1.

INTRODUCTION

Videogames have been a form of entertainment as early as 1947. It is a million dollar industry and is received well by the public. Video gamers consist of many age groups, from children to adults. Video games are electronic games that involves human interaction(non-linear interactivity) with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. Video games are multimedia applications that largely consist of animation. Large- scale games nowadays are very complex and requires a large sum of cash for production. Video games typically use additional means of providing interactivity and information to the player. Audio is almost universal, using sound reproduction devices, such as speakers and headphones. Other feedback may come via haptic peripherals, such as vibration or force feedback, with vibration sometimes used to simulate force feedback.

2.HARDWARE

A PC is a common platform for running video games, but there are other platforms for running video games. These platforms are called video game consoles.

2.1 VIDEO GAME CONSOLES Video game consoles focus mainly on the running of video games. The term "video game console" is used to distinguish a machine designed for people to buy and use primarily for playing video games on a TV. One of the various examples of video game consoles is the Sony Playstation 3.

The PlayStation 3 uses the Cell microprocessor, designed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM, as its CPU, which is made up of one 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based "Power Processing Element" (PPE) and eight Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The eighth SPE is disabled to improve chip yields. Only six of the seven SPEs are accessible to developers as the seventh SPE is reserved by the console's operating system. Graphics processing is handled by the NVIDIA RSX 'Reality Synthesizer', which can produce resolutions from 480i/576i SD up to 1080p HD. The PlayStation 3 has 256 MB of XDR DRAM main memory and 256 MB of GDDR3 video memory for the RSX.

2.2 VIDEO GAME INPUT DEVICES A game controller is a device used with games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game, typically to control an object or character in the game. A controller is usually connected to a game console or computer by means of a wire or cord, although wireless controllers are also widespread. Input devices that have been classified as game controllers include keyboards and mice. As for video game consoles, special controllers have been designed for ease of use, for many gamers think that using a mouse and keyboard is rather difficult. An example of video game controller is the Dualshock. The DualShock (trademarked as DUAL SHOCK) is a line of vibration-feedback gamepads by Sony for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 video game consoles. The DualShock Analog Controller (SCPH-1200) is a controller capable of providing vibration feedback based on the onscreen action of the game (if the game supports it), as well as analog input through two sticks. The controller's name derives from its use of two (dual) vibration motors (shock). These motors are housed within the handles of the controller, with the left one being larger and more powerful than the one on the right, so as to allow for varying levels of vibration. Other special video game controllers include motion control. A motion controller controls the motion of some object. Frequently motion controllers are implemented using digital computers, but motion controllers can also be implemented with only analog components as well. Motion controllers using accelerometers are used as controllers for video games, which was publicly introduced in 2006 by Nintendo's Wii Remote, which uses accelerometers to detect its approximate orientation and acceleration, and serves an image sensor,[1] so it can be used as a pointing device.

3. GAME ENGINE A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. The leading game engines provide a software framework that developers use to create games for video game consoles and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (renderer) for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, and a scene graph. The process of game development is often economized, in large part, by reusing/adapting the same game engine to create different games, or to make it easier to "port" games to multiple platforms. Game engines provide a suite of visual development tools in addition to reusable software components. These tools are generally provided in an integrated development environment to enable simplified, rapid development of games in a data-driven manner. Game engine developers attempt to "pre-invent the wheel" by developing robust software suites which include many elements a game developer may need to build a game. Most game engine suites provide facilities that ease development, such as graphics, sound, physics and AI functions. These game engines are sometimes called "middleware" because, as with the business sense of the term, they provide a flexible and reusable software platform which provides all the core functionality needed, right out of the box, to develop a game application while reducing costs, complexities, and time-to-marketall critical factors in the highly competitive video game industry. An example of a game engine is the Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first illustrated in the 1998 firstperson shooter game Unreal. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully used in a variety of other genres, including stealth, MMORPGs and RPGs. With its core written in C++, the Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability and is a tool used by many game developers today. Making its debut in 1998, the first generation Unreal Engine integrated rendering, collision detection, AI, visibility, networking, scripting and file system management into one complete engine. Unreal Engine 1 provided an advanced software rasterizer and a hardwareaccelerated rendering path using the Glide API, specifically developed for 3dfx GPUs, and was

