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Eastern Front (1941)
''Eastern Front (1941)'' is a computer wargame for the Atari 8-bit family created by Chris Crawford and published through the Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. A scenario editor and assembly language source code for the game were also sold by APX. Recreating the Eastern Front during World War II, ''Eastern Front'' covers the historical area of operations during 1941–1942. The player commands German units at the corps level as they invade the Soviet Union in 1941 and fight the computer-controlled Russians. The game simulates terrain, weather, supplies, unit morale, and fatigue. A killer app for Atari computers, ''Eastern Front'' was among APX's best selling games, selling over 60,000 copies. It was widely lauded in the press and was '' Creative Computing''s Game of the Year in 1981. In 1982, it was licensed by Atari for distribution on game cartridge, then rereleased in 1988 in XEGS styled packaging. Gameplay ''Eastern Front'' is a corps-level simulation of the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Crawford (game Designer)
Christopher Crawford (born June 1, 1950) is an American video game designer and writer. Hired by Alan Kay to work at Atari, Inc., he wrote the computer wargame ''Eastern Front (1941)'' for the Atari 8-bit family which was sold through the Atari Program Exchange and later Atari's official product line. After leaving Atari, he wrote a string of games beginning with '' Balance of Power'' for Macintosh. Writing about the process of developing games, he became known among other creators in the nascent home computer game industry for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form. He self-published '' The Journal of Computer Game Design'' and founded the Computer Game Developers Conference (later renamed to the Game Developers Conference). In 1992 Crawford withdrew from commercial game development and began experimenting with ideas for a next generation interactive storytelling system. In 2018, Crawford announced that he had halted his work on interactive storytelling, concluding ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe after Istanbul, Moscow and London, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city. The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through the 1990s and became one of the largest dedicated video game magazines, reaching around 500 pages by 1997. In the early 2000s its circulation was about 300,000, only slightly behind the market leader ''PC Gamer''. But, like most magazines of the era, the rapid move of its advertising revenue to internet properties led to a decline in revenue. In 2006, Ziff announced it would be refocused as ''Games for Windows'', before moving it to solely online format, and then shutting down completely later the same year. History In 1979, Russell Sipe left the Southern Baptist Convention ministry. A fan of computer games, he realized in spring 1981 that no magazine was dedicated to computer games. Although Sipe had no publishing experience, he formed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanktics
''Tanktics: Computer Game of Armored Combat on the Eastern Front'', also named ''Wargy I'', is a 1976 two-player tank battle video game by Chris Crawford. It was Crawford's first video game; it was initially sold directly by him, and was published by Avalon Hill in 1981 under the name ''Tanktics''. The game has no graphics; the player moves tokens on a physical map to represent a tank battle, with the computer controlling one of the sides. The game received weak reviews by critics, who found the artificial intelligence to be weak and suited for players who wanted neither a complex nor fast-paced game. Gameplay The game simulates a two-player tank battle on a large hex grid. ''Tanktics'' has no graphics; the player moves tokens on a map using coordinates the computer, acting as referee, provided. Crawford used maps and tokens from Avalon Hill's '' Panzer Leader'' when developing the game. To compensate for the computer's weak artificial intelligence, he gave it twice as many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Learning Curve
A learning curve is a graphical representation of the relationship between how Skill, proficient people are at a task and the amount of experience they have. Proficiency (measured on the vertical axis) usually increases with increased experience (the horizontal axis), that is to say, the more someone, groups, companies or industries perform a task, the better their performance at the task.Compare: The common expression "a steep learning curve" is a misnomer suggesting that an activity is difficult to learn and that expending much effort does not increase proficiency by much, although a learning curve with a steep start actually represents rapid progress., see the "Discussions" section, Dr. Smith's remark about the usage of the term "steep learning curve": "First, semantics. A steep learning curve is one where you gain proficiency over a short number of trials. That means the curve is steep. I think semantically we are really talking about a prolonged or long learning curve. I kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg ( , ; from 'lightning' + 'war') is a word used to describe a surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force concentration that may consist of armored and motorized or mechanized infantry formations, together with close air support, that has the intent to break through the opponent's lines of defense, then dislocate the defenders, unbalance the enemy by making it difficult to respond to the continuously changing front, and defeat them in a decisive : a battle of annihilation. During the interwar period, aircraft and tank technologies matured and were combined with systematic application of the traditional German tactic of (maneuver warfare), deep penetrations and the bypassing of enemy strong points to encircle and destroy enemy forces in a (cauldron battle). During the Invasion of Poland, Western journalists adopted the term ''blitzkrieg'' to describe this form of armored warfare. The term had appeared in 1935, in a German military periodical (German Defen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Undocumented Feature
