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ZZT
''ZZT'' is a 1991 action-adventure puzzle video game and game creation system developed and published by Potomac Computer Systems for MS-DOS. It was later released as freeware in 1997. It is an early game allowing user-generated content using object-oriented programming. Players control a smiley face to battle various creatures and solve puzzles in different grid-based boards in a chosen world. It has four worlds where players explore different boards and interact with objects such as ammo, bombs, and scrolls to reach the end of the game. It includes an in-game editor, allowing players to develop worlds using the game's scripting language, ZZT-OOP. The game was designed by mechanical engineering student Tim Sweeney in roughly six to nine months. It was built from a text editor conceived in 1989 to build a better editor for Pascal, after disliking editors that came with other programming languages for his computer. During development, he experimented with adding creatures and cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Potomac Computer Systems
Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, '' ZZT'' (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rein, who has been its vice president since. After moving the headquarters to Cary in 1999, the studio changed its name to Epic Games. Epic Games develops Unreal Engine, a commercially available game engine which also powers their internally developed video games, such as ''Fortnite'' and the ''Unreal'', '' Gears of War'' and ''Infinity Blade'' series. In 2014, Unreal Engine was named the "most successful videogame engine" by ''Guinness World Records''. Epic Games owns the game developers Chair Entertainment, Psyonix, Mediatonic and Harmonix, as well as cloud-based software developer Cloud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boss Fight Books
Boss Fight Books is a Los Angeles-based book publisher and its eponymous series of books about video games. Similar to the style of 33⅓, a series of books about individual record albums, each book focuses solely on one video game. The company was founded by Gabe Durham in June 2013, and following a successful Kickstarter campaign in July, they released their first book, ''EarthBound'' by Ken Baumann in January 2014. The idea for the series came when Durham was reading Jeff Ryan's ''Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America'', as Durham wished that the book would slow down and provide more depth to the games it covered. After finding there was no equivalent of 33⅓ for video games, Durham pitched the idea of the series to his friend, Ken Baumann, who agreed to write the first book and serve as the series' designer. After securing agreements with authors for the first five books, Durham turned to Kickstarter, seeking $5,000 in funding, a target that was met within eight ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Sweeney (game Developer)
Timothy Dean Sweeney (born 1970) is an American video game programmer and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Epic Games, and the creator of the Unreal Engine, one of the most-used game development platforms. He has purchased large amounts of land in North Carolina to assist in conservation efforts. Early life Sweeney was raised in Potomac, Maryland, the youngest of three brothers. At a young age, he became interested in tinkering with mechanical and electrical devices, and stated he had taken apart a lawnmower as early as five or six, and later built his own go-kart. He became interested in arcade games when they began to become popular in the late 1970s, knowing that like the mechanics devices he took apart and repaired, there were those that had programmed the games in the machines. Though the family got an Atari 2600, Sweeney was not as interested in the games for that, outside of ''Adventure'', and later said he had not played many video games in his life and very few ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Game Creation System
AHjbhb job u tv in ubjb, A game creation system (GCS) is a consumer-targeted game engine and a set of specialized design tools (and sometimes a light scripting language), engineered for the rapid iteration of user-derived video games. Examples include Robinson Technologies#Other projects, Novashell and Pie in the Sky (game engine), Pie in the Sky. Unlike more developer-oriented game engines, game creation systems promise an easy entry point for novice or hobbyist game designers, with often little to no coding required for simple behaviors. Although initially stigmatized, all-in-one game creation systems have gained some legitimacy with the central role of Unity (game engine), Unity, Pixel Game Maker MV, and GameMaker: Studio in the growth of the indie game development community. Currently the Independent Games Festival recognizes games produced with similar platforms. Early game creation systems such as Broderbund's ''The Arcade Machine'' (1982), Pinball Construction Set (1983), A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modding
