Framings systems of Mirrors edge

Mirrors edge as a formal system


Objects - The objects of Mirrors edge is Faith the avatar you control throughout the whole game and the environment which is mostly set on top of buildings, there are some levels and times where you are on street levels but you will be set to move back up to rooftop level because the rules stated you are vulnerable on street level so you need to escape to the rooftops where Faith has more Advantage, this is a attribute Ill explain this later.


Attributes - The attributes to Mirrors edge are that the avatar is a free runner so you consume the characteristics of a free runner. Attributes of a Free runner are that they mostly use themselves to conquer what obstacles they choose to over come, this is exactly the same with the avatar in Mirrors edge you choose what path to take to get to the goal but in the process you have to overcome obstacles to progress.
   The rules only let you interact with certain rooftops because the ones that are not interact-able because they are too far away to get to, this would be a type of sandbox design. The building you can interact with are usually in jumping range or you need to reach a high peek to jump and have gravity at your side to help your momentum. So the avatar can jump quite far because she's a free runner and jumping is one of their main attributes. Falling on the other hand, you can fall quite a distance but if you do not roll you won't absorb the impact and get hurt.


Internal relationships - Most of the time in Mirrors edge you are in danger because of being chased by the blue (police AI.) These as a CPU are trying to stop you from progressing by trying to kill you.
   Going back to attributes Faith has hand to hand combat to use so she can disarm or takedown the AI when they are at close range, she can also use the AI's weaponry but this leads to a downfall because however larger the weapon the slow the avatar will move/run and moving and running is I would say 'the core mechanic' in this game because you can outrun the AI if you choose not to fight.


Environment - The environment is a modern revolutionized free running playground that is in a linear format.

The Core Mechanics (from rules of play)

   Every single game has a core mechanic. The core mechanic is a very important play activity that players experience and perform again and again throughout a game.
   So from what I have read a core mechanic of a first person shooter game would be a set of related iterative actions the player conceives while playing the game. For example such as moving, aiming, shooting and also rationing health, stored ammo and armor. If these actions are not repeated or carried out in play the player won't promotionally move on to a higher rank or level. In a abbreviated matter of speaking the player won't progress.

Game and play

   Play is both a larger and smaller term than game depending on how it's stated for example, on one side Play is a bigger term that includes Game as a subset. However in reverse its true as well: Game is the bigger term and shares Play within it. (Still these relationships are separate just linked by similar characteristics)

Games as a subset of play


   If you was to think of all activities we could call play, from a baby running with a ball to a young teenager rolling on a skateboard, to a community of online players, it seems that only some of these versions of play would actually be classed as a game. Playing Football is playing a game because there are formalized rules thats players must obey to compete and win.
   So going back to the baby running with a ball, this doesn't necessarily count as a game but it is a form of play because how to baby interacts with the ball. A young teenager skateboarding doesn't have rules so its not a game but is a form of play just depends how the teenager interacts with the skateboard. Although skateboarding can be a form of game from competing in competitions this way there is a formal set of rules added to the activity to make it a game.

Play is a subset of games


In another sense games can be thought of as containing play. The experience of play is but many ways of looking at and understanding games.
The play of the game represents one aspect of games, though play is a crucial area of games, basically you can interact and 'play' with a set of formalized rules this is why these to words have the same meaning vise versa.
  enjoyment and like are a big part of play I think. Enjoyment and like can make us want to play. So for example forget about football for the time beings; if you were to like the look of kicking a ball around a field this would draw you to play but not in a game sense, add formalized sets of rules to kicking that ball around the field then you would have a game and also enjoyment as a outcome because if you didn't have the liking of play then you wouldn't think of turning it into a game so with out some sort of satisfaction you wouldn't have something become a game.

The Chris Goodwin talk

From the lecture with Chris Goodwin I got inspired a lot to try new programs and new techniques on the course, however on the other hand I was a bit disappointed when he mentioned his story of being out in the game business. He basically said that he didn't like what he was doing most of the time, this made me a bit uncomfortable about being in the business, but one must think optimistic because no one knows what the future holds

Inspired games of the present times

Now days I play the xbox 360, the games that inspire me at the moment are the star wars unleashed games, Dante's inferno, silent hill homecoming, halo reach and gears of war.
All these games evaluate how my art style is today because I draw quite messy and use grungy textures most of my drawings always turn out linked to either one of the games mentioned above; not so much star wars because i have only just recently got back into it.

Times will change though there are a lot of games out there that will inspire me more, maybe even take me away from my comfort zone then I might be drawing completely different or be drawing different things besides what Im comfortable with at the moment.

Xbox and inspired games

Xbox was my favourite consoles before the xbox 360 came out because of 3 games that I was really into that were only released on xbox: Splinter Cell series on xbox, Doom 3 and halo.

