Computer Game Graphic Types

Digital graphics play an important part in the creation of video-games. They are used to create in-game content like menus and sprites as well as promoting the sales of the game through cover art and posters. I’m going to list some of it uses and try to explain them.

 2D Sprites

A 2D sprite is a flat image of an object or a character.

 A group of them are used in sequence in order to produce movement.

 The more sprites in an action, the more frames required resulting in a more fluid

 and realistic movement

3D Isometric Sprites                          

An isometric sprite is a model made in a 3D program that is then rendered on a 2D plain. They are used to make the look of a 3D object without the system requirements of having 3D objects rendered.

Concept art                                

Concept art uses ideas from the game designers to make some rough sketches in order to display how the different game elements would work
together. Enviromental concepts give an idea of

the in-game landscape, character concepts show how different npcs would look and interact with the player.Vehicle concept shows how the cars and trains in-game would look in the setting. Weapons concepts show different weapons, these weapons are then worked upon remove and adding different features.

Textures
Textures form the details on a model, this means the system doesn't have to render as many polygons.There a few different texture types the first is  the bump map, high intensity areas are represented by white and low intensity areas are represented by black. Grey represents normal areas. Normal Maps are rainbow coloured grids of mainly blue. It's mainly used in the production high resolution models, where developers then bake the geometry onto a low poly-count model to save polygons.

Specular maps are used to show an objects shininess, the higher the the value of the pixel the shinier the object becomes. Textures like cotton will have a dark specular map while marble would have a high specular map. Diffuse maps use textures to define the objects main colour.

                                                                                                                                                                                    








 Game Interface                         

The game interface of game range from the heads-up display in-game, the text, the menus to the menu backgrounds.Interfaces are mainly 2D with a few exceptions, the HUD must be visible without taking up the whole screen, the text needs to be large enough to read and the menu need to indicate which option you are selecting.






Printed Media
Different types of printed media are distributed during the end of production and start of selling period of a game, they can be in the form of posters, box-art and cases as well as the image on the disc.Most of which is used to promote and advertise the game, in order to gain more sales.