Computer Games roundup

The interesting Computer Games session successfully did a great job in inspiring me of the World of games. Through the simple concepts, Dr Golam Ashraf created the basic idea of the Computer Games, which is proper for us freshmen.
At the first few minutes he broke the ice by asking interesting things about each student in the class and how do they feel about the course so far. Following by asking the types of the games each one plays, gradually he made us build up the general content of a game in general, which includes Characters, Story lines (sometimes optional) and the environment or level of the game. All of these things are called “art work”.
In the matter of Games Design (or Games Mechanic), to ensure that a game work well, the game masters must pay full attention to these properties:
1. Rules
2. Attributes: like the value of things, penalty, any damage or in general how each item changes as the player does some actions.
3. The rate of change, or the gradient
4. HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) UI: means how to play the game. Maybe the game is played with mouse, or keyboard, or remote, or using player’s smile  or gesture, or a character may respond to the player when he talks…
5. The indispensible factor when creating a game is its Balance. It can be restricted number of player in a round, the resource that the character can exploit to survive, and each player is given equal chance to win.
Especially in the game of action types, there must be so-called ‘romantic relieve’, it is the zone between boredom and frustration. It ensures the enjoyment of the game.




Moving on to the real-time Technology used, this includes:
1. Graphics needed
2. Processing Unit (or System Architecture) like power consumption,…
3. Internet/or in general communication: connect to the server. Fast compression tech is needed as the data is huge.
4. Database: the main purpose of it is to store your own characters’ feature, and connecting of players. It’s a quick way to get access to millions of data, and for fast searching.
5. AI
6. HCI
In the topic of Foundation Game, we are given a question: “What concepts make them so ambitious?” Answering this question is analogous to how to survive in 15 days with only 10$ given. Philosophically speaking it is the matter of how to bring the user the best game with lowest price.
To obtain this purpose, the game masters should do the following tasks:
1. Divide and conquer
2. KISS – Keep It Short and Sweet
3. COWYNC – Compute Only What You Need To Compute
4. PRECOMPUTE what you can
-> These techniques keep the game master frugal enough to create an effective game.
In the end of the class, what remains in my mind is not only the basic concepts of a game, the enjoyment of the interesting videos but also an inspiration for the game masters in the future. We owe a big thank you to Dr Golam Ashraf for his enthusiasm.

Written by: Dang Dung Ha