Games Production Pipeline

Game Production Pipeline

 

Concept idea

First of all before any game designer starts to make a game they need to come up with was is called a concept idea, this can be a concept to create a copy of a game that is already existing for example it could be a concept to create another car racing game and just add in a few different things to make it unique or the concept idea for the game could be a completely new  idea for a type of game that no one has ever thought of before for example the idea for the game ‘Guitar Hero’ was a first and a completely unique idea that had never be thought of before.

 

Storyboard

Once the production team has come up with a concept idea that they would like to create as a game they then get the writers together and they will create a story using storyboards showing exactly what will go on at each level of the game and what possibilities can happen depending on what the player does in the game.

 

Character Design

As the storyboard is being drawn and sketched out the character designers are drawing and sketching out the major characters in the game. These characters are drawn in great detail so that they are prefect. This is so that it when it comes to creating the character the 3d artists know exactly what it wanted.

Here is a sketch of the Master Chief from the Halo games. And an image of the final render.

 

 

When the sketches are done and finalized and the character designing team have decided to use the designs they then go to the next stage which is creating the characters in 3d.

 

Character Development

The 3D artists now start in creating the character from the designs drawn from the character designers.

The first stage of the creation is too create the mesh of the characters this is probably the most important part of the creation as this will give the character shape and form.

Here with this picture we can see the mesh and skeleton of The Master Chief in Halo the mesh is made up of lots of polygons, for the master chief the polygons are rather simple as the design of the character is rather boxy in shape.

The next step in the creation of the character is the skeleton this will make the mesh able to move, here in the image below with the master chief, the skeleton is just a basic biped structure that has been aligned to the mesh.

 

 

Once the mesh is connected to the skeleton the next stage is the textures and mapping.

 

As you can see in this image on the above the mesh has now been given a map that finishes the model.

Then it is tweaked and then fully rendered until you get this.

 

Scene Development

Once all the characters have been created in 3d in next stage is the environment designs. This is one of the biggest parts of the whole creation of the game as there are so many different places in a game from one level to the next; all these scenes have to be first designed by the designers.

 

All scenes in the game like the characters are sketched out so that the 3d artists no exactly what they are having to create and that everything will be perfect.

 

All the sketches are drawn by the environment designers then there drawings are taken to the 3d environment artists who then work on creating all the scenes in 3d. This would usually have a lot more people working on it than the character artists as there a lot more elements involved in the creation of the scene for example if the scene was a street or city landscape there would be the roads, which means cars and background people, road signs and lots of buildings etc…

 

The shapes for the scene are first created in 3d and will show no detail in the objects.

For example this image below.

 

 

The scenes are then taken too the material artists where they add in the detail like textures and colour like the second image.

Then that scene is taken to the lighting artists where they will add in all the lighting to add the final realistic look to it.

 

 

Coding

Now the most important element in creating the game is the coding without the code for the game, the game would not work. The coding is what makes your character move when you use the controller on your console and what makes the whole game run.

This is created by a computer coding team which uses a coding system that will help in gets the animation of all the polygons that are involved in the scene. Games these days have a very high polygon rate and need to have a very high powered coding system so that everything runs smoothly.  

 

Post-Production

Once the game has been created and all the elements are in places, characters, scenes, and coding it all, the production team then have to then send the game in the testing stage and the process this is where the game is tested out for anything that might need changing or even sometimes adding in what the testing team would think make the game a whole lot better.

The testing team will play the game that has been created and will play the game again and again to look for any think that might be work with the game whether it is a mistake that has been made in the coding or whether it is a bug that is in the game.

 

Marketing

Marketing is a huge part of making a game successful, the game ‘Grand Theft Auto Vice City’ spent $3-5 million on the development on the game and spent around $10million on the marketing over double the amount for game creation itself.

Without the right marketing the game is highly likely to flop. This shows in Grand Theft Auto as the games have all been great hits. And the new ‘GTA 4’ had a profit of around $500million.