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Nilai Matakuliah MetPen

2011-03-20T12:03:00.008+07:00

Daftar Nilai
IT 330 - Metodologi Penelitian

Kelas K

Kelas L

Nama mahasiswa selalu tidak ditampilkan untuk kepentingan privasi.
Jika ada kesalahan harap SEGERA menghubungi dosen pengampu.
Terima Kasih.

Salam.

Nilai Matakuliah

2011-03-20T09:25:00.005+07:00

Pengumuman Matakuliah
IT 250 C - Algoritma Dan Struktur Data Lanjut

Daftar Kelompok Presentasi

1. Kompresi

Ragil Witcahyono             672010191
Hanif Sidiq P                    672010194
Baguz Dwi p                     672010230
Zulianto                             672010233
Daniel Cahyo K                672010251

2. Shortest Path

Tommy 672010187

Fidelis 672010153

Chistian 672010237

Indra Setiawan 672010041

Glendy 672010209

3. Kriptografi

Aji 672010132

Rizky Purnomo 672010024

Timotius 672010022

Darmanto 672010183

Eka Yuliana 672010227

4. Kompresi

Okta wariyanto                672010148
Jhon rinto tonapa             672010155
Samuel ruby m.t.n            672010257
Febri xaperius tarihoran    672010199
Jusia amanda ginting         672010289

5. Shortest Path

Alvian A. Tutupary      672010010
Bertel W.S. Ruata            672010188
Nikolas R. Werluka           672010202
Alviona Vriska                  672010246

6. Time Tabling

Agra Dwi Saputra 672010080

Bagus Aji 672010058

Iga Ayuningtyas 672010217

Retno Sari Sabdosih 672010079

Indriani Riski Yunita Sabintoe 672010087

7. Kriptografi

Mala Widiyanto 672010082

M.Roikhan 672010104

Fanny Ardhiawan 672010216

Fajar Silviana 672010273

Tika Marsiyanti 672010226

8. Graph

Ari Listiyaningsih (672010042)

Elizabeth Anggie Utamy Putri (672010066)

Aloysius Adhitya Adhinugraha (672010086)

Ika Handayani (672010129)

Yonathan Sona Pradana (672010212)

Jadwal Presentasi
1 : Shortest Path (Selasa, 19 Juli 2011)
2 : Graph Teori
3 : Time Tabling
4 : Kompresi
5 : Kriptografi

Salam.

Android

2010-12-21T09:37:00.000+07:00

Android is a mobile operating system initially developed by Android Inc. Android was bought by Google in 2005. Android is based upon a modified version of the Linux kernel. Google and other members of the Open Handset Alliance collaborated to develop and release Android to the world. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is tasked with the maintenance and further development of Android. Unit sales for Android OS smartphones ranked first among all smartphone OS handsets sold in the U.S. in the second and third quarters of 2010, with a third quarter market share of 43.6%.
Android has a large community of developers writing application programs ("apps") that extend the functionality of the devices. There are currently over 200,000 apps available for Android.Android Market is the online app store run by Google, though apps can be downloaded from third party sites (except on AT&T, which disallows this). Developers write in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries.

The unveiling of the Android distribution on the 5th of November 2007 was announced with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of 79 hardware, software, and telecom companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. Google released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free software and open source license.
The Android operating system software stack consists of Java applications running on a Java based object oriented application framework on top of Java core libraries running on a Dalvik virtual machine featuring JIT compilation. Libraries written in C include the surface manager, OpenCore media framework, SQLite relational database management system, OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics API, WebKit layout engine, SGL graphics engine, SSL, and Bionic libc. The Android operating system consists of 12 million lines of code including 3 million lines of XML, 2.8 million lines of C, 2.1 million lines of Java, and 1.75 million lines of C++.

History
Acquisition by Google
In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc., a small startup company based in Palo Alto, California, USA. Android's co-founders who went to work at Google included Andy Rubin (co-founder of Danger), Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire Communications, Inc.), Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (headed design and interface development at WebTV). At the time, little was known about the functions of Android, Inc. other than that they made software for mobile phones. This began rumors that Google was planning to enter the mobile phone market.
At Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel which they marketed to handset makers and carriers on the premise of providing a flexible, upgradable system. It was reported that Google had already lined up a series of hardware component and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation on their part. More speculation that Google's Android would be entering the mobile-phone market came in December 2006. Reports from the BBC and The Wall Street Journal noted that Google wanted its search and applications on mobile phones and it was working hard to deliver that. Print and online media outlets soon reported rumors that Google was developing a Google-branded handset. More speculation followed reporting that as Google was defining technical specifications, it was showing prototypes to cell phone manufacturers and network operators.
In September 2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony.

Open Handset Alliance
"Today's announcement is more ambitious than any single 'Google Phone' that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks. Our vision is that the powerful platform we're unveiling will power thousands of different phone models."
Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman/CEO
On the 5th of November 2007 the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of several companies which include Texas Instruments, Broadcom Corporation, Google, HTC, Intel, LG, Marvell Technology Group, Motorola, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile was unveiled with the goal to develop open standards for mobile devices. Along with the formation of the Open Handset Alliance, the OHA also unveiled their first product, Android, a mobile device platform built on the Linux kernel version 2.6.
On 9 December 2008, it was announced that 14 new members would be joining the Android Project, including PacketVideo, ARM Holdings, Atheros Communications, Asustek Computer Inc, Garmin Ltd, Softbank, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba Corp, and Vodafone Group Plc.

Licensing
With the exception of brief update periods, Android has been available under a free software / open source license since 21 October 2008. Google published the entire source code (including network and telephony stacks) under an Apache License.

iPhone

2010-12-20T09:31:00.000+07:00

The iPhone (pronounced /ˈaɪfoʊn/ EYE-fohn) is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was introduced on January 9, 2007.
An iPhone functions as a camera phone, including text messaging and visual voicemail, a portable media player, and an Internet client, with e-mail, web browsing, and Wi-Fi connectivity. The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard rather than a physical one. Third-party applications are available from the App Store, which launched in mid-2008 and now has well over 300,000 "apps" approved by Apple. These apps have diverse functionalities, including games, reference, GPS navigation, social networking, security and advertising for television shows, films, and celebrities.
There are four generations of iPhone models, and they were accompanied by four major releases of iOS (formerly iPhone OS). The original iPhone established design precedents like screen size and button placement that have persisted through all models. The iPhone 3G added 3G cellular network capabilities and A-GPS location. The iPhone 3GS added a compass, faster processor, and higher resolution camera, including video. The iPhone 4 has two cameras for FaceTime video calling and a higher-resolution display. It was released on June 24, 2010.

History and availability
Development of the iPhone began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs' direction that Apple engineers investigate touchscreens. Apple created the device during a secretive and unprecedented collaboration with AT&T Mobility—Cingular Wireless at the time—at an estimated development cost of US$150 million over thirty months. Apple rejected the "design by committee" approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house.
Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007 at Macworld 2007. Apple was required to file for operating permits with the FCC, but since such filings are made available to the public, the announcement came months before the iPhone had received approval. The iPhone went on sale in the United States on June 29, 2007, at 6:00 pm local time, while hundreds of customers lined up outside the stores nationwide. The original iPhone was made available in the UK, France, and Germany in November 2007, and Ireland and Austria in the spring of 2008.
On July 11, 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G in twenty-two countries, including the original six. Apple released the iPhone 3G in upwards of eighty countries and territories. Apple announced the iPhone 3GS on June 8, 2009, along with plans to release it later in June, July, and August, starting with the U.S., Canada and major European countries on June 19. Many would-be users objected to the iPhone's cost, and 40% of users have household incomes over US$100,000. In an attempt to gain a wider market, Apple retained the 8 GB iPhone 3G at a lower price point. When Apple introduced the iPhone 4, the 3GS became the less expensive model. Apple reduced the price several times since the iPhone's release in 2007, at which time an 8 GB iPhone sold for $599. An iPhone 3GS with the same capacity now costs $99. However, these numbers are misleading, since all iPhone units sold through AT&T require a two-year contract (costing several hundred dollars), and a SIM lock.
Apple sold 6.1 million original iPhone units over five quarters. The sales has been growing steadily thereafter, by the end of fiscal year 2010, a total of 73.5 million iPhones were sold. Sales in Q4 2008 surpassed temporarily those of RIM's BlackBerry sales of 5.2 million units, which made Apple briefly the third largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenue, after Nokia and Samsung. Approximately 6.4 million iPhones are active in the U.S. alone. While iPhone sales constitute a significant portion of Apple's revenue, some of this income is deferred.
The back of the original iPhone was made of aluminum with a black plastic accent. The iPhone 3G and 3GS feature a full plastic back to increase the strength of the GSM signal. The iPhone 3G was available in an 8 GB black model, or a black or white option for the 16 GB model. They both are now discontinued. The iPhone 3GS was available in both colors, regardless of storage capacity. The white model was discontinued in favor of a black 8 GB low-end model. The iPhone 4 has an aluminosilicate glass front and back with a stainless steel edge that serves as the antennae. It is available in black; a white version was announced, but has as of October 2010 not been released.
The iPhone has garnered positive reviews from critics like David Pogue and Walter Mossberg. The iPhone attracts users of all ages, and besides consumer use the iPhone has also been adopted for business purposes.

Windows Azure

2010-12-15T17:51:00.000+07:00

Windows Azure is Microsoft's Cloud Services Platform

Building out an infrastructure that supports your web service or application can be expensive, complicated and time consuming. Forecasting the highest possible demand. Building out the network to support your peak times. Getting the right servers in place at the right time, managing and maintaining the systems.

Or you could look to the Microsoft cloud. The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud–computing platform that lets you focus on solving business problems and addressing customer needs. No need to invest upfront on expensive infrastructure. Pay only for what you use, scale up when you need capacity and pull it back when you don’t. We handle all the patches and maintenance — all in a secure environment with over 99.9% uptime.

At PDC10 last month, we announced a host of enhancements for Windows Azure designed to make it easier for customers to run existing Windows applications on Windows Azure, enable more affordable platform access and improve the Windows Azure developer and IT Professional experience. Today, we’re happy to announce that several of these are either generally available or ready for you to try as a beta or Community Technology Preview (CTP). Below is a list of what’s now available, along with links to more information.

The following functionality is now generally available through the Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio and the new Windows Azure Management Portal:

Development of more complete applications using Windows Azure is now possible with the introduction of Elevated Privileges and Full IIS. Developers can now run a portion or all of their code in Web and Worker roles with elevated administrator privileges. The Web role now provides Full IIS functionality, which enables multiple IIS sites per Web role and the ability to install IIS modules.
Remote Desktop functionality enables customers to connect to a running instance of their application or service in order to monitor activity and troubleshoot common problems.
Windows Server 2008 R2 Roles: Windows Azure now supports Windows Server 2008 R2 in its Web, worker and VM roles. This new support enables you to take advantage of the full range of Windows Server 2008 R2 features such as IIS 7.5, AppLocker, and enhanced command-line and automated management using PowerShell Version 2.0.
Multiple Service Administrators: Windows Azure now supports multiple Windows Live IDs to have administrator privileges on the same Windows Azure account. The objective is to make it easy for a team to work on the same Windows Azure account while using their individual Windows Live IDs.
Better Developer and IT Professional Experience: The following enhancements are now available to help developers see and control how their applications are running in the cloud:
A completely redesigned Silverlight-based Windows Azure portal to ensure an improved and intuitive user experience
Access to new diagnostic information including the ability to click on a role to see role type, deployment time and last reboot time
A new sign-up process that dramatically reduces the number of steps needed to sign up for Windows Azure.
New scenario based Windows Azure Platform forums to help answer questions and share knowledge more efficiently.
We are releasing the following functionality is now available as beta:

Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role: Support for more types of new and existing Windows applications will soon be available with the introduction of the Virtual Machine (VM) role. Customers can move more existing applications to Windows Azure, reducing the need to make costly code or deployment changes.
Extra Small Windows Azure Instance, which is priced at $0.05 per compute hour, provides developers with a cost-effective training and development environment. Developers can also use the Extra Small instance to prototype cloud solutions at a lower cost.
Developers and IT Professionals can sign up for either of the betas above via the Windows Azure Management Portal.

Windows Azure Marketplace is an online marketplace for you to share, buy and sell building block components, premium data sets, training and services needed to build Windows Azure platform applications. The first section in the Windows Azure Marketplace, DataMarket, became commercially available at PDC 10. Today, we’re launching a beta of the application section of the Windows Azure Marketplace with 40 unique partners and over 50 unique applications and services.

Cloud Computing Deployment Models

2010-12-13T16:18:00.000+07:00

Public cloud
Public cloud or external cloud describes cloud computing in the traditional main stream sense, whereby resources are dynamically provisioned on a fine-grained, self-service basis over the Internet, via web applications/web services, from an off-site third-party provider who bills on a fine-grained utility computing basis.

Community cloud
A community cloud may be established where several organizations have similar requirements and seek to share infrastructure so as to realize some of the benefits of cloud computing. With the costs spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a single tenant) this option is more expensive but may offer a higher level of privacy, security and/or policy compliance. Examples of community cloud include Google's "Gov Cloud".

Hybrid cloud
There is some confusion over the term "Hybrid" when applied to the cloud - a standard definition of the term "Hybrid Cloud" has not yet emerged. The term "Hybrid Cloud" has been used to mean either two separate clouds joined together (public, private, internal or external), or a combination of virtualized cloud server instances used together with real physical hardware. The most correct definition of the term "Hybrid Cloud" is probably the use of physical hardware and virtualized cloud server instances together to provide a single common service. Two clouds that have been joined together are more correctly called a "combined cloud".
A combined cloud environment consisting of multiple internal and/or external providers "will be typical for most enterprises". By integrating multiple cloud services users may be able to ease the transition to public cloud services while avoiding issues such as PCI compliance.
Another perspective on deploying a web application in the cloud is using Hybrid Web Hosting, where the hosting infrastructure is a mix between Cloud Hosting and Managed dedicated servers - this is most commonly achieved as part of a web cluster in which some of the nodes are running on real physical hardware and some are running on cloud server instances.
A hybrid storage cloud uses a combination of public and private storage clouds. Hybrid storage clouds are often useful for archiving and backup functions, allowing local data to be replicated to a public cloud.

Private cloud
Douglas Parkhill first described the concept of a "Private Computer Utility" in his 1966 book The Challenge of the Computer Utility. The idea was based upon direct comparison with other industries (e.g. the electricity industry) and the extensive use of hybrid supply models to balance and mitigate risks.
Private cloud and internal cloud have been described as neologisms, however the concepts themselves pre-date the term cloud by 40 years. Even within modern utility industries, hybrid models still exist despite the formation of reasonably well-functioning markets and the ability to combine multiple providers.
Some vendors have used the terms to describe offerings that emulate cloud computing on private networks. These (typically virtualization automation) products offer the ability to host applications or virtual machines in a company's own set of hosts. These provide the benefits of utility computing -shared hardware costs, the ability to recover from failure, and the ability to scale up or down depending upon demand.
Private clouds have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and manage them" and thus do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less hands-on management, essentially " the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept".

Cloud Computing

2010-12-12T16:13:00.000+07:00

Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, as with the electricity grid. Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, Service-oriented architecture and utility computing. Details are abstracted from consumers, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them. Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on the Internet, and it typically involves over-the-Internet provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources. It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer. NIST provides a somewhat more objective and specific definition here. The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software like a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.

Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers, and typically include service level agreements (SLAs). The major cloud service providers include Amazon, Rackspace Cloud, Salesforce, Microsoft and Google. Some of the larger IT firms that are actively involved in cloud computing are Fujitsu, Dell, Red Hat, Hewlett Packard, IBM, VMware and NetApp.

Comparisons
Cloud computing derives characteristics from, but should not be confused with:

Autonomic computing — "computer systems capable of self-management"
Client–server model – client–server computing refers broadly to any distributed application that distinguishes between service providers (servers) and service requesters (clients)
Grid computing — "a form of distributed computing and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks"
Mainframe computer — powerful computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data-processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.
Utility computing — the "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility, such as electricity";
Peer-to-peer – distributed architecture without the need for central coordination, with participants being at the same time both suppliers and consumers of resources (in contrast to the traditional client–server model)
Service-oriented computing – Cloud computing provides services related to computing while, in a reciprocal manner, service-oriented computing consists of the computing techniques that operate on software-as-a-service.

Characteristics
The fundamental concept of cloud computing is that the computing is "in the cloud" i.e. that the processing (and the related data) is not in a specified, known or the same place(s). This is in opposition to where the processing takes place in one or more specific servers that are known. All the other concepts mentioned are supplementary or complementary to this concept.
Generally, cloud computing customers do not own the physical infrastructure, instead avoiding capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use. Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed, whereas others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing "perishable and intangible" computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not unnecessarily left idle (which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development). A side-effect of this approach is that overall computer usage rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits. In addition, "increased high-speed bandwidth" makes it possible to receive the same. The cloud is becoming increasingly associated with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as in many cases they cannot justify or afford the large capital expenditure of traditional IT. SMEs also typically have less existing infrastructure, less bureaucracy, more flexibility, and smaller capital budgets for purchasing in-house technology. Similarly, SMEs in emerging markets are typically unburdened by established legacy infrastructures, thus reducing the complexity of deploying cloud solutions.

Economics
Cloud computing users avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use. Consumption is usually billed on a utility (resources consumed, like electricity) or subscription (time-based, like a newspaper) basis with little or no upfront cost. Other benefits of this approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overhead, and immediate access to a broad range of applications. In general, users can terminate the contract at any time (thereby avoiding return on investment risk and uncertainty), and the services are often covered by service level agreements (SLAs) with financial penalties.
According to Nicholas Carr, the strategic importance of information technology is diminishing as it becomes standardized and less expensive. He argues that the cloud computing paradigm shift is similar to the displacement of frozen water trade by electricity generators early in the 20th century.
Although companies might be able to save on upfront capital expenditures, they might not save much and might actually pay more for operating expenses. In situations where the capital expense would be relatively small, or where the organization has more flexibility in their capital budget than their operating budget, the cloud model might not make great fiscal sense. Other factors having an impact on the scale of potential cost savings include the efficiency of a company's data center as compared to the cloud vendor's, the company's existing operating costs, the level of adoption of cloud computing, and the type of functionality being hosted in the cloud.
Among the items that some cloud hosts charge for are instances (often with extra charges for high-memory or high-CPU instances), data transfer in and out, storage (measured by the GB-month), I/O requests, PUT requests and GET requests, IP addresses, and load balancing. In some cases, users can bid on instances, with pricing dependent on demand for available instances.

Architecture

Cloud computing sample architecture

Cloud architecture, the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of cloud computing, typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over application programming interfaces, usually web services. This resembles the Unix philosophy of having multiple programs each doing one thing well and working together over universal interfaces. Complexity is controlled and the resulting systems are more manageable than their monolithic counterparts.
The two most significant components of cloud computing architecture are known as the front end and the back end. The front end is the part seen by the client, i.e. the computer user. This includes the client’s network (or computer) and the applications used to access the cloud via a user interface such as a web browser. The back end of the cloud computing architecture is the ‘cloud’ itself, comprising various computers, servers and data storage devices.

History
The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to the 1960s, when John McCarthy opined that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility." Almost all the modern-day characteristics of cloud computing (elastic provision, provided as a utility, online, illusion of infinite supply), the comparison to the electricity industry and the use of public, private, government and community forms was thoroughly explored in Douglas Parkhill's 1966 book, The Challenge of the Computer Utility.
The actual term "cloud" borrows from telephony in that telecommunications companies, who until the 1990s primarily offered dedicated point-to-point data circuits, began offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) services with comparable quality of service but at a much lower cost. By switching traffic to balance utilization as they saw fit, they were able to utilize their overall network bandwidth more effectively. The cloud symbol was used to denote the demarcation point between that which was the responsibility of the provider from that of the user. Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the network infrastructure. The first scholarly use of the term “cloud computing” was in a 1997 lecture by Ramnath Chellappa.
Amazon played a key role in the development of cloud computing by modernizing their data centers after the dot-com bubble, which, like most computer networks, were using as little as 10% of their capacity at any one time, just to leave room for occasional spikes. Having found that the new cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements whereby small, fast-moving "two-pizza teams" could add new features faster and more easily, Amazon initiated a new product development effort to provide cloud computing to external customers, and launched Amazon Web Service (AWS) on a utility computing basis in 2006.
In 2007, Google, IBM and a number of universities embarked on a large scale cloud computing research project. In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first open source AWS API compatible platform for deploying private clouds. By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them" and observed that "organisations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" so that the "projected shift to cloud computing ... will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions in other areas."

Kinect History

2010-12-05T17:53:00.000+07:00

Kinect was first announced on June 1, 2009 at E3 2009 under the code name "Project Natal". Following in Microsoft's tradition of using cities as code names, "Project Natal" was named after the Brazilian city of Natal as a tribute to the country by Microsoft director Alex Kipman, who incubated the project, and who is from Brazil. The name Natal was also chosen because the word natal means "of or relating to birth", reflecting Microsoft's view of the project as "the birth of the next generation of home entertainment".
Four demos were shown to showcase Kinect when it was revealed at Microsoft's E3 2009 Media Briefing: Ricochet, Paint Party, Milo & Kate, and "Mega Ring Ring, Mega Ring Ring". A demo based on Burnout Paradise was also shown outside of Microsoft's media briefing. The skeletal mapping technology shown at E3 2009 was capable of simultaneously tracking four people, with a feature extraction of 48 skeletal points on a human body at 30 Hz.
It was rumored that the launch of Project Natal would be accompanied with the release of a new Xbox 360 console (as either a new retail configuration, a significant design revision and/or a modest hardware upgrade). Microsoft dismissed the reports in public, and repeatedly emphasized that Project Natal would be fully compatible with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft indicated that the company considers it to be a significant initiative, as fundamental to the Xbox brand as Xbox Live, and with a launch akin to that of a new Xbox console platform. Kinect was even referred to as a "new Xbox" by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at a speech for the Executives' Club of Chicago. When asked if the introduction will extend the time before the next-generation console platform is launched (historically about 5 years between platforms), Microsoft corporate vice president Shane Kim reaffirmed that the company believes that the life cycle of the Xbox 360 will last through 2015 (10 years).

During Kinect's development, project team members experimentally adapted numerous games to Kinect-based control schemes to help evaluate usability. Among these games were Beautiful Katamari and Space Invaders Extreme, which were demonstrated at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2009. According to creative director Kudo Tsunoda, adding Kinect-based control to pre-existing games would involve significant code alterations, making it unlikely for Kinect features to be added through software updates.
Although the sensor unit was originally planned to contain a microprocessor that would perform operations such as the system's skeletal mapping, it was revealed in January 2010 that the sensor would no longer feature a dedicated processor. Instead processing would be handled by one of the processor cores of the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU. According to Alex Kipman, the Kinect system consumes about 10-15% of the Xbox 360's computing resources. However, in November, Alex Kipman made a statement that "the new motion control tech now only uses a single-digit percentage of the Xbox 360's processing power, down from the previously stated ten to 15 percent." A number of observers commented that the computational load required for Kinect makes the addition of Kinect functionality to pre-existing games through software updates even less likely, with Kinect-specific concepts instead likely to be the focus for developers using the platform.
On March 25, Microsoft sent out a save the date flier for an event called the "World Premiere 'Project Natal' for the Xbox 360 Experience" at E3 2010. The event took place on the evening of Sunday, June 13, 2010 at the Galen Center. The event featured a performance by Cirque du Soleil. It was announced that the system would officially be called Kinect, a portmanteau of the words "kinetic" and "connect", which describe key aspects of the initiative. Microsoft also announced that the North American launch date for Kinect will be November 4, 2010. Despite previous statements dismissing speculation of a new Xbox 360 to accompany the launch of new control system, Microsoft announced at E3 2010 that it was introducing a redesigned Xbox 360, complete with a Kinect-ready connector port. In addition, on July 20, 2010, Microsoft announced a Kinect bundle with a redesigned Xbox 360, to be available with the Kinect launch.

Launch
Microsoft has an advertising budget of US$500 million for the launch of Kinect, a larger sum than the investment at launch of the Xbox console. Plans involve featuring Kinect on the YouTube homepage, advertisements on Disney's and Nickelodeon's digital publications as well as during Dancing with the Stars and Glee. Print ads are to be published in People Magazine and InStyle, while brands such as Pepsi, Kellogg's and Burger King will also carry Kinect advertisements. A major Kinect event was also organized in Times Square, where Kinect was promoted via the many billboards.
On October 19, before the Kinect launch, Microsoft advertised Kinect at The Oprah Winfrey Show by giving free Xbox 360s and Kinect sensors to the people who were in the audience. Later they also gave away Kinect bundles with Xbox 360's to the audiences of The Ellen Show and Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
On October 23, Microsoft held a pre-launch party for Kinect in Beverly Hills. The party was hosted by Ashley Tisdale and was attended by soccer star David Beckham and his three sons, Cruz, Brooklyn, and Romeo. Guests were treated to sessions with Dance Central and Kinect Adventures, followed by Tisdale having a Kinect voice chat with Nick Cannon. On November 1, 2010, Burger King started giving away a free Kinect bundle "every 15 minutes". The contest ended on November 28, 2010.

Kinect

2010-12-05T17:47:00.001+07:00

Kinect for Xbox 360, or simply Kinect (originally known by the code name Project Natal), is a "controller-free gaming and entertainment experience" by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game platform, and may later be supported by PCs via Windows 8. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 console, it enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller, through a natural user interface using gestures, spoken commands, or presented objects and images. The project is aimed at broadening the Xbox 360's audience beyond its typical gamer base. Kinect competes with the Wii Remote with Wii MotionPlus and PlayStation Move & PlayStation Eye motion control systems for the Wii and PlayStation 3 home consoles, respectively.
Kinect was launched in North America on November 4, 2010, in Europe on November 10, 2010, in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore on November 18, 2010 and in Japan on November 20, 2010. Purchase options for the sensor peripheral include a bundle with the game Kinect Adventures and console bundles with either a 4 GB or 250 GB Xbox 360 console and Kinect Adventures.
As of November 29, 2010, 2.5 million Kinect sensors have been sold.

Technology
Kinect is based on software technology developed internally by Rare, a subsidiary of Microsoft Game Studios owned by Microsoft and range camera technology by Israeli developer PrimeSense, which interprets 3D scene information from a continuously-projected infrared structured light.
The Kinect sensor is a horizontal bar connected to a small base with a motorized pivot, and is designed to be positioned lengthwise above or below the video display. The device features an "RGB camera, depth sensor and multi-array microphone running proprietary software", which provides full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition and voice recognition capabilities. Voice recognition capabilities will be available in Japan, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States at launch, but have been postponed until spring 2011 in mainland Europe. The Kinect sensor's microphone array enables the Xbox 360 to conduct acoustic source localization and ambient noise suppression, allowing for things such as headset-free party chat over Xbox Live.
The depth sensor consists of an infrared laser projector combined with a monochrome CMOS sensor, and allows the Kinect sensor to see in 3D under any ambient light conditions. The sensing range of the depth sensor is adjustable, with the Kinect software capable of automatically calibrating the sensor based on gameplay and the player's physical environment, such as the presence of furniture.
Described by Microsoft personnel as the primary innovation of Kinect, the software technology enables advanced gesture recognition, facial recognition, and voice recognition. According to information supplied to retailers, the Kinect is capable of simultaneously tracking up to six people, including two active players for motion analysis with a feature extraction of 20 joints per player.
Through reverse engineering efforts, it has been determined that the Kinect sensor outputs video at a frame rate of 30 Hz, with the RGB video stream at 8-bit VGA resolution (640 × 480 pixels) with a Bayer color filter, and the monochrome video stream used for depth sensing at 11-bit VGA resolution (640 × 480 pixels with 2,048 levels of sensitivity). The Kinect sensor has a practical ranging limit of 1.2–3.5 metres (3.9–11 ft) distance when used with the Xbox software. The area required to play Kinect is roughly around a 6m² area, although the sensor can maintain tracking through an extended range of approximately 0.7–6 metres (2.3–20 ft). The sensor has an angular field of view of 57° horizontally and a 43° vertically, while the motorized pivot is capable of tilting the sensor as much as 27° either up or down. The microphone array features four microphone capsules, and operates with each channel processing 16-bit audio at a sampling rate of 16 kHz.
Because the Kinect sensor's motorized tilt mechanism requires more power than can be supplied via the Xbox 360's USB ports, the Kinect sensor features a proprietary connector combining USB communication with additional power. Redesigned "Xbox 360 S" models include a special AUX port for accommodating the connector, while older models require a special power supply cable (included with the sensor) which splits the connection into separate USB and power connections; power is supplied from the mains by way of an AC adapter.

HTML5 video

2010-12-03T16:35:00.000+07:00

HTML5 video is an element introduced in the HTML5 draft specification for the purpose of playing videos or movies[1], partially replacing the object element.
Adobe Flash Player is widely used to embed video on web sites such as YouTube, since many web browsers have Adobe's Flash Player pre-installed (with exceptions such as the browsers on the Apple iPhone and iPad and on Android 2.1 or less). HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video online, but has been hampered by lack of agreement as to which video formats should be supported in the video tag.

Supported video formats
The current HTML5 draft specification does not specify which video formats browsers should support in the video tag. User agents are free to support any video formats they feel are appropriate.

Default video format debate
Main article: Use of Ogg formats in HTML5
It is desirable to specify at least one video format which all user agents (browsers) should support. The ideal format should:
Have good compression, good image quality, and low decode processor use.
Be royalty-free.
In addition to software decoders, a hardware video decoder should exist for the format, as many embedded processors do not have the performance to decode video.
Initially, Ogg Theora was the recommended standard video format in HTML5, because it was not affected by any known patents. But on December 10, 2007, the HTML5 specification was updated, replacing the reference to concrete formats:
User agents should support Theora video and Vorbis audio, as well as the Ogg container format.
with a placeholder:
It would be helpful for interoperability if all browsers could support the same codecs. However, there are no known codecs that satisfy all the current players: we need a codec that is known to not require per-unit or per-distributor licensing, that is compatible with the open source development model, that is of sufficient quality as to be usable, and that is not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies. This is an ongoing issue and this section will be updated once more information is available.
Although Theora is not affected by known patents, companies such as Apple and (reportedly) Nokia are concerned about unknown patents that might affect it, whose owners might be waiting for a corporation with extensive financial resources to use the format before suing. Formats like H.264 might also be subject to unknown patents in principle, but they have been deployed much more widely and so it is presumed that any patent-holders would have already sued someone. Apple has also opposed requiring Ogg format support in the HTML standard (even as a "should" requirement) on the grounds that some devices might support other formats much more easily, and that HTML has historically not required particular formats for anything.
Some web developers criticized the removal of the Ogg formats from the specification. A follow-up discussion also occurred on the W3C questions and answers blog.
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is widely used, and has good speed, compression, hardware decoders, and video quality, but is covered by patents. Except in particular cases, users of H.264 have to pay licensing fees to the MPEG LA, a group of patent-holders including Microsoft and Apple. As a result, it has not been considered as a required default codec.
Google's acquisition of On2 resulted in the WebM Project, a royalty-free, open source release of VP8, in a Matroska container with Vorbis audio. It is supported by Google Chrome, Opera Browser and Mozilla Firefox.

Spike Video Game Awards Previous Winners

2010-12-02T13:58:00.000+07:00

2009 Awards
The 2009 VGAs were held on December 12, 2009 at the Nokia Event Deck in Los Angeles, California[5] and were the first VGAs to not have an overall host.[6] It opened with a trailer announcing the sequel to Batman Arkham Asylum. There were other exclusive looks at Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, UFC 2010 Undisputed, Halo: Reach, and others. Samuel L. Jackson previewed LucasArts newest upcoming Star Wars game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. In addition, Green Day: Rock Band was announced and accompanied with a trailer.
With appearances from Stevie Wonder, MTV Jersey Shore cast, Green Day and Jack Black, live music performances at the 2009 awards included Snoop Dogg and The Bravery.
Game of the Year: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Studio of the Year: Rocksteady Studios
Best Independent Game Fueled by Dew: Flower
Best Xbox 360 Game: Left 4 Dead 2
Best PS3 Game: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Best Wii Game: New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Best PC Game: Dragon Age: Origins
Best Handheld Game: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Best Shooter: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Best Action Adventure Game: Assassin's Creed II
Best RPG: Dragon Age: Origins
Best Multiplayer Game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Best Fighting Game: Street Fighter IV
Best Individual Sports Game: UFC 2009 Undisputed
Best Team Sports Game: FIFA 10
Best Driving Game: Forza Motorsport 3
Best Music Game: The Beatles: Rock Band
Best Soundtrack: DJ Hero
Best Original Score: Halo 3: ODST
Best Graphics: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Best Game Based On A Movie/TV Show: South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play!
Best Performance By A Human Female: Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Best Performance By A Human Male: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Best Cast: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Best Voice: Jack Black for the voice of Eddie Riggs in Brütal Legend
Best Downloadable Game: Shadow Complex
Best DLC: Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony
Most Anticipated Game of 2010: God of War III

2008 Awards
The 2008 VGAs were held on December 14, 2008. The show, hosted by Jack Black, featured ten previews of upcoming games. Musical performances included 50 Cent, The All-American Rejects, Weezer, and LL Cool J.
Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto IV
Studio of the Year: Media Molecule
Gamer God: Will Wright, creator of The Sims and Spore
Best Shooter: Gears of War 2
Best RPG: Fallout 3
Best Individual Sports Game: Shaun White Snowboarding
Best Handheld Game: Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Best Graphics: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show: Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
Best Music Game: Rock Band 2
Best Driving Game: Burnout Paradise
Best Action Adventure Game: Grand Theft Auto IV
Best Soundtrack: Rock Band 2
Best Xbox 360 Game: Gears of War 2
Best Wii Game: Boom Blox
Best PS3 Game: LittleBigPlanet
Best PC Game: Left 4 Dead
Best Original Score: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Best Multiplayer Game: Left 4 Dead
Best Independent game: World of Goo
Best Fighting Game: Soulcalibur IV
Best Male Voice: Michael Hollick as Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV
Best Female Voice: Debi Mae West as Meryl Silverburgh in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Big Name in the Game Male: Kiefer Sutherland as Sgt. Roebuck in Call of Duty: World at War
Big Name in the Game Female: Jenny McCarthy as Special Agent Tanya Adams in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Best Team Sports Game: NHL 09

2007 Awards
The 2007 VGAs aired December 9, 2007. Hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, the winners were announced ahead of the event which was held at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. The show featured performances by Foo Fighters, Kid Rock, and exclusive world videogame premieres of Borderlands, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and TNA iMPACT!
Game of the Year: BioShock
Studio of the Year: Harmonix
Best Shooter: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Best RPG: Mass Effect
Best Military Game: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Best Individual Sports Game: Skate
Best Handheld Game: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Best Graphics: Crysis
Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show: The Simpsons Game
Best Rhythm Game: Rock Band
Best Driving Game: Colin McRae: Dirt
Best Action Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Best Team Sports Game: Madden NFL 08
Best Soundtrack: Rock Band
Breakthrough Technology: The Orange Box/Portal
Best Xbox 360 Game: BioShock
Best Wii Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Best PS3 Game: Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Best PC Game: The Orange Box
Best Original Score: BioShock
Best Multiplayer Game: Halo 3
Most Addictive Video Game: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

2006 Awards
The 2006 VGAs featured musical performances by Tenacious D and AFI and show appearances by 50 Cent, Eva Mendes, Sarah Silverman, Seth Green, Masi Oka, Hayden Panettiere, Brandon Routh, Rachael Leigh Cook, Tony Hawk, Michael Irvin, Method Man, Maria Menounos, Tyrese, Xzibit, James Gandolfini, Kurt Angle, among others. In character as Stewie Griffin and Tom Tucker from Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane served as the voice of the VGAs. The awards aired December 13, 2006 and were hosted by Samuel L. Jackson.
Game of the Year: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Studio of the Year: Epic Games
Cyber Vixen of the Year: Alyx Vance - Half-Life 2: Episode One
Best Individual Sports Game: Tony Hawk's Project 8
Best Team Sports Game: NBA 2K7
Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show: Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Best Performance by a Human Male:Patrick Stewart in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Best Supporting Male Performance: James Gandolfini in The Sopranos: Road to Respect
Best Performance by a Human Female: Vida Guerra in Scarface: The World Is Yours
Best Supporting Female Performance: Rachael Leigh Cook in Kingdom Hearts II
Best Cast: Family Guy Video Game!
Best Song: "Lights and Sounds" by Yellowcard in Burnout Revenge
Best Soundtrack: Guitar Hero II
Best Original Score: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Best Driving Game Award: Burnout Revenge
Most Addictive Game: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Best Fighting Game: Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Best Action Game: Dead Rising
Best Shooter: Gears of War
Best Military Game: Company of Heroes
Best Graphics: Gears of War
Best Handheld Game: New Super Mario Bros.
Best Multiplayer Game: Gears of War
Breakthrough Technology: Wii
Best RPG: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Best PC Game: Company of Heroes
Best Wireless Game: SWAT Force
Critic's Choice (released after 11/15/2006 and before 12/31/2006) - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Gamer's Choice-Breakthrough Performance: Rosario Dawson in Marc Eckō's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure
Gamer's Choice-Character of the Year: Jack Sparrow portrayed by Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow

2005 Awards
The 2005 VGAs were held December 10, 2005 at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. This was the first year that Samuel L. Jackson hosted the VGAs.
Game of the Year: Resident Evil 4
Action Game of the Year: God of War
Best Individual Sports Game: Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
Best Team Sports Game: Madden NFL 06
Cyber Vixen of the Year: Maria Menounos as Eva in From Russia with Love
Best Game Based on a Movie: Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Best Performance by a Human Male: Jack Black in Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Best Supporting Male Performance: Christopher Walken in True Crime: New York City
Best Performance by a Human Female: Charlize Theron in Æon Flux
Best Supporting Female Performance: Traci Lords in True Crime: New York City
Best Action Game: Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Best Original Song: "Maybe We Crazy" by 50 Cent in 50 Cent: Bulletproof
Best Soundtrack: Guitar Hero
Best Original Score: We Love Katamari
Designer of the Year: David Jaffe for God of War
Pontiac Best Driving Game Award (Viewer's Choice): Burnout Revenge
Most Addictive Game Fueled by Mountain Dew: World of Warcraft
Best Fighting Game: Fight Night Round 2
Best First-Person Action: F.E.A.R.
Best Military Game: Call of Duty 2
Best Graphics: Resident Evil 4
Best Handheld Game: Lumines
Best Multiplayer Game: World of Warcraft
Best Breakthrough Technology: PSP
Best RPG: World of Warcraft
Best PC Game: World of Warcraft
Best Wireless Game: Marc Eckō's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

2004 Awards
The 2004 VGAs were held in Santa Monica, California at the Barker Hangar. They were hosted by Snoop Dogg. The event featured musical performances including Sum 41, Ludacris and a special live performance by Snoop Dogg and the remaining members of The Doors performing "Riders on the Storm".
Game of the Year: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Best Game Based on a Movie: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
Best Performance by a Human Female: Brooke Burke in Need for Speed: Underground 2
Best Performance by a Human Male: Samuel L. Jackson in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Cyber Vixen of the Year: BloodRayne in BloodRayne 2
Best Driving Game: Burnout 3: Takedown
Best Sports Game: Madden NFL 2005
Best Fighting Game: Mortal Kombat: Deception
Best Action Game: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Best First-Person Action: Halo 2
Best Song in a Video Game: "American Idiot" by Green Day in Madden NFL 2005
Best Soundtrack: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Designer of the Year: Jason Jones and Bungie Studios for Halo 2
Best Military Game: Call of Duty: Finest Hour
Best PC Game: Half-Life 2
Best Wireless Game: Might and Magic
Best Graphics: Half-Life 2
Best New Technology: Nintendo DS
Best Handheld: Metroid: Zero Mission
Best Massively Multiplayer Game: City of Heroes
Best RPG: Fable
Most Addictive Game (viewer's choice): Burnout 3: Takedown
Best Gaming Publication (fan favorite): Game Informer
Best Gaming Web Site (fan favorite): GameSpot

2003 Awards
The 2003 VGAs were the first VGAs to be hosted by Spike TV. They were held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 2, 2003 and aired on December 4, 2003. The event was hosted by David Spade and featured appearances by Lil' Kim, Jaime Pressly, DMX, P.O.D., Orlando Jones, and Cedric the Entertainer. The event also featured a WWE tag team wrestling match featuring the superstars Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Trish Stratus, and Victoria.
Game of the Year: Madden NFL 2004
Best Sports Game: Madden NFL 2004
Best Action Game: True Crime: Streets of LA
Best Animation: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball
Best Game Based on a Movie: Enter the Matrix
Pontiac/GTO Driving Award: NASCAR Thunder 2004
Best Music: Def Jam Vendetta
Best Performance by a Human: Ray Liotta in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Most Anticipated: Halo 2
Most Addictive: Soulcalibur II
Best PC Game: Halo: Combat Evolved
Best Online Game: Final Fantasy XI
Best Handheld Game: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Best Fighting Game: WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain
Best First Person Action: Call of Duty
Best Fantasy Game: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Spike Video Game Awards 2010

2010-12-02T09:16:00.000+07:00

The Spike Video Game Awards (VGA) is an award show hosted by Spike TV that recognizes the best computer and video games of the year. Beginning in 2003, the Spike TV Video Game Awards garnered much attention, since video game awards were not common prior to its introduction. The VGAs feature live music performances and appearances by popular performers in music, movies, and television. Additionally, preview trailers for upcoming games are highlighted. The show is produced by GameTrailers TV's Geoff Keighley. The event has been held at various locations in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California as well as Las Vegas, Nevada.
The program has encountered criticism for its selection of both nominees and winners by the gaming community. Bias for specific platforms and products has been claimed by critics. Additionally, winners are selected via online polling leading to critics calling the results merely a "popularity contest." Many consider the VGAs to be a gimmick awards show, whereas other awards given out by the G4 network, IGN, and other media outlets are considered to be more accurate.

2010 Awards
The 2010 VGAs will be held Saturday, December 11, 2010 in Los Angeles, CA at the L.A. Convention Center.
On Tuesday, 16 November 2010, it was revealed that two new titles would be revealed ahead of their debut at the 2010 Awards the following day, 17 November 2010. BioWare will announce a new title at the 2010 Awards.[citation needed] On November 21, 2010, Sony Russia tweeted this announcement to be Mass Effect 3. Batman: Arkham City will have it's gameplay debut at the 2010 awards along with an unknown game announcement by Activision. Lucasarts is rumored to announce Star Wars Battlefront 3, but it seems unlikely.

Nominees:
Game of the Year:
Call of Duty: Black Ops, God of War III, Halo: Reach, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption

Studio of the Year:
Bioware Mass Effect 2
Blizzard Entertainment, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Bungie Studios, Halo: Reach
Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption

Best Xbox 360 Game:
Alan Wake, Fable III, Halo: Reach, Mass Effect 2

Best PS3 Game:
God of War III, Heavy Rain, ModNation Racers, Red Dead Redemption

Best Wii Game:
Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Metroid: Other M, Super Mario Galaxy 2

Best PC Game:
Fallout: New Vegas, Mass Effect 2, Sid Meier's Civilization V, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

Best Handheld Game:
God of War: Ghost of Sparta, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Super Scribblenauts

Best Shooter:
Battlefield: Bad Company 2, BioShock 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo: Reach

Best Action Adventure Game:
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, God of War III, Red Dead Redemption, Super Mario Galaxy 2

Best RPG:
Fable III, Fallout: New Vegas, Final Fantasy XIII, Mass Effect 2

Best Multi-player:
Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Halo: Reach, Call of Duty: Black Ops, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

Best Individual Sports Game:
EA Sports MMA, Shaun White Skateboarding, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, UFC Undisputed 2010

Best Team Sports Game:
FIFA 11, Madden NFL 11, NBA 2K11, MLB 10: The Show

Best Driving Game:
Blur, ModNation Racers, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Split/Second

Best Music Game:
Dance Central, DJ Hero 2, Def Jam Rapstar, Rock Band 3

Best Soundtrack:
Def Jam Rapstar, DJ Hero 2, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, Rock Band 3

Best Song in a Game:
"Basket Case" by Green Day, Green Day: Rock Band
"Black Rain" by Soundgarden, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock
"Far Away" by José González, Red Dead Redemption
"GoldenEye" by Nicole Scherzinger, GoldenEye 007 (2010)
"Won't Back Down" by Eminem, Call of Duty: Black Ops
"Replay/Rude Boy Mashup" by Iyaz/Rihanna, DJ Hero 2

Best Original Score:
God of War III, Halo: Reach, Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption

Best Graphics:
God of War III, Heavy Rain, Kirby's Epic Yarn, Red Dead Redemption

Best Adapted Video Game:
Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, Transformers: War for Cybertron

Best Performance by a Human Male:
Daniel Craig as James Bond, James Bond 007: Blood Stone
Gary Oldman as Sergeant Reznov, Call of Duty: Black Ops
John Cleese as Jasper, Fable III
Martin Sheen as The Illusive Man, Mass Effect 2
Nathan Fillion as Sergeant Edward Buck, Halo: Reach
Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker/Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions
Rob Wiethoff as John Marston, Red Dead Redemption
Sam Worthington as Alex Mason, Call of Duty: Black Ops

Best Performance by a Human Female:
Dame Judi Dench as M, James Bond 007: Blood Stone
Danica Patrick as Herself, Blur
Emmanuelle Chriqui as The Numbers Lady, Call of Duty: Black Ops
Felicia Day as Veronica Santangelo, Fallout: New Vegas
Jennifer Hale as Commander Shepard (female version), Mass Effect 2
Kristen Bell as Lucy Stillman, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Tricia Helfer as Sarah Kerrigan, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Yvonne Strahovski as Miranda Lawson, Mass Effect 2

Best Downloadable Game:
Costume Quest, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Monday Night Combat, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game

Best DLC:
BioShock 2: Minerva's Den
Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker
Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

Best Independent Game:
Joe Danger, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom

Most Anticipated Game:
Batman: Arkham City, BioShock: Infinite, Gears of War 3, Portal 2

HTML5

2010-12-01T16:07:00.000+07:00

HTML5 is the next major revision of the HTML standard, currently under development.
Like its immediate predecessors, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5 is a standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It incorporates new features for the control of embedded audio and video, and the utilization of drag-and-drop—historically implemented in various ways depending on platform.

W3C standardization process
The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) started work on the specification in June 2004 under the name Web Applications 1.0. As of March 2010, the specification is in the Draft Standard state at the WHATWG, and in Working Draft state at the W3C. Ian Hickson of Google, Inc. is the editor of HTML5.
The HTML5 specification was adopted as the starting point of the work of the new HTML working group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 2007. This working group published the First Public Working Draft of the specification on January 22, 2008. The specification is an ongoing work, and is expected to remain so for many years, although parts of HTML5 are going to be finished and implemented in browsers before the whole specification reaches final Recommendation status.
According to the W3C timetable, it is estimated that HTML5 will reach W3C Recommendation by late 2010. However, the First Public Working Draft estimate was missed by 8 months, and Last Call and Candidate Recommendation were expected to be reached in 2008, but as of July 2010 HTML5 is still at Working Draft stage in the W3C. HTML5 has been at Last Call in the WHATWG since October 2009.
Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012. The criterion for the specification becoming a W3C Recommendation is “two 100% complete and fully interoperable implementations”. In an interview with TechRepublic, Hickson guessed that this would occur in the year 2022 or later. However, many parts of the specification are stable and may be implemented in products:

Some sections are already relatively stable and there are implementations that are already quite close to completion, and those features can be used today.
– WHAT Working Group, When will HTML5 be finished?

Markup
HTML5 introduces a number of new elements and attributes that reflect typical usage on modern websites. Some of them are semantic replacements for common uses of generic block (div) and inline (span) elements, for example nav (website navigation block), footer (usually referring to bottom of web page or to last lines of HTML code), or audio and video instead of object. Some deprecated elements from HTML 4.01 have been dropped, including purely presentational elements such as font and center, whose effects are achieved using Cascading Style Sheets. There is also a renewed emphasis on the importance of DOM scripting (e.g., JavaScript) in Web behavior.
The HTML5 syntax is no longer based on SGML despite the similarity of its markup. It has, however, been designed to be backward compatible with common parsing of older versions of HTML. It comes with a new introductory line that looks like an SGML document type declaration, doctype html, which triggers the standards-compliant rendering mode. HTML5 also incorporates Web Forms 2.0, another WHATWG specification.

New APIs
In addition to specifying markup, HTML5 specifies scripting application programming interfaces (APIs). Existing document object model (DOM) interfaces are extended and de facto features documented. There are also new APIs, such as:

The canvas element for immediate mode 2D drawing. See Canvas 2D API Specification 1.0 specification
Timed media playback
Offline storage database (offline web applications). See Web Storage
Document editing
Drag-and-drop
Cross-document messaging
Browser history management
MIME type and protocol handler registration.
Microdata

Not all of the above technologies are included in the W3C HTML5 specification, though they are in the WHATWG HTML specification. Some related technologies, which are not part of either the W3C HTML5 or the WHATWG HTML specification, are

Geolocation
Web SQL Database, a local SQL Database.
The Indexed Database API, an indexed hierarchical key-value store (formerly WebSimpleDB).

The W3C publishes specifications for these separately.

Top 10 Best Strategy Games for PC (Part 2)

2010-11-29T16:08:00.000+07:00

Rise of Nations
This game features the idea of expanding territory similarly to Civilization IV, but employes a real-time mode of gameplay. Territory is expanding by building more cities and forts within the borders, which opens more options on a technology tree, through which options are selected to customize the territory. Cities support citizen units, which can be assigned to specific tasks, but will always look for tasks to do when idle if not assigned to anything specific. Rise of Nations specifies six different resources, food, timber, metal, oil, wealth and knowledge, which are used to create buildings, units, and to research technologies.
Any nation within the game is playable at any point in history, regardless of the actual historical timeline of that nation, but resources only become available in the age in which they were originally utilized. Keeping a balance between offensive and defensive forces is crucial to successful gameplay, as is the state of the economy. Rise of Nations is both rewarding and frustrating in turns, but always highly addictive.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
This long awaited sequel to the original Starcraft has earned a spot on this list in its own right. Finally released in July of 2010, the story picks up four years after the events of the original Starcraft, and follows an insurgent group attempting to make its way across the Terran Dominion. Non-linear gameplay with regard to the campaigns keeps the game interesting, and is a minor departure from the original. However, the order in which the campaigns are done will not interrupt the narrative.
Units remain largely the same, with some additional specialized units available only for campaign play and not in regular multi-player, such as the Terran Wraith, Vulture, and Diamondback. There is also a map editor, similar to the original StarEdit, which allows for customization of terrain and campaigns.
A word of warning for players hoping to have a nostalgic evening of strategy gaming with local friends, though: Blizzard has killed LAN play with this release, so players can only play together online, and on the same server. Any players wishing to play together must ensure that they've signed up for the same server at the time of original registration, because the game is region-locked.

Warcraft III
Before it was an extremely popular (and often parodied) MMORPG, the "world" of Warcraft existed in a series of real-time strategy games. Standard resource-gathering and unit-building rules apply, with "black mask" covering unopened areas of the map. Once explored, the black mask is removed, but these areas must remain within sight of at least one unit, or they will be covered in the "fog of war".
With AI-controlled, universally hostile units called "creeps" guarding areas heavy in resources, there is a slight element of RPGs, especially since players win experience points, gold and items after defeating them. Also introduced in this game was the shifting from day to night, which provides more cover, but reduces the ability to see incoming attackers.
There are five total campaigns, which are broken up according the various character race factions, though some specific "hero" characters are retained across each race's campaigns. Warcraft III still has a devoted following, and in spite of the massive popularity of the MMORPG, remains a favorite among fans of Warcraft and strategy games alike.

Supreme Commander
Considered by many to be a spiritual successor to 1997's Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander begins with a single unit, which much be expanded and multiplied to aid in a war which has erupted in the future after humans developed portal technology, referred to as a "quantum gateway".
The three warring factions are the Cybran nation, comprised of cyborgs who wish to separate from the other two factions, and get out from under the thumb of the United Earth Federation, which represents a united government for all three factions, which of course would be based off of the planet Earth. Finally, there is the Aeon Illuminate, which wishes to emulate the so-called "Golden Age" of Earth, in which alien life was first discovered but soon went south due to xenophobia. Naturally, the thing to do when fighting xenophobia is to go out and wage war on anyone who doesn't share the same beliefs.
The critical moment comes when the UEF decides to use "Black Sun", a weapon which, if deployed, will wipe out both planets of the other factions. However, the Crybrans and the Aeon Illuminate have their own secret weapons as well, and one of these does involve use of the phrase "Monkeylord", which is reason enough to put any game on a top 10 list.

Company of Heroes
This release and subsequent expansions from Relic Entertainment takes place during WWII. Players are put in charge of two U.S. units during the Allied takeover of France from occupying Nazi forces.
Micromanagement skills are key in this game, and perhaps provide the tiniest degree of realism (minus the horrific violence, of course, as this is not typically depicted in strategy games) as to what it must have been like to actually "storm the beach at Normandy", considering that there were over 150,000 troops in reality, and each one had to know exactly what when and where in order for the mission to be successful.
Players take control of points on the campaign map, collect munitions, fuel and manpower, and can takeover civilian buildings to convert them to barracks, which will aid in the creation of new units.
Company of Heroes has been praised as one of the best real-time strategy games of all time, with several successful expansions and both LAN and online options available for multi-player.

Top 10 Best Strategy Games for PC

2010-11-29T16:06:00.000+07:00

Strategy games, whether they are turn-based or real-time, occupy a unique niche within gaming. While there is not always the thrill of the fight, there is often a deep satisfaction achieved from outsmarting both other players and particularly AI. Here are some of the most favored titles in recent years, in no particular order.

Starcraft
This classic real-time strategy game, released in 1998 is still one of the most popular releases of all time. Three species duke it out in the 26th century to gain control of a faraway chunk of the Milky Way. Terrans are humans who've been exiled from Earth. Another humanoid species, the Protoss, who are fairly advanced and possess various psychic abilities, are trying to keep their culture safe from the insectoid Zerg, who are bent on assimilating everyone else.
Starcraft is largely considered a game that revolutionized real-time strategy gameplay, as well as providing a deeply engaging story. There is still a thriving community of professional competitors, particularly in Asia, complete with sponsorships and televised events. Zerg Rush!

Age of Empires III
This real-time strategy game, released in 2005, takes place largely during the colonial era, from the late 1400s to the 1850s. Players must choose to develop a colony of Europe, Asia, or North America from an initial settlement to a thriving empire. Development of the colony goes through various technological ages, but unlike other games about territorial conquest, such as the Civilization series, where it is technically possible to play an entire game without fighting, this game requires the player to destroy the enemy's colony. Emphasis is placed on the production of civilian units to collect resources to stimulate the economy, and the development of the military to defend against rival colonies.
Another feature unique to this game is the use of a "Politician System", where players must choose from among several politicians upon successful completion of each level, which grant various bonuses. Difficulty level is assigned to specific colonies, as opposed to a more customized method, which often serves as motivation to keep playing.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
This title, a sequel and marked improvement to the first Dawn of War is unique in that the multiplayer option involves co-op, as opposed to pitting players against one another. The campaigns, unlike those found in this game's predecessors are non-linear, and do not have base building elements. Units must be selected before a missions beings, and no new units are issued once it is progress.
Players are faced with decisions regarding the missions and locations chosen in which to fight, and consequences are based on these choices. Even after choices are made, missions can have multiple objectives which may be mutually exclusive depending on the further unfolding of events.
This game can be appealing to those who normally prefer RPGs, as players to level up, and some units can be equipped with scavenged weaponry and armor. This is a good crossover game for any die-hard RPG fans who are interested in experiencing a strategy game without completely unfamiliar elements.

World in Conflict
Many strategy games take place either in the distant past or future, but this title, released in 2007, is set in more recent times, during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but speculates as to what would have happened if Soviet forces had attempted to remain in power through aggressive action.
There is no resource collection or base building in this game, but rather reinforcement units are bought with a pre-determined amount of in-game points, and dropped into the battlefield. When units are dead, the points gradually return to the player's balance, so that new units can be acquired.
In multi-player games, players choose a specific role from among four preset roles, Air, Armor, Infantry, and Support. These have various abilities, such as unusually effective long ranged attacks, and the ability to hide easily, but are usually balanced with a weakness of some sort, like being vulnerable to attack on open ground, or being useless in short-range skirmishes.
Players will enjoy the small user interface, as it provides a more open view of the battlefield and the ability to manage individual units more effectively.

Civilization IV
Like the other titles in this series, Civilization IV is a turn-based game in which the player takes on the role of the leader of an empire that must be built from scratch from a single city, built by a settler in 4000 B.C. As the building expands, so do the options for infrastructure, military fortification and training, study of science and art, religion, and all the other stuff that empires have. Build "wonders" around the empire, and experience the birth of historical figures who can enhance various aspects of cities within the empire.
This game, like many turn-based strategy games can feel slow for the first few turns, but things get interesting once contact is made with neighboring cultures, and the potential for trade, aid, and war arises. Bonus: Leonard Nimoy congratulates the you overtime you attain a new technology or hit a milestone within your empire.

Next : Part 2

World Wide Web Consortium

2010-11-28T16:39:00.000+07:00

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3).
Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of 8 September 2009, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has 356 members.
W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.

History
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded by Tim Berners-Lee after he left the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in October, 1994. It was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT/LCS) with support from the European Commission and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which had pioneered the Internet.
W3C was created to ensure compatibility and agreement among industry members in the adoption of new standards. Prior to its creation, incompatible versions of HTML were offered by different vendors, increasing the potential for inconsistency between web pages. The consortium was created to get all those vendors to agree on a set of core principles and components which would be supported by everyone.
It was originally intended that CERN host the European branch of W3C; however, CERN wished to focus on particle physics, not information technology. In April 1995 the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA) became the European host of W3C, with Keio University becoming the Japanese branch in September 1996. Starting in 1997, W3C created regional offices around the world; as of September 2009, it has eighteen World Offices covering Australia, the Benelux countries (Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium), Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and Ireland.
In January 2003, the European host was transferred from INRIA to the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), an organization that represents European national computer science laboratories.

Recommendations and Certifications
In accord with the W3C Process Document, a Recommendation progresses through five maturity levels:

Working Draft
Last Call Working Draft
Call for implementation
Call for Review of a Proposed Recommendation
W3C Recommendation (REC)

A Recommendation may be updated by separately published Errata until enough substantial edits accumulate, at which time a new edition of the Recommendation may be produced (e.g., XML is now in its fifth edition). W3C also publishes various kinds of informative Notes which are not intended to be treated as standards.
W3C leaves it up to manufacturers to follow the Recommendations. Many of its standards define levels of conformance, which the developers must follow if they wish to label their product W3C-compliant. Like any standards of other organizations, W3C recommendations are sometimes implemented partially. The Recommendations are under a royalty-free patent license, allowing anyone to implement them.
Unlike the ISOC and other international standards bodies, the W3C does not have a certification program. A certification program is a process which has benefits and drawbacks; the W3C has decided, for now, that it is not suitable to start such a program owing to the risk of creating more drawbacks for the community than benefits.

Augmented Reality Applications

2010-11-17T17:29:00.000+07:00

Current applications

Advertising: Marketers started to use AR to promote products via interactive AR applications. For example, at the 2008 LA Auto Show, Nissan unveiled the concept vehicle Cube and presented visitors with a brochure which, when held against a webcam, showed several versions of the vehicle. In August 2009,discrepancies Best Buy ran a circular with an augmented reality code that allowed users with a webcam to interact with the product in 3D. In 2010 Walt Disney used mobile augmented reality to connect a movie experience to outdoor advertising.

Support with complex tasks: Complex tasks such as assembly, maintenance, and surgery can be simplified by inserting additional information into the field of view. For example, labels can be displayed on parts of a system to clarify operating instructions for a mechanic who is performing maintenance on the system. AR can include images of hidden objects, which can be particularly effective for medical diagnostics or surgery. Examples include a virtual X-ray view based on prior tomography or on real time images from ultrasound and microconfocal probes or open NMR devices. A doctor could observe the fetus inside the mother's womb. See also Mixed reality.

Navigation devices: AR can augment the effectiveness of navigation devices for a variety of applications. For example, building navigation can be enhanced for the purpose of maintaining industrial plants. Outdoor navigation can be augmented for military operations or disaster management. Head-up displays or personal display glasses in automobiles can be used to provide navigation hints and traffic information. These types of displays can be useful for airplane pilots, too. Head-up displays are currently used in fighter jets as one of the first AR applications. These include full interactivity, including eye pointing.

Industrial Applications: AR can be used to compare the data of digital mock-ups with physical mock-ups for efficiently finding discrepancies between the two sources. It can further be employed to safeguard digital data in combination with existing real prototypes, and thus save or minimize the building of real prototypes and improve the quality of the final product.

Military and emergency services: AR can be applied to military and emergency services as wearable systems to provide information such as instructions, maps, enemy locations, and fire cells.

Prospecting: In the fields of hydrology, ecology, and geology, AR can be used to display an interactive analysis of terrain characteristics. Users could use, and collaboratively modify and analyze, interactive three-dimensional maps.

Art: AR can be incorporated into artistic applications that allow artists to create art in real time over reality such as painting, drawing, modeling, etc. One such example of this phenomenon is called Eyewriter that was developed in 2009 by Zachary Lieberman and a group formed by members of Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks and the Graffiti Research Lab to help a graffiti artist, who became paralyzed, draw again.

Architecture: AR can be employed to simulate planned construction projects.

Sightseeing: Models may be created to include labels or text related to the objects/places visited. With AR, users can rebuild ruins, buildings, or even landscapes as they previously existed.

Collaboration: AR can help facilitate collaboration among distributed team members via conferences with real and virtual participants. The Hand of God is a good example of a collaboration system.

Entertainment and education: AR can be used in the fields of entertainment and education to create virtual objects in museums and exhibitions, theme park attractions (such as Cadbury World), games (such as ARQuake) and books.

Music: Pop group Duran Duran included interactive AR projections into their stage show during their 2000 Pop Trash concert tour. Sydney band Lost Valentinos launched the world's first interactive AR music video on 16 October 2009, where users could print out 5 markers representing a pre-recorded performance from each band member which they could interact with live and in real-time via their computer webcam and record as their own unique music video clips to share via YouTube.

Future applications
It is important to note that augmented reality is a costly development in technology. Because of this, the future of AR is dependent on whether or not those costs can be reduced in some way. If AR technology becomes affordable, it could be very widespread but for now major industries are the sole buyers that have the opportunity to utilize this resource.
Expanding a PC screen into the real environment: program windows and icons appear as virtual devices in real space and are eye or gesture operated, by gazing or pointing. A single personal display (glasses) could concurrently simulate a hundred conventional PC screens or application windows all around a user
Virtual devices of all kinds, e.g. replacement of traditional screens, control panels, and entirely new applications impossible in "real" hardware, like 3D objects interactively changing their shape and appearance based on the current task or need.
Enhanced media applications, like pseudo holographic virtual screens, virtual surround cinema, virtual 'holodecks' (allowing computer-generated imagery to interact with live entertainers and audience)
Virtual conferences in "holodeck" style
Replacement of cellphone and car navigator screens: eye-dialing, insertion of information directly into the environment, e.g. guiding lines directly on the road, as well as enhancements like "X-ray"-views
Virtual plants, wallpapers, panoramic views, artwork, decorations, illumination etc., enhancing everyday life. For example, a virtual window could be displayed on a regular wall showing a live feed of a camera placed on the exterior of the building, thus allowing the user to effectually toggle a wall's transparency
With AR systems getting into mass market, we may see virtual window dressings, posters, traffic signs, Christmas decorations, advertisement towers and more. These may be fully interactive even at a distance, by eye pointing for example.
Virtual gadgetry becomes possible. Any physical device currently produced to assist in data-oriented tasks (such as the clock, radio, PC, arrival/departure board at an airport, stock ticker, PDA, PMP, informational posters/fliers/billboards, in-car navigation systems, etc.) could be replaced by virtual devices that cost nothing to produce aside from the cost of writing the software. Examples might be a virtual wall clock, a to-do list for the day docked by your bed for you to look at first thing in the morning, etc.
Subscribable group-specific AR feeds. For example, a manager on a construction site could create and dock instructions including diagrams in specific locations on the site. The workers could refer to this feed of AR items as they work. Another example could be patrons at a public event subscribing to a feed of direction and information oriented AR items.
AR systems can help the visually impaired navigate in a much better manner (combined with a text-to-speech software).
Computer games which make use of position and environment information to place virtual objects, opponents, and weapons overlaid in the player's visual field.

Augmented Reality Technology

2010-11-12T17:23:00.000+07:00

Hardware
The main hardware components for augmented reality are: display, tracking, input devices, and computer. Combination of powerful CPU, camera, accelerometers, GPS and solid state compass are often present in modern smartphones, which make them prospective platforms for augmented reality.

Display
There are three major display techniques for Augmented Reality:
Head Mounted Displays
Handheld Displays
Spatial Displays

Head Mounted Displays
A Head Mounted Display (HMD) places images of both the physical world and registered virtual graphical objects over the user's view of the world. The HMD's are either optical see-through or video see-through in nature. An optical see-through display employs half-silver mirror technology to allow views of physical world to pass through the lens and graphical overlay information to be reflected into the user's eyes. The HMD must be tracked with a six degree of freedom sensor.This tracking allows for the computing system to register the virtual information to the physical world. The main advantage of HMD AR is the immersive experience for the user. The graphical information is slaved to the view of the user. The most common products employed are as follows: MicroVision Nomad, Sony Glasstron, Vuzix AR and I/O Displays.

Handheld Displays
Handheld Augment Reality employs a small computing device with a display that fits in a user's hand. All handheld AR solutions to date have employed video see-through techniques to overlay the graphical information to the physical world. Initially handheld AR employed sensors such as digital compasses and GPS units for its six degree of freedom tracking sensors. This moved onto the use of fiducial marker systems such as the ARToolKit for tracking. Today vision systems such as SLAM or PTAM are being employed for tracking. Handheld display AR promises to be the first commercial success for AR technologies. The two main advantages of handheld AR is the portable nature of handheld devices and ubiquitous nature of camera phones.

Spatial Displays
Instead of the user wearing or carrying the display such as with head mounted displays or handheld devices; Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) makes use of digital projectors to display graphical information onto physical objects. The key difference in SAR is that the display is separated from the users of the system. Because the displays are not associated with each user, SAR scales naturally up to groups of users, thus allowing for collocated collaboration between users. SAR has several advantages over traditional head mounted displays and handheld devices. The user is not required to carry equipment or wear the display over their eyes. This makes spatial AR a good candidate for collaborative work, as the users can see each other’s faces. A system can be used by multiple people at the same time without each having to wear a head mounted display. Spatial AR does not suffer from the limited display resolution of current head mounted displays and portable devices. A projector based display system can simply incorporate more projectors to expand the display area. Where portable devices have a small window into the world for drawing, a SAR system can display on any number of surfaces of an indoor setting at once. The tangible nature of SAR makes this an ideal technology to support design, as SAR supports both a graphical visualisation and passive haptic sensation for the end users. People are able to touch physical objects, and it is this process that provides the passive haptic sensation.

