Chris Hecker
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Chris Hecker
Christopher Bryan Hecker (born 1970) is an American video game programmer and commentator. He is the founder of the gaming company Definition Six and best known for his engineering work on Will Wright's 2008 game '' Spore''. Hecker is an advocate for indie game development and co-founder of the Indie Game Jam. He has written a number of influential articles on programming and has been an editor for ''Game Developer Magazine'' and the '' Journal of Graphics Tools''. Biography Hecker studied fine arts at Parsons School of Design in New York City, with the goal of becoming an illustrator. Along the way, he noticed an article in ''Byte Magazine'' about computer programming which piqued his interest. He switched career tracks and dropped out of school to begin work on graphics and games. Hecker obtained a job at Microsoft in Seattle, Washington around 1992. He worked there for three years, becoming creator and leader of the WinG API project for the Windows operating system. After ...
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Game Developers Conference
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and round Table, roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering Video game programmer, programming, game design, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts. History Originally called the Computer Game Developers Conference, the first conference was organized in April 1988 by Chris Crawford (game designer), Chris Crawford in his San Jose, California-area living room. About twenty-seven designers attended, including Don Daglow, Brenda Laurel, Brian Moriarty, Gordon Walton, Tim Brengle, Cliff Johnson (game designer), Cliff Johnson, Dave Menconi, and Carol and Ivan Manley. The second conference, held that same year at a Holiday Inn at Milpitas, California, Milpitas, attracted abou ...
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Computer Programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as analysis, generating algorithms, profiling algorithms' accuracy and resource consumption, and the implementation of algorithms (usually in a chosen programming language, commonly referred to as coding). The source code of a program is written in one or more languages that are intelligible to programmers, rather than machine code, which is directly executed by the central processing unit. The purpose of programming is to find a sequence of instructions that will automate the performance of a task (which can be as complex as an operating system) on a computer, often for solving a given problem. Proficient programming thus usually requires expertise in several different subjects, including knowledge of the application domain, specialized algori ...
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Xbox
Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the name of Xbox Game Studios. The brand was first introduced in the United States in November 2001, with the launch of the original Xbox console. The original device was the first video game console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. It reached over 24 million units sold by May 2006. Microsoft's second console, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005 and has sold 86 million units as of October 2021. The third console, the Xbox One, was released in November 2013 and has sold 51 million units. The fourth line of Xbox consoles, the Xbox Series X and Series S, were released in November 2020. The head of Xbox is Phil Spencer, who succeeded former head Marc Whitten in late March 2014. History When ...
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VentureBeat
''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. History The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, an ex-correspondent for ''The Mercury News''. In March 2009, ''VentureBeat'' signed a partnership agreement with IDG to produce DEMO Conference, a conference for startups to announce their launches and raise funding from venture capitalists and angel investors. In 2012, the partnership with IDG ended. In 2014 and 2015, the company raised outside investor funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalist firms including CrossLink Capital, Walden Venture Capital, Rally Ventures, Formation 8, and Lightbank. Editorial The ''VentureBeat'' website comprises a series of distinct news "Beats": Big data, Business (general news), Cloud, Deals, Dev, Enterprise, Entrepreneur, Media, Mobile, Marketing, Security, Small Biz, and Social. In addition, the ...
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Early Access
Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alpha, alpha, and/or beta, while the developer is able to use those funds to continue further development on the game. Those that pay to participate typically help to debug the game, provide feedback and suggestions, may have access to special materials in the game. The early-access approach is a common way to obtain funding for indie games, and may also be used along with other funding mechanisms, including crowdfunding. Many crowdfunding projects promise to offer access to alpha and/or beta versions of the game as development progresses; however, unlike some of these projects which solicit funds but do not yet have a playable game, all early access games offer an immediately playable version of the unfinished game to players. History Traditi ...
