Designing Video Games

A video game is more than the sum of its pieces; a game has a synergy that, after the game is complete, makes it something unique. Creating this synergy takes a lot of technical know-how, as well as a sense of design and art. Basically, you need to be a Leonardo da Vinci and an Albert Einstein all in one.
The basic sequence of game design is as follows:

• Come up with an idea for a game.

• Create storyboards and rough sketches of your game world, the main characters, and the action.

• List the details of your game and take into consideration everything about the game "universe."

• Finally, put these concepts all together into a design document, something like a movie script that contains everything about your game.

Developing an idea

Before you write a game, you need an idea — a story, something to start with. Brainstorm and come up with an idea for a game; the idea should be loosely based on something that has at least a fleeting resemblance to a story. Then you need to come up with the goals of the game. Ask yourself questions such as "What will the player do?" and "How will the player do it?"
Maybe you're wondering, "Where do I get ideas for games?" Well, you can't tap into any magical formulas, but you can look in a few places:

• Other games: Don't copy another game, of course, but improving and taking a new perspective within the game is fine.

• Movies and videos: Watch as many sci-fi movies as possible and see if you can come up with a game based on some of their ideas and content. Of course, you need to get permission from the filmmaker if you use any characters or story lines from those movies.

• Real-life games: You can take a game such as hockey and make a computer version of it, or make a futuristic version of it.

• Dreams and nightmares: This technique is a gold mine; in your mind, you can try anything out. Go to sleep thinking about games, demons, monsters, or whatever, and hopefully, you will have a killer dream that gives you an idea for a game.

After you have your game ideas, then you need to outline the story.

Storyboarding

One of the best ways to see a game is to storyboard it — to create a sequence of drawings that show the levels of the game or the different scenes and goals. Each storyboard should include a paragraph or two to describe what is going on. Figure 1 depicts a basic storyboard for an imaginary shoot-'em-up game.

Figure 1: A typical game storyboard.

As you can see, the storyboard has six frames; each frame represents a different level of the game, and the final frame is the goal. Notice that the storyboards are sketched and messy. Storyboard sketches are used only for brainstorming and for getting down on paper the general flow of the game.

Considering the details

After you create storyboards, you write the details of the game design. This stage is where the process gets complex. You have to think of every possible detail and write something about it — because when you make your game, you are a god — well, at least a demigod. If you don't program a specific detail, it's not going to happen.
You need to figure out all the rules and the structure of the game. For example, here's a list of questions to consider:

• What can the game character do? Can he or she fly, swim, and teleport?

• How many different enemies will the hero fight?

• What kind(s) of weapons are available?

• How does the player get rejuvenated?

• Can more than one player play at once? If so, what are the ramifications of this?

• Will the game's perspective be a side view, top view, or first-person and full 3-D view?

• What kind of sound track? Rock, rap, techno?

• What is the personality of the main character?

These examples are just some of the details you need to think about. The key here is to create the characters, rules, laws, and goals of your game universe in as much detail as possible. That's necessary because you're going to generate the artificial universe they all exist in. The more detail you include, the better the game will be.

Constructing a design document

After you have all the storyboards and details of the game written down, create a design document. The goal of the document is to record all your ideas in a format that resembles a movie script. Creating the document is a housekeeping step, but it gives you another chance to change your mind, see if some rule or event is totally stupid, or add another game element.
The result of developing the design document is that your imaginary world becomes more vivid in your mind. When you start talking to yourself about the stuff that is happening in your game, when your imaginary world is so thick with texture and so alive with detail that you can see it, then writing a game around it is much easier, because you aren't making things up as you go. Having a clear picture of a game's world is one of the most important issues in game design.

The universe you create must be coherent; it must be well thought out enough to hang together about as well as the universe we live in (or better). If your game universe is coherent, the players will lose themselves in it; they will experience a suspension of disbelief and really have fun. On the other hand, if you come up with a half-baked idea and then wing it as you go, your game ends up looking thrown together, which doesn't invite belief. Without thought or planning, you won't pull the players into your world, and they won't play your game!

After you have a design document in hand, you're in a far better position to create a solid game. As you work on the game, you won't be tempted to impulsively add elements that are inappropriate or out of place in your game's world.
Don't misunderstand. Changing and adding to your design is acceptable, but make sure all the elements work well together. If players aren't distracted by inconsistencies in your game's universe, they can be fully involved with the characters and situations.

