GejmDef

True color

(Graphics) When color information is stored in the form of its red, green and blue components it is said to be stored in true color. Opposite is Indexed Color.

Blending

(Graphics) When an image is drawn so that images drawn before it can still be seen. This is done through blending the source colors with the destination colors at different percentages. Also called Transparency.

Voxel

(Graphics) Volume pixel. These are basically another way of drawing 3D objects, instead of defining them as the polygons that make up the outside of an object, you define it as a number of points. Voxels can be the size of a pixel on the screen, or they can be large spheres, sprites or any graphical representation of a point.

Indexed Color

(Graphics) When color information is stored in a look up table that contains the colors red, green and blue information.

Accumulation Buffer

(Graphics) A surface where multiple scenes can be added to before the surface is displayed.

Frame Skipping

(Graphics) When a computer cannot process the frame graphics, or the game engine fast enough, a solution is to compensate the frame rate with "skipping". Each time the game loses performance, it skips some calculations and think ahead for compensating the time, without the heavy processing.

Interpolation

(Graphics) Using a ratio to step gradually a variable from one value to another.

Face

(Graphics) Usually a polygon that is part of an object.

Bitmap

(Graphics) Usually a rectangular block of information where data is stored by the picture to make an image. For instance, if you capture the screen the data you would have is a bitmap of the screen.

Model

(Graphics) Usually referring to an object that is created out of a number of polygons, splines or NURBS which to create an object in 3D.

Line

(Graphics) Usually refers to a line segment -- i.e., a one dimensional span of space between two points.

Projection

(Graphics) Usually the conversion of three dimensional coordinates to two dimensions, thus making drawing the polygon on a two dimensional screen far simpler.

VESA

(Graphics) Video Electronics Standards Association. An organization that sets standards for video and multimedia in PCs. They created the Super VGA (SVGA) standard and the VESA Local Bus.

Frustum Clipping

(Graphics) When a polygon is clipped against the viewing frustum.

Transparency

(Graphics) When an image is drawn so that images drawn before it can still be seen. This is done through blending the source colors with the destination colors at different percentages. Also called Blending.

Drive By Check In

(And the build broke often...) Synonym for Commit and Run... Often pantomimed/re-enacted with imaginary guns/grenades.

Drinking the Kool-Aid

(All was well) A feeling of faith or trust in the direction of the company

Core Pillars

(All was well) Identifying characteristics defined to make sure bets are safe. What at the three core pillars of the game? Jumping, Running, Talking Pies

Pirate Ship

(All was well) Tends to describe a smaller studio in which things get accomplished with success despite a lack of formal process definitions.

Meritocracy

(All was well) The philosophy where promotions are given to the hardest workers and best performers regardless of who they know.

Making Bread

(All was well) Used to describe the gruntier and less glorious tasks of game making.

BlameBot

(And the build broke often...) a non-automated robotic process of finding out who is responsible for breaking the game using Perforce history. Activation of Blamebot is often announced by the human in robot voice.

Sticky Grenade

(And the fun started to manifest) Named after the feature in Halo. A game mechanic that simply never gets old no matter how many times you use it.

Special Sauce

(And the fun started to manifest) That one missing gameplay element that hasn't made it in yet that's needed to make the core loop fun and engaging.

Cobra Venom

(And the fun started to manifest) The distilled-down, core coolness of an idea or a project. You just need a little bit of this to make a big impact.

ADSR

(Audio) A complex envelope, probably the most common. Allows for fairly accurate recreation of real instruments' dynamics. The evelope has four parts, attack, decay, sustain, and release.

AIFF

(Audio) A fairly common audio standard, an acronym for Audio Interchange File Format.

Bus

(Audio) A feature on a mixer where a number of channels can have their settings modified together.

Aftertouch

(Audio) A feature on keyboards that allows you to alter the sound produced by pressing the key after a note has been released.

WAV File

(Audio) A file which stores audio information, saved with a ".wav" extension. WAV files are commonly used in big budget games because they provide excellent sound quality. But it takes a lot of data to provide such high quality sound. So WAV files are larger than those of other audio file formats. (Microsoft's standard sound exchange format.)

ADAT

(Audio) A form of digital audio tape with 8 tracks.

Asset

(Audio) A generic term for graphics, sounds, maps, levels, models, and any other resources. Generally assets are compiled into large files. The file formats may be designed for fast loading by matching in-memory formats, or tight compressions for handheld games, or designed to otherwise help in-game use. It is often useful to have an asset tool chain. The original models may be high-density models with R8G8B8A8 images. You may have a model striper and image compresser that reduces the model for LOD, and compresses the texture to a DXT compressed image. These assets may then go through further transformations, and end up in the large resource file.

Decibel

(Audio) A logarithmic scale of an audio signal's intensity.

Fuzz

(Audio) A type of distortion that intentionally adds noise to the signal.

VOC File

(Audio) Creative Labs' sound format made popular with the Sound Blaster.

DAT

(Audio) Digital audio tape -- a very common means of digital recording.

Vibrato

(Audio) The sine-wave modulation of a signal's frequency. Basically, it results in the warbling of the signal's pitch.

VCA

(Audio) Voltage Controlled Amplifier. In analog synthesizers, an amplifier whose magnitude of amplification manipulated through control voltage. With various modulators, it is possible to create a number effects with a VCA, such as tremolo (a low-frequency sine wave as the modulator).

VCF

(Audio) Voltage Controlled Filter. A filter in analog synthesizers controlled by voltage.

VCO

(Audio) Voltage Controlled Oscillator. In analog synthesizers, a device that generates various waveforms, whose frequency is determined by a control voltage.

Frequency Modulation

(Audio) When a signal's frequency is altered by another signal's.

Channel

(Audio) With MIDI, there are 16 channels over which data can be transmitted. With mixers, a channel is an input.

Aliasing

(Audio) With digital sampling, to measure a particular frequency, the sampling rate must be at least twice that of the measured frequency. If an insufficient sampling rate is used, phantom frequencies will be created.

Suit

(Buisness) (AKA: 'Corporate Suit') Derogatory term used by front-line development staff for anyone who _has_ to wear a suit to work. Usually applies to managers, producers, accountants, company directors and anyone else who generally has little to do with either programming, graphics, audio or game design. Also applied to anyone in the company who has little or know knowledge of how computer game design and development is done. ["Joe? Heck no, he don't know jack 'bout programming; he's just a Suit! We gotta kowtow to him, 'cuz he's the guy who pays us."]

Distributor

(Buisness) A business that buys, warehouses, ships, invoices and sells to retailers for non-competing products. Contrast to a wholesaler which carries non-exclusive lines of products.

Wholesaler

(Buisness) A business that buys, warehouses, ships, invoices and sells to retailers without exclusivity. Contrast to a distributor which carries non-competing lines of products.

Publisher

(Buisness) A company that funds and sells games, but usually not directly. Publishers usually sell games through retailers, and often do not develop the games themselves.

Freeware

(Buisness) A concept that grew out of the desire to make software free for use, but not to give up all authorial rights which a public domain license does.

Non Disclosure Agreement

(Buisness) A contract between two parties where they agree not to discuss details that they tell each other about matters they would rather keep private. This is different than a submission agreement though.

License

(Buisness) A right given to use a brandname or theme from another company for a game. For instance many movies have been licensed for video games, such as Goldeneye.

Price Point

(Buisness) A term used to classify a product in a price range.

Trade-Out

(Buisness) A trade exchange system whereby employees of two different developers or publishers trade retail copies of one game for another. Popular at the close of E3 and ECTS shows.

Trade Advertising

(Buisness) Advertising not meant for the consumer, but instead intended to reach retailers, wholesalers, reps and salespeople.

Silver

(Buisness) Another name for the final manufactured CD. See Going Glass.

Slip

(Buisness) When a product is not finished has passed its' date of completion.

Retail

(Buisness) When something is sold, it is said to be a retail item.

ROI

(Business) Return of Investemnt

Digipen

(Community) A college for Game Programming. (WWW) (Review Info)

Avatar

(Design) A buzzword used by the Virtual Reality community to mean a "representation of the user".

Computer Game

(Design) A simulation created using a relational database and all the client (and, optionally, server-side) software required to interact with it, with the traditional business rules layer replaced by a gameplay rules layer. The database's media content, user interface and gameplay rules are usually specified and defined by a 'game designer'. The database and rules engine programming is created by one or more 'game programmers'. The graphical content of the database is usually created by one or more 'artists'. The audio content is similarly created by one or more musicians and/or audio technicians.

Palette Swap

(Design) A technique in which a videogame uses the same basic character, with a different color scheme, to make that character look like a different character. Used often in may RPGs.

Artificial Life

(Design) AL is basically the antithesis of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While AI seeks to simulate real world by following a complex series of rules, AL starts with very simple rules for a system and enables complex behavior to emerge from them.

Murder Based Experience

(Design) An advancement system in which points are only rewarded once an opposing creature is killed. This is a specialized form of Combat based experience that doesn't reward the player for defeating the enemy unless death has occurred.

Cut-Sequence

(Design) An animation that segues between different components of a game, such as providing information or entertainment between levels or missions.

Blueroom

(Design) Graybox

Gameplay

(Design) Meaningful interactions during a game.

NIS

(Design) Non-interactive sequence. Synonyms: cut-to's, movies. A non-interactive sequence is a part of the game when the player watches the events rather than participates (or interacts). E.g., a transition movie from one level to another.

Turn Based Strategy

(Design) Often a war game that the player will be given as much time as is necessary to move or perform the actions they wish. Actions will then usually performed one at a time and the sides trade of. For instance, Chess is a turn based strategy game.

Experience Points

(Design) Often used in Role Playing Games (RPGs), experience points are a way of measuring how much the player has experienced to grant them additional benefits often in the form of increased statistics or skills.

Semiotics

(Design) Part of the science of communication. Specifically, Semiotics deals with the use of symbols and 'signs' (in a very broad sense) and how well/badly these perform their tasks. Anything from ideograms, gestures, alphabets and even road signs are affected by this science. For computer games, Semiotics comes into its own when dealing with the User Interface design and 'signposting' within a game.

RTS

(Design) Real-time (not turn-based) Strategy.

RPG

(Design) Roleplaying Game. A game that is usually based on controlling one or more characters to finish some large and more minor quests while fighting and gaining experience points.

Design bible

(Design) see "design document"

ACT File

(Graphics) .ACT files are the actor files for Genesis3D - also referred to as models.

Term Name

(Graphics) Description

SSS

(Graphics) Refers to sub-surface scattering

Backface Removal

(Graphics) See Backface Culling.

BPS

(Network) Bits Per Second. A measurement of speed for transfering information.

Sakaguchi, Hironobu

(People) The creator of the Final Fantasy games, Hironobu Sakaguchi is often thought of as the father of console role playing games. And with his induction into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Science's Hall of Fame, Hironobu Sakaguchi is now recognized along with Sid Meier and Shigeru Miyamoto

Miyamoto, Shigeru

(People) The creator of the ever-so-popular Super Mario Bros & Legend of Zelda games.

Jones, Cliff

(People) The first game developer to combine artsy cinematic storytelling with intense first-person action. Credited with the invention of the "interactive movie."

Molyneux, Peter

(People) The inventor of the real-time strategy genre with his games Powermonger and Populous, Peter Molyneux is a legend in game design. Founder of Bullfrog he also designed Syndicate, Magic Carpet, and Theme Park. He quit Bullfrog near the release of Dungeon Keeper and co-founded Lionhead Studios where he went on to design Black & White.

Blezinski, Cliff

(People) The mastermind behind the Unreal Games. Started the company Epic Megagames. Created the Jazz Jackrabit series before starting on Unreal. Shortly after, he created Unreal Tournament, which revolved around the concept of multiplayer.

Hallford, Neal

(People) The writer and designer behind a number of bestselling computer games including "Betrayal at Krondor", "Return to Krondor", "Planet's Edge" and "Might & Magic III: Isles of Terra". Further information about him is available through his website at Neal.Hallford.com.

LaMothe, Andre

(People) Well-known author of a number of successful game programming books, including Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus and The Black Art of 3D Game Programming. Also the founder of Xtreme Games.

Lua

(Programming) "Lua is a powerful light-weight programming language designed for extending applications. Lua is also frequently used as a general-purpose, stand-alone language." http://www.lua.org

Vector

(Programming) 1) A resizable array of elements (such as std::vector) 2) A mathematical object, usually in 2D or 3D space containing position elements of the same order. A vector is different than a point of the same magnitude in that it generally assumes movement from the origin of the coordinate system to the specified position.

Collision Detection

(Programming) A process of determining if two objects have collided by testing their bounds or a spatial overlap.

Lerp

(Programming) Abbreviation for Linear Interpolation.

bloatware

(Programming) Software that is needlessly large in size, that is, requiring a noticable amount of hard drive space (for installation) and RAM (while running). Bloatware is created by the inclusion of more than the necessary features for a particular program.

TSR

(Programming) Terminate but Stay Resident: TSR is when a program terminates, but remains resident in memory.

DirectShow

(Programming) The API developed for easily playing media such as AVIs and MPEGs. (WWW)

DirectInput

(Programming) The API needed to closely access hardware through Windows, such as the keyboard, mouse, joysticks and joypads. (WWW)

Hash Table

(Programming) The Hash Table is a data structure which is suited to searching large amounts of information by a key value. Hash tables are most useful with a large number of records are stored, and allow information to easily be located. Hash tables function by processing the key using a function which returns a hash value - this value determines where the the data the particular record will be stored. This same value can then be used to search the hash table, and will point to the same location.

GLUT

(Programming) The OpenGL Utility Toolkit. This set of libraries provides a set of helper functions to OpenGL, including methods to abstract the windowing system (for cross-platform development), rendering "standard" 3D objects, etc. For more info, visit the GLUT homepage

Quicksort

(Programming) The most popurar sorting algorithm to sort an array of items.

Infinit Loop

(Programming) This is a condition when a cycle does not terminate. In programming, infinit loops are caused when the termination condition cannot be meet due to a coding error. The following are infinit loops would include: // No termination condition for(;;) { // No termination, has nothing to stop the loop } // Unreachable termination condition for( int i = 0; i != -1; i++) { } // Constant true condition while(1) { } // Incorrect use of operators while(i = 4) { } The above are just a few conditions that will cause an infinite loop. See: Infinit Loop

Instanciate

(Programming) To make a instance of a class. To create a object.

Refactor

(Programming) To rewrite a piece of code in order to improve structure and/or readability without changing it's external behavior or overall meaning. Refactoring code will often result in simpler code which will potentially be more performant and/or readable than the original version.

VB

(Programming) Visual Basic. An extension of BASIC made by Microsoft, often used to create Windows applications quickly.

WDL

(Programming) WDL stands for "World Definition Language". WDL scripting is used to make interaction in 3D game programming. WDL is used with the powerful "Acknex" game creation system created by Conitec at conitec.com.

Initialize

(Programming) When you initialize a variable, you give it its value. Used in programming. You can define and initialize a variable in one statement to help reduce code size. C++ Example: int num=3; ^ ^ ^ | | | | | value | variable name type

Module

(Programming) a collection of data and routines that act on the data. It might also be a collection of routines that provides a cohesive set of services even if no common data is involved. Examples include a source file in C, a class in C++, a package in Ada, and a unit in some versions of Pascal.

quicksort

(Programming) an algorithm used to sort elements in an array. Developed by C.A.R. Hoare, it has an average efficency of 1.4n log2(n) as compared to Insertion, Selection, and Bubble with averages of n(n-1)/4, n(n-1)/2, and<="" td="">

Star Chamber

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) A chamber composed of an insular elite authoritative body with strict, arbitrary rulings, secretive proceedings, and an inherent lack of objectivity that casts doubt on the legitimacy of decisions made.

Cabal

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) A small group of employees secretly operating together toward ends that differ from those of studio authorities.

Hello, Monster

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) When you encounter horrible design decisions, often from a marketing exec or someone far from design. Like, "Why don't you just make the game open world?"

80/20 Rule

(Something needed to change...) 80 percent of the game comes from 20 percent of the work. The remaining 80 percent of the work goes into polishing that last 20 percent of the game.

Gold Edition

(Something needed to change...) A feature to be saved for a future edition of the game that will probably never happen and we all know it, but nobody wants to commit to killing the feature entirely.

Chainsaw to Scalpel

(Something needed to change...) Dealing with the biggest problems first, and then the smaller ones after.

Triage

(Something needed to change...) Going through the bugs to determine priority.

Isle of Dreams

(Something needed to change...) Lowest priority bugs that may be addressed in the sequel

Pre-mortem

(Something needed to change...) Someone messed up really bad, usually a group of people, and we need to talk about it as a team right now.

Save the Astronauts

(Something needed to change...) The "Save the Astronauts Meeting," "Let's go Save the Astronauts," "We were out Saving Astronauts." Inspired by the scene in Apollo 13 where the scientists on Earth have a table full of equipment and very little time to figure out how to save the astronauts' lives, the ten-minute, time-boxed meeting is one of my favorites: "We have 10 minutes to squash this problem and Save the Astronauts."

High School Problem

(Something needed to change...) a problem that seems huge and awful at the time, but reflecting on it later, you realize it wasn't that big of a deal.

Shotgun Decisions

(Something needed to change...) pushing someone to make a decision quickly on something. "Imagine you have a shotgun to your head and you have one minute to make this decision. What would you do?"

Reboot

(Something needed to change...) when you need to restart a project because something big (usually the design) failed.

A

*(Programming) A algorithm for searching through data using heuristics, most usually used for path finding.

Babe Ruth

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) Developer who always swings for the fences, but hasn't got a great batting average.

Fat Finger

(And the build broke often...) Breaking an important build by clicking the wrong button. An inherent flaw of build processes with manual steps (verb or noun.)

Know It When I See It

(The game was just not fun...) A style of direction where creative vision is developed through expensive trial and error as opposed to being synthesized via mental simulation before implementation.

Crazy Quilt

(The game was just not fun...) A way to describe a level with too many textures and no unifying theme.

My Immersion

(The game was just not fun...) Freakouts about realism in spite of a ton of other unrealistic things with which they have no problem.

Chopping Wood

(The game was just not fun...) The feeling one gets when melee combat fails to hold the player's interest due to feeling like a lumberjack mashing buttons in a forest of highly durable trees.

Analog Synthesizer

(Audio) A type of synthesizer that creates sounds through the modification of electrical signals.

Effect Box

(Audio) A type of unit that alters the signal in a wide variety of manners.

AR

(Audio) A very simple envelope type, with only attack and release.

Adhocracy

(All was well) Organization in which tasks are done by the people who realize they need to be done and / or are able to do them best. (see Pirate Ship)

Rotating Trees

(All was well) Work with a very poor payoff to time ratio.

Franken-

(And the build broke often...) Prefix for any cobbled together collection of pieces never intended to work together. Most often "frankenbuild."

The Voodoo

(And the build broke often...) The processes and incantations that team members follow as the build and tools pipeline change over time, for the worse. Usually the result of sloppy data versioning and/or poorly documented interfaces.

Fakosity

(Artists) Simulated radiosity lighting (global illumination) via the use of point lights.

Greeble

(Artists) The micro-level geometry detail usually found on architectural or mechanical assets that give an object visual complexity on a surface level.

TARDIS

(Artists) Verb that means to make something up to 40 percent larger on the interior than on the exterior.

Wonkify

(Artists) to add imperfection to geometry to break the perfect symmetry and "straightness" of 3D. Wonkifying something gives it personality. It can be as subtle as slightly rotating/scaling a couple of edge loops to break the rigidity of a silhouette.

Filter

(Audio) A component that attenuates certain frequency ranges. Various filters have different volume reduction slopes; the most common being 12 decibels per octave.

OGG

(Audio) A compressed file format, similar to mp3. Features slightly better quality at the same compression rate. See http://www.vorbis.com for library and sources. Free, open source. Very liberal license. Can be used commercially without paying royalties.

Drum Machine

(Audio) A device that simulates percussion patterns. Used often when band members are short, for practice (to lay down a beat to use as reference), or in certain musical genres (hip hop, house).

Arpeggiator

(Audio) A device that, when you play a chord on a keyboard, cycles through the depressed keys in a programmed pattern.

Amplifier

(Audio) A device used to increase the volume or amplitude of a source signal.

Subtractive Synthesis

(Audio) A form of synthesis that is popular with analog synthesizers. It takes a complex waveform rich in harmonics (such as the sawtooth) and strips away parts, resulting in a simpler wave.

Triangle Wave

(Audio) A fundamental waveform that has very weak, odd harmonics (approximately 8/9 of the energy is devoted to the fundamental). Often found in oscillators instead of sine waves because a low-pass filtered triangle wave is effectively a sine wave.

Square Wave

(Audio) A fundamental waveform whose shape is the same as a wave. Spectrum-wise, it's the same as a sawtooth, sans the even even harmonics.

