully. When you throw all this into combat with all the spell effects, the game can be quite a sight to behold.

Things can get pretty chaotic during teamfights

The only thing that I can't get on with is the lore. I know in a game like this the lore isn't as important as in say Mass Effect or Skyrim, so I should be happy that Valve have taken the time to try and explain the world and the heroes, but the number of heroes that have just popped out the ground is a bit much. Some of them have stories intertwined with other heroes, which for me adds believability to the world, yet a good number of them have the "mysterious unknown power" thing attached to them and this reduces the credibility.

For Balance
Not wanting this post to become overly biased I thought I'd write down some of things that I think are wrong or just bad, after all, without this I'd be saying Dota 2 is near perfect, when it obviously isn't. The very nature of the game is "snowbally", meaning if one team make enough mistakes the enemy team can push the advantage hard, leaving the other team in a corner for 20 minutes just losing with no hope of coming back, which isn't fun. Add this on top of the inevitable losing streaks and your morale for the game can drop pretty hard.

Being an internet based game the community can have bad members, but I guess this just comes with the hobby. The servers can be a bit wonky at times and while the menus are functional they feel a bit sluggish in places, the option for more player statistics would be great too. Lastly, some of the cosmetic items don't match up to the quality of others, but this is because most of the sets are made by the community. A lot of the things mentioned in this paragraph could all be addressed through patches, which Valve push out at a decent rate.

A festive version of the standard Dota 2 map

I could quite easily double the size of this post discussing things in Dota 2, but I won't, I feel I have covered all the necessary points in what makes this game great and the influences it can pass on. In my future work I hope I can replicate some of the design choices made by Valve, especially in character design, as Dota 2 is a real showcase for fantastic character design work. As for playing the game itself, I'm slowly approaching my 400th game and I can't wait to see what the another 400 have in store for me!

References & Notes

[1]http://www.dvlzgame.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DotA-21.jpg
[2]http://www.devilesk.com/dota2/images/dota_minimap.jpg
All other images were taken by me, in-game

A Big Drawing Update.

As the title says, I've uploaded quite a few drawings, I have even managed to take photos of the A1 sheets too. I haven't uploaded everything I've done, some sheets are unfinished and others I just don't see the point, like how many blind contour drawings do you need to see?

Life Drawing

We've been doing a good mix of techniques in life drawing, many of which I've enjoyed. I always feel like just as I get to grips with a technique we move onto another, which is a shame as I'd like to see how far I could push some of them. After looking over these images it is also clear I have some problems with proportion, like certain heads being too big or small, or a thigh looking too chunky.

Visual Design
We had to take a trip to a Victorian pumping station on the edge of Leicester for one of the weeks, to get there I decided to walk a long the canal for about an hour which was... pleasant. The actual station was fantastic though. The final I produced for the station I will be redoing over Christmas, I made mistakes throughout and I think the final piece is very disjointed. I think certain areas work well but none of them work well with each other, which is a big problem!

The final project before Christmas was going the National Space Centre, located just next to the pumping station. Inside there were various space equipment like satellites and other machinery, there's even an old US rocket in the building which was a surprise. The actual building was an odd giant bubble, looking like something out of a 70's sci-fi show. It was also semi-opaque, making it very challenging to draw, which is why I picked it for my final.

History of Gaming: Part 4.

The start of the 00's, Sega had stopped production of the Dreamcast, leaving the market open for another competitor. Sega had decided to produce games for other platforms otherwise they'd run the risk of going under, this shocked many of the fans as the console had so much potential. (Fahs, T 2010) Sony had released the Playstation 2 at the start of the decade and the console was selling very well, while Nintendo was about to release the Gamecube meaning the market was already shaping up for another fight.

At the end of 2001, Microsoft decided to step into the ring by releasing the Xbox. Microsoft had the money and the knowledge to step into the market and while the console didn't sell as much as the Playstation it certainly showed that Sony didn't have a firm grip on the lead position. The Xbox released with Halo: Combat Evolved and year later Xbox Live was released, so the console certainly had a few tricks, but it also had a few missteps, like the original "Duke" controller which was the size of a small car (Certainly felt that way). (Goss, P 2011)

[1]

During this decade many of the big game franchises started to pick up, such as Grand Theft Auto. GTA III was released in 2001 and this was the games first 3D outing, and since then had been one of the top selling franchises in the gaming industry. Call of Duty was released in 2003 and while it wasn't the mega-blockbuster it is now, it certainly shows what games can become with a decent developer, time and an eventual endless money pit. Nintendo were also releasing their usual games for the Gamecube, such as Smash Bros, Zelda and the multiple Mario games, all of which sold well.

