|
The Manhole
''The Manhole'' is an adventure video game in which the player opens a manhole and reveals a gigantic beanstalk, leading to fantastic worlds. Summary The game was first released on floppy disks in 1988 by Cyan, Inc. (now ''Cyan Worlds'') and distributed through mail order. In 1989, it was produced for Activision as a CD-ROM version based on the floppy disk game. This version was the first computer game distributed on CD-ROM (although there had already been two games released in late 1988 in Japan for NEC's PC Engine game console on its CD-ROM² format). It runs in black-and-white on the Macintosh line of computers. It was created using the HyperTalk programming language by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, who founded the company Cyan and would go on to produce the best-selling adventure game ''Myst''. ''The Manhole'' was later also released for the PC Engine and FM Towns. The game was re-released for MS-DOS twice, once in 1992 by Activision as ''The Manhole: New and Enhanced'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cyan Worlds
Cyan, Inc., also known as Cyan Worlds, Inc., is an American video game developer. Founded as Cyan Productions by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller in 1987, the company is best known as the creator of the ''Myst'' series. The company is located in Mead, Washington, just outside Spokane. ''Myst'' became the best-selling PC game ever made when it was released in 1993, and remained so for several years afterwards. It spawned several sequels, including ''Riven'' and the massively multiplayer online adventure '' Myst Online: Uru Live''. Before ''Myst'', the company created children's games such as ''The Manhole''. In 2016, they released the Kickstarter-funded game ''Obduction''. History Pre-Myst Cyan was founded in 1987 by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, operating out of their parents' basement in their Spokane, Washington home. Rand had been programming games as a junior high school student in the 1980s, while Robyn studied music and arts in high school. The two found a common grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floppy Disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. Floppy disks store digital data which can be read and written when the disk is inserted into a floppy disk drive (FDD) connected to or inside a computer or other device. The first floppy disks, invented and made by IBM, had a disk diameter of . Subsequently, the 5¼-inch and then the 3½-inch became a ubiquitous form of data storage and transfer into the first years of the 21st century. 3½-inch floppy disks can still be used with an external USB floppy disk drive. USB drives for 5¼-inch, 8-inch, and other-size floppy disks are rare to non-existent. Some individuals and organizations continue to use older equipment to read or transfer data from floppy disks. Floppy disk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chuck Carter (illustrator)
Charles Michael "Chuck" Carter is a video game and film artist. He and Robyn Miller designed and rendered the environments in the video game ''Myst''. After ''Myst'', he was an artist for Westwood's ''Command & Conquer'' and ''Command & Conquer: Red Alert'' series and a digital matte painter on the television series Babylon 5. His digital art clients include Disney, NASA, National Geographic, Scientific American, and BBC. In 2017 Chuck founded his own video game studio, Eagre Games, and released the video game ''ZED'' in June, 2019. In September of 2021, Chuck joined Standard Magic Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ..., a virtual and augmented reality startup based in Maine as Creative Director. References External links * *https://web.archive.org/web/201504090744 ... [...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] |
Sound Effect
A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditionally, in the twentieth century, they were created with foley. In motion picture and television production, a sound effect is a sound recorded and presented to make a specific storytelling or creative point ''without'' the use of dialogue or music. The term often refers to a process applied to a recording, without necessarily referring to the recording itself. In professional motion picture and television production, dialogue, music, and sound effects recordings are treated as separate elements. Dialogue and music recordings are never referred to as sound effects, even though the processes applied to such as reverberation or flanging effects, often are called "sound effects". This area and sound design have been slowly merged since the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in which the vocal folds (vocal cords) are the primary sound source. (Other sound production mechanisms produced from the same general area of the body involve the production of unvoiced consonants, clicks, whistling and whispering.) Generally speaking, the mechanism for generating the human voice can be subdivided into three parts; the lungs, the vocal folds within the larynx (voice box), and the articulators. The lungs, the "pump" must produce adequate airflow and air pressure to vibrate vocal folds. The vocal folds (vocal cords) then vibrate to use airflow from the lungs to create audible pulses that form the laryngeal sound source. The muscles of the larynx adjust the length and tension of the vocal folds to 'fine-tune' pitch and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Game Music
Video game music (or VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to the style of music known as chiptune, which became the sound of the first video games. With technological advances, video game music has grown to include a wider range of sounds. Players can hear music in video games over a game's title screen, menus, and gameplay. Game soundtracks can also change depending on a player's actions or situation, such as indicating missed actions in rhythm games, informing the player they are in a dangerous situation, or rewarding them for specific achievements. Video game music can be one of two kinds: original or licensed. The popularity of video game music has created education and job opportunities, generated awards, and led video game soundtracks to be commercially sold and performed in concerts. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Color
Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associated with objects or materials based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra. By defining a color space, colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates. Because perception of color stems from the varying spectral sensitivity of different types of cone cells in the retina to different parts of the spectrum, colors may be defined and quantified by the degree to which they stimulate these cells. These physical or physiological quantifications of color, however, do not fully explain the psychophysical perception of color appearance. Color science includes the perception of color by the eye and brain, the origin of color in materials, color theory in art, and the physics of electr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PC Engine
The TurboGrafx-16, known as the outside North America, is a home video game console designed by Hudson Soft and sold by NEC Home Electronics. It was the first console marketed in the fourth generation, commonly known as the 16-bit era, though the console has an 8-bit central processing unit (CPU) coupled with a 16-bit graphics processor. It was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1989. In Europe, the console is known as the PC Engine, after the Japanese model was imported and distributed in the United Kingdom and France from 1988. In Japan, the system was launched as a competitor to the Famicom, but the delayed United States release meant that it ended up competing with the Sega Genesis and later the Super NES. The console has an 8-bit CPU and a dual 16-bit graphics processing unit (GPU) chipset consisting of a video display controller (VDC) and video color encoder. The GPUs are capable of displaying 482 colors simultaneously, out of 512. With dimensions of just ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Myst
''Myst'' is a graphic adventure/puzzle video game designed by the Miller brothers, Robyn and Rand. It was developed by Cyan, Inc., published by Broderbund, and initially released for the Macintosh in 1993. In the game, the player's character travels via a special book to the island of Myst. From there, solving puzzles allows the player to travel to four other worlds which reveal the backstory of the game's characters, one of which the player must eventually choose to aid. The Miller brothers got their start in video game development by creating titles for children. They conceived of ''Myst'' as their first game for adults, receiving funding from Japanese publisher Sunsoft. Development began in 1991 and was Cyan's biggest undertaking to date. Technical constraints of the time influenced the design of the game and the production of its graphics, which were state-of-the-art but mostly relied on static images. Robyn Miller composed 40 minutes of synthesized music for the soundtrac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Programming Language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming language is usually split into the two components of syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), which are usually defined by a formal language. Some languages are defined by a specification document (for example, the C programming language is specified by an ISO Standard) while other languages (such as Perl) have a dominant implementation that is treated as a reference. Some languages have both, with the basic language defined by a standard and extensions taken from the dominant implementation being common. Programming language theory is the subfield of computer science that studies the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of programming languages. Definitions There are many considerations when defini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