SQL Data Types

Here’s a list of all the formal data types that ISO/IEC standard SQL recognizes. In addition to these, you may define additional data types that are derived from these.
Exact Numerics:

• INTEGER
• SMALLINT
• BIGINT
• NUMERIC
• DECIMAL

Approximate Numerics:

• REAL
• DOUBLE PRECISION
• FLOAT

Binary Strings:

• BINARY
• BINARY VARYING
• BINARY LARGE OBJECT

Boolean:

• BOOLEAN

Character Strings:

• CHARACTER
• CHARACTER VARYING (VARCHAR)
• CHARACTER LARGE OBJECT
• NATIONAL CHARACTER
• NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING
• NATIONAL CHARACTER LARGE OBJECT

Datetimes:

• DATE
• TIME WITHOUT TIMEZONE
• TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIMEZONE
• TIME WITH TIMEZONE
• TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE

Intervals:

• INTERVAL DAY
• INTERVAL YEAR

Collection Types:

• ARRAY
• MULTISET

Other Types:

• ROW
• XML

How to Remove Unwanted Objects in Your Digital Photos

You can easily remove a piece of content (an object, background, or unlikable person) from a digital photo by using your image-editing program. You can replace that removed piece, and no one can even tell that you removed anything. To get rid of something in a digital picture

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Select the unwanted element with a selection tool, as shown in this figure.

Don’t worry about getting a little of the surrounding image, as long as it doesn’t remove someone else’s arm or the side of a face.

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Press Delete to get rid of the selected element.

The background layer or any other underlying layer’s content now shows through the hole, like in this figure.

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Fill the hole with other content.

You can copy content from elsewhere and paste it onto the hole or use the Clone tool to fill in the hole with sampled content from elsewhere in the image, as this figure shows.

If you want to remove a person from a photo but he or she is partially blocking other photo elements, consider bringing someone in from another picture and putting him or her in place of the person you’re deleting.

Securing Your Access 2003 Database as an MDE File

If you make an Access 2003 database for other people — especially people who may be a teeny bit clueless about Access — you may want to lock up your database to prevent other users from making changes that may break it. You can add security in the form of user names and passwords, but a simpler option is to turn your database from an MDB file to an MDE file.
An MDE file is the same as a regular Access MDB database file, with the following changes:

• All VBA procedures are compiled — converted from human-readable code (more or less readable, anyway) to a format that only the computer understands. This change prevents a database user from reading or changing your VBA code.

• No one can create forms or reports or modify the existing ones (you can't even open them in Design view). You can't import any, either.

Be sure to keep a copy of your original MDB file! If you need to make changes to your VBA code, forms, or reports (or create new ones), you need to use the MDB file, not the MDE file. MDE files are most commonly used for the front-end database when you split an application into two databases (front end and back end).

Creating an MDE file

Saving your MDB file as an MDE file is easy. Follow these steps:

1. Make sure your database is in Access 2002/2003 file format by opening the database.

Take a look at the title bar of the Database window. (Press F11 if it's not visible.) If the title bar says "(Access 2000 file format)" then you need to convert it to the latest file format.

2. Choose Tools --> Database Utilities --> Make MDE File.

Access closes the database to do the conversion. Then you see the Save MDE As dialog box.

3. Specify the folder and file name for the file and click the Save button.

Access creates the new MDE file while leaving the original MDB file untouched. Then the new MDE file opens.

If Access runs into a problem while making the MDE file, a message appears with a Show Help button. Click the button to find out what's wrong.

Making updates later

Sooner or later, you are going to want to make a new report or fix an annoying typo in a form. You have to go back to your MDB file to make these kinds of changes, because you can't make changes in an MDE file.
If the MDE file is a front-end file, with no data stored in it, you can just make your changes to the original MDB file and resave it as an MDE file. Because all your data lives in the back-end database, you're all set.
However, if your MDE file contains tables full of valuable information, you can't just abandon it. If you use the MDE file to do data entry and editing, that file contains your up-to-date tables. The original MDB file has editable forms, reports, and VBA code, but doesn't have the latest version of the data stored in your tables. Not a problem.
Follow these steps to update your MDE file:

1. Rename your MDE file as a backup file.

For example, add today's date to the end of the file name (right before the .mde part). You're about to create a new MDE file, but you don't want to lose the data in this file.

2. Open the original MDB file and make any changes to contain the forms, reports, and VBA code that you want.

If you plan to make drastic changes, make a backup copy of the MDB first.

3. Choose Tools --> Database Utilities --> Make MDE File and save it as an MDE file with the name that your MDE file originally had.

Now you have an updated MDE file with new, improved forms, reports, and VBA procedures, but with old data. You also have an updated MDB file with your new, improved forms, reports, and VBA code (but out-of-date tables).

4. Delete all the tables from this new MDE file.

In the Database window, click the Tables button in the Objects list, click each table in the list that appears in the right pane and then press the Delete key for each table. You need to confirm each deletion by clicking the Yes button. Deleting tables sounds dangerous, but remember you have all these tables stored safely in your old MDE file.

5. Import the tables from the old MDE file to the new one.

Choose File --> Get External Data --> Import and choose the name you gave your old MDE file in Step 1.