Signal/Noise Ratio

(Audio) A measure of how much undesirable noise a signal has in it.

Chorus

(Audio) A method of adding depth to a sound, by rotating part of the sound in one channel out of phase with the other.

Control Voltage

(Audio) A method of controlling analog synthesizers -- used for pitch control (with VCOs), loudness control (VCAs), etc.

Tracker

(Audio) A music sequencing program, in which the interface is primarily numeric. The interface of a tracker allows the user to arrange sound-samples on a timeline across several monophonic channels. Trackers generally save songs to disk incorporating both sequencing data and samples. This can give a relatively small file size, while still providing a generally better quality of sound that MIDI often produces.

Pre-Amp

(Audio) A pre-amp is the first device in a gain structure. It is used to bring a relatively weak microphone signal up to line level. It is often found at the top of a mixing console or as a dedicated outboard device. In the mixing console, the amount of signal gain is determined by a "gain" or "trim" knob.

Quantization

(Audio) A repercussion of an insufficient bit depth used to represent the amplitude of a signal. Quantization may create frequencies that do not exist in the original signal. This is, however, occasionally used as a desirable effect. // The act of conforming digital music information (MIDI) to a set tempo and time signature.

Envelope

(Audio) A representation of the dynamics of a single note.

Ring modulation

(Audio) A ring modulator is used in analogue synthesis. A ring modulator takes two different tones, and plays the sum, and difference frequences of them both. Example: if you run a 500 Hz sine wave and a 600 Hz sine wave through a ring modulator, it produces two sine waves with the frequencies 100 Hz (600 - 500 Hz) and 900 Hz (600 + 500 Hz). With such simple ingredients it is not very useful, but using more complex tones, it generates more interesting results. Nowadays it is rather simple to produce digitally, but back in the old days when everything was analogue, it was a bit more complicated. The most common way to do it involves a ring of four diodes, hence the name, Ring Modulator.

DIN

(Audio) A round connector with a number of pins. MIDI connectors are 5-pin DIN connectors.

Clean

(Audio) A signal without any effects.

Texture

(Audio) A subjective perception of a sound's fundamental qualities. Usually expressed in terms of 'harshness', 'smoothness', 'breadth' and so forth. Eg: A sawtooth waveform would be perceived as having a harsh texture, whereas a square or simple sine wave would have a smoother texture. A similar usage is often seen in discussions of music and compositions in general.

Solid State Amplifier

(Audio) A type of amplifier that uses solid-state circuitry, or transistors, rather than valves. This form of amplification has a higher degree of linearity and is more reliable than vacuum tube amplification, though produces harsher tones when overdriven.

Amplitude Modulation

(Audio) Amplitude Modulation Changing the amplitude (volume) of a signal. For instance, amplitude modulation with a sine wave as the modulator gives you tremolo. Very fast amplitude modulation is called ring modulation. Ring modulation produces the sum and difference of all the frequencies of both the modulator and the signal being modulated.

Resampling

(Audio) An alteration of sampling rate without changing the pitch or speed of the sample.

Digital Modelling Amplifier

(Audio) An amplifier that emulates the characteristics of other amplifiers, allowing for near authentic tone with much more versatility and a vastly lower price.

Vacuum Tube Amplifiers

(Audio) An amplifier that uses valves (vacuum tubes) to make the signal louder. They add a bit of coloration to the signal, which is usually desirable, and sound very warm and rich when overdriven.

Tremolo

(Audio) An effect where the amplitude of a signal is modulated by a sine wave. In the guitar world, the "whammy bar" is mistakenly called a tremolo -- it is used, in fact, to produce vibrato (modulation of frequency).

Delay

(Audio) An effect where the original signal is repeated after a short interval.

Echo

(Audio) An effect where the original signal is repeated after a small delay.

Distortion

(Audio) Any alteration of a signal -- can be desirable, with controlled distortion through effects boxes, overdrive, etc., or unwanted, such as with noticable distortion in hi-fi equipment caused by poor components.

Gain

(Audio) Boosting the power of a signal.

Clipping

(Audio) Clipping occurs when a device is transmitting more signal than it was designed to handle. The distinct sound of audio clipping is created by the waveforms getting "chopped off" before they (the waveforms) reach the peaks of their excursion. Creating, esentially, a square-wave. The higher the amplitude, the closer the waveform resembles a square-wave, and thus, the more noticable the sound becomes. Clipping is found useful in some cases ie: overdriven guitar effects.

Software Synthesizers

(Audio) Computer programs that produce sound. They are usually less expensive than their hardware counterparts, though, due to the limitation of computing power, they are seldom realtime.

DLS

(Audio) Downloadable Sounds. A standard that encorporates custom samples into MIDI sequences. DLS samples are distributed in conjunction with a SMF and are played back as part of the sequence. DLS ensures that a sequence played back on one system sounds the same as the original.

Sidebands

(Audio) In modulation, "phantom frequencies" that are created when the modulator's frequency enters the audible range.

Envelope Generator

(Audio) In synthesizers, a device that produces a volume envelope. Some common types are ADSR and AR generators.

MOD

(Audio) MOD is a trackerbased music format well used and spread on bbs.

Wah

(Audio) More formally called timbre modulation. It is your standard "wah-wah" effect that Jimi Hendrix and so many other guitarists hackneyed.

MIDI

(Audio) Musical Instrument Digital Interface. The interface between different sound hardware and software to pass on musicial information.

White Noise

(Audio) Noise with completely random amplitude across all frequencies. Also known as Gaussian noise.

OpenAL

(Audio) OpenAL is a cross-platform 3D audio API appropriate for use with gaming applications and many other types of audio applications. Visit site for more information.

Compression

(Audio) Reduction of the signal's dynamic range; makes quiet sounds louder, and louds sounds quieter. Often used to smooth the sound of an instrument and to increase sustain.

Wavetable Synthesis

(Audio) Synthesis that digitally stores the waveforms in a "wavetable" and then uses them to create sounds. This method is capable of producing very realistic sounds.

Digital Synthesizer

(Audio) Synthesizers where sound is generated much like it is with analog synthesizers, though all processing and filtering is done digitally. Usually capable of much more realistic reproduction of natural instruments, though this is not always desirable. A common complaint is that digital synthesizers sound colder than their analog counterparts.

MP3

(Audio) The MPEG-3 format. An audio format with CD quality music. It is usually created by converting a WAV file to the format via an MP3 Converter. //a format for audio compression, MP3 uses psychoacoustics to eliminate/reduce redundancy.

Timbre

(Audio) The character of a sound. More formally, an instrument's unique set of overtones. It is timbre that causes a piano to sound different from, say, a guitar, and also what makes sine waves sound different from a pulse wave.

Sustain

(Audio) The duration a note is held before it decays away. As the third part of an ADSR envelope, the volume at which a note is held after the attack and decay until the key is released.

Soft Clipping

(Audio) The effect on a signal typical of an overdriven valve. As opposed to hard clipping, which creates high frequency harmonics, it tends to eliminate these harsh, higher frequencies.

Attack

(Audio) The first part of an ADSR envelope. The amount of time, immediately after a key is struck, that it takes for the resulting note to reach the velocity (volume level) at which the key was struck.

Release

(Audio) The fourth and final part of an ADSR envelope. The amount of time it takes after a key is released for the note's volume to drop from sustain level to zero.

Equalization

(Audio) The manual shaping of various frequency ranges.

Sine Wave

(Audio) The most fundamental waveform, which contains no harmonics. All other waveforms can be composed out of an infinte number of sine waves.

Noise Gate

(Audio) The noise gate is a piece of studio equipment used to control the volume of an audio signal. The original intended purpose of this is to clean up unwanted noise from a recording, but some nice effects can also be achieved using a noise gate. Used simply, the noise gate only allows an audio signal above a certain threshold to play. This can be used to clean up unwanted noise by setting the threshold above the level of the noise. A typical use of the noise gate as an audio effect is to have it controlled by an additional track - for example, a beat supplied by a drum machine. In this case, the gate can be applied over the top of an audio track such as a synth pad, or perhaps vocal 'oohs'. By 'opening' and 'closing' the gate based on the rhythm supplied by another track (which may or may not be audible itself), the track in question is effectively cut up into a nice rythm. This is often used in electronic music, especially Trance. Software noise gates are also available.

Attenuation

(Audio) The opposite of amplification -- when a signal's amplitude is reduced.

Additive Synthesis

(Audio) The process of creating complex waveforms by combining simpler ones. Also known as Fourier synthesis.

Decay

(Audio) The second part of an ADSR envelope. The amount of time, after the attack time has elapsed, that it takes for the note's volume to drop to sustain level.

Waveform

(Audio) The shape of any periodically oscillating wave.

Carrier

(Audio) The signal that is modulated by the modulator or program wave.

Count Virtula

(Bugs) A bug that happens in C++ when you misspell a virtual function in a subclass and spend a while figuring out why your polymorphism is broken.

Showstopper

(Bugs) A bug that prevents the game from going gold. Normally found an hour after delivering a release candidate.

Kickbombing

(Bugs) A natural defense against bugbombing, it means to kick back bugs en masse to the pub QA lead because they weren't written correctly or they failed to include a screenshot.

Voodoo Code

(Bugs) Code that magically fixes a bug, but you have absolutely no idea how.

Alien Queen

(Bugs) Named after the queen alien from the Alien series. A nasty bug which spawns countless other bugs as defenses, making it extremely hard to find... and when you do finally find it, it suddenly becomes a real fight.

Friendly Fire

(Bugs) Someone comes along, thinks there's a problem with a particular bit of code, rewrites it to fix that (wildly overblown) problem, and in doing so destroys all sorts of implicit assumptions built into it because they don't have the big picture.

Bugbombing

(Bugs) The inevitable portion of every final cycle when publisher-side QA testers try to bury the dev team in bugs based on sheer quantity over quality... often with testers vying with each other for the highest defect-reporting totals.

Olé

(Bugs) The subtle, fine art of passing a bug along to someone else without doing a damn stitch of work on it. Usually, said passing occurs at 5PM on Friday afternoon.

Engine Imps and Fairies

(Bugs) When no one touches the engine and something magically breaks overnight, the imps did it. When no one touches anything and something magically gets fixed overnight, the fairies did it.

Defactoring

(Bugs) applying refactoring methods to make the code less stable, less resilient to bugs, and harder to maintain. Often associated with turning a function into a class so you "don't have to pass all of those parameters around."

Glory Code

(Bugs) when a programmer implements something that didn't take very long, but visually is very impressive. Sometimes glory code is unstable and not done -- a fact that oftentimes is hard to explain to a an overeager manager who assumes it's done because it looks done.

Game Developer Conference

(Buisness) A conference for industry professionals to gather, do business, attend lectures and round tables given by professionals and schmooze. Abbreviated GDC, this event is hosted by Miller Freeman and information can be found at http://www.gdconf.com/.

Publishing Deal

(Buisness) A deal that is made, usually at first for funding, between a development company and a publisher. The developer will often get a royalty percentage of the net profit on the game once it is sold, minus their advance.

Work-For-Hire

(Buisness) A deal where a publisher pays a development team to do a specific set of work and all work done is owned by the publisher. These deals are normally initiated at the publishers request for a specific product, as opposed to the developer creating a spec and getting a deal on it. See Licensing Deal.

Independent Developer

(Buisness) A developer that is not owned by a large publishing company.

Third Party Developer

(Buisness) A developer which is not owned or run by the maker of a platform or operating system. For instance all developers besides Microsoft are third party developers for Windows. Developers for consoles need to be licensed by their console manufacturer before they are allowed to develop for the platform.

End Cap

(Buisness) A display that is placed at the end of a retail shelf and considered the premiere placement. Publishers will pay extra for end caps so that their games are more prominent to customers.

Submission Agreement

(Buisness) A document you'll have to sign to get a publisher to look at your game. Publishers have a lot of ideas they are considering and they don't want to risk someone suing them for an game they were already considering or working on.

Licensed Games

(Buisness) A game based on a story or character from another medium, such as a movie, comic book or TV show. Examples include Batman, Beavis and Butt-Head, Bart Simpson, etc. The rights to make these types of games have to be licensed from their respective owners.

Affiliated Chain

(Buisness) A group of retail stores who take advantage of large-scale purchasing or co-op advertising buying efficiency by associating with each other.

NDA

(Buisness) A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal contract between two parties which outlines confidential materials the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict from generalized use.

Retailer

(Buisness) A retailer is someone who sells things. For instance, the store CompUSA or Babbages are computer software retailers.

ECTS

(Buisness) Acronym: "European Computer Trade Show". This is Europe's premier industry trade show and is roughly analogous to the US' own E3 (q.v.). It is held in London and usually uses one of the sprawling Earls Court exhibition complex's many halls. The ECTS is specific to computer games and the interactive electronic media industry. Although there were attempts to run it twice a year initially, it is currently held only in September to coincide with Christmas release schedules.

Advance

(Buisness) Advance on royalties. Money given from a publisher to a developer to create a game that will be recouped from the developers royalties on sales. For instance, if a developer is given $25,000 as an advance to create a game. When the developer is finished with the game and it is sold, the developer will not recieve any money from the sales royalties until the advance has been paid back. So if the product is retailed for $30, and the net proceeds for the publisher to sell the game is $15 and the developer has a 10% royalty, the developer will recieve $1.50 for every game sold. Before the developer recieves any money after the advance the game will have to sell 16,667 units ($25,000 / $1.50).

Agent

(Buisness) Agents will normally be a buffer in between a publisher and a developer, working for the developer. The standard agent's pay is 10% of what the developer is given on the advance.

Licensing Deal

(Buisness) An agreement between a publisher and a developer where the developer grants the rights to distribute a game. Deals are normally exclusive and detail regions for distribution, such as North America or world wide. See Work-For-Hire.

Expansion Pack

(Buisness) An expansion to a previously sold game which usually includes new characters, enemies, levels, stories, and bug fixes. Sometimes refered to as Mission Pack.

Niche Market

(Buisness) Buzzword for defining a narrowly-targeted market. Normally referring to a segment of consumers who are not being targeted by mainstream products.

GDC

(Buisness) Game Developer Conference

Unique Selling Proposition

(Buisness) In advertising, the single unique proposition you make to your customer about your product that is strong enough to convince them to buy it. There are 3 parts to this principle: 1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: "Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit". 2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique -- either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising. 3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product. from Reality in Advertising by Rosser Reeves

Director

(Buisness) In game industry there is no real director position, besides possibly a corporate position like "Director of Technology". The position which is closest to this film position in games would be a designer or producer, depending on the company.

Infinate Power

(Buisness) Infinate Power is a game development group based out of Alberta, Canada. There focus genre(s) are: R.P.G.'s Fantasy, Action, and Adventure. For More information go to http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/9250

IP

(Buisness) Intellectual Property

IDSA

(Buisness) Interactive Digital Software Association. An organization dedicated to improving the business aspects of the industry, often in the areas of piracy and the industry's image.

MFD

(Buisness) Market Development Funds. Money used to secure shelf space and end caps with retailers and advertising.

NDA

(Buisness) Non-Disclosure Agreement

Ethereal Darkness Interactive

(Buisness) Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer founded by Raymond Jacobs and well known to GameDev.net; over the course of three years they designed, produced and sold the Indie game Morning's Wrath.

Producer

(Buisness) Often this is someone from the game's publisher who will be the liaison between the publisher and the game development team. It is really crucial that this person knows how to communicate between both teams as otherwise a lot of problems can arise. Sometimes this is the title of someone in the game development company who is working as the project lead.

Paper launch

(Buisness) Product specifications released well before the real product launch. A paper launce describes all the features the new product will include in order to beat the rival companies. This is especially common in the computer hardware industry.

Blizzard Entertainment

(Buisness) Renowned game designing company who created the smash hit games Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft, as well as their sequels.Praised by pc gaming columnists worldwide, Blizzard Entertainment has earned itself a reputation for releasing only high-quality games.

Mission Pack

(Buisness) See Expansion Pack.

Distributor

(Buisness) Someone who distributes items to retail stores. For instance, a publisher will have a game printed into its material/box for and then send them to distributors who will store them in warehouses and distribute them to retail stores when they are needed.

SKU

(Buisness) Stock Keeping Unit. Any unit recieved by the retailer that they have to keep inventory on.

Going Gold

(Buisness) Terminology used when software is burned onto a "gold" cd that will be sent to the CD manufacturers to be reproduced.So named because of the CDR burnable CDs are gold backed normally. See Going Glass.

Going Glass

(Buisness) Terminology used when software is burned onto the final CDs that will be distributed and sold. So named because in contract to "gold" CDR discs, the distribution CDs are clear. See Going Gold.

Gold Master

(Buisness) The CD that will be sent to the CD manufacturers to be reproduced. So named because of the CDR burnable CDs are gold backed normally.

E3

(Buisness) The Electronic Entertainment Expo. This is the main event of the year for the game industry for publishers to woo retailers and show off games that will hopefully be ready for the Christmas sales season.

Piracy

(Buisness) The act of counterfeiting software.

Intellectual Property

(Buisness) The art, sound, music, code, 3d models, design, story, and the like created during game production that make the product what it is. Typically, IP can be copyrighted, trademarked, or patented.

Marketing

(Buisness) The process of convincing a gamer to buy that piece of cheap tat on the shelf. A good marketer can sell snow to Alaska. A bad marketer would have trouble selling snow in a desert. So if you find you've bought a dud game, criticize everyone but the marketing team: they're *paid* to make you buy these things.

Sales

(Buisness) The process of getting a product from the factory - the developer, in this case - onto the shelves in a store, and, ultimately, into a plastic bag in some hapless punter's hand. This process is nowhere near as easy as most people think.

Abandonware

(Buisness) The term �abandonware� was coined in 1997 to refer to any game that has been discontinued by its publishers. Even through a game isn't being commercially sold, it doesn�t make it legal to download from sites not permitted by the publisher. Even if a company stops distributing a product, does not mean the copyright lapses.

Game Schools

(Buisness) There are several University type schools for game programming, a list of which be found here: (WWW)

USP

(Buisness) Unique Selling Points. Normally what will be put on the back of a box or an advertisement showing how a game is different and better than its competitors and predecessors.

Sell-Through

(Buisness) Units sold from retail stores to customers. See Sell-In.

Sell-In

(Buisness) Units sold to retail stores. See Sell-Through.

AAA

(Buisness) What does AAA stand for? We have found one definition saying: "What does a Triple A rating mean? The ILFs are rated independently by the rating agency Moody's Investor Services. AAA (Triple A) is the highest rating that can be assigned by the rating agency to ILFs of this type. The rating is independent of JP Morgan Fleming and is only given after a thorough examination by the rating agency of a number of elements. These include an examination of the portfolio management team and its investment process, internal control procedures, the quality of securities held by the portfolio and the consistency of performance by the ILFs. A full technical definition on an AAA rating can be obtained from Moody's Investor Services. " From: http://www.efs-online.com/efs/faqs/jpmorganfaqs.asp, Q11

Joe Walmart

(Business) The lowest common denominator consumer that many publishers must cater to in order to mitigate financial risk. Coined to describe the powerful force that allowed Deer Hunter to become a market success. Can also be referred to as "Walmartian."

Managing Upwards

(Business) When management duties are focused on people above in the hierarchy as opposed to below.

iDevGames.com

(Community) A Macintosh game development site with tutorials, forums, game assets, code and information for Macintosh game developers.

Remake

(Community) A Remake is generally a newly programmed version of an existing (usually quite old) game. Remakes can be true to the original, but most tend to use improved graphics or enhance gameplay with new ideas. There are several websites dedicated to making Remakes.(e.g. http://www.remakes.org)

Independent Games Festival

(Community) A competition that promotes independent developers by allowing them to display their games at the Game Developer Conference. (WWW)

GameDev.Net

(Community) A game development resource site with articles, tutorials, design diaries and general information for game developers. (WWW)

Computer Gaming World

(Community) A magazine that provides previews/reviews of the latest games each month.

Madmonkey

(Community) A site dedicated to showcasing indepedent games. (WWW)

Happy Puppy

(Community) A site for gamers and has some information for game developers as well. ()

ACM

(Community) ACM is the Association of Computing Machinery. It is one of the oldest computing societies in the world. ACM organizes various special intrest groups, including SIGGRAPH. Visit the ACM website for more information.

Morning's Wrath

(Community) Created by Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer Ethereal Darkness Interactive; Morning's Wrath is a Classical Adventure/RPG game. The emphasis is placed on a strong storyline and intellectually stimulating game play. Players guide the main character, Princess Morning, through a series of locales containing tasks that require the completion of puzzles.

Lionhead Studios

(Community) Formed by Peter Molyneux, the former owner/founder of Bullfrog and the creator of Populous and the god game genre.

Game Developer Magazine

(Community) Game Developer Magazine is the premier paper publication for the industry. (WWW)

GameDev.Net IRC Chat

(Community) GameDev.Net has an IRC channel #gamedev on the AfterNET servers. You can log on to 'irc.afternet.org' with any IRC client. Then type '/join #gamedev'.

GarageDeveloper International

(Community) Home to The Ongoing GarageWare Game Festival, GarageDeveloper International is a combination game publisher/organization whose focus is on bringing games developed by garage developers to the marketplace. (WWW)

IGDA

(Community) International Game Developers Association. Community of professional game developers and local game developer chapters. Their website also includes forums, news and information to help the expanding community.

Ethereal Darkness Interactive

(Community) Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer founded by Raymond Jacobs and well known to GameDev.net; over the course of three years they designed, produced and sold the Indie game Morning's Wrath.

Game Programming Wiki

(Community) The Game Programming Wiki (or GPWiki for short) is an online community dedicated to covering material related to games development. This Wiki was created, and is maintained by the creator of the now defunct Lucky's VB Gaming tutorials, but unlike the previous site, covers material in any programming language, as well as a lot of material not specific to any particular language. The GPWiki can be found at www.gpwiki.org.

IGDN

(Community) The International Game Developers Network. This is group that was created to bring more community to the game industry while also including people from other countries besides the US. (www.igdn.org)

Gamasutra

(Community) The online version of Game Developer Magazine. Updated regularly with articles from the magazine, as well as new online only articles. (WWW)

Vultures

(Crunch) Folks who eat the crunch dinner, often before the people who are working too hard to immediately jump up and run for dinner as soon as the announcement comes in can get to it.

Donut Diplomacy

(Crunch) Management tactic applied to game developers where cheap incentives are provided in the hopes of boosting output. See also: "pizza diplomacy."

Eater Leavers

(Crunch) People who stay just late enough to get the company-bought dinner, but leave right after eating instead of working for a few more hours.

Hero Death Spiral

(Crunch) The cycle you get into where one or two people end up always being the hero to "get a project going in the right direction", and those one or two people work later and later into the night, and show up later and later in the morning/afternoon, until you operate as two nearly distinct teams. The team that "does stuff" and the team that "breaks stuff."

Stockholm Syndrome

(Crunch) Usually refers to junior developers who are loving this hardcore crunch-laden life that is being imposed upon them because suffering gives meaning to their existence.

Clone

(Design) (1) Games designed or made with special features similar from other local video games. (2) Games that are made to look similar to other popular video games in appearance, gameplay, and so on, but have different titles. EX: There are a few Tetris-like puzzle games displayed out in small computer stores.

Design Treatment

(Design) A basic summary description of the concept of the game, explaining what the game will be like. Mainly, the design treatment should discuss the game's basic plot, gameplay, general discussion of the target audience(age and gender), the basic presentation of how the game would be constructed, and other features. The treatment is made to be short and simple.

Genre

(Design) A class of games. Common genres would be the shooter, First Person Shooter (FPS), Role Playing Game (RPG), simulation, Real Time Strategy (RTS)

Maze

(Design) A complex system of paths

Design Document

(Design) A document that the designer creates which contains everything that a game should include. Sometimes referred to as a "design bible", this document should list every piece of art, sound, music, character, all the back story and plot that will be in the game. Basically, if the game is going to have it, it should be thoroughly documented in the design document so that the entire development team understands exactly what needs to be done and has a common point of reference.

Game Entity

(Design) A entity is a abstract class of an object that can be moved and drawn over a game map

Foozle

(Design) A foozle is an object which a player must acquire and give to an NPC or use in a certain area to advance the plot.

Game Mechanic

(Design) A game mechanic is a rule which defines how a game proceeds. For instance, in Chess, a bishop may move only along the boards diagonals. In the Mario Bros. games, Mario may squish his enemies by stomping upon them. In football, a team loses posession of the ball after failing to advance 10 yards in 4 downs. Each of these rules is a game mechanic.

Real-Time

(Design) A game that proceeds constantly which the player needs respond actively as it changes from second to second matching natural time progression.

Real-Time Strategy

(Design) A game usually based on controlling many units in real-time (as opposed to turn-based). Often the perspective is an overhead view to give a better overall view of the playing field.

Online Game

(Design) A game which is meant to be played while connected to the Interner, or network, with one or more other people over the network.

Turn-Based

(Design) A game which progresses in stages where time is only applied after the player has finished making their decisions for their next actions.

Single-Player

(Design) A game which was made to be played by a single person.

Grognardy

(Design) A game/universe/mechanic that is too niche/hardcore/nerdy. "That JRPG is too grognardy for Facebook, it'll never sell."

Adventure Game

(Design) A genre of games that typically are graphics, character and story based. The player usually has to solve a series of puzzles while being given a deep story. Examples of this genre would be many of the LucasArts such as Grim Fandango, the Monkey Island series, and many of the Quest series from Sierra Online.

3D Studio Max

(Design) A highend package used for both game development, character development and film. Although a high package the price is resonable. ( www.ktx.com )

Bonus Level

(Design) A level or stage in a game where the character can obtain special items or additional points that otherwise can not be achieved in regular gameplay. Being aply to play the bonus level usually requires some trick or cheat that can not be easily found in normal gameplay.

First Person

(Design) A perspective in which a player's character is not represented on the screen, but rather the view is such that the player "sees" what he or she would if they were actually performing the actions found in the game (looking through the window of a cockpit, for example).

2&1/2-D

(Design) A platform, rpg, or fighting game in which there is a 3-D engine but that features 2-D control or graphics, i.e. Paper Mario, Super Smash Brothers, Parappa the Rappa.

Plot

(Design) A plot is a sequence of events that raise the level of dramatic tension as the player progresses and becomes emotionally involved with the game, then satisfies this tension with a resolution that (hopefully) prevents the player from being resentful that there isn't any more game. A plot can be linear or branching, and may have one ending or a multitude of possible endings.

Puzzle

(Design) A problem created for testing ingenuity

ren'ai

(Design) A ren'ai game, also known as a dating sim, is a popular genre of game in Japan but hasn't made it to western gaming very much. In this game the player plays one main character, (usually) male, and the game objective is to court and impress one or more (usually) female NPCs. Gameplay usually relies heavily on dialogue choices and may contain sim or adventure elements. There is not usually any combat. Perhaps the clearest western examples of this genre would be the Leisure Suit Larry games. There are also X-rated versions of these games known as hentai games, h games, or ecchi games.

Cutscene

(Design) A screen which is removed from the gameplay to segue between different situations, such as levels or different kinds of interfaces.

game level

(Design) A section of the game. Most modern games require the computer to process a tremendous amount of information. These data cannot all be stored in the computer's main memory at the same time. (Sound files in particular take up a lot of space.) So the game is broken up into sections, or levels. When a game level is to be played, the computer loads only the information which is required for that section of the game. When that portion of the game is finished, the computer loads the information for the next game level. (Because this usually means that the player must wait before continuing to play the game, some developers have chosen to implement "streaming", in which portions of the game are alwaysbeing loaded.)

Fatality

(Design) A special move that can be executed in some fighting games, notably the Mortal Kombat series, after a match is over, which results in the graphic death of the losing character. Variations include; "animalities", where the character is turned into an animal before killing it�s opponent, "babalities", where the loser turns into a baby, and "friendship" moves where the character does something goofy, like signs an autograph for the loser.

Simulation

(Design) A system of rules that tries to emulate reality.

Strategy

(Design) A systematic plan of action, often used with military plans.

Archtype

(Design) An Archtype is a commonly followed pattern in design. It can apply to any design aspect. For instance the "Quest" archtype is a common adventure game plot archtype. As part of the "Quest" archtype, character X must save the world from evil by retrieving/ destroying/ the magical object/person/ thing Y. X starts off as an inexperienced person but his quest will bring an new maturity to him. Character Archtypes are often followed. The "Princess" the "Rogue Warrior", the "kind old wizard" are some examples that can be easily recognised. By using archtypes as part of a story design, a user can instantly gain a feel for the story, and can gain an instant insight into the interactions between characters.

Paper doll

(Design) An image of a character in a inventory that can be dressed or equipped by dropping clothes or items onto it. Is mostly used in CRPGs.

Power-Up

(Design) An incremental reward for items or a characters stats. For example, mushrooms in Super Mario Brothers that would make Mario larger.

Game

(Design) An interactive, self-contained system of rules containing a challenge and a victory condition that defines a focused reality for the purpose of entertainment.

Machete

(Design) Another term for subtractive design. "Get out the machete and chop what isn't working or needed."

THE Top Five

(Design) Any of a handful of creative ideas that always get brought up on every single project you've worked on (i.e. "Wouldn't it be great if you could seamlessly go from space to the surface of the planet?")

Moves

(Design) Anything a character can do in a game. While early games, like Galaga, may have had only three moves (move left, move right, and shoot), newer games, particularly fighting games, may have hundreds (low punch, block, mid-kick, high block, etc). Often, in fighting games many of the moves are hidden, and not revealed in the documentation.

Factory Method

(Design) As defined by GOF: Creational Pattern "Define an interface for creating an object, but let subclasses decide which class to instantiate. Factory Method lets a class defer instantiation to subclasses."

Singleton

(Design) As defined by GOF: Creational Pattern "Ensure a class only has one instance, and provide a global point of access to it."

Builder

(Design) As defined by GOF: Creational Pattern "Separate the construction of a complex object from its representation so that the same construction process can create different representations."

Prototype

(Design) As defined by GOF: Creational Pattern "Specify the kinds of objects to create using a prototypical instance, and create new objects by copying this prototype."

Abstract Factory

(Design) As defined by GOF: Creational Pattern Provide an interface for creating families of related or depenedent objects without specifying their concrete classes.

Cheats

(Design) Codes or tricks that are programmed into a game, which give the player special abilities; like invulnerability or extra weapons. Cheats are often programmed into games to facilitate easy testing, and left in to add depth. Many magazines print game cheats that they have discovered. Today many cheat websites now store thousands of cheats for games across multiple game platforms.

Dice Humped

(Design) Consistently getting a poor result from a random number generator. Originally was used when playing tabletop games, but was expanded to be used as a warning thought experiment for any truly random number in a system. "What happens if the player gets dice humped?" It's a test if the designer actually wants things random or just distributed.

Flowchart

(Design) Design tool that graphically shows the logic in an algorithim, using symbols that represent various operations in a program's logic.

FPS

(Design) First Person Shooter

FMV

(Design) Full Motion Video. Video streams such as AVIs and MPEGs are examples of FMV. Games that used FMV extensively, both real actors and computer created, were often classified as FMV games.

Game+

(Design) Game+ is a game feature that allows a character who has beaten the game to play again, retaining some advantage that zie has earned, or allowing the player to start at a plot-branch point and travel the "road not taken". The first game with this feature that I know of was Chrono Trigger.

Palate Cleansing

(Design) Giving players a break from predominant gameplay to do something different for a while, before bringing then back to the normal gameplay.

Rule

(Design) Guides for actions. Rules for board games are usually given as written instructions, which the players then opt to follow. In a computer game, the rules are inherent and the player is forced to follow them.

Cinematic

(Design) Having qualities of the cinema. Often used to mean dramatic in the sense of being sensational or thrilling.

Attributes

(Design) In Role-Playing Games, attributes are numbers that represents specific aspects in a character's stats. EX: Agility, Intelligence, Luck, Power, etc. are all attributes.

Combo

(Design) In a fighting game, a "combo" is a combination of moves executed in rapid sequence, often following so closely together that the opponent has no time to respond. Combos can do more damage to the other character than the sum of the damage inflicted by the individual moves. Some moves are only available during or after combos.

Continue

(Design) In arcades, when a game is over, one is often presented with the opportunity to continue where one died (instead of starting over at the beginning of the game) by inserting another quarter or token. Most home games also have the continue option, but have a limit of some set number of continues to prevent one from finishing the game the first time it is played.

One-up

(Design) In early two-player simultaneous games, this message would flash on-screen when the first player received an extra life. Two-up would appear when the second player received an extra life. Since then, it has come to be shorthand for getting an extra life, usually not by accumulating a certain number of points, or collectables, but by finding a special icon. This icon is often referred to as a "one-up."

difficulty level

(Design) In some games, the player is able to control how easy or difficult it will be to play the game. For instance, playing the game on the "easy" or "please don't hurt me" setting makes the game easier, while playing the "difficult" or "I'm completely insane" version will be much different.

Difficulty ramping

(Design) Like music or theatre, video games often have a pattern of action that starts low, then steadily rises through the game, and climaxes near the end. This means that the challenges faced by the player are not equal in difficulty as the game progresses. Games tend to start with simple challenges and build to a higher difficulty level as the game nears completion. Obtaining a desired difficulty ramp is one of the reasons developers make video games linear. As a linear game has fewer variables to consider, it is much easier to apply an even ramp to than to a non-linear game.

Linear

(Design) Linearity can occur in a game's story and in a game's gameplay. A game's story is linear when there is only one story that is introduced to you as you move on, much like reading a book or watching a movie. A game's gameplay is linear if there is only one option for how to react. Adventure games normally have both linear story and gameplay.

Entity Relationship Management

(Design) Managing the relationship of game design entities (see Entity). As the number of entity types in a game increases, the relationships between them increases geometrically, so for instance in a game with 3 entity types there are 3 possible relationships. For a game with 4 entity types there are 12 and so on. For games such as large adventure games where there may be many different entities, it will become necessary to manage this in some way, by creating standard interactions, or reducing the number of entities available in any one scene.

Life

(Design) Many videogames give you multiple chances at gameplay, which are commonly called lives. Failing in a videogame results in your character getting 'killed' or otherwise terminated. When all the lives are lost, the game is over. Almost always, there is a way to acquire more lives, by reaching a certain goal or objective in the game.

MMO

(Design) Massively Multiplayer Online. Games built with MMO support have the ability to connect hundreds or thousands of players throughout the world into a single and continuous gameplay. The most popular genre that support MMO is what people commonly refer as RPG, where people interact to each other either by regular social interactions such as talking, hunting together, or killing each other.

MUD

(Design) Multi-User Dungeon. A multiplayer online game, usually an RPG, where users telnet to the server to play the game with other people.

MUSH

(Design) Multi-User Shared Hallucination. A type of MUD where the users can create their own rooms, items and environments.

NPC

(Design) Non-Player Characters

Storyline

(Design) Provides a rationale for the gameplay. Game storylines vary from the very simplistic (e.g. rescue the princess) to exceptionally complex and involved storylines (as found in RPGs such as the Final Fantasy series).

Path Finding

(Design) Quite simply, finding a path for units or characters in a game. This is often a serious problem because obstacles and avoiding other units in the game requires a number of different kinds of checks.

Pushing Buttons to Make Rainbows

(Design) Refers to a neighborhood of game mechanics and/or interactions where the psychological reward given to the player is disproportionately larger than the effort required on the player's part.

Role Playing Game

(Design) Role Playing Games have been a popular paper game system since Dungeons & Dragons and before. This genre has enjoyed a good amount of attention in software form as well, with some of the original titles being Ultima, Wizardry and Bards Tale. Software Role Playing Games usually give the player more than one character which they can build into a powerful fighting force by slaying monsters and gaining experience points and then levels.

Design Spec

(Design) Short for design specification; A document that is a technical version of the design document. The design spec is like a "map" for how the game will be constructed. Here the designer must include what the game needs to be put together, including a list of materials, required people, and so on. The design spec is a way to detail the construction of the game.

Artificial Emotion

(Design) Simulation of moods and personalities in software.

Simulator

(Design) Software that attempts to emulate a real event or action.

Easter Egg

(Design) Something in a game that has nothing to do with the main game or is an unnecessary bonus. For example, some games have hidden pictures of their developers that can be viewed by pressing special key combinations.

Proxy

(Design) The Proxy pattern is meant to provide a surrogate or placeholder for another object to control access to it. There are different kinds of proxies: - Remote Proxies are responsible for encoding a request and its arguments and for sending the encoded request to the real subject in a different address space. - Virtual Proxies may cache additional information about the real subject so that they can postpone accessing it. - Protection Proxies check that the caller has the access permissions required to perform a request.

Entity

(Design) The base unit of a design. This is anything that can react with anything else in any way: For instance in an adventure game, every inventory object, every item that the player can interact with, every NPC and the player themselves are all entities. In a FPS, any missile that an NPC fires is an entity, as is an exploding section of wall or an exploding dustbin. As a game has more entities, the ways that they can react together increases geometrically. Thus entity relationship management becomes necessary.

Data Wrangler

(Design) The human that tunes gameplay values for character types, items, and systems in the game.

Graybox

(Design) The idea of making a game level without textures or high detail models, animations, etc. Just get it working, paced, and ideally, fun without any art requirements.

Gameplay

(Design) The key element in any game, the fact of the game itself, what the player actually does. Examples: Pong - the act of bouncing the dot, which represents the ball, off the line that represents the paddle. Super Mario Bros - moving the plumber around, jumping on heads of enemies, breaking blocks, when trying to rescue the princess.

Interface

(Design) The means by which an entity interacts with something. In programming, an interface is often used to provide abstraction of functions. The interface defines what methods that a function or class MUST possess. This allows the simple replacement of functions with any other function which also meets the requirments, without requiring any modification elsewhere in the program (particular useful when porting to a different platform, or using an alternate rendering system, etc).

Hybrid Camera System

(Design) The most common types of cameras used in games today are OTS (Over the Shoulder; Tomb Raider series) and FP (First Person; Quake series) along with some others such as isometric etc. A hybrid camera system is a camera system that combines two or more camera types in a single game. One example is Morrowind an RPG which uses both OTS (so the player can see his character's equiped items and the combat more closely) and FPS (to give the player a sense of immersion in Morrowinds rich enviorments).

Critical Path

(Design) The necessary route from start to finish in a game. Everything that must be done to complete a game is considered to be within the �critical path�. This holds especially true in linear games, where a player is forced to proceed along a specified path. Often the critical path is shown to the player with �primary objectives� or �main goals� of a level or the game as a whole. Other, smaller objectives or secondary goals that are not required to finish the game are considered �non-critical path�.

User Interface

(Design) The part of the game that in which information is displayed and presented on screen with various commands that the user uses to communicate with; The uses of the controls in the game, supportive peripherals needed to accomplish certain game actions, the on-screen interface (inventory icons, life gauges, scoreboard, etc.), on-screen text and messages, menus, commands, and options that are described or presented for the user to use to communicate to the game visually and/or audibly.

Bottom-Up

(Design) The process of creating something by first designing the base elements and then creating the big picture out of them. Opposite of Top-Down.

Top-down

(Design) The process of creating something by looking at the big picture first, then working your way down to the details. Opposite of Bottom-Up.

monster level

(Design) The relative strength and skill of monsters and NPCs may also be indicated by level. For example, a 1st level monster is very weak. But a 23rd level monster is a much more formidable opponent.

Player Package

(Design) The suite of movement and abilities available to the player.

Tree of Death, The

(Design) The term used for an overabundance of branching pathways in game design. When the number of possible outcomes governed by player choice becomes unmanagable, it is said you have planted "The Tree of Death".

Design Theory

(Design) The underlying and abstract thought behind the simple idea of making games 'fun'. Simple to understand, hard to master. Anybody can write up a design document with countless revolutionary, inventive, and well-documented ideas. It is only a true Design Theorist who can make that design document produce a fun and addictive game.

Game Progression

(Design) The way a game moves from beginning towards a (possibly undefined) end. The most common game progression is linear, however many other game progression structures exist.

character level

(Design) This is a measurement of a game character's strength, ability, etc. In many games, especially RPGs, the characters which the player controls may grow and become more powerful or more skilled throughout the course of the game. The character's level provides an indication of how capable the character currently is. To gain a character level: Some allow the player's character to increase in level. When the character attains the next level, the character is said to have "leveled up". It is not uncommon for players to refuse to stop playing an RPG until a character has reached the next level.

Heads Up Display

(Design) This is a technique for imparting vital information to the player during gameplay, without requiring him to access a separate menu. The relevant information is simply overlaid on the game screen. This makes the information instantly available, without destroying the flow of the game itself. Typical examples of the Heads Up Display include the health bars common to Fighting games,and speedometers found in Racing games. While the Heads Up Display can help to support the game's pacing, it may also detract from the mood of a game. So it is important to make the Heads Up Display blend with the rest of the game as seemlessly as possible.

Refactor

(Design) To rewrite a piece of code in order to improve structure and/or readability without changing it's external behavior or overall meaning. Refactoring code will often result in simpler code which will potentially be more performant and/or readable than the original version.

Hit Points

(Design) Used in most games to reference the amount of times a player can be damaged before their character passes out or dies.

High level

(Design) Used to describe an idea that is more conceptual than specific.

Boss

(Design) Usually an enemy character that will be found at the end of a level which is harder to kill. Originally bosses were given specific patterns you would have to learn to beat them.

Playtesting

(Design) When a game is played to judge its balance, and how entertaining it is. Playtesting is different than testing for bugs as it deals with how the game plays, rather than whether it functions properly.