Tracking
Modern mobile augmented reality systems use one or more of the following tracking technologies: digital cameras and/or other optical sensors, accelerometers, GPS, gyroscopes, solid state compasses, RFID, wireless sensors. Each of these technologies have different levels of accuracy and precision. Most important is the tracking of the pose and position of the user's head for the augmentation of the user's view. The user's hand(s) can be tracked or a handheld input device could be tracked to provide a 6DOF interaction technique. Stationary systems can employ 6DOF track systems such as Polhemus, ViCON, A.R.T, or Ascension.

Input devices
This is a current open research question. Some systems, such as the Tinmith system, employ pinch glove techniques. Another common technique is a wand with a button on it. In case of a smartphone, the phone itself could be used as 3D pointing device, with 3D position of the phone restored from the camera images.

Computer
Camera based systems require powerful CPU and considerable amount of RAM for processing camera images. Wearable computing systems employ a laptop in a backpack configuration. For stationary systems a traditional workstation with a powerful graphics card. Sound processing hardware could be included in augmented reality systems.

Software
For consistent merging real-world images from camera and virtual 3D images, virtual images should be attached to real-world locations in visually realistic way. That means a real world coordinate system, independent from the camera, should be restored from camera images. That process is called Image registration and is part of Azuma's definition of Augmented Reality.
Augmented reality image registration uses different methods of computer vision, mostly related to video tracking. Many computer vision methods of augmented reality are inherited from similar visual odometry methods.
Usually those methods consist of two parts. First interest points, or fiduciary markers, or optical flow detected in the camera images. First stage can use Feature detection methods like Corner detection, Blob detection, Edge detection or thresholding and/or other image processing methods.
In the second stage, a real world coordinate system is restored from the data obtained in the first stage. Some methods assume objects with known 3D geometry(or fiduciary markers) present in the scene and make use of those data. In some of those cases all of the scene 3D structure should be precalculated beforehand. If not all of the scene is known beforehand SLAM technique could be used for mapping fiduciary markers/3D models relative positions. If no assumption about 3D geometry of the scene made structure from motion methods are used. Methods used in the second stage include projective(epipolar) geometry, bundle adjustment, rotation representation with exponential map, kalman and particle filters.

Augmented Reality

2010-11-10T17:01:00.000+07:00

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated sensory input such as sound or graphics. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.
In the case of Augmented Reality, the augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, such as sports scores on TV during a match. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view. The term augmented reality is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, an employee of Boeing at the time.

Augmented reality research explores the application of computer-generated imagery in live-video streams as a way to expand the real-world. Advanced research includes use of head-mounted displays and virtual retinal displays for visualization purposes, and construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators.

Definition

There are two commonly accepted definitions of Augmented Reality today. One was given by Ronald Azuma in 1997 [2]. Azuma's definition says that Augmented Reality
combines real and virtual
is interactive in real time
is registered in 3D
Additionally Paul Milgram and Fumio Kishino defined Milgram's Reality-Virtuality Continuum in 1994 [3]. They describe a continuum that spans from the real environment to a pure virtual environment. In between there are Augmented Reality (closer to the real environment) and Augmented Virtuality (is closer to the virtual environment).

This continuum has been extended into a two-dimensional plane of "Virtuality" and "Mediality". Taxonomy of Reality, Virtuality, Mediality. The origin R denotes unmodified reality. A continuum across the Virtuality axis V includes reality augmented with graphics (Augmented Reality), as well as graphics augmented by reality (Augmented Virtuality). However, the taxonomy also includes modification of reality or virtuality or any combination of these. The modification is denoted by moving up the mediality axis. Further up this axis, for example, we can find mediated reality, mediated virtuality, or any combination of these. Further up and to the right we have virtual worlds that are responsive to a severely modified version of reality. (at right) Mediated reality generalizes the concepts of mixed reality, etc.. It includes the virtuality reality continuum (mixing) but also, in addition to additive effects, also includes multiplicative effects (modulation) of (sometimes deliberately) diminished reality. Moreover, it considers, more generally, that reality may be modified in various ways. The mediated reality framework describes devices that deliberately modify reality, as well as devices that accidentally modify it.
More recently, the term augmented reality has been blurred a bit due to the increased interest of the general public in AR.

Examples
Commonly known examples of AR are the yellow "first down" lines seen in television broadcasts of American football games using the 1st & Ten system, and the colored trail showing location and direction of the puck in TV broadcasts of ice hockey games. The real-world elements are the football field and players, and the virtual element is the yellow line, which is drawn over the image by computers in real time. Similarly, rugby fields and cricket pitches are branded by their sponsors using Augmented Reality; giant logos are inserted onto the fields when viewed on television. In some cases, the modification of reality goes beyond mere augmentation. For example, advertisements may be blocked out (partially or wholly diminished) and replaced with different advertisements. Such replacement is an example of Mediated reality, a more general concept than AR.
Television telecasts of swimming events also often have a virtual line which indicates the position of the current world record holder at that time.
Another type of AR application uses projectors and screens to insert objects into the real environment, enhancing museum exhibitions for example. The difference from a simple TV screen for example, is that these objects are related to the environment of the screen or display, and that they often are interactive as well.
Many first-person shooter video games simulate the viewpoint of someone using AR systems. In these games the AR can be used to give visual directions to a location, mark the direction and distance of another person who is not in line of sight, give information about equipment such as remaining bullets in a gun, and display a myriad of other images based on whatever the game designers intend. This is also called the head-up display.
In some current applications like in cars or airplanes, this is usually a head-up display integrated into the windshield.
The F-35 Lightning II has no head-up display. This is because all targets are tracked by the aircraft's situational awareness and the sensor fusion is presented in the pilot's helmet mounted display. The helmet mounted display provides an augmented reality system that allows the pilot to look through his own aircraft as if it wasn't there.

Mortal Kombat (Game)

2010-11-02T16:49:00.014+07:00

Mortal Kombat, commonly abbreviated MK, is a series of fighting games created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. The first four renditions and their updates were developed by Midway Games and initially released on arcade machines. The arcade titles were later picked up by Acclaim Entertainment for the home console conversions. Beginning with Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, Midway Games exclusively created home versions of Mortal Kombat up until Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Following Midway's bankruptcy, the franchise was picked up by Warner Bros. in July 2009 and became a part of the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Branch.
The series began originally as a game based on the popular actor martial artist, Jean-Claude Van Damme. The idea fell through and Mortal Kombat was born instead. As a result of its success, Mortal Kombat has spawned many sequels and has been spun off into several adventure games, films (animated and live-action with its own sequel), and television series (animated and live-action). Other spin-offs include various comic book series, a card game and a live-action tour.
The original three games and their updates, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II, Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, were styled in a 2-D fighting fashion with gameplay consisting of six buttons that were high punch, low punch, high kick, low kick, block, and run (run was added in "Mortal Kombat 3"). Reviewers have stated that because of this the characters are only differentiated by their special moves. In fact, some reviewers have criticized that the "bewildering array" of special moves in comparison to other fighting games has resulted in too little focus on regular moves.
The series is especially noted for its realistic digitized sprites (which differentiated it from its contemporaries' hand-drawn sprites), and its high levels of blood and gore, including, most notably, its graphic Fatalities—finishing moves, requiring a sequence of buttons to perform, which, in part, led to the creation of the ESRB. The series name itself is also known for using the letter "K" in place of "C" for the hard C sound, thus intentionally misspelling the word "combat," as well as other words with the hard C sound within later games in the series. Early games in the series were infamous for the prominent use of palette swapping to create new character sprites.

Gameplay
According to 1UP.com, the early Mortal Kombat characters played virtually identical to one another with the only major differences being special moves. In an interview with Computer and Video Games, Ed Boon stated, "[...] since the beginning, one of the things that's separated us from other fighting games is the crazy moves we've put in it, like fireballs and all the magic moves, so to speak." When asked if Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat would do a crossover, Street Fighter producer, Yoshinori Ono, called Mortal Kombat a very different game from Street Fighter. The Capcom Senior Director of communications compared Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat in an interview with Gamasutra by asking if the interviewer preferred the "precision and depth" of Street Fighter or the "gore and comedy" of Mortal Kombat; he also stated that the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat rivalry was considered similar to the Coke and Pepsi rivalry in the 1990s. In an interview with Video Games Daily, Senior Producer of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Hans Lo, called Street Fighter a little more technical fighter in comparison to Mortal Kombat.
Midway would keep their single styled fighting moves with four attack buttons which were a different array of punches and kicks and block until they changed this in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance by differentiating characters normal moves and even giving them multiple fighting styles. Beginning in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and until Mortal Kombat: Deception, the characters would have three fighting styles per character: two unarmed styles, and one weapon style. Few exceptions to this arose in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, such as monster-like characters like Onaga and Moloch who would have only one fighting style. Most of the fighting styles featured are based on real martial arts, though a few of them are not. Goro's fighting styles, for example, are designed to take advantage of the fact that he has four arms. For Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, fighting styles were reduced to a maximum of two per character (generally one hand-to-hand combat style and one weapon style) due to the sheer number of playable characters.
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe dropped the multiple fighting style trend altogether in favor of giving each character a much wider variety of special moves, however some characters still had multiple fighting styles Baraka, utilizing the retractable blades in his arms (called the "Blade Stance"), and Deathstroke who also possessed the ability to use another fighting style in the form of a sword (called the "Sword Stance").

Finishing Moves
Mortal Kombat introduced Fatalities, finishing moves that allow players to end a fight by killing their opponent in a gruesome manner. It was developed in order to give gamers a free hit at the end of the fight. Finishing moves in later games included:
Friendship, in Mortal Kombat II, "which includes giving opponents a present or a bouquet of flowers, instead of killing them",
Animality, in Mortal Kombat 3: turning into an animal to violently finish off the opponent,
Mercy, where the victor gives a little health to the opponent,
Brutality, in Mortal Kombat Trilogy: bashing an opponent into pieces with a long combination of hits or combo
Babality "[where] your opponent turns into a baby."
Deception added the Hara-Kiri (as described by GameSpot, "[...] the hara-kiri, or self-fatality. Basically, players who have lost a match have the ability to punch in a command to perform a self-fatality"), to allow the losers to engage in a suicide-based finishing move, creating a race between both players to see if the winning player can finish off the losing player before the losing player can kill himself.
The Babality and Friendship moves were created as a satirical non-violent finishing move, a sarcastic swipe at the U.S. congressional Investigation for Violence in Videogames who came down harshly on the Mortal Kombat games.

Graphics
The original Mortal Kombat was developed with digitized sprites based on actors, as opposed to animated cartoon graphics. Mortal Kombat 4 brought the series into 3D, replacing the digitized fighters of previous games with polygon models.
More so than other fighting games at the time, Mortal Kombat was famous for re-coloring certain sprites to appear as different characters. This was most prominent with the series' various ninja/assassin characters. Many of the more popular characters were spawned from these palette swaps.
In the very first game, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Reptile were essentially the same character. The colors of their attire, fighting stance, and special techniques indicated the difference. Sub-Zero wore blue attire, Scorpion wore yellow, and Reptile wore green. Later games added other ninjas based on the same model: Noob Saibot (fully black), Smoke (gray with an attire that emitted clouds of smoke), Ermac (red), and Rain (purple). Chameleon was a hidden character who would cycle the palette colors of the other ninja.

Development
Mortal Kombat started development in 1991 with only four people; Ed Boon, John Tobias, John Vogel, and Dan Forden. As Ed Boon stated in an interview with Major Nelson "The first Mortal Kombat game was 4 guys, literally, one programmer, myself (Boon), two graphics guys (Tobias and Vogel), and a sound guy (Forden) was the entire team, literally" Originally, Boon and Tobias wanted to create a video game starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, with a digitized version of the action star fighting villains. In a podcast interview with the Official Xbox Magazine, Ed Boon stated for six out of the eight months while they were in production of Mortal Kombat, "...nobody could come up with a name nobody didn't hate." Some of the names suggested were Kumite, Dragon Attack, Death Blow, and even at one point, Fatality. Someone had written down "combat" on the drawing board for the names in Ed Boon's office and someone wrote a K over the C, according to Ed Boon, "...just to be kind of weird..." Steve Ritchie, a pinball designer at that time, was sitting in Ed Boon's office and saw the word "Kombat" and said to Ed Boon, 'Why don't you name it Mortal Kombat?' and according to Ed Boon, that name "just stuck."
The series itself commonly uses the letter "K" in place of "C" for words containing the hard C sound, thus misspelling them. According to an interview with CraveOnline, Ed Boon stated that during game development they usually spell the words correctly and change them later when the developers recognize an opportunity.
As outlined in an article by TIME in 2001, the team switched from digitized actors to motion capture technology stating, "To make the characters in video games more realistic, actors are being recruited to serve as models. Acclaim, the video-game company that made Mortal Kombat, has created a special 'motion capture studio' for this purpose. A martial-arts expert with as many as 100 electronic sensors taped to his body sends precise readings to a camera as he goes through his moves—running, jumping, kicking, punching. The action is captured, digitized and synthesized into a 'naked' wire-frame model stored in a computer. Those models can then be 'dressed' with clothing, facial expressions and other characteristics by means of a computer technique called texture mapping."

Easter Eggs and Secrets
Mortal Kombat included secret characters, secret games, and other Easter eggs. Mortal Kombat 3, for example, included a hidden game of Galaga as well a hidden game of Pong in Mortal Kombat II. Many extras in the series have only been accessible through very challenging, demanding, and sometimes coincidental requirements.
The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis versions had some unique eggs: in Mortal Kombat, a head shot of the President of Probe Software, Fergus McGovern, flew in front of the moon in the Pit stage, while in Mortal Kombat II, Raiden could perform a "Fergality" on the Armory stage.
In the 1992 arcade original when fighting on The Pit stage, the player can qualify for a fight at the bottom of The Pit with the hidden character Reptile, who has the powers of Scorpion and Sub-Zero.
Some Easter eggs originated from in-jokes between members of the development team. One example is "Toasty", which found its way into the game in the form of a small image of sound designer Dan Forden, who would appear in the corner of the screen during gameplay (after performing an uppercut) and yell the word "Toasty". This egg was also the key to unlocking the hidden character Smoke when it happened in the Portal stage. Another note of interest is in Mortal Kombat 4, Forden would say "Toasty! 3D!" after Scorpion did his burn fatality, a reference to the fact that it is the first 3D game of the series.
"Toasty" is also found in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, appearing randomly after the character pulls off a chain of hits, though the picture of Forden was removed for that version.
Yet another private joke was the hidden character "Noob Saibot", who appeared in various versions of the game. The character's name derived from two of the series' creators' surnames, Ed Boon, and John Tobias, spelled backwards. In addition, the character Ermac's name came from the first Mortal Kombat, which had "ERMAC5" on its diagnostics screen; players presumed this dealt with some secret character. The development team decided to turn this rumor into an actual character, who was introduced in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. The character Mokap is based upon Carlos Pesina who leads the motion capture team for modern MK games (and previously played Raiden in the first and second games).

Hitman Characters (Game)

2010-10-22T16:37:00.011+07:00

Agent 47
A genetically-engineered assassin created from the recombinant DNA of five of the world's most dangerous criminals. The fact that the DNA came from multiple ethnicities allows 47 to blend in to a certain degree in most places in the world, or at least not look immediately suspicious and out-of-place. His name comes from the last two digits of a bar code on the back of his head – 640509-040147. He is a tall, bald, blue-eyed, no-nonsense individual and usually wears a suit with black leather gloves and a red tie and is known to disguise himself. Engineered from conception to be the perfect killer, 47's strength, speed, and intellect are above the human norm. According to Jacob Andersen, lead designer of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Agent 47 went from being "a mean old hairy guy" to having "hi-tech glasses" before getting to his current design. More inspiration came from "comic books, Hong Kong movies," and other similar media. According to Game Director Rasmus Højengaard (Hoejengaard), the idea of a clone whose future is decided by the people that created him, intrigued the Hitman team. Hojengaard felt the idea of creating the "ultimate assassin" by cloning "evolved with the character before the first Hitman game was done". 47 is modeled after David Bateson, the veteran actor who has voiced 47 in every Hitman game.

Diana Burnwood
47's handler at the Agency. Diana briefs 47 on his assignments, oversees his progress, and serves as his guide over the radio. For the vast majority of the series, 47 never sees Diana, recognizing her only by voice, however, they do come face-to-face at the conclusion of Hitman: Blood Money and Hitman: Contracts. Diana has an upper-class English accent and a business-like demeanor. Although Diana usually handles 47's affairs from afar, she turns out to be a major character in Hitman: Blood Money; serving as a double agent, faking 47's death, saving the Agency from liquidation, and dodging death herself a few times. In the end, her efforts pay off when the Agency is brought back online, although it is left unmentioned if Diana has been promoted to a higher position. Diana is voiced by Vivienne McKee. In the Hitman film, Diana's only form of contact with 47 is through a synthesized voice via laptop. However, she does directly call 47 by phone in order to warn him that the Organization has targeted him.

Agent Smith
A fairly inept American CIA agent with ties to the Agency. He has a tendency to be captured and tortured by the people he has been assigned to spy on. As a result, the Agency has sent 47 to rescue him on a number of occasions. His torture experiences have caused him to take up drinking on the job, making him even more ineffective. Like 47, Agent Smith dons a variety of disguises, but most often he's seen beaten and stripped down to his American Flag boxer shorts. He seems to regard 47 as a friend, no doubt because 47 has rescued him so many times. The feeling is not mutual. 47 initially treats his relationship with Agent Smith as detached and professional, but as he is forced to rescue Smith again and again he increasingly sees Smith as an ineffective hindrance. In Hitman: Blood Money, 47 puts a gun to Smith's head and threatens to kill him. Smith's appearance changes somewhat in Hitman: Blood Money, having lost most of his hair through long term alcoholism and depression. In the Hitman film, Smith is instead portrayed as a very competent and dutiful CIA agent. In return for assassinating a high priority CIA target (Udre Belicoff, the brother of 47's original target), Smith helps 47 elude arrest by Interpol.

Mei-Ling
A young woman from the Chinese mainland, abducted and recruited into the brothel of Hong Kong crime lord Lee Hong. 47 rescues her in exchange for information about her employer in preparation for assassinating him. After escaping from Lee Hong, Mei-Ling is later revealed to be prostituting herself to Hayamoto, another Asian crime lord. 47 ends up rescuing her again (much to his consternation). Lei-Ling is apparently the first woman who has ever kissed 47; his reaction is different in the original game from the remake. In the original Hitman, 47 reacts with significant revulsion. In the remake Hitman: Contracts, his reaction is one of detached bemusement. She was known as Lei Ling in the original Hitman.

Dr. Otto Wolfgang Ort-Meyer
47's creator and the ultimate villain of Hitman: Codename 47. A brilliant but dangerous individual. Ostracized by the scientific community for his radical theories on genetic manipulation, Ort-Meyer ran a sophisticated lab hidden beneath a Romanian asylum. There he labored on DNA splicing in an effort to create a flawless human being. He took a great part in raising and indoctrinating 47 at the asylum, where 47 was kept a prisoner until he matured. Ort-Meyer eventually engineered 47's "escape" from the asylum in order to test his performance in the real world. The consummate megalomaniac, Ort-Meyer contracted with the Agency to have 47 kill the other 4 men behind the Hitman Project (47's "fathers"), so that Ort-Meyer could enjoy the fruits of his labor by himself. Ort-Meyer then attempted to lure 47 to his death, having perfected "Mr. 48", an improved, mindlessly loyal series of clones. Ort-Meyer underestimated how far 47 had advanced, and in the final showdown, 47 slaughtered the 48s and then killed Ort-Meyer himself by snapping his neck.

Hitman (Game)

2010-10-21T16:31:00.016+07:00

Hitman is a stealth game series developed by the Danish company IO Interactive. The series is available on PC as well as several video game consoles, including the Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Xbox 360. The game series has since expanded into a novel, Hitman: Enemy Within written by William C. Dietz, and a Hitman film adaptation which is loosely based on the storyline of the games.
The series revolves around Agent 47 (usually simply referred to as "47" or "Mr. 47"), an assassin-for-hire, whose flawless record places him in high demand among the wealthy and elite. The games feature a mix of orchestral and electronica musical scores, composed by Jesper Kyd. A fifth installment of the series is in the works; according to the IO Interactive team and it was due for release late in the fourth quarter of 2010. It has since been confirmed that Hitman 5 has now been delayed until Christmas 2011 "at the earliest". Certain websites are advising that the game will be released for sale in late November 2011.

Games
To date, four games have been released with a fifth title in development by IO Interactive for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows. The fifth title has been officially announced by Square Enix, though no further information has been released. The games contain violence and blood and are rated Mature (17+) by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. All games are third-person stealth-based, although it is possible to switch between third-person and first-person perspective in all versions except in the first, which offers an optional camera angle comparable to one used in fixed-camera adventure games.

Hitman Triple Pack
A Hitman compilation was released for the PC and PlayStation 2 containing the last three games of the series; Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, and Hitman: Blood Money. The compilation is called Hitman The Triple Hit Pack in Europe and Hitman Trilogy in North America. It was released for the North American market on June 20, 2007 and for the European market on June 22, 2007.
The purpose for this new release of the three latest Hitman-games is to introduce new players to the series as well as giving old players one Hitman-package. The compilation also includes a Kane & Lynch: Dead Men bonus disc with some special features.
Included games are:
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
Hitman: Contracts
Hitman: Blood Money
Note that Hitman: Codename 47 is the first game of the series and follows a slightly different game mechanic from its sequels. It has been omitted most likely due to the fact that it was only released for PC, as the trilogy pack was released for the PlayStation 2 as well. Furthermore, Hitman: Contracts includes some levels remade from Hitman: Codename 47. Hitman: Ultimate Contract, a PC-only compilation of all four games, was released on 17 Jul 2009.

Games by Year
Hitman: Codename 47 released in 2000
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin released in 2002
Hitman: Contracts released in 2004
Hitman: Blood Money released in 2006
Hitman 5 due for release in 2011

Gameplay
The core objective in each level is to kill assigned targets (usually multiple and sometimes additional targets as an optional bonus). In most cases, 'Hitman' allows the player different options to accomplish this task. Players can perform precise assassinations or slaughter indiscriminately in order to achieve the mission goals; however, the games reward a subtle approach by awarding special weapons or cash bonuses if players earn a favourable rank (usually achievable by eliminating only the assigned target, and without raising the alarm doing so). 47 can also wear a variety of disguises (such as repairmen, police officers and waiters) to fool enemies and gain access to restricted areas. The focus of 'Hitman' is not hiding in the shadows from the enemy, but rather blending in amongst them. It is up to the player to initiate the violence, since guards do not usually open fire unless provoked.
In every game, the player character, 'Agent 47', has limited maneuverability; he cannot jump, scale walls, or mantle up ledges (there are a few pre-scripted places where he can jump from one balcony to another, but these are very rare). This generally limits the player to a single plane of movement, although he is often presented the opportunity to move to higher or lower areas through the use of ladders, stairs, elevators, or hills.
47 is given the ability to hop over minor obstructions in Blood Money, and can also climb up certain edifices (such as fencing, vines, loose bricks, crates etc.). There is also the option of climbing onto the top of elevators through the hatch, allowing the player to strangle a victim from above. This is thought to be a homage to the Luc Besson hitman film Léon, in which the title character kills in this way in an early scene.
A major feature in the game is the 'tension' meter, detailing how much attention the player is receiving from the public or guards and is dependent on many things. For example, walking around in a guard's uniform with the correct corresponding gun won't gather much notice, whereas running around in a waiter's uniform in a restricted area while carrying a visible weapon instead of an appetizer tray will result in an unwanted confrontation with the guards.
In most cases, 47 is required to hide any dead bodies, to prevent alarm. As introduced in Hitman Blood Money, 47 can hide a body in a place such as a garbage dump/rubbish bin. Many targets in the Hitman games can be assassinated without firing a single shot; this style of gameplay became more prevalent in 'Blood Money', where the focus was to make 47's hits look like accidents. Accidents can be caused remotely with RU-AP mines acting on some (usually heavy and suspended) object, directly by pushing someone over a railing, and by other, more elaborate methods such as:
Replacing a World War II Replica Gun to be used in the opera 'Tosca' with a real World War II era pistol (Hitman Blood Money, the fourth game of the series).
Crushing a man's neck using weights during his morning workout (Hitman Blood Money, the fourth game of the series).
Rigging a grill to set a victim on fire (Hitman Blood Money, the fourth game of the series).
The second game of the series, 'Silent Assassin', enforced the concept of kills without firing more than a single shot. As per the number of gun shots fired and stealth used, ratings were given after every mission. The best of these was Silent Assassin indicating no more than 1 gunshot per target (and a guard) with no alerts raised.

Hitman Insignia
The 'Hitman' insignia appears in 'Hitman: Codename 47' on the gates of Prof. Dr. Otto Wolfgang Ort-Meyer's asylum, throughout his laboratory and is formed by Prof. Dr. Otto Wolfgang Ort-Meyer's pool of blood when 47 kills him at the end of the game. It also appears in 'Hitman: Contracts' on the floor of the cloning lab, this time as though it is the actual floor design, as well as on Ort-Meyer's belt buckle.
The symbol is engraved on the handles of his custom 'AMT Hardballer' (called: 'Silverballer' in 'Hitman: Contracts', the third game and 'Hitman: Blood Money', the fourth game of the 'Hitman' series), pistols. After 'Hitman: Contracts', the symbol is on the slides as well. It is also found on 47's equipment such as his laptop, his briefcase and cell phone. In the film, 47 wears a pair of silver cufflinks with his insignia enamelled in red.

Methods of Assassination
The Hitman series permits the player to kill targets (or non-targets) in a variety of ways, using firearms, melee weapons, or even conventional objects that 47 picks up (such as shovels, fireplace pokers, pool cues, etc.). In Hitman: 'Contracts', melee weapons such as knives can be used to kill in more than one method, including forward stabs, horizontal throat slitting, frontal slashes, repeated stabs under the ribcage, or thrusting the blade into the carotid artery.
47 also has a 'Garrote wire', or 'Fiber strangulation wire'. Unlike conventional piano wire, the fiber wire is specially made for strangulation, with reinforced handles so 47 can use his maximum grip to choke and break the windpipe of his target. He carries it with him on every mission, even those in which he is stripped of all other weaponry. It is also one of the few weapons (along with the syringe, .22 SD and plastic explosives) which can bypass metal detectors.
To achieve the ideal 'Silent Assassin' rank, it is recommended that 47 only kill his assigned targets, and no one else. The sedative syringes, or chloroform in 'Hitman 2: Silent Assassin' (which only has a temporary, dose-dependent effect, unlike syringes), exist for this purpose, so that 47 may incapacitate an innocent person to take items or clothing from their body without harming them at all (so it does not count against the player in the final ranking). In 'Hitman: Blood Money', the ability to add sedative to food and drink was added, to avoid direct confrontation. Hitman: Blood Money also introduced the option to hold any player hostage using smaller arms and use them as a human shield, and allows the player to knock the hostage unconscious with the gun, saving the player much needed sedatives for food items or any impeding characters that are seated in chairs. In some missions, if a murder can be made to look like accidental death (using the accident system first introduced in Blood Money), some kills will not be counted as hits, but as accidents. Any civilians or armed personnel who witness a kill (even from afar) will count as witnesses, and will harm the player's rank if they remain alive or alert nearby guards. If however, someone (target or civilian) dies because of an accident, it will not matter if there are witnesses. 47 has the option of killing witnesses before they reach a guard, but the unnecessary murder will still count against his rank (unless he kills them with an accident). Witnesses also include anybody who sees 47 changing disguises or holding a weapon. In the games prior to 'Blood Money', the only consequence of having witnesses to a crime is that they will seek out police/guards and trigger an alert.
There are mission-specific options for killing a target in certain levels. Notable examples include locking a target in a sauna to stimulate a heart condition and cause cardiac arrest, poisoning a target's meal (this becomes more widespread in Blood Money, with meals or drinks that can be poisoned in almost every level), disguising 47 as a doctor and sabotaging a surgical operation, replacing a prop Mauser C96 handgun with a real one at an opera rehearsal, causing an actor to unwillingly kill the target, and causing stage pyrotechnics to explode and set the target on fire.
In most cases, it is required that 47 also hide the body of killed or unconscious victims, in order to avoid any unwanted alarm or if this is the desired effect 47 can leave the victims body in a wide open space for all to see.

Grand Theft Auto History (Game)

2010-10-15T16:23:00.007+07:00

History
The Grand Theft Auto series may be divided into canons, based on the inclusion of a numbering after the recognizable title name (e.g. Grand Theft Auto III) after the original Grand Theft Auto's release, and to a certain extent, the type of graphics engine used.

Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto, the first game in the Grand Theft Auto series, was created by video game developer DMA Design, and was released for Microsoft DOS/Windows in 1997/1998 and also for the PlayStation. The game is set in three different fictional cities, Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City. A reduced Game Boy Color port was later released.
Subsequently, two expansion packs, Grand Theft Auto: London, 1969 and Grand Theft Auto: London, 1961, were released on 31 March and 1 June 1999, respectively.

Grand Theft Auto 2
The second game in the series, Grand Theft Auto 2, was developed for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, and Dreamcast and released in the year 1999. Set in the indeterminable future, it featured updated graphics and somewhat different gameplay based upon the player's appeal to various criminal organizations. Grand Theft Auto 2 takes place in a retrofuturistic setting, in an unnamed American city.
A reduced Game Boy Color port was also produced. It is the only Grand Theft Auto game to have a "T" rating for a PlayStation console, it is also the only sequel to have a digit in the title instead of a Roman numeral.

Grand Theft Auto III
Grand Theft Auto III was released in October 2001, and served as the breakthrough for the franchise. The game's setting takes place around that time, in fictional Liberty City, which is loosely based on New York City, but also incorporates elements of other American cities. Grand Theft Auto III brought a third-person view to the series, rather than the traditional top-down view of earlier titles (although the view is still made available as an optional camera angle). For the first time, the problem of navigating in the huge sandbox game was solved by implementing a constant GPS triggered mini-map that highlights the player's position as well as those of current targets. Graphics were also updated with a new 3D game engine. The gameplay engine expanded the explorable world of GTA III, using a mission-based approach. Multiplayer was discarded (third party mods were later released, allowing for multiplayer gameplay), but GTA III improved in many other areas such as voice-acting and plot (in previous games, there was speech only in short animated cut scenes between levels, while other communication was simply subtitles running on the bottom of the screen).
After the success of Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released in 2002. This game was set in 1986 in Vice City, which was based on Miami, Florida. The game's plot focuses on the cocaine trade during the 1980s. Vice City was the first game to introduce fully functional flying vehicles that could be used by the player, such as seaplanes and helicopters. It also featured a variety of new weapons and vehicles.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, released in October 2004, is set in 1992, focusing on California gang life and the awakening of the drug epidemic brought on by crack cocaine. The setting was in the fictional state of San Andreas, which was based on some California and Nevada cities, specifically Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. Their counterparts are Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas respectively. The game also included a countryside in between Los Santos and San Fierro and also between Los Santos and Las Venturas, and a desert in between Las Venturas and San Fierro.
Grand Theft Auto (unofficially referred to as Grand Theft Auto Advance), for the Game Boy Advance, was also released in 2004. Originally developed as a top-down conversion of GTA III, it eventually became an original game. Unlike the Game Boy Color ports of Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2, Grand Theft Auto did not tone down the violence and profanity common to the GTA series. The game received an "M" rating from the ESRB. It was developed by an external developer, Digital Eclipse.
In 2005 and 2006, Rockstar released two games for the PlayStation Portable, both developed by Rockstar Leeds. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories is a prequel to Grand Theft Auto III and set in Liberty City in 1998. A PlayStation 2 port was released by Rockstar on 6 June 2006.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories was released for the PlayStation Portable on 31 October 2006 and set in Vice City in 1984, two years before the events of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. A PlayStation 2 port of the game was released on 6 March 2007. It is the last game of the third generation series, and the final game in the Grand Theft Auto III canon.
In in-game chronological order the third generation Grand Theft Auto games are:
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories; set in 1984, released in 2006
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City; set in 1986, released in 2002
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas; set in 1992, released in 2004
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories; set in 1998, released in 2005
Grand Theft Auto (Game Boy Advance); set in 2000, released in 2004
Grand Theft Auto III; set and released in 2001

Grand Theft Auto IV
Grand Theft Auto IV was released on 29 April 2008, after a six month delay. It was the first Grand Theft Auto game to be released simultaneously for both Sony and Microsoft's video game consoles. In August 2008, Rockstar announced that it was going to publish GTA IV for PC. GTA IV's game engine is the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) used in Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis and the Euphoria physics engine.

