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Mass Effect (video Game)
''Mass Effect'' is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare and originally released for the Xbox 360 in 2007. It is the first game in the ''Mass Effect'' series, and takes place within the Milky Way galaxy in the year 2183, where civilization is threatened by a highly advanced machine race known as the Reapers. The player assumes the role of Commander Shepard, an elite human soldier who must stop a rogue agent from carrying out the Reapers' galactic invasion. The game involves completing multiple quests that generally involve space exploration, squad and vehicular combat, and interaction with non-player characters. Planned as the first chapter of a trilogy, ''Mass Effect'' was developed over the course of three and a half years, and uses the Unreal Engine 3 as a groundwork. It was designed so that the player would assume the role of a central character that could make important decisions and impact the story of the game in numerous ways. The combat was designed to offer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BioWare
BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated Doctor of Medicine, medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip, alongside Trent Oster, Brent Oster, and Marcel Zeschuk. Since 2007, the company has been owned by American publisher Electronic Arts. BioWare specializes in role-playing video games, and achieved recognition for developing highly praised and successful licensed franchises: ''Baldur's Gate'', ''Neverwinter Nights'', and ''Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic''. They proceeded to make several other successful games based on original intellectual property: ''Jade Empire'', the ''Mass Effect'' series, and the ''Dragon Age'' series. In 2011, BioWare launched their first massively multiplayer online role-playing game, ''Star Wars: The Old Republic''. History Foundation BioWare was founded by Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, alongside Trent Oster, his brother Brent, Zeschuk's cousin Marcel, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The term ''Milky Way'' is a translation of the Latin ', from the Greek ('), meaning "milky circle". From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy with an estimated D25 isophotal diameter of , but only about 1,000 light years thick at the spiral arms (more at the bulg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequel
A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same fictional universe as an earlier work, usually chronologically following the events of that work. In many cases, the sequel continues elements of the original story, often with the same characters and settings. A sequel can lead to a series, in which key elements appear repeatedly. Although the difference between more than one sequel and a series is somewhat arbitrary, it is clear that some media franchises have enough sequels to become a series, whether originally planned as such or not. Sequels are attractive to creators and to publishers because there is less risk involved in returning to a story with known popularity rather than developing new and untested characters and settings. Audiences are sometimes eager for more stories about p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Porting
In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally designed for (e.g., different CPU, operating system, or third party library). The term is also used when software/hardware is changed to make them usable in different environments. Software is ''portable'' when the cost of porting it to a new platform is significantly less than the cost of writing it from scratch. The lower the cost of porting software relative to its implementation cost, the more portable it is said to be. Etymology The term "port" is derived from the Latin '' portāre'', meaning "to carry". When code is not compatible with a particular operating system or architecture, the code must be "carried" to the new system. The term is not generally applied to the process of adapting software to run with less memory on the sam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Of Interactive Arts & Sciences
The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) is a non-profit organization of video game industry professionals. It organizes the annual Design Innovate Communicate Entertain summit, better known as D.I.C.E., which includes the presentations of the D.I.C.E. Awards. History AIAS was originally founded in 1992 by Andrew Zucker, a lawyer in the entertainment industry. AIAS co-promoted numerous events with organizations such as the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Directors Guild of America and Women in Film. Their first awards show program, "Cybermania '94", which was hosted by Leslie Nielsen and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, was broadcast on TBS. While a second show was run in 1995, and was the first awards program to be streamed over the Web, it drew far less audiences as the first. Video game industry leaders decided that they wanted to reform AIAS as a non-profit organization for the video game industry. The effort was backed by Peter Main of Nintendo, Tom Kalins ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spike Video Game Awards
The Spike Video Game Awards (in short VGAs, known as the VGX for the final show) was an annual award show hosted by American television network Spike from 2003 to 2013 that recognized the best computer and video games of the year. Produced by '' GameTrailers TV's'' Geoff Keighley, the show featured preview trailers for upcoming games, live music performances and appearances by popular performers in music, movies, and television. The VGAs was held at various locations in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, California as well as Las Vegas, Nevada. Spike's only Video Game Hall of Fame award, given to ''The Legend of Zelda'', was awarded at the 2011 awards show. On November 15, 2013, Spike announced a new format under the name ''VGX'', calling it "The next generation of the VGAs". The last award show, carrying this name, aired on December 7. Changes from the previous format included "in-depth extended demos of the next generation of games and interactive one-on-one interviews and panel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Intelligence (video Games)