The Playstation 2 has now become the best selling console in history, selling over 150 million units, yet the next generation wasn't going to be as easy for Sony. In 2005 Microsoft had rushed into the next generation of consoles with the Xbox 360, they had learned from their past mistakes and also built upon their old successes with Xbox Live. The end of 2006 saw Sony and Nintendo enter the next-gen with the Playstation 3 and the Wii. The Xbox 360 had hardware problems with the dreaded Red Ring of Death, while the Playstation 3 had a very high price point and shaky online features. The Wii on the other hand found success in the innovative motion-controls and the usual high quality Nintendo games.

These sort of families appeared on our TV's  [2]

The difference between the PS3 and the 360 eventually came down to the exclusive games. The 360 had the Halo franchise, Gears of War, Forza and a few other one offs, such as Mass Effect or Lost Odyessy. The PS3 on the other hand had Kill Zone, Gran Turismo, Uncharted and others. The cross-platform games are almost identical in every way and this seems to be continuing across to the new generation that has just been released.

It is hard to tell who will win the new generation. Microsoft will have to work hard to regain some lost sales due to a terrible E3, while Sony and the PS4 at the moment appear to be the golden company. Nintendo are doing what they do best with the WiiU, yet the WiiU hasn't picked up like the original Wii did. I imagine as more must-have Nintendo titles come out the console will sell. I've personally gone with the Xbox One for now, I was torn at first but I feel the starting line-up on the One is slightly stronger and I enjoy both the Forza and Dead Rising franchises.


References & Notes
Fahs, T. (2010). IGN Presents the History of Dreamcast. Available: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2010/09/10/ign-presents-the-history-of-dreamcast?page=10. Last accessed 15th Nov 2013.

Goss, P. (2011). Ten years of Xbox: a brief history. Available: http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/ten-years-of-xbox-a-brief-history-1040866. Last accessed 17th Dec 2013.

http://us.playstation.com/corporate/about/theplaystationstory/

[1]http://images.thecarconnection.com/lrg/2013-volkswagen-golf-r-2-door-hb-side-exterior-view_100414823_l.jpg http://gearmedia.ign.com/gear/image/article/117/1176925/dukecontroller_1308247746.jpg

[2]http://lazytechguys.com/featured/top-20-family-friendly-video-games-of-2012/#.UrCXsfRdXuM

Architecture.

The project after the wheelie bin was to create a building, it's been completed for a while now but I've been sitting on it because I've wanted to add some finishing touches to the finals before I uploaded it. Now I have finally had the chance to spend an afternoon on it and I can post about it!

Our brief was to create a photo-realistic building using reference that we gathered ourselves. The building had to be old, something with an interesting look and a bit of character, 1970's council houses were out of the question! I went to a town near where I live that dates back to the Roman's to look for interesting buildings. I found a small church built around the 1900's, the building had a lot of interesting architecture and also had some modern extensions added to it. I've uploaded a few of my reference shots to help compare between the real-life version and my 3DS Max version.

The tri-limit for the building was 2,500, while using 2 1024's for texturing, we could divide this up if needed. Compared to the bin this was a much bigger project, but I was feeling confident. I ran into a few problems while constructing the building so my confidence didn't last long but I managed to figure most of them, or find a suitable work around, one example is I placed far too much detail around the windows, so I had to revert back to an earlier save to undo all the work I had done. This meant I did waste about 2 hours but I didn't fancy blowing my entire tri-limit on windows. 

Under construction

I created the building using 2,430 tris and I managed to squeeze in some details, most importantly a couple of door handles! On the 2 front doors to the church I added door handles, the back doors I left all handle less. I think this is a good way to show the players that a door is usable. It is this route or I could place novelty padlocks on the unusable doors but without any indication if a door is usable players like me will try to open every one. I spent the first 10 minutes of The Stanley Parable just trying to open doors, which the narrator then mocked me for.