Grand Theft Auto IV has much more realistic gameplay than its predecessors, no characters from previous games appear in GTA IV; according to Dan Houser "virtually none of the characters from the previous games returned, as a lot of them are dead anyway." The game once again takes place in a redesigned Liberty City that very closely resembles New York City, much more than previous renditions.
Microsoft officially announced a "strategic alliance" with Rockstar Games over the rights to episodic content through their Xbox Live service at their X06 event. This content was released as Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned on 17 February 2009, and it was available for download, exclusively for the Xbox 360, this was because of the substantial $50 million that Microsoft paid Rockstar to keep it exclusive. The strategic alliance was however timed and both DLC episodes and the compilation pack were released on 13 April 2010 on PS3 and PC. The expansion adds some new elements to the existing game and focuses on Johnny Klebitz, the vice president of "The Lost" motorcycle gang.
The second and last Grand Theft Auto IV downloadable content episode was called Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony and was released on 29 October 2009. Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City is a compilation pack released for the Xbox 360 at the same time as The Ballad of Gay Tony. It contains The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony on one disk and does not require an original copy of GTA IV.
Grand Theft Auto IV officially introduced online multiplayer to the series. In most games, a customizable character is used to play, and money earned in game is translated to levels, with more customization available at higher levels. The game does not offer split screen or local area network (LAN) multiplayer modes on PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, but there is LAN on the PC mode. Up to 16 (32 on PC) players can play together, doing a variety of games including Death Match, Cops 'n' Crooks, races, Deal Breaker, and Mafiya Work as well as team varieties of Death Match, and Mafiya Work to name just a few.
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is the first Grand Theft Auto game to be released on the Nintendo DS, and was announced at the E3 Nintendo Press Conference on 15 July 2008. This game has several new features, such as touch screen mini-games. The game was released on 17 March 2009 in North America and 20 March 2009 to Australia and Europe. The game is rated 18+ by PEGI and the BBFC (Europe, UK) and M by the ESRB (North America). A PSP version was later announced on 22 June 2009 and was released in North America on 20 October 2009. It was also released on the Apple iOS platform 18 January 2010.
In chronological order the fourth generation Grand Theft Auto games are in order:
Grand Theft Auto IV; set and released in 2008
Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned; set in 2008, released in 2009 for Xbox 360, in 2010 for PlayStation 3 and PC
Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony; set in 2008, released in 2009 for Xbox 360, in 2010 for PlayStation 3 and PC
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars; set and released in 2009
On 26 February 2011, five websites were discovered which seemed to indicate the next installment of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Grand Theft Auto (Game)

2010-10-14T16:15:00.000+07:00

Grand Theft Auto (commonly abbreviated GTA) is an award-winning video game series created in the United Kingdom by Dave Jones, then later by brothers Dan Houser and Sam Houser, and game designer Zachary Clarke. It is primarily developed by Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) and published by Rockstar Games. The name of the series is derived from grand theft auto, a term referring to motor vehicle theft.
The series is set in fictional locales heavily modelled on American cities, while an expansion for the original was based in London. Gameplay focuses on an open world where the player can choose missions to progress an overall story, as well as engaging in side activities; all consisting of action, adventure, driving, occasional role-playing, stealth, and racing elements. The subject of the games is usually a comedic satire of American culture, but the series has gained controversy for its adult nature and violent themes. The series focuses around many different protagonists who attempt to rise through the ranks of the criminal underworld, although their motives for doing so vary in each game. The antagonists are commonly characters who have betrayed the protagonist or his organization, or characters who have the most impact impeding the protagonist's progress.
Video game developer DMA Design began the series in 1997, and it currently has ten stand-alone games and four expansion packs. The third chronological title, Grand Theft Auto III, was widely acclaimed, as it brought the series to a 3D setting and more immersive experience, and is considered a landmark title that has subsequently influenced many other open world action games and led to the label "Grand Theft Auto clone" on similar games. Subsequent titles would follow and build upon the concept established in Grand Theft Auto III. Film veterans such as Michael Madsen, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper, Danny Trejo, Gary Busey, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Penn, James Woods, Joe Pantoliano, Frank Vincent, Robert Loggia, Kyle MacLachlan, and Peter Fonda have all voiced major characters in many installments, and the series is critically acclaimed and commercially successful.

Overview
Each game in this series allows players to take on the role of a criminal or a wannabe in a big city, typically an individual who rises through the ranks of organized crime through the course of the game. The player is given various missions by kingpins and major idols in the city underworld which must be completed to progress through the storyline. Assassinations and other crimes feature regularly, but occasionally taxi driving, firefighting, street racing, bus driving, or learning to fly helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are also involved.
In later titles, notably those released after Grand Theft Auto 2, the player is given a more developed storyline in which he is forced to overcome an unfortunate event (e.g., being betrayed and left for dead), which serves as motivation for the character to advance up the criminal ladder and ultimately leads to the triumph of the character by the end of the storyline. The Grand Theft Auto series belongs to a genre of free-roaming video games called sandbox games, and grants a large amount of freedom to the player in deciding what to do and how to do it through multiple methods of transport and weapons. Most traditional action games are structured as a single track series of levels with linear gameplay, but in GTA the player can determine the missions that he wants to undertake, and his relationships with various characters are changed based on these choices. The cities of the games can also be roamed freely at any point in the game, and are examples of open world video game environments which offer accessible buildings with minor missions in addition to the main storyline. There are exceptions: missions follow a linear, overarching plot, and some city areas must be unlocked over the course of the game.
Grand Theft Auto III and later subsequent games have more prevalent voice acting, and radio stations, which simulate driving to music with disc jockeys, radio personalities, commercials, talk radio, pop music, and American culture.
The use of vehicles in an explorable urban environment provides a basic simulation of a working city, complete with pedestrians who generally obey traffic signals. Further details are used to flesh out an open-ended atmosphere that has been used in several other games, such as The Simpsons Hit & Run, which has less emphasis on crime or violence.

Setting
The Grand Theft Auto series is set in a fictional version of the United States, in a number of different time periods. The original Grand Theft Auto introduced three main locations: Liberty City, based upon New York City, Vice City, based upon Miami, and San Andreas, based upon the Southwestern cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Subsequent games in the series have reimagined and expanded upon the original locales. Grand Theft Auto III is set in a different rendition of Liberty City only loosely based on New York City. A revised Vice City is depicted in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the location of San Andreas takes the form of an entire state, instead of a single city. The state of San Andreas is based on the states of California and Nevada, and consists of three major cities: Los Santos (Los Angeles), San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas). Surrounding towns and areas of desert, water, woodland and countryside lie between the three cities.
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, originally released on the PlayStation Portable handheld console, are set in the previous depictions of their respective eponymous cities.
Grand Theft Auto IV and its subsequent expansion packs The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony are set in a third revision of Liberty City, set in 2008. A version of New Jersey, known as Alderney, is depicted adjacent to the city. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is also set in this version of Liberty City, although the state of Alderney is not present.
Other places in the same fictional universe as the Grand Theft Auto series also exist. Carcer City and Cottonmouth are two different cities featured in the Manhunt series. There is also the town of Bullworth from another Rockstar Game's release, Bully.
Only the expansion packs for the original Grand Theft Auto, London 1969 and London 1961, set in London, have featured a location outside of the United States.

Pixel Art

2010-10-07T09:08:00.000+07:00

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old (or relatively limited) computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.

History
The term pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The concept, however, goes back about 10 years before that, for example in Richard Shoup's SuperPaint system in 1972, also at Xerox PARC.
Some traditional art forms, such as counted-thread embroidery (including cross-stitch) and some kinds of mosaic and beadwork, are very similar to pixel art. These art forms construct pictures out of small colored units similar to the pixels of modern digital computing. A similar concept on a much bigger scale can be seen in the North Korean Arirang Festival.

Definition
Image filters (such as blurring or alpha-blending) or tools with automatic anti-aliasing are considered not valid tools for pixel art, as such tools calculate new pixel values automatically, contrasting with the precise manual arrangement of pixels associated with pixel art.

Techniques
Drawings usually start with what is called the line art, which is the basic line that defines the character, building or anything else the artist is intending to draw. Linearts are usually traced over scanned drawings and are often shared among other pixel artists. Other techniques, some resembling painting, also exist.
The limited palette often implemented in pixel art usually promotes dithering to achieve different shades and colors, but due to the nature of this form of art this is done completely by hand. Hand-made anti-aliasing is also used.

Here are a few parts of the above image of “The Gunk” in detail, depicting a few of the techniques involved:
1. The basic form of dithering, using two colors in a 2×2 checkerboard pattern. Changing the density of each color will lead to different subtones.
2. Stylized dithering with 2×2 pixel squares randomly scattered can produce interesting textures. Small circles are also frequent.
3. Anti-aliasing can be done, by hand, to smooth curves and transitions. Some artists only do this internally, to keep crisp outlines that can go over any background. The PNG alpha channel can be used to create external anti-aliasing for any background.

Saving and Compression
Pixel art is preferably stored in a file format utilizing lossless data compression, such as run-length encoding or an indexed color palette. GIF and PNG are two file formats commonly used for storing pixel art. The JPEG format is avoided because its lossy compression algorithm is designed for smooth continuous-tone images and introduces visible artifacts in the presence of dithering.

Categories
Pixel art is commonly divided in two subcategories: isometric and non-isometric. The isometric kind is drawn in a near-isometric dimetric projection. This is commonly seen in games to provide a three-dimensional view without using any real three-dimensional processing. Technically, an isometric angle would be of 30 degrees from the horizontal, but this is avoided since the pixels created by a line drawing algorithm would not follow a neat pattern. To fix this, lines with a 1:2 pixel ratio are picked, leading to an angle of about 26.6 degrees (arctan 0.5).
Non-isometric pixel art is any pixel art that does not fall in the isometric category, such as views from the top, side, front, bottom or perspective views. These are also called Planometric views.

Scaling
When pixel art is displayed at a higher resolution than the source image, it is often scaled using the nearest neighbor interpolation algorithm. This avoids blurring caused by other algorithms, such as bilinear and bicubic interpolation—which interpolate between adjacent pixels and work best on continuous tones, but not sharp edges or lines. Nearest-neighbor interpolation preserves these sharp edges, but it makes diagonal lines and curves look blocky, an effect called pixelation. Thus, hybrid algorithms have been devised to interpolate between continuous tones while preserving the sharpness of lines in the piece; such attempts include the 2xSaI and Super Eagle algorithms.

Uses
Pixel art was very often used in older computer and video console games. With the increasing use of 3D graphics in games, pixel art lost some of its use. Despite that, this is still a very active professional/amateur area, since mobile phones and other portable devices still have low resolution and then require a skillful use of space and memory. Sometimes pixel art is used for advertising too. One such company that uses pixel art to advertise is Bell. The group eboy specializes in pixel graphics for advertising and has been featured in magazines such as Wired, Popular Science, and Fortune 500.
Icons for operating systems with limited graphics abilities are also pixel art. The limited number of colors and resolution presents a challenge when attempting to convey complicated concepts and ideas in an efficient way. On the Microsoft Windows desktop icons are raster images of various sizes, the smaller of which are not necessarily scaled from the larger ones and could be considered pixel art. On the GNOME and KDE desktops, icons are represented primarily by SVG images, but with hand-optimized, pixel art PNGs for smaller sizes such as 16x16 and 24x24. Another use of pixel art on modern desktop computers is favicons.
Modern pixel art has been seen as a reaction to the 3D graphics industry by amateur game/graphic hobbyists. Many retro enthusiasts often choose to mimic the style of the past. Some view the pixel art revival as restoring the golden age of second and third generation consoles, where it is argued graphics were more aesthetically pleasing. Pixel art still remains popular and has been used in the virtual worlds Citypixel and Habbo as well as among hand-held devices such as the Nintendo DS and Cellphones.

Digital Art

2010-10-01T09:16:00.000+07:00

Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process. Since the 1970s, various names have been used to describe the process including computer art and multimedia art, and digital art is itself placed under the larger umbrella term new media art.
The impact of digital technology has transformed activities such as painting, drawing and sculpture, while new forms, such as net art, digital installation art, and virtual reality, have become recognized artistic practices. More generally the term digital artist is used to describe an artist who makes use of digital technologies in the production of art. In an expanded sense, "digital art" is a term applied to contemporary art that uses the methods of mass production or digital media.

Digital Production Techniques in Visual Media
The techniques of digital art are used extensively by the mainstream media in advertisements, and by film-makers to produce special effects. Desktop publishing has had a huge impact on the publishing world, although that is more related to graphic design. It is possible that general acceptance of the value of digital art will progress in much the same way as the increased acceptance of electronically produced music over the last three decades.
Digital art can be purely computer-generated (such as fractals and algorithmic art) or taken from other sources, such as a scanned photograph or an image drawn using vector graphics software using a mouse or graphics tablet. Though technically the term may be applied to art done using other media or processes and merely scanned in, it is usually reserved for art that has been non-trivially modified by a computing process (such as a computer program, microcontroller or any electronic system capable of interpreting an input to create an output); digitized text data and raw audio and video recordings are not usually considered digital art in themselves, but can be part of the larger project of computer art and information art. Artworks are considered digital painting when created in similar fashion to non-digital paintings but using software on a computer platform and digitally outputting the resulting image as painted on canvas.
Andy Warhol created digital art with the help of Amiga, Inc. in July 1985 when he publicly introduced at Lincoln Center Amiga paint software.

Digital Photography and Image Processing
Digital photography and digital printing is now an acceptable medium of creation and presentation by major museums and galleries. But the work of artists who produce digital paintings and digital printmakers is beginning to find acceptance, as the output capabilities advance and quality increases. Internationally, many museums are now beginning to collect digital art such as the San Jose Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum print department also has a reasonable but small collection of digital art. One reason why the established art community finds it difficult to accept digital art is the erroneous perception of digital prints being endlessly reproducible. Many artists though are erasing the relevant image file after the first print, thus making it a unique artwork.
The availability and popularity of photograph manipulation software has spawned a vast and creative library of highly modified images, many bearing little or no hint of the original image. Using electronic versions of brushes, filters and enlargers, these "neographers" produce images unattainable through conventional photographic tools. In addition, digital artists may manipulate scanned drawings, paintings, collages or lithographs, as well as using any of the above-mentioned techniques in combination. Artists also use many other sources of electronic information and programs to create their work.

Computer-Generated Visual Media
There are two main paradigms in computer generated imagery. The simplest is 2D computer graphics which reflect how you might draw using a pencil and a piece of paper. In this case, however, the image is on the computer screen and the instrument you draw with might be a tablet stylus or a mouse. What is generated on your screen might appear to be drawn with a pencil, pen or paintbrush. The second kind is 3D computer graphics, where the screen becomes a window into a virtual environment, where you arrange objects to be "photographed" by the computer. Typically a 2D computer graphics use raster graphics as their primary means of source data representations, whereas 3D computer graphics use vector graphics in the creation of immersive virtual reality installations. A possible third paradigm is to generate art in 2D or 3D entirely through the execution of algorithms coded into computer programs and could be considered the native art form of the computer. That is, it cannot be produced without the computer. Fractal art, Datamoshing, algorithmic art and Dynamic Painting are examples.

Computer Generated 3D Still Imagery
3D graphics are created via the process of designing complex imagery from geometric shapes, polygons or NURBS curves to create three-dimensional shapes, objects and scenes for use in various media such as film, television, print, rapid prototyping and the special visual effects. There are many software programs for doing this. The technology can enable collaboration, lending itself to sharing and augmenting by a creative effort similar to the open source movement, and the creative commons in which users can collaborate in a project to create unique pieces of art.

Computer Generated Animated Imagery
Computer-generated animations are animations created with a computer, from digital models created by the artist. The term is usually applied to works created entirely with a computer. Movies make heavy use of computer-generated graphics; they are called computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the film industry. In the 1990s, and early 2000s CGI advanced enough so that for the first time it was possible to create realistic 3D computer animation, although films had been using extensive computer images since the mid-70s. A number of modern films have been noted for their heavy use of photo realistic CGI.

Digital Installation Art
Digital installation art constitutes a broad field of activity and incorporates many forms. Some resemble video installations, particularly large scale works involving projections and live video capture. By using projection techniques that enhance an audiences impression of sensory envelopment, many digital installations attempt to create immersive environments. Others go even further and attempt to facilitate a complete immersion in virtual realms. This type of installation is generally site specific, scalable, and without fixed dimensionality, meaning it can be reconfigured to accommodate different presentation spaces.
Noah Wardrip-Fruin's interactive new media art piece entitled "Screen is an example of digital installation art. To view and interact with the piece, a user first enters a room, called the "Cave," which is a virtual reality display area with four walls surrounding the participant. White memory texts appear on the background of black walls. Through bodily interaction, such as using one's hand, a user can move and bounce the text around the walls. The words can be made into sentences and eventually begin to "peel" off and move more rapidly around the user, creating a heightening sense of misplacement.
"In addition to creating a new form of bodily interaction with text through its play, Screen moves the player through three reading experiences — beginning with the familiar, stable, page-like text on the walls, followed by the word-by-word reading of peeling and hitting (where attention is focused), and with more peripheral awareness of the arrangements of flocking words and the new (often neologistic) text being assembled on the walls. Screen was first shown in 2003 as part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival (in the Cave at Brown University) and documentation of it has since been featured at The Iowa Review Web, presented at SIGGRAPH 2003, included in Alt+Ctrl: a festival of independent and alternative games, published in the DVD magazines Aspect and Chaise, as well as in readings in the Hammer Museum's HyperText series, at ACM Hypertext 2004, and in other venues."

Benoit Mandelbrot (Figure)

2010-09-23T12:18:00.000+07:00

Benoît B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, acquiring dual French and American citizenship.
Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the father of fractal geometry. He coined the term fractal and described the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot extensively popularized his work, writing books and giving lectures aimed at the general public.
Mandelbrot spent most of his career at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and was appointed as an IBM Fellow. He later became a Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University. Mandelbrot also held positions at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Université Lille Nord de France, Institute for Advanced Study and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Early Years
Mandelbrot was born in Warsaw into a Jewish family from Lithuania. Mandelbrot was born into a family with a strong academic tradition - his mother was a physician and he was introduced to mathematics by two of his uncles, one of whom, Szolem Mandelbrojt, was a mathematician who resided in Paris. However, his father made his living trading clothing. Anticipating the threat posed by Nazi Germany, the family fled from Poland to France in 1936 when he was 11. Mandelbrot attended the Lycée Rolin in Paris until the start of World War II, when his family moved to Tulle, France. He was helped by Rabbi David Feuerwerker, the Rabbi of Brive-la-Gaillarde, to continue his studies. In 1944 he returned to Paris. He studied at the Lycée du Parc in Lyon and in 1945 - 47 attended the École Polytechnique, where he studied under Gaston Julia and Paul Lévy. From 1947 to 1949 he studied at California Institute of Technology, where he earned a master's degree in aeronautics. Returning to France, he obtained his Ph.D. degree in Mathematical Sciences at the University of Paris in 1952.
From 1949 to 1958 Mandelbrot was a staff member at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. During this time he spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was sponsored by John von Neumann. In 1955 he married Aliette Kagan and moved to Geneva, Switzerland, and later to the Université Lille Nord de France. In 1958 the couple moved to the United States where Mandelbrot joined the research staff at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. He remained at IBM for thirty-five years, becoming an IBM Fellow, and later Fellow Emeritus.

Research Career
From 1951 onward, Mandelbrot worked on problems and published papers not only in mathematics but in applied fields such as information theory, economics, and fluid dynamics. He became convinced that two key themes, fat tails and self-similar structure, ran through a multitude of problems encountered in those fields.
Mandelbrot found that price changes in financial markets did not follow a Gaussian distribution, but rather Lévy stable distributions having theoretically infinite variance. He found, for example, that cotton prices followed a Lévy stable distribution with parameter α equal to 1.7 rather than 2 as in a Gaussian distribution. "Stable" distributions have the property that the sum of many instances of a random variable follows the same distribution but with a larger scale parameter.
Mandelbrot also put his ideas to work in cosmology. He offered in 1974 a new explanation of Olbers' paradox (the "dark night sky" riddle), demonstrating the consequences of fractal theory as a sufficient, but not necessary, resolution of the paradox. He postulated that if the stars in the universe were fractally distributed (for example, like Cantor dust), it would not be necessary to rely on the Big Bang theory to explain the paradox. His model would not rule out a Big Bang, but would allow for a dark sky even if the Big Bang had not occurred.
In 1975, Mandelbrot coined the term fractal to describe these structures, and published his ideas in Les objets fractals, forme, hasard et dimension (1975; an English translation Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension was published in 1977). Mandelbrot developed here ideas from the article Deux types fondamentaux de distribution statistique (1938; an English translation Two Basic Types of Statistical Distribution) of Czech geographer, demographer and statistician Jaromír Korčák.

While on secondment as Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University in 1979, Mandelbrot began to study fractals called Julia sets that were invariant under certain transformations of the complex plane. Building on previous work by Gaston Julia and Pierre Fatou, Mandelbrot used a computer to plot images of the Julia sets of the formula z2 − μ. While investigating how the topology of these Julia sets depended on the complex parameter μ he studied the Mandelbrot set fractal that is now named after him. (Note that the Mandelbrot set is now usually defined in terms of the formula z2 + c, so Mandelbrot's early plots in terms of the earlier parameter μ are left–right mirror images of more recent plots in terms of the parameter c.)
In 1982, Mandelbrot expanded and updated his ideas in The Fractal Geometry of Nature. This influential work brought fractals into the mainstream of professional and popular mathematics, as well as silencing critics, who had dismissed fractals as "program artifacts".

Mandelbrot left IBM in 1987, after 35 years and 12 days, when IBM decided to end pure research in his division. He joined the Department of Mathematics at Yale, and obtained his first tenured post in 1999, at the age of 75. At the time of his retirement in 2005, he was Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences. His awards include the Wolf Prize for Physics in 1993, the Lewis Fry Richardson Prize of the European Geophysical Society in 2000, the Japan Prize in 2003, and the Einstein Lectureship of the American Mathematical Society in 2006.
The small asteroid 27500 Mandelbrot was named in his honor. In November 1990, he was made a Knight in the French Legion of Honour. In December 2005, Mandelbrot was appointed to the position of Battelle Fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Mandelbrot was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honour in January 2006. An honorary degree from Johns Hopkins University was bestowed on Mandelbrot in the May 2010 commencement exercises.

Fractals and Regular Roughness
Although Mandelbrot coined the term fractal, some of the mathematical objects he presented in The Fractal Geometry of Nature had been described by other mathematicians. Before Mandelbrot, they had been regarded as isolated curiosities with unnatural and non-intuitive properties. Mandelbrot brought these objects together for the first time and turned them into essential tools for the long-stalled effort to extend the scope of science to non-smooth objects in the real world. He highlighted their common properties, such as self-similarity (linear, non-linear, or statistical), scale invariance, and a (usually) non-integer Hausdorff dimension.
He also emphasized the use of fractals as realistic and useful models of many "rough" phenomena in the real world. Natural fractals include the shapes of mountains, coastlines and river basins; the structures of plants, blood vessels and lungs; the clustering of galaxies; and Brownian motion. Fractals are found in human pursuits, such as music, painting, architecture, and stock market prices. Mandelbrot believed that fractals, far from being unnatural, were in many ways more intuitive and natural than the artificially smooth objects of traditional Euclidean geometry:
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
—Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature

Mandelbrot has been called a visionary and a maverick. His informal and passionate style of writing and his emphasis on visual and geometric intuition (supported by the inclusion of numerous illustrations) made The Fractal Geometry of Nature accessible to non-specialists. The book sparked widespread popular interest in fractals and contributed to chaos theory and other fields of science and mathematics.
When visiting the Museu de la Ciència de Barcelona in 1988, he told its director that the painting The Face of War had given him "the intuition about the transcendence of the fractal geometry when making intelligible the omnipresent similitude in the forms of nature". He also said that, fractally, Gaudí was superior to Van der Rohe.

One Piece Media

2010-09-17T08:19:00.000+07:00

Manga
Written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece has been serialized in the manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump starting on August 4, 1997. The chapters have been published into tankōbon volumes by Shueisha since December 24, 1997. As of November 2010, the series spans over 600 chapters and 61 tankōbon volumes.
The One Piece series was licensed for an English language release by Viz Media publishes its English-language adaptation of the series, chapterwise in the manga anthology Shonen Jump, since the magazine's launch in November 2002, and in bound volumes since June 2003. As of March 3, 2010, 38 English-language volumes have been published. However, Viz Media released a statement in July 2009 confirming the release of five volumes per month in North America during the first half of 2010, greatly increasing that number. In the United Kingdom, the volumes were published by Gollancz Manga, starting March 2006, until Viz Media replaced it after the fourteenth volume. In Australia and New Zealand, the English volumes have been distributed by Madman Entertainment since November 10, 2008.

Original Video Animations
Two original video animations (OVAs) have been released in Japan. The first, One Piece: Defeat The Pirate Ganzack!, was produced by Production I.G for the Jump Super Anime Tour of 1998 and directed by Gorō Taniguchi. It is 29 minutes in length and features character designs by Hisashi Kagawa. Luffy, Nami, and Zoro are attacked by a sea monster that destroys their boat and separates them. Luffy is found on an island beach, where he saves a little girl, Medaka, from two pirates. All the villagers, including Medaka's father, have been taken away by Ganzack and his crew as forced laborers. After hearing that Ganzak also stole all the food, Luffy and Zoro rush out to get it back. As they fight the pirates, one of them kidnaps Medaka. A fight starts between Luffy and Ganzack, ending in Luffy's capture. Meanwhile, Zoro is forced to give up after a threat is made to kill all of the villagers. The people from the village rise up against Ganzack, and while the islanders and pirates fight, Nami goes and unlocks the three captives. Ganzack defeats the rebellion and reveals his armored battleship. Now it is up to the Straw Hats to "Defeat the Pirate Ganzack!" and prevent him from destroying the island.
The second OVA, One Piece: Romance Dawn Story, was produced by Toei Animation in July 2008 for the Jump Super Anime Tour. It is 34 minutes in length and based on the first version of Romance Dawn, the pilot story for One Piece, but includes the Straw Hat Pirates up to Brook and their second ship, the Thousand Sunny. In search for food for his crew, Luffy arrives at a port town, defeating a pirate named Crescent Moon Gally on the way. He meets a girl named Silk in town, who was abandoned by attacking pirates as a baby and raised by the mayor, which has caused her to value the town as her "treasure". The villagers mistake Luffy for Gally and capture him just as the real Gally returns. Gally throws Luffy in the water and plans to destroy the town, but Silk saves him and Luffy goes after Gally. His crew arrives to help him, and with his help, he recovers the treasure for the town, gets some food, and destroys Gally's ship.

Anime Series
Toei Animation produced an anime television series based on the manga chapters, also titled One Piece. The series premiered in Japan on Fuji Television on October 20, 1999. Since then, the still ongoing series has aired more than four hundred eighty episodes and has been exported to various countries around the world.
In 2004, 4Kids Entertainment began production on an English language release of One Piece in North America, and sub-licensed home video distribution with Viz Media. This dub of One Piece was heavily edited for content and length, reducing the first 143 episodes to 104. Sanji's cigarettes, for example, were turned into lollipops, and "the skin of a black pirate was changed to a tan mulatto / white color." 4Kids originally created an English version of the original opening theme; however, the music was replaced with an alternate score. The series premiered in the United States on September 18, 2004 on the Fox network as part of the Fox Box block, and later aired on the Cartoon Network in the Toonami block in April 2005. However, 4Kids released a statement in December 2006 confirming that it canceled production of its dubbed version. In July 2010, an interview was conducted between Anime News Network and Mark Kirk, the Vice President of Digital Media for 4Kids Entertainment. In this interview, Kirk explained that 4Kids acquired One Piece as part of a package deal with other anime, and that the company did not actually watch much—if any—of the series before acquiring it. However, once it became clear to the company how One Piece would not work with their intended demographic, they decided to edit it into a more kid-friendly show until they had an opportunity to legally drop the license. Kirk said the experience "ruined company's reputation." Ever since that incident, 4Kids have established a more strict set of guidelines, checks, and balances to determine what anime the company acquires.
In April 2007, Funimation Entertainment acquired the license from 4Kids. In an interview with voice actor Christopher Sabat, Sabat stated that Funimation had been interested in acquiring One Piece from the very beginning, and produced a "test episode," in which Sabat played the character of Helmeppo and Eric Vale played the part of the main character, Luffy (they would later go on to provide the English voices for Roronoa Zoro and Sanji, respectively). After producing a new English voice dub, the company released its first unedited, bilingual DVD box set, containing 13 episodes, on May 27, 2008. Similarly sized sets followed with fourteen sets released as of October 26, 2010. The Funimation dubbed episodes premiered on the Cartoon Network on September 29, 2007 and aired until its cancellation on March 22, 2008. The remainder of Funimation's dubbed episodes continued being aired on Australia's Cartoon Network, and then shifted into reruns of the Funimation dub before being replaced by Total Drama Island. Funimation, Toei Animation, Shueisha, and Fuji TV released a statement in May 2009 confirming that they would simulcast stream the series within an hour of the weekly Japanese broadcast. This free, English-subtitled simulcast is available at www.onepieceofficial.com. Originally scheduled to begin on May 30, 2009 with episode 403, a lack of security resulted in a leak of the episode. As a result, Funimation delayed the offer until August 29, 2009 at which point it began with a simulcast of episode #415. One Piece episodes are also available for streaming at Hulu.com, in both subtitled and dubbed formats (with the dub being the unedited dub found on the DVD releases).

Anime Films
Ten animated films based on the One Piece series have been released in Japan. The films are traditionally released during the Japanese school spring break since 2000. The films feature self-contained, completely original plots with animation of higher quality than what the weekly anime allows for. Funimation Entertainment has licensed the eighth film for release in North America.
Additionally, three of these movies have had special featurette shorts, showcasing the characters engaged in various activities unrelated to the series. They were shown dancing in Jango's Dance Carnival with Clockwork Island Adventure; playing soccer in Dream Soccer King! with Chopper's Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals; and playing baseball in Take Aim! The Pirate Baseball King with Curse of the Sacred Sword.
The first, third, and ninth films were directed by Junji Shimizu. The fourth and seventh films were directed by Kōnosuke Uda. The fifth film was directed by Kazuhisa Takenouchi. The sixth film was directed by Mamoru Hosoda. The eighth film was directed by Takahiro Imamura. It also featured a song, "Sayaendo," sung by the Japanese band NEWS. The tenth film was directed by Munehisa Sakai.

Video Games
The One Piece franchise has been adapted into multiple video games published by subsidiaries of Bandai and later as part of Namco Bandai Games. The games have been released on a variety of video game and handheld consoles. The series features various genres, mostly role-playing games—the predominant type in the series' early years—and fighting games, such as the titles of the Grand Battle! sub-series.
The series debuted in Japan on July 19, 2000 with One Piece: Mezase Kaizoku Ou!. At the moment, the series contains 27 games, not counting Battle Stadium D.O.N, the title One Piece shares with its related anime series Dragon Ball Z and Naruto.

Music
Myriad soundtracks were released to the anime, films and the games. The music for the One Piece anime series and most of its films were directed by Kohei Tanaka and Shiro Hamaguchi. Various theme songs and character songs were released on a total of 49 singles. Most of the songs are also featured on six compilation albums and on 16 soundtrack CDs.

Light Novels
A series of light novels was published based on the first OVA, certain episodes of the TV anime, and all but the first feature film. They featured art work by Oda and are written by Tatsuya Hamasaki. The first of these novels, One Piece: Defeat The Pirate Ganzak!, based on the OVA, was released on June 3, 1999. On July 17, 2000, followed One Piece: Logue Town Chapter, a light novel adaptation of the TV anime's Logue Town story arc. The first feature film to be adapted was Clockwork Island Adventure. The book was released on March 19, 2001. On December 25, 2001, followed the second and so far last light novel adaptation of a TV anime arc in One Piece: Thousand-year Dragon Legend. The adaptation of Chopper's Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals was released on March 22, 2002, and that of Dead End Adventure on March 10, 2003. Curse of the Sacred Sword followed on March 22, 2004, and Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island on March 14, 2005. The light novel of The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle was released on March 6, 2006 and that of The Desert Princess and the Pirates: Adventures in Alabasta on March 7, 2007. The newest novel adapts Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in the Winter, Miracle Cherry Blossom and was released on February 25, 2008.

Art and Guidebooks
Five art books and five guidebooks for the One Piece series have been released. The first art book, One Piece: Color Walk 1, released June 2001, has also been released in English on November 8, 2005. The second art book, One Piece: Color Walk 2, was released on November 4, 2003, the third, One Piece: Color Walk 3 – Lion, was released January 5, 2006, and the fourth art book, subtitled Eagle, was released on March 4, 2010. The fifth art book, subtitled Shark, was released on December 3, 2010. The first guidebook, One Piece: Red – Grand Characters was released on March 2, 2002. The second guidebook, One Piece: Blue – Grand Data File, was released on August 2, 2002. The third guidebook, One Piece: Yellow – Grand Elements, was released on April 4, 2007, and the fourth guidebook, One Piece: Green - Secret Pieces, was released on November 4, 2010. An anime guidebook, One Piece: RAINBOW!, was released on May 1, 2007, and covers the first 8 years of the TV show.

Other Media
Other One Piece media include a trading card game by Bandai named One Piece CCG and a drama CD centering around the character of Nefertari Vivi released by Avex Trax on December 26, 2002.

One Piece

2010-09-16T18:48:00.021+07:00

One Piece (ワンピース Wan Pīsu?) is a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, that has been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump since August 4, 1997. The individual chapters are being published in tankōbon volumes by Shueisha, with the first released on December 24, 1997, and the 61st volume released as of February 2011. In 2010, Shueisha announced that they sold over 200 million volumes of One Piece manga so far; volume 61 set a new record for the highest initial print run of any book in Japan in history with 3.8 million copies (the previous record belonging to volume 60 with 3.4 million copies). Volume 60 is the first book to sell over two million copies in its opening week on Japan's Oricon book rankings. One Piece follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, a 17-year-old boy who gains elastic abilities after inadvertently eating the gum gum fruit, one of the mystical devil fruits, and his diverse crew of pirates, named the Straw Hats. Luffy explores the ocean in search of the world's ultimate treasure known as the One Piece and to become the next Pirate King. On his journey, Luffy battles a wide variety of villains and makes several friends.
The series has been adapted into an original video animation (OVA) produced by Production I.G in 1998, and an anime series produced by Toei Animation, which premiered in Japan in 1999. Since then, the still ongoing series has aired more than four hundred episodes. Additionally, Toei has developed ten animated feature films, an OVA, and five television specials. Several companies have developed various types of merchandising such as a trading card game, and a large number of video games.
The manga series was licensed for an English language release in North America by Viz Media, in the United Kingdom by Gollancz Manga, and in Australia and New Zealand by Madman Entertainment. The anime series was licensed by Funimation Entertainment for an English language release worldwide, although the series has been dubbed previously by 4Kids Entertainment.
Since its release, One Piece has become one of the most popular manga series of all time in Japan. It is the highest-selling manga of all time in the history of Weekly Shōnen Jump, as well as currently being its most acclaimed manga. It enjoys a high readership, with more than 202 million volumes of the series sold by 2011. Reviewers have praised the art, characterization, and humor of the story.

