Whether or not emotive modelling should be part of NPC development is a difficult question to answer currently. And i do believe that it’s not exactly a yes or no question of whether it should have a place in games with NPCs and more of a question of should it be included in certain games. Emotive modelling means that the AI by having their own emotions can decide how they interact with the player and other NPCs. Now this could have serious impact on gameplay depending on the game and could be both positive and negative for the player. Imagine the player needs to talk to an NPC but that particular NPC was killed by another for somehow upsetting the other AI. Usually without this emotive modelling the NPCs wouldn’t be able to interact in this way. A good example is from the article below:

“There was one time I was playing a murder mystery game we had designed – and there was this doctor who came to diagnose how a character was murdered,” he says. “However, the doctor was being very rude to my character and kept making dismissive remarks. Initially I thought it was a bug because I knew the doctor’s personality was mostly pleasant, and I knew I hadn’t been rude to him. I thought, oh man, why is he being such an arsehole to me?
 
“I looked through the code and it turned out that much much earlier in the game I’d been rude to a servant during dinner, and the servant had gone into the kitchen and told the people there what a jerk I’d been – one of those people was the doctor. He remembered that.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/12/video-game-characters-emotional-ai-developers

In FFXV AI are present constantly, from start to finish of the game. Some with their own personalities and traits, and others who are simply background characters. From enemy AI to friendly characters the player meets on their journey. When playing the game you’ll notice you are accompanied by 3 AI companions, each with different traits and personalities. They’re aimed at bringing something unique to the team and keeping the player immersed. They’ll follow the player wherever the player goes and they’ll traverse environments and fight in different ways. They appear to be quite intelligent AI on the surface but they do have quite a few issues.

They can notoriously get stuck on objects in the environment which means the only way to free them is to progress a large distance and the game will teleport them to you. The enemy AI in the game is relatively simple as they only have one or two attacks each with the exception of the final boss. The final boss of the game tries to mimic the player by fighting with the same weapons as them and using the same attacks, however they don’t seem to learn at all during the fight.

Receiving and completing the tasks that have been set throughout the RCS module has allowed me to learn a lot about myself, my work ethic, and my understanding of different issues and subject matters within the fashion and textiles industry. Throughout the past few weeks I have been provided with a new set of challenges to overcome in order to successfully complete the tasks.

I found this module to be very interesting, the lectures to be engaging and the tasks to be well explained, presented and easily accessible when needed. I found some tasks to be easier than others but all to be pretty substantial and at an even skill level.  Going into this module I feel I already had a lot of experience with referencing because I learnt to Harvard reference and reference a range of different sources during my art and design diploma, despite this it was refreshing to have the importance of referencing explained to me going into this course, I also found the lecture on plagiarism to be a very useful reminder before starting our tasks, encouraging us to become more confident in our work and not to rely purely on the sources we find in relation to our tasks.

All of the tasks forced us to develop a collection of information from various different sources, living in the modern age I find it very difficult to steer away from looking purely at online sources, I am aware of the importance of looking at books, news articles and objects to back up your opinions and facts, however this is something I feel I haven’t achieved well throughout this module, therefore looking at both primary and secondary sources is something I would like to make a conscious effort to improve on next term.

Looking back I feel as though I struggled more with the long written tasks, even though I am fairly confident in my writing skills I feel it is important for me to fully understand what I am focusing my attention on to succeed to an extent I am happy with. I learnt that it was important for me to discuss the tasks and gather second opinions on my ideas before moving forward with a task. The ‘Ethics’ task was one of my favourite tasks because even though it was a longer task I felt as though I understood the brief to the best of my knowledge and was able to see many pathways and opportunities within a limited theme.

This module has been useful in helping me to focus on direction and format within my work, both written and practical, it has allowed me to think more about where I gather initial my sources from in each project or task that will benefit my studies in the near future. I was grateful that there was plenty of explanation and direction given to us to ensure we fully understood the tasks set but still containing plenty of balance which allowed me to be independent and original enough in my work.

The first chapter from ‘Taste, Fashion and the French a Magazine’ by Sanda Miller addresses how “taste provides a rational universal basis which postulated an inborn faculty of taste deeming a beautiful object to a not so beautiful object” (Milller). It goes on to discuss philosophical aesthetics and how they have guided us in understanding our personal concepts of taste and the development of fashion magazines originating from the French Revolution.