updated for OpenGL and Direct3D. Large parts of the game were implemented in a custom scripting language called UnrealScript. The initial network performance was also very poor when compared to its biggest competitor, Quake 2. Internally, Epic used this engine for Unreal and Unreal Tournament. The release of Unreal Tournament marked great strides in both network performance and Direct3D & OpenGL support.The engine became very popular due to the modular engine architecture and the inclusion of a scripting language which made it easy to mod, including total conversions like Tactical Ops. For instance, a developer was able to replace the original renderer from UE1 with a DirectX 10 renderer in 2009. The second version made its debut in 2002 with America's Army. This generation saw the core code and rendering engine completely re-written. In addition, it featured UnrealEd 2, which debuted with the previous generation of the engine and was shortly followed later by UnrealEd 3, along with the Karma physics SDK. This physics engine powered the ragdoll physics in Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Championship. Other engine elements were also updated, with improved assets as well as adding support for the GameCube and the Xbox. Support for the PlayStation 2 console was previously added in UE1.

UE2.5, an update to the original version of UE2, improved rendering performance and added vehicles physics, a particle system editor for UnrealEd and 64-bit support in Unreal Tournament 2004. A specialized version of UE2.5 called UE2X was used for Unreal Championship 2 on the original Xbox platform. It featured optimizations specific to that console. EAX 3.0 is also supported for sound.

The third and current generation of the Unreal Engine (UE3) is designed for DirectX (versions 9-11 for Windows and Xbox 360), as well as systems using OpenGL, including the PlayStation 3, Mac OS X, iOS, Android, Stage 3D for Adobe Flash Player 11, PlayStation Vita and Wii U. Its renderer supports many advanced techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows. It also builds on the tools available in previous versions. In October 2011, the engine was ported to support Adobe Flash Player 11 through the Stage 3D hardware-accelerated APIs. Epic has used this version of the engine for their in-house games. Aggressive licensing of this iteration has garnered a great deal of support from many prominent licensees. Epic has announced that Unreal Engine 3 runs on both Windows 8 and Windows RT.

Another example of the latest game engine is the Fox Engine. The Fox Engine is a cross-platform game engine built by Kojima Productions for use in future titles developed by the team. It is believed that this engine is designed for the next generation of video games. The engine was revealed by Konami on June 3, 2011. The engine's development began after the completion of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots with the goal of making the "best engine in the world."

The engine will make it possible for Kojima Productions to develop multiplatform games with a significantly shortened development time and has been described as the first step for the developer to move away from development for a single platform. The engine is named after FOX, a fictional military unit from the Metal Gear series, wherein is also a reflection of Kojima Productions itself, which based its company logo on FOX's fox emblem. A demo of the engine was shown at Konami's conference at E3 2011. Taking place in a jungle environment, the demo showed off the engine's visual capabilities and featured a young man running around, a horse and a dog. The tech-demo was not a game that will be released but instead a test area for the development of the engine. Kojima Productions will use the engine for all future titles, including the next iteration in the Metal Gear franchise, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, which was revealed by Hideo Kojima, the series creator at a special 25th anniversary of the series event in Tokyo. On August 17, 2011, Kojima released a series of images on Twitter. The images were of facial tests created in the Fox Engine. In addition, during a lecture at the University of Southern California held by Hideo Kojima, an image was shown to various students in a demonstration of the Fox Engine's capabilities with a scene depicting a forest environment. Later, on December 16th, Kojima released more images over Twitter, including one image showcasing cloth transparency features.On March 2, 2012, the Development Without Borders website uploaded a "classified" CD labelled "Fox Engine Lighting Sample" that contained a question as to which of the two pictures was a simulation of the staff room created by the Fox engine. Clicking on it will reveal that Side B was the correct answer, and explains how it does it. The second slide also depicts some hoops and levitating balls of varying colors in the "seats"

of the table, as well as a horse entering through the room.At an event on May 25, 2012, Kojima confirmed that work on the next installment in the Zone of the Enders series had begun, and is in the early prototyping phase. The game is to be developed using the Fox Engine.

The image above shows two real life images and two images recreated using the fox engine.Can you guess which one is real and which is fox?

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_controller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DualShock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_control http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Engine