A History of Computers and Games: Part Two (Don't mention the war.)

There is a peculiar constant in the history of human kind, which states that when engaged in warfare our technology develops exponentially. I'd imagine it's because during those times of hardship you can afford to engage in these kind of activities while the public are two busy to worry about what Governmental death rays are being produced. It's safe to say though most premier technology development of the modern is tied up in the arms races of the past. Even when we aren't expressively designing new and exciting ways to kill each other the technology we use often had a military use somewhere along the line. On that note lets talk a little about a very significant piece of technology from World War 2: Reich Harder.

Konrad Zuse (A German) With the Z3

In the 1930's there were various computers being concepted and thrown into development but for now I want to talk about Konrad Zuse an engineering student at the University of Berlin. A man concerned less with the political aspects of the time when it was all most could concentrate on and more on a device used to negate the humdrum of repetitive calculation in his line of work. Sounding familiar? We've more or less hit the point where technology had caught up to the insane hopefulness of Charles Babbage. In 1936 he quite his job and devoted himself to the production of this machine. His baby was named the Z1 and was remarkable in a number of ways like nothing of it's kinda before it had a binary method of operation. It had a keyboard for the input of instruction, memory, and something akin to a central processor. He didn't stop here though Z2 his next build he switched out the memory to a more effective system and replaced the input mechanism from a keyboard to strips of punched paper tape. And would you believe it the son of gun worked. 

Here's an interesting if not slightly horrible hypothetical for you though. Zuse made a friend shortly after his production of the Z2 a certain Herr Schreyer who happaned to be writing a thesis in electrical engineering. The two came to a conclusion that if you could replace the relays in the machine with valves that it would operate significantly past its current capacity. At the time it wasn't practical but had enough effort been put in, maybe it could have happened. Now if Germany at the time had possession of a computer of this design, well that would have had a significant impact on the outcome of the war. Of course at the time they were too busy blitzkrieging their way across Europe to really care, the investment seemed unnecessary considering Hitler thought the war all but won by 1940.

Of course that didn't happen. Britain's own expertise in the areas of code making and breaking made sure of that. And it's developments like these that pushed technological advancements to the point that we could start on much more important things. You know like games and stuff.

   Have you ever stopped to think what the appeal to all this gaming stuff is? I'm sure plenty of people have their own personal opinions on it, hell some people hate gaming but here's the thing. Almost as soon as computers were capable of containing what could be considered a “game” someone went and did it. Even though gaming as an entity didn't actually exist yet.

It's great to think that somewhere between using this new and exciting technology to bomb people and finding out how to transmit gratuitous nude imagery world wide. Someone thought. “Hey, lets do something fun.” I say this, actually said guy did create a radar display for an experimental bomber, essentially making him a merchant of death. On the flip side though he did help to found the nuclear nonproliferation group so he can't have been all that bad.

Enter stage right Willy Higinbotham. Now this bloke after mucking around with all these radars and....science for so long. You know generally trying to do something useful for humanity. Well he clocked on that he could take one of his radars and turn it into something else. You know get people excited about, how relevant science is...Ironic considering one of the arguments against gaming is how irrelevant and pointless it is.

Tennis for Two is arguably the first game ever created and when the public got their hands on it at Brookhaven lab's visitors day they went mental for it. Or as mental as people could get in the 1950's. Though strangely enough as popular as this game was it didn't really kick off until some years later with new incarnations of the game. But here we had it, a piece of technology purely for the purposes of one persons entertainment and procrastination, and that my friends, is a beautiful thing.  

Tennis for Two Interface

Sources:

Evans, C. (1981.) The Making of the Micro - A History of the Computer. Victor Gollancz LTD.

http://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php

http://www.deutsches-museum.de/fileadmin/Content/010_DM/070_Presse/2010/Konrad_Zuse_mit_Z3.jpg

http://pongmuseum.com/history/FirstElectronicGameEverMade.php

Babe With the Power

   Ain't thrown any life drawing up on here in a while. Which is a shame I tend to look forward to it after all and I think it's where some of my best work gets produced. So I figured it might be worth taking a look at some of the stuff we've been up to recently. We've had a fair few new approaches thrown at us and it takes a lot of will power to suck it up when it goes wrong. Thankfully though a couple o' weeks back we got to start using either watercolour or ink. Now when I was doing life drawing back in college 90 percent of the work I produced was with ink. The only difference was I only use black for a sort of tonal effect whereas we've been getting to play around with colour.

   Really enjoyed getting to do this kinda stuff again though it might just be because I'm comfortable doing it but in any case what came next was a little more awkward. Inspired by Matisse we had to nuke a few sheets of paper with emulsion paint and then try and recreate both scene and figure with a collage. Which is more stressful than it sounds let me tell you. I mean it's fun once you can get out of the mindset that you don't know what you're doing and the results gonna be awful because of it. Thing is as well they didn't look half bad all my class did a great job despite the fact we were basically pissing and moaning the whole time. Just goes to show we should probably keep an open mind.