''Modding'' is a slang expression derived from the English verb " to modify". The term refers to modification of hardware, software, or anything else, to perform a function not originally intended by the designer, or to achieve bespoke specification or appearance. The term is often used in relation to video games, particularly in regard to creating new or altered content and sharing that via the web. It may be applied to the overclocking of computers in order to increase the frequency at which the CPU operates. Case modding is a popular activity amongst many computer enthusiasts which involves the customization of a computer case or the installation of water cooling technology. In connection with automobiles, modding can connote engine tuning, remapping of a vehicle's engine control unit or customization of the coachwork. Computers and digital equipment Legal issues Modding may sometimes infringe the legal rights of the copyright owner. Some nations have laws prohibiting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland. It is also the largest university in both the state and the Washington metropolitan area, with more than 41,000 students representing all fifty states and 123 countries, and a global alumni network of over 388,000. Together, its 12 schools and colleges offer over 200 degree-granting programs, including 92 undergraduate majors, 107 master's programs, and 83 doctoral programs. UMD is a member of the Association of American Universities and competes in intercollegiate athletics as a member of the Big Ten Conference. The University of Maryland's proximity to the nation's capital has resulted in many research partnerships with the federal government; faculty receive research funding and institutional support from many agencies, such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Game Programmer
A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines, all of which fall under the umbrella term of "game programmer". A game programmer should not be confused with a game designer, who works on game design. History In the early days of video games (from the early 1970s to mid-1980s), a game programmer also took on the job of a designer and artist. This was generally because the abilities of early computers were so limited that having specialized personnel for each function was unnecessary. Game concepts were generally light and games were only meant to be played for a few minutes at a time, but more importantly, art content and variations in gameplay were constrained by computers' limited power. Later, as specialized arcade hardware and home systems became more powerful, game developers could develop d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PC Speaker
A PC speaker is a loudspeaker built into some IBM PC compatible computers. The first IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, employed a standard 2.25 inch magnetic driven (dynamic) speaker. More recent computers use a tiny moving-iron or piezo speaker instead. The speaker allows software and firmware to provide auditory feedback to a user, such as to report a hardware fault. A PC speaker generates waveforms using the programmable interval timer, an Intel 8253 or 8254 chip. Use cases BIOS/UEFI error codes The PC speaker is used during the power-on self-test (POST) sequence to indicate errors during the boot process. Since it is active before the graphics card, it can be used to communicate "beep codes" related to problems that prevent the much more complex initialization of the graphics card to take place. For example, the Video BIOS usually cannot activate a graphics card unless working RAM is present in the system while beeping the speaker is possible with just R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Code Page 437
Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacritics), Greek letters, icons, and line-drawing symbols. It is sometimes referred to as the "OEM font" or "high ASCII", or as "extended ASCII" (one of many mutually incompatible ASCII extensions). This character set remains the primary set in the core of any EGA and VGA-compatible graphics card. As such, text shown when a PC reboots, before fonts can be loaded and rendered, is typically rendered using this character set. Many file formats developed at the time of the IBM PC are based on code page 437 as well. Display adapters The original IBM PC contained this font as a 9×14 pixels-per-character font stored in the ROM of the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) and an 8×8 pixels-per-character font of the Color Graphics Adapter ( CGA) ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boolean Data Type
In computer science, the Boolean (sometimes shortened to Bool) is a data type that has one of two possible values (usually denoted ''true'' and ''false'') which is intended to represent the two truth values of logic and Boolean algebra. It is named after George Boole George Boole (; 2 November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher, and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork in ..., who first defined an algebraic system of logic in the mid 19th century. The Boolean data type is primarily associated with Conditional (computer programming), conditional statements, which allow different actions by changing control flow depending on whether a programmer-specified Boolean ''condition'' evaluates to true or false. It is a special case of a more general ''logical data type—''logic does not always need to be Boolean (see probabilistic logic). Generali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invisible Wall
An invisible wall is a boundary in a video game that limits where a player character can go in a certain area, but does not appear as a physical obstacle. The term can also refer to an obstacle that in reality could easily be bypassed, such as a mid-sized rock or short fence, which does not allow the character to jump over it within the context of the game. In 2D games, the edge of the screen itself can form an invisible wall, since a player character may be prevented from traveling off the edge of the screen. In 3D games, invisible walls are used similarly to prevent a player leaving the gameplay area, or getting trapped in a small inescapable space, though visible boundaries such as stone walls or fences are generally preferred. Completely invisible walls are cited to be level design bugs, and might be "left-over geometry" from an earlier version of the level or an object's improperly-aligned collision box. Nevertheless, designers might add invisible walls on cliffs to keep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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