Plot
The series begins with a boy named Monkey D. Luffy, inspired by his childhood hero, the pirate known as "Red-Haired" Shanks, going on a journey to find the One Piece. Along the way, he organizes and leads a crew named the Straw Hat Pirates. The crew consists of a swordsman and first mate named Roronoa Zoro; the navigator and thief Nami; the cowardly sharpshooter Usopp; the womanizing chef Sanji; the doctor Tony Tony Chopper, an anthropomorphized deer; the archaeologist Nico Robin, a former enemy of the crew; the cybernetic shipwright Franky; and a musician skeleton named Brook.
The crew faces diverse villains such as Baroque Works, Eneru, the Seven Warlords of the Sea, Blackbeard and the Marines. The marines are the subordinates of the World Government, who seek justice by ending the Golden Age of Pirates. Many background story elements involve the delicate balance of power between the World Government and the world's most powerful pirate crews, especially the Four Emperors, the four most powerful pirates in the world.
After the death of Luffy's adopted brother Portgas D. Ace and one of the Four Emperors named Whitebeard, the Straw Hat Crew undergoes rigorous training regimens. Two years later, the crew regroups at Sabaody Archipelago and set out on a journey to the New World.

Setting
The fictional world of One Piece is covered by two vast oceans, which are divided by a massive mountain range called the Red Line. The Grand Line, a sea that runs perpendicular to the Red Line, further divides them into four seas: North Blue, East Blue, West Blue and South Blue. Surrounding the Grand Line are two regions called Calm Belts, which experience almost no wind and ocean currents and are breeding ground for the huge sea creatures called Sea Kings (renamed "Neptunians" in the English manga). Because of this, the Calm Belts are very effective barriers for those trying to enter the Grand Line. While navy ships, using sea stone to mask their presence, can simply pass through, most have to use the canal system of Reverse Mountain, a mountain at the first intersection of the Grand Line and the Red Line. Sea water from each of the four seas runs up that mountain and merges at the top to flow down a fifth canal and into the first half of the Grand Line. The second half of the Grand Line, beyond the second intersection with the Red Line, is also known as the New World.
The currents and weather on the Grand Line's open sea are extremely unpredictable, while as in the vicinity of islands the climate is stable. What makes it even harder to navigate is the fact that normal compasses do not work there. A special compass called a Log Pose must be used. The Log Pose works by locking on to one island's magnetic field and then locking on to another island's magnetic field. The time for it to set depends on the island. This process can be bypassed by obtaining an Eternal Pose, a Log Pose variation that is permanently set to a specific island and never changes.
The world of One Piece is filled with anachronisms, like the transponder snails, snail-like animals that can be attached to electric equipment and function as rotary phones, fax machines, surveillance cameras, and similar devices. Dials, the shells of certain sky-dwelling animals, can be used to store wind, sound, images, heat, and the like and have various applications. A Devil Fruit (renamed "Cursed Fruit" in the edited dub) is a type of fruit which when eaten confers a power on the eater. There are three categories of Devil Fruit. Zoan fruits allow the user to fully and partially transform into a specific animal. Logia fruits give control over and allow the user "to change their living body structure into the powers of nature". Paramecia is a catch-all category for fruits that give the user superhuman abilities. They are said to be incarnations of the Sea Devil himself, and as a result, Devil Fruit users cannot swim in sea water, as "they are hated by the sea". When even partially submerged in sea water, they lose all of their strength and coordination, although some abilities remain, such as Luffy still being able to stretch after being totally submerged. "Moving" water, such as rain or waves, does not have this effect.

Production
One Piece started as three one-shot stories entitled Romance Dawn—which would later be used as the title for One Piece's first chapter and volume. The two one-shots featured the character of Luffy, and included elements that would later appear in the main series. The first of these short stories was published in August 1996 in a special issue of Shōnen Jump and later in One Piece Red. The second was published in the 41st issue of Shōnen Jump in 1996 and reprinted 1998 in Oda's short story collection, Wanted!.
Oda originally planned One Piece to last five years, and he had already planned out the ending, but he found himself enjoying the story too much to end it in that amount of time and now has no idea how long it will take to reach that point. Nevertheless, the author states, as of July 2007, that the ending will still be the one he had decided on from the beginning and he is committed to seeing it through to the end, no matter how many years it takes.
When creating a Devil Fruit, Oda thinks of something that would fulfill a human desire; he added that he does not see why he would draw a Devil Fruit unless the fruit's appearance would entice one to eat it. The names of many special attacks and other concepts in the manga consist of a form of punning, in which phrases written in kanji are paired with an idiosyncratic reading. The names of Luffy, Sanji, Chopper, Robin, and Franky's techniques are often mixed with other languages, and the names of a number of Zoro's sword techniques are designed as jokes; for example, some of them look fearsome when read by sight but sound like kinds of food when read aloud (like Zoro's signature move, Onigiri, which is rendered as demon's cut but may also mean rice dumpling). Eisaku Inoue, the animation director, has said that the creators did not use these kanji readings in the anime since they "might have cut down the laughs by about half." Nevertheless, Konosuke Uda, the director, said that he believes that the creators "made the anime pretty close to the manga."
Oda was "sensitive" about how it would be translated. The English version of the One Piece manga in many instances uses one onomatopoeia for multiple onomatopoeia used in the Japanese version. For instance, "saaa" (the sound of light rain, close to a mist) and "zaaa" (the sound of pouring rain) are both translated as "fshhhhhhh."

Eiichiro Oda (Figure)

2010-09-11T18:41:00.018+07:00

Eiichiro Oda (尾田栄一郎 Oda Eiichirō?, born January 1, 1975 in Kumamoto, Kumamoto) is a Japanese manga artist, best known as the creator of the manga and anime One Piece.

Early Life
As a child, Oda was inspired by Akira Toriyama's works and aspired to become a manga artist. He recalls that his interest in pirates was probably sparked by the popular TV animation series titled Vicky the Viking. He submitted a character named Pandaman for Yudetamago's classic wrestling manga Kinnikuman. Pandaman was not only used in a chapter of the manga but would later return as a recurring cameo character in Oda's own works.

Career
At the age of 17, he submitted his work Wanted! and won several awards, including second place in the coveted Tezuka Award. That got him into a job at the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, where he originally worked as assistant to Shinobu Kaitani's series Suizan Police Gang before moving to Masaya Tokuhiro on Jungle King Tar-chan and Mizu no Tomodachi Kappaman, which gave him an unexpected influence on his artistic style. At the age of 19, he worked as an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki on Rurouni Kenshin, before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists. Watsuki also credits Oda for the creation of the character Honjō Kamatari who appears in Rurouni Kenshin. During this time, he drew two pirate-themed one-shot stories, called "Romance Dawn", which would debut in Monthly and Weekly Jump in late 1996-early 1997. "Romance Dawn" featured Monkey D. Luffy as the protagonist, who then became the protagonist of One Piece. While Oda was an assistant of Watsuki, his colleague was Hiroyuki Takei, and the three of them are good friends.
In 1997, One Piece appeared for the first time in Weekly Shōnen Jump and promptly became one of the most popular manga in Japan. His biggest influence is Akira Toriyama, who is the creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump.
In an interview with Shonen Jump, when asked what his three favorite manga by other authors were, he stated 'everything by Akira Toriyama'. Oda and Toriyama have made a one shot called "Cross Epoch" containing characters from Toriyama's Dragon Ball and Oda's One Piece.

Works
One Piece (since 1997)
Wanted! (1998, Collection of the short stories below)
Wanted! (1992)
God's Present for the Future (1993)
Ikki Yakou (1993)
Monsters (1994)
Romance Dawn (Version 2, 1996)
Dragon Ball x One Piece: Cross Epoch (2007)

Popularity
In a 2008 poll, conducted by marketing research firm Oricon, Oda was elected fifth most favorite manga artists of Japan. He shared the place with Yoshihiro Togashi, creator of Hunter X Hunter and YuYu Hakusho.

Personal Life
Oda is married to Chiaki Inaba, who had played the One Piece character Nami during Jump Festa One Piece stage performances. They have two children. On April 9, 2009, Anime News Network reported Oda was receiving death threats from a 27-year-old unemployed woman , who was arrested earlier that day. According to authorities, the woman's husband was an assistant at Oda's office and was fired for an unknown reason. As a result, Oda was sent threatening text messages that read "Die Die".

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Edition (Game)

2010-09-09T18:54:00.000+07:00

Game Edition

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell was developed in 2 years, after which it was first released for the Xbox in North America on November 19, 2002. It uses an Unreal Engine 2 that was modified to allow the light-and-dark based gameplay.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004)
Pandora Tomorrow was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai and introduced multiplayer gameplay to the Splinter Cell series. In single-player mode, the game AI adapts to adjust to the player's skill level. Its first initial releases on March 23, 2004 supported the Xbox and Windows platforms.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)
Ubisoft Montreal was again responsible for the third game in the series, Chaos Theory. It adds a cooperative multiplayer mode. Originally announced to be released in Fall 2004, its initial releases were made at the end of March 2005. Again the Unreal Engine was heavily modified, this time from version 2.5.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Essentials (2006)
Essentials extends the Splinter Cell series to the PSP platform. Through a series of flashback missions, the player learns more about Sam Fisher's back story. The game was critically received much worse than the others in the series: While the graphics were considered high-quality for the PSP, the multiplayer was deemed almost unplayable. The game was also criticized for not being able to be played on the go, because it requires a dark environment.[citation needed]
It was released in March 2006.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006)
For the series' fourth installment, two separate versions were created, one for generation six consoles and the other for generation seven consoles as well as PCs. Double Agent features a "trust system" that presents the player with moral dilemmas.
The initial versions were released in October 2006.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (2010)
Conviction was officially announced on May 23, 2007 when Ubisoft released a trailer for the game. The game was due for release on November 16, 2007. However, the game missed its initial launch date, and on May 19, 2008, it was reported that Splinter Cell: Conviction was "officially on hold" and that the game had been taken "back to the drawing board". Ubisoft announced that the game had been pushed back to the 2009-10 fiscal year.
At E3 2009, the developers confirmed that the "new" Conviction had been in development since early 2008, commenting that "the gameplay has evolved a lot" and "the visual direction is simply much better". The game's release date was pushed back several times. On March 18, 2010, the demo was released for Xbox 360.
Ubisoft wanted to make the fifth game more accessible. so Conviction was designed around the new core elements "Mark and Execute" and "Last Known Position", while stealth elements present in the previous games were de-emphasized. Conviction uses a cover system and adds simple interrogation sequences to the series.
The Xbox 360 was released in Mid-April 2010, with the Windows version following at the end of April.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D (2011)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released by Ubisoft as part of the Nintendo 3DS launch in March 2011, is a version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, with specific features that utilize the 3DS capabilities.[16] This game uses the same stealth gameplay as Chaos Theory. The voice acting is the same as the Original Port. The graphics have been downgraded due to 3DS portable graphics. There are save points and health cabinets to be found in the game.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Trilogy (2011)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Trilogy is a collection of the first three games in the series remastered in high definition.
In February 2011 it was reported that an Xbox 360 version of this trilogy had been rated by the ESRB.

Novels
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2004)
Splinter Cell is the first installment of a series of novels based on the successful video game series. It was written by Raymond Benson under the pseudonym David Michaels. The plot follows Sam Fisher as he investigates a terrorist group called "The Shadows" and a related arms-dealing organization named "The Shop". Members of "The Shop" use inside information to attempt to kill "Third Echelon" members, including Fisher. Shortly after its publication in December 2004, it spent 3 weeks on the New York Times list of bestsellers. It also made it to the list of Wall Street Journal mass-market paperback bestsellers.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda (2005)
In Operation Barracuda, which was released on November 1, 2005, and which also made the New York Times bestseller list, Raymond Benson (again as David Michaels) continues the story of the first Splinter Cell novel.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Checkmate (2006)
For Checkmate, Grant Blackwood took over as author behind the David Michaels pseudonym, Benson having declared that he was "finished with Splinter Cell".[22] Unlike the first two books, Checkmate is not written from the first person perspective of Fisher, nor does Checkmate continue the running subplots that were established in the previous. This novel was released on November 7, 2006.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Fallout (2007)
On November 6, 2007, Fallout, was published, Blackwood's second Splinter Cell novel and the fourth in the series. The story follows Sam Fisher as he combats Islamic fundamentalists who have taken over the government of Kyrgystan.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (2009)
Conviction, is the tie-in novel to the game with the same name. It was published on November 3, 2009.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Endgame (2009)
Endgame is the second tie-in to the Conviction game. It covers the same events as the Conviction novel from the point of view of Fisher's antagonists. It was published on December 1, 2009.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Game)

2010-09-02T18:50:00.000+07:00

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a series of stealth video games, the first of which was released in 2002, and their tie-in novels. The protagonist, Sam Fisher, is presented as a highly-trained agent of a fictional black-ops sub-division within the NSA, dubbed "Third Echelon". The player guides Fisher, who usually has the iconic trifocal goggles at his disposal, to overcoming his adversaries in levels based on Unreal engines that were extended to emphasise light and darkness as gameplay elements. With one exception all games in the series were critically acclaimed, and the series is commercially successful.

Plot and Themes
The first game explains that "Splinter Cell" refers to an elite recon-type unit of single covert operatives (such as Sam Fisher) who are supported in the field by a high-tech remote team.
In the first three games (Splinter Cell, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory), terrorists are planning attacks, usually by use of information warfare, which Sam Fisher, an operative for Third Echelon, a secret branch of the NSA, must prevent. The missions range from gathering intelligence to capturing and/or eliminating terrorists.
In the fourth game, Double Agent, Fisher assumes the identity of a wanted criminal in order to infiltrate a terrorist ring.
The fifth game, Conviction, starts after events in the conclusion of Double Agent: Sam has abandoned Third Echelon. When he discovers that the death of his daughter Sarah had not been an accident (as had been purported at the beginning of Double Agent), he strikes out on his own in search of those responsible.

Trifocal Goggles
A device used for seeing in the dark features strongly in the series. Originally, Tom Clancy had rejected the idea of Sam Fisher having these "trifocal goggles", having stated that such goggles (with both thermal vision and night vision) were impossible to make. The creators argued that having two separate sets of goggles would have made for awkward gameplay and convinced Clancy to allow it. This also gave the Splinter Cell series a recognizable signature, a desirable feature. Current technology allows goggles with both thermal and night visions (as used in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas games) to be available for the military, although the goggles featured in the games are still much more compact than their real-life counterparts.

Characters
The characters of the games, as well as the organization "Third Echelon", were created by JT Petty. The main recurring ones are:
Sam Fisher is the main protagonist of the series. The character ranks 24th on the "Guinness Top 50 Video Game Characters of All Time" list.
Irving Lambert, leader of "Third Echelon", serves as the player's guide by leading Fisher through the games' missions, until he is killed as part of Double Agent's story.
Anna Grimsdóttír is portrayed as an official Third Echelon hacker and analyst, who helps Fisher when technical obstacles need to be overcome. In Conviction she takes over the role of guide from the deceased Lambert; her character also becomes the source of dramatic tension in the story.

Gameplay
The encouraged way to progress through the games is to remain hidden, select non-obvious routes, and utilize diversions to pass guards. The first game in the series only features a single-player mode, Pandora Tomorrow introduces a two-on-two multiplayer mode. Chaos Theory further develops that mode and introduces a cooperative mode. Cooperative mode plays similarly to the single player mode, but adds situations that can only be overcome as a team. The cooperative storylines in Chaos Theory and the sixth generation version of Double Agent parallel those of Sam's actions in the single-player modes, letting players act on information he obtained or provide support in the field.
Double Agent introduces a morality factor: Fisher may now encounter conflicting objectives between his superiors and the terrorists. For example, the terrorists may assign a mission to assassinate someone, while the NSA simultaneously instructs the player to prevent the assassination. This creates a delicate balancing act between gaining the trust of the terrorists and fulfilling the mission assignments. In addition, Fisher must not do anything to reveal to the terrorists that he is a double agent (such as let himself be seen with an NSA gadget), otherwise he will lose instantly.
Conviction utilizes a much faster and more violent[original research?] form of stealth action gameplay than previous games in the series. It retains the cooperative multiplayer mode of the two preceding games.

The Sims 3 (Game)

2010-08-25T18:43:00.000+07:00

The Sims 3 is a 2009 strategic life simulation computer game developed by The Sims Studio and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the best-selling computer game, The Sims 2. It was first released on June 2, 2009 simultaneously for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. The Sims 3 was released to home consoles on October 26, 2010, for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo DS and later the Wii platform on November 15, 2010. There is also a Nintendo 3DS version under development, which will be in 3D.
It has also been released for mobile phones, such as those running the iOS, Bada OS, Windows Phone 7, webOS, Android, Symbian^3, and Nokia N-Gage platforms. A much simpler version is also available for mobile phones with support for the Java platform.
The Sims 3, an instant success, sold 1.4 million copies in its first week and dominated the sales charts over a month later. Critics issued mostly positive reviews. The Sims 3 gained an 86% score from aggregator Metacritic.

Gameplay
The Sims 3 is built upon the same concept as its predecessors. Player controls their own Sims in activities and relationships in a similar manner to real life. The gameplay is open-ended and indefinite.
Sim houses and neighborhoods are entirely in one continuous map. The developers stated, "What you do outside your home now matters as much as what you do within." The game includes an optional feature called "Story Progression", which allows all Sims in the neighborhood to autonomously continue as if the player was controlling them, such as grow up, get married, get jobs and promotions, have children, build or buy their dream house while the player isn't playing.
The Sims 2 used a reward system called Wants and Fears. This is replaced with a new system called Wishes in The Sims 3. Fulfilling a Sim's wish contributes to the Sim's Lifetime Happiness score and mood. Some wishes, such as "Go to the Park", may add little points to their lifetime happiness while "Have A Baby Boy" may add thousands of points. In The Sims 2, Wants and Fears also contributed to a Sim's "Aspiration" meter, roughly analogous to current self-esteem. In The Sims 3, Aspiration is removed entirely, replaced with "Moodlets", which contribute positive or negative values to the original Motivation meter. Moodlets can be inspired by physical events, such as having a good meal or comfort from sitting in a good chair, as well as emotional events like a first kiss or a break-up. Most moodlets last for a set duration, but some negative Moodlets can be cured (such as the one incurred by an urgent need to urinate) and some positive ones rely on the Sim's surroundings and traits.
Sims live for a set duration of time (adjustable by the player) and advance through several stages (baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult, and elder). Sims can die of old age or they can die prematurely from causes such as fire, starvation, drowning, electrocution, (as of the World Adventures expansion pack) The Mummy's curse, (as of the Ambitions expansion pack) a meteor, and (as of the Late Night expansion pack) by thirst (vampires only).

Open World
On March 19, 2008, EA revealed open world, a new feature, for The Sims 3. Players can explore the world outside their Sims' homes without having to face strenuous loading times. Every house lot is now synchronized with the main neighborhood time. In previous Sims games, the time of day was separate and different for each house lot.
Players can interact with every building and amenity in a city. Although players are unable to see inside of certain commercial buildings (grocer, bookstore, theater, police office, school, etc.), they are able to enter and retain limited control over their Sims' actions while in these locations. The player has complete control in some other commercial buildings - such as the gym, library and the beach house. All occupied residential buildings can be entered in the same manner as a Sims' home, provided that they are not empty or too late at night.

Skills
There are several skill-dependent abilities, such as advanced social interactions available from high charisma, special songs for guitar players and appliance upgrades (self-cleaning, more TV channels, etc.) for high handiness. Painting, writing and guitar are now different skills, instead of the all-encompassing "creativity" skill of The Sims and The Sims 2. Paintings are now more particular to each Sim, based on their traits. Sims can increase their skills by practicing a skill (e.g. playing the guitar, working in the garden, writing a novel, even flirting, etc.), reading a book about the skill, or taking a class in the skill at a civic building. Sims can begin building their skills as early as their toddler days. While skills do not show up in the meter right away, using skill building objects is rewarded once the toddler grows into a child. Logic can be used to teach children skills that will help them in later life.

Careers
In The Sims 2, Sims 'disappeared' once they took the carpool to work, and the player had no control of them until they returned, whereas in The Sims 3, each career now takes place in a building in the neighborhood that a Sim travels to. New aspects of careers include self-employment, part-time jobs, overtime, and salary raises. Sims now have a boss to report to. Each career can yield several different rewards and some can be split into several tracks. A new function is that instead of having just skills to advance in a job, Sims also depend on relationships with co-workers and their boss. While at work, the player has a certain level of control over working Sims through 'Options', adjustable settings that dictate how the Sim should go about their work (e.g. take a break, socialize with co-workers, run errands, , etc.), which all come with their set of advantages and disadvantages.

Opportunities
One of the major new additions to gameplay is Opportunities, tasks that Sims can complete to earn rewards. These challenges occur randomly based on aspects of each Sim's lifestyle, such as relationships, skills and job. Career opportunities such as working overtime or completing special tasks can yield a pay raise, cash bonus, or relationship boost. Skill opportunities are requests by neighbors or community members for Sims to solve problems using their acquired skills for cash or relationship rewards.

Create-A-Sim
Create-a-Sim (CAS) is the character (Sim) builder, where the polygon 3-D models of Sims can be modified. New features include the ability to change footwear and headwear separately and add facial details. Sliders have replaced prior functions in CAS. For instance, muscular and obesity sliders replace The Sims 2 system of three body types (fit, regular, and overweight). Skin color, voice pitch, hair color, and chin size among other things may also be adjusted on sliders. Tattoos were introduced in the update patches from version 1.12/2.7/3.3.
The original system of percentage bar personality points has been replaced with a system of traits. These traits include moodlets, interactions, and behavior associated with the trait. For example, a Workaholic Sim is not easily stressed by work and enjoys being at work while a Flirty Sim is more successful with their romantic advances and has more romantic interactions than the average Sim.

Build / Buy modes
The build and buy modes have received their own makeover. The square tile outlines that appeared on the ground in previous Sims games' build and buy modes are now a quarter of their original size to give the player more liberty to place objects where they want. Players can re-color and re-pattern the furniture and other items to specific shades and patterns with the new Create-a-Style and make six story houses with basements.

Create-A-World
On October 29, 2009, Electronic Arts announced "Create-A-World (CAW)", which is a game world editor that allows players to create their own custom cities from scratch for use within the game. The editor tool is offered to players as a separate download (156MB), and was released on December 16, 2009 as a beta version. EA will offer technical support and updates. Players are able to share their neighborhoods as with other content. The Create A World tool is currently only available for Windows based PCs.

Cheat Codes
Like most of the other Sims games, cheat codes are available to accomplish a number of things, including getting simoleons, force events, and setting Sim attributes (career, clothing, etc.). Cheats are entered through the console.

The Sims 2 (Game)

2010-08-21T18:36:00.000+07:00

The Sims 2 is a 2004 strategic life simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the best-selling computer game, The Sims, which debuted on February 4, 2000. It was first released on September 14, 2004 for Microsoft Windows. A port to Macintosh was released on June 13, 2005. Eight expansion packs and nine stuff packs were subsequently released. In addition several console versions have been released. Though not commonly known, The Sims 2 is offered on mobile platforms. Mobile manufacturers such as Nokia offer The Sims 2 from the Ovi Store. It costs $2.99 USD. A sequel, The Sims 3, was released in June 2009.

The Sims 2 has the same concept as its predecessor. Players control their Sims in various activities and form relationships in a manner similar to real life. The Sims 2, like its predecessor, The Sims, does not have a defined final goal; gameplay is open-ended. Sims have life goals, wants and fears, the fulfillment of which can produce both positive or negative outcomes. All Sims age, and can live to 90 sim days depending on the degree to which their aspirations are fulfilled. The Sims 2 builds on its predecessor by allowing Sims to age through six stages of life and incorporating a 3D graphics engine. Although gameplay is not linear, storylines exist in the game's pre-built neighborhoods. Pleasantview is based 25 years after the town in the original The Sims. Strangetown's storyline is based on the supernatural, and is loosely connected with Pleasantview. Veronaville's characters are based on Shakespearian characters.

The Sims 2 was an instant success, selling a then-record one million copies in its first ten days. As of June 2009, The Sims 2 has sold more than 14 million units worldwide and was the best-selling PC game of 2004. During April 2008, The Sims 2 website announced that 100 million copies of The Sims series had been sold. In addition to its commercial success, The Sims 2 was well received by critics gaining a 90% score from aggregators Metacritic and GameRankings.

Gameplay

Buy and Build mode
From the neighborhood view, the player selects one lot to play, as in The Sims. There are both residential and community lots, but Sims can only live in residential lots. Community lots are where Sims travel to in order to purchase things like clothing and magazines, and to interact with NPCs.
The player can choose between playing a pre-made inhabited lot, moving a household into a built-up lot, or constructing a building on an empty lot. One novelty from The Sims 1 is foundations.
The player switches among the "live" mode (default) to control Sims, the "buy" mode to add, move or delete furniture, or the "build" mode to rebuild the house. Buy and build mode for community lots is locked when player Sims visit the lot but are available from the neighborhood view. It is also possible to import neighborhood terrains from SimCity 4.
The game contains some time-bound social challenges that provide a reward if successful. Sims can throw parties to gain aspiration points or invite the headmaster over for dinner in order to enroll their children in private school. Some expansion packs have new mini-games, like running a Greek house in University or dating in Nightlife. In Nightlife, each day is a challenge to keep both Sims as happy as possible while accumulating aspiration points. Various other expansion packs introduce supernatural characters which Sims can be turned into. This includes Vampires, Werewolves, Plantsims, Zombies, and Witches.

Comparison to The Sims
Graphically, The Sims 2 is more detailed than The Sims and lets players to view its world in full 3D. This is a change from earlier Sim games, such as SimCity 2000, which used dimetric projection and fixed resolutions, as the camera was in The Sims. In The Sims, Sims are 3D meshes, but The Sims 2 introduces far more detail in mesh quality, texture quality, and animation capability. A Sim's facial features are customizable and unique, and Sims can smile, frown, and blink. The player can adjust a Sim's features in the in-game Create-a-Sim tool; for example, noses can be made to be very large or very small. Texturing is achieved through use of raster images, though it appears more lifelike.
The Sims 2 characters' pass through six life stages (seven with University), with eventual death of old age, while babies in The Sims only become children before ceasing to continue aging. The aspiration system (described above) is also new to The Sims 2. Sims can become pregnant and produce babies that take on genetic characteristics of their parents, such as eye color, hair color, facial structure, and personality traits. Genetics play a major role in the game, and as such, dominant and recessive genes play a larger role than they did in the original game. A player can also aspire to have a Sim abducted by aliens. Males then have the chance to become impregnated and produce after three Sim days a half-alien child.
Some of the other additions to gameplay are career rewards, a week cycle, the cleaning skill (which was a hidden skill in The Sims), a variety of meals (depending on time of day), exercise clothing, body shape affected by diet and exercise, and houses built on foundations.

Game Customization
The Sims 2 is an extremely malleable game. Modders alter the game in ways as simple as creating a new floor texture of rocks or as complicated as writing entire patches for the game code to customize its behavior. Such modifications are all loosely referred to as "custom content". Specifically, custom content can be divided into four categories: exporting (creating Sims and lots in-game or using the game's included Body Shop and exporting them to a file), recoloring (creating a new texture for an object), meshing (creating an object or modifying its shape) and hacking (writing code that manipulates game and object behaviors). There are two major ways that custom content is implemented into the game. One is by way of downloading a .Sims2pack file (these are usually items of custom content that were uploaded from the game or Bodyshop, such as Sims or Lots), placing it into the game's download folder, and double-clicking to install. Another way is downloading a file, usually in Rar or Zip format, unzipping it with one of those programs, and placing the resulting .package file into the game downloads folder. The second method is usually used for items, such as hacks or original meshes, that were not created with original game software, but with third-party software. These kinds of downloads are more often available on fan-sites rather than the official site.
It should be noted that players must be fairly advanced in order to properly use hacks, especially in large numbers, as conflicts between hacks can cause game damage. Certain hacks, particularly those that change game behavior in ways that raise the game rating from T to M (for example, teen pregnancy hacks), are not allowed to be discussed on the official forum.
The modding community for The Sims 2 is self-supporting, with more advanced modders writing tools and tutorials to help in creating custom content and modifying the game environment. The "Sims 2 Body Shop" is a program shipped with The Sims 2 that allows users to create custom clothing and body recolors, such as eyes, hair and skin tone. These custom created parts can be imported directly into the game, or can be uploaded onto the official The Sims 2 Exchange for other users to download and implement into their own games. Two elements that propagate customization are the official Sims 2 Exchange and the extensive network of fan sites that distribute custom content. More than 250,000 Sims and lots have been uploaded to the Sims 2 Exchange on the Official Site.
There is an ongoing debate in the Sims 2 Community between paysites (sites that charge money for their custom content downloads) and free sites about whether or not custom content downloads should be free. Opponents of paysites claim that EA owns the rights to certain types of content created with the game, and that sale of this content is inconsistent with EA's intellectual property rights and violates the End User Licensing Agreement. Certain sites have actually given out PayPal details because they thought the users of their site had been giving out the downloads (which they had paid for) for free.

The Sims Expansion Packs (Game)

2010-08-13T18:30:00.001+07:00

Expansion Packs

A Sim using a virtual reality simulator
The Sims is one of the most heavily expanded computer game franchises ever. In all, a total of seven expansion packs were produced for The Sims (listed in chronological order):

The Sims: Livin' Large
Release date: August 31, 2000 (North America)
The Sims: Livin' Large (known as The Sims: Livin' It Up in Europe) is the first expansion pack released for The Sims. This expansion pack focuses on adding new characters, careers, items, and features that allow for more obscure and extreme gameplay. Many of the games new additions may seem a bit out of place. For example, sims can transform into Frankenstein-esque monsters by ingesting certain potions made from the chemistry set.

The Sims: House Party
Release date: April 2, 2001 (North America)
The Sims: House Party is the second expansion pack for The Sims. House Party gives players the ability and facilities to hold elaborate parties and gatherings in their sims' homes. For example, sims can purchase dance floors, costume trunks, and buffet tables complete with hired caterers. Interestingly, if a Sim throws a really good party with a lot of guests, Drew Carey will make a guest appearance and mingle with the guests at the party.
House Party was reissued in October 2002, not only to mark the release of The Sims Deluxe Edition, but also to match the box covers of the Hot Date and Vacation expansion packs.

The Sims: Hot Date
Release date: November 12, 2001 (North America)
The Sims: Hot Date is the third expansion pack released for The Sims. Hot Date adds a significant new feature not present in previous versions of the game - the ability for sims to leave their homes and travel to new destinations. In this expansion pack, the new destination is composed of ten new lots and is called "Downtown". This new feature sets a new legacy for the franchise as all of the following expansion packs for The Sims adds new destinations as well. At this new destination, sims can enjoy various activities such as eating at restaurants, shopping at stores, and going out on dates. Hot Date introduces other new features such as a revamped relationship system involving daily relationship and lifetime relationship scores. Sims can also carry inventory and give gifts to other sims. As with other expansion packs, Hot Date also adds a variety of items such as the heart-shaped hot tub, cuddle swings, and items used to build eateries and shops. New characters such as the blonde bombshell and lounge lizards are introduced.

The Sims: Vacation
Release date: March 28, 2002 (North America)
The Sims: Vacation (called The Sims: On Holiday in the Republic of Ireland, the UK, China and Scandinavia) is the fourth expansion pack for The Sims. Vacation introduces a new destination called "Vacation Island" where Sims can take vacations with family members or with other Sims. This marks the first time sims can stay on lots away from home. In other words, the game can be saved while a sim is on Vacation Island. Vacation Island is split into three distinct environments: beach, forest, and snow-capped mountain. Sims can stay at a hotel or rent a tent/igloo to rough it in the wild. They can also purchase or find souvenirs. As with other expansion packs, Vacation introduces new items, characters, and features pertaining to the theme of vacations.

The Sims: Unleashed
Release date: November 7, 2002 (North America)
The Sims: Unleashed is the fifth expansion pack developed for The Sims. Unleashed introduces pets into the game. While dogs and cats are treated as sims, other pets are treated as objects. However, they cannot be controlled directly like human Sims are. Furthermore, Unleashed introduced gardening, allowing sims to grow and nurture plants that could later be harvested and consumed. In Unleashed, the original ten-lot neighborhood that was featured in all previous games is now expanded to over forty and there is now an option to re-zone lots into residential or commercial. In commercial lots, one can build shops of numerous types and restaurants which sims can visit by calling the Old Town trolley to take them there. The theme of the game is considered to be Cajun or Zydeco. One could compare it to New Orleans' French Quarter with voodoo shops and jazz musicians appearing on commercial lots.

The Sims: Superstar
Release date: May 13, 2003 (North America)
The Sims: Superstar is the sixth expansion pack of the seven released for The Sims. This expansion allows the player's Sims to become entertainment figures and includes representations of several famous personalities. They can impersonate several great stars like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Christina Aguilera, The Beatles, Richie Sambora, and Avril Lavigne. Along with new work items such as the runway and leisure items such as the mud bath tub, Superstar includes a new destination called "Studio Town" in which celebrity sims can utilize these work items to generate simoleans and fame.

