What are computer game graphics

Computer graphics are the art, style and theme that is used in different games for backgrounds, objects, characters, scenes and anything else that is seen by the player. There are lots of different art styles for computer graphics for example, military style games like call of duty and battlefield uses this style,Photo realism is also used by simulators and other games to make the game look as realistic as they can and text based game only use pixelated pictures and are mostly text.

A 2 dimension game is flat on the screen or monitor and player is limited to moving left, right, up and down, the player cannot move front or back. 2D sprites can be made in Photoshop and are fairly easy to make they are made up of pixels and depending on how many pixel make up the character the smoother and more detailed they can be. A 3 Dimension game are more time consuming and harder to make however the results and the graphics are far superior to 2d. 3d characters can be made in a number of software like blender. Depending on how detailed you want your character the more time it will take. Heads up display or HUD is used in lot of games, a HUD shows the player all the stats on screen that may prove relevant for him/her e.g. heath, shield, ammo, level, map, objectives and other players.

Texture are used to add detail and realism to the environment , objects or characters and are one of he most import steps in game development. Texture mapping is an application in digital graphics. Text graphics is the font and style the text is used in the game. Different fonts and colors can change the way text and objectives look. Game packaging textures are how the packaging and case for the game looks, this is useful for advertisement and appeal to increase sales

Raster images are made up of pixels and also know as bitmap images and Vector images are made up of paths and are also called esp files. Vector images use points / paths and create an image when all of these are connected together. Vector images offer higher resolution and look smoother and cleaner at all resolutions. Raster images look better at larger resolution compared to lower resolutions, but if the raster image is zoomed in its is easy to see individual pixels and colours in the images. Vector images are better suited for images like logos because at any size or resolution the image is smooth and clean. Raster images are used for digital photos and game textures as they render faster and look good. Lots of software allows for images to be edited, Photoshop is is used a lot to edit, change images from vector to to raster and the other way around.

There are lots of different types of image capture, from taking a picture with a phone or digital camera downloading a picture or image of the internet or scanning a image into a computer. In game development being able to have a real life picture of a building or object can be useful for development. Picture of buildings and landscapes can be used to design environments for the game you are developing. Using usb cables and sd cards from digital cameras and phones makes transferring images easy and quick. Pictures like brick walls or plaster can be used to add texture to buildings and environment in your game by overlaying the image over the image of the object or building, this adds realistic detail and texture.

 Elliott