Origin

FPS - First Person Shooter, as one of the most recognized and accepted video game genre, it was considered appeared in 1974 with the very first FPS game "Maze War".

Maze War originated the basic concept of its kind: player see through controlled character's eye wander through a maze and defeat enemies by shoot a gun-like type weapon.


And what maybe surprise you is that in this game, which released in 1974, the designer already involved some "Player Versus Player" elements into it, you could shoot another player who is seen as an eyeball.

Predecessor

On May 5 of 1992, a game shocked the entire industry.




Wolfenstein 3D, developed by the later widely-known "id software" for MS-DOS. If "Maze War" provided the concept, then "Wolfenstein 3D" is the archtype or demo of whole FPS genre games built later.


The Protagonist "William B.J Blazkowicz" is a captured American soldier who is trying to escape from the Nazi stronghold of Castle Wolfenstein. In Wolfenstein 3D, Player could revive thier "Health Point" by inject "Medical Kit" they collected, and player is offered three different types of weapons to use, each weapon has its unique firepower and ammunition.


Another feature of Wolfenstein3D is more types of enemies, player will engage different types of enemies in game progression, in each stage there is a different enemy placement. And, most important, this game has Boss! In each episode there is a Boss enemy who is totally unique and tougher than all common enemies, player must defeat the Boss in order to complete the final mission of current episode.




Another advantage Wolfenstein 3D made is designer had placed numbers of "Hidden Room" inside game area, contain various treatures and supplies.


Wolfenstein is released as a one episode shareware, consisting of ten missions. In the commercial release version there are six episodes, all consisting of ten missions as well.

id Tech

Right after development of Wolfenstein 3D, id software moved on a new project what is known as "DOOM" nowadays. During the developingof "DOOM", id software applied various of new techniques, and what all these effort came up with is the famous game engine "id Tech", also known as "DOOM Engine".

 Doom's most outstanding feature that made it a cannon game is its realistic and dynamic 3D graphics, compared to Wolfenstein 3D, Doom engine's advantages could be summaried within several reasons list below( refered from Wikipedia):



"Height differences – all rooms in Wolfenstein 3D have the same height;
Non-perpendicular walls – all walls in Wolfenstein 3D run along a rectangular grid;
Full texture mapping of all surfaces – in Wolfenstein 3D, floors and ceilings are flat colors;
Varying light levels – all areas in Wolfenstein 3D are fully lit at the same brightness. This contributed to Doom's visual authenticity, not to mention its atmosphere and gameplay. The use of darkness to frighten or confuse the player was nearly unheard of in games released prior to Doom.


In contrast to the static levels of Wolfenstein 3D, those in Doom are highly dynamic: platforms can lower and rise, floors can rise sequentially to form staircases, and bridges can rise and fall. The lifelike environment was enhanced further by the stereo sound system, which made it possible to roughly determine the direction and distance of a sound effect. The player is kept on guard by the grunts and growls of monsters, and receives occasional clues to finding secret areas in the form of sounds of hidden doors opening remotely. As in Wolfenstein 3D, monsters can also become aware of the player's presence by hearing distant gunshots.


Carmack had to make use of several tricks for these features to run smoothly on home computers of 1993. Most significantly, Doom levels are not truly three-dimensional; they are internally represented on a single plane, with height differences stored separately as displacements. (A similar trick is still used by many games to create huge outdoor environments). This allows a two point perspective projection, with several design limitations: for example, it is not possible for the Doom engine to render one room over another. However, thanks to its two-dimensional property, the environment can be rendered very quickly, using a binary space partitioning method. Another benefit was the clarity of the automap, as that could be rendered with 2D vectors without any risk of overlapping. Additionally, the BSP tree technology created by Bruce Nailer was used.


Another important feature of the Doom engine is its modular data files, which allow most of the game's content to be replaced by loading custom WAD files. Wolfenstein 3D was not designed to be expandable, but fans had nevertheless figured out how to create their own levels for it, and Doom was designed to further extend the possibilities. The ability to create custom scenarios contributed significantly to the game's popularity."

DOOM


Of course, "DOOM" isn't just about graphics. From Maze War's concept, to Wolfenstein 3D's demo, now, here comes DOOM, the typical template of all FPS games ever made from 1993 to now.




Main theme of DOOM is science fiction/horror, what remind you of that?

Half Life? F.E.A.R? Dead Space? Bioshock? Too many?


Yes, just as DOOM itself, the sci-fi horror theme has also become a typical template of FPS, for it both keep players in a high tesion and throw them into the imagine game world.


In DOOM, player take the role of a nameless marine who acts as a security in a Mars teleportation experiment base, one day the teleportation experiment opened the gate between Hell and our world, demons came out killing everyone in base, your task is fighting out a way from the entire legion of hell to prevent them attacking your hometown Earth.