Texturing an entire building was much harder than a wheelie bin I found out. I should have planned out my polygons in such a way that would make texturing easier, instead I put little thought into this and had already invested a large number of hours in modeling the building so I did not want to redo the entire thing. This left me with a building that was difficult to texture exactly how I wanted.

The final building: 2,430 tris & 6.25mb worth of textures

Finally the reason it has taken me so long to post this. I wanted to add a few smaller details to the building, like a ground to sit on, a few bushes, to really make the building stand out. I would have liked to have included a 3D viewer like in my previous Robot post but the program doesn't seem to like tiling textures, I will have a look into this however and update the post if I can find a fix!

EDIT: After a couple of hours messing around I've managed to import the building correctly, so it can now be viewed fully in 3D! The lighting isn't perfect and is causing some issues with the bushes but I'm okay with that. I have embedded it at the bottom of the post. 

Final building with some added extras

Coleshill Church from Braden May on Sketchfab.

Robots!

It wasn't going to be long for a blog about Game Art to mention robots. Our course has a mentoring program set up between the first and third years, named Gurus & Grasshoppers, and they set us the task to create a robot. This would not go towards our grade, it is completely optional but the reason I want to get into the industry is to design cool things like robots, so I wasn't going to pass this up.

The brief was about as open as it can get: Design and make a robot with 2000 tris and texture it with 2 512s, so I could have gone down any route possible. I knew straight away I didn't want to make the typical death-kill-kill robot, I've seen plenty of these. I wanted to create something like Wall-E or C3-P0, an assistant bot, built for making human life easier. I hit the web for research, throwing together a mood board of sorts of different robots.

Once I had a good amount of reference I began sketching, my very first attempt was far too human so I tried to push away from the i-robots and more towards the Wall-E type robots. As I went on they became much more industrial and eventually I thought "What if they were made of scrap?"

Rough sketches

The 2 bottom right robots where my favourite, one made from junkyard scrap and another from car scrap. I picked the junk yard robot because I thought he could have more interesting silhouette and overall look. My idea was that this robot was foraging for scrap to stay alive, replacing parts that needed repair with whatever he could find. The spyglass is because he can't replace his own lens and he needs better vision over long distances. Next step was to finalize the design with some Photoshop.

Photoshop final - Using colour scares me :(

To start my 3D modelling I had to draw up the reference sheets, this was a first time for actually drawing them as so far I've only used photographs. I learned they require a huge amount of effort to make sure everything is aligned properly and consistent, they also should require more detail than I included, as I was using guess work for parts of it. Lessons learned! After reading Valve's DOTA 2 Character Art Guide I concentrated a large number of my tris towards the head and torso, this did lead me to a tight budget for the lower parts but I think I managed well.

Robot - Unsmoothed and naked at 1,980 tris

As this wasn't being graded I wanted to play around with the texturing, instead of using photographs I wanted to try and paint them, like Blizzard, Valve or many other developers do. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into but I had a go. The hardest part for me was that the final outcome wouldn't be a flat canvas, I had to keep uploading the texture to get a feel for what was working and what wasn't. Looking back I could have increased the contrast on the finer details as they become almost invisible at a distance.

Both texture sheets side by side

I kept the colour of the robot quite dull, keep most of the colours in the muddy brown/red area. The first idea for the plated arm was to have it blue, but this clashed way too much with everything so I chose the dull green. If I was up to the challenge I should have experimented with different colours when I was painting the final concept, this could have opened up some interesting colour options.

The final model sits at 1980 tris, with the textures coming to 1.5mb. Overall I am happy with the robot, if I had more texture budget I would have liked to have placed an alpha on him for the hanging wires like I had in my concept. Below is the final render but he's unfortunately stood in a Christ the Redeemer stance, I've also put in a Sketchfab 3D model viewer, hopefully it works fine and you should be able to fully explore the final robot.

Scrapbot just wants a hug

Scrap Robot from Braden May on Sketchfab.

History of Gaming: id & the First Person Shooter.

It is without a doubt that the first-person shooter genre might not be as big as it is today without the help of id. Through out the 1990’s the company pushed the genre multiple times, helping place the FPS in the top spot for addictiveness and competitiveness. This post will briefly look over Id’s history with the genre and how they shaped it.

