Spore (2008 Video Game)
''Spore'' is a 2008 life simulation real-time strategy God game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Designed by Will Wright, it covers many genres including action, real-time strategy, and role-playing games. ''Spore'' allows a player to control the development of a species from its beginnings as a microscopic organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation. Throughout each stage, players are able to use various creators to produce content for their games. These are then automatically uploaded to the online Sporepedia and are accessible by other players for download. ''Spore'' was released after several delays to generally favorable reviews. Praise was given for the fact that the game allowed players to create customized creatures, vehicle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Maxis
Maxis is an American video game developer and a Division (business), division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright (game designer), Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by Electronic Arts, EA in 1997. Maxis is best known for its simulation games, including ''The Sims'', ''Spore (2008 video game), Spore'' and ''SimCity''. In the late 2010s, Maxis suffered from a series of studio closures and layoffs. This included the shutdown of Maxis Emeryville in 2015, EA Salt Lake in 2017, and a wave of layoffs at Redwood Shores in 2018. With the remainder of Maxis reorganised under EA Mobile, and EA opening new studios under the label from 2019, some commentators have suggested that only the brand name from the original studio survives. History Independent studio (1987-1997) Maxis was founded in 1987 by Will Wright (game designer), Will Wright and Jeff Braun to help publish ''SimCity (1989 video game), SimCity'' on home computers. Before then, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Action Game
An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, and platform games. Multiplayer online battle arena and some real-time strategy games are also considered action games. In an action game, the player typically controls a character often in the form of a protagonist or avatar. This player character must navigate a level, collecting objects, avoiding obstacles, and battling enemies with their natural skills as well as weapons and other tools at their disposal. At the end of a level or group of levels, the player must often defeat a boss enemy that is more challenging and often a major antagonist in the game's story. Enemy attacks and obstacles deplete the player character's health and lives, and the player receives a game over when they run out of lives. Alternatively, the player gets to the end of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Galactic Center
The Galactic Center or Galactic Centre is the rotational center, the barycenter, of the Milky Way galaxy. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational center. The Galactic Center is approximately away from Earth in the direction of the constellations Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius, where the Milky Way appears brightest, visually close to the Butterfly Cluster (M6) or the star Shaula, south to the Pipe Nebula. There are around 10 million stars within one parsec of the Galactic Center, dominated by red giants, with a significant population of massive supergiants and Wolf–Rayet stars from star formation in the region around 1 million years ago. The core stars are a small part within the much wider galactic bulge. Discovery Because of interstellar dust along the line of sight, the Galactic Center cannot be studied at v ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Supermassive Black Hole
A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical objects that have undergone gravitational collapse, leaving behind spheroidal regions of space from which nothing can escape, not even light. Observational evidence indicates that almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its Central massive object, center. For example, the Milky Way has a Galactic Center#Supermassive black hole, supermassive black hole in its Galactic Center, corresponding to the Astronomical radio source, radio source Sagittarius A*. Accretion (astrophysics), Accretion of Interstellar medium, interstellar gas onto supermassive black holes is the process responsible for powering Active galactic nucleus, active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and quasars. Two supermassive black holes have been directly imaged by the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Respawn
In video games, spawning is the live creation of a character, item or NPC. Respawning is the recreation of an entity after its death or destruction, perhaps after losing one of its lives. Despawning is the deletion of an entity from the game world. All player characters typically spawn at the start of a round, whereas some objects or mobs may spawn after the occurrence of a particular event or delay. When a player character respawns, they generally do so in an earlier point of the level and get some kind of penalty. The term was coined by id Software within the context of its game, ''Doom''. Spawn points ''Spawn points'' are areas in a level where players spawn. In levels designed for team play, these points are usually grouped so that each team spawns in their own tight area of the level. Spawn points are typically reserved for one team at any time and often have the ability to change hands to the other team. Some games even allow spawn points to be created by players; using ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Digital Rights Management
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use, modification, and distribution of copyrighted works (such as software and multimedia content), as well as systems that enforce these policies within devices. Laws in many countries criminalize the circumvention of DRM, communication about such circumvention, and the creation and distribution of tools used for such circumvention. Such laws are part of the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the European Union's Information Society Directive (the French DADVSI is an example of a member state of the European Union implementing the directive). DRM techniques include licensing agreements and encryption. The industry has expanded the usage of DRM to various hardware products, such as K ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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SecuROM
SecuROM was a CD/DVD copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) product developed by Sony DADC. It aims to prevent unauthorised copying and reverse engineering of software, primarily commercial computer games running on Microsoft Windows. The method of disc protection in later versions is data position measurement, which may be used in conjunction with online activation DRM. SecuROM gained prominence in the late 2000s but generated controversy because of its requirement for frequent online authentication and strict key activation limits. A 2008 class-action lawsuit was filed against Electronic Arts for its use of SecuROM in the video game ''Spore''. Opponents, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believe that fair-use rights are restricted by DRM applications such as SecuROM. Software SecuROM limits the number of PCs activated at the same time from the same key and is not uninstalled upon removal of the game. SecuROM 7.x was the first version to include t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Procedural Generation
In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In computer graphics, it is commonly used to create textures and 3D models. In video games, it is used to automatically create large amounts of content in a game. Depending on the implementation, advantages of procedural generation can include smaller file sizes, larger amounts of content, and randomness for less predictable gameplay. Procedural generation is a branch of media synthesis. Overview The term ''procedural'' refers to the process that computes a particular function. Fractals are geometric patterns which can often be generated procedurally. Commonplace procedural content includes textures and meshes. Sound is often also procedurally generated, and has applications in both speech synthesis as well as music. It has been used to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spaceflight
Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly spacecraft into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in orbit around Earth, but also includes space probes for flights beyond Earth orbit. Such spaceflight operates either by telerobotic or autonomous control. The more complex human spaceflight has been pursued soon after the first orbital satellites and has reached the Moon and permanent human presence in space around Earth, particularly with the use of space stations. Human spaceflight programs include the Soyuz, Shenzhou, the past Apollo Moon landing and the Space Shuttle programs, with currently the International Space Station as the main destination of human spaceflight missions while China's Tiangong Space Station is under construction. Spaceflight is used for placing in Earth's orbit communications satellites, reconnaissance satellites ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interstellar Spaceflight
Interstellar travel is the hypothetical travel of spacecraft from one star system, solitary star, or planetary system to another. Interstellar travel is expected to prove much more difficult than interplanetary spaceflight due to the vast difference in the scale of the involved distances. Whereas the distance between any two planets in the Solar System is less than 30 astronomical units (AU), stars are typically separated by hundreds of thousands of AU, causing these distances to typically be expressed instead in light-years. Because of the vastness of these distances, non-generational interstellar travel based on known physics would need to occur at a high percentage of the speed of light; even so, travel times would be long, at least decades and perhaps millennia or longer. As of 2022, five uncrewed spacecraft, all launched and operated by the United States, have achieved the escape velocity required to leave the Solar System as part of missions to explore parts of the out ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |