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Microsphere (software Company)
Microsphere was a British software company formed in Muswell Hill, north London in 1982 by husband and wife team David and Helen Reidy, best known for several popular computer games in the mid 1980s. Company history The company was formed in November 1982 as a consulting firm, before transforming into development the following year. The Reidys targeted the then recently released ZX Spectrum, and initially attempted to write business software, producing the Visicalc clone ''Omnicalc'', but quickly realised that the future for the machine lay with games after their first effort, a cassette containing ''Crevasse'' and ''Hotfoot'', received a good review in Sinclair User. After recruiting local artist and family friend Keith Warrington, they released one of their best known and critically acclaimed games, ''Skool Daze'' in 1984, which sold 50,000 copies and Crash (magazine), Crash described as "excellent value, plenty to do, addictive, unusual" and followed it up with ''Back to Skool ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Computer Software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th century. Early programs were written in the machine language specific to the hardware. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 allowed for more human-readable instructions, making software development easier and more portable across different computer architectures. Software in a programming language is run through a compiler or Interpreter (computing), interpreter to execution (computing), execute on the architecture's hardware. Over time, software has become complex, owing to developments in Computer network, networking, operating systems, and databases. Software can generally be categorized into two main types: # operating systems, which manage hardware resources and provide services for applicat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that translate source code from a high-level programming language to a lower level language, low-level programming language (e.g. assembly language, object code, or machine code) to create an executable program.Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, Jeffrey D. Ullman - Second Edition, 2007 There are many different types of compilers which produce output in different useful forms. A ''cross-compiler'' produces code for a different Central processing unit, CPU or operating system than the one on which the cross-compiler itself runs. A ''bootstrap compiler'' is often a temporary compiler, used for compiling a more permanent or better optimised compiler for a language. Related software ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Train Game
''The Train Game'' is a simulation video game originally published by Microsphere for the ZX Spectrum in 1983. Gameplay The player assumes the role of a chief operations manager at a railway. Two different track layouts are included, A and B, each viewed from overhead on a single screen. Trains must be kept running by operating switches to avoid derailment. To score points, trains must stop at stations to pick up passengers. The player selects a level of play, which determines the number of trains running, and for every 25 passengers picked up, the sub-level increases by one. If passengers are kept waiting too long, they become angry and do not increase the player's score. Up to three trains may be running on the network, and passengers are colour-coded indicating which train they wish to board. Each switch is designated a letter of the alphabet, corresponding to the keyboard key the player must press to switch it. Track A has 25 points, and track B has 19. While the player may p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Electrical Engineer
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the 19th century after the commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electrical power generation, distribution, and use. Electrical engineering is divided into a wide range of different fields, including computer engineering, systems engineering, power engineering, telecommunications, radio-frequency engineering, signal processing, instrumentation, photovoltaic cells, electronics, and optics and photonics. Many of these disciplines overlap with other engineering branches, spanning a huge number of specializations including hardware engineering, power electronics, Electromagnetism, electromagnetics and waves, microwave engineering, nanotechnology, electrochemistry, renewable energies, mechatronics/control ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Software Piracy
Online piracy or software piracy is the practice of downloading and distributing copyrighted works digitally without permission, such as music, movies or software. History Nathan Fisk traces the origins of modern online piracy back to similar problems posed by the advent of the printing press. Quoting from legal standards in '' MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.'', he notes that there have historically been a number of technologies which have had a "dual effect" of facilitating legitimate sharing of information, but which also facilitate the ease with which copyright can be violated. He likens online piracy to issues faced in the early 20th century by stationers in England, who tried and failed to prevent the large scale printing and distribution of illicit sheet music. WordStar was so widely pirated that many books on how to use the software appeared, their authors knowing that they were selling documentation for illicit copies. Starting in the 1980s, the availability of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Contact Sam Cruise
