Essence of Audio/Music in Gaming

Hi there,
We have been discussing over various topics on gaming over the period. Now I would like to bring the topic of Audio/Music in gaming, which is very essential part. Lets say, you are playing a game with out music / audio for  an hour and now start playing a game which has audio then you will feel a beautiful difference which is nothing but audio. Audio / Music gives life for the visual applications like games, movies etc... So, like in movie production, in gaming also their is always an audio department involved.

If you wanna be a good game maker then you should have a good knowledge or taste in music. In general most of gamers are music lovers. You can always check this out. Most popular games like Prince Of Persia, Need for Speed, F.E.A.R, God of War, Sim City, Age Of Empires, etc... all these games have a prominent importance of music in their games.

How does this work in gaming? if you have this question then here is the answer. The game music is a combination of background music, event based music tracks, Voice overs, Audio effects etc.... Working on music is the most lovable and easiest thing than any other part of game. All you have to do is to find the right music for your game and then start working on it.

Their are lot of free tools available for editing, mixing and compositing musics. I recommend to start with open source tools.

• For Music composing use free tools like "Easy Music Composer","Virtual Music Composer"
• For Music recording and editing use free tools like "Audacity"

Its quite easy to learn and use this tools and more over freeware so no license issues too. 

Your game may be racing, strategy, puzzle, action adventure, horror, scientific etc... music identification is based on screen play and over all concept. Adding music is not just an ingredient, but it is the voice of your game.

Regarding job opportunity in game music their are openings like

• Music Technician
• Music Composer
• Musician
• Music Director  

Roles are pretty much like in movie industry and they get really paid well.  

For any queries please mail to schoolofgaming@gmail.com

regards,

Editor

Essence Of Physics in Gaming

Hi there,
Lets speak about the use of physics in gaming today. Most of the games that are developed today are having the promenent part of physics involued inorder to have good gameplay feel. Physics brings the realism to the virtual game world (computer graphics world). The games which are made out of no physics were always bounded to specific borders so that to avoid complexity in game play. But now a days all games meet the basic physics rules so that player is given the joy of real game play.

In either the case like 2D games or 3D games physcis have its importance. The very essential part comes at collisions between the object's that are created inside the game. Simple box physics to complex physics calculations are used to bring the realism in games.

So one should have basic knowledge in physics so that he/she can start working on required physics in games. Basic physics concepts such as mass, gravity, force, damping, elasticity, torque etc... calculations should be learned throughly.

In the later stages during the project development as per required one can learn the deeper physics concepts to bring out the quality output.

Areas Of Use:

• Realistic Simulation development
• Realistic 3d Games
• Realistic 2d Games
• Realistic Virtual Walks

The most popular physics engines that run in today market are ODE and Ageia Physx. ODE is breifly called Open Dynamics Engine and is completly an open source engine. While Ageia Physx is developed by nVidia company. Ageia Physx is more capable of calculating higher physics values keeping higher cpu clock rates while ODE can support proper basic physics and can support complex physics at lower cpu clock rates.

As a starter one should start with ODE so that it will be convenient in learning complex physics calculations at later stage.

for more info please do visit the following link. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_physics

note:
Almost all Game engines provide either ODE physics or Ageia Physx.

For any queries please post to schoolofgaming@gmail.com

regards,
Editor