2. BRIEF HISTORY
MMRPGS (Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games) these are games that are
played socially online with friends or strangers. These types of games allow you to
create appearances and personalities for your character within a fantasy setting.
You walk around trying to survive and to pick up skills and weapons to increase
your characters stats. Many forms of the genre have been created over the years
but the the first to hit our slow old computer screens was Never Winter Nights in the
year 1991. The next leap from this game was ‘Ultima online’ released in 1997. And
let but not least we have what is arguably the biggest game ever made ‘World Of
Warcraft’ released in 2004. There were other releases such as EVE and
Runescape that were both played on a massive scale still to this day but these 3
seemed to be the peak of the genre throughout the years.
3. NEVER WINTER NIGHTSNever winter nights was the very first online game to
start of the MMRPGS craze. although this game
was the birth of an era it had its major downfalls.
Due to the computers available when this was
released the speed of the game was very slow and
the graphics were very pixelated. The game run at
14KB a second and was 2D. even though the
graphics were 2D they gave off a 3D illusion in
some of the graphics by using layers and shading.
The games background story followed from the
board game ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ It was the first
online digital version of the popular board game.
When combat occurs gameplay switches to full-
screen combat mode, in which a player's characters
and enemies are represented by icons which move
around in the course of battle. That was the closest
to getting real life action due to computer speeds at
the time. Neverwinter Nights was a co-development
of AOL, Stormfront Studios, SSI, and TSR. Even
though this was a break though for online games
the scale of people playing it was still very small
because the access of computers was much harder
than the present day. The capacity of each server
grew from 50 players in 1991 to 500 players by
1995 and the game peaked at only 115,000 players
4. ULTIMA ONLINEUltima Online was the next big step within the
MMRPGS. With a improvement of up to 56Kb
modem speed per second it was an
improvement from its predecessor. the Online
community was slightly larger to with a peak
user stat of 250,00 and a whopping total of
19,540,000 hosts. The game was made by
origin systems and electronic arts. Ultima
Online was The first MMORPG to reach the
100,000 subscriber base, far exceeding that
of any game that went before it. Ultima Online
continued the tradition of previous Ultima
games in many ways, but due to advancing
technology and the simple fact that it was
Origin's first persistent online game, there
were many new game mechanics as well.
The games graphics were better than its
predecessors due to the computers available
at the time and the 2D-3D perspective was
better than ever. they angled the view of the
game in a special birds eye way to show
structures along with people in the
perspective of flying over them. It was much
better and easier to portray the 3D illusion
5. WORLD OF WARCRAFTWorld of Warcraft was released in 2004 with a
uprising of staggering 1billion hosts to date making it
the biggest online game ever made. By 2004 the
age of computers was advancing quick and the
game was allowed to run at a increased speed of
1000KB a second and was one of the first MMRPGS
to use 3D graphics. The peak amount of users was
recorded at 7,000,000 users at any one time. The
development company that produced and made the
game was Blizzard Entertainment. since the release
of the game they have released two other versions
which include different worlds and extension packs
e.g more weapons and costumes. The game is all
online and the map goes on for days. The user
interface for this game was a risk as it changed the
normal birds eye view that people were used to
playing in the past and changed it to a 3D
perspective in a POV angle. Due to the amount of
sales it was a risk worth taking in the end. As you
can see in the image on the bottom corner you can
see that there is high amounts of buttons and text
shown, the game takes a long time to get used to
and is very complex on what you can do and play
with. due to the high extent of features this is
perhaps why it was so popular, as there was so
much to do within the game it resulted in people
never getting bored. The game got to point were
some people couldn't stop playing it and would be on
the game for days and described iras some sort of
8. MOTION CAPTURE
FIFA 13 - 3D HEAD SCANNINGThe capture lab at EA sports HQ came up
with a new idea on how to capture as much
detail as possible within the game. This was
called 3D head scanning. The process would
be set up by placing 18 cameras rigged in a
circle of this dome which would surround an
athlete sitting in a chair. Giving a 3D
perspective view of the the players head.
With this process giving off higher detail you
are left with a higher expectation and
standard for making them look and move like
real life. Humans are all experts at noticing
things when they are slightly wrong or out of
place, this could be from a facial expression
or the way someone is walking, so making
them seem as realistic as possible can
become a more challenging exercise for the
animators. When all the photos have been
taken they are sent into the fifa artists where
the refine the models and touch up on things
like the finer details of the hair as the
programme cant pick up every little detail of
9. MOTION CAPTURE
FIFA 13 - MOTION SUITSMotion capture is a much more time
efficient and professional way of doing
animation. How the suits work is a set
of players would get suited up into
these black latex ‘Morph Suits’ with
20-30 reflective balls placed on the
joints and main body parts. These
players would act out scenarios within
a football game and they would be
recorded and transferred into 3D data
into a skeleton on the computer and
then that skeleton would be
transferred to the fully animated
characters. The players simulate
things like ball control kicking and
celebrations to make the game as