Mood

(Design) While the word mood doesn't seem to require a definition, I believe that its importance in game design merits an entry in the Dictionary. Although the mood of a game is often overlooked by players, it is very important to every game. Some game genres, such as Horror, must pay very strict attention to the mood of their games. This is because if a Horror game doesn't capture the right mood, it will fail completely.

World

(Design) World - Usually a series of similar levels that are grouped together into a mega-level.

90/10 rule (for code)

(Eventually, the game became stable) 90 percent of processor execution time is taken up by 10 percent of the code.

Binary Chop

(Eventually, the game became stable) Applying the binary search algorithm to commenting out lines of code in order to track down a bug.

Ugly-Pretty

(Eventually, the game became stable) Code that looks ugly until you realize that the problem itself is horrendous and that the solution is good relative to that.

Kludgy

(Eventually, the game became stable) Describes an awkward or inelegant solution to a problem.

Space Magic

(Eventually, the game became stable) Glowy technology that makes no sense at all.

Cardboard Cutout Dog

(Eventually, the game became stable) The person you drag to your desk to explain why a bug can't possibly be happening, so that halfway through you can discover what the bug is, without them saying a word. From Steve Baker's seminal article.

Bobblehead Help

(Eventually, the game became stable) When a helpful person is just nodding and making "I understand" sounds until you figure it out on your own.

ACT File

(File formats) .ACT files are the actor files for Genesis3D - also referred to as models.

PCX

(File formats) .PCX is a graphic format created by ZSoft. Was sometimes used in DOS and early Windows games as it is a fairly simple format and supports Run-Length Encoding.

C

(File formats) A C source code file.

CPP

(File formats) A C++ source code file.

H

(File formats) A C/C++ header file.

3DS

(File formats) A File format for storing model geometry. Originally used by 3D Studio Max, it has become nearly a standard for 3D models.

OGG

(File formats) A compressed file format, similar to mp3. Features slightly better quality at the same compression rate. See http://www.vorbis.com for library and sources. Free, open source. Very liberal license. Can be used commercially without paying royalties.

AIFF

(File formats) A fairly common audio standard, an acronym for Audio Interchange File Format.

WAV File

(File formats) A file which stores audio information, saved with a ".wav" extension. WAV files are commonly used in big budget games because they provide excellent sound quality. But it takes a lot of data to provide such high quality sound. So WAV files are larger than those of other audio file formats. (Microsoft's standard sound exchange format.)

MPEG

(File formats) A format for encoding video. MPEG-1 was the original format which is used extensively for computer graphics, MPEG-2 is the basis for DVD.

Asset

(File formats) A generic term for graphics, sounds, maps, levels, models, and any other resources. Generally assets are compiled into large files. The file formats may be designed for fast loading by matching in-memory formats, or tight compressions for handheld games, or designed to otherwise help in-game use. It is often useful to have an asset tool chain. The original models may be high-density models with R8G8B8A8 images. You may have a model striper and image compresser that reduces the model for LOD, and compresses the texture to a DXT compressed image. These assets may then go through further transformations, and end up in the large resource file.

MOD

(File formats) A music file format composed of sound samples in digitized format. Mod files both record the position, pitch and duration of notes, as well as including the actual sample data, and in this respect are almost a hybrid of some of the better features of both the WAV and MIDI formats. A free editor for mod files can be found at www.modplug.com.

TXT

(File formats) A plain unformatted ASCII text file.

EXE

(File formats) An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also occasionally found among Unix programmers even though Unix executables don't have any required suffix. From The Jargon Dictionary

OBJ

(File formats) An older Alias/Wavefront(creators of Maya) format. It's generally used for ease of loading and simplicity. No animation; ascii.

BVH

(File formats) BVH file - Biovision Hierarchical motion capture data (.bvh) A .bvh file is nothing more than a text file that has data that was captured from a moving skeletal system. Another name for this type of data capture is "Motion Capture" which has been abbreviated as mocap. A .bvh file can be made by software or by hardware. Most studio houses that do their own commercial animation have their own type of motion capture technique.

BMP

(File formats) Bitmap: A set of bits that represents a graphic image, with each bit or group of bits corresponding to a pixel in the image.

VOC File

(File formats) Creative Labs' sound format made popular with the Sound Blaster.

DFF

(File formats) Criterion RenderWare 3.x 3D model/object file format.

Term Name

(File formats) Description

XML

(File formats) Extensible Markup Language - A metalanguage written in SGML that allows you to design a markup language, used to allow for the easy interchange of documents on the World Wide Web.

GIF

(File formats) Graphics Interchange Format. A format for saving graphics that usually uses a 8-bit (256 color) indexed bitmap.

HTML

(File formats) HyperText Markup Language: A markup language used to structure text and multimedia documents and to set up hypertext links between documents, used extensively on the World Wide Web.

MNG

(File formats) MNG (pronounced "ming"), is short for Multiple-image Network Graphics. Designed with the same modular philosophy as PNG and by many of the same people, MNG is intended to provide a home for all of the multi-image capabilities that have no place in PNG. Although the idea of MNG has been around almost as long as PNG has, serious design discussions didn't begin until May 1996, and even then there was considerable debate over whether to make MNG a dirt-simple ``glue'' format around PNG or a complex multimedia format capable of integrating animations, audio and even video. By mid-1998, MNG had settled down to something in between; while it has fairly extensive animation and image-manipulation capabilities, there is no serious expectation that it will ever integrate audio or video. MNG Homepage

MIDI

(File formats) Musical Instrument Digital Interface. The interface between different sound hardware and software to pass on musicial information.

PNG

(File formats) Portable Network Graphics. A graphics format that was brought about due to the licensing disagreements conerning GIF and JPEG.

MD3

(File formats) Quake III model format. Supports complete skeletal animation.

TIFF

(File formats) TIFF is an acronym for Tag(ged) Image File Format. It is one of the most popular and flexible of the current public domain raster file formats.

MP3

(File formats) The MPEG-3 format. An audio format with CD quality music. It is usually created by converting a WAV file to the format via an MP3 Converter.

MD2

(File formats) The model format used in Quake II. Supports vertex interpolation for animation.

MS3D

(File formats) The native format for the Milkshape 3D modelling package. It supports texture coords, normals, skeletal animation among other things.

JPEG

(File formats) This is an ISO standard by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEGs work with color resolutions of up to millions of colors (also called 24 bit color). When you save an image as a JPEG, it gets compressed, making the file smaller. However, JPEG compression is lossy, so each time you save a JPEG, you lose some data and reduce image quality. When saving a JPEG, you can choose a compression level from low to high. Low compression gives you better quality but a larger file size. High compression gives you a smaller file - but less quality.

MP3

(File formats) a format for audio compression, MP3 uses psychoacoustics to eliminate/reduce redundancy.

Maplestory

(GAMES) A Korean-based translated 2D sidescrolling free MMORPG. Currently (as of Nov 15, 04) in Beta production stages. Features clean, cute anime-style artwork. Can be downloaded atMapleglobal.com. Warning: Extremely addictive!

Capture The Flag

(General) A multiplayer game with teams where the objective is to capture the other teams flag and bring it back to your own teams base while protecting your own flag.

Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete

(GAMES) A PSX Remake of the Sega CD game Lunar: The Silver Star. Lunar is an RPG game with almost an hour of anime FMVs and a story about a boys quest to become a hero and his journey to rescue the girl he loves from an evil magical emperor. Of course along the way there are many twists and turns where the hero and heroin both realize thier fate. Lunar also spawned a sequal in which a boy name Hiro must accompany a girl to see the goddess of Lunar. Both stories intertwine greatly and both have endings that set them for a sequal.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

(GAMES) A RPG/Adventure game made by Nintendo in 1998. It is the 5th game out of the series and is about a boy named Link who is courageous to save the Princess Zelda from the evil Gannondorf. Zelda hold the triforce piece of wisdom, Link has the triforce piece of courage, and Gannondorf steals the triforce piece of power. Link needs to save all the pieces to make a triforce (powers that make up the whole world) so that Gannondorf can't rule the world. Considered by some to be one of the best games of all time.

Starcraft

(GAMES) A Real Time Strategy game created by Blizzard and the Science Fiction successor to the Warcraft series. (WWW)

Remake

(GAMES) A Remake is generally a newly programmed version of an existing (usually quite old) game. Remakes can be true to the original, but most tend to use improved graphics or enhance gameplay with new ideas. There are several websites dedicated to making Remakes.(e.g. http://www.remakes.org)

Betrayal at Krondor

(GAMES) A best-selling and award-winning title, Betrayal at Krondor was the first first-person role-playing game to use a true 3D engine, developed at Dynamix in Eugene, Oregon in 1993. Directed by John Cutter and Neal Hallford, it was inducted into the Computer Gaming World Hall of Fame in 1996.

Pacman

(GAMES) A classic arcade game. The game screen displayed a maze. This maze was inhabited by four little ghosts, and a creature called Pacman. Pacman was the player's character, and looked somewhat like a lemon pie with a slice cut out. Essentially, he was an eating machine.

Fallout

(GAMES) A computer rpg by Black Isle Studios. Considered by some as the closest to traditional RPGs a computer RPG has come.

Newbie

(GAMES) A derogatory term for someone who has little or no experience.

Diablo

(GAMES) A dungeon based shooter with Isometric graphics and dynamic map creation system that has enormous popularity. Diablo 2 is currently scheduled for release. WWW

Hypercycle

(GAMES) A evolutionary body that regulates the intrinsic intelligence of Living and Artifical Living systems. Developed in 1979 Eigen, M. and P. Schuster, hypercyclic systems have become primary factor in the study of evolving systems. Since 1999, the Bionic Bros. GmbH lauched the development of an ALife gaming system based on the Eigen - Schuster Proposal. Watch it evolve.. www.bionicbros.de

Descent

(GAMES) A game released in 1995 by Interplay Productions and Parallax Software, Descent was the first commercial game to feature full 6-degrees-of-freedom movement inside a structure. The player's objective is to destory haywire mining robots, save hostages, destroy the mine's reactor and escape before it blows the whole mine to kingdom come. Descent also features an excellent enemy AI which learns the player's combat style, forcing him to change his tactics or die. Interplay has since released two sequels to this popular game.

Myst

(GAMES) A game that is somewhat different than other games; you're alone on a desolated island and you must solve some very complicated puzzles. A game for people with a good brain. Superior graphics. Made with Bryce (graphics) and Hypercard (underlying programming).

Tyrant

(GAMES) A graphical roguelike/RPG game written in Java and released as open source GPL software.

EverQuest

(GAMES) A massively multiplayer online RPG. Takes place in a fantasy world and is based on the user to create a character using different races and classes in order to survive the harsh realms of Norrath.

Counter Strike

(GAMES) A mod to the popular Half Life engine, Counter Strike is with out a doubt the most popular team based FPS (first person shooter). Counter Strike was even cited by ABC News in 2004 as a contributer to the decline in TV viewers in the male 18 to 34 age bracket. Counter Strike blends the quick paced action of a FPS with a team play element that is unmatched.

Ultima

(GAMES) A popular series of games, from Akalabeth in 1979 (often referred to as Ultima 0) to Ultima IX in 1999. U-VII also had to extensions. Ultima Online was released 1995 and still (2001) has thousands of active players. The most of the Ultima games are played in a fantasy world called Britannia (except U-II and U-VIII). Britannia is ruled by Lord British which is the alias of Richard Garriot, the original creator of the Ultima world. All games in the Ultima series is tile-based except U-IX and Ultima Online 2 which is yet to be released.

Planet's Edge

(GAMES) A science-fiction role-playing and strategy hybrid, Planet's Edge grew out of the first attempt to realize a computer driven version of Task Force Games' "Star Fleet Battles." It featured a massive storyline, and offered the first fully customizable starships in a detailed space strategy environment. Created for New World Computing by Eric Hyman, Neal Hallford, and Kenneth Mayfield.

Simcity

(GAMES) A series of games from Maxis that allowed the player to create a town. Progressive installments in the series added sewage, garbage disposal, and other resource management to the player's plate. Notable for being one of the first games to simulate a complex reality-based system on the relatively underpowered machines of the time. In series: Simcity, Simcity 2000, Simcity 3000, Simcity 4000 (Multiple expansion packs released for each). Computers/Consoles: SNES, Saturn, PlayStation, PC, Mac among others

Mortal Kombat

(GAMES) A series of popular fighting games created by Midway. Mortal Kombat was one of the first console games to show blood. Thus, it has always been a target, for the "Violence in video games" issue.

Abuse

(GAMES) A side scroller that used a combination of the keyboard (to move) and mouse (direction to shoot) which became a cult hit. Made by the now defunct Crack dot com. (WWW)

Sim RPG

(GAMES) A sub Genre of RPGs. Sim RPGs combine the elements of RPGs and Turn based strategy. They have experience, Levels, Story and Various other Roleplaying elements but the gameplay is focus more towards battles and Story than exploration. Infact Sim RPGs usually lack sidequests and secrets. Examples: Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle, Vandel Hearts.

Dreamweb

(GAMES) A top down Action/Adventure game. The game follows the character Ryan, who hears voices which urge him to assassinate people. This game featured an interface which was innovative, but not very good. The game had good atmosphere. But many people found the puzzles to be overly difficult. It was given an 18 Certificate in the U.K. for violence and sexual content.

Jagged Alliance 2

(GAMES) A turn based/real time tactical squad strategy game. A very unpopular genre which is my very favorite. Similar to games such as Silent Storm, Xcom, and Soldiers At War. You were a mercenary leader (with an in-game avatar), who hired other mercs. Each one had TONS of fully voiced lines, and had their own likes and dislikes for other merc. If you ask Drakkcon you'll find that this was the best game ever made.

NeverWinter Nights

(GAMES) A very in-depth Role Playing Game released by BioWare. It has a very well constructed multiplayer system and allows for DMing. The rule set is based on AD&D but manages to keep the Player away from the dice rolls and other unnecessarily complex systems. The viewing angle is fully 3D isometric, but the view can also be rotated and zoomed in for a different viewing angle depending on the players discression. This game is by far a gem of RPGs and has a very entertaining single player campaign.

Unreal Tournament

(GAMES) A very popular First Person Shooter, developed by Epic Games. Many people have developed mods for this game. This support of the Unreal Tournament community helps to provide great replayability.

Pokemon

(GAMES) A very, very popular RPG created by Game Freak and Nintendo. It stars 150 unique monsters called Pokemon, that trainers have to catch in Pokeballs.

Tetris

(GAMES) A wonderfully innovative Puzzle game, designed by Alexy Pajitnov. Tetris was the original "falling blocks" game.

Blood

(GAMES) An early FPS from Monolith based on a raycasting engine and themed with a variety of non-standard weapons, such as dynamite and a voodoo doll. (WWW)

Baldur's Gate II - Shadows of Amn

(GAMES) An enthralling game by BioWare as a sequel to their original Baldur's Gate Game. This RPG captures a great deal of imagination in its Isometric simplicity as you travel with up to 5 party members on your journey. One of the little perks in this well written storyline is the way your character interacts with party members of the opposite sex, especially if there are more than one that take an interest. There is a whole lot of gameplay to be had in this masterpiece. There is also an expansion pack to this game titled "The Throne of Bhaal" where you continue your quest towards the ultimate goal of godlike power.

The Sims

(GAMES) An innovative simulation of suburban life. This game was designed by Will Wright, and published by Electronic Arts.

Chrono Trigger

(GAMES) Chrono Trigger is a game made by Squaresoft (makers of the Final Fantasy series.) The original Chrono Trigger was realeased on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and on the Playstation in the Final Fantasy Chronicles game. The story of Chrono Trigger deals with a character named Chrono who gets transported through time when one friend's expirement conflicts with another new friend's pendant. A sequel, called Chrono Cross, was released for the Playstation.

Morning's Wrath

(GAMES) Created by Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer Ethereal Darkness Interactive; Morning's Wrath is a Classical Adventure/RPG game. The emphasis is placed on a strong storyline and intellectually stimulating game play. Players guide the main character, Princess Morning, through a series of locales containing tasks that require the completion of puzzles.

Rainbow Six

(GAMES) Created in 1998 by Red Storm, who was founded by Tom Clancy, Rainbow 6 is a first-person tactical shooter and a major revolution in FPS games, bringing in a new level of depth. (WWW)

Wolfenstien 3D

(GAMES) Critically acclaimed and the game that brought real-time first person game play to the masses, Wolfenstein 3D was a raycasting based engine set in Nazi Germany. Created by id Software and published by Apogee (now 3D Realms). (WWW)

Term Name

(GAMES) Description

Doom

(GAMES) Doom is a game that is a landmark for the first person shooter game genre. Wolfenstein3D was the first FPS game but Doom took this idea to the next level. With unique monsters, dark levels, motivating music and the monster noises designed to give you nightmares for weeks the game is a classic. There were 4 dooms released. Ultimate Doom, Doom ][, Doom: TNT, and Doom: Plutonia. The sucess of these games has spawned off many first person shooters and has made the market what it is today. These games were developed by ID software. Other titles made by ID include Quake 1, Quake 2 and the new Quake 3: Arena.

Duke Nukem 3D

(GAMES) Duke Nukem 3D was a game designed by 3d Realms. It uses portals and sectors (similar to Doom) in order to give the illusion of 3d space using a 2d mapping system. The mapping system and level designer are called Build. In addition, the Build Engine was used in other games such as Blood. At the time of release the Build engine was eclipsed by the Quake engine developed by ID software. Duke Nukem 3d was still a successful game due to the nature of the main character and the interactive enviroment.

DM

(GAMES) Dungeon Master. The term is trademarked to TSR/Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro and refers to the player who runs a session of Dungeons & Dragons. The generic term is Game Master.

Goldeneye

(GAMES) FPS develped by Rare for the Nintendo 64. Seen by many people as the best fps on the system, and also one of its best overall. The game followed the plot of the James Bond film that it was licensed off, and gave gamers their first real chance to actually BE James Bond. The game is still popular, due to its powerful multiplayer component

FPS

(GAMES) First Person Shooter. Shooter of the first person perspective. E.g. Quake, Unreal Tounament, Rainbow Six, etc.

Galaga

(GAMES) Galaga was the definitive triggerhappy space shooter. It was probably the first game to give the illusion of being a topscroller through the use of a scrolling, randomly generated starfield. Galaga, while no longer popular in its own right long before the advent of the internet, continues to be popular as a "mixing game".

Half-Life

(GAMES) Half-Life is an innovative First Person Shooter that brought real scenario and artificial intelligence. Its main ability relied in the fact that it was customable, so that people could program game mods (modifications).

StarFox

(GAMES) Highly popular space combat game by Nintendo for their SNES platform. Recently converted into an RPG for the GameCube platform by Rare.

MMORPG

(GAMES) MMORPG stands for: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. A type of role playing game that supports a huge number of players in the game world. Such examples are Ultima Online, Everquest, Ragnarok, the new up and coming Star Wars: Galaxies and many more.

Super Mario Bros

(GAMES) Mario and his brother Luigi were invented by Shigeru Miyamoto in the late 80's. Known as the trademark of Nintendo he has become the star of many games. Probably the greatest Mario game ever would be Super Mario 64 on the N64 which invented the 3D platformer genre.

Ethereal Darkness Interactive

(GAMES) Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer founded by Raymond Jacobs and well known to GameDev.net; over the course of three years they designed, produced and sold the Indie game Morning's Wrath.

Zelda

(GAMES) One of Nintendo's most popular game series. Zelda always centers around an action/adventure style of play in different fantasy worlds. The main characters in the series are Link, an elven heroe (the player), and Zelda, a princess who is, most often an intricale part of the plot. Zelda's appeal and history have made it a best-selling series throughout Japan and the United States.

Warcraft

(GAMES) One of the first mass market successes in the Real Time Strategy genre, War Craft pitted Orcs versus Humans in battle and resource management. This title originally came out around the time Westwood Studios made Dune, and Warcraft 2 around the time of Command & Conquer. (WWW)

Quake

(GAMES) One of the leading series in the 3D First Person Shooter Genre. Developed by iD Software and the successor to the Doom series. Quake 3 is scheduled for release. WWW

Civilization

(GAMES) One of the leading turn-based games ever developed. Originally based on a board game by Avalon Hill, and put to the computer by design god Sid Meier. The franchise contains Civilization (one by MicroProse and one by Avalon Hill), CivNet (A multiplayer version of Civilization), Civilization II (MPS), Civ: Call to Power (Activision), and various expansions to Civilization 2 (Multiplayer Gold, Fantastic Worlds, Test of Time). Alpha Centauri is often considered to be a Sci-Fi sequel. Civilization III has been announced to be in development.

PBeM

(GAMES) Play by E-mail. A way to play normally face-to-face games over the Internet. The most common genres include turn-based strategy and roleplaying games.

