Task 1
Features
Scalability
Scalability is a big solution to many game developers who want their product to be released to a wider audience. There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of games in existence. For next gen consoles, such as the Xbox One there are only 800+ as from September 2016. The PlayStation 4 has over 1200 games as from August 2016. However these games are only for their consoles, and in most cases PC as well. However for Triple A games such as Call of Duty, these games are released for almost all platforms, not matter if you’re a PC gamer, or console. But can you get big budget games for mobile?
When developing a high budget game for mobile, it is almost guaranteed to get many, many downloads, this usually means in the millions. What makes the mobile game different though? It could be easier to just save your money and pay £3.99 for the latest Fifa on your phone than pay £40 for the console version. The two products are just too different. Comparing a mobile game to a console/PC means that the graphics, load time, capacity, data usage, etc. all have to be taken into to consideration.
There are many cut backs when releasing a triple a titles game from Console to mobile. The biggest one would be the graphics. Graphics in top rated games is at its absolute best, however those next gen graphics do not get passed down to mobile games. This happens because as it is downloading unto a mobile phone it would take a considerable amount of storage space. As the majority of iPhones are still selling a 16GB model as their default device, these phones will not be able to hold these games. The standard size for a Triple A titles is usually 20+GB. That is still not ideal for a 32GB smart phone, and physically impossible for a standard iPhone. So huge chunks of the code is taken out of the big title games to scale it to mobile. This means cuts backs to graphics and performance. Usually the games will load faster on mobile as the GPU does not have to render too much. With huge portions of the graphics cut, this means the games decrease in storage size. The controls are also cut back massively making it compact yet slightly harder to use. There are sections and features removed from these mobile games, this could mean that certain maps/levels are non-existent in the mobile game. This is able to cut a 20GB game down to a maximum 1 GB. But at times 1GB can still be insufficient for many users.
Simplicity for users
Simplicity is key for most users. Having an app that is easy, simple and effective to navigate around and to function is a major thing. Having a menu system that is complex, and ineffective is enough to put a potential customer of the product. A company being able to produce and develop a simple, straightforward application that is easy to navigate through means that the business is efficient and able to meet customer needs. Having the simplicity for users therefore makes the customer have a stress free experience with the application.
The current trend with mobile app and in the developer scene is having a product that is minimalistic. This means that everything is pure, clean and easy to get through. Making animations smooth, and quick. However, minimalism also means that tasks and navigating is easy and simplistic, with an enjoyable experience.
A good app that is simple for users would be one of the most popular social media apps on mobile devices, Snapchat. Snapchat is a simple, free to use picture sharing service for communication. Snapchat is simple to use as it has a minimalistic feel to it, it’s smooth to use and all menus are just one swipe/tap away. All setting are easily found thought the setting icon. The option are easily accessible as you have to swipe to get to another section of the application. Snapchat offers it’s user a simple, enjoyable, stress free experience when using.
Performance
The Performance on mobile applications be high powered or low powered. An example of a high powered mobile application would Adobe Premiere Clip. This application is a mobile editing piece of software, making you able to edit, render and publish video straight from your phone. However, this means that the device is going to be able to cope and deal with the rendering, and not just any phone is capable of doing that. It is highly recommended that the mobile phone as a relativity up-to-date GPU inside it as well as RAM to enhance performance.
Adobe Premiere Clip is the mobile version of Adobe Premiere Pro for PC. The PC software is much more high powered and needs the right system requirements to run, edit and render. Many phone will be able to use Premiere Clip, but most likely at a slow pace and what would seem to be a lag with the application and device. It is important to know your devices system specifications, to know what it can and cannot run. If a mobile device is not able to run an application this will mean that the device will be running harder than it normal should be running. This is the same for PC.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a key feature in mobile phones for many, many users. Without Bluetooth we wouldn’t have features such as NFC, which therefore means there would mean, no contactless payments from smartphones. Bluetooth has been around for a few decades, and it keeps advancing and getting better. Bluetooth key feature is being able to receive and transfer files from one device to another. Not only is it mobile devices that use Bluetooth, many PCs have Bluetooth prebuilt into them, this means that files can be sent easier from PC to mobile device (Vise-Versa). Bluetooth has a range in which it can proceed to follow the connection to send/receive files. Bluetooth 4.0 has a range of 200 feet, this is the version of Bluetooth in most smart devices in 2015/16. Bluetooth 5.0 is able to reach a distance of 800 feet.