The Sims: Makin' Magic
Release date: October 29, 2003 (North America)
The Sims: Makin' Magic is the seventh and final expansion pack released for The Sims. It introduces magic to the game and allows Sims to cast spells, forge charms, brew potions and buy alchemical ingredients. Baby dragons are also available as hazardous pets and it also introduces a new neighborhood area. In addition, it introduces baking and nectar-making. This expansion pack includes a disc containing a preview of The Sims 2.
The theme of the game is Mediterranean and Eastern European/gypsy carnival.

The Sims (Game)

2010-08-10T18:27:00.001+07:00

The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It was created by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity. It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons ("Sims") in a suburban household near SimCity.
The Sims was first released on February 4, 2000. By March 22, 2002, The Sims had sold more than 6.3 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling PC game in history; the game has shipped 16 million copies worldwide as of February 7, 2005. Since its initial release, seven expansion packs and sequels, The Sims 2 and the newest sequel The Sims 3 (each with their own expansion packs), have been released. The Sims has won numerous awards, including GameSpot's "Game of the Year Award" for 2000.

Gameplay and Design
Instead of objectives, the player is encouraged to make choices and engage fully in an interactive environment. This has helped the game successfully attract more casual gamers. The only real objective of the game is to organize the Sims' time to help them reach personal goals.

Life Stages
There are three life stages in The Sims: infant, child, and adult. While babies grow up into children, children and adults never age. This means children and adults remain in their life stage indefinitely. Sims, however, can die from various causes (e.g. burning to death in a fire, drowning in a pool, starving, or dying from diseases). The Sims: Livin' Large, the first expansion pack, introduces the Grim Reaper who appears after the death of a sim. If a relative of the dead sim wins against him in Rock, Paper, Scissors, the dead sim will be revived. If the relative loses, the dead sim will remain dead and his/her tombstone will appear and the option of Rock, Paper, Scissors will not be available. The tombstone will stay in its place, unless the player decides to move it to another place, or just delete it.

Build and Buy Modes
Each newly created family will begin with §20,000 regardless of its number of members. These funds can be used to purchase a house or vacant lot, build or remodel a house, and/or purchase furniture. All architectural features and furnishings are dictated by a square tile system in which items must be placed on a tile. Walls and fences go on the edge of a tile and can be diagonal, whereas sims and items cannot be diagonal. Items that are attached to walls cannot be placed on diagonal walls in the same way that items cannot be placed up against diagonal walls. The base game contains over 150 items including furniture and architectural elements.

Sims' Lives
Sims are directed on the basis of instructing them to interact with objects, such as a television set, or other sims. Sims may receive house guests from other playable lots or from a pool of unhoused sims. If enabled within the game, sims can have a certain amount of free will, allowing them to autonomously interact with their world. However, the player can override most autonomous actions. Unlike the simulated environments in games such as SimCity, SimEarth, or SimLife, the sims are not fully autonomous. They are unable to take certain actions without specific commands from the player, such as paying their bills, finding a job, and conceiving children.

The player can make decisions about time spent in skill development, such as exercise, reading, creativity, and logic, by adding activities to the daily agenda of the sims. Daily needs fulfillment such as hygiene maintenance and eating can also be scheduled. Although sims can autonomously perform these actions, they may not prioritize them effectively. Much like real humans, sims can suffer consequences for neglecting their own needs. For example, sims can die from starvation if they do not eat for prolonged periods of time. Needs govern the overall moods of the sims. If the needs are not fulfilled, the sims can become grumpy and unwilling to obey certain player-directed commands, particularly ones that do not fulfill the depleted needs in question. This system follows the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in which physiological needs must be satisfied before other needs can be attended to.

In addition to fulfilling their needs, sims need to maintain balanced budgets. The most conventional method of generating an income is to obtain a job. The game presents various career tracks with ten jobs (levels of promotion) in each. The original careers include Business, Entertainment, Law Enforcement, Crime, Medicine, Military, Politics, and Science. Sims may earn promotions by fulfilling skill and friendship requirements of each level. These promotions lead to new job titles, increased wages, and different work hours. The Sims: Livin' Large and The Sims: Unleashed introduced additional career tracks including those of Paranormal and Education. Other means of generating an income include creating and selling various items such as artworks and gnomes at home, or growing produce at home and selling them at a nearby farmers' market. The latter option is introduced in The Sims: Unleashed.
The inner structure of the game is actually an agent based artificial life program. The presentation of the game's artificial intelligence is advanced, and the Sims will respond to outside conditions by themselves, although often the player/controller's intervention is necessary to keep them on the right track. The Sims technically has unlimited replay value, in that there is no way to win the game, and the player can play on indefinitely. It has been described as more like a toy than a game.

In addition, the game includes a very advanced architecture system. The game was originally designed as an architecture simulation alone, with the Sims there only to evaluate the houses, but during development it was decided that the Sims were more interesting than originally anticipated and their initially limited role in the game was developed further.
The first game of The Sims has several limitations, most notably that children never grow up to become adults, though babies do eventually become children. Also, adult Sims never age (or die of old age), and there is no concept of weekends. For example, adults and children are expected to go to work and attend school respectively, every day. In particular, adults receive a warning if they miss one day of work, but they are fired if they miss work for two consecutive days. Children can study at home to keep their school grades up.
While there is no eventual objective to the game, states of failure do exist in The Sims. One is that Sims may die, either by starvation, drowning, perishing in a fire, electrocution or by virus (contracted from a pet guinea pig, which can happen when its cage is left dirty). When a Sim dies, a tombstone or an urn will appear in place of him/her. Their remains can be sold, or placed anywhere, inside or outside the building. At night, the ghost of the deceased Sim may haunt the building where it died. In addition, Sims can leave a household (and game) for good and never return; two adult Sims with a bad relationship may brawl, eventually resulting in one of them moving out. If a child has failing grades for too long, he or she will be sent to military school and also leave the lot for good. There are also more complicated ways of killing Sims, including getting them into a pool and deleting the steps, or putting them into a room then deleting all of that room's doors.
The Sims uses a combination of 3D and 2D graphics techniques. The Sims themselves are rendered as high-poly-count 3D objects, but the house, and all its objects, are pre-rendered, and displayed dimetrically.

Gundam Model Grades

2010-07-28T18:01:00.000+07:00

Scales And Grades

Super Deformed
Not based on any particular scale, the super-deformed style features comically-proportioned models, the most noticeable features of which are their very large heads. Super Deformed Gundam kits are often very easy to construct but offer very limited articulation and require paint and detailing to truly "finish" the kit. The most famous line is the BB Senshi (or "SD GUNDAM BB Warriors" in English). There are also separate product lines: for instance, Superior Defender Gundam Force and Ganso SD Gundam (discontinued in the 1990s). Most kits of this line are from the Musha Gundam series and the Knight Gundam series.

1:144 scale
The very first kits have been running for 30 years (starting with RX-78-2 Gundam) and are routinely re-released by Bandai. As these kits are limited in articulation and require glue (for the early kits) and paint to assemble, these have retroactively been categorized as NG (No Grade), to differentiate them from FG (First Grade).
During the mid- to late-1980s, the quality of molding improved and HG (High Grade) level kits were introduced in 1990, starting from the titular mobile suits of the first four TV series. These limited-run kits featured full snap fit assembly, an "internal frame" (for the first two kits, which provides better range of motion and were more poseable), and utilized the molding technique known as System Injection, wherein multiple colors would be cast on the same part.
In 2010, Real Grade (RG) surpassed HG as the top-end series of the 1:144 Gunpla line. The kits feature extensive detail and articulation, as well as a poseable skeletal frame comparable to the 1:100 Master Grade kits. The first RG kit was the 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam, followed by the 1/144 MS-06S Char's Zaku II.

1:100 scale
Just like the 1:144 scale model kits, these kits started about the same time with the very first 1:144 model kits, again starting from RX-78-2 Gundam. "Generic" 1:100 kits may also be called "No-Grade" (NG 1:100) to differentiate from other specific 1:100 kits. Later kits (from Turn-A Gundam onwards) are clearly inspired from the post-HG 1:100 kits and features a similar (or greater) level of quality and detail.
Beginning with Victory Gundam in 1993, the HG line would shift to relatively well detailed larger scale kits in the 1:100 scale. There were need for little painting and detailing. These applied for the 1:100 scale models produced between 1993 and 1998, including Victory Gundam, G Gundam, Gundam Wing, Gundam X, and New Mobile Report: Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. Each TV series would receive on average between 6 to 8 models in this scale and grade.

Master Grade (MG) models were first introduced in the summer of 1995, designed and made to higher standards than most other models. These take much longer to construct and are often much more expensive than their lower-grade counterparts. These kits consists of features similar to those of the HG and HGUC but better. This line of plastic kits was the first to feature a movable inner frame system which enables extensive movement and bending of joints. The popularity of this line was so great that a lot of old and new kits from non-graded series were cast as Master Grade models. The vast majority of MG offerings are from Gundam, with the rest coming from mechas in Patlabor and Dunbine, as well as character figures of Dragonball Z, Kamen Rider W, and One Piece (under the name of MG Figurerise). As the MG line has become a symbol of Gunpla, Bandai released another lineup called Real Robot Revolution (R3), for the non-Gundam type real robots like Layzner and L-Gaim, made using their experience in MG model production.

1:60 scale
Bandai release 1:60 scales to the main mecha of major TV series. These are non grades or TV grades models, and the main line of 1:60 scale. Early 1:60 kits, like other scales, where simply a bigger version of the smaller scales. In the early to mid 90's, 3 High Grade EX models of V2 Gundam, Shining Gundam and God Gundam from the V Gundam series and G Gundam series where release, featuring more details and gimmicks than its smaller counter parts. Bandai also created a much more detailed series of figures. The Perfect Grade (also known as PG) model kits come in standard 1:60 scale but are superbly detailed in terms of color and its inner frame, as well as normally possessing more points of articulation, such as hands that articulate at the knuckles. Perfect Grade kits were mainly used for developing new plastic model technologies, a function currently taken over by the Master Grade series, and typically need a few years to develop each kit.

1:35 scale
Universal Century HardGraph does not primarily center around the humanoids of the Gundam universe. Rather, it centers on military things on a more conventional scale such as land vehicles, tanks and troops. However, some kits do include detailed to-scale mecha parts which are particularly useful for the creation of dioramas. For instance, the Anti-MS Squad kit includes an articulated lower Gundam arm.

Other/Mixed Scales
There are various other scales, like the Mega Grade's 1:48, the Speed Grade's 1:200. These scales are less dominant in the Gundam Model line.
A 1:400 scale model line is designed for large mobile armours and battle ships in the Gundam Collection line, which the line's ordinary mobile suits are figures, not models. Only extremely large units like Mobile Armours and Warships need assembly. These models are pre-coloured models, and the warships need minimal assemble. An earlier line of model, the High Grade Mechanics, with a scale of 1:550 held a similar function in introducing large mobile units, but the line only consist of 3 mobile units from 0083.
Another high-detail line is the EX model, in scales of 1:144 and 1:100 (non-humanoid units like aircraft) and 1:1600/1:1700 (spaceships), ranging from the Universal Century to Cosmic Era productions. This series is not Gundam-exclusive, having models from other series like some of the jet aircraft from Sentō Yōsei Yukikaze and at least one aircraft from Ace Combat 5.

Special Editions
Over the years, Bandai released special limited editions of various kits, usually as competition (such as the yearly Bandai Action Kits Asia (now Universal) Cup held in Hong Kong) prizes, or as an event-limited (such as Japanese toy expos, movie launch premieres) item, although sometimes these kits are sold as limited web-shop items or discreetly sold by Bandai. These kits usually come in clear plastic, metal-plated (certain kits are in so-called 24-k gold finish), "gloss-finish", "pearl-finish", "titanium-finish", or any combination of these. Their prices are usually much higher than their regular-release counterparts.

Gundam Model

2010-07-21T17:57:00.001+07:00

Gundam Models refers to plastic and non-plastic model kits depicting the mechas, vehicles and characters of the fictional Mobile Suit Gundam universe. These kits have become popular among anime fans and model-lovers, especially in Japan and in other nearby Asian countries since 1980s. The popularity of Gundam models increased in the 1990s with North America and Europe being exposed to Gundam through television, video and manga. These Gundam Models may also be called Gunpla (ガンプラ Ganpura?), a portmanteau of "Gundam plastic model". "Gunpla" more commonly refers to the practice of building Gundam models, rather than the models themselves.

History

Late 1970s - 1980s
Mobile Suit Gundam debuted in 1979 and the first Gunpla kits came in 1980, following the show's cancellation. Models produced during this era were considered non-graded models. Parts came in up to 3 different colored sprues. They lacked articulation and detail and required glue and paint to build and finish.
Following the completion of the TV series line, Bandai introduced the MSV (Mobile Suit Variation) line, featuring alternate variants of the series' mobile suits. One of the highlights of the line was the RX-78 Perfect Gundam, which introduced System Injection (a process where one sprue - sometimes even one part - was molded in multiple colors), which minimized the need to paint the model.

Mid 1980s - 1990s
Following a line of kits from the Round Vernian Vifam series, the 1985 Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam kit line incorporated the use of polycaps. These kits, although still needing glue and paint to build, featured polycaps (soft plastic, typically Polyethylene) as connectors for better articulation of joints. The 1987 Gundam Sentinel model line introduced the concept of snap-fit models, reducing the need to use glue. And starting from the 1988 Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack line, all Gunpla kits feature snap-fit assembly with many incorporating System Injection molding.
In 1990, Bandai introduced the High Grade (HG) line, which featured newer 1:144 scale versions the RX-78-2 Gundam, the RX-178 Gundam Mk. II, the MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam and the MSZ-010 ZZ Gundam. Each kit boasted exceptional detail and articulation, as well as features normally found in their larger-scale versions such as the Gundam's Core Block System and the Zeta's transformation feature. Since then, the HG line has become the top-end range of the 1:144 Gunpla series, as well as middle-range for 1:100 and 1:60 scales.

Beginning with Mobile Suit Victory Gundam in 1993, a unified set of polycap joints was created for smaller scale models that allowed easy mass production of models that all shared the same basic skeletal frame. This standardization allowed Bandai to release more models over a shorter period. As a result, the Gundam shows of the '90s usually received sizable 1:144 model lines. These were all of similar quality, with some attention to colors molded in the right area, a reasonable level of detail for their price point, and mobility as such that all major joints had at least some degree of mobility.[citation needed]
In 1995, the 1:100 Master Grade (MG) line was introduced. This line features more parts, better detail and improved articulation than past kits of the same scale. Until now, the MG line has become the high-end segment of the 1:100 Gunpla series.
Following the release of the Perfect Grade Evangelion, Bandai introduced the 1:60 Perfect Grade (PG) line to the Gundam series in 1998. This line features extensive detail and articulation, as well as working skeletal systems and light-up features. The PG line is the most expensive among all Gunpla kits, and only a select few mobile suits have been released in this line.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the franchise in 1999, Bandai released 1:144 First Grade (FG) kits of mobile suits from the original series. Marketed as budget models, these snap-fit kits featured the simplicity of the original kits, but with more modern designs based upon the corresponding Perfect Grade kits.
2000s
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED introduced a new type of a non-graded model, with a completely different design plan. While these still feature snap-fit and color molding, they omit major joints, opting instead to only allow critical pieces to move - typically the neck, hips, shoulders, and feet. These are budget models, usually retailing much lower than other models; and this line was extensive, covering nearly every machine to be featured in the TV series. Gundam SEED also featured non graded 1:100 models, identical in quality to Bandai's High Grade offerings.
In 2010, Bandai released the 1:48 Mega Size Model RX-78-2 Gundam kit as part of the franchise's 30th anniversary campaign. This kit features many innovations that make it easy to assemble for first-time Gunpla collectors. For example, the parts are attached to sprue gates thin enough to break without the need to use of plastic cutters, and excess gate plastic can be removed from the parts without using a hobby knife. some sprues have been designed to snap together for easy and quick removal of assembled parts.[1] Also in the same year, Bandai introduced the 1:144 Real Grade (RG) line, which takes design elements from the MG line such as an inner skeletal frame.

Plastic
Plastic Gundam model kits are manufactured by Bandai in Japan (or China) which has an exclusive license in manufacturing and marketing them around the world, the first of them being sold in 1980 in Japan. The models are typical of Plastic model; frames of injection-molded Polystyrene (PS) parts which must be cut out of the frame before assembly. The majority of post-1990 models have snap-fit parts, with models prior to that requiring an adhesive such as plastic cement. Plastic Gundam models kits are typically supplied with stickers and sometimes decals to apply extra colors and markings as seen in popular media such as TV shows, movies, manga or video games. Smaller or lower-grade kits often require paint to give the model a finished appearance, due to color discrepancies.
The kits range in different scales with the most popular scales being: 1:550 , 1:220, 1:144, 1:100 and 1:60, and more recently the 1:35 (UC HardGraph) line. Generally in real world terms, kits range from 4~5 inches for small-scale models, 6 to 8 inches for mid-scale models, and 12 inches for big-scale models, although these sizes vary from model to model. With a few exceptions, all currently produced kits bear grade ratings that give a good idea about their final quality. The following lists the most well-known and common categories with humanoid designs (very roughly) in their order of quality, from lowest to highest.
Please note that other categories, such as EX Model, do exist. Additionally, Bandai often produces limited-run kits for special events such as JAFCON or C3 conventions. These have different packaging, and usually only differ from their common counterparts in that they are metal-plated or made of translucent plastic.

Quake Engine

2010-07-05T10:01:00.000+07:00

The Quake engine is the game engine that was written to power 1996's Quake, written by id Software. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
After release it immediately forked, as did the level design. Much of the engine remained in Quake II and Quake III Arena. The Quake engine, like the Doom engine, used binary space partitioning (BSP). The Quake engine also used Gouraud shading for moving objects, and a static lightmap for nonmoving objects.

History

The Quake engine was created in 1996 for Quake. John Carmack did most of the programming of the engine, with help from Michael Abrash in algorithms and assembly optimization. It was later upgraded to id Tech 2 and id Tech 3.

3D Engine Design and Milestones

Reducing 3D complexity to increase speed
Quake was the first true-3D game to use a special map design system that preprocessed and pre-rendered the 3D environment, so as to reduce the processing required when playing the game on the 50-75 MHz CPUs of the time. The 3D environment in which the game takes place is referred to as a map, even though it is three-dimensional in nature rather than a flat 2D space. The map editor program uses a number of simple convex 3D geometric objects known as brushes that are sized and rotated to build the environment. The brushes are placed and oriented to create an enclosed, empty, volumetric space, and when the design is complete the map is run through the rendering preprocessor. The preprocessor is used to locate two types of empty space in the map, the empty space enclosed by brushes where the game will be played, and the other empty space outside the brushes that the player will never see. The preprocessor then strips away the back-faces of the individual brushes which are outside the game-space, leaving only the few polygons that define the outer perimeter of the enclosed game space.
Generally once a map has been preprocessed it cannot be re-edited in a normal fashion because the original brushes have been cut into small pieces. Instead the original map editor data with the brushes is retained and used to create new versions of the map. But it is possible to edit a processed map by opening it in a special vertex editor and editing the raw vertex data, or to add or remove individual triangle faces. Though difficult, this technique was occasionally used by cheaters to create windows in walls, to see normally hidden enemies approaching from behind doors and walls, and resulted in an anti-cheat mechanism used in recent 3D games that calculates a checksum for each file used in the game, to detect players using potentially hacked map files.
A processed map file can have a much lower polygon count than the original unprocessed map, often by 50 to 80 percent. On the 50-75 MHz PCs of the time, it was common for this pruning step to take many hours to complete on a map, often running overnight if the map design was extremely complex.
This preprocessing step can not work if there are any small holes or "leaks" that interconnect the interior game space with the exterior empty space, and it was common for complex map-building projects to be abandoned because the map designer could not locate the leaks in their map. To prevent leaks, the brushes should overlap and slightly interpenetrate each other; attempting to perfectly align along the edges of unusually-shaped brushes on a grid can result in very small gaps that are difficult to locate.
The open cloudy sky in Quake maps is in fact not open, but is covered over and enclosed with large brushes, and textured with a special skybox texture that always looks the same from any viewing position.

Precalculating lighting and shadows
Quake also incorporated the use of lightmaps and 3D light sources, as opposed to the sector-based static lighting used in games of the past. id Software's innovation has been used for many 3D games released since, particularly first-person shooters, though id Software switched to a Unified lighting and shadowing model for Doom 3. After a map had been pruned of excess polygons, a second preprocessing system was used to precalculate and bake the lightmaps into the game map, to further reduce load on the CPU when playing the game. However, full light processing could take an extremely long time, so for the initial map design process, lesser-quality light processing could be done, but at the cost of creating a jagged stair-step lightcast around lights.

Sectioning the map to increase speed
To further decrease 3D rendering, a mechanism was developed to section off large regions of the map that are currently not visible to the player, and to not render those unseen spaces. A 3D rendering engine without any such optimizations would draw every part of the world and then attempt to determine which polygons are the closest; then hide all the other polygons behind the closest polygons (a technique known as Z-buffering); just because a polygon is not visible does not mean it is not part of the scene calculations. With this Quake 3D engine optimization, if the player could not see into a nearby region, the 3D engine could be told ahead of time to not include any of the objects in that space in the rendering calculations, greatly reducing the rendering load on the CPU. This effect can be noticed in the game as small tunnels with sharp 90-degree bends leading from one large space into the next large space. The small tunnel is used to block view into the adjoining unrendered space, and a special type of transparent brush (called a visportal) is used to define the edge of where the engine should stop rendering the adjoining space. It is uncommon in the original Quake to be able to see across the entire length of a map, and outdoor spaces are often very tall and narrow, primarily utilizing distance above and below into open sky or lava, to create a low-polygonal illusion of expanse.

How sectioning is performed
A Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) tree is built from the map, simplifying searching for a polygon to O(number of polygons). Each leaf creates some area of 3D space (imagine cutting a pie into pieces). The leaves of this Binary Tree have polygons of the original map associated with them, which are then used for computing each area's visibility. For each area, the VSD algorithm finds the parts of the map for which a line of sight exists. This is called the potentially visible set (PVS).
This process uses large amounts of memory, since it should take O(n2) (where n is the number of polygons) bits (only visible/hidden information is needed). John Carmack realized that one area sees just a small fraction of the other areas, so he compressed this information by using run-length encoding (RLE). This is what allowed Quake's sophisticated graphics to run so quickly on the hardware of the time.

Speeding up the rendering, and rendering order
To reduce overdraw (rendering a new pixel that hides a previously rendered point, meaning the previous work was useless and wasted), the environment was displayed first, from front to back. To hide parts of walls hidden by other walls, a Global Edge List was sorting edges of already rendered polygons ; new polygons were first clipped against previous edges so that only visible parts would get to the framebuffer.
Also while rendering the environment, a ZBuffer was filled (but never read while rendering the environment, as the BSP tree and Global Edge List ensured that each pixel was rendered only once). The ZBuffer was later used to render correctly characters and other moving objects that were partially hidden by the environment.
The pixel rendering loop was implemented in assembly. The texture coordinates perspective correction and interpolation was done using the floating-point unit, due to the limited number of integer registers.
The base texture and the lightmap of a wall were rendered at the same time: a Surface Cache was creating new Surfaces, which are new pre-lighted textures which combines the base and lightmap textures. Surfaces not used since a few frames were released, while new required Surfaces were dynamically created. Generating the surfaces was consuming less time than a secondary lighting pass would have. To save memory, smaller surfaces using mipmaps of the original texture were generated first for further walls.
The characters were lit using a constant ambient light, which value came from a structure storing ambient colors in 3D, depending on the character's position. Characters and objects very far from the camera were not rendered in 3D: they were instead rendered as voxels: 3d big square points of a single color (which came from the object texture).

Hardware 3D acceleration
Quake was also one of the first games to support 3D hardware acceleration. While initially released with only software rendering, John Carmack created a version of the Quake executable that took advantage of Rendition's Vérité 1000 graphics chip (VQuake). OpenGL support was soon added in the form of the GLQuake executable for Windows 95 and higher. Many believe that this kick-started the independent 3D graphics card revolution, GLQuake being the first application to truly demonstrate the capabilities of the 3dfx "Voodoo" chipset at the time. The only two other cards capable of rendering GLQuake were a professional (very expensive) Intergraph 3D OpenGL card, and, later, the PowerVR cards.
To optimize the software rendering engine, lightmaps were shared by polygons that were close in space, and in the same leaf of the BSP tree. This means that quite often polygons using the same main texture could not be rendered at the same time with the 3d acceleration, due to the multitexturing second unit having to be reconfigured with another lightmap. This architecture decision was reducing hardware accelerated rendering performances.

Player movement
Quake by default used the keyboard to turn left and right and move forward and backward, using the mouse, like Doom, to do the same movements. This produced awkward movements, and required settings like "auto-level" that would move the viewpoint back to straight forward as the player moved and "auto vertical aim" that would automatically shoot things above and below the player. Probably because of this, the level design in Quake was more suited to the 2.5D environment of Doom. Only in a few spots in the game was the attacking monster far above or below the player. Quake did have the option of using the mouse to look/aim/orient ("mouselook") and the keyboard to move forward, backward and sideways, but it was not the default until Quake III Arena was released.

Network play
Quake includes cooperative and deathmatch multiplayer modes over LAN or the Internet. Additional multi-player modes were later added using "mods".
Quake uses the client–server model, where a server has control of all game events. All players connect to this server in order to participate, with the server telling the clients what is happening in the game. The server may either be a dedicated server or a listen server. Even in the latter situation, Quake still uses the client–server model, as opposed to the peer-to-peer networking used by some other games. Quake thus cannot suffer from de-synchronized network games that could occur from different clients disagreeing with each other, since the server is always the final authority.
Depending on the client's specific route to the server, different clients will get different ping times. The lower a player's latency (ping time) is, the smoother his or her in-game motions are, which makes it easier to aim, move, and score. Someone playing at the PC or within the same LAN as the server gets a substantial advantage due to having essentially no lag. This created a class structure of haves and have nots, spawning the phrases, Low Ping Bastards or LPBs and High Ping Bait or HPBs.
While gamers had been deathmatching each other via IPX LAN connections, serial cable connections, and modems in the Doom, Heretic, and Hexen series of games, it was not until Quake that the Internet deathmatch community really began.

Quake Arena (Game)

2010-07-02T09:59:00.001+07:00

Quake III Arena (also known as Quake 3; abbreviated as Q3A or Q3), is a multiplayer first-person shooter computer and video game released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly. Quake III Arena is the third in the series and differs from previous games by excluding a traditional single-player element and focusing on multi-player action. The single-player is instead played against computer controlled bots in a similar style to Unreal Tournament.
Notable features of Quake 3 include the minimalist design, lacking rarely used items and features, the extensive customizability of player settings such as field of view, texture detail and enemy model, and advanced movement features such as strafe and rocket-jumping.
Quake 3 is available on a number of platforms and contains mature content. The game was highly praised by reviewers who, for the most part, described the gameplay as fun and engaging. Many liked the crisp graphics and focus on multiplayer.
Quake 3 has also been used extensively in professional electronic sports tournaments such as Quakecon, Cyberathlete Professional League and the Electronic Sports World Cup.

Gameplay
Unlike its predecessors, Q3A does not have a plot-based single-player campaign. Instead, it simulates the multiplayer experience with computer controlled players known as bots. The game's story is brief - 'the greatest warriors of all time fight for the amusement of a race called the Vadrigar in the Arena Eternal.' The introduction video shows the abduction of such a warrior, Sarge, while making a last stand. Continuity with prior games in the Quake series and even Doom is maintained by the inclusion of player models related to those earlier games as well as biographical information included on characters in the manual, a familiar mixture of gothic and technological map architecture and specific equipment; for example, the Quad Damage power-up, the infamous rocket launcher and the BFG super-weapon.
In Quake III Arena the player progresses through tiers of maps, combating different bot characters that increase in difficulty, from Crash (at Tier 0) to Xaero (at Tier 7). As well as tougher opponents the fights take place in more complex arenas as the game progresses. While deathmatch maps are designed for up to 16 players, tournament maps are designed for duels between 2 players and in the single-player game could be considered as 'boss battles'.
The weapons are balanced by role, with each weapon having advantages in certain situations such as at long-range or fired around a corner; the BFG is an exception to this as a super-weapon. Weapons appear as level items, spawning at regular intervals in set locations on the map. If a player dies all their weapons are lost and they receive the spawn weapons for the current map, usually the gauntlet and machine gun. Players also drop the weapon they were using when killed, which other players can then pick up.
Q3A comes with several gameplay modes; Free for All (FFA), a classic deathmatch, where each player competes against the rest for the highest score, Team Deathmatch (TDM), where usually two teams of four compete for the highest team frag total, Tournament (1v1), a deathmatch between two players, usually ending after a set time and Capture the Flag, which is played on symmetrical maps where teams have to recover the enemy flag from the opponents' base while retaining their own.
Quake III Arena was specifically designed for multiplayer, the game allows players whose computers are connected by a network or to the internet, to play against each other in real time. It employs a client–server model, requiring all players' clients to connect to a server. Q3A's focus on multiplayer gameplay spawned a lively community, similar to Quakeworld, that is active to this day.

Development
During early March 1999, ATI leaked the internal hardware vendor (IHV) copy of the game.[4] This was a functional version of the engine with a textured level and working guns. The IHV contained most the weapons (excepting the Gauntlet) that would make it into the final game although most were not fully modeled; a chainsaw and grappling hook were also in the IHV but did not make it into the final release. Many of the sounds that would make it into the final release were also included.
After the IHV fiasco id Software released a beta of the game called Quake III Arena Test on April 24, 1999. The Q3Test started with version 1.05 and included three levels that would be included in the final release: dm7, dm17, and q3tourney2. Id software continued to update Q3Test up until version 1.09.
During the game's testing it was found that the lightning gun was too dominating. Its strength was reduced to the point that some players have found it useless. Weapon balance was achieved by examining earlier games in the series, Quake and Quake II as well as extensive play testing with well-known players such as Thresh. In the first Quake the rocket launcher was so effective that it dominated entire deathmatches while the rocket launcher in Quake II so weak that it was sometimes ignored. The rocket launcher in Quake III is effective but not overpowering, allowing it to be countered in many situations.

Quake (Game)

2010-07-01T09:43:00.001+07:00

Quake is a first-person shooter video game that was released by id Software on June 22, 1996. It was the first game in the popular Quake series of video games. It was made available on Steam on August 3, 2007.

History
A preview included with id's very first release, 1990's Commander Keen, advertised a game entitled The Fight for Justice as a follow-up to the Keen trilogy. It would feature a character named Quake, "the strongest, most dangerous person on the continent", armed with thunderbolts and a "Ring of Regeneration." Conceived as a VGA full-color side-scrolling RPG, The Fight for Justice was never released.

Pre-release and QTest
Quake was given as a title to the game that id Software was working on shortly after the release of Doom II. The earliest information released described Quake as focusing on a Thor-like character who wields a giant hammer, and is able to knock away enemies by throwing the hammer (complete with real-time inverse kinematics). At the start, the levels were supposed to be designed in an Aztec style, but the choice was dropped some months into the project. Early screenshots then showed medieval environments and dragons. The plan was for the game to have more RPG-style elements. However, work was very slow on the engine, since John Carmack, the main programmer of Quake, was not only developing a full 3D engine, but also a TCP/IP networking model. (Carmack later said that he should have done two separate projects which developed those things.) Eventually, the whole id team began to think that the original concept may not have been as wise a choice as they first believed. Thus, the final game was very stripped down from its original intentions, and instead featured gameplay similar to Doom and its sequel, although levels and enemies were closer to medieval RPG style rather than science-fiction. Praised throughout the gaming community, it quickly dethroned previous FPS titles and revolutionized the way multiplayer games were developed.
Before the release of the game or the demo of the game, id software released QTest on February 24, 1996. It was described as a technology demo and was limited to three multiplayer maps. There was no single player support and some of the gameplay and graphics were unfinished or different from their final versions. Nevertheless, the game's multiplayer support caused Quake servers to spring up everywhere overnight. QTest also gave gamers their first peek into the filesystem and modifiability of the Quake engine, and many entity mods (that placed monsters in the otherwise empty multiplayer maps) and custom player skins began appearing online before the full game was even released.

Development
Quake was programmed by John Carmack, Michael Abrash and John Cash. The level and scenarios were designed by American McGee, Sandy Petersen, John Romero and Tim Willits. The graphics were designed by Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud. Music and sound design was by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame.
The game engine developed for Quake, the Quake engine, popularized several major advances in the 3D game genre: polygonal models instead of prerendered sprites; full 3D level design instead of a 2.5D map; prerendered lightmaps; and allowing end users to partially program the game (in this case with QuakeC), which popularized fan-created modifications (mods).

Gameplay
Quake has two fundamental modes of gameplay: single player and multiplayer.

Single Player
In single-player mode, players explore and navigate to the exit of each level, facing many challenging monsters and a few secret areas along the way. Usually there are buttons to press or keys to collect in order to open doors before the exit can be reached. Once reaching the exit, the game takes the player to the next level.
Before the start level, there is a set of three pathways with easy, medium, and hard skill levels; in order to reach the Nightmare skill level (described in the game manual as "so bad that it was hidden, so people won't wander in by accident"), the player must drop through the water before the Episode 4 entrance and jump into a secret passage.
Quake's single-player campaign is organized into four individual episodes of about eight levels each (each including a secret level, one of which is a "low gravity" level—Ziggurat Vertigo in Episode 1, Dimension of the Doomed—that challenges the player's abilities in a different way). As items are collected, they are carried to the next level, each usually more challenging than the last. If the player dies, he must restart at the beginning of the level. However, games may be saved at any time.
Upon completing each episode, the player is returned to the hub Start level, where he can then enter the next episode. Each episode starts the player from scratch, without any previously collected items. Episode I (which formed the shareware or downloadable demo version of Quake) has a boss in the last level. The ultimate objective at the end of an episode is to recover a magic rune. After all of the runes are collected, the floor of the Start opens up to reveal an entrance to the End level which contains the final boss, based on the God Shub-Niggurath from the Cthulhu Mythos.

