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Computer Games
One of today's most prominent forms of amusement is without doubt, the computer game. For over 15 years computer games have been awash with bright, bold, sometimes exaggerated colours. Over the course of 15 years, the number of possible colours available to games designers has greatly increased. In the late 1980's, one generally had a pallette with no more than 16 possible colours to work with. This gradually increased and now stands at some 16.7million. As can be seen in the comparative images below, the advances in computer graphics technologies have not only allowed for more 'solid object' colours, but also made possible many complex environmental effects such as coloured lighting effects and weather effects. |
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"4D Sports Driving"
Mindscape - 1990 |
"Need for Speed: Underground"
EA Games - 2003 |
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"4D Sports Boxing"
Mindscape - 1991 |
"Dead or Alive 3"
Microsoft Game Studios - 2001 |
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"War Eagles"
Cosmi Corporation - 1989 |
"Flight Simlator 2004: A Century of Flight"
Microsoft Game Studios - 2003 |
Colours are used to great effect in computer games. EA Games' "Need for Speed: Underground", for example, places the player in the world of urban street racing using beautiful combinations of light and dark colours to render the night-time city environments with areas ranging from dark and dirty construction sites to streets lined with bright, bold neon signs.
By contrast, Microsoft's "Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight", makes frequent use of soft pastel colours to render seemingly endless skies populated with fluffly clouds that are verging on the photo-realistic. Harder colours such as greens, browns and greys are used to render the landscapes as the player passes over them, many thousands of feet above. |
Copyright © 2004 Micro Academy.
Copyright permission pending for computer game images:
Need for Speed ™ Underground © Electronic Arts Inc.
Dead or Alive® 3 © Microsoft Corporation.
Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight © Microsoft Corporation.
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