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SpyParty
''SpyParty'' is a social deduction stealth video game developed by Chris Hecker. ''SpyParty'' was first shown at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. Hecker describes his game as "an asymmetric multiplayer espionage game, dealing with the subtlety of human behavior, character, personality, and social mores, instead of the usual spy game explosions and car chases". Gameplay A round of ''SpyParty'' is played between two players, one of whom is designated "the spy" while the other is designated "the sniper". The spy must attempt to blend in with a number of non-playing characters within a high-society cocktail party setting while completing a pre-determined number of espionage missions (such as planting a bug on a character designated “the ambassador”, or communicating a code phrase to a double agent known to both players) within a time limit. The sniper, who is viewing the party from the outside and does not know which avatar is the sp ...
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Tessellation (computer Graphics)
In computer graphics, tessellation refers to the dividing of datasets of polygons (sometimes called ''vertex sets'') presenting objects in a scene into suitable structures for rendering. Especially for real-time rendering, data is tessellated into triangles, for example in OpenGL 4.0 and Direct3D 11. In graphics rendering A key advantage of tessellation for realtime graphics is that it allows detail to be dynamically added and subtracted from a 3D polygon mesh and its silhouette edges based on control parameters (often camera distance). In previously leading realtime techniques such as parallax mapping and bump mapping, surface details could be simulated at the pixel level, but silhouette edge detail was fundamentally limited by the quality of the original dataset. In Direct3D 11 pipeline (a part of DirectX 11), the graphics primitive is the patch. The ''tessellator'' generates a triangle-based tessellation of the patch according to tessellation parameters such as the ''Tes ...
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Rock Climbing
Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically and mentally demanding sport, one that often tests a climber's strength, endurance, agility and balance along with mental control. Knowledge of proper climbing techniques and the use of specialized climbing equipment is crucial for the safe completion of routes. Because of the wide range and variety of rock formations around the world, rock climbing has been separated into several different styles and sub-disciplines, such as scrambling, bouldering, sport climbing, and trad (traditional) climbing another activity involving the scaling of hills and similar formations, differentiated by the rock climber's sustained use of hands to support their body weight as well as to provide balance. Rock climbing competitions have the objectives of either ...
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OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) began developing OpenGL in 1991 and released it on June 30, 1992; applications use it extensively in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD), virtual reality, scientific visualization, information visualization, flight simulation, and video games. Since 2006, OpenGL has been managed by the non-profit technology consortium Khronos Group. Design The OpenGL specification describes an abstract API for drawing 2D and 3D graphics. Although it is possible for the API to be implemented entirely in software, it is designed to be implemented mostly or entirely in hardware. The API is defined as a set of functions which may be called by the client program, alongside a set of named intege ...
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Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay Area and the List of largest California cities by population, eighth most populated city in California. With a population of 440,646 in 2020, it serves as the Bay Area's trade center and economic engine: the Port of Oakland is the busiest port in Northern California, and the fifth busiest in the United States of America. An act to municipal corporation, incorporate the city was passed on May 4, 1852, and incorporation was later approved on March 25, 1854. Oakland is a charter city. Oakland's territory covers what was once a mosaic of California coastal prairie, California coastal terrace prairie, oak woodland, and north coastal scrub. In the late 18th century, it became part of a large ''rancho'' grant in t ...
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Encarta
''Microsoft Encarta'' is a discontinued digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription, although later articles could also be viewed for free online with advertisements. By 2008, the complete English version, ''Encarta Premium'', consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive content, timelines, maps, atlases and homework tools. Microsoft published similar encyclopedias under the ''Encarta'' trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. Localized versions contained contents licensed from national sources and more or less content than the full English version. For example, the Dutch-language version had content from the Dutch ''Winkler Prins'' encyclopedia. In March 2009, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing both the ''Enc ...
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Windows Operating System
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for servers, and Windows IoT for embedded systems. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone. The first version of Windows was released on November 20, 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Windows is the most popular desktop operating system in the world, with 75% market share , according to StatCounter. However, Windows is not the most used operating system when including both mobile and desktop OSes, due to Android's massive growth. , the most recent version of Windows is Windows 11 for consumer PCs and tablets, Windows 11 Enterprise for corporations, and Windows Server 2022 for servers. Genealogy By marketing r ...
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