For player's satus, armor and ammunition-carrying capacity is added besides the health point, and various power-up items are provided as well: power-ups, such as a backpack that increases the player character's ammunition-carrying capacity, armor, first aid kits to restore health, the berserk pack ( active berserk mode, allowing player to deal out rocket launcher-level damage with fist and potentially splattering former humans and imps), supernatural blue orbs (named soul spheres in the manuals) that boost the player character's health percentage by 100%, up to a maximum of 200%, computer maps ( show up whole area of current level), partial invisibility, and protective suits that allows the player to survive in toxic acids.


Objective of each level is escaping, there are special looking doors that marked with exit sign every level, what player need to do is simply surviving all hazards and enemies to make out the door.


What indeed remarkable is the weapon system, the available weapon in DOOM is way too high compared to its competitors: 10!


Start with a pistol and a pair of brass knuckle, player could gain chainsaw, shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, and the invincible BFG 9000. Different from Wolfenstein 3D, every weapon list above actually IS different, from different outfit, firepower and enemy feedback, player could recognize that "This is a shotgun!". Another great detail is that when you played Wolfenstein 3D, you will find that whatever happened to William, standing, running, get hit, his hands stays in the same position forever, which makes player sometimes feel like they are floating. But in DOOM, player character's hands will keep moving when player give different orders.



WADs

DOOM's greatness didn't over yet, as many players said "Success of Starcraft is half depends on its great editor", the first giant fan-made mod community is created by DOOM.


That is "DOOM WADs".


DOOM WADs are package files for Doom and Doom II, that contain sprites, levels, and game data. WAD stands for "Where's All the Data?". Just after its release in 1993, DOOM attracted a sizeable following of players who created their own mods for WAD files.


First level editor appeared in 1994, additional tools have been created that allow most aspects of the game to be edited. Besides the original WADs contained custom levels, other new monsters and resources could be imported, and make a completely different game.

Summary

As one of the most significant milestone in whole electrical game industry, DOOM populized the great FPS and spawned its own game subculture.


DOOM was voted the "No.1 game of all time" in a poll among over 100 game developers and journalists conducted by GameSpy in July 2001, and PC Gamer proclaimed DOOM the most influential game of all time in its ten-year anniversary issue in April 2004, and named it the second best game of all time a year later (number one was Half-Life). And finally GameTrailers listed DOOM as No.1 Breakthrough PC Game. In 2009, Game Informer put DOOM 6th on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time", saying that it " the genre the kick start it needed to rule the gaming landscape two decades later".

There is no reason for us not to put such a game as a cannon one.

MYSTery




What makes a cannon game? Through my game play of Myst I found out and uncovered why this game was so important and how it affected the gaming industry and im sure after reading through my report on how and why it is so important to computer gaming you too will understand what made Myst so important and why that it deserves to be classified as a cannon game.



Myst created by Cyan Worlds a video game company founded by Rand and Robyn Miller. It been said that Myst puts the Myst in Mysterious Island a book that the Miller brothers quote as being the some of the inspiration behind the game and title “Myst was simply a working title that came from Jules Verne's Mysterious Island”[1] as stated by Rand Miller. But for me my first thought about the game was more like Myst puts the MY in MY GOD WHAT THE HECK AM I MEANT TO BE DOING, from the first scene I was lost and confused what was required of me, no menu bar, no interface, no objective message, just a mouse courser and a screen shot.

The only hint of story is a short intro movie at the start that hints at books being lost, but really it just made me more confused. After all Myst was from 1993 a time when I can remember playing games like ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’, ‘Super Mario’ and ‘Doom’ games of that era were very much plug and play, you would put the game in have an intro and start playing it was very simple time for games, you knew straight away what you needed to do in the game whether it was collecting coins or blasting away monsters. So I figured Myst would follow this standard, I thought once the game started it would all become more clear and I would have some sort of objective but no I was wrong. For the first 30 minutes of game play I just found myself clicking on the screen with no clue or any idea just trying to get a reaction from the game, the only thing I found out during this time was the game is set on a an island with different buildings scattered across it, after all Myst is a ‘point and click’ graphic adventure game, the kind of game that requires you to click the screen to either move somewhere new or to get a response off something like all the switches, buttons, levers and other various objects on the island. For me I was trying to click on something that would give me some sort of story about the game and so I can try to unravel this mystery of the books. Oddly this form of clicking interaction was something the Miller brothers had intended for a children’s game “A child would turn the page, click on items on each page, and those items would react in certain ways” [2] which Robyn Miller explained in the making of Myst. But it wasn’t until they made Myst did there theory clicking and then some sort of reaction in the game come to life. And the result was a much more dynamic then they had intended for there child’s game.



After having the search around the island for clues I still didn’t even who I was in the game am I playing myself, am I someone else? If so how and why am I on the island. But no nothing I didn’t receive any help from the game it was clear this game was not meant to be taken lightly and if you weren’t prepared to think and pay attention you weren’t going to progress anywhere in the game. Something that games of the time didn’t really offer players, games were seen for children but this game was intended to challenge even the best puzzle gamers. I decide to go back to the start, but this time move more slowly paying more attention, after all Myst did bring a 3D world to a 2D format by building the Myst island in a 3D world and then taking 2D bitmap snapshots and placing them into the game, when ever the player clicked to move somewhere the game would just cycle through the 2d images to make appear as though the player was moving through this virtual world. “Nintendo would later use this technique to great effect in Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo.” [3].