 

A History of Computers and Games: Part One - The Difference Engine

   The first time computers rocked up in history might surprise you. You can date rudimentary mechanisms with a thin but arguable definition as computers as early as the 1800's. Though some might be considered calculators which muddies the waters somewhat. For now though, it's these counting machines that I'm going to discuss. Why? Because mathematicians are an untrustworthy breed and a natural enemy of the creative. So my long term plan is to learn their knowledge gain their trust and destroy them from the inside, but for now I've got a blog post to write.

Babbage

 Charles Babbage, a maths hound of some renown is as good a place as any to start this little foray into a very brief history of computers and gaming. Turns out the man spent a great deal of his time getting wound up by errors of mathematics in various published works. Some of these on account of this particular brand of mathematics would eventually lead to an incredible array of inaccuracy when it came to the final result. He decided, as will our robot overlords of the future, that a machine could do a better job. The idea for Difference Engine was born. A lot of money and a lot of time got invested into this little do dad so it's a pity that the inherent complexity of the thing meant it never actually worked.

Most people would give up by this point but not Mr. Babbage, no, he went one better. Starting on the design of the Analytical engine which had it been completed would have been the first ever programmable computer, using punch cards believe it or not you would have been able to instruct the computer on what it was supposed to be doing. Most importantly though it actually had a degree of functions that made it very similar to the general build of a modern day computer. Part calculated numbers very similar to a processor does now. A way to input instructions which I previously mentioned. As well as a control unit to make sure the machine was tackling tasks in the correct order and a type of memory where it could contain numbers which were waiting for their turn to be dealt with. He also planned on using steam to power the engine which I don't really have to tell you is absolutely mental. Regardless of this though the man had a insatiable and ridiculous capacity for dreaming of these possibility’s. You don't whether pay him a compliment or give him a straight jacket.

Now I probably don't have to tell you on account of the already apparent impracticality of the Difference Engine that it's hypothetical big brother the Analytical was never actually built. I mention it anyway since from a purely intellectual stand point this is where it began. The concept of computers and this man dared to dream. Just a shame no one bar a few actually understood the significance of his insane idea. Well c'est la vie.  

The Analytical Engine

Sources

Evans, C. (1981.) The Making of the Micro - A History of the Computer. Victor Gollancz LTD.

On Ridiculousness and Herbal Tea

   Had more character stuff thrown at us this past couple of weeks than I ever thought possible. I've previously mentioned the start of our Gladiator project but since then we've had a another character to create, this time in Visual Design. It involved finding folk with interesting features and then using them as the basis for any character you want. I love when I get given that kind of creative freedom. Anyway I've made some alright progress on both accounts but I'll mostly be talking about the Gladiator stuff.
 So far I've found this a lot easier to get started with that every previous Game Production project now whether this is because of me starting to get to grips with 3ds max or because I'm a bit more comfortable with my knowledge of anatomy as opposed to buildings and vehicles. It could be a combination of these things but suffice to say I feel less resistance in regards to getting the outcome I'm looking for.

  Ultimately decided on an enslaved Celtic warrior chick just so I get to throw in a few new influences and not stay strictly Roman. Obviously she's still a gladiator but I get to make some hints at her background which is nice to do whenever designing a character. Bit of woad a lot of ginger whats not to like? So yea it's going pretty well should be finished modelling this week and then we get to play the texture game. 

 Throwing in my final piece for my interesting character as well 'cause why the hell not. She's the wise old hag lady of a village who lives in a nearby bog and may or may not consort with strange and untrustworthy being of a magical nature. 

Rookie of the Year

   Before all this game art stuff kicked off there was one thing I used to love to draw more than anything else. Characters. I say that as though my opinions have changed, they haven't, it's still my favourite thing to do in terms of artistic expression. To this day I'm fascinated as to how to represent qualities, personality, ideals onto a piece of flesh and bone. I mean it's almost countless aspects, some blatant and grand, others subtle to the point of almost infinitesimal proportions.
 It's these that make up the entirety of a persons character, gait, clothing, body language, haircut anything that can express who they are as an individual will come across in some way shape or form. Have you ever noticed, for instance, the phenomenal distance you can recognize an individual who you are on close terms with. Be they friend, lover or mother. Without hearing voice, having the recognition of facial features or being able to make out the specifics of what they are wearing. They will turn the corner of the street a good fifty feet from where you are standing and the way they carry themselves will tell you who it is almost instantly.
 As far as I'm concerned this is the most important thing to consider when designing a character. They have to be convincing, better than any actor, the viewer....or in our case the player must believe everything they are being told from every aspect of that character. Dialogue, design, animation all come together to sell the character as a certainty.

