The Snow has Buried My Mind and Froze My Soul

In other words, I have no idea what to write about. With the weather draining out all my mental and physical energy I am at a loss at thinking of a meaningful topic to write about. So I am going to write about a game I purchased and played (for research purposes, of course) called Thief Gold, developed by Looking Glass Studios. The game is one of, if not the first, first person game that revolved around stealth. Before this,  first person games were essentially shooters (FPSs). This game threw the whole notion running and gunning thing out the window and instead focused on the fact that a good thief should be able to get into any place, rob them blind, and get out without even being seen. Personally, I love stealth games like this, spending hours  crouching in shadows timing the patrols of guards, swearing under your breath the moment a guard so much as breaths in your direction, and crapping your pants when he starts moving in your direction. The game came out years ago for PC, and by years I mean 1999. Though despite its age, it made a great use of shaders, mainly lights and shadows but they really enhanced the atmosphere. Which was very much needed given the quality of graphics at the time.

Now, this would be the part in the blog where I put screenshots of the game and talk a little bit of whats happening in the shots. But unfortunately the game doesn't seem to want to cooperate ( in other words it wont let me print screen). Which is really unfortunate because there was one happening that I really wanted to show. In my quest to obtain screenshots of the shaders used in the game, I had unwittingly woken up a zombie, but because I was hidden in the shadows it did not attack me but instead attacked a nearby guard. The guard immediately tried to defend himself but couldn't because his weapon kept hitting the wall. Oh the AI of that time, creating hilarious happenings around every turn. So as consolation I have drawn you all a happy face! May it bring you warmth in these cold times! Till next time! Laters!

Lights! Camera! Action! and Shaders!

Last week we were introduced to basic lighting and shading techniques such as the use of Phong and Blinn equations. Lighting and shading has been essential to fully expressing the vision of the designer creating vastly different moods from the same model or level with a simple change in lighting, immersing the player deeper into the world which you created.

Modern techniques mainly use 3 kinds of lighting/shading ambient, specular and diffuse that when combined create a realistic interpretations of real life lights and shadows.

Within the game Guild Wars 2 it is possible manipulate the level of shading within the game for purposes such as for improved computer performance or personal preference.

As can be seen in the image above there is no shading on any of the character within the scene but the buildings possess some diffused shading.

Where in this image all characters and buildings posses very clean well defines shadows. Here the developers use multiple passes to create these dynamic shadows, first from  the light's perspective and the second from the camera's perspective.