Believable AI Programming Guide in your Game Design

Artificial intelligence or AI can be referred to as scripted algorithms that have preset data embedded into them so that your system/ program behaves in a certain way under controlled environment. AI creates a realistic and fun experience in game designs. It’s an evolutionary process. If you remember, earlier games, computer opponents  had less options/actions, but today, there can be as many in numbers. From firing to dodging to hiding, all the reactions/responses they produce on your gaming screen can be attributed to this software program only. Whether your game will be a success or failure depends a lot on the quality of its AI today. You can go to a design college in Singapore to get some amazing tricks. But before this you can explore some expert advices here.

Work on AI from day1
Experts recommend that developers should not treat AI as the last thing when working on game designs. In fact, it has to be on your mind from the very first day to ensure ease of functionalities.

Implement AI along with Game design
AI and game design has to be implemented together and not in isolation for best results. To ensure this, both design and AI roles have to be performed in tune with each other. Whatever constraints and possibilities exist have to be thought through in conjunction with each other.

Focus first on Behavior 
Explore your game design to see what AI behaviors you want to include in the game and what not. On the basis of this, your game design team can decide what behavior they desire their AI to exhibit to the player. Once it is sorted out, you can divide the AI in different layers of strategy, methods and control, where strategy consists of long-term goals, methods refer to decision making at every point and control concerns the stop-motion control over the AI character.

Keep a Separate Testing Ground for the AI
According to programming gurus, designers need to keep their elements simple and generic because even after extensive planning you may feel the need for adding some more of them. And since AI not always works the desired way, they recommend you to create a distinct testing ground away from the core game for this so that you have full control over the functionality of the AI.

Be Careful with your Selection of Methods
Since how good or bad, your game will be received by your users, depends largely on the quality of the AI used in it. You have to take special care while using a particular method. For a clear idea, you can take resort to some software called “Decision Trees”, “Behavior Trees” or “Stack-based State Machines”. These tools enable you to tweak and alter elements easily for a better AI experience.

These advices along with training in a reputed design college in Singapore can prove fruitful for your career as a game designer.

How to Create the Perfect Logo for a Tech Company?

A logo is an epic symbol of your company; it represents the face and soul of any brand. Think of Apple’s logo for instance. What do you see when you close your eyes and imagine about this company? We bet that your mind conjured up the image of its logo and that too in less than a second.  A logo is that important. When it comes to designing a logo for a tech company, you have to make sure your purpose is clearly conveyed through it. For this, you have to observe every minute detail while designing, right from color, font, aesthetics, use of negative space and much more. A reputed graphic design institute Singapore can give you the right expertise to achieve this. 

Nevertheless, here are a few pointers that you can follow as a logo designer.

Be Simple and Clear

Your logo has to be bang on the message your brand wants to convey. You have to ensure its design is such that people see your company as a high tech one and that it is a trendsetter. To communicate this through your logo, you first have to understand the nature of your brand. What impression do your brand needs to create on its target audience? Start with a list of keywords, like – strong, sporty, elegant, feminine, fun, etc. The moment you identify a few critical keywords from the list you can begin your designing work with an amount of clarity.

Be Eternal

Your logo needs to have a timeless property to it. For this, you have to think beyond current trends and focus on elements that will reflect your brand identity many years down the line. It will save you the cost that goes into bringing in a replacement design. A wise approach in this direction is keeping the foundation elements of your logo intact so that when your startup undergoes any major shift you just have to do minor tweaks in the design.

Fonts and Colors

Fonts and colors are the two critical elements of logo design. Let’s first look at fonts. A font can easily communicate the idea your brand stands for. It can impart elegance, strength and everything. So make sure the font you select for your company is descriptive of its image. Don’t ignore its contribution to the overall design.

As far as color is concerned, we all know every color has its own personality and thus, can create a deep impression on the mind of the person seeing it. Try to use this attribute of the colors to your advantage while designing a logo. However, for this, you have to understand the impact that a particular color is potential of creating. If you study colors and their impact, you will realize that color blue generates a soothing and healing feeling, orange conveys energy, etc.

You can achieve success in making a perfect logo for a tech startup by paying attention to these details. To get more insights and knowledge on logo designing, you can even do a course in a renowned graphic design institute in Singapore.