Elite

(GAMES) Released in 1984, Elite was a milestone in the history of gaming - it was the first truly 3D game on home computers, and was one of the first open-ended games, allowing the player to freely explore a galaxy without tying him to a linear plot. It went on to sell over a million units, and was released on a multitude of platforms. It was followed by two sequels, Frontier and First Encounters (released in 1993 and 1995 respectively). Elite 4 (working title) is currently scheduled to be released in 2002. For more information see www.frontier.co.uk

Trespasser

(GAMES) Released in 1998 by DreamWorks, Trespasser was very much overhyped to contain realistic physics, highly intelligent dinosaur AI, and hyper-realistic environments. Unfortunately, it didn't meet its expectations and was immediately shunned by the industry as a flop. Regardless, it was years ahead of most games in terms of physics, shadows, and simply realism.

Gabriel Knight Series

(GAMES) Series created by Jane Jensen for Sierra Online back in the good old days of Adventure games. You play Gabriel Knight, a horror writer from New Orleans, who comes from a long line of Schattenjagers (german for Shadow Hunter). This new title throws Gabriel into a new world of supernatural mystery connected to haunting past events and experiences. Currently, there are only 3 games in the series. 1) Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 2) Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within 3) Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned Fans still hope and pray that there will be a fourth volume of this epic story.

Alien Breed

(GAMES) The Alien Breed series is a series of sci-fi shooters created by Team17. It all started in 1991 with the release of "Alien Breed". This game, along with all of the other Alien Breed games, was based heavily on the "Aliens" movie. The series was revisited 5 times, with the release of Alien Breed II (1993), Tower Assault (1994), Alien Breed 3D (1995), Alien Breed 3D II (1996), Alien Breed 2004 (Cancelled). Some would say that the series was a 2D precursor to Doom.

Pong

(GAMES) The first video game to be a mass market success, Pong was the pioneer of video games in stores and the home. Its creator, Nolan Bushnell, went on to found Atari.

Command & Conquer

(GAMES) The game that brought the Real-Time Strategy genre to the masses and one of the first major hits to include network play. The Command & Conquer franchise has had a series of hits afterwards such as Covert Ops, Red Alert and Tiberian Sun(WWW)

Xbox360

(GAMES) The successor to the Microsoft Xbox, this console uses new ATI graphics chips as well as multi-core IBM PowerPC CPUs capable of running six simultaneous threads in hardware.

Morrowind

(GAMES) The third installment in the Elder Scrolls chronicles. This is a highly detailed world with a vast amount of freedom for a character while still having a great storyline. Morrowind is a first person Fantasy RPG that aims to bring all of the depth of Daggerfall into the high tech 3D world that is ensuing. As Daggerfall became a timeless classic so should Morrowind.

Frederik Pohl's GATEWAY

(GAMES) This game was developed by Legend Entertainment in the early 1990s. It is a Space science-fiction title based on "The Heechee Saga" books by Frederik Pohl.

Monkey Island Series

(GAMES) This series of Lucas Arts' adventure games started with The Secret Of Monkey Island, and was created by designer Ron Gilbert. Guybrush Threepwood, it's leading character, continued in three sequels (The last one, Escape form Monkey Island, being 3D). This series gained a wide variety of fans due to it's witty humour and interesting gameplay.

Unreal

(GAMES) This was a 3-D first person shooter by Epic Megagames. It was very similar to Half-Life in that you had to explore a unknown world and fight the alien race in it. It featured Stunning graphics for the time of release (roughly 1997) The game featured huge worlds to explore and was one of the first game that used scripted events to increase the in-depth perspective. Unlike what many people think.... the coming sequel tot he game is NOT a sequel for Unreal Tournament it is a sequel for Unreal... unreal is more single-player based althought it does have multi-player support, Unreal Tournament is almost completly multi-player based but it does include very challenging bots as well as it's own built in server so it is easy to find other online games.

Street Fighter

(GAMES) Thought by many to be the greatest fighting game series on the planet, and is most likely the longest running. Street Fighter II set off the 2D fighting craze that has slightly died down in recent months. The Street Fighter series has an ever growing number of titles which include Street Fighter, Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo, Super Street Fighter III, Street Fighter Alpha (Zero), Street Fighter Alpha (Zero) II, Street Fighter Alpha (Zero) III, Street Fighter EX, and many more. Street Fighter characters are also used in many games such as Pocket Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom I and II, and SNK vs. Capcom. Street Fighter also spawned a cartoon series and several animation movies, as well as a live action movie.

Final Fantasy

(GAMES) Very popular RPG series created by Squaresoft, started in the mid-late 1980's. Most take place in a fantasy/sci-fi environment. So far there are 8 Final Fantasy games, with an upcoming 9 and 10. Extra tidbit: It's even getting a movie next year

Vector

(General) 1) A resizable array of elements (such as std::vector) 2) A mathematical object, usually in 2D or 3D space containing position elements of the same order. A vector is different than a point of the same magnitude in that it generally assumes movement from the origin of the coordinate system to the specified position.

Lossy Compression

(General) A Lossy Compression, used in such formats at .MP3, discards what it feels is 'unnecessary' information during encoding. Therefore, after compressing a file with a Lossy format, you are unable to decompress it to the same state in which it was originally. While many times this information truly is unnecessary, proponents of lossless compression would argue that it's a sloppy practice.

Remake

(General) A Remake is generally a newly programmed version of an existing (usually quite old) game. Remakes can be true to the original, but most tend to use improved graphics or enhance gameplay with new ideas. There are several websites dedicated to making Remakes.(e.g. http://www.remakes.org)

Windows Console

(General) A Windows Console is basically a DOS prompt the opens under the Windows OS inside its own Window. In Windows 95/98, the Windows Console was truly a DOS prompt, which allowed the user to access the underlying DOS-powered operating system, where as in NT-Based Windows distributions, the console is enumerated, and has a bit less functionality than that of it's predecessors.

Strategy Guide

(General) A book designed to aid the player in learning basic and advanced strategies for a particular game. These strategies can range from simplistic (such as a moves list) to complex (such as a walk-through for an RPG). There are both official (approved by the publisher of the game) and un-official (have not obtained permission from the game publisher) strategy guides.

Byte

(General) A byte is 8 bits, which is the equivalent of 256 different possible combinations (0 to 255). A single letter (character) on a computer is normally stored as a byte in ASCII format.

Kripke Structure

(General) A finite state machine, whose states are labeled with boolean variables and whose next state is chosen nondeterministically. It may be extended with fairness constraints.

Model of Computation

(General) A formal, abstract definition of a computer. Using a model one can more easily analyze the intrinsic execution time or memory space of an algorithm while ignoring many implementation issues. There are many models of computation which differ in computing power (that is, some models can perform computations impossible for other models) and the cost of various operations.

AAA

(General) A game with an AAA rating is one that is considered 'best of breed'. These titles have excellent production values, large budgets and often come from well-known developers. Examples of AAA title games would include: Doom III, Final Fantasy VII, and Starcraft.

persistent

(General) A game, generally a role-playing game in which there is no overall victory condition. There may be short-term victories and losses, but the overall goal of the game is to refine and improve the player's "character".

Hungarian Notation

(General) A list of suggested prefixes to variable and function names created by Charles Simonyi. There are different versions for both Visual Basic and Visual C++. VC++: b - boolean operator by - byte (unsigned char) c - char cx / cy - size stored in a short dw - DWORD; double word, unsigned long fn - function h - handle i - integer l - long n - short int p - pointer s - string sz - ASCIIZ string terminated with a zero (null-terminated) w - WORD (unsigned int) x, y - short used as coordinates These can be combined in many cases. For instance, lpsz - long pointer to a null-terminated ASCII string. Visual Basic (almost all Visual Basic notations are three letters long): bln - Boolean chk - Check box cbo - Combo box cmd - Command button cur - Currency dtm - Date/Time (variant) dlg - Dialog Box (also used for common dialog control) dbl - Double (double-precision float) frm - Form fra - Frame hsb - Horizontal scroll bar img - Image box int - Integer lbl - Label lst - List box lng - Long mnu - Menu opt - Option (radio) button pic - Picture box shp - Shape or Line sng - Single str - String txt - Text box vnt - Variant vsb - Vertical scroll bar

multiplayer

(General) A mode of game in which the primary aspect is to compete against one or more human players.

Sprite

(Graphics) A small bitmap image, often used in animated games but also sometimes used as a synonym for icon.

Euler Cycle

(General) A path through a graph which starts and ends at the same vertex and includes every edge exactly once. Also known as an Eulerian path, Euler tour, etc.

Lattice

(General) A point lattice generated by taking integer linear combinations of a set of basis vectors.

Fibonacci Numbers

(General) A sequence of numbers such that each number is the sum of the preceding two. The first seven numbers are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13.

massively multiplayer

(General) A specific designation of multiplayer game in which the number of simultaneuous players is on the order of hundreds or even thousands.

Camper

(General) A term used to define someone who acts as a sniper in a First Person Shooter. Usually used derogatively.

Matched Vertex

(General) A vertex on an matched edge in a matching, or, one which has been matched.

Markov Chain

(General) A weighted graph in which all weights are nonnegative and the total weight of outgoing edges is positive.

Word

(General) A word is usually the natural size of data that a processor works with. On early x86 systems, a word was 16 bits. On 32-bit systems, a word is 32 bits. (However, for compatibility with 8088 terminology, Windows uses "word" to mean 16 bits.) On 64-bit systems, a word is 64 bits, but often the operating system "word" is 32 bits for compatibility with existing 32-bit Unix systems. Similar in context to byte, a word is string of bits of any length.

BSOD

(General) Acronym short for "Blue Screen Of Death", commonly displayed after a major system error under numerous versions of Microsoft Windows. Seeing a BSOD generally means a reboot is soon to follow.

Lexicographical Order

(General) Alphabetical or ``dictionary'' order.

ANSI

(General) American National Standards Institute.

ASCII

(General) American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This is a standard for representing characters. In addition to text characters, other control characters are used. (Control characters include CARRIAGE RETURN, BACKSPACE, DELETE, etc.

Assembler

(General) An assembler is basically a low level compiler which translates assembly instructions into object code, which can be read by the processor. See also: Assembly language.

Bug

(General) An error in a game or computer program. The word originated with mainframes; Insects would crawl inside the machines seeking warmth and destroy delicate wiring. "Bug" now means any error or undesired effect in a game or program.

Integer

(General) An integer is a whole number, positive or negative commonly stored as a group of bytes. The integer size usually is in proportion to the pipelining capabilities of the processor architecture it is implemented in. On modern x86 architectures, integers are normally 32-bits in length.

Frag

(General) Another name for a kill, usually associated with First Person Shooter deathmatch. Originally used in Vietnam as slang for killing the officer with a "stray" fragmentation grenade.

Microsoft

(General) Business that created OS Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000. Also creates development SDK called DirectX which is used by most games on Windows OS. (WWW)

Gigabyte

(General) Can be shortened to GB. 1 GB Approx.: 1 billion bytes

Kilobyte

(General) Can be shortened to KB or K. 1K = 1024 bytes, 8192 Bits

Megabyte

(General) Can be shortened to MB. 1 MB Approx.: 1,000,000 Bytes

Petabyte

(General) Can be shortened to PB. 1PB = 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes

Terabyte

(General) Can be shortened to TB. 1 TB Approx.: 1 Trillion bytes

Collision Detection

(General) Collision detection is a means of determining whether two objects have come into contact with one another. In games, this is necessary in order to make decisions. For example, in a Fighting game, it is important to know whether a character's punch has hit or missed an opponent. If the two objects intersect, meaning that they are in the same place at the same time, they are assumed to have made contact. In the Fighting game, if one character's fist and the other character's face are in the same place at the same time, someone has a bloody nose!

Development

(General) Development is a process of creating something.

Computer

(General) Electronic machine, operating under the control of instructions stored in its own memory, that can accept data, manipulate the data according to specified rules, produce results, and store the results for furture use.

Dual Linear Program

(General) Every linear program has a corresponding linear program called the dual. It is maxy {b � y | ATy c and y 0 }. For any solution x to the original linear program and any solution y to the dual we have c � x (AT y)T x = yT(Ax) y � b. For optimal x and y, equality holds. For a problem formulated as an integer linear program, a solution to the dual of a relaxation of the program can serve as witness.

EBCDIC

(General) Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Primarily used on mainframe computers, EBCDIC is used to represent data.

FIFO

(General) First in, first out. This is opposite of how the stack works, LIFO. This stands for Last In First Out.

Intro Sequence

(General) Generally an intro is a fully animated sequence that appears when a game is first loaded and explains the back-story of the game and may introduce the main character and nemesis.

Idle Motion

(General) Idle motions are scripted events that are triggered when the player does not provide any input for a certain period of time. The motions are generally small, like fidgeting, or polishing the weapon.

IMHO

(General) In My Humble Opinion.

Parallax Scrolling

(General) Kind of scrolling in which you have several (usualy) 2D bitmap/tiled layers that scroll at different speeds giving a Different Depth Sense to the viewer. It is usualy used in arcade games as the background world maps e.g. Jazz Jack Rabbit or Mortal Kombat series.

Difficulty ramping

(General) Like music or theatre, video games often have a pattern of action that starts low, then steadily rises through the game, and climaxes near the end. This means that the challenges faced by the player are not equal in difficulty as the game progresses. Games tend to start with simple challenges and build to a higher difficulty level as the game nears completion. Obtaining a desired difficulty ramp is one of the reasons developers make video games linear. As a linear game has fewer variables to consider, it is much easier to apply an even ramp to than to a non-linear game.

Boolean Geometry

(General) Named after mathematician George Boole Boolean geometry refers to combining multiple objects. Common operations include "unions" which combine two shapes and "difference" operations. Difference operations can be used to cut one shape out of another. 3d Studio Max and the game Red Faction for the Playstation II are good examples of how Boolean geometry can be used in practical applications.

Ethereal Darkness Interactive

(General) Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer founded by Raymond Jacobs and well known to GameDev.net; over the course of three years they designed, produced and sold the Indie game Morning's Wrath.

Hardcore

(General) One who is extremely familiar with games and gaming terms. Usually knows more about the industry than most, and enjoys niche and import games such as anime and RPG based games. Also, are known for being large fans of import gaming. Usually "live and breath" games.

Warez

(General) Pirated software distributed over the Internet.

Player Killing

(General) Player Killing or Team Killing refers to the act of "killing" a player in a game that is on your team or general "side".

Programming

(General) Programming is the act of developing software.

RTFM

(General) Read The Fu****g Manual. Usually said to people who keep bugging others with their questions BECAUSE they didn't RTFM. :-)

Bit

(General) Short for binary digit. the smallest unit of data a computer can represent -either ON or OFF

Mod

(General) Short for modification. Many current games have tools that have been developed by the creators or players which allow the game to be changed by players to create different looking and sometimes playing games. See Total Conversion.

Emulator

(General) Something which performs like something else. In the game world, this is usually one system being able to run software that was created to be run on a different system.

Hash Table

(General) The Hash Table is a data structure which is suited to searching large amounts of information by a key value. Hash tables are most useful with a large number of records are stored, and allow information to easily be located. Hash tables function by processing the key using a function which returns a hash value - this value determines where the the data the particular record will be stored. This same value can then be used to search the hash table, and will point to the same location.

NIST

(General) The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology.

TANSTAAFL

(General) The abbreviation TANSTAAFL stands for "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" and is quite often used by Michael Abrash when he talks about optimization. It means that whatever you do, there's always a trade-off, be it size, speed, or the developer's nerves.

Binary

(General) The binary number system is a base 2 number system. This system uses combination of 1's and 0's to represent data.

Designer

(General) The game designer is the one who takes a game from an initial concept and flushes out all the components of a game until it is totally complete on paper. The designer usually writes this information into a design document.

Hexadecimal

(General) The hexadecimal number system is a base 16 number system. This number system uses values 0-9 and A-F to represent values.

Kernel

(General) The kernel is the core that provides basic services for all other parts of the operating system. A kernel also can be defined as the outermost part of an operating system that interacts with user commands.

Kolmogorov Complexity

(General) The minimum number of bits into which a string can be compressed without losing information. This is defined with respect to a fixed, but universal decompression scheme, given by a universal Turing machine.

Skeletal Animation

(General) The process of animationg by deforming a mesh over a series of contollable "bones" (seen in Half-Life)

Physics

(General) The science of matter and energy and their interactions.

Architecture

(General) The science, art, or profession of designing and constructing buildings, bridges, etc.

Deathmatch

(General) The term coined for multiplayer games in Doom, usually consisting of all players trying to see who can get the most kills.

Gone Askew

(General) The term refers to a glitch in a game. It's a word used by game programers when they come across a problem which causes the screen to sway from side to side on random moments in a game (like the camera was being shaken). Incorrect camera data positions and faulty code cause this rare glitch. Nick Askew was the person who first came across this while beta testing the game Doom. Ever sense then this 1 in a 1,000 chance of occurrence has been called "Gone Askew" (as a side note: many programmers use it as kind of a joke because it refers to "bad" programming and hours of work for it to be corrected)

Texture Generator

(Graphics) A small program that generate textures, mainly for use in 64k demos. The generators often have generate, filter and distortion functions.

Load Time

(General) The time it takes for information to transfer from the storage deice, like a CD-ROM or cartridge, to RAM. Long load times from CD-ROMs were initially thought to be a potentioal problem with next-generation systems. Now dynamic loading methods are being developed to lessen or eliminate the load-waiting experience for the player.

Median

(General) The value which has an equal number of values greater and less than it. For an even number of values, it is the mean of the two middle values.

Logic

(General) The word 'logic' comes from the ancient Greek word for 'Reason' and is primarily about proof and reasoning in arguments. In a computing context, logic implies a precise, reasoned, provable system which can be rigorously tested for accuracy.

Endian

(General) This refers to the value of bits which comprise a number. Binary numbers are made up of 1s and 0s. A typical eight bit binary number looks like this: 1000 0101

Developer

(General) This term refers to anyone who is involved in the process of development of games. This could include anyone in a game company, or it could only mean those who are directly involved in creating the game such as the artists, designers, programmers and musicians. Developer is also sometimes used as a synonym to a programmer.

Programmer

(General) This the person who actually writes the software. There are often several different titles of programmers in a game development projects. There is normally a programming lead who coordinates the team and takes on a majority of the base programming. There is sometimes tool programmers who create the tools the artists and others use to add content to the game and there are also sometimes AI programmers.

Port

(General) To convert a game to work on another platform than the one originally developed for. Example: Converting a PC game to work on Sony's PlayStation.

Refactor

(General) To rewrite a piece of code in order to improve structure and/or readability without changing it's external behavior or overall meaning. Refactoring code will often result in simpler code which will potentially be more performant and/or readable than the original version.

UML

(General) UML is the Unified Modelling Language. It is a highly structured, object oriented methodology for software engineering. Currently, it is accepted as the defacto standard.

Unicode

(General) Unicode is a standard which describes character encoding, similar to ASCII. However, in contrast to ASCII and other encodings, Unicode tries to encompass all characters ever needed. While ASCII is limited to one-byte units and therefore 256 different characters, Unicode uses three different encoding forms: UTF-8 uses 8-bit units; UTF-16 uses 16-bit units; UTF-32 uses 32-bit units. All three of these forms can make use of all characters covered by the standard; in UTF-8 and UTF-16, a character may however consist of more than one unit. The web site of the Unicode consortium is http://www.unicode.org/

spline

(Graphics) "Spacial line" is a linear pattern that has a tri-coordinate system (x,y,z) rather than the planar system which forms a line(x,y).

genre-lizing

(Graphics) 'Genre-lizing' (or non-US 'Genre-lising') is the act of defining a game to be within a specific genre. This has mainly pertained to the RPG genre, but is not limited to it. Genre-lizing, from a development point of view, is limiting to a designer in that they are forced to include attributes of a game that are associated with that genre and to not include those attributes that are not associated with that genre.

Coordinate system

(Graphics) (see also: Matrix) An orthogonal grid in which elements are placed. For displays, each point in the coord system is a pixel. Note: On a computer monitor, x-coords increase from left to right, but y-coords indrease from top to bottom (contrary to traditional math).

BMP

(Graphics) .BMP, a bitmap file format. Used as the standard file format for Windows, BMP files can display data through a number of different color depths, and is usually uncompressed. BMP format does include a Run-Length Encoding version for 8-bit files and does not support a 16-bit format.

PCX

(Graphics) .PCX is a graphic format created by ZSoft. Was sometimes used in DOS and early Windows games as it is a fairly simple format and supports Run-Length Encoding.

6DOF

(Graphics) 6 Degrees of Freedom. This refers to the ability to move in the X, Y and Z axis and also rotate around the X, Y, and Z axises.

Normal

(Graphics) A "vector" that points away from the face of an object at a right (90 degree) angle.

Billboard

(Graphics) A 2D image rotated in 3D so that its normal follows the normal of the viewing direction. Another definition would be: A 2D image that is rendered on the same plane as the viewing camera in a 3D world.