   Splinter cell displays alot of realism and the controls are so senitive, for example when you are sneaking you have to just push the left analoge stick very slightly so its like you have complete control over the protagonist so you feel like you are more inside the game; you feel like you are Sam Fisher (protagonist.)
Thats why I think I was drawn to it so much because it felt like you was in the game so much that you would get that adrenaline rush from you thinking that you are in that epic gun fight or sneaking behind a enemy and get that build up of gettin closer to silently taking them down.

   Doom 3 does roughly the same, although it not being the most realistic game out there it still give me goosebumps each time I played it; this goes back to my history of overcoming resident evil but this time it was Doom 3.
   very good game though, for its time it was even better but if it can still terrify me at some points in the game then id software have definately done their job well.

   Lastly, when Halo came out my style of gaming changed, I tended to be the solo side of gaming but Halo had cooperative play on it; so this got me started with playing with other people. This was the starting point towards online play for me because Halo 2 came out which had online on it, so Halo was the reason why I got Xbox live.
   Just some added feeling from myself, I do feel like the very first Halo was the best out of all the other Halo games; better as play and as a game.

Playstation 2 and Playstation 2 inspired games

2001 at christmas I got my first Playstation 2, it was quite amazing because it was a surprise so I wasn't expecting it at all.

The first game I got was a wrestling game which I didn't particularly like but I had to make the most of it at the time.

My second game was Max Payne, this was another game that for some reason i couldn't stop playing because it was so unique at its time.
It was the first game Id ever played at the time that went really in depth with bullet time mechanics, although with Max Payne bullet time encompasses the game itself; its a big part of the gameplay. So instead of bullet time being just a mechanic in gameplay I believe myself to think that its more of a experience because instead of just deciding to use it every now and then, u have to use it the majority of the time in a strategic manor to survive because if you run in guns blazing without bullet time there's a high chance you will get shot and get critically hurt or die, so if you enter a room with bullet time switched on the likely side moves to survival because the bullet time gives you the extra time to quickly count the number of enemies in the area and also set you up for a bullet time dive which helps you dodge bullets from the angle you are at in mid-air but also then gives you the time to set up your aim to shoot more accurately.
As you can see from this bullet time becomes more of a core element to the game and you experience it to a intense level because without it you wont survive.

playstation 1 inspired games

I gradually got more games after resident evil like the die hard trilogy, driver, dino crisis and Tai Fu wrath of the tiger, these were the other games I used to play a lot when i had my playstation 1.
I got highly inspired by dino crisis because of the idea that you would be attacked by dinosaurs so this was a cool change from playing resident evil with constant zombies.
   I completed dino crisis quite a few times; i dont know why its just when I kept replaying it it seemed to feel different each time i played it.

I have to admit for dino crisis's time it was amazing for gameplay and graphics were good for original playstation aswell, because they used the same sense of camera type for dino crisis as they did for resident evil; like the scenery would not need to render because the camera would be fixed at certain angles and wouldnt move with the player so they could spend alot of time on environment detail in the game, because it would not need to load a full background but just load the angle that they have chosen for that part in the game.

The playstation

   My first encounter with the Playstation 1 was seein my dad play the very first resident evil, it scared me so much I cried because he made me sit there and watch as you meet the first zombie at the start of the game. how the zombie slowly rotates its head round with half his jaw ripped out; just that one scene terrified me and i had few nightmares about it aswell.

   To present day though I love horror games, the buzz of being on the edge all the time not knowing something will jump out of nowhere and hit me by surprise, so a few years later after I saw that scene in resident evil I decided to tackle my fear of that scene and play the game myself (this was a few years after when the N64 was purchased for me.)
as i was playing through the game I started to get used to the atmosphere and realize that its only just a game so I gave it my best and shot lots of zombies; this is how I got into survival horror games because of overcoming my fear.

My gaming life (furthermore)

The N64 was the start of my collection of games consoles I played it so much and always went back to it at some point, I mean i had the playstation 1 and played that alot but when WWF no mercy came out on the N64 in the year 2000 i never got off the the N64; I didnt touch my playstation for months. Even at present day I still go back and play the N64 its like a antique that will live on.

My gaming life

When I was 5 years old my mother bought me a console made my Nintendo called the N64, this was my first proper games console other than my dads playstation and game gear but the Nintendo 64 was my console so ill class that as my first encounter with games.

   I remember the first two games I got was Goldeneye 64 and Mariocart 64, these were the starting points for gaming in my life and i spent a lot of time with these two games. I was very inspired by goldeneye 64 because from childhood id always been into violence because of all the action movies I watched in that time period, so if you was to look at most of my artwork at present date its usually quite dark or has some sort of gruesomeness to it.

   

As the time went on and more violent games came out the nastier my drawing came out as a kid.