[1]

While id made the genre popular, they certainly did not invent it. Decades before, in 1973 a NASA intern named Steve Colley created a program that placed the user inside a maze, not just above it. The idea of 3D rendering at the time seemed far fetched but Colley and his co-workers figured mazes only needed 90 degrees angles, this made it much easier to create. The original game was boring, but 2 other interns, Greg Thompson and Howard Palmer saw potential in the program.

Thompson and Palmer had the idea to place more than 1 user in the maze and soon after shooting each other was introduced. At the start the game was passed around between friends but in 1974 Thompson returned to MIT and upgraded Maze Wars to run over an early version of the internet. Students battled it out across campus and the game grew in popularity, even being picked up by Xerox to port to other computers. (Olivetti, 2012) Maze Wars now appears to be mostly forgotten about, every resource I’ve read through so far seems to completely ignore it in the history of gaming, yet I believe it holds great significance in both the FPS genre and gaming in general with some of the first online multiplayer, a radar and a spectator mode.

In 1989, John Carmack met John Romero during a job interview for Softdisk. Both were very skilled programmers but Romero also had an artistic side. They also met Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack (no relation) there and began moon-lighting to create their own games, the first one being Commander Keen. Keen was a side-scrolling action game, very much like Mario but the people who played it said it was much better. The moon-lighting team began calling themselves Ideas From the Deep and eventually left Softdisk to create id Software, founded on February 1st, 1991.

J.Carmack - Front Left, Adrian Carmack - Hidden at the back, J.Romero - Middle, Tom Hall - Second from the right[2]

John Carmack, now id’s main programmer, wanted to create a fast-paced 3D game, instead of the slow 2D game, Commander Keen. After months of research Carmack and the others had come up with Hovertank. The game however was rather ugly due to the limitation of the computers at the time. Id continued work on Commander Keen to pay the bills and eventually wanted to explore the fast-paced 3D game again. The decision was made to recreate Wolfenstein by John Romero, an older stealth game that was well suited to Carmack’s engine. Romero also wanted the game to be bloody and violent, after growing up with films like Rambo and Friday the 13th, extreme violence had not been explored in video games yet. New technology such as texture mapping helped Wolfenstein 3D achieve a good visual style while also keeping the speed of the game high, the stealth elements were thrown away as they were “slowing the game down”. Wolfenstein 3D was released on May 5, 1992, with secret sliding doors, boss death cams, taunting difficulties and lots of violence and gore.

The game became an underground sensation. Internet forums and BBSs where filled with people talking about it. Eventually the media caught on and praised it too, even with all the violence. Wolfenstein 3D began to get hacked, or for a more modern term, modded. Due to the 3D nature it was more difficult to hack but this didn’t stop people replacing the enemies with Smurfs for example.

Wolfenstein 3D - No floor or roof textures yet [3]

John Carmack had again made advances with 3D rendering, creating an engine that enabled fading light and textures on walls and ceilings, he also had the idea to base their next game on demons with the title Doom. Carmack continued to push the engine, helping Romero and Adrian bring their demonic imaginations to life, while scrapping anything that would slow down the pace of the game, including the story. Tom Hall wanted to include a more cinematic story with Doom, yet Carmack said “Story in a game, is a like a story in a porn movie, it’s expected to be there but it’s not that important.”

Doom was released at the end of 1993, with faster gameplay, more violence, complex levels and multiplayer. A first person game of this speed had never included multiplayer before. Doom became an overnight hit, with any place having internet access grinding to a stop simply because people were playing. Intel and A&M had to take actions to stop their employees playing.

Doom - Roof and floor textures, with shadows! [4]

After seeing what modders had done with Wolfenstein 3D, Id made sure that Doom was much more accessible with WAD files, these allowed players to alter the game without destroying the code. Despite being so popular Doom was mostly an underground game, only available through shareware. Id worked on Doom II which would be released on CD-ROM, helping id so mainstream, while John Carmack began working on their next game engine.

Id grew, hiring more people to cope with the lengthening development time. Their next game would be Quake, they had planned this game for a while but their idea was different to the final out come. The original idea was for Quake to be a fantasy, melee combat game but as development became troubled id decided to stick with what they know - the FPS. One thing was certain though, the game would be playable over the internet from release, with 16 players. The various artists had all been in their own worlds while Carmack worked on the Quake engine, this lead to there being 3 distinct looks between the levels. Id stitched them together with a story about an invader using slipgates to assault different worlds.

