Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Working with graphic assets
Strong visual style is one of the important components of a game's success, but it
is not the primary component because without a good game idea and its proper im-
plementation, the game would be only a graphical cover. On the other hand, a game
with great mechanics and good gameplay but with indifferent artwork may expect only
partial success or even failure. Ideally, the graphics is not an ordinary set of beautiful
pictures but a tool to establish communication between the game and the player; it
tells him the story and demonstrates how the game world works.
The number and types of graphics depend on the game's genre and its complexity.
In most simple cases, the game can operate only the graphics rendered by itself. All
geometric shapes and even 3D forms are drawn by programming codes, but most
modern games use pre-rendered artwork in a form of raster images.
There are several basic types of 2D graphics the games use, which are as follows:
•
Sprites
: These are small images being used as different components of the
game process. They can display game characters, weaponry, landscape ele-
ments, various props, and bonuses. They can also be an integral part of spe-
cial effects, such as smoke or fire.
•
Animated sprites
: These are special form of sprites that help to create an an-
imation. These are series of still images, each of which is displaying a specific
phase of an object's movement. Together they are collected into one image
sheet. The game plays a particular type of file and the player sees the anima-
tion associated with this file.
•
Tiles
:Thisisaspecialcaseofordinarysprites. Tilesarespecialgraphic
bricks
helping to draw up the game scene. They can be both functional and decor-
ative. In contradistinction to the sprites, the tiles sometimes are only
construc-
tion material
; they do not include any game character. They are collected in
tile sheets—files with all the image elements for a certain game level or scene.
•
Textures
: These are images that are used as textures for 3D models or for
screen backgrounds.
•
Backgrounds
: These are images that are used as backdrops for game
scenes. Often they are pretty large.
•
GUI elements
: This includes all the graphics that are used like a control inside
the game. Buttons of different size, switches, radio-buttons, and various pan-
els to display alerts and text are gathered into GUI sheets.