An undocumented feature is an unintended or undocumented hardware operation, for example an undocumented instruction, or software feature found in computer hardware and software that is considered beneficial or useful. Sometimes the documentation is omitted through oversight, but undocumented features are sometimes not intended for use by end users, but left available for use by the vendor for software support and development. Also, some unintended operation of hardware or software that ends up being of utility to users is simply a bug, flaw or quirk. Since the suppliers of the software usually consider the software documentation to constitute a contract for the behavior of the software, undocumented features are generally left unsupported and may be removed or changed at will and without notice to the users. Some user-reported defects are viewed by software developers as working as expected, leading to the catchphrase "it's not a bug, it's a feature" (INABIAF) and its variat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Crawford On Game Design
''Chris Crawford on Game Design'' () is a book about computer and video game design by Chris Crawford. Although referred to as the second edition of '' The Art of Computer Game Design'', it is in fact a completely new book. It was published by Peachpit under the New Riders imprint in 2003. It includes Crawford's response to recent game developments, such as ''The Sims'', and dedicates a chapter to each of his first 14 published games: ''Tanktics'', ''Legionnaire'', '' Wizard'', ''Energy Czar'', ''Scram'', ''Eastern Front (1941)'', ''Gossip'', ''Excalibur'', '' Balance of Power'', '' Patton Versus Rommel'', '' Siboot'', '' The Global Dilemma: Guns & Butter'', '' Balance of the Planet'' and '' Patton Strikes Back''. See also * List of books on computer and video games * People games External linksPeachpit's catalog entry for ''Chris Crawford on Game Design'' [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vertical Blank Interrupt
{{unreferenced, date=February 2008 A vertical blank interrupt (or VBI) is a hardware feature found in some legacy computer systems that generate a video signal. Cathode-ray tube based video display circuits generate vertical blanking and vertical sync pulses when the display picture has completed and the raster is being returned to the start of the display. With VBI, the vertical blank pulse is also used to generate an interrupt request for the computer's microprocessor. The interrupt service routine can then run specific software to modify data in the video display memory while it is not being read to avoid screen tearing effects. This was particularly useful in simple home computers and video game consoles that relied upon a central microprocessor to generate text or graphic displays. More advanced home computers featuring hardware sprites often supported the more flexible horizontal blank interrupt instead in order to allow them to be multiplexed. As the VBI will be generate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' of Oxford University Press defines artificial intelligence as: the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. AI applications include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google), recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri and Alexa), self-driving cars (e.g., Tesla), automated decision-making and competing at the highest level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pondering
In turn-based games, permanent brain (also called pondering) is the act of thinking during the opponent's turn. Chess engines that continue calculating even when it is not their turn to play end up choosing moves that are stronger than if they are barred from calculating on their opponent's turn. Use with chess programs The strength of chess programs depends very much on the amount of time allocated for calculating. Many chess programs use pondering to improve their strength. Current programs cannot create strategic plans, so a program simply tries to predict the opponent's move and begins to calculate its response. If the opponent's move has been guessed correctly, then the program continues to calculate. If the prediction fails, the program begins a new computation. Pondering is less effective than normal thinking. For example, if the program guesses 25% of the opponent's moves correctly, the use of pondering is on average equivalent to increasing the normal calculating time b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zone Of Control
In board wargames, a zone of control (ZOC) is the area directly adjacent to certain combat forces that affects the movement and actions of enemy combat units. In hexagonal tiled maps, a combat unit's zone of control is the six hexagons adjacent to the hexagon occupied by a unit. The effects of zones of control can vary significantly between different wargame rules. The most common effect is that moving combat units must stop when entering an enemy unit's zone of control. This type of zone of control is termed "rigid" zone of control. If movement is not stopped, but only prohibited when moving directly from one zone of control space to another, this is termed "semi-rigid". Rules that slow down (increase movement cost) instead of stopping movement are termed "fluid" or "elastic" zones of control. Rules that prohibit leaving are termed "locking" zones of control. Some zone of control rules require enemy units must be attacked. In some games, zones of control may be cancelled by ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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