''Contact Sam Cruise'' is an action-adventure game created by David Reidy with graphics by Keith Warrington for the ZX Spectrum and released by Microsphere in 1986. Using a modified '' Skool Daze'' engine, the game follows the exploits of player-controlled private detective Sam Cruise. Plot The player controls Sam Cruise, a private investigator in an unnamed city in an unnamed year. Sam has received a call from a woman called Lana requesting he meet her in a hotel room in town. "So began", says Cruise in the game's opening "the case of the Bali Budgie" (a play on the title of the noir film '' The Maltese Falcon''). Gameplay The game is made in the style of a 1930s detective movie and Sam needs to solve a murder. Play takes place in a scrolling two-dimensional environment consisting of part of a city in the United States. Although the player is given considerable freedom to explore the game-area the solution to the game is a linear progression through various puzzles. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Graph Paper
Graph paper, coordinate paper, grid paper, or squared paper is writing paper that is printed with fine lines making up a regular grid. It is available either as loose leaf paper or bound in notebooks or graph books. It is commonly found in mathematics and engineering education settings, exercise books, and in laboratory notebooks. The lines are often used as guides for mathematical notation, plotting graph of a function, graphs of functions or experimental data, and drawing curves. History The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a pattern book dated to around 1596 in which each page bears a grid woodblock printing, printed with a woodblock. The owner has used these grids to create block pictures in black and white and in colour. The first commercially published "coordinate paper" is usually attributed to a Dr. Buxton of England, who patented paper printed with a rectangular coordinate grid, in 1794. A century later, E. H. Moore, a distinguished mathematician at the University of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Machine Code
In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For conventional binary computers, machine code is the binaryOn nonbinary machines it is, e.g., a decimal representation. representation of a computer program that is actually read and interpreted by the computer. A program in machine code consists of a sequence of machine instructions (possibly interspersed with data). Each machine code instruction causes the CPU to perform a specific task. Examples of such tasks include: # Load a word from memory to a CPU register # Execute an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) operation on one or more registers or memory locations # Jump or skip to an instruction that is not the next one In general, each architecture family (e.g., x86, ARM) has its own instruction set architecture (ISA), and hence its own specific machine code language. There are exceptions, such as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Assembly Language
In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture's machine code instructions. Assembly language usually has one statement per machine instruction (1:1), but constants, comments, assembler directives, symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers, and macros are generally also supported. The first assembly code in which a language is used to represent machine code instructions is found in Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 work, ''Coding for A.R.C.''. Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an '' assembler''. The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book '' The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Dig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Back To Skool
''Back to Skool'' is an open world video game, sequel to the '' Skool Daze'', created by David Reidy with graphics by Keith Warrington for the ZX Spectrum and released by Microsphere in 1985. The gameplay is very similar to - if more advanced than - ''Skool Daze'', incorporating most of the same characters, gameplay elements and graphics. The game is ranked 19th in the "Your Sinclair official top 100" Spectrum games of all time. Gameplay The game differs from its predecessor by an increase in the size of the play area (including a neighbouring girls' school) and a number of gameplay changes. The girls' school incorporates its own new characters including undistinguished girls with hockey sticks, Hayley (girlfriend of the main character Eric) and Miss Take (the headmistress). Only at break time and lunch times are the girls allowed to mingle with the boys, in the central grassy playground, separated at other times by a high gate. The opening and closing of the gate is controll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a tidal estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years. Its ancient core and financial centre, the City of London, was founded by the Roman Empire, Romans as Londinium and has retained its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has been the centuries-long host of Government of the United Kingdom, the national government and Parliament of the United Kingdom, parliament. London grew rapidly 19th-century London, in the 19th century, becoming the world's List of largest cities throughout history, largest city at the time. Since the 19th cen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Skool Daze
''Skool Daze'' is an open world action-adventure game released by Microsphere in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum and ported to the Commodore 64 the following year. It was written by David Reidy, with graphics designed by Keith Warrington. The game was commercially and critically successful, and praised for its original concept. It has since been regarded as one of the pioneers of the sandbox game genre. Gameplay The game features the player as a schoolboy named Eric whose objective is to steal his report card out of the staff room safe by accomplishing various tasks around the school. The computer controls all the other characters in the game, including the headmaster, other teachers and other pupils. The four teachers are Mr Wacker (the headmaster), Mr Rockitt (the science teacher), Mr Withit (the geography teacher) and Mr Creak (the history master). Other than Eric, three of the pupils are named: Boy Wander (the tearaway), Angelface (the bully) and Einstein (the swot). The player has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
