Btec Game: Unit 70: Computer game Engines

Same game on two different platforms
There are plenty of examples of games that are meant to be the same but are different in some aspects. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (2006; Namco Bandai/Atari (NA)) is one of these titles. It was released on the Playstation 2 and on the Nintendo Wii and there are a few differences between the two versions
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The Playstation 2 version was sold 790,000 times. It’s rated PEGI 12+. It’s played with the Playstation 2 controller. It’s a 4 button (Triangle, Square, Circle and X) combination for melee and different combinations of buttons that makes ranged combat possible (Triangle, R1, R2 and the Arrow buttons). It’s possible to hit one button all the time, but the better the combinations are the player makes, the easier it is to win. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 has 129 playable characters. Almost every one of these characters has at least one special form. Every character has a basic ranged attack, a charged ranged attack, 4 blocking animation, a various amount of different melee attack animations, 2 strong abilities (could be melee or ranged), one ultimate ability (could be ranged or melee), a dying animation, a weakened model (shows when the health bar is orange), 4 different flying animations  and a voice. The abilities are mostly shown in cut scenes and can’t be blocked but dodged. Some characters have special moves only they are able to use (Son Goku is able to do a fusion with Vegeta and some characters are able to teleport to dodge an ability). The game has 16 different maps. All of them have destroyable objects and (depends which planet, Earth or Namek) can be formed in a different map (Destroyed Namek and Destroyed Earth). The game is able to be played alone or with a second player. The character designs and backstory as well as the character of the characters are based on the anime/manga series Dragon Ball (1986-1989), Dragon Ball Z (1989-1996) and Dragon Ball GT (1996-1997). The games story has an open world feeling. The player is able to choose what he's going to do next. He has to do the missions to get a higher level and new items and to unlock new missions. The fights with another player are always in split screen. That's because it's not possible to play the story with another player. It’s only possible to play against each other.


Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (Wii: 2006; Namco Bandai): This is the Nintendo Wii version. It got sold 620,000 times. The PEGI rating is 12+. The player is able to play the game with the Nintendo Wii Remote and Nunchuck or the N64 controller. On the controller the controls are similar to the Playstation 2 version, but on the Nintendo Wii Remote the player has to move himself to make one of the stronger abilities. And the button controls are different to make the whole game feeling more comfortable for the player. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 has 135 playable characters. Almost every one of these characters has at least one special form. Every character has a basic ranged attack, a charged ranged attack, 4 blocking animation, a various amount of different melee attack animations, 2 strong abilities (could be melee or ranged), one ultimate ability (could be ranged or melee), a dying animation, a weakened model (shows when the health bar is orange), 4 different flying animations  and a voice. The abilities are mostly shown in cut scenes and can’t be blocked but dodged. Some characters have special moves only they are able to use (Son Goku is able to do a fusion with Vegeta and some characters are able to teleport to dodge an ability). The game has 16 different maps. All of them have destroyable objects and (depends which planet, Earth or Namek) can be formed in a different map (Destroyed Namek and Destroyed Earth). The game is able to be played alone or with a second player. The character designs and backstory as well as the character of the characters are based on the anime/manga series Dragon Ball (1986-1989), Dragon Ball Z (1989-1996) and Dragon Ball GT (1996-1997). The games story has an open world feeling. The player is able to choose what he's going to do next. He has to do the missions to get a higher level and new items and to unlock new missions. The fights with another player are always in split screen. That's because it's not possible to play the story with another player. It’s only possible to play against each other.


Both games share almost the same content, the number of possible players and the basic playing experience
The things they don't share are the controls, the gameplay, the game feeling and the number of characters.
The Playstation 2 version of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2 gets my personal rating of 8/10. The reason is, because the controls are actually working. For me it was always easier to play with the controller instead of the Wii Remote. Even when I finished the story I(continued playing. That's the RPG element the developers implemented in the game. I just couldn't stop levelling and making side quests to get items for my personal Son Goku. The fact that the player has to unlock everything in the whole game is just addictive. It was one of the biggest parts of my childhood (besides the jak&dexter trilogy and Lego)



The Nintendo Wii gets a personal rating of 3/10. The reason for the low rating is that the controls aren't very fluent. Especially the movement doesn't really work. The player put too much effort in one attack. The fun of that game is almost not there after 30 minutes of gameplay. If the player would make one of the special abilities, the 2nd player would know instantly, because most of the time the player has to do the moves he needs to do to make the special ability a few times. Somehow the characters are unlocked in the beginning of the game and the RPG feeling is completely gone. So the story is completely unnecessary to play and the PvP mode is just boring. Everyone i played the game with was getting very angry when the person lost the game. I got angry too. It's just not a game someone ever should play with these controls.
(pictures are missing.)
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Research Task: Components of Game Engines

A game engine does many things such as, Rendering for either 2D or 3D graphics; a very important part of a Game Engine rendering is the process of generating an image from models providing the geometry, texture, viewpoint, lighting and shading of an environment. A Physics Engine also known as Collison detection gives games true realistic addition things like gravity, crashing, and speed are implemented to make the player more immersed. Almost anything that happens in a game will use sound if it is a character speaking, scrolling through a menu or a gun being fired sound is important for any game. Scripting is a high level programming language run through the Engine it enables big changes to be made to certain aspects of the game. Animation works with rendering providing an environment that looks good and in high detail improving the overall game quality. Artificial Intelligence is game behaviours taken usually by characters coded to seem as realistic as they can be to a degree of difficulty. Networking is the part of the Engine that communicates through well a Network for example a stock in a video game affected by other peoples choices will change what happens to someone's game. There are others that are not always included and if they are normally have small less important roles for instance; Memory, streaming, memory management, localization support, threading and a scene graph. All make up a Game engine contributing some more than others and some are not used at all.
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