   The reason I bring this up as I drink tea, eat biscuits and listen to Funeral for a Friend is this. We've got to model a character...and this, this above all other things, is the reason that I am here. So admittedly a low poly Gladiator already puts me in a position where I don't have ultimate freedom of design but it certainly gives me enough to make me excited.
 Fundamentally this is a project teaching us to model human anatomy, now I'm pretty good at anatomy from a general standpoint but this is gonna force us to learn how to translate that to the topology of an effectively recognizable 3D figure.

 So I'm going to be trying to keep blogging about this project just because I actually have a decent amount to say on the subject...or at least I feel as though I do. Granted we already have to make a design doc explaining the majority of our project but all the same I can put some of it on here too. Now as well as general anatomy research I went ahead and grabbed a few bits of reference just to get the old idea machine running, this isn't all of it just a little moodboard to get me stated with preliminary sketches.

   As it stand I'm liking the idea a gladiatorial warrior woman, lightly armoured (though not scantily clad) and armed with a trident and net. Though I am looking at a fair few other ideas as well. Mostly because I can already see myself going over the tri limit on unnecessary details. Seriously how could I do extremely low poly dreadlocks? Well in any case, plenty of time to refine my idea.

 

Goodbye Sir Jeffers

   This weeks been an interesting one, an intensive visual design workshop....because well collectively we suck a little too much. I do say this knowing full well in how many areas I fall short, you know, before anyone gets offended. Now for an intensive workshop this has actually been a pretty fun project. Essentially using silhouettes and very basic shapes in order to build up a vehicle design. Seemed a tall order at first until it all started to click. 

 I've never tried either these techniques or designed a vehicle before so this is all fairly new to me and even the digital painting, while something I've played around with is certainly something I'm not that good at. I mean I can't paint with a brush and that seems like a fundamental thing to understand before being any good at the digital equivalent. 

 Ended up creating a glider of sorts, really basic considering how every vehicle I've seen so far from anybody else has been a high tech sort of affair. Though I did find myself inspired by the forms of hand made guitars and violins, that sort of stuff. Seems like it lean't itself better to a more old timey design.

 

   I ain't gonna lie, for a while the design had no purpose. Which is a bit awkward, I mean after all things like this are generally made with a specific goal in mind. Hard to design something if you have no use in mind for it. A little later though things started to take shape. It's a fairly classy looking craft, somewhere between a glider, a gondola and an engraved classical guitar. To me it does look hand made, as though it's a labour of love by a dedicated craftsman.   

 At some point mid way through the design I just happened upon the thought of that Red Bull event where folks from all over create those completely impractical flying machines and throw themselves off a pier. Now I got to thinking, what would be a more dangerous idea. Throwing yourself off a waterfall would do it, a big one at that. So the concept arose of a sport in which people build these, crafts that they really do put effort and dedication into and then try to fly off the edge of a furious torrent of cascading water and land into the river below, seeing how fair they can make it. Adds a nice aspect to it as well if you consider messing it up means the loss of a craft you could have spent a year putting together yourself. Alright idea I thought, still can't paint mind. 

 

Gesture is One Third the Battle

   Now I ain't been using the blog entirely as effectively as I could be. We got told pretty early on that besides blog tasks and the documentation of various aspects of our work, that we should use it as an expression of our creative identities. What makes us tick so to speak. Now there's a thousand things I could talk about but I think I've finally come across something that I actually want to share.

 It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I really enjoy our weekly life drawing sessions, hell just drawing the figure in general is a nice treat. There's a tonne of techniques that come into these lessons but I'm going to get into gesture drawings for the time being. Gesture drawings are a great way of telling if someone has a good knowledge of most aspects of figure drawings. You have to get all the rhythm down in an incredibly limited amount of time and with minimal but entirely effective mark making. When done well gesture drawings are immense pieces of work in their own right, it's almost musical, bringing to mind the blues masters who started to bare their soul with three chords and a guitar with four broken strings. When you can get that quality with what seems to the ignorant eye to be a monumental level of simplicity you've pretty much cracked it. Which is difficult for me as a progressive metal head to say. I'm usually all about the technical.

 Can get round to showing you what I wanted to now anyway. I found this animator called Ryan Woodward while I was having a raz round for some gesture drawing exercises. On the side he does a body of work called Conte Animated. Which as the name suggests are gesture drawings completed with conte sticks. You know what you can just have a look see.

  How cool are those? It's a hypothetical question I suppose but I can't get enough of them. For sure a technique I want to try for myself. I mean I'm sure there are other artists that approach their gestures in a similar way but I just love the sense of form he managed to get with the blocks of tone that he throws in. Just badass. Even took some of these gestures and made an animation out of them. I'll throw that below along with a link to his two websites. Check it out you won't be sorry.

http://ryanwoodwardart.com/

http://conteanimated.com/