Multiplayer
In multiplayer mode, players on several computers connect to a server (which may be a dedicated machine or on one of the player's computers), where they can play against each other. Typically in multiplayer mode, when a player dies he can immediately respawn, but loses any items he has collected and so must start collecting them again. Similarly, items that have been picked up previously respawn after some time, and may be picked up again.
The single-player campaign can be played in co-op mode.
The most popular multiplayer modes are all forms of deathmatch. Deathmatch modes typically consist of either free-for-all (no organization or teams involved), one-on-one duels, or organized teamplay with two or more players per team (or clan). Teamplay is also frequently played with one or another mod. Typically, no monsters are normally present, as they serve no purpose other than to get in the way and give away the player.
The gameplay in Quake was considered unique for its time because of the different ways the player can maneuver through the game. For example: bunny hopping or strafe jumping can be used to move faster than normal, while rocket jumping enables the player to reach otherwise-inaccessible areas (or just move faster), at the cost of some self-damage. The player can start and stop moving suddenly, jump unnaturally high, and change direction while moving through the air. Many of these non-realistic behaviors contribute to Quake's appeal. The nature of the gameplay is often fast and frenzied, and has become considerably faster over the years as players mastered advanced movement techniques.
There is obvious skill needed to react quickly, aim precisely, dodge other players' shots, and jump across tricky spaces. As Quake did not include any automap, it also requires considerable knowledge of the sometimes confusingly-contorted maps (made more complex by the frequent use of teleporters) as well as careful planning in order to collect needed items and conserve health and ammunition. Strategies include regularly picking up items to prevent one's opponent from having access to them and controlling certain critical areas of each level. Duels often take place with opponents mostly out of sight of each other, jockeying for position and carefully stocking up on items, with sudden changes in speed of play when one player or the other gains an advantage. Sound also plays a central role in keeping track of other players and even items in the game, so many players use headphones to give the clearest sound and directionality. Teamplay adds even more tactical layers, with different ways to communicate and cooperate.
Multiplayer Quake was one of the first games that people singled out as a form of electronic sport. Most notable was Dennis "Thresh" Fong who won John Carmack's Ferrari 308 at the Microsoft-sponsored Red Annihilation tournament in 1997.

Story
The player takes the role of an un-named protagonist sent into a portal in order to stop an enemy code-named "Quake". Previously, the government had been experimenting with teleportation technology, and upon development of a working prototype called a "Slipgate", this enemy has compromised the human connection with their own teleportation system, using it to insert death squads into the "human" dimension, supposedly in order to test the martial capabilities of humanity.
The sole surviving protagonist in Operation Counterstrike is the player, who must advance, starting each of the four episodes from a human held but overrun military base, before fighting through into other dimensions, traversing these via slipgate or their otherworld equivalent. Once passing through each slipgate, the player's main objective is to survive and locate the exit which will take him to the next level, not unlike that of id Software's previous hit, Doom.
The game consists of around 28 separate "levels" or "maps", grouped into four episodes. Each episode represents individual dimensions that the player can access through magical portals (as opposed to the technological Slipgate) that are discovered over the course of the game. At the start of each episode, the player is deployed in a futuristic military base and he has to find a slipgate that will take him to the alternate realm. The various realms consist of a number of gothic, medieval, as well as "fire and brimstone"-style caves and dungeons with a recurring theme of hellish and satanic imagery reminiscent of Doom (such as pentagrams and images of demons on the walls). The latter is inspired by several dark fantasy influences, notably that of H. P. Lovecraft; most notably, Dimensional Shamblers appear as enemies, the "Spawn" enemies are called "Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua" in the manual, the end boss of the first episode is named Chthon, and the final boss is named Shub-Niggurath (though actually resembling a Dark Young). Some levels have Lovecraftian names, such as the Vaults of Zin and the Ebon Fortress. Originally, the game was supposed to include more Lovecraftian bosses, but this concept was scrapped due to time constraints.
It should be noted, however, that by the time the game was released the specifics of the story had become relatively unimportant and somewhat disorganized. This is mainly due to a last-minute mix of two different game designs: lead level designer John Romero wanted to make a dark fantasy hand to hand combat/RPG hybrid game, while level designers Tim Willits and American McGee wanted to make a more futuristic, Doom-like game. Ultimately the Doom-like mechanics were implemented and many of the dark fantasy design elements were incorporated into the graphics and visual effects of the game.

Sequels
After the departure of Romero, the remaining id employees chose to change the thematic direction substantially for Quake II, making the design more technological and futuristic rather than Lovecraftian fantasy. Quake 4 followed the design themes of Quake II, whereas Quake III Arena mixed these styles, as it existed in a parallel continuity that housed several "id all-stars", from various games, as playable characters.
The mixed settings occurred because Quake II originally began as a separate product line. Unfortunately, due to the failure to gain rights to the title they wanted, id designers were forced to fall back on the project's nickname of "Quake II." Since any sequel to the original Quake had already been refused, it became a viable way of continuing the series without actually continuing the storyline or setting of the first game.

Dance Dance Revolution (Game)

2010-06-22T17:13:00.009+07:00

Dance Dance Revolution, abbreviated DDR, and previously known as Dancing Stage in Europe and Australasia, is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, Dance Dance Revolution is the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance genre in video games. Players stand on a "dance platform" or stage and hit colored arrows laid out in a cross with their feet to musical and visual cues. Players are judged by how well they time their dance to the patterns presented to them and are allowed to choose more music to play to if they receive a passing score.
Dance Dance Revolution has been given much critical acclaim for its originality and stamina in the video game market. There have been dozens of arcade-based releases across several countries and hundreds of home video game console releases. The series has promoted a music library of original songs produced by Konami's in-house artists and an eclectic set of licensed music from many different genres. The series has also inspired many clones of its gameplay and a global fan base of millions that have created simulators of the game to which they contribute original music and "simfiles", collections of dance patterns to a specific song. DDR is generally considered the first "machine dance" game, followed by games such as Pump It Up by Andamiro and In the Groove by Roxor. DDR celebrated its 10th anniversary on November 21, 2008.

Gameplay

The dance stage, divided into 9 sections, 4 of them in the cardinal directions contain pressure sensors for the detection of steps.
The core gameplay involves the player moving his or her feet to a set pattern, stepping in time to the general rhythm or beat of a song. Arrows are divided by 1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, and so on (with differing color schemes for each), up to about 1/32 notes. During normal gameplay, arrows scroll upwards from the bottom of the screen and pass over a set of stationary arrows near the top (referred to as the "guide arrows" or "receptors", officially known as the Step Zone). When the scrolling arrows overlap the stationary ones, the player must step on the corresponding arrows on the dance platform, and the player is given a judgement for their accuracy (Marvelous, Perfect, Great, Good, Almost (close miss), Boo (complete miss)). Longer green and yellow arrows referred to as "freeze arrows" must be held down for their entire length, either producing a "O.K." if successful, or a "N.G." (no good) if not. Dance Dance Revolution X contains songs with Shock Arrows, walls of arrows with lightning effects which must be avoided, which are scored in the same way as Freezes (O.K./N.G.). If they are stepped on, a N.G. is awarded, the lifebar decreases, and the steps become hidden for a short period of time.
Successfully hitting the arrows in time with the music fills the "Dance Gauge", or life bar, while failure to do so drains it. If the Dance Gauge is fully depleted during gameplay, the player fails the song, usually resulting in a game over. Otherwise, the player is taken to the Results Screen, which rates the player's performance with a letter grade and a numerical score, among other statistics. The player may then be given a chance to play again, depending on the settings of the particular machine (the limit is usually 3-5 songs per game). In some of the home versions, there is usually an option for event mode, where an unlimited number of songs can be played. On some DDR games, there is an option to use two pads at once, making it harder to play but increasing the number of moves to incorporate into songs.

Difficulty
Depending on the version of the game, dance steps are broken into various levels of difficulty, often by color. Difficulty is loosely separated into 3-5 categories depending on timeline:
DDR 1st Mix only started out with Basic (even though not mentioned) and it began using the foot + name rating. The highest difficulties were 6-foot (Genuine) on Singles and 7-foot (Paramount) on doubles. DDR 2nd Mix added the Another difficulty and increased the highest difficulty to 8-foot (Exhorbitant). DDR 3rd Mix added the SSR (Step Step Revolution) mode, which can only be accessed via input code and is played on Flat (all arrows are the same color) by default. The SSR mode was eliminated in 3rdMix Plus and USA, and the Maniac routines were folded back into the regular game. The highest difficulty was increased to 9-foot (Catastrophic). DDR 4th Mix removed the names of the song and made it simple by removing those names and organizing the difficulty by order. DDR 4th Mix Plus replaced some stepcharts with newer and harder ones (which will later on be known as Challenge Steps on later console versions).
Beginning in DDRMAX, a "Groove Radar" was introduced, showing how difficult a particular sequence is in various categories, such as the maximum density of steps, how many jumps are in the steps, freeze arrows, etc. Excluding the U.S. Home Version, the step difficulty was removed in favor of the Groove Radar. DDRMAX2 re-added the foot ratings. DDRMAX2 added an official Oni/Challege difficulty which can only be accessed in Oni/Challenging Mode (Kakumei is the only Oni chart that can only be accessed by getting a AA on MaxX Unlimited as an Extra Stage). Also, that mix increased the maximum difficulty from a 9-footer to a 10-footer. Some songs were re-ranked in difficulty such as Drop Out and End of the Century being 8-footers to now 9-footers. On DDR Extreme, flashing 10-footers existed only on songs that producers felt were higher than the 10-footer rating. In addition, Beginner is a new difficulty added for beginners and the Oni/Challenge can be freely accessible, except for Extra Stage.
DDR SuperNOVA, while still has the foot ratings, removed the flashing 10-foot that existed on certain songs for unknown reasons. Later on, DDR SuperNOVA2 ditched the foot rating and replaced it with bars. However, all songs from the previous games remain identical, with very few changes to certain song difficulties such as Xepher Challenge being changed from a 10-bar to a 9-bar.

On Dance Dance Revolution X, the foot/bar rating system was given its first major overhaul, now ranking songs on a scale of 1-20, the first 10 represented by yellow bars, and the second 10 represented by additional red blocks shown in place on top of yellow bars. All songs from previous versions were re-rated on the new scale, including the flashing 10s, whose true difficulty in comparison to other flashing 10s is also now known as a result for the first time. The best way to calculate the new ratings of songs is to roughly multiply the previous difficulty rating to numbers between 1.3 to 1.5 and round it up. However, there are some dramatic changes in the way songs are rated; Bag (Expert - 10) is listed as Level 12, The Least 100 Seconds (Expert - 8) and Paranoia Hades (Difficult - 8) are listed as Level 14, and Arrabbiata (Expert - 9) is listed as Level 16.
The highest known difficulty on the new scale is 19, which are the Challenge charts of Valkyrie Dimension from the arcade version of Dance Dance Revolution X2, in both single and double.

Street Fighter (Game)

2010-06-19T17:08:00.000+07:00

Street Fighter is a 1987 arcade game developed by Capcom. It is the first competitive fighting game produced by the company and the inaugural game in the Street Fighter series. While it did not achieve the same worldwide popularity as its sequel Street Fighter II when it was first released, the original Street Fighter introduced some of the conventions made standard in later games, such as the six button controls and the use of command based special techniques.
A port for the TurboGrafx-CD console was released under the title Fighting Street in 1988. This same version was later re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in North America on November 2, 2009, and in the PAL region on November 5, 2009.

Gameplay
The player competes in a series of one-on-one matches against a series of computer-controlled opponents or in a single match against another player. Each match consists of three rounds in which the player must defeat an opponent in less than 30 seconds. If a match ends before a fighter is knocked out, then the fighter with the greater amount of energy left will be declared the round's winner. The player must win two rounds in order to defeat the opponent and proceed to the next battle. If the third round ends in a tie, then the computer-controlled opponent will win by default or both players will lose. During the single-player mode, the player can continue after losing and fight against the opponent they lost the match to. Likewise, a second player can interrupt a single-player match and challenge the first player to a new match.
In the deluxe version of the arcade game, the player's controls consist of a standard eight-way joystick, and two large, unique mechatronic pads for punches and kicks that returned an analog value depending on how hard the player actuated the control. An alternate version was released that replaces the two punching pads with array of six attack buttons, three punch buttons and three kick buttons of different speed and strength (Light, Medium and Heavy).
The player uses the joystick to move towards or away from an opponent, as well to jump, crouch and defend against an opponent's attacks. By using the attack buttons/pads in combination with the joystick, the player can perform a variety of attacks from a standing, jumping or crouching positions. There's also three special techniques which can only be performed by inputting a specific series of joystick and button inputs. These techniques are the "Psycho Fire" (波動拳 Hadōken?, "Surge Fist"), the "Dragon Punch" (昇龍拳 Shoryūken?, "Rising Dragon Fist") and the "Hurricane Kick" (竜巻旋風脚 Tatsumaki Senpū Kyaku?, "Tornado Whirlwind Kick"). Unlike the subsequent Street Fighter sequels and other later fighting games, the specific commands for these special moves are not given in the arcade game's instruction card, which instead encouraged the player to discover these techniques on their own.

Characters
The player takes control of a Japanese martial artist named Ryu, who competes in an international martial arts tournament to prove his strength. The second player takes control of Ryu's former training partner and rival Ken, who challenges Ryu in the game's 2-player matches. Normally the player takes control of Ryu in the single-player mode, however, if the player controlling Ken defeats Ryu in a 2-player match, then the winning player will play the remainder of the game as Ken. The difference between the characters is aesthetic, as both of them have the same moves and techniques.
The single-player mode consists of a series of battles against ten opponents from five different nations. At the beginning of the game, the player can choose the country where their first match will take place: the available choices are Japan or the US, as well as China or England (depending on the game's configuration). The player will then proceed to fight against two fighters from the chosen country before proceeding to the next country. In addition to the regular battles, there also two types of bonus games which player can play for additional points: a brick breaking bonus game and a table breaking bonus game. After defeating the initial eight characters, the player will travel to Thailand to fight against the final two opponents.
The first eight computer controlled opponents are: Retsu, an expelled Shorinji Kempo instructor, and Geki, a claw-wielding ninja. From the United States, Joe, a kickboxer and underground martial art champion, and Mike, a former heavyweight boxer who once killed an opponent in the ring. From China, Lee, an expert in Chinese martial arts, and Gen, an elderly professional killer who has developed his own murderous martial art style. From England, Birdie, a tall bouncer who uses a combination of wrestling and boxing techniques, and Eagle, a well-dressed bodyguard of a wealthy family who uses Kali sticks. After the first eight challengers are defeated, the player is taken to Thailand for the final two adversaries: Adon, a deadly Muay Thai master, and his mentor Sagat, the reputed "Emperor of Muay Thai" and the game's final opponent.

Development
Street Fighter was directed by Takashi Nishiyama (who is credited as "Piston Takashi" in the game) and planned by Hiroshi Matsumoto (credited as "Finish Hiroshi"), who both previously worked on the overhead beat 'em up Avengers. The two men would leave Capcom after the production of the game and were employed by SNK, developing most of their fighting game series (including sequels to Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting). The duo would later work for Dimps and work on Street Fighter IV with Capcom. Keiji Inafune, best known for his artwork in Capcom's Mega Man franchise, got his start at the company by designing and illustrating the character portraits in Street Fighter.

Arcade Variants
Two different arcade cabinets were sold for the game: a "Regular" version (which was sold as a tabletop cabinet in Japan and as an upright overseas) that featured the same six button configuration later used in Street Fighter II and a "Deluxe" cabinet that featured two-pressure sensitive rubber pads. The pressure-sensitive pads determine the strength and speed of the player's attacks based on how hard they were pressed.
In the American and Worldwide versions of the game, Ryu's and Ken's voices were dubbed so that they yelled the names of their moves in English (i.e.: Psycho Fire, Dragon Punch, Hurricane Kick), while all subsequent localized releases left the Japanese voices intact. Street Fighter IV contains both English and Japanese voice acting, although characters from Asia still use Japanese names for certain special moves and super/ultra combos amidst otherwise English dialogue.

Home Versions
Street Fighter was ported under the title Fighting Street in 1988 for the TurboGrafx-CD. This version features an arranged soundtrack. Due to the lack of a six-button controller available for the TurboGrafx-16 at the time this version was released, the strength level of the attacks were determined by how long either of the action buttons were held. This version was published by NEC Avenue in North America and Hudson Soft in Japan and was developed by Alfa System. The cover artwork featured Mount Rushmore, which was one of the locations in the game. This version was released for the Wii's Virtual Console in Japan on October 6, 2009, in North America on November 2, 2009 and in the PAL regions on November 6, 2009.
Versions of Street Fighter for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MS-DOS, Amiga and Atari ST were published by U.S. Gold in 1988 in Europe. These ports were developed by Tiertex. The Commodore 64 actually got two versions, published on the same tape/disk - the NTSC (US) version developed by Capcom USA, and the PAL (UK) version by Tiertex. Shortly afterward, Tiertex developed their own unofficial sequel titled Human Killing Machine, which was entirely unrelated to the subsequent official sequel or indeed any other game in the series. This edition of Street Fighter was featured in two compilations: Arcade Muscle and Multimixx 3, both of which featured other U.S. Gold-published ports of Capcom games such as Bionic Commando and 1943: The Battle of Midway.
An emulation of the original arcade version is featured in Capcom Arcade Hits Volume 1 (along with Street Fighter II: Champion Edition) for Windows PC, Capcom Classics Collection Remixed for the PlayStation Portable and Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 (along with Super Street Fighter II Turbo) for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

DirectX

2010-06-15T19:40:00.000+07:00

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. The name DirectX was coined as shorthand term for all of these APIs (the X standing in for the particular API names) and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console, the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. The X initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), while the DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite.
Direct3D (the 3D graphics API within DirectX) is widely used in the development of video games for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox, and Microsoft Xbox 360. Direct3D is also used by other software applications for visualization and graphics tasks such as CAD/CAM engineering. As Direct3D is the most widely publicized component of DirectX, it is common to see the names "DirectX" and "Direct3D" used interchangeably.

The DirectX software development kit (SDK) consists of runtime libraries in redistributable binary form, along with accompanying documentation and headers for use in coding. Originally, the runtimes were only installed by games or explicitly by the user. Windows 95 did not launch with DirectX, but DirectX was included with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2. Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 both shipped with DirectX, as has every version of Windows released since. The SDK is available as a free download. While the runtimes are proprietary, closed-source software, source code is provided for most of the SDK samples.
Direct3D 9Ex, Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 are only available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 because each of these new versions were built to depend upon the new Windows Display Driver Model that was introduced for Windows Vista. The new Vista/WDDM graphics architecture includes a new video memory manager that supports virtualizing graphics hardware to multiple applications and services such as the Desktop Window Manager.

History
In late 1994 Microsoft was on the verge of releasing its next operating system, Windows 95. The main factor that would determine the value consumers would place on their new operating system very much rested on what programs would be able to run on it. Three Microsoft employees – Craig Eisler, Alex St. John, and Eric Engstrom – were concerned because programmers tended to see Microsoft's previous operating system, MS-DOS, as a better platform for game programming, meaning few games would be developed for Windows 95 and the operating system would not be as much of a success.
DOS allowed direct access to video cards, keyboards, mice, sound devices, and all other parts of the system, while Windows 95, with its protected memory model, restricted access to all of these, working on a much more standardized model. Microsoft needed a way that would let programmers get what they wanted, and they needed it quickly; the operating system was only months away from being released. Eisler (development lead), St. John, and Engstrom (program manager) worked together to fix this problem, with a solution that they eventually named DirectX.

The first version of DirectX was released in September 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was the Win32 replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1. Simply put, DirectX allowed all versions of Microsoft Windows, starting with Windows 95, to incorporate high-performance multimedia. Eisler wrote about the frenzy to build DirectX 1 through 5 in his blog.
DirectX 2.0 became a component of Windows itself with the releases of Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT 4.0 in mid-1996. As Windows 95 was itself still new and few games had been released for it, Microsoft engaged in heavy promotion of DirectX to developers who were generally distrustful of Microsoft's ability to build a gaming platform in Windows. Alex St. John, working as an evangelist for DirectX, staged an elaborate event at the 1996 Computer Game Developers Conference which game developer Jay Barnson described as a Roman theme, including real lions, togas, and something resembling an indoor carnival. It was at this event that Microsoft first introduced Direct3D and DirectPlay, and demonstrated multi-player MechWarrior 2 being played over the Internet.
The DirectX team faced the challenging task of testing each DirectX release against an array of hardware and software. A variety of different graphics cards, audio cards, motherboards, CPUs, input devices, games, and other multimedia applications were tested with each beta and final release. The DirectX team also built and distributed tests that allowed the hardware industry to confirm that new hardware designs and driver releases would be compatible with DirectX.
Prior to DirectX, Microsoft had included OpenGL on their Windows NT platform. At the time, OpenGL required "high-end" hardware and was focused on engineering and CAD uses. Direct3D was intended to be a lightweight partner to OpenGL, focused on game use. As 3D gaming grew, OpenGL evolved to include better support for programming techniques for interactive multimedia applications like games, giving developers choice between using OpenGL or Direct3D as the 3D graphics API for their applications. At that point a "battle" began between supporters of the cross-platform OpenGL and the Windows-only Direct3D. Incidentally, OpenGL was supported at Microsoft by the DirectX team. If a developer chose to use OpenGL 3D graphics API, the other APIs of DirectX are often combined with OpenGL in computer games because OpenGL does not include all of DirectX's functionality (such as sound or joystick support).
In a console-specific version, DirectX was used as a basis for Microsoft's Xbox and Xbox 360 console API. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and Nvidia, who developed the custom graphics hardware used by the original Xbox. The Xbox API is similar to DirectX version 8.1, but is non-updateable like other console technologies. The Xbox was code named DirectXbox, but this was shortened to Xbox for its commercial name.
In 2002 Microsoft released DirectX 9 with support for the use of much longer shader programs than before with pixel and vertex shader version 2.0. Microsoft has continued to update the DirectX suite since then, introducing shader model 3.0 in DirectX 9.0c, released in August 2004.
As of April 2005, DirectShow was removed from DirectX and moved to the Microsoft Platform SDK instead. The DirectX SDK is, however, still required to build the DirectShow samples.

OpenGL

2010-06-12T19:34:00.000+07:00

OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL was developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) in 1992 and is widely used in CAD, virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, and flight simulation. It is also used in video games, where it competes with Direct3D on Microsoft Windows platforms (see OpenGL vs. Direct3D). OpenGL is managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group.

Design
OpenGL serves two main purposes:

Hide complexities of interfacing with different 3D accelerators by presenting a single, uniform interface
Hide differing capabilities of hardware platforms by requiring support of full OpenGL feature set for all implementations (using software emulation if necessary).

OpenGL's basic operation is to accept primitives such as points, lines and polygons, and convert them into pixels. This is done by a graphics pipeline known as the OpenGL state machine. Most OpenGL commands either issue primitives to the graphics pipeline, or configure how the pipeline processes these primitives. Prior to the introduction of OpenGL 2.0, each stage of the pipeline performed a fixed function and was configurable only within tight limits. OpenGL 2.0 offers several stages that are fully programmable using GLSL.
OpenGL is a low-level, procedural API, requiring the programmer to dictate the exact steps required to render a scene. This contrasts with descriptive (aka scene graph or retained mode) APIs, where a programmer only needs to describe a scene and can let the library manage the details of rendering it. OpenGL's low-level design requires programmers to have a good knowledge of the graphics pipeline, but also gives a certain amount of freedom to implement novel rendering algorithms.
OpenGL has historically been influential on the development of 3D accelerators, promoting a base level of functionality that is now common in consumer-level hardware:

Simplified version of the Graphics Pipeline Process; excludes a number of features like blending, VBOs and logic ops

Rasterised points, lines and polygons as basic primitives
A transform and lighting pipeline
Z-buffering
Texture mapping
Alpha blending

A brief description of the process in the graphics pipeline could be:

Evaluation, if necessary, of the polynomial functions which define certain inputs, like NURBS surfaces, approximating curves and the surface geometry.
Vertex operations, transforming and lighting them depending on their material. Also clipping non-visible parts of the scene in order to produce the viewing volume.
Rasterisation or conversion of the previous information into pixels. The polygons are represented by the appropriate colour by means of interpolation algorithms.
Per-fragment operations, like updating values depending on incoming and previously stored depth values, or colour combinations, among others.
Lastly, fragments are inserted into the frame buffer.

Many modern 3D accelerators provide functionality far above this baseline, but these new features are generally enhancements of this basic pipeline rather than radical revisions of it.

History
In the 1980s, developing software that could function with a wide range of graphics hardware was a real challenge. Software developers wrote custom interfaces and drivers for each piece of hardware. This was expensive and resulted in much duplication of effort.
By the early 1990s, Silicon Graphics (SGI) was a leader in 3D graphics for workstations. Their IRIS GL API[8] was considered the state of the art and became the de facto industry standard, overshadowing the open standards-based PHIGS. This was because IRIS GL was considered easier to use, and because it supported immediate mode rendering. By contrast, PHIGS was considered difficult to use and outdated in terms of functionality.
SGI's competitors (including Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM) were also able to bring to market 3D hardware, supported by extensions made to the PHIGS standard. This in turn caused SGI market share to weaken as more 3D graphics hardware suppliers entered the market. In an effort to influence the market, SGI decided to turn the IrisGL API into an open standard.
SGI considered that the IrisGL API itself wasn't suitable for opening due to licensing and patent issues. Also, the IrisGL had API functions that were not relevant to 3D graphics. For example, it included a windowing, keyboard and mouse API, in part because it was developed before the X Window System and Sun's NeWS systems were developed.
In addition, SGI had a large number of software customers; by changing to the OpenGL API they planned to keep their customers locked onto SGI (and IBM) hardware for a few years while market support for OpenGL matured. Meanwhile, SGI would continue to try to maintain their customers tied to SGI hardware by developing the advanced and proprietary Iris Inventor and Iris Performer programming APIs.
As a result, SGI released the OpenGL standard.
The OpenGL standardised access to hardware, and pushed the development responsibility of hardware interface programs, sometimes called device drivers, to hardware manufacturers and delegated windowing functions to the underlying operating system. With so many different kinds of graphic hardware, getting them all to speak the same language in this way had a remarkable impact by giving software developers a higher level platform for 3D-software development.
In 1992, SGI led the creation of the OpenGL architectural review board (OpenGL ARB), the group of companies that would maintain and expand the OpenGL specification for years to come. OpenGL evolved from (and is very similar in style to) SGI's earlier 3D interface, IrisGL. One of the restrictions of IrisGL was that it only provided access to features supported by the underlying hardware. If the graphics hardware did not support a feature, then the application could not use it. OpenGL overcame this problem by providing support in software for features unsupported by hardware, allowing applications to use advanced graphics on relatively low-powered systems.
In 1994, SGI played with the idea of releasing something called "OpenGL++" which included elements such as a scene-graph API (presumably based on their Performer technology). The specification was circulated among a few interested parties – but never turned into a product.
Microsoft released Direct3D in 1995, which would become the main competitor of OpenGL. On December 17, 1997, Microsoft and SGI initiated the Fahrenheit project, which was a joint effort with the goal of unifying the OpenGL and Direct3D interfaces (and adding a scene-graph API too). In 1998, Hewlett-Packard joined the project. It initially showed some promise of bringing order to the world of interactive 3D computer graphics APIs, but on account of financial constraints at SGI, strategic reasons at Microsoft, and general lack of industry support, it was abandoned in 1999.
OpenGL releases are backward compatible. In general, graphics cards released after the OpenGL version release dates shown below support those version features, and all earlier features. For example the GeForce 6800, listed below, supports all features up to and including OpenGL 2.0. (Specific cards may conform to an OpenGL spec, but selectively not support certain features. For details, the GPU Caps Viewer software includes a database of cards and their supported specs)

Touchscreen

2010-06-10T19:26:00.000+07:00

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus.
The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than indirectly with a cursor controlled by a mouse or touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device that would need to be held in the hand. Such displays can be attached to computers, or to networks as terminals. They also play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as the personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones, and video games.

History
In 1971, the first "touch sensor" was developed by Doctor Sam Hurst (founder of Elographics) while he was an instructor at the University of Kentucky. This sensor, called the "Elograph," was patented by The University of Kentucky Research Foundation. The "Elograph" was not transparent like modern touch screens; however, it was a significant milestone in touch screen technology. In 1974, the first true touch screen incorporating a transparent surface was developed by Sam Hurst and Elographics. In 1977, Elographics developed and patented five-wire resistive technology, the most popular touch screen technology in use today. Touchscreens first gained some visibility with the invention of the computer-assisted learning terminal, which came out in 1975 as part of the PLATO project. Touchscreens have subsequently become familiar in everyday life. Companies use touch screens for kiosk systems in retail and tourist settings, point of sale systems, ATMs, and PDAs, where a stylus is sometimes used to manipulate the GUI and to enter data. The popularity of smart phones, PDAs, portable game consoles and many types of information appliances is driving the demand for, and acceptance of, touchscreens.
From 1979–1985, the Fairlight CMI (and Fairlight CMI IIx) was a high-end musical sampling and re-synthesis workstation that utilized light pen technology, with which the user could allocate and manipulate sample and synthesis data, as well as access different menus within its OS by touching the screen with the light pen. The later Fairlight series III models used a graphics tablet in place of the light pen.
The HP-150 from 1983 was one of the world's earliest commercial touchscreen computer. It did not have a touchscreen in the strict sense; instead, it had a 9" Sony Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) surrounded by infrared transmitters and receivers, which detected the position of any non-transparent object on the screen.
Until recently, most consumer touchscreens could only sense one point of contact at a time, and few have had the capability to sense how hard one is touching. This is starting to change with the commercialization of multi-touch technology.
Touchscreens are popular in hospitality, and in heavy industry, as well as kiosks such as museum displays or room automation, where keyboard and mouse systems do not allow a suitably intuitive, rapid, or accurate interaction by the user with the display's content.
Historically, the touchscreen sensor and its accompanying controller-based firmware have been made available by a wide array of after-market system integrators, and not by display, chip, or motherboard manufacturers. Display manufacturers and chip manufacturers worldwide have acknowledged the trend toward acceptance of touchscreens as a highly desirable user interface component and have begun to integrate touchscreen functionality into the fundamental design of their products.

Technologies
There are a variety of touchscreen technologies.

Resistive
A resistive touchscreen panel is composed of several layers, the most important of which are two thin, electrically conductive layers separated by a narrow gap. When an object, such as a finger, presses down on a point on the panel's outer surface the two metallic layers become connected at that point: the panel then behaves as a pair of voltage dividers with connected outputs. This causes a change in the electrical current, which is registered as a touch event and sent to the controller for processing.

Surface acoustic wave
Surface acoustic wave (SAW) technology uses ultrasonic waves that pass over the touchscreen panel. When the panel is touched, a portion of the wave is absorbed. This change in the ultrasonic waves registers the position of the touch event and sends this information to the controller for processing. Surface wave touch screen panels can be damaged by outside elements. Contaminants on the surface can also interfere with the functionality of the touchscreen.

Capacitive
A capacitive touchscreen panel is one which consists of an insulator such as glass, coated with a transparent conductor such as indium tin oxide (ITO). As the human body is also a conductor, touching the surface of the screen results in a distortion of the screen's electrostatic field, measurable as a change in capacitance. Different technologies may be used to determine the location of the touch. The location is then sent to the controller for processing.

Surface capacitance
In this basic technology, only one side of the insulator is coated with a conductive layer. A small voltage is applied to the layer, resulting in a uniform electrostatic field. When a conductor, such as a human finger, touches the uncoated surface, a capacitor is dynamically formed. The sensor's controller can determine the location of the touch indirectly from the change in the capacitance as measured from the four corners of the panel. As it has no moving parts, it is moderately durable but has limited resolution, is prone to false signals from parasitic capacitive coupling, and needs calibration during manufacture. It is therefore most often used in simple applications such as industrial controls and kiosks.

Projected capacitance
Projected Capacitive Touch (PCT) technology is a capacitive technology which permits more accurate and flexible operation, by etching the conductive layer. An X-Y grid is formed either by etching a single layer to form a grid pattern of electrodes, or by etching two separate, perpendicular layers of conductive material with parallel lines or tracks to form the grid (comparable to the pixel grid found in many LCD displays).
The greater resolution of PCT allows operation without direct contact, such that the conducting layers can be coated with further protective insulating layers, and operate even under screen protectors, or behind weather and vandal-proof glass. Due to the top layer of a PCT being glass, PCT is a more robust solution versus resistive touch technology. Depending on the implementation, an active or passive stylus can be used instead of or in addition to a finger. This is common with point of sale devices that require signature capture. Gloved fingers may or may not be sensed, depending on the implementation and gain settings. Conductive smudges and similar interference on the panel surface can interfere with the performance. Such conductive smudges come mostly from sticky or sweaty finger tips, especially in high humidity environments. Collected dust, which adheres to the screen due to the moisture from fingertips can also be a problem. There are two types of PCT: Self Capacitance and Mutual Capacitance.