A mobile app that relies on using Bluetooth is the Android Wear application. Bluetooth is needed for this app to work correctly, as the smart phone would not be able to connect to the smart watch if there is no connection link. When Bluetooth is turned on this allows for the watch to communicate to the phone, via the Android Wear application. This application takes the Bluetooth signal from the phone and then re-directs it to the final destination, which is the watch. Without Bluetooth, this would mean that devices cannot connect to each other.
Support and updates
Support and updates is one of the main functionalities when keeping your applications or software secure and running bug free. Developers keeping their software up-to-date with updates and not falling behind with releases and patches means that the program is less likely to be visited by the bugs. This usually happen when the operating system has had an update but the software has not. Therefore making the OS ahead of the software, this can lead to having the software crash, run slow, or not run at all. The best example of this is when Apple roll out their latest iOS update. When the newest iOS comes out, you may find that if you install it early enough that some of your apps are not compatible with your new updates operating system. This is because the app is built and designed to run on the current operating system, so when a new one comes out, the code doesn’t match it, leaving the software bugged.
Other examples of updating software and application is Adobe Dreamweaver. This is a piece of software that has been around for many years, receiving annual updates. These updates consist of changing small features to make the software more intuitive and flow smoother. However, despite the constant small updates, the last update was not small. Adobe released a new update which changed a mass amount of features, making the software unrecognisable to some of the long-time users. This made the software more up-to-date with the latest hardware and operating systems released.
Personalisation
Personalisation within app and games on mobile and PC is a key feature. Personalisation gives the user sense of control and power within the software, this makes them feel a part of it and therefore wanting to put more of their time into the product. An example of an application that makes use of personalisation is Facebooks Messenger application. After a few years of this app being released, there came a stream of updates. These updates included being able to change the colour of the message bubble, the entire theme of an individual person chat or a group chat. Change the default emoji. And also the ability to adjust users names who you message. All these small update features changed the entire perspective of the messaging platform. The updates made users feel more in control of their conversations, as everything they wanted was in the control of their hands.
It is important that developers keep up-to-date with the latest trends and what rises to popularity, as those are the features that can be added into mobile applications as well as desktop software. Being able to customise applications is a feature and privilege many people look key for within many pieces of applications.
Limitations
Range & Bandwidth
Having a low bandwidth can be end all for some people, this means that your speed of the internet is not that fast, and there are a few reasons why people have low bandwidth. The speed over someone’s internet can be determined by their location. Location can play a part as some ISPs do not provide their best services to all areas of a country. This therefore will leave certain parts with connection speeds half or even less than what users in a city would be receiving. As many of the top rated games on the market are fast paced, real time FPS’ this would require the user to have a high speed internet connection. If a player does not have this high connection, this could lead to latency within the game causing what would look like glitches. Computers games such as CS:GO or Over Watch would require a high speed connection. If the player doesn’t meet the bandwidth requirements, the player may struggle to play the game in real time, as they may be seconds behind or unable to play do to the latency.
Range also plays hand in hand with bandwidth. When using a smartphone the range can means a huge difference. It can be the difference between receiving 14Mbps to only getting 3 – 7Mbps. That can means a whole lot. This is to do with the range, and where you are located. Or what mobile career you are using. There are 4G Zones and 3G Zones. The fastest being the 4G areas as they reach a 14Mbps download speed and a theoretical speed of 300Mbps. Therefore Range & Bandwidth is a limitation when using certain applications.
Security Issues
Something that developers take very seriously is the risk of compromisation of their software this falls under security issues. When users download software and applications they normally wouldn’t think that there would be any issues relating to security. However, this is becoming more of a fear with the public. When users give their personal information over the internet, via website or a program, the last thing that user is thinking is that the application is going to get hacked. If a piece of software gets breached and all user data is leaked this is a very serious issue. These breaches can come in a few ways, such as logging directly into the software to gain access to the private information. Another way is by getting access, such as a back door to a database or software, these can be like cracking the software to get in.
Power Consumption
When downloading a mobile application, if it be a game or a social media app, one thing you don’t want to happen is that it uses a lot of your battery. This is far too common with many applications on the market as to date. Application such as Facebook have a large power consumption when downloaded unto a mobile device. And many high rendered games on the devices market store. This can because the game takes a lot of RAM to run and CPU/GPU usage. With all those hardware components running it can lead to a decrease in battery. Applications such as Facebook can use so much battery not because it is hard on the device to run, hardware wise, but as it runs in the background. Running in the background is self-explanatory, it refers to the application running when the app is not necessarily open on the device.
Potential health hazards
There are many health risks when playing mobile applications. One of the biggest ones are playing or looking at an application/game when driving. Over the past few months there was a surge of car accidents due to one specific reason, and this reason was, Pokémon Go. This game is a real time invisible monster catcher that uses your real location to catch digital creatures. Many people played this game while they were driving this meant that they could get better at the game as they were able to travel further, faster. Driving while playing games is a big health risk, not only to yourself but to other around you, in cars or pedestrians.