You see the Import Objects dialog box, with tabs for Tables, Queries, Forms, Reports, and other objects.

6. Click the Select All button with the Tables tab selected and then click OK.

Access imports your tables from the original MDE to the new MDE files, replacing the older data in the tables.

7. Import any queries or macros in the old MDE database that you created or changed.

Repeat Steps 5 and 6, but use the Queries and Macros tabs on the Import Objects dialog box to import whatever has changed.

If you are going to do this often, consider splitting your table into a front end and a back end. With a split database, you don't have to re-import your updated tables: You can just leave them in the unchanged back-end database.

How to Draw a Table Line by Line in Word 2007

The Draw Table command lets you draw complicated tables in your Word 2007 documents by using a simple set of drawing tools. This command is ideal for creating tables that aren’t a simple grid of rows and columns.

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Select the Insert tab, click the Insert Table button in the Tables group, and then choose the Draw Table command.

The cursor changes to a small pencil.

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Draw the overall shape of the table by dragging the pencil pointer to create a rectangular boundary.

When you release the mouse button, a table with a single cell is created. In addition, the Ribbon displays the Design tab under Table Tools.

3

Carve the table into smaller cells.

For example, to split the table into two rows, point the cursor somewhere along the left edge of the table and then click and drag a line across the table to the right edge. When you release the mouse button, the table splits into two rows.
You can use this technique to continue carving up the table into smaller cells.

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Use the Line Style and Line Weight drop-down controls to change the style or size of lines in the table.

These controls are the top and middle buttons on the left side of the Draw Borders group, located on the Design tab under Table Tools. You can change the style of a line you’ve already drawn by tracing over the line with a new style.

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If you make a mistake, click the Eraser button and erase the mistaken line segment.

The Eraser button is in the Draw Borders group and looks like a table with an eraser in the corner. Click the Draw Table button if you want to draw additional segments after using the Eraser tool.

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When you’re done, click anywhere outside of the table.

Share a Printer on Your Network

Because many households or offices have several computers but only one printer, you need to share the printer on your network. To let everyone on the network print on that printer, share it by following these steps on the Vista computer connected to the printer:

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1Click the Start menu, choose Network, and click the Network and Sharing Center button along the top.

2The Network and Sharing Center window appears

Turn on Printer Sharing and click Apply.

3Look in the Printer Sharing category and click the Off button to reveal the menu. When the menu drops down, choose Turn On Printer Sharing and click Apply to share that printer with the network.
Now, tell your other networked PC (or PCs) about your newly shared printer by following these steps:

Click the Start menu, choose Control Panel, and select Printers from the Hardware and Sound category.

4The Printers window lists icons for any installed printers

Click the Add a Printer button.

5The Add Printer window appears

Choose Add a Network, Wireless, or Bluetooth Printer and click Next.

6Your PC glances around the network for the other PCs’ shared printer. When it finds it, click its name and click Next to install it. If it doesn’t find it, move to Step 4.

Choose The Printer That I Want Isn’t Listed and then click Browse to go to the shared printer.

7Clicking the Browse button fetches a list of your networked PCs. Double-click the PC with the attached printer, and Vista lists the printer’s name.

Double-click the shared printer’s icon and click Next.

Vista finally connects to your networked printer. You may also need to install the printer’s software on your PC before it can print to the networked printer.

How to Access Another Computer's Disk Drives from Your Laptop

You can use your laptop to access another computer's disk drives over a network. To be more specific, however, you don't really access the entire disk drive. No, only specific folders on the drive are up for sharing. Even then, your access may be restricted by password, or you can only read, and not write or modify, any files in that folder.
No matter what, if a computer user shares a folder on the network, that folder shows up as available for your laptop to use. Choose Control Panel from the Start menu, and then choose either Network Center (Vista) or Network Connections (XP).
In Windows Vista, open a computer icon in the Network window, shown above, to see whether any folders or disk drives are available.
In Windows XP, shared resources are listed directly in the My Network Places window, as shown above.
To access a specific folder, double-click to open it, just as you would open any folder on your own hard drive. The contents of that folder are displayed on the screen, just as though it were a folder on your laptop's hard drive. Remember that the folder isn’t on your hard drive; it's a folder elsewhere on the network.
If the folder is password-protected, you're asked to provide a password for access to the folder.
After the network folder is open, you can access files in the folder just as though they were on your own laptop. Note that some folders can be shared as read-only, in which case the files and folders cannot be renamed or deleted or their contents modified.
Remember to practice polite network etiquette and close a network folder when you’re done using it. If you forget and don't close the folder, a connection still exists between your laptop and the computer sharing that folder. If so, an error message may appear if the network connection goes down or the other computer disconnects from the network.
 dummies.com