Mutual Capacitance
In mutual capacitive sensors, there is a capacitor at every intersection of each row and each column. A 12-by-16 array, for example, would have 192 independent capacitors. A voltage is applied to the rows or columns. Bringing a finger or conductive stylus close to the surface of the sensor changes the local electrostatic field which reduces the mutual capacitance. The capacitance change at every individual point on the grid can be measured to accurately determine the touch location by measuring the voltage in the other axis. Mutual capacitance allows multi-touch operation where multiple fingers, palms or stylus can be accurately tracked at the same time.

Self Capacitance
Self capacitance sensors can have the same X-Y grid as mutual capacitance sensors, but the columns and rows operate independently. With self capacitance, the capacitive load of a finger is measured on each column or row electrode by a current meter. This method produces a stronger signal than mutual capacitance, but it is unable to resolve accurately more than one finger, which results in "ghosting", or misplaced location sensing.

Infrared
An infrared touchscreen uses an array of X-Y infrared LED and photodetector pairs around the edges of the screen to detect a disruption in the pattern of LED beams. These LED beams cross each other in vertical and horizontal patterns. This helps the sensors pick up the exact location of the touch. A major benefit of such a system is that it can detect essentially any input including a finger, gloved finger, stylus or pen. It is generally used in outdoor applications and point-of-sale systems which can't rely on a conductor (such as a bare finger) to activate the touchscreen. Unlike capacitive touchscreens, infrared touchscreens do not require any patterning on the glass which increases durability and optical clarity of the overall system.

Optical imaging
This is a relatively modern development in touchscreen technology, in which two or more image sensors are placed around the edges (mostly the corners) of the screen. Infrared back lights are placed in the camera's field of view on the other side of the screen. A touch shows up as a shadow and each pair of cameras can then be triangulated to locate the touch or even measure the size of the touching object (see visual hull). This technology is growing in popularity, due to its scalability, versatility, and affordability, especially for larger units.

Dispersive signal technology
Introduced in 2002 by 3M, this system uses sensors to detect the mechanical energy in the glass that occurs due to a touch. Complex algorithms then interpret this information and provide the actual location of the touch. The technology claims to be unaffected by dust and other outside elements, including scratches. Since there is no need for additional elements on screen, it also claims to provide excellent optical clarity. Also, since mechanical vibrations are used to detect a touch event, any object can be used to generate these events, including fingers and stylus. A downside is that after the initial touch the system cannot detect a motionless finger.

Acoustic pulse recognition
This system, introduced by Tyco International's Elo division in 2006, uses piezoelectric transducers located at various positions around the screen to turn the mechanical energy of a touch (vibration) into an electronic signal. The screen hardware then uses an algorithm to determine the location of the touch based on the transducer signals. The touchscreen itself is made of ordinary glass, giving it good durability and optical clarity. It is usually able to function with scratches and dust on the screen with good accuracy. The technology is also well suited to displays that are physically larger. As with the Dispersive Signal Technology system, after the initial touch, a motionless finger cannot be detected. However, for the same reason, the touch recognition is not disrupted by any resting objects.

Monkey Island (Game)

2010-05-07T19:05:00.000+07:00

Monkey Island is the collective name given to a series of five graphical adventure games produced and published by LucasArts, originally known as LucasFilm Games through the development of the first game in the series. The fifth installment of the franchise was developed by Telltale Games in collaboration with LucasArts. The games follow the misadventures of the hapless Guybrush Threepwood as he struggles to become the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean, defeat the plans of the evil undead pirate LeChuck and win the heart of governor Elaine Marley. Each game's plot usually involves the mysterious Monkey Island and its impenetrable secrets.

The games were created as a collaborative effort among Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman. Gilbert worked on the first two games before leaving LucasArts. Grossman and Schafer, who also worked on the first two games, would enjoy success on other titles before both of them also left. The rights to Monkey Island remained with LucasArts, and the third and fourth games were created without the input of the original writing crew. Development of the fifth game was headed by Dave Grossman, with work from Michael Stemmle; while not actively engaged in the project, Gilbert was involved with the initial design of the game.

Overview
The Monkey Island series is known for its humor and "player-friendly" qualities. The player cannot permanently place the game in an unwinnable state or cause Guybrush to die without great effort. This "player-friendly" approach was unusual at the time of the first game's release in 1990; prominent adventure-game rivals included Sierra On-Line and Infocom, both of which were known for games with sudden and frequent character deaths or "lock-outs". LucasArts itself used such closed plot paths for its drama games like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (1989), but preferred the open format for other humor-oriented adventure games such as Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993) and Day of the Tentacle (1993). After Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in 1991, the series went in hiatus until 1997, when it resumed with The Curse of Monkey Island. After the fourth entry, Escape from Monkey Island, the franchise again went on hiatus, though numerous rumors persisted about a revival until the announcement of Tales of Monkey Island by Telltale Games in early 2009.
Much of the music of the games is composed by Michael Land. The score largely consists of reggae, Caribbean and dub-inspired music.
The series also tends to break the Fourth wall, as several of the characters acknowledge that they are in a video game.

Setting
Each of the games takes place on fictional islands in the Caribbean around the Golden Age of Piracy in the 18th century. The islands teem with pirates dressed in outfits that seem to come from movies and comic books rather than history, and there are many deliberate anachronisms and references to modern-day popular culture.
The main setting of the Monkey Island games is the "Tri-Island Area", a fictional archipelago in the Caribbean. Since the first game in the series, The Secret of Monkey Island, three of the games have visited the titular island of Monkey Island, while all have introduced their own set of islands to explore. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge features four new islands, but does not return to Monkey Island until the final cutscene. The Curse of Monkey Island introduces three, and Escape from Monkey Island, which revisits some of the older islands, features three new islands as well. As such, the "Tri-Island area" actually comprises a total of 13 visitable islands. Tales of Monkey Island takes place in a new area of the Caribbean called the "Gulf of Melange".
The main islands of the Tri-Island Area are Mêlée Island, Booty Island, and Plunder Island governed by Elaine Marley in place of her long lost grandfather, Horatio Torquemada Marley. Elaine moves from island to island at her convenience, though she considers her governor's mansion on Mêlée Island, the capital island of the area, as home.
Other islands in the region are considered under the umbrella of Tri-Island Area as well, even though not directly governed by Elaine include: Lucre Island, Jambalaya Island, Scabb Island, Phatt Island, Plunder Island, Hook Island, Skull Island, Knuttin Atoll, Blood Island, Spittle Island and Pinchpenny Island.
The Gulf of Melange has its own set of islands: Flotsam Island, the Jerkbait Islands (Spinner Cay, Spoon Island, Roe Island), Brillig Island, Boulder Beach, Isle of Ewe, and the Rock of Gelato.
Monkey Island and Dinky Island are not officially part of any island area, but nonetheless are central to the series' overall back-story and canon.

Characters
The games have a wide cast of characters, many of which reappear throughout the series. Each entry in the series revolves around three main characters: Guybrush Threepwood (the protagonist); Elaine Marley (the primary foil as the object of Guybrush and LeChuck's affection); and LeChuck (the primary antagonist).

Inspiration
Ron Gilbert's two main inspirations for the story were Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride and Tim Powers' book On Stranger Tides. The book was the inspiration for the story and characters, while the ride was the inspiration for the ambiance. "[The POTC Ride] keeps you moving through the adventure," Gilbert said in an interview, "but I've always wished I could get off and wander around, learn more about the characters, and find a way onto those pirate ships. So with The Secret of Monkey Island(TM) I wanted to create a game that had the same flavor, but where you could step off the boat and enter that whole storybook world."
Several specific references to the ride are made throughout the series, including a puzzle in the second game based on the ride's famous Jail Cell/Dog With Keys scene (the dog in the scene is even named Walt). The banjo music in the opening menu of the third game is also very reminiscent of the banjo music at the beginning of the ride. Additional references are made to Disneyland and theme parks in general throughout the series, including Guybrush finding an E ticket.

Star Craft (Game)

2010-05-02T19:00:00.000+07:00

StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling games for the personal computer. A Mac OS version was released in March 1999, and a Nintendo 64 adaptation co-developed with Mass Media Interactive Entertainment was released on 13 June 2000. StarCraft has had its storyline adapted and expanded through a series of novels, the expansion pack StarCraft: Brood War and two authorized add-ons. The game's sequel, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, was released in 2010.
Set in the 26th century, the game revolves around three species fighting for dominance in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy: the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth skilled at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoid aliens in pursuit of genetic perfection obsessed with assimilating other races; and the Protoss, a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities, attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophical way of living from the Zerg. The game has been praised for pioneering the use of unique factions in real-time strategy gameplay and for a compelling story.

Many of the industry's journalists have praised StarCraft as one of the best and most important video games of all time, and for having raised the bar for developing real-time strategy games. StarCraft's multiplayer is particularly popular in South Korea, where players and teams participate in professional competitions, earn sponsorships, and compete in televised tournaments.

Gameplay
Blizzard Entertainment's use of three distinct races in StarCraft is widely credited with revolutionizing the real-time strategy genre. All units are unique to their respective races and while rough comparisons can be drawn between certain types of units in the technology tree, every unit performs differently and requires different tactics for a player to succeed. The enigmatic Protoss have access to powerful units and machinery and advanced technologies such as energy shields and localized warp capabilities, powered by their psionic traits. However, their forces have lengthy and expensive manufacturing processes, encouraging players to follow a strategy of the quality of their units over the quantity. The insectoid Zerg possess entirely organic units and structures, which can be produced quickly and at a far cheaper cost to resources, but are accordingly weaker, relying on sheer numbers and speed to overwhelm enemies. The Terrans provide a middle ground between the other two races, providing units that are versatile and flexible. They have access to a range of more ballistic military technologies and machinery, such as tanks and nuclear weapons. Although each race is unique in its composition, no race has an innate advantage over the other. Each species is balanced out so that while they have different strengths, powers, and abilities their overall strength is the same. The balance stays complete via infrequent patches (game updates) provided from Blizzard.
StarCraft features artificial intelligence which scales in difficulty, although the player cannot change the difficulty level in the single-player campaigns. Each campaign starts with enemy factions running easy AI modes, scaling through the course of the campaign to the hardest AI modes. In the level editor provided with the game, a designer has access to four levels of AI difficulties: "easy", "medium", "hard" and "insane", each setting differing in the units and technologies allowed to an AI faction and the extent of the AI's tactical and strategic planning. The single-player campaign consists of thirty missions, split into ten for each race.

Resource management
Each race relies on two resources to sustain their game economies and to build their forces: minerals and vespene gas. Minerals are needed for all units and structures, and are obtained by using a worker unit to harvest the resource directly from mineral nodes scattered around the battlefield. Players require gas to construct advanced units and buildings, and acquire it by building a refinery on top of a geyser and using worker units to extract the gas from it. In addition, players need to regulate the supplies for their forces to ensure that they can construct the number of units they need. Although the nature of the supply differs between the races—Terrans use physical supplies held in depots, Protoss use a psionic power nexus and Zerg are regulated by the number of controlling overlord units present—the supply mechanic works in exactly the same way for each race, allowing players to create new units when there are sufficient resources to sustain them.

Base construction
Protoss and Zerg building construction is limited to specific locations: Protoss buildings need to be linked to a power grid, while almost every Zerg structure must be placed on a carpet of biomass, called "creep", that is produced by certain structures. Terran buildings are far less limited, with certain primary base structures possessing the ability to take off and fly slowly to a new location. Terran buildings, however, require the worker unit to continue construction on the building until it is completed. Also, once a Terran building has taken a certain amount of damage, it will catch fire and eventually burn to the ground without further enemy action, though this can be prevented by repairs performed by a worker unit. The Protoss, by contrast, only require a worker unit to begin the process of transporting a building to the theater of operations via warp, and their buildings' shields (but not their structure) are regenerative. The Zerg worker unit physically transforms into the structure created, which is capable of healing itself.

Multiplayer
Multiplayer on StarCraft is powered through Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net Internet service. Through this, a maximum of eight players can compete in a variety of game modes, from simply destroying all other players on a level, to king of the hill and capture the flag objective-based games. In addition, the game incorporates a variety of specialized scenarios for different types of game, such as simulating a football game, using the Terran hoverbike unit to conduct a bike race, or hosting a Zerg hunting competition. StarCraft is also one of the few games that include a spawn installation, which allows for limited multiplayer. It must be installed from a disc, and requires a product key to work just as the full version does. However, one product key can support up to eight spawned installations with access to Battle.net. Limitations of a spawned installation include the inability to play single-player missions, create multiplayer games or use the campaign editor.

Command & Conquer (Game)

2010-04-21T18:54:00.000+07:00

Command & Conquer (often abbreviated as C&C or CnC) is a video game franchise, mostly of the real-time strategy style as well as a first-person shooter game based on the former. The Command & Conquer series was initially developed by Westwood Studios between 1995 and 2003, with development being taken over by Electronic Arts with the liquidation of Westwood Studios in 2003.
The first installment of the series was released worldwide on August 31, 1995 and was simply named Command & Conquer. It was based on Westwood Studios' earlier strategy game Dune 2. The series was originally marketed to an Anglophone audience, though many of the games have been translated into other languages including German, French, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. The series is primarily developed for personal computers running Microsoft Windows, although some titles have been ported to various video game consoles and the Apple Macintosh. The later games of the series starting with Tiberium Wars have also been developed in parallel for Xbox 360. Another spin-off game, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, was developed for PC/Mac, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

In 1999, American game marketer and developer Electronic Arts purchased Westwood Studios. Westwood was eventually closed down in 2003 and absorbed into EA Los Angeles which has become the current development center for the ongoing Command and Conquer series. Some of the original Westwood developer team remained at EA Los Angeles, but most left to form Petroglyph Games.
As of July 2010, the Command & Conquer franchise consists of eleven games and eight expansion packs with sales of more than 30 million units worldwide and EA has confirmed that a new game is in the earliest stages of development.

Common gameplay elements
The Command & Conquer games belong to the real-time strategy genre, with the exception of the first person shooter Command & Conquer: Renegade. A staple of the series is the parallel campaigns of various different factions to one central storyline. Games in the series also offered multiplayer game options, via LAN and modem connection. All games in the series have also offered online play.
All Command & Conquer real-time strategy games except Command & Conquer: Generals and its expansions have featured the "side bar" for navigation and control as opposed to many other similar games where the control bar is located on the bottom of the screen.
Command & Conquer gameplay typically requires the player to construct a base and acquire resources, in order to fund the ongoing production of various types of forces with which to assault and conquer the opponent's base. All available structures of the faction chosen by the player are constructed on-site at so-called "construction yard" - which typically begin as large-sized vehicles capable of deploying themselves into the aforementioned construction yards. When a construction yard has finished building a new structure, the player can select a spot near to a preexisting structure in order to place it, where the prefabricated building will then rapidly unfold in a distinctive manner.
In all games in the series except Command & Conquer: Generals and its expansion, Zero Hour, funds are acquired by specialized "harvester" units which bring their cargo (Tiberium for the Tiberian series of games or Ore or the more valuable gems for the Red Alert series) to a "refinery" structure. This in turn will convert the raw material into usable resources, expressed as credits. The raw materials themselves require storage space in the form of refineries and, in the case of excess, "storage silo" structures.
All factions have structures and units with similar functions at their disposal. However, they are adjusted to fit each faction's theme and have somewhat varying properties. Units can be classified into infantry, vehicles, and aircraft, each with their own subdivisions (note: in the Red Alert series there is also naval craft available). Unit effectiveness against opponents follows the rock-paper-scissors principle found in most real-time strategy games.

Virtually every type of structure in the series acts as a tech tree node, and additional units, structures and faction-specific abilities will become available as new structures are built and placed. Access to advanced units and abilities may be temporarily blocked if the required structures are destroyed or if they are not being provided with adequate power by the supporting "power plant" structures.

Multiplayer
Each Command & Conquer game has included the ability to play multiplayer games against other humans. Each box of Command & Conquer contains two CD copies of the game, immediately making multiplayer gaming possible with a single purchase of the game. Westwood Studios advertised this on the packaging with the slogan "A second copy, so you and your friend can destroy each other." This resulted in Command & Conquer becoming the first RTS game title to feature competitive online play, and this is considered the most pertinent outside factor in the success of Command & Conquer.[3] All games in the series up to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 also featured two CDs that could be used for this reason. However, later games did not.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 was noted for being the first RTS game to enable the campaigns to be played cooperatively online; others had only supported single player campaigns. However, it was only possible to connect to other computers through EA's servers and not with LAN play.
Games produced by Westwood use the proprietary Westwood Online system to facilitate multiplayer games over the internet; Renegade also supported Gamespy. Games under EA's development continued to use Gamespy, but dropped support for Westwood Online in favor of using EA's own servers.

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (Game)

2010-04-16T18:46:00.000+07:00

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real-time strategy game (RTS), developed by Blizzard Entertainment and published by Blizzard and Interplay Entertainment. The MS-DOS version was released in November 1994 and the Macintosh version in late 1996. Sales were fairly high, reviewers were mostly impressed, and the game won three awards and was a finalist for three others. The sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, became the main rival to Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer series, and this competition fostered an RTS boom in the mid to late 1990s.
Although Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was not the first RTS title to offer multiplayer games, Blizzard's game persuaded a wider audience that multiplayer facilities were essential for future RTS titles. The game introduced innovations in mission design and gameplay elements, which were adopted by other RTS developers.
Blizzards's main emphases in these games were on skillful management of relatively small forces and on development of characterization and storyline within and between games played in the same universe.

Gameplay
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a real time strategy game (RTS), that is, the contenders play at the same time and continuously, so that players have to move quickly. One player represents the Human inhabitants of Azeroth, and the other controls the invading Orcs. Each side tries to destroy the other by collecting resources and creating an army. In addition both sides have to ward off dangers from wild monsters, but sometimes can use some monsters as troops. The game plays in a medieval setting with fantasy elements. Both sides have melee units and ranged units, and also spellcasters.

Modes
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans's gameplay expanded the Dune II "build base, build army, destroy enemy" paradigm to include other modes of game play. These included several new mission types, such as conquering rebels of the player's race; rescuing and rebuilding besieged towns; rescuing friendly forces from an enemy camp and then destroying the main enemy base; and limited-forces missions, in which neither side could make further units, and making efficient use of one's platoon was a key strategy element. In one mission, the gamer had to kill the Orc chief's daughter.
Blizzard's game allowing two gamers to compete in multiplayer contests by modem or local networks, and enables gamers with the MS-DOS and Macintosh version to play each other. Multiplayer and AI skirmishes that are not part of campaigns were supported by a random map generator. The game also allowed spawn installations to be made.

Economy and power
Warcraft requires players to collect resources, and to produce buildings and units in order to defeat an opponent in combat. Non-combatant builders deliver the resources to the Town Center from mines, from which gold is dug, and forests, where wood is chopped. As both are limited resources which become exhausted during the game, gamers must collect them efficiently, and must also retain forests as defensive walls in the early game when combat forces are small.
The lower-level buildings for Humans and Orcs have the same functions, but different graphics. The Town Hall stores resources and produces units that collect resources and construct buildings. Each Farm provides food for up to four units, and additional units cannot be produced until enough Farms are built. The Barracks produces all non-magical combat units, including melee, ranged, mounted, and siege units. However all except the most basic also need assistance from other buildings, some of which can also upgrade units.
Each side can construct two types of magical buildings, each of which produces one type of spellcaster and researches more advanced spells for that type. These advanced buildings can be constructed only with assistance from other buildings. The Human Cleric and Orc Necrolyte can both defend themselves by magic and also see distant parts of the territory for short periods. The Cleric's other spells are protective, healing the injured and making himself invisible, while the Necrolyte raises skeletons as troops and can make other units temporarily invulnerable, at the cost of severely damaging them when the spell dissipates. The Human Conjurer and Orc Warlock have energy blasts, wider-range destruction spells and the ability to summon small, venomous monsters. The Conjurer can summon a water elemental, while the Warlock can summon a demonic melee unit.

User interface
Orcs (red) attack a Human town and its defenders (blue). The flaming building is close to collapse, and the burnt ground to its left is the remains of a razed building. The numbers across the top are the gamer's reserves of lumber and gold. The unit marked with a light green box is currently selected, and its details appear in the lower left panel. The upper left panel is the mini-map, which shows all the territory fought over, mostly not yet discovered by the gamer, and enables the gamer to select a part of the territory to view.
The main screen has three areas: the largest, to the right, is the part of the territory on which the gamer is currently operating; the top left is the minimap; and, if a building or unit(s) is selected, the bottom left shows their status and any upgrades and the actions that can be performed. The status details include a building's or unit's health, including its progress if being constructed, and any upgrades the object has completed. The Menu control, at the very bottom on the left, provides access to save game, load game and other menu functions.
Initially most of the main map and minimap are blacked out, but the visible area expands as the gamer's units explore the map. The mini-map shows a summary of the whole territory, with blue dots for the gamer's buildings and units and red dots for enemy ones. The gamer can click in the main map or the minimap to scroll the main map around the territory.
All functions can be invoked by the mouse. Keys can also invoke the game setup, some of the menu options and some gameplay functions including scrolling and pausing the game. Gamers can select single units by clicking, and groups of up to four by shift-clicking or bandboxing. To move units, gamers can shift the mouse to select units on the main map, move to the unit menu to select an action, and then back to the main map to specify the target area; but shortcut keys can eliminate the middle mouse action in this cycle.

Storyline
The Orcs originated from another world, Draenor, where the majority were bloodthirsty warriors driven by strife. However, their Warlocks remained aloof, devoted their time to the research of magic. The Warlocks noticed a rift between the dimensions and, after many years, opened a small portal to another world. One Warlock explored and found a region, whose Human inhabitants called it "Azeroth", from which the Warlock returned with strange plants as evidence of his discovery.
The Orcs enlarged the portal until they could transport seven warriors, who massacred a Human village. The platoon brought back samples of good food and fine workmanship, and a report that the Humans were defenseless. The Orcs' raiding parties grew larger and bolder, until they assaulted Azeroth's principal castle. However, the Humans had been training warriors of their own, especially the mounted, heavily-armed Knights. These, assisted by Human Sorcerors, gradually forced the Orcs to retreat through the portal, which the Humans had not discovered.
For the next fifteen years, one faction of Orcs demanded that the portal be closed. However a chief of exceptional cunning realized that the Humans, although out-numbered, had prevailed through the use of superior tactics, organization, and by magic. He united the clans, imposed discipline on their army and sought new magics from the Warlocks and Necromancers. Their combined forces were ready to overthrow the Humans.

Lara Croft (Figure)

2010-04-10T18:41:00.000+07:00

Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Square Enix (previously Eidos Interactive) video game series Tomb Raider. She is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, and athletic archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins around the world. Created by Toby Gard during his employment at British developer Core Design, the character first appeared in the 1996 video game Tomb Raider. Other appearances include video game sequels, printed adaptations, a series of animated short films, feature films (portrayed by Angelina Jolie), and merchandise related to the series. Official promotion of the character includes a brand of apparel and accessories, action figures, and model portrayals. Lara Croft has also been licensed for third-party promotion, including television and print advertisements, music-related appearances, and as a spokesmodel.

Core Design handled initial development of the character and the series. Inspired by pop artist Neneh Cherry and comic book character Tank Girl, Gard designed Lara Croft to counter stereotypical female characters. The company modified the character for subsequent titles, which included graphical improvements and gameplay additions. American developer Crystal Dynamics took over the series after poor reception to the 2003 sequel Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. The new developer rebooted the character along with the video game series. Crystal Dynamics focused on making the character more believable, and altered her physical proportions and capabilities to interact with game environments. Lara Croft has been voiced by four actresses in the video game series: Shelley Blond, Judith Gibbins, Jonell Elliott and Keeley Hawes.
Critics consider Lara Croft a significant game character in popular culture. She holds two Guinness World Records, has a strong fan following, and is among the first video game characters to be successfully adapted to film. The character's debut was well-received by the video game industry, but her popularity slowly declined until the series' reboot in 2006. While the rebooted games were generally well-received, Lara Croft's redesign was met with mixed responses. Lara Croft is also considered a sex symbol, one of the earliest in the industry to achieve widespread attention. The character's influence in the industry has been a point of contention among critics; viewpoints range from a positive agent of change in video games to a negative role model for young girls.

Description
Lara Croft is depicted as an athletic woman; she has brown eyes and hair, frequently kept in a plait or ponytail. The character's classic costume is a turquoise sleeveless tank top, light brown shorts, calf-high boots, and long white socks. Accessories include fingerless gloves, a backpack, a utility belt with holsters on either side, and two pistols. The video game sequels introduced new outfits designed for different environments, such as underwater and cold weather. In the later games, Lara Croft wears a crop top, camouflage pants and black or light brown shirts. When exploring, she often carries two pistols, but has used other weaponry throughout the series. Lara Croft is fluent in several languages. Game manuals describe the character as the Wimbledon, London-borne daughter of the fictional Lord Henshingly Croft. She was raised as an aristocrat and betrothed to the fictitious Earl of Farringdon. Lara Croft attended the Scottish boarding school Gordonstoun and Swiss finishing school. A plane crash left the character stranded in the Himalayas for two weeks; the experience spurred her to shun her former life and seek other adventures around the world. Lara Croft wrote books and other published works based on her exploits as a mercenary, big-game hunter, and master thief. The story was later changed to include her mother in the plane crash. While searching for shelter against the elements, Lara Croft witnesses her mother vanish after tampering with an ancient sword. Her father disappears in search of his wife.

Toby Gard (Figure)

2010-04-05T18:39:00.000+07:00

Toby Gard is an English computer game character designer and consultant, notably creating female British archaeologist Lara Croft. Lara Croft was awarded a Guinness World Record recognizing her as the "most successful human video game heroine."

History
Originally employed at Core Design, he designed the original Tomb Raider video game in 1995 along with the character Lara Croft. His work on the game included building and animating most of the game's characters (including Lara), animating the in-game cutscenes, storyboarding the FMV's, and managing the level designers. Core gave Gard creative control over the game, although it was clear they wanted to market Lara's sex appeal, even asking Gard to implement a nude code into the game which he refused to do. His vision for Lara was "a female character who was a heroine, you know, cool, collected, in control, that sort of thing" and that "it was never the intention to create some kind of 'page 3' girl to star in Tomb Raider".
Gard left Core Design in 1997. With Tomb Raider already an established hit, Core was no longer giving Gard the creative freedom he originally had. In the end he was given the choice of making a Tomb Raider port for the Nintendo 64, or working on Core's vision for Tomb Raider II. Neither option appealed to him, so he left the company.
In late 1997, he formed the company Confounding Factor along with co-developer Paul Douglas, who had worked with Gard on Tomb Raider. Galleon was announced soon after, and released nearly 7 years later on Microsoft's Xbox in 2004.
After Galleon, Gard was hired by Eidos (publisher and copyright holder of the Tomb Raider series) to work with Crystal Dynamics on a reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, beginning with Tomb Raider: Legend. While initially hired as a creative consultant, his work became "hands on" during the production and eventually included Lara's visual redesign, overseeing character design and creation, co-writing the story, designing and implementing parts of the character movement system, and directing the cinematics.
The next game in the series, Tomb Raider: Anniversary, was a re-imagining of the original Tomb Raider. It was co-developed by Crystal Dynamics and Buzz Monkey Software. Gard's role on Anniversary was limited to "story consultant", while also adding his voice to the audio commentary included in the game.
For Tomb Raider: Underworld, Gard's work included co-writing the story, directing the cinematics, voice direction, motion capture direction (along with camera setup and managing the animators and lighters), and directing the European TV advert for the game. Gard and Eric Lindstrom received a nomination for "Best Writing in a Video Game" by the WGA for their work on Underworld.
In January 2009, Toby Gard revealed that he is leading a design group on an unannounced project. Soonafter, however, he left the design group for this project and is now working as a computer game consultant at Focal Point Games LLC.

Ian Livingstone (Figure)

2010-04-04T18:32:00.000+07:00

Ian Livingstone OBE (born December 1949 in Prestbury, Cheshire, England) is an English fantasy author and entrepreneur. He is a co-writer of the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and co-founder of Games Workshop.

Early life
Livingstone attended Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, and left armed with (he claims) only one A level in Geography. He has retained his close links with the school on numerous occasions including to donate money for a refurbishment of the ICT suite, and also to give a speech and present awards to the GCSE graduates of 1998.

Career

Games Workshop
Livingstone co-founded Games Workshop in early 1975 with flatmates John Peake and Steve Jackson, and began distributing Dungeons & Dragons and other TSR products later that year.
Under the direction of Livingstone and Jackson, Games Workshop expanded from being a bedroom mail order company to a successful gaming manufacturer and retail chain. In June 1977, partially to advertise the opening of the first Games Workshop store, Livingstone and Jackson launched the gaming magazine White Dwarf, which Livingstone edited for the first 74 issues.
They opened a number of Games Workshop stores and then Ian and Steve together with Bryan Ansell founded Citadel Miniatures in Newark to make miniatures for games.
Ian Livingstone has been the host of the executive level GameHorizon conference for the last 3 years.

Fighting Fantasy
In 1981 Jackson and Livingstone co-wrote the first book in the Fighting Fantasy series, but following an instruction from publishers Penguin to write more books "as quickly as possible", the pair wrote subsequent books separately. The series has sold over 14 million copies to date, with Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon selling over 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom alone.

Videogame industry
In the mid 1980s Livingstone did some design work for video game publisher Domark, and in 1993 he returned to the company, this time as a major investor and board member. In 1995 Domark was acquired by the video technology company Eidos plc, which had floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1990, and formed the major part of the newly created Eidos Interactive. In 2005 Eidos was taken over by SCi and Livingstone was then the only former board member to be retained, taking on the role of product acquisition director. He contributed to the Tomb Raider project entitled Tomb Raider: Anniversary (an enhanced version of the original Tomb Raider game), which was released in 2007. In 2009, Japanese video-game company Square Enix completed a buyout of Eidos Interactive and Ian was promoted to Life President of Eidos.

Skills Champion
In 2010 Livingstone was asked to act as the Skills Champion by Ed Vaizey, tasked with producing a report reviewing the UK video games industry. The report is due in 2011 and will be a, "complete bottom up review of the whole education system relating to games."

Awards
In 2002, Livingstone won the Gift of the Academy in the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards for outstanding contribution to the community.
Livingstone was awarded an Order of the British Empire, for "Services to the Computer Games Industry" in the New Years Honours List 2006.

Resident Evil (Game)

2010-03-23T18:12:00.001+07:00

Resident Evil, originally known as Biohazard (バイオハザード Baiohazādo?) in Japan, is a video game series and media franchise consisting of comic books, novelizations, films, and a variety of collectibles, including action figures, strategy guides and publications. Developed by Capcom and created by Shinji Mikami, the series has sold almost 40 million games as of May 2009.

History
Resident Evil made its 1996 debut on the Sony PlayStation and later on the Sega Saturn. It was a critical and commercial success, leading to the production of two sequels, Resident Evil 2 in 1998 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in 1999, both for the PlayStation. A port of Resident Evil 2 was released for the Nintendo 64. In addition, ports of all three were released for Windows. The fourth game in the series, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, was developed for the Sega Dreamcast and released in 2000, followed by ports of 2 and 3. Resident Evil Code: Veronica was later re-released for Dreamcast in Japan in an updated form as Code: Veronica Complete, which included slight changes, many of which revolved around story cut scenes. This updated version was later ported to PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube under the title Code: Veronica X.
Despite earlier announcements that the next game in the series would be released for the PlayStation 2, which resulted in the creation of an unrelated game titled Devil May Cry, series' creator and producer Shinji Mikami decided to make the series exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube. The next three games in the series—a remake of the original Resident Evil and the prequel Resident Evil Zero, both released in 2002, as well as Resident Evil 4—were all released initially as GameCube exclusives. Resident Evil 4 was later released for Windows, PS2 and Wii. In addition, the GameCube received ports of the previous Resident Evil sequels. Despite this exclusivity agreement between Capcom and Nintendo, Capcom released several Resident Evil titles for the PS2 that were not considered direct sequels.
A trilogy of GunCon-compatible light gun games known as the Gun Survivor series featured first person gameplay. The first, Resident Evil: Survivor, was released in 2000 for the PlayStation and PC, but received mediocre reviews. The subsequent games, Resident Evil: Survivor 2 Code: Veronica and Resident Evil: Dead Aim, fared somewhat better. Dead Aim is actually the fourth Gun Survivor game in Japan, with Gun Survivor 3 being the Dino Crisis spin-off Dino Stalker. In a similar vein, the Chronicles series features first person gameplay, albeit on an on-rails path. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles was released in 2007 for the Wii, with a follow up, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles released in 2009.
Resident Evil: Outbreak is an online game for the PS2, released in 2003, depicting a series of episodic storylines in Raccoon City set during the same time period as Resident Evil 2 and 3. It was followed by a sequel, Resident Evil: Outbreak: File 2. Raccoon City is a fictional metropolis located in the Arklay Mountains of North America that succumbed to the deadly T-Virus outbreak and was consequently destroyed via a nuclear missile attack issued by the United States government. The town served a critical junction for the series' progression as one of the main catalysts to Umbrella's downfall as well as the entry point for some of the series' most notable characters.

Resident Evil Gaiden is an action-adventure game for the Game Boy Color featuring an RPG-style combat system. Also, a Resident Evil-themed pinball game was released on Game Boy Color. It featured boards with characters, settings, and monsters from the game. There have also been several downloadable mobile games based on the Resident Evil series in Japan. Some of these mobile games have been released in North America and Europe through T-Mobile. It has also been announced at the Sony press conference during E3 2009 that a Resident Evil title will be heading to the PlayStation Portable, entitled Resident Evil Portable.
At E3 2010, Keiji Inafune stated that the franchise will be heading to the Nintendo 3DS "in a totally new way", while announcing the title Resident Evil: Revelations.