Texture

(Graphics) A 2D image which is is used as a kind of wallpaper for the basic polygons used in 3D graphics. Textures are usually images of real-world objects and are often repeated over an entire object in a tiled fashion. Eg: a retouched photograph of a brick wall may used to provide the basic texture for a house's walls.

Rhino

(Graphics) A 3D CAD NURBS modeller.

Morfit

(Graphics) A 3d engine developed in the late 1990s based on DirectX. Now known as 3d State. It has generated a large following of programmers and is praised for it's ease of use and compatability with many programming languages and compilers such as Microsoft Visual C++, Borland C++, Delphi, and Visual Basics. More information can be found at thier website at www.3dState.com.

Mesh

(Graphics) A 3d modelling term that refers to a model as a series of polygons.

ProMAT Animation Library

(Graphics) A FLI/FLC Software Development Kit (SDK), for Allegro

Complete Binary Tree

(Graphics) A binary tree in which all leaf nodes are at level n or n-1, and all leaves at level n are towards the left.

Tile

(Graphics) A bitmap that can be placed to create a picture, usually used for background maps.

Bounding Box

(Graphics) A box approximation of an object used for collision detection. An axis-aligned bounding box (AABB) is defined by the minimum and maximum 'x', 'y', and 'z' values. An oriented bounding box (OBB), however, generally gives a closer fit, because it is always aligned with the object.

Stencil Buffer

(Graphics) A buffer that holds information about what pixels should be drawn or not. Often used for creating shadows and reflections.

2.5D

(Graphics) A buzzword used to describe raycasting engines, such as Doom or Duke Nuke Em. The maps were generally drawn as 2D bitmaps with height properties but when rendered gave the appearance of being 3D models.

Polygon

(Graphics) A closed form made up of at least three sides. Each side is made up from a line segment and each end of a line segment is a vertex.

Palette

(Graphics) A collection of indexed colors.

Object

(Graphics) A collection of polygons, usually arranged to create a representation of a real-life shape.

Affine Transformation

(Graphics) A combination of a set of linear transformations, usually stored in a single matrix. Affine transformations include rotation, scaling, translation and shear.

Polar Coordinate System

(Graphics) A coordinate system in which a point is described by the angle and distance from a point O, the pole.

Absolute Coordinate System

(Graphics) A coordinate system where all objects must be shown from the position of your viewpoint. Coordinates are all static and the Viewpoint (camera) moves through the preset coordinates.

Lumel

(Graphics) A coordinate that represents a point in a light map.

Bezier Curve

(Graphics) A curve that is generated from the creation of several control points.

Bezier Surface

(Graphics) A curved surface created from a mesh of control points.

Point

(Graphics) A dimensionless representation of a discrete location in space.

Drop Out

(Graphics) A drop out occures when a few polygons vanish because there are too many polygons being displayed on screen for the computer to handle.

Axis Aligned Bounding Box

(Graphics) A form of a bounding box where the box is aligned to the axis therefore only two points in space are needed to define it. AABB's are much faster to use, and take up less memory, but are very limited in the sense that they can only be aligned to the axis.

Graphics

(Graphics) A form of data representation. Without graphics, we'd just have numeric displays. * Graphics use imagery, such as pictures, lines, points, colors and so on to represent information. It's the difference between a spreadsheet and a pie-chart. The spreadsheet is a numeric representation; the pie-chart is a graphical representation. Since computers see all things as numbers, programmers and electronics engineers have had to design ways to convert those numbers into moving images. The electronics engineers gave us the Graphics Card for this very purpose.

MPEG

(Graphics) A format for encoding video. MPEG-1 was the original format which is used extensively for computer graphics, MPEG-2 is the basis for DVD.

Perlin Noise

(Graphics) A function, inveted by Ken Perlin, who invented it to generate textures for the movie Tron (1982). One of the first films to use computer graphics extensively, Tron has a distinctive visual style. He won a special Academy Award for Perlin noise in 1997. Perlin noise is widely used in computer graphics for effects like fire, smoke and clouds. It is also frequently used to generate textures when memory is extremely limited, such as in demos.

Asset

(Graphics) A generic term for graphics, sounds, maps, levels, models, and any other resources. Generally assets are compiled into large files. The file formats may be designed for fast loading by matching in-memory formats, or tight compressions for handheld games, or designed to otherwise help in-game use. It is often useful to have an asset tool chain. The original models may be high-density models with R8G8B8A8 images. You may have a model striper and image compresser that reduces the model for LOD, and compresses the texture to a DXT compressed image. These assets may then go through further transformations, and end up in the large resource file.

Specular Highlighting

(Graphics) A graphics technique which creates the illusion of light reflected on a surface. A specular highlight is the brightest point on an object.

Blitter

(Graphics) A highly specialized processor which is designed solely for working on graphics. * Usually adept at copying rectangular chunks of graphic data around from place to place. Since Operating Systems such as Windows, MacOS often deal with large rectangular chunks of stuff on a screen - such as, er, windows - a blitter has become a standard feature in today's graphics cards.

Vector

(Graphics) A line or movement defined by its end points, or by the current position and one other point.

Alpha buffer

(Graphics) A linked list of depth-sorted colors, typically representing each pixel in a z-buffer. The colors may either be added to the list in a pre-sorted order or the list may be able to sort them by itself. After all colors are added the list is used to create on resulting color by blending the containing colors from the back and forward using their alpha channel.

Translation Matrix

(Graphics) A matrix that moves a point linearly.

Alpha Testing

(Graphics) A method for creating transparency by checking the alpha value of a given pixel.

Radiosity

(Graphics) A method of indirect lighting which calculates the light diffusion/deflection off of not only the light to face angle to viewer (specular) but calculates the diffused light coming from the light source, hitting the faces in the scene and diffusing light from those faces onto other faces then to the viewer.

Light Map

(Graphics) A special type of image map that, when applied, effects the intensity of the texture of an object.

Blitting

(Graphics) A method of outputting sprites by only showing non-transparent colors, without any checking during run time. This is done by precompiling a bmp into a piece of code that contains a set of screen memory writes that only include non-trasparent colors.

Volume Rendering

(Graphics) A method of rendering that deals with the space that is used, as opposed to the faces that make up the outside of an object. Originally used for medical purposes only, it has also been adapted to do environmental effects, such as light through fog.

Palette Swap

(Graphics) A method of swapping colors in the color table (palette) to change the appearance of images using that color table.

Dirty Rectangles

(Graphics) A method of updating only the changed parts of the screen. The screen is divided up into rectangles and only rectangles that have changes are makred "dirty" and then are redrawn to clean them up. Increases drawing speed as less is drawn.

Height Map

(Graphics) A method often used to create 3D landscapes, height maps contain a grid of points that are given height values and the landscape is rendered by building polygons out of them.

13h

(Graphics) A mode of the VGA video card hardware that displays the screen in 320 x 200 pixels.

Particle System

(Graphics) A particle system is a collection of entities, related or unrelated, that comply with a set of logical and physical rules. The components of a basic particle system are: an emitter, particles and particle modifiers. A particle is an entity that holds the necessary info about a particular particle in the system. The particle has different properties, or attributes, such as: velocity, position, size, affecting force, color, etc. The emitter is the object (usually not visible on screen) responsible for emitting the particles into the scene and giving them initial properties. Once these properties has been set, they can later be modified by the modifiers. The particles belonging to one particle system are usually associated with one texture. The texture is often applied to a rectangle that, in each game loop, is adjusted so that it always faces the camera, a technique known as billboarding. One visual effect can be made up by many particle systems, with different textures and characteristics. A burning fire, for example, could consist of one particle system for the flames, one for the smoke, and another one for emitting sparks.

YUV

(Graphics) A pixel format comprised of luminance (the Y component) and chrominance (the color components U & V). YUV was developed for the compression of motion video data. See also RGB.

Milkshape 3D

(Graphics) A popular 3D modelling package. It was originally made for modding games, and can export and import a wide variety of popular game formats. It supports textures and texture coordinate mapping very well, and has a nice SDK. The registered version is currently $25. http://www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/

Maya

(Graphics) A premium modelling program produced by Alias, it is used by several companies in the games industry as their primary modelling tool. A free version is available at alias.com

Gimble Lock

(Graphics) A problem encountered when one tries to rotate using the 3 axises where one ends up rotating in the wrong direction after several rotations. Common fixes to this problem are to use matrix multiplication for rotations or quaternions.

Bump Mapping

(Graphics) A process of rendering polygons that gives them an illusion of depth.

Frame

(Graphics) A processed scene that consists of a static view of the game moment, it includes all objects, sprites and textures. Along with a set of frames, its possible to create an animation.

Lens Flare

(Graphics) A refraction that appears in a camera lens normally when it is directed at the sun. A favorite added effect by many computer artists.

Sub-Surface Scattering

(Graphics) A rendering technique used on objects to determine how much light is allowed through the object. This is a very demanding technique since it calculates the amount of the material is it going through and the denisty of the material. This is most commonly used on skin, plant material, and cloth materials.

Depth Cueing

(Graphics) A scene effect to make objects that are farther away from the camera are rendered with a lighter color so that they are given the illusion of distance

Scene Graph

(Graphics) A scene graph is a tree where the nodes are objects in a scene arranged in some sort of hirearchy. These nodes may be actual physical objects, or simply 'abstract' objects. For example a transformation node would apply some form of transformation to any 3D objects that are below the transformation node in the scene graph. A scene graph can be used for many things, depending on the way you order the nodes in the graph. For example you could have an octree containing object to be rendered in a scene, this would be a limited form of scene graph. You could have a scene graph that contains an octree as well as an alternative way or organising the same data, e.g. by render state. So you could use your scene graph for culling unseen objects as well as ordering objects to be rendered by render state.

Backbuffer

(Graphics) A secondary surface where the current frame's graphics are stored before they are transferred to the primary display surface.

Arc

(Graphics) A section of a circle that is measured in degrees or radians.

Mortal Kombat

(Graphics) A series of popular fighting games created by Midway. Mortal Kombat was one of the first console games to show blood. Thus, it has always been a target, for the "Violence in video games" issue.

Phong Shading

(Graphics) A shading model where the intensity of the light is calculated at each pixel in the polygon. This is extremely processor intensive, however, so it is virtually never used in unaccelerated, speed critical applications. "Fast phong shading" was an attempted optimization of the algorithm, though it is ineffective, and can not really be called phong shading.

Lambert Shading

(Graphics) A shading model where the light intensity is calculated at one point along the polygon and is used to shade the entire face. Also commonly refered to as flat shading.

Swept Sphere

(Graphics) A swept sphere is a 3D object that can be created by pulling, or sweeping, a sphere along a path, leaving a trace that kind of resembles the shape of toothpaste when it comes out of the tube. While sweeping, the radius of the sphere may be changed, and the path does not need to be a straight line. Quite often, though, swept spheres are used in collision detection as an alternative to bounding boxes. In these cases, most of the time the path is a straight line and the radius stays fixed. The object that is created by sweeping a sphere like that is a cylinder with hemispheres, which have the same radius as the cylinder, attached to both ends. Detecting if a point is within this object is computationally quite simple, often easier than doing this with a bounding box.

Palette

(Graphics) A table of colors indexed by a buffer as a color source.

Cel Shading

(Graphics) A technique which causes rendered objects to look as though they are hand-drawn, cartoon images.

Skin

(Graphics) A texture that is used to wrap around an entire model. Normally skins are drawn on a single bitmap, and then the coordinates are mapped onto the vertices of the model.

Mode X

(Graphics) A tweaked VGA card graphics resolution that displayed graphics at 320x240 which created a square pixel resolution. The term Mode X was coined by Michael Abrash.

3D Accelerator Card

(Graphics) A type of graphics card which helps a computer to process 3D graphics very quickly. * Computers cannot actually do 'real' 3D imagery (well, none that you can buy without three major lottery wins and a Chair of Lucasian Mathematics at Cambridge University). We haven't invented the Star Trek-style Holosuite(tm) yet, so computers have to create a fake 3D which gets shown on a monitor or TV. Unfortunately, the conversion from 3D to 2D that has to be done requires a lot of mathematics. A 3D Accelerator card has specially-designed stuff on it which does a lot of the mathematics for the computer - leaving the computer to get on with more interesting work. Most 3D Accelerator cards now also accelerate the basic 2D stuff.

Rotation Matrix

(Graphics) A type of matrix that, when applied, rotates a point.

Portal Rendering

(Graphics) A type of rendering where the world is split up into self-enclosing sectors. Each sector is made up of multiple walls, and each wall may be a portal to another sector. The advantage of portal rendering is the simplicity to code it and the increased speed in your game. For each portal you make a clipping frustum out of the wall polygon, then render the sector that the portal connects to. The initial frustum is the viewing frustum used by the camera. That type of clipping is 3d, the 2d counterpart is where you calculate the 2d rectangle of the portal on the screen and do 2d clipping.

Color Key

(Graphics) A value indicating the color to be used for transparent or translucent effects. For example, when using a hardware blitter, all the pixels of a rectangular area are blitted, except the value that was set as the color key; this creates nonrectangular sprites on a surface.

Scalar

(Graphics) A value that one can represent with one component.

Right Handed Coordinates

(Graphics) A version of the Cartesian coordinate system where positive X points right of the origin, positive Y points up from the origin, and positive Z points behind the origin.

Left Handed Coordinates

(Graphics) A version of the Cartesian coordinate system where positive X points right of the origin, positive Y points up from the origin, and positive Z points beyond the origin.

Cut Vertex

(Graphics) A vertex whose deletion along with incident edges breaks up the remaining graph into two or more disconnected pieces.

Double Buffering

(Graphics) A video buffer consists of a memory allocation for the information that is drawn to the screen. The first buffer is what is actually drawn to the screen, a second and third buffer are used to create a workspace to draw to that doesn't require synchronization to the vertical retrace of the monitor. Double buffering gives the program a buffer to draw on that is not dependent on the retrace. The second buffer can be held in video memory and then "flipped" to change places with the primary buffer, which then is used as the second buffer until the next flip.

Tripple Buffering

(Graphics) A video buffer consists of a memory allocation for the information that is drawn to the screen. The first buffer is what is actually drawn to the screen, a second and third buffer are used to create a workspace to draw to that doesn't require synchronization to the vertical retrace of the monitor. Tripple buffering allows the advantages of a double buffer, where the program has a buffer to draw on that is not dependent on the retrace, but adds the additional advantage of being able to draw to the third buffer while the second buffer is waiting to flip to the front of the screen.

AABB

(Graphics) AABB is an acronym for Axis-Alligned Bounding Box. Effectively it is a cuboid which is not rotated. All of its edges are parallel to the axes it is alligned to. AABBs can be defined using just two points, a maxium point and a minimum point. The rest of the box can be worked out from these two points. AABBs can be used for collision detection and scene culling (among other things).

Phosphor Persistence

(Graphics) Also called "Ghost Images". The after image of an moving object that is displayed on a black or mostly black background. A result of the time that it takes for the phosphor layer of a CRT to go from an excited state to a ground state. Not to be confused with artifacts.

Relative Coordinate system

(Graphics) Also called the View-Centered Coordinate system. The Viewpoint (camera) is always at coordinates <0,0,0> and everything else in the Universe is based relatively to this home position.

Gouraud Shading

(Graphics) Also known as intensity interpolation. A shading model where the light intensity is calculated at each of the vertices, and is interpolated across the polygon.

Albedo Texture

(Graphics) An albedo is a physical measure of a material's reflectivity, generally across the visible spectrum of light. An albedo texture simulates a surface albedo as opposed to explicitly defining a colour for it.

HUD

(Graphics) Heads-Up-Display. This means status information which are always visible like health or ammo information.

Grayscaling

(Graphics) An algorithm by which a color is converted into a shade of gray(where R, G, and B are all equal), usually by weighting each of the R, G, and B components by certain percentages.

Bresenham's Algorithm

(Graphics) An algorithm to compute which cells in a grid should be drawn in order to display a line between any two cells in the grid. Used to draw arbitrary lines to the screen.

Cube Mapping

(Graphics) An alternative to sphere mapping used in environment mapping, cube mapping gets a 'screenshot' looking in 6 different directions and arranges them in a rolled out cube. When applied, the object appears to reflect the environment around it. A 'cheap' alternative to raytracing reflections, cube mapping is fast enough for realtime.

Tru-Walk Technology

(Graphics) An animation technique used to create the illusion that the characters are engaging in various forms of locomotion.

Interpolation

(Graphics) An approximation between two known values. In graphics, this is a process in which the software increases the resolution of an image by first filling the image with blank pixels and then coloring the blank ones based on the color values of its surrounding pixels.

Z-Buffer

(Graphics) An array of numbers that store the proper point on an polygon and its distance from the camera. The array is usually comprised of all the pixels in a screen and only the closest points are stored and then drawn. This method eliminates the problem of overlapping objects.

shader

(Graphics) An assembly-like program which replaces part of the rendering pipeline with custom code. Shaders that affect vertices (vertex shaders) replace the normal transformation and lighting stage of the pipeline, while shaders that affect pixels (pixel shaders), work at the rasterization stage, affecting how the final screen color is determined. Shaders are supported in DirectX 8 and later, and in OpenGL through extensions (and as part of the proposed OpenGL 2.0 standard).

Environment Mapping

(Graphics) An effect where an object reflects its surroundings, much like chrome.

Quaternion

(Graphics) An extention to normal complex numbers, invented by Sir William Rowan Hamilton. Usually used in 3D graphics to represent rotations and the orientations of coordinate axes. It is possible to use them to create smooth interpolations between two rotations.

Screenshot

(Graphics) An image taken from a game to show what was on the screen.

Wings 3D

(Graphics) An increasingly popular free modeling utility. It has a very nice interface, and doesn't take much time to learn. It's good for both high and low polygon models, but is not particularly well suited for entire scenes or rooms. http://www.wings3d.com/

User Interface

(Graphics) An interface in which the user interacts with the game. There is output given to the user through the monitor and speakers, as well as input taken from the user through the keyboard, mouse, joystick and other devices. User Interface is commonly used to describe the layout of the screen and screen elements that the user must interact with. For instance, buttons or windows that the user must use to access different features or give commands in the game.

Blender

(Graphics) An open-sourced 3D modeller released under the GPL. Blender was originally a commercial product, but was open-sourced when the parent company, Not a Number, folded. The Blender Foundation was formed by one of NaN's founders, with the intention of raising enough money to purchase the rights to make Blender open source, and met their goal within a matter of weeks. Blender is a powerful modeller, featuring built-in ray-trace renderer, NURBS curves and surfaces, Beziers curves and surfaces, powerful mesh modelling tools, meta-balls, skeletal animation and inverse kinematics, non-linear animation, sub-division surfaces, particle systems, etc... A Python interface allows for the creation of custom scripts for import/export, special effects, and so on. http://www.blender.org

Clear Reduction

(Graphics) An optimization of Z-buffering that buffers 1/Z values rather than Z values. Traditionally, Z-buffers are cleared each frame, but clear reduction makes it so they must only be cleared far less frequently.

Skeletal Animation

(Graphics) Animation that is based on a model having a skeleton instead of being drawn as a series of different models (same model saved in different positions, key-frame animation). Skeletons are set up with joints or bones to determine how the unit will animate. Hierarchical Skeletons and Skinning Skeletal Deformation Example

Ghost Images

(Graphics) Another term for Phosphor Persistence.

Wu-antialiasing

(Graphics) Antialiasing algorithm that extends the Bresenham-line by drawing additional (background-)blended pixels above and below each original pixel. What is considered "above" and "below" is decided by the direction of the plotting. Some implementations also blend the original pixels.

antialias

(Graphics) Antialiasing refers to the process of adding additional pixels around the border of an object in order to blend it into it's background more smoothly, and to reduce the appearance of jagged edges. Typically, the colour used is the average of the surrounding background pixels and that of the object being antialiased, or an approximation of the average. This technique was invented by MIT's Media Lab.

Transformation Matrix

(Graphics) Any kind of matrix that is used to alter the position and/or orientation of an object.

Polygonal

(Graphics) Any time that a 3D object isn't smooth and you can see the polygons that make the object up. The object then looks too polygonal, for example, the 3D object of a man. On his face, his nose comes to a sharp point, his ears look like decagons.

Alpha Blending

(Graphics) Assigning varying levels of translucency to graphical objects, allowing the creation of things such as glass, fog, and ghosts. This can be accomplished by using alpha channels, or other means.

HSR

(Graphics) Hidden Surface Removal The CPU removes hidden surfaces before sending meshes to the videocard. Because the CPU can remove entire meshes at a time, this can save a lot of time when checking individual triangles.