So I figured these fantastic graphics the game provides must be for a reason, besides just for cosmetic look. It didn’t take long on my journey back to the starting point on the island, I noticed a piece of paper on the ground, I click it and a letter opens up it tells me to go to the dock, go into the secret room and enter a code to see a message. I couldn’t help but kick myself for missing this the first time as it was so close to the start, but here it was my first puzzle to be solved, my first objective, something to aim to complete some sort of direction that I had been craving.



The letter says I need to enter the number of beacon transmitters on the island into the pad to receive the message. I reach the secret room and there’s a big well looking object in the middle but no pad? I find the pad under neath a piece of paper on the wall. I can see this game isn’t going to offer me anything easy. I enter the number into the pad, which was hidden under a piece of paper on the wall and then check out the well, a video appears and it is where I met Atrus the creator of the books and he has hidden his books, suspecting one of his sons wants to destroy them. First clue solved and im now starting to understand what is happening Erik Davis said “The puzzles thereby serve as the perfect metaphor for the unveiling of the hidden mysteries of the land.”[4] I have to agree with this metaphor as it wasn’t until I solved my first puzzle did begin to learn something about the islands story, and I think this is something which compelled many players to play Myst and why is was so successful being the number 1 selling computer game until sims, to find the story you must solve the puzzles, this complex structure something that challenged the players was very refreshing and unique game play of the time. The fact even after 17 years the game is still just as challenging is a compliment to the Miller brothers, many old games become easier after time but for a game to still hold itself even after so long is a true achievement.




Atrus tells me to check out the library and I do, i find a few me hints and clues as to what I need to do next. I decide to check out the log cabin, with a gas furnace and a safe, I turn on the gas but no fire. I open up the safe find matches and light the fire. That leads me to one of the best things about the game are the sound affects that are in it, from wind blowing when you up high, or birds chirping when walking through the trees to the fire crackling in the furnace. Chris Brandekamp a friend of the Miller brothers was the sound engineer on the game and one of the hardest tasks for them was creating these real sounds affects, to make the player feel as though they are in a real place. Often the sounds in real life when recorded would not sound how they were meant to be which meant the Millers and Chris had to find strange ways to record these sounds “the sound of fire in a boiler was created by driving over the gravel in the Miller brothers’ driveway. “ [5] and even the bubbling of water was made by “sticking a large tube into a toilet and blowing into it!”[5]. It was these lengths the Miller brothers and Chris went to create the most authentic and realistic fantasy island/ worlds possible.



I couldn’t help but be amazed at how Myst had combined the graphics with the music and sound affects so well to create this amazing atmosphere within the game and it certainly set a new standard on how good a game could look and feel. But how was this possibly and why weren’t other games doing this? One simple reason. And the reason why is possibly how Myst had the biggest impact on the gaming industry and it was because of the CD. They were one of the first games to use Compact disk drives to deliver there game. They were the first to take full advantage of the larger memory space on Cds, something that rivaly games on floppy disks and cartridges couldn’t compete with. It meant Myst was able to use such beautiful graphics and much larger variety of sounds. The games popularity gave a huge rush for CD drives which at the time had to be bought separate from computers. The fact the game was so popular and that almost everyone who owned a computer had bought a disk drive to play Myst, it meant that future games could now take advantage of the CD to make there games. From then on the conversion to CD become much more abundant with games and as you can see now a days all games are on CDs which if it wasn’t for Myst may have taken a lot longer.



Its not hard to see the importance Myst played to computer gaming, from the use of 3D rendered images to create picture perfect visuals, to the use of realistic sound affects the kind of thing at the time only used in movies, to original music soundtrack and the fact that it brought and was able to utilise the CD for gaming, there was no other option but to class MYST as a cannon game. It for ever changed how games were presented through visuals and audio and the way in which we received our game through CDs.





[1] http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/interviews/269/

[2] http://www.nowgamer.com/features/224/the-making-of-myst?o=0#listing

[3] http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/09/dayintech_0924

[4] http://www.techgnosis.com/index_myst.html

[5] http://mystolgia.angelfire.com/myst.htm

Street Fighter II


street fighter II is made by Capcom in 1990s, it's one of the most popular game. Because It is widely considered a pioneer in fighting games and it is more emphasis on maneuverability and playability, without relying on images and animations. In this game every characters have their own unique fighting style and special moves, street fighter II have many version, like The World Warrior, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II, Super Street Fighter II--The New Challengers, Super Street Fighter II-- Turbo etc, I just talk about the first version of street fighter II-- The World Warrior.

In this version, player just have 8 characters can be choice, after this vesion we can choice more and more characters. They come different countries and regions and everyone get one place.

Ryu