Dimension/Depth/Space & Katamari

Developed by Namco Bandai, Katamari Forever is a PlayStation 3 game that has a complete environment within itself. To navigate through the game, a sense of dimension and size is necessary. Relative size is important to play the game because the objective is to roll up similar-sized objects into a ball. The more you roll up, the larger objects you can gather. Relative size also has a role in depth perception in the game. In the screenshot, the signs on the street appear smaller and smaller, a two-dimensional cue that they are receding into the background, becoming further and further away. The people in the screenshot also show signs of relative size. They look smaller as they recede into space. Linear perspective is also put into use. The lines for the little street or sidewalk curve together into the upper left side of the screen, into a vanishing point. More converging lines can be seen at the buildings at the top. Their base lines and other construction lines converge towards where the curving sidewalk lines are going. Another cue is overlap. The signs on the road are overlapping each other. Some look to be in front, while others behind. The rolling ball in the center of the screen is overlapping the objects on the blanket. The effect reinforces a sense of depth as it puts objects in front or behind each other. Finally, the game also simulates a texture gradient. At the bottom of the image, the white spots of the street's texture are spaced out and large. When the eye travels upwards, the texture starts becoming smaller and the white spots begin disappearing. The gradient's loss of detail reflects the human nearsighted vision, where objects are clearer when close, and blurrier when far. With the use of these depth and size cues, Katamari Forever creates a virtual world for players that seems tangible.

image source: http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/14333801/katamari-damacy-tribute/images/katamari-forever-20090814033434654.html
more info: http://www.katamariforever.com/

Video Game Design, Tone, & Color

In this image of a level in the Nintendo DS puzzle game Meteos, tone is being used to differentiate the objects from each other. By juxtapositioning lightness and darkness, our eyes are able to distinguising different objects, their edges, and changes between them. For example, in the top half of the image, the lightness of the sparkles and stick figures juxtaposed against the darkness of the outer space background creates a contrast great enough to separate the said objects. Tone is interacting in dimension in this image of Meteos. For example, the planets in the top half look three-dimensional because of tone. Their round shapes are reinforced by the highlights, shadows, and the tonal steps in between. Tone creates the illusion of round, tangible objects from the two-dimensional because that is how we perceive round objects in light.

Color is operating most dominantly in the bottom half of the image, where the player looks to the most. The object of the game is to align three or more blocks of the same color together. Once aligned, the matching blocks will become rockets that will shoot all blocks above them into space and back at the evil that rained down the blocks. Hue is most important in playing the game as players must match the different colored blocks together: blues with blues, greens with greens, and so on. The high saturation of the game's colors generate the fun, intense, and action-packed aspects of Meteos. Color interacts directly with shape during the game. The dominant shape of the game is the square shape of the blocks. Since all blocks are the same shape and scale, The element of color characterizes the blocks, as well as the shapes within them, such as the blue "teardrop" block or the red "fire" block. Matching color and shape is fundamental in Meteos.

image source: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/DS/Top+10+DS+charts/feature.asp?c=9943
game info: http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/4LUrMFrGvMRuQiuHjKUozvSIhxhIoQxY

Video Game Design

image source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/8/9/9/i/4/3/0/o/Flower1FINAL.jpg

ThatGameCompany's Flower title for the Playstation 3 uses the basic element of texture effectively. The game presents highly-detailed environments that immerse the player in a natural world away from civilization. Players control the wind and sweep through meadows, fields, and other landscapes. The objective is to blow off flower petals, gathering enough to revive "dead" land patches. The designer used texture to replicate the natural environments. From the image, you can already see the individual blades of grass and the organic shapes of the flower petals. This type of texture is optical, not tactile. In other words, it is only simulated visually, not physically. In addition, the grass's texture provides a depth cue. You can see a "texture gradient" the grass diminishes into the distance. It gets blurrier and darker, creating an illusion of receding perspective. The texture provides a beautiful detail to the game and gives it a realistic touch. It refers to the grass's composition as it looks green and thin just like real blades of grass. This fake illusion is purely a visual, stunning experience for its players.


image source: http://files.myopera.com/Seiter/blog/shadow-of-the-colossus-20050927025333795.jpg

Shadow of the Colossus by Sony Computer Entertainment Company is based completely on scale. For the majority of the game, players control a young man who must defeat colossal creatures in order to save his loved one. The giants tower over the boy and his horse. As is the requirement of scale, the hero and the giants are constantly juxtaposed to each other. The players find themselves facing the giants head to head. They stand dozens of times taller than the human, blocking out the sun. They are truly larger than life and seem impossible to defeat because of their sheer size. The giants make the players feel small and insignificant, as opposed to other games where the enemies are usually about the same size or smaller than the human. Each giant becomes a puzzle in themselves as we must figure out a way to climb up them and attack their weak points without getting harmed.


image source: http://www.gameguru.in/images/echochrome-1.jpg

Echochrome is a game developed by Japan Studio and is almost entirely derived upon the element of dimension. The object of the game is to maneuver around a three-dimensional puzzle using only camera angles and getting your mannequin-like character to the spots where dark blurry human figures are, as shown in the image. The puzzles are made entirely of line (another element), and solving them requires rotating the camera perspective around to allow the walking mannequin to continue on its path. Physics depends on illusion. Players have to create the illusion that the figure will fall onto the platform below or use perspective to block a gap in order to to keep on walking. The type of perspective used is linear, making the two-dimensional appear three-dimensional. The simple, converging lines look like solid objects because of the linear perspective.

Syntactical Guidelines & Video Games

image source: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2j177yh&s=4

The LittleBigPlanet "popit" menu puts Syntactical Guidelines to good use. I believe the strength lies in the organizational grouping of the various objects the player can use. For example, in the image, all the "sound effect" shapes are grouped together. Another way that the menu is successful is because it uses balance to organize and present itself. The menu is a rectangular shape and all the images within it are aligned to a grid. For the player, this provides a predictable layout from which to find the items they need.










image source: http://arcadeberg.com/files/2009/04/eso_hud.jpg

This videogame does not have good design and does not use the Syntactical Guidelines well. There is just too much information on the interface. The designer used too much stress for all the different menus. For example, the character window (top left) and map (top right) are both highlighted with a bright blue. There are also other bright blue points on the screen. The stress put on all these objects does not make any of them stand out anymore. It does not use Balance and Imbalance properly either. There is no sense of stability as the menus are all scattered. All the points of interest cause too much imbalance, creating a screen full of clutter rather than an understandable interface.