Interlacing

(Graphics) Because the electron guns that draw pictures on TV screens were initially too slow to draw the screen in one pass, the first lines at the top of the screen would be fading by the time the last lines were drawn, pictures on TVs were drawn using what is known as interlacing. First the odd lines down are drawn (line 1, 3, 5, etc.). Then the even lines are drawn (line 2, 4, 6, etc.). The image shown by one pass is known as a field, and the complete image drawn by two passes is known as a frame. Standard TV broadcasts run at 30 frames per second (fps). In an effort to boost hype for a product, sometimes ads or press releases would state that their game was "60 fields per second", instead of 30 fps. Most computer monitors are non-interlaced as well as many arcade screens.

Backface Culling

(Graphics) Because the polygons facing away from the viewer are not seen, and the extra time spent drawing them would have no effect on the visual quality of the scene, these backfaces are almost always removed in some manner.

BSP Tree

(Graphics) Binary Space Partition Tree. This is a sorting method for sorting nonmoving polygons where polygons are either in front or behind the currently polygon. The resulting linked list gives you the proper sorting for all polygons on the screen.

Blit

(Graphics) Bit Block Transfer (properly abbreviate BLT). The process of transferring a bitmap to or from a display surface via the blitter.

CLUT

(Graphics) Color Look Up Table. An index of colors, for instance to hold 256 different colors in a single byte and look up a color using 3 bytes.

Trilinear Filtering

(Graphics) Combines bilinear filtering from 2 Mip levels (See Mip Mapping) to create a smoother version of the textures current size. Doubles the memory useage and can cause bandwidth problems.

Quads

(Graphics) Common term used in modeling when refering to a model made up of four point polygonal faces.

PING

(Graphics) Commonly referred to a standard way to see if a network connection is available - a packet is sent to a destination, which returns the packet or additional information. The gamers definition usually refers to the time it takes for a message to get to and back from a server or another gamer. Usually going through the game's network processing (i.e. the ping is handled by the game and not computer's network hardware or operating system) The original acronym is from Packet INternet Groper.

Channel

(Graphics) Commonly used to describe a color component that makes up an image. A 24-bit image can have red, green, and blue channels. 32-bit images have room for a fourth channel, commonly known as an alpha channel.

Triangulation

(Graphics) Converting a polygon into a number of triangles.

Post-Perspective Homogeneous Space

(Graphics) Coordinate system after the perspective-projection transform.

Cross-Product

(Graphics) Cross Product (Vector Product) The cross product is a little more tricky. The cross product between two vectors yields a third vector which is perpendicular to the first two.

RenderWare

(Graphics) Developed by Criterion Software Limited in 1993, RenderWare (RW) is a 3D "middleware" applications programming interface (API) graphics rendering engine that has become more popular since version 3 and the Playstation 2 video game console where it has been used in various games (most notably Grand Theft Auto 3), many of which have been ported to the PC.

Dot-Product

(Graphics) Dot Product (Scalar Product) The dot product shouldn't cause you any trouble. It is simply a way to multiply vectors. Keep in mind that we would normally describe these vectors in unit vector notation.

Parallax Occlusion Mapping

(Graphics) Employs per-pixel ray-tracing for dynamic lighting of surfaces in real-time on the GPU. The method uses a high precision algorithm for approximating view-dependent surface extrusion for a given height field to simulate motion parallax and perspective-correct depth. Additionally, the method allows generation of soft shadows in real-time for surface occlusions. Alternatively, POM can be coupled with well-known bump mapping algorithms such as normal mapping if physical accuracy can be sacrificed for greater computational efficiency.

Visual Surface Determination

(Graphics) Ensuring polygons are drawn in appropriate order. Popular methods are depth soring, Z-buffering, portals, and BSP trees. Often abbreviated VSD.

FVF

(Graphics) Flexible Vertex Format.

Fractal

(Graphics) Fractional Dimensions. The name comes from the process of using fractional dimension mathematics to create images or data. The data often works on a system of patterns being repeated in larger and smaller forms with the same algorithm.

FPS

(Graphics) Frames Per Second. A measure of animation display rate. Not to be confused with First Person Shooter.

Scaling Matrix

(Graphics) Generally appiled to an entire object or group thereof, a scaling matrix lets you either enlarge or decrease the size of the desired object.

GUI

(Graphics) Graphical User Interface.

GIF

(Graphics) Graphics Interchange Format. A format for saving graphics that usually uses a 8-bit (256 color) indexed bitmap.

Raycasting

(Graphics) Graphics technique used in Wolf3D where a number of rays (or lines) where drawn from the current position out to the obstacles they would encounter. The distance of the line and the surface they hit would determine what would be drawn to the screen. If there was a 320x240 sized screen, there would be 320 rays cast out to get a sliver for each pixel of the screen.

Translucent

(Graphics) Having the property of admitting and diffusing light so that the objects beyond cannot be clearly distinguished : partly transparent. (ie. Alpha-blending two polys together).

Transparent

(Graphics) Having the property of transmitting light without appreciable scattering so that the bodies lying beyond are entirely visible. (ie. Color keying or transparent sprites - not drawing the mask color).

Potential Visibility Set

(Graphics) Hierarchical schemes partition the environment to allow efficient reduction of the superset of polygons down to a more managable subset of candidate polygons. (PVS)

HLSL

(Graphics) High-Level Shading Language. A C-like language developed by Microsoft for DirectX Graphics. Shader programs, such as vertex and pixel shaders, can be written and compiled in HLSL rather than the various hardware shader assembly languages. The resulting compiled can then be loaded onto modern graphics hardware that supports programmable shaders.

Photorealistic

(Graphics) Image which approaches photographic quality. With a large enough color palette (around 16,000 colors) it is possible to display these types of images on a TV or computer screen.

Alpha Channel

(Graphics) In 32-bit color, 24-bits are used for the color, and the extra 8-bits represent an alpha value, or alpha channel. This value is used to determine the pixel's translucency level.

Vector

(Graphics) In 3D graphics, a set of numbers representing magnitude and direction.

Artifacts

(Graphics) In graphics, persistent portions of images resulting from improper blitting operations.

Indot

(Graphics) Indot refers to non-quad and non-tri polygons. For instance a pentegon without triangulation or quads. (This is only appreant during modeling in a 3d application that supports this feature.)

DirectGraphics

(Graphics) Introduced in DirectX 8; DirectGraphics combines both Direct3D and DirectDraw. (DirectDraw was removed after DirectX 7)

LOD

(Graphics) Level of Detail. Often pertaining to the complexity of 3D models, such as having less or more polygons when the model is closer or farther from the camera.

Nurnies

(Graphics) Little electronic, pipe, or mechanical looking objects that add function/life to a space ship texture.

Vector Graphics

(Graphics) Made famous by games like Asteroids and Battlezone, these are graphics that are defined by objects like lines, triangles or boxes, instead of by a bitmap.

Scan Conversion

(Graphics) Method by which a graphical object (such as a line, circle, ellipse, etc) is converted from its algebraic equation into its approximate representation on a raster display.

Boolean Geometry

(Graphics) Named after mathematician George Boole Boolean geometry refers to combining multiple objects. Common operations include "unions" which combine two shapes and "difference" operations. Difference operations can be used to cut one shape out of another. 3d Studio Max and the game Red Faction for the Playstation II are good examples of how Boolean geometry can be used in practical applications.

NURBS

(Graphics) Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines

Normal Mapping

(Graphics) Normal Mapping is a lighting technique used to light a low-polygon model like a high-polygon model by means of a bitmap image. Each RGB value of each individual texel within the normal map is used to represent the x,y,z components of the mesh normal at each texel. Rather than using interpolated vertex normals to calculate the lighting data, the normals from from the normal map are used.

Color Cycling

(Graphics) Normally used with Indexed Color, this is a method of changing the index information for an image so that the colors change in a way that makes it appear to animate or cycle colors.

Isometric Tiles

(Graphics) One way of drawing 2D tiles so that it appears that they look 3D as they are layered with depth. In computer games this is usually a misnomer as isometric means a 1-1-1 perspective. Normally in games the depth ratio is less so that the tiles do not seem as wide.

Pixel

(Graphics) Picture Element. A pixel is the smallest object in the computer graphics world. Screen sizes are measured in pixels such as 800x600 or 640x480.

PNG

(Graphics) Portable Network Graphics. A graphics format that was brought about due to the licensing disagreements conerning GIF and JPEG.

PVS

(Graphics) Potential Visibility Set. A sorting process used in 3D engines to determine that polys can be seen from a given position.

ray casting

(Graphics) Raycasting is a technique used to produced 3-D worlds based on a 2-D matrix. In this technique, rays are shot out from a specific point and their intersections with the world (as represented by the matrix) are recorded. The information recorded from these intersections is then used to create a 3-D perspective.

Rotoscoping

(Graphics) Real video is shot and then drawn over to give very accurate looking cartoon animation. This was done on movies such as The Lord of the Rings and was also done on the game Prince of Persia.

HDR

(Graphics) Real world lighting contains a high range of luminance values. HDR, or High Dynamic Range lighting, is essentially a technique that exceeds the normal computer graphics color range of 0 to 255, allowing for more realistic lighting models.

Quadtree

(Graphics) Recursively using 2 cutting planes to subdivide space. Used for image/model storage and visibility determination (i.e. terrain rendering.). See also: Spatial-partioning, Binary Space-Partitioning Trees (BSP), and Octrees

Octree

(Graphics) Recursively using 3 (perpendicular) cutting planes to subdivide space. Used for image/model storage and visibility determination (i.e. terrain rendering.) (Article) See also: Spatial-partioning, Binary Space-Partitioning Tree (BSP), and Quadtree

Spatial-partioning

(Graphics) Recursively using n cutting plane(s) to subdivide space, where n typically ranges from: 1 = BSP 2 = Quadtree 3 = Octree See also: Binary Space-Partitioning Tree (BSP), Quadtree, and Octree.

RGB

(Graphics) Red, Green, Blue. The 3 primary colors that make up all other colors by being displayed at different intensities next to each other. In a monitor this is referred to as a triad, which equals one pixel.

Carmack's Reverse

(Graphics) Refers to a modification to Heidmann's original stenciled shadow volumes technique generally attributed to John Carmack, although others came up with the same modification at about the same time. Rather than incrementing and decrementing for the front and back faces (respectively) when the depth test passes, the method increments for back faces and decrements for front faces when the depth test fails. This prevents shadow volumes from being clipped by the near plan, but introduces the problem of them being clipped by the far plane.

Color Depth

(Graphics) Refers to the amount of memory used to represent a single pixel, and is most commonly measured in bits. Common values are 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit. More bits means a wider range of colors.

Solid Shading

(Graphics) Rendering a polygon a certain color without regards to the possible effects of lighting.

RLE

(Graphics) Run Length Encoding. A type of compression that reduces file sizes by shortening sequential "runs" of color of the same amount. For example, 20 pixels of red horizontally could be abbrieviated to a number equalling a row 20, followed by the color of red. Then when the image is decoded it reads that there are 20 pixels of the following color and draws them.

OpenGL

(Graphics) SDK used orginaly in SGI workstations, currently the 3D render of choice by most developers.

Machinima

(Graphics) Scripted (non-interactive) 3D animation comprised of pre-set camera motion, character motion and environment changes. Mostly used for cutscenes within a game in place of pre-rendered CGI animation or film. Typically uses a game's real-time 3D engine to depict a portion of the game story in a non-interactive cinematic representation. Gamasutra Article

Bezier Patch

(Graphics) See Bezier Surface.

Texel

(Graphics) Short for texture element, a texel is an individual pixel that is part of a texture.

2 1/2 D Graphics

(Graphics) Slang. Refers to games with 3D polygon sprites and backgrounds, yet which have gameplay restricted to a 2D style. Examples are Super Smash Brothers, Einhander and Kirby 64.

TGA

(Graphics) TGA is a graphical format for saving files.

S3TC

(Graphics) Texture compression developed by S3.

Procedural Texture Mapping

(Graphics) Texture maps created by an algorithm often based on a fractal noise or turbulence and an algorithm for the material to be drawn. Advantages include being able to have unlimited levels of detail as each texture can be made precisely to the size that is currently being viewed and can always be continuous by using fractal patterns.

Flat Shading

(Graphics) That which assigns only one color shade per face.

Clipping Pane

(Graphics) The Clipping Pane is a barrier to determine the loading and display points of 3d models and textures. The farther away the clipping pane from the main object, the further you can "see", but comes at a heavy performance cost.

Clipping Plane

(Graphics) The Clipping Plane is a barrier to determine the loading and display points of 3d models and textures. The farther away the clipping pane from the main object, the further you can "see", but comes at a heavy performance cost.

GLAUX

(Graphics) The OpenGL Auxillary Library. A library including functions to load textures and do other common tasks. It is no longer supported or updated, but it is still used for many beginning OpenGL tutorials.

GLUT

(Graphics) The OpenGL Utility Toolkit. This set of libraries provides a set of helper functions to OpenGL, including methods to abstract the windowing system (for cross-platform development), rendering "standard" 3D objects, etc. For more info, visit the GLUT homepage

Resolution

(Graphics) The accuracy of something. Often used as the resolution of a screen, the number of pixels in X and Y dimensions.

Translation

(Graphics) The act of linearly altering the location of a point.

Corona

(Graphics) The artifacts that appear around a bright light source. Often in circular or star like shapes.

Aspect Ratio

(Graphics) The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of its width to its height. Aspect_Ratio = Width / Height See Pixel Ratio

gib

(Graphics) The bloody pieces of meat that fly off of a character when they get shot, chopped, etc., etc. Usage: "After I used my rocket launcher on that demon there were gibs _everywhere_!" Probably derived from 'giblets.'

Parallax Scrolling

(Graphics) The effect one sees one looking at a scrolling series of "layers". Each layer represents a distance from the viewer (the foreground, the background, far in the distance, etc.) As the entire view "scrolls" or moves in a 2-dimensional direction (no depth movement), the layers scroll at a different speed. The farther away from the viewer a layer is supposed to be, the slower it will scroll. This creates the illusion of depth.

Aliasing

(Graphics) The effect produced when a complex image is put onto a display with a limited resolution. This effect is a product of downsampling. Examples include jagged looking lines in lower resolutions.

Z-Fighting

(Graphics) The flickering distortion effect caused by two or more textures which overlap each other / are too close to each other / occupy simliar planes. It is called z-fighting because the multiple textures appear to be 'fighting' for dominance of the z-axis.

Color bleeding

(Graphics) The idea of colors blending or "bleeding" into their surroundings, creating a smooth and realistic effect.

Painters Algorithm

(Graphics) The idea of drawing from back to front, like a painter would while composing a scene. Problems can arise as some objects may be partially behind and in front of other objects.

Anisotropic Filtering

(Graphics) The level past trilinear filtering, this uses samples from multiple Mip Maps to get the best approximation for a texture. Very heavy performance cost.

Photon Tracing

(Graphics) The most realistic, but also the slowest, 3D rendering technique where you spawn photons from all light sources and use realistic photon physics (including reflection, refraction, diffraction, dispersion, etc...) to find out which ones reach the camera. This technique may also be used to pre-render photon maps to add a more realistic touch to games.

3D

(Graphics) The name of your third dimension for viewing things. The first two being width and height, the third being depth.

Pixel Ratio

(Graphics) The pixel ratio is the ratio of the pixel's width to its height. If the pixels are square, the pixel ratio is 1 and the number of pixels in X divided by the number of pixels in y equals the aspect ratio. Pixel_Ratio = Pixel_Width / Pixel_Height X_Resolution / Y_Resolution = Aspect_Ratio / Pixel_Ratio See Aspect Ratio

Vertex

(Graphics) The point of intersection of lines or the point opposite the base of a polygon or other object.

Scaling

(Graphics) The process of altering the size of an object.

Texturing

(Graphics) The process of applying a texture to something.

Dithering

(Graphics) The process of creating an illusion of more colors than are really available in the current color depth by creatively arranging individual pixel patterns.

Rasterization

(Graphics) The process of creating an image from 3D components.

Inverse Kinematics (IK)

(Graphics) The process of creating realistic positioning of a complex object, such as an arm, based on the positioning of a lower-level node in the skeletal heirarchy, such as the twisting of a hand. This process works in the reverse of forward kinematics.

Animation

(Graphics) The process of creating simulated motion or activity.

Texture Mapping

(Graphics) The process of mapping a 2D image to a polygon. Often the polygon is rotated and a different size so that the texture must be rotated and scaled.

Fogging

(Graphics) The process of putting a hazy, fog-like area near the end of the visibility distance so that objects appear to disapear more naturally.

Refresh Rate

(Graphics) The rate at which the screen is drawn, usually measure per seconds as frames per second (FPS) in software and Hz in hardware.

Point Filtering

(Graphics) The simplest form of texture filtering. This method will just take the closest texel to the pixel, which will increase the jaggedness of a texture as it gets larger.

Affine Texture Mapping

(Graphics) The simplest form of texture mapping. The texture coordinates of a polygon are linearly interpolated across the polygon surface. This technique does not account for perspective and therefore produces swimming texture effects.

Cartesian Coordinate System

(Graphics) The standard coordinate system. With three dimensions, there are three scalars, x, y, and z used to represent a point at a given distance from a reference point, the origin.

Pitch

(Graphics) The width of a drawable surface multiplied by the number of bytes per pixel. For instance an 800x600 screen at 16-bit color would have a pitch of 1600.

JPEG

(Graphics) This is an ISO standard by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEGs work with color resolutions of up to millions of colors (also called 24 bit color). When you save an image as a JPEG, it gets compressed, making the file smaller. However, JPEG compression is lossy, so each time you save a JPEG, you lose some data and reduce image quality. When saving a JPEG, you can choose a compression level from low to high. Low compression gives you better quality but a larger file size. High compression gives you a smaller file - but less quality.

Anti-aliasing

(Graphics) This is the process that gets rid of the aliasing effect. A filtering process is normally used in the process that removes "jaggedness effect" produced by pixels.

Mip Mapping

(Graphics) This process takes a texture and breaks it down into smaller pieces such as 1/2 the size, then 1/2 the size of that, and so on, so that different textures can be used at different distances from the texture. This helps the texture retain what its overall image should look like at different distances.

Prerendered

(Graphics) This type of 3D scene is rendered and then stored, usually as a bitmap, and are often used as backgrounds and 2D sprites in games, like Nintendo�s Donkey Kong country. Unlike scenes that are rendered in real-time, prerendered images cannot have their viewing angle changed during runtime.

Rotate

(Graphics) To change the angle an object is being drawn at, or the camera is looking at.

Prerender

(Graphics) To create graphics outside of a program. The opposite would be to algorithmically, procedurally or dynamically create the graphics at run-time.

Tesselate

(Graphics) To divide an object into geometric primtives, such as triangles, for the purpose of simplification. Used either to make rendering or to reduce the complexity of the object.

T&L

(Graphics) Tranformantion and Lighting Recent 3D accelerators now have special features for hardware based transformations, which were traditionally control by the software, as well as hardware.

Motion Capture

(Graphics) Used for creating complex movements for 3D objects, such as a persons walk, run, jump or other actions. This is currently used more on console games due to the expensive costs in owning or renting equipment.

Bilinear Filtering

(Graphics) Uses the four adjacent corners to interpolate the value of a pixel in a texture map. This decreases the jaggedness of a texture when it gets larger, but also takes more memory and gives it a blurred look.

Texture Filtering

(Graphics) Using a filtering method, such as point sampling, bilinear, trilinear, or anisotrophic filtering, to resolve problems caused by applying a 2D texture to a 3D object.

Bilinear Interpolation / Bilerp

(Graphics) When viewing a texture up close the texture becomes very aliased and ugly (for an example, in Doom get as close to a wall as possible). Bilinear Interpolation is the process of smoothing out the texture so that it is blurred and looks more smoothed when viewed up close.

XGA

(Graphics) XGA is a Monitor Graphics Type which contains 15-inch units with a native resolution of 1024x768 pixels.

Rendering Context

(Graphics) aka: RC The active area of memory that OpenGL writes information derived from the Model View, Projection View and Texture matrices, that is displayed on screen. Similar to the Device Context (DC) used by Windows when drawing graphics with GDI.

gMAX

(Graphics) gMAX is a powerful subset of the game industry-standard 3D content creation tool � 3d studio max � that will be provided to game players for no charge on the web. gMAX is narrowly targeted at the interactive computer & video games market, and will be based on the next major release of 3d studio max. It is designed to serve as a highly extensible and customizable content creation platform for both professional and consumer use.

CG

(Graphics) nVidia's (relatively) simple shader language. It's currently one of the most commonly used shader languages, and it supports OpenGL and Direct3D even on non-nVidia cards. Toolkit and information can be found at www.developer.nvidia.com

Interrupt

(Hardware) 1. aka Hardware Interrupts: A request for attention from the processor. When the processor receives an interrupt, it suspends its current operations, saves the status of its work, and transfers control to a special routine known as an interrupt handler, which contains the instructions for dealing with the particular situation that caused the interrupt. ex: int 0x09 - keyboard interrupt 2. aka Software interrupts: functions stored in memory by the operating system to be used by programs to facilitate different tasks (aka system calls). ex: int 0x21 in MS-DOS

PowerPC

(Hardware) A RISC microprocessor designed by IBM and Motorola and Apple. Most well known for its presence inside Macintoshes, although it is quite popular in IBM's server lineup. The most powerful model at the time of this writing is the POWER4 (Server, 64-bit). It has been modified to produce the PPC970 (G5, Desktop, 64-bit) for desktop machines.