Limitations
Limitations can come in a few methods. When using a smartphone a limitation can be the restricted mobile data. This is mainly due to the carrier. Some mobile phone carriers, such as O2, do not produce a suffice amount of mobile data for their users. This can mean that customers are not receiving the 3G, but mainly 4G that they are paying for, if they are in certain parts of the country. When using a mobile phone and you have no accessible data this can restrict you to not access the internet. This could lead to applications such as Facebook not responding and being live. There are many issues when to comes to living in more rural areas of the country.
Compare & Contrast
The first mobile application I talked about was Fifa. Fifa is a very successful mobile game that can be played by anyone, however, there are games that compete against Fifa, trying to outrank it. Games such as PES. As both of these games can be played on mobile, are both football games, you may ask what the difference is, and why not the free game play instead. There is clear difference with many of the paid and free games no the mobile market. Firstly, graphics, Graphics are the one thing that many, many people look for in games, not if it runs well or how functional the game is, it’s the graphics. The graphics in Fifa are much better in comparison to PES. As well as the functionality of Fifa, it plays smoother, it is more reactive and easier controls. These are all feature that PES lacks. One of the biggest upsides to PES is the fact that it is a free. Because it is free this means that it attracts the attention of many users. The one function that both of these mobile games share is the fact that they are both a football game. The user will still be able to play football no matter what game they decide to use
Secondly, Snapchat is an applications used by roughly 100 million monthly users. One of Snapchats probably most recognised competitors would be an application known as Slingshot. Slingshot was made by Facebook to try and compete against Snapchat. This app did not take the world by storm, it withered away. This app was not a functional as Snapchat, didn’t have the clean and interactive user interface that everyone loves. However one thing that it did have going for it, was the fact that it was new. By the fact a new form of social media coming out attracts the attention on many which can lead to its popularity. Unfortunately the popularity didn’t last too long with slingshot. Snapchat still reigns for sharing photos and videos quickly to friends or others. This is because Snapchat release updates frequently updates the User interface, making the application smoother to run and adding more additional features such as texting privately with messages that delete themselves when exited. Both of these social media services allows user to share and send photos to each other, just in their own unique format.
My Third comparison is Dreamweaver to software such as notepad ++. There are big differences between these programs. One being, one costs hundreds of pounds and the other is free. Dreamweaver is a professional piece of software used by experts and professionals that is the reason that it costs so much. There are hundreds of features that Dreamweaver has that notepad ++ does not have. Features that Dreamweaver has the additions such as adding CSS as a different document and not adding it differently into the HTML code. Notepad ++ has the simplicity of just writing the code, but not too many features. Dreamweaver has the ability to publish your code to create a website, that maybe using FTP. On the other hand, Notepad++ does not have the functions to do such things. Both of these pieces of software are both able to write code though, so this is the biggest function they share.
The Forth application is Facebooks messenger. Messenger is the messaging app that changed the world. A rival to Facebook messenger would be Google Allo. Allo is a brand new messenger service that can be used anywhere within 3/4G areas or WiFi. Both of these app are customisable, however, Facebook Messenger would just be a bit more than Allo. Allo doesn’t have the audience that Messenger has. One thing that both of these apps have in common is the fact that they are both used to share and send messages.
Finally, Premiere pro, one of the most recognised desktop/mobile editing suites. The desktop software has many rivals that are trying to compete with it. Fin cut pro x is Premiere’s biggest competitor. These are both the best software editing suites on the market. Both of their software packages offers some of the latest features for video editing, however they still have their differences. Final Cut Pro X is known for its minimalism, as it is an Apple Product. This means that everything is presented easily and accessibly. FCP X uses soft smooth animations. FCPX offers better audio and video syncing option compared to Premiere Pro. However, Premiere Pro fives the user the ability to use and share their project with the other adobe software, such as After Effects, or Photoshop. This means that you can easily adjust a clip with the completely different software while not losing any features or productivity. One thing both of these software packages have in common is the fact that they can both download add-ons, this means that you user can download additional features for the software to make them more useful and productive. But overall, these software packages both do essentially the same job, which is, editing videos.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_4_games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_One_games
https://boostcompanies.com/mobile-apps/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth
http://www.4g.co.uk/how-fast-is-4g/
https://www.macprovideo.com/hub/final-cut/final-cut-pro-x-vs-adobe-premiere-pro-performance-test
References:
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/types-of-computer-programs