[5]

Quake was released on June 22, 1996 and despite the rough development the game was a success... a massive success, due to Carmack’s ground-breaking engine and because the game was built from the start for multiplayer. Gamers played the game across LAN and the internet battling it out and forming clans. It didn’t take long for tournaments to begin and once this happened e-sports had begun. While gamers enjoyed Quake, Id had suffered during the development and the fallout hit them hard, with the majority of the talent leaving.They later released Quake II and thanks to Carmack’s coding was a success, but Id’s win streak was over.

April 20th, 1999, the Columbine killings took place, where 2 teenagers killed 13 others. Hours before, one of them recorded a video explaining his actions and he mentioned “it’s going to be like fucking Doom!”. This lead to a media storm over violence in video games and fingers were all pointed towards the creators of these games, such as id. Quake III was in development at the time but the pitchforks were already out. Gamers had also shifted in taste, but it’s unsure if the bad media was the reason. They wanted stories now, with games like Half-Life, System Shock and Marathon leading this change. To make things worst the development of Quake III was rough due to in-fighting and no real leadership, id began to fall apart again losing some of it’s newer members. (Kusher, 2003)

Half-Life: "Do you know who ate all the donuts?" [6]

This is where, in my opinion, the FPS left id’s hands and other companies began to push the genre. Companies like Rare brought quality first-person shooters to the console with Goldeneye 007, Bungie streamlined it with Halo 2 and Infinity Ward made it extremely popular with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Id’s latest game was RAGE released in 2011, while being technologically fantastic the gameplay didn’t do anything new and multiplayer was completely absent. The fate of the FPS is now open, with companies like DICE and Infinity Ward/Treyarch making little to no advancements for the genre, here’s hoping Valve has something ground-breaking in store with Half-Life 3.


Reference & Notes
Kushner, D (2003). Masters of Doom. London: Judy Piatkus Publishers. p37-276

Olivetti, J (2012). The Game Archaeologist: Maze War. Available: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/12/the-game-archaeologist-maze-war/ . Last accessed 30th Oct 2013.


[1]http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/news2001/24183/id_software.gif
[2]http://dorkshelf.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/legends.jpg
[3]http://obrazki.elektroda.pl/4690575400_1336649125.jpeg
[4]http://media.desura.com/images/articles/1/122/121099/auto/doom-imp-pc-version.png
[5]http://static.zenimax.com/bethblog/oldcontent/925702-me0000485352_2_super.jpg
[6]http://www.xblafans.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/08/halflife1.jpg

Cars, bones & more cars.

After Bradgate Park our weekly drawing task was to sit in a local Museum and sketch the bones, this was a nice change simply because we didn't need to fight the weather! The museum is quite small, but had 3 quite large dinosaur skeletons in there, with plenty of other smaller skeletons placed around them.

The bones of a Plateosaurus, Fox, Anteater, Turkey and a Tree Kangaroo

While the dinosaur bones were fascinating I found the intricacy of the smaller skeletons much more interesting. The small skeletons were of much more mundane animals but that didn't bother me much, so for my final instead of focusing on one of the massive dinosaurs that loomed over everything I picked a small skeleton of a turkey. The turkey was standing in a corner, over-shadowed by a huge dinosaur yet the features of the neck and skull of the turkey attracted the attention of my eye.

Turkey final

The next drawing task was to draw cars. I've had a good amount of practice drawing people and landscapes, but cars are my Achilles' heel, I did not want to be beaten by them so I drew a lot of cars. I hit the required 12 cars needed for the task and kept going. I wasn't worried about hitting the target number of drawings for that week, I just wanted to get better at drawing cars! Below are a selection of sketches.

The final drawing I picked one of my favourite cars, the Subaru Impreza (Yeah, I know I have bad taste...). After spending 4 days practicing I was feeling a lot more confident in producing something I'd be proud of. The line drawing I was happy with but as I began to add values to the car I felt it slipping away from me, I definitely need practice on car rendering.The wheels also caused me problems through out, especially the spokes on the alloys so I left them as plain as possible to not draw attention to them.

Final - Subaru Impreza WRX STI 2005