Motion Graphic Terminology For Students and Professionals

Jargon exists because it makes it easier for people in a particular business to communicate effectively and efficiently. All businesses have their own lingo that helps them work and understand each other. The graphics business isn’t very different at all and your college of motion graphic in Singapore will teach you that.

 

Some of the basic terminology you should know as a graphic designer are:

- Anti-Alias: In order to reduce or prevent rendering of artifacts through the use of color information, which will stimulate a higher screen resolution. This method is called Anti-Alias.

- Alpha Channel/ Matte: Alpha is the fourth channel in 32-bit graphic systems. It comes after RGB and is reserved for transparency information.

- Animatic: To get an idea of the timing of a sequence, a rough animation is used by animators, like a storyboard.

- Codec: It is a video data encoding system for storage, transmission or encryption. It may be lossless or lossy.

- Cel: It is short for celluloid, a transparent plastic sheet used to create hand drawn animations.

- Color Depth: This describes the number of bits used in describing the color properties of one single pixel.

- Clipping Plane: It is the limit at which rendering and visibility stops in 2D and 3D.

- Depth of Field: This is a good shorthand cinematic effect. It refers to the range of distance from the camera allowing the image to remain in clear focus.

- Dynamics: The modeling of physics and physical interactions like collisions in as a system inside an animated scene.

- Exposure: This refers to the number of cels on which the drawing appears, in the scene.

- Exposure Sheet/ Dope Sheet: It is the tabulated breakdown of camera moves, frames, objects and their actions, scene by scene.

- Fall-Off: This is the phenomenon where the strength of light diminishes as it more further away from the source.

- Interpolation: It means filling in unknown data between two values that are known.

- Null: This refers to an invisible object that doesn’t appear in the final render. However, it does have inherent properties and can be used like the other layers in a workflow. (Null refers in VFX and Programming as empty)

- Onion Skinning: is an animation technique where transparent layers representing subsequent animation frames are put together.

- 2K/ 4K: It is related to a digital frame’s horizontal pixel count. 2K – standard for motion pictures and 4K – the future.

By learning the basic terminology you will ensure you know what you should to. This in turn will allow you to develop your skills as a motion graphics expert and create amazing designs without any hindrances.

Guide for Successful Game Design Ideas

Designing a game takes a lot of time, effort, patience, and also practice. Sometimes, even though one may really like and enjoy the process of creating games, it may be difficult to come up with any interesting idea for designing a game. You may have done a game design program in Singapore but a new idea is solely sparked from creativity and inspiration. For some people, an idea might come very easily to them, but the same techniques may not work for other people. There are some who have to brainstorm for an idea while others, it may be a ‘spark of the moment'.

 

Not having any new idea can be frustrating for a game designer. Here are some interesting tips to find new ideas:

• When you’re short of new ideas, set aside about an hour each day where you just sit down and write down a bunch of ideas on paper, listing them as they come to mind. At the end of the week, go through the ideas and pick out the ones you find interesting and throw the rest away. Then do a little research on the interesting ones and see if they lead anywhere. If not, then throw those away as well and start on a new list. You may also try carrying a small notebook with you in case you’re out on the street and an idea comes to you. If you don't write it down, you may forget it later.

 

• The method of starting an idea with a phrase is called prompt-based brainstorming" and is a very common method.  Some people put words in a bucket and draw random ones, or use an online generator. You can also try searching for words or titles from books and write down the ones that catch your fancy. Then try making up a story from them and converting it into a game.

 

• Mind-webbing is a third method, and it usually involves taking a few key words that are deeply important to you and exploring how they might be related to each other in a fictional or game-design structure.

• Staying inspired is another key to coming up with interesting game design ideas. Go out, see the sights, talk to people, and try to derive inspiration from the world around you. You could also read books or blogs on or by successful game developers and try to follow the path they had taken to design highly successful games. Inspiration comes in various forms. Just keep your senses alive and awake all the time.

 

• Never, ever quit. A good example of this would be Steve Jobs. He never had a single original idea during his time; he didn’t invent the personal computer, the MP3 player, the cell phone, the touchscreen or the tablet computer. But he made those things his own, he put his own touch on them and turned previously obscure technology into things people wanted to own and use. Maybe the game will not be the first one out there, but you can definitely make it the best.

Take pride in your creativity and keep trying until you have that Eureka moment.