In video games, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-player characters (NPCs) similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in the 1950s. AI in video games is a distinct subfield and differs from academic AI. It serves to improve the game-player experience rather than machine learning or decision making. During the golden age of arcade video games the idea of AI opponents was largely popularized in the form of graduated difficulty levels, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on the player's input. Modern games often implement existing techniques such as pathfinding and decision trees to guide the actions of NPCs. AI is often used in mechanisms which are not immediately visible to the user, such as data mining and procedural-content generation. In general, game AI does not, as might be thought and sometimes is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interactive Storytelling
Interactive storytelling (also known as interactive drama) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (also reader or player) experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. The architecture of an interactive storytelling program includes a drama manager, user model, and agent model to control, respectively, aspects of narrative production, player uniqueness, and character knowledge and behavior. Together, these systems generate characters that act "human," alter the world in real-time reactions to the player, and ensure that new narrative events unfold comprehensibly. The field of study surrounding interactive storytelling encompasses many disparate fields, including psychology, sociology, cognitive science, linguistics, natural language processing, user interface design, computer science, and emergent intellig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downloadable Content
Downloadable content (DLC) is additional content created for an already released video game, distributed through the Internet by the game's publisher. It can either be added for no extra cost or it can be a form of video game monetization, enabling the publisher to gain additional revenue from a title after it has been purchased, often using some type of microtransaction system. DLC can range from cosmetic content, such as skins, to new in-game content such as characters, levels, modes, and larger expansions that may contain a mix of such content as a continuation of the base game. In some games, multiple DLC (including future DLC not yet released) may be bundled as part of a " season pass"—typically at a discount in comparison to purchasing each DLC individually. While the Dreamcast was the first home console to support DLC (albeit in a limited form due to hardware and internet connection limitations), Microsoft's Xbox console and Xbox Live platform helped to popularize th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Third-person Shooter
Third-person shooter (TPS) is a subgenre of 3D shooter games in which the gameplay consists primarily of shooting. It is closely related to first-person shooters, but with the player character visible on-screen during play. While 2D shoot 'em up games also employ a third-person perspective, the TPS genre is distinguished by having the game presented with the player's avatar as a primary focus of the camera's view. Definition A third-person shooter is a game structured around shooting,Nate Garrets, ''The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto: critical essays'' (McFarland, 2006)159 and in which the player can see the avatar on-screen in a third-person view.Anne-Marie Schreiner,Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games '' Leonardo Journal'', Vol. 34, No. 3 (2001): 222. Third-person shooters are distinguished from other shooter games that may present the game from a third-person view such as shoot 'me ups, as the game is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turns, Rounds And Time-keeping Systems In Games
In video and other games, the passage of time must be handled in a way that players find fair and easy to understand. This is usually done in one of the two ways: real-time and turn-based. Real-time Real-time games have game time progress continuously according to the game clock. One example of such a game is the sandbox game ''Terraria'', where one day-night cycle of 24 hours is equal to 24 minutes in real time. Players perform actions simultaneously as opposed to in sequential units or turns. Players must perform actions with the consideration that their opponents are actively working against them in real time, and may act at any moment. This introduces time management considerations and additional challenges (such as physical coordination in the case of video games). Real-time gameplay is the dominant form of time-keeping found in simulation video games, and has to a large degree supplanted turn-based systems in other video game genres as well (for instance real-time strateg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-player Character
A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster or referee rather than by another player. In video games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer (instead of a player) that has a predetermined set of behaviors that potentially will impact gameplay, but will not necessarily be the product of true artificial intelligence. Role-playing games In a traditional tabletop role-playing game such as ''Dungeons & Dragons'', an NPC is a character portrayed by the gamemaster (GM). While the player characters (PCs) form the narrative's protagonists, non-player characters can be thought of as the "supporting cast" or "extras" of a roleplaying narrative. Non-player characters populate the fictional world of the game, and can fill any role not occupied by a player character. Non-player ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