Firstly Miller introduces how the first fashion magazine was produced in the 17^th century by Jean du Vise who published ‘Le Mercure Galant’ consisting of articles, illustrations and addresses of ‘merchandes de mondes’ and therefore was considered to be the first form of publicity in the sector. Although short lived this first publication allowed people to gain an understanding of the emergence of fashion in media and advertisement. During the 18^th century fashion magazines gained a higher status of the Enlightenment during the revolution due to their more intellectual profile.

The chapter goes onto discuss philosophical aesthetics and how they sought to understand how our experiences within beauty sets out to provide us with our own personal opinion, suggestively providing us with a reason as to why we acquire our own taste/aesthetic. This emerged as an enquiry into the concept of taste in order to deal with the shift in interest from aesthetic contemplation to subjective appreciation (the art work and our psychological response towards it). The subject of ‘taste’ began with British empiricist philosophers such as Anthony Ashley Cooper who sought to provide an answer as to why we seemingly have an emotional response to particular aesthetic experiences. David Hume investigated ways to come up with a more accurate definition as to why we seek a standard of taste proposing that ‘only a qualified observer is in a position to provide a proper verdict of the true standard of taste and beauty’(Hume) leaving a range of ongoing disagreements.

The concept in this chapter of fashion and taste being linked creates lots of room for discussion behind why we find things visually appealing and how trends are created due to a common denominator in our likes and dislikes. Furthermore the existence of personal opinion leads to the idea of ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ (Kant) suggesting that everything is art, and everything is beautiful depending on who is making the judgement leaving this down the ‘the delicacy of the imagination’. The linking of fashion and taste has been used throughout history to elevate fashion above its current state.

In summary the emergence of taste in the fashion industry has led to wide success and has been greatly accepted in order to maintain a functioning status within the fabrication of the media. The concept of philosophical aesthetics brings a new light into how we engage in criticism and how this is applied in fashion.  I feel that in turn this was very beneficial and will continue to be revolutionary to fashion magazines. I appreciate the depth of the history and the discussions and points made about each statement and feel I have learnt a lot about the importance of taste in order to help the growth of the fashion magazine industry.

Example of a good UI in a game would be Final Fantasy XV. This games UI does everything it should in a simplistic way for the player to understand. The information is presented and then removed when its not needed so that it doesn’t hinder the players experience and break immersion.

In a game such as FFXV colour is used to help the player keep track of their health. For example, the player will notice that when they are on low health their screen will go red alerting them that they need to heal. This is a subtle warning using colour to indicate the players health. Colour is also used another way in combat. It serves as a guide to which form of attacks the player should use on an enemy.
This is shown where when the player attacks an enemy, it shows a damage number in one of three colours (yellow, white, purple). White damage indicates to the player they are dealing moderate damage to their foe. Yellow damage shows that they are using a weapon that is effective against the enemy resulting in a higher damage number. Purple damage indicates that the form of attack they are using is not very effective as the enemy has a resistance to something you’re using.

Health – In FFXV, The bottom right of the screen displays each character in the parties health and the playable characters MP. As each character in the game is important, displaying every party members health is a crucial aspect in a battle. This feature allows the players to see which member of their team needs help and how much damage the enemies can do. When the player is attacked their health bar goes down and the number next to it (which represents their health) drops.
It also shows the players MP bar to let them know how much Magic they have left to use. This is crucial information for the game to help the player understand the game and strategize their gameplay. The health bar is easy to understand for anyone who’s playing the game as it has a very simple format which is similar to many past games and is also easy to understand even if you’ve never played a game before.

HCI – Human Augmentation.
As technology evolves over time, so does HCI. Virtual Reality (or VR) is one of the many ways that HCI is evolving. Virtual reality has been around for a very long time but recently huge strides have been made in helping to successfully enhance the experience. Just recently it was released to the public for use in games. VR has the ability to trick the mind into believing its somewhere else and change our perceptions. Its ability to do this means that people can experience things that they may never have the chance to. Below is a good article on how it is changing our world around us and some of the people responsible for this change.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36279855