Net Yaroze

(Hardware) A black Playstaton hobbyist's development kit (which also looks exactly like the regular Playstation & is made by Sony) that enables you to develop your own video games just for the Net Yaroze. But only members can participate. More information can be found at the following address: http://www.scea.sony.com/net/what.htm

Graphics Card

(Hardware) A card which processes graphics for a computer. * A graphics card is given an image in digital form. The card then takes care of converting the digital data and squirting down a cable into a monitor or TV in their preferred analog[ue] form. Modern cards also provide some features which help speed the creation of an image by the computer. For instance, most now have blitters which speed up copying rectangular chunks of memory around from A to B.

3DFX

(Hardware) A company that used to make the Voodoo series of 3D accelerator cards. Notable for its innovations (SLI mode) as well as arcade hardware (some of Midway's arcade machines, including Hydro Thunder and Gauntlet Legends, were basically PCs running souped-up 3dfx cards). After a number of disappointments following the voodoo3 series, they (and their proprietary graphics API, GLIDE) were purchased by NVidia in 2000.

CD-RW

(Hardware) A device that can READ and WRITE data to CDs. With this device, data can be "Fixed" (replaced) on CDs to which data had once been burned. The CR-RW can only fix CDs that are REWRITABLE.

CD-R

(Hardware) A device used to WRITE Compact Discs. This is also known as the "CD - BURNER," because it burns data onto the CD with a laser. CD-Rs cannot write data to CDs on which data have already been written.

PlayStation

(Hardware) A game console made by Sony.

Gameboy

(Hardware) A handheld game console created by Nintendo. A second, smaller version was later released. This was the Gameboy Pocket. A third model was called the Gameboy Color. Recently another, more powerful version called the Gameboy Advance was released.

Hard Drive

(Hardware) A media storage device which is usually built into the computer tower, and serves as major storage space for programs and other data.

Modem

(Hardware) A shorter term for "modulator/demodulator". This is a device which takes data from a computer and turns it into a series of audio pulses which can be sent over a telephone line; on the receiving end, these pulses are "demodulated" into a copy of the original data. Modern internet devices like ADSL and cable no longer use this exact type of technology, but the term "modem" has been expanded to include these devices.

XBox

(Hardware) A videogame console created by Microsoft. Released in November 2001.

GameCube

(Hardware) A videogame system created by Nintendo. Released in November 2001.

AGP

(Hardware) Accelerated Graphics Port. A specialized graphics port which gives a dedicated port between the display system and system memory, surpassing the Expansion Bus, for greater speed.

MMX

(Hardware) An advancement to Intel microprocessors which added 57 new instructions which are designed to handle video, audio, and graphical data more efficiently.

Dolphin

(Hardware) An early production name for the IBM/ATI-based Nintendo GameCube.

Joypad

(Hardware) An input device which consists of a button like surface which can usually move in 4 distinct directions and 4 more combinations and is almost exclusively hand-held. Usually used for giving directional information and comes with buttons for action input.

Joystick

(Hardware) An input device which consists of a stick that comes up from a platform which can be hand-held or mounted onto a surface. Usually used for giving directional information and comes with buttons for action input.

Cable Modem

(Hardware) An internet service which transmits data through a thick cable to the consumer; naturally, this means that a lot of data can be transmitted quickly. Though the technology itself has no self-imposed limits -- other than the maximum speed possible for transmission -- cable companies often place maximum speeds on the internet connections, since people generally don't need much upload speed. This is in the best interest of the consumer, because it allows everyone to have fair access to the total amount of speed available to the company.

BIOS

(Hardware) Basic Input/Output System The part of a PC that manages communications between CPU and peripherals. The BIOS is, in most cases, embedded in a EEPROM (rewritable memory ROM). The BIOS manage the first reads on the disk drive, to boot, for instance.

Interlacing

(Hardware) Because the electron guns that draw pictures on TV screens were initially too slow to draw the screen in one pass, the first lines at the top of the screen would be fading by the time the last lines were drawn, pictures on TVs were drawn using what is known as interlacing. First the odd lines down are drawn (line 1, 3, 5, etc.). Then the even lines are drawn (line 2, 4, 6, etc.). The image shown by one pass is known as a field, and the complete image drawn by two passes is known as a frame. Standard TV broadcasts run at 30 frames per second (fps). In an effort to boost hype for a product, sometimes ads or press releases would state that their game was "60 fields per second", instead of 30 fps. Most computer monitors are non-interlaced as well as many arcade screens.

CGA

(Hardware) CGA - Color Graphics Array IBM defined graphic card. Created to provide color graphic (4 colored modes 320x200, 'hacked' 16 colored mode 160x100).

CRT

(Hardware) Cathode Ray Tube. A raster display consisting of an electron gun (Cathode) that fires charged particles (electrons) at a thin film of phosphorus, thus exciting the phosphor and causing it to emit light.

CD

(Hardware) Compact Disc. The current default media for distributing software to end users.

DVD

(Hardware) DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) DVD storage capacity is: 17 Gbyte DVD delivers the data at a higher rate than CD-ROM. This technology could replace the Video Cassett tape due to the high quality of the sound and video. Unlike video cassett tapes, DVDs do not degrade in picture quality over time.

EGA

(Hardware) EGA - Enhanced Graphics Array IBM defined graphic card. Followup to CGA. Provides up to 16 colors out of a palette of 64.

FPU

(Hardware) Floating Point Unit. The unit that compute all floating point types. For Intel Processors series, until the 80486 (1992), the FPU was dissociated from the main Processor (x87 series).

GPF

(Hardware) General Protection Fault - CPU error which can be intercepted by the OS to perform different tasks or generate an error. Can be caused by: - a process who violated its assigned resources and tried to access a resource which it was not granted (often unavailable memory due to pointer errors). - a process who tried to acces memory in a lower ring (higher priority, usually kernel memory) The GPF can also be used for memory swapping - the OS catches the GPF involved in reading a memory page which is in the swap file so it loads it into RAM and then resumes execution. Usually a GPF results in a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) in Windows

MCA Bus

(Hardware) IBM's PS/2 32-bit expansion bus. In 1987, IBM created the PS/2, with a 32-bit expansion bus, to replace the original PC's ISA 8 bit (and later 16 bit) buses. The MCA bus was patented, so other brands than IBM couldn't use them. That has lead a consortium to create EISA bus. Very few cards are in MCA bus nowadays.

Vertical Retrace

(Hardware) In a CRT, this is the time during which the electron gun is repositioning itself from the lower right to the upper left. It is during this time that proper page flipping is done, so that smooth, tear free animation can be done.

IHV

(Hardware) Independent Hardware Vendor. A hardware manufacturer that specializes in manufacturing a single type of hardware rather than manufacturing full computer systems.

LCD

(Hardware) LCD - Liquid Crystal Display. LCD screens are used widely among electronic devices. Probably the most common application of LCD screens, is in Digital Watches. How it works is as follows: Two sheets of clear plastic are pancaked together with a think lair of a substance called Liquid Crystal. When a voltage is applyed, it causes the liquid crystal to turn opaq.

MIPS

(Hardware) Million Instructions Per Second. Measurement of speed for processors.

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) Cable

(Hardware) Not to be confused with, "Integrated Development Environment," this cable connects varius drives to the motherboard allowing data to quickly get from one to the other. It is generally shaped like a ribbon, though round IDE cables do exist.

Playstation 2

(Hardware) Playstation 2 is Sony's latest consoleas of 2002. It was the first of the next generation consoles to be released, and gains much of its popularity from thew Final Fantasy series of games it runs. THe PS2 now has online capabilities, and along with Final Fantasy XI, hard drives can be purchased as an expansion for the PS2. The PS2 is powered by a 250MHz Sony/Toshiba CPU, dubbed the "Emotion Machine." You may develop on PS2 using Sony's PS2 SDK for Linux. PS3 is planned to be released in the near future.

PIT

(Hardware) Programmable Interval Timer. A timer present in all PCs with a frequency of 1.193MHz (2^32/3600) with 3 outputs, channel 0 causing IRQ 0 (int 8), channel 1 for memory refresh and channel 2 for the PC Speaker.

VGA

(Hardware) Video Graphics Array: Analog graphics standard introduced with the IBM PS/2 series. Backwards compatible with EGA at the BIOS level, but provides higher resolutions. Supports a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels in 16 colors (mode 0x12) out of a palette of 262,144 colors. Mode switching can be done using int 0x10, func 0x00

XGA

(Hardware) XGA is a Monitor Graphics Type which contains 15-inch units with a native resolution of 1024x768 pixels.

Cassandra

(Morale diminished with each passing day...) A person who foresees the future (usually pending doom) but is ignored for various reasons.

RAID

(Hardware) RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Basically you can connect normal IDE drives onto your RAID controller and then select a mode for operation, most controllers at time of writting support 4 modes, stripping (RAID 0), Mirroring (RAID 1), stripping and Mirroring (RAID 0+1) as well as the SPAN mode. To Use RAID 0 or 1 you need 2 hard drives (any normal IDE), and for 0+1 you need at least 4 drives, while for spanning you can have any number greater then 2. RAID 1 impoves your proformence by turning your connected hard drives effectively into one large one, as well as sharing the work between them, which doubles the proformence of the drives. RAID 0 creates and stores a on the fly copy of your first hard disk onto the seccond drive in case of failure. RAID 0+1, you have a RAID 0 working which is backed up onto other drives which are running in RAID 1. SPAN connects any number of drives >2 togethor so that they appear as one big drive, however it DOES NOT share work between them like RAID 0, so you don't get a proformence increase.

Sega Genesis

(Hardware) Sega Genesis (AKA: Mega Drive in many parts of the world): A 16-bit videogame system that was made by Sega. Released in the US on the 1st of September in 1989. A second smaller scaled down version was released in 1993 called the Genesis Mark II; as well a company called Majesco released a third system in 1998 called the Mark III. There was also a couple attachments released for the system as well, including a CD ROM drive called the Sega CD (AKA: Mega CD) and a 32 bit adapter named the 32x. Other variations of the Genesis console include a portable hand-held version with a LCD screen called the Sega Nomad and a combination Sega Genesis/Sega CD system named the Sega CDx (Or Multi Mega).

Sega Saturn

(Hardware) Sega's home console, the successor to the Sega Megadrive. It failed due to a lack of developer interest due to the unnecessary complexity of the system; a small but dedicated development scene exists surrounding it much like that surrounding the Megadrive.

PSX

(Hardware) Sony Playstation.

SNES

(Hardware) Super Nintendo. (NES, Nintendo Entertainment System). Successor to the NES, this system was 16-bit and the reigning champion for its time period in consoles. (WWW)

Console

(Hardware) Systems designed specifically for playing video games. Currently consoles would include the Sony Playstation, Nintendo N64 and Sega Dreamcast.

CPU

(Hardware) The Central Processing Unit of a computer, also called the computer's "processor." The CPU acts as the computer's brain by performing important calculations and executing the commands found in a program.

PCI BUS

(Hardware) The Periferal Componet Interconnect BUS is used for all types of hardware components, including (non-AGP) video cards, sound cards, extra ports, and others. The slots (generally 3 to 5) are located in the lower left portion of the motherboard (under the AGP BUS) and are white or gray.

Dreamcast

(Hardware) The Sega Dreamcast is the last console of Sega Enterprises, which was released in 1998 in Japan and 1999 in North-America and Europe. Since 2000 various freeware games are available thanks to the open source and free development kit KallistiOS. The Dreamcast is the one and only videogame console which makes it possible due the free development libraries like SDL to create software legal without using any Sega libraries. Three commercial games without Sega licence were released 2003 and 2004 this way. Still, there are publishers like www.dreamcast-scene.com or www.goatstore.com who even help out single programmers to release their software commercially on CD.

Dreamcast

(Hardware) The latest console from Sega. (WWW)

Noise Gate

(Hardware) The noise gate is a piece of studio equipment used to control the volume of an audio signal. The original intended purpose of this is to clean up unwanted noise from a recording, but some nice effects can also be achieved using a noise gate. Used simply, the noise gate only allows an audio signal above a certain threshold to play. This can be used to clean up unwanted noise by setting the threshold above the level of the noise. A typical use of the noise gate as an audio effect is to have it controlled by an additional track - for example, a beat supplied by a drum machine. In this case, the gate can be applied over the top of an audio track such as a synth pad, or perhaps vocal 'oohs'. By 'opening' and 'closing' the gate based on the rhythm supplied by another track (which may or may not be audible itself), the track in question is effectively cut up into a nice rythm. This is often used in electronic music, especially Trance. Software noise gates are also available.

Button

(Hardware) The simplest form of interface the button either provides pressed or non-pressed information to the game. Buttons are usually used for action commands, such as punching, kicking, pressing the gas/break, or shooting.

Xbox360

(Hardware) The successor to the Microsoft Xbox, this console uses new ATI graphics chips as well as multi-core IBM PowerPC CPUs capable of running six simultaneous threads in hardware.

Cache Memory

(Hardware) The term cache refers to a fast intermediate memory within a larger memory system (Handy, 1993). Cache memory, utilized on machines such as the IBM System/360 Model 91 as early as 1968, was created to address the von Neumann bottleneck. Despite the efforts of engineers, early computer processors processed information much faster than they could access information from main memory. The low ratio of processor speed to memory access time in this case was so common on von Neumann machines that it became known as the von Neumann bottleneck (Baker, 1994). The introduction of cache memory, a special form of random access memory (RAM), helps to eliminate this bottleneck by providing one-cycle memory access to the processor (Hayes, 1998). Cache memory serves as a buffer between a CPU and main memory (Hayes, 1998). Data and instructions located inside cache memory may be accessed significantly faster than data and instructions in main memory. Typically, the larger the cache, the faster the computer runs as a whole (Corporate Technology Direct, 1996).

Triad

(Hardware) The term given to a pixel in a monitor based on the red, green and blue components that make up each one. In other viewing devices, such as Head Mounted Displays, resolution is often given in triads instead of pixels.

Fill Rate

(Hardware) Used to describe the number of pixels a card can move onto into view, thus the screen. Often the fill rate is given with different qualfiers, such as textured, zbuffered, filtered pixels.

Clown Shoes

(Morale diminished with each passing day...) A really bad mistake or decision born out of shortsightedness, inexperience or just plain incompetence.

DarkPathing

(Morale diminished with each passing day...) Deep, deep bitching about the project or company. Contagious negative ranting that can spread toxins into the company culture.

Rally Monkey

(Morale diminished with each passing day...) Person who engages in ill-advised attempts to raise morale.

Gone All Kurtz

(Morale diminished with each passing day...) Someone tasked to get something under control who instead makes it worse.

Donkey

(Morale diminished with each passing day...) Used as an adjective to indicate something as terrible and utterly lame (noun form: "Donkey Porn")

Lipstick on the Pig

(Morale diminished with each passing day...) When you know the project should be cancelled (high likelihood of vaporware) but the publisher still wants it in the box and on the shelf.

Crossover-Cable

(Network) A cable specifically used in network situations involving only two computers. By using a crossover-cable there is no need of a network hub, saving you money. Often used in home situations and direct comunication between two network servers. There are two variants: -One using your COM/PARALEL ports. (not recomended: slow) -And one using your Network Interface Card. Check your local suplier for details, a good suplier always has a couple of crossover's on stock.

OpenSSL

(Network) A collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library.

FTP site

(Network) A computer or website which makes files available for download using File Transfer Protocol.

Network

(Network) A group of computers which are connected together through hardware and software.

Hub

(Network) A piece of hardware that connects multiple network connections together, such as computers. Can be active or passive. Sends a brodcast signle to all computers untill a response is received from the destination client.

Router

(Network) A router is a piece of hardware that directs network traffic from one network to the other, and can also act as a firewall.

Modem

(Network) A shorter term for "modulator/demodulator". This is a device which takes data from a computer and turns it into a series of audio pulses which can be sent over a telephone line; on the receiving end, these pulses are "demodulated" into a copy of the original data. Modern internet devices like ADSL and cable no longer use this exact type of technology, but the term "modem" has been expanded to include these devices.

TCP/IP

(Network) A suite of protocols that is the standard on the Internet. There are 13 protocols overall, including telnet, FTP, TCP, UDP and RDP. See TCP and UDP.

Switch

(Network) A switch acts like a hub in that it connects multiple network connections, but is "smarter" in that it knows where to send them, it cuts down on broadcasting.

FTP

(Network) An abbreviation for "File Transfer Protocol". This is a technology which allows the transfer of files from one computer to another. FTP also allows for limited access to the files on a computer by reequesting a user name and password. Anyone who does not have a password can enter the user name "anonymous" and his e-mail address as a password. But users with special priviliges may have access to files to which the general public does not have access.

Client / Server

(Network) An architecture in which there is a main source of information, the server, and it is accesed when the information is needed by the clients.

Cable Modem

(Network) An internet service which transmits data through a thick cable to the consumer; naturally, this means that a lot of data can be transmitted quickly. Though the technology itself has no self-imposed limits -- other than the maximum speed possible for transmission -- cable companies often place maximum speeds on the internet connections, since people generally don't need much upload speed. This is in the best interest of the consumer, because it allows everyone to have fair access to the total amount of speed available to the company.

Node

(Network) Any connection in a network with a unique MAC address. This can be, for example, a computer or a printer.

ADSL

(Network) Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. As opposed to SDSL (Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line), an ADSL connection runs through an ordinary phone line and receives data over the internet at high speeds, comparable to those of cable modems, though it transmits data at only a fraction of the speed at which it receives data -- but still faster than a conventional 56Kbps modem.

Repeater

(Network) Device used in networks to regenerate analog and digital signals. Analog signals are simply amplified, while digital signals are nearly reproduced.

Crosstalk

(Network) Electromagnetic interference, usually a near by cable or electronic device, affecting a signal being transmited over a medium network cable. In cases where closely bound cables/devices is unavoidable, shielded cabling is used.

IP

(Network) Internet Protocol

IRC

(Network) Internet Relay Chat. A client-server created to allow people to talk to each over a network. The unit runs a IRC client, such as mIRC, and connects to an IRC server and can then talk to other through channels or directly.

IPX

(Network) Internetwork Packet Exchange. An unreliable (datagram) protocol introduced by Novell Netware. Complimentary protocol would be SPX.

LAN

(Network) Local Area Network. A computer network limited to the immediate area, often connected with Ethernet. It is often supported in multiplayer games.

AggroNerd

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) Hyper critical, combative, argumentative developer.

MAC address

(Network) Media Access Control address. The address on a piece of hardware, on the MAC layer of the network, that is used to identify a node on a network. This address is unchangable since it resides in the hardware itself.

MOSPF

(Network) Multicast Open Shortest Path First. A Multicast Version of OSPF

NIC

(Network) Network Interface Card. Hardware used to interact through a network. Usually on a LAN.

OSPF

(Network) Open Shortest Path First. The OSPF is a (link state) routing protocol used by the Internet community. OSPF is classified as an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP), this means that it distributes routing information between routers belonging to a single Autonomous System. OSPF is used over IP. That means that an OSPF packet is transmitted with an IP data packet header. The PROTOCOL field in the IP header is set to 89 for OSPF. OSPF is designated to be run internal to a single Autonomous System. Each OSPF router maintains an identical database describing the Autonomous System's topology. From this database, a routing table is calculated by constructing a shortest path tree. OSPF recalculates routes quickly in the face of topological changes, utilizing a minimum of routing protocol traffic. Separate routes can be calculated for each IP type of service. OSPF allows sets of networks to be grouped together. Such a grouping is called an area and it's topology is hidden from the rest of the Autonomous System. This information hiding enables a significant reduction in routing traffic. An area is a generalization of an IP subnetted network. All OSPF routing protocol exchanges are authenticated. This means that only trusted routers can participate in the AS's routing.Information Source

PPP

(Network) Point-to-Point-Protocol, used in internet connections.

Bandwidth

(Network) Refers to a measurement of how many bits can be transfered over a path at once. For instance a pipe may be able to send 16 bits at once which would be called 16 bits of bandwidth.

SPX

(Network) Sequenced Packet Exchange. A reliable network protocol introduced by Novell Netware. Complimentary protocol would be IPX.

SDSL

(Network) Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line. This is a high-speed internet connection which, like a cable modem, runs at very high speeds. Unlike conventional ADSL (Assymetric Digital Subscriber Line), however, an SDSL connection is "symmetric" -- it receives data just as fast as it sends data, and in both cases, this is very fast. However, SDSL requires its own special line -- whereas ADSL runs through a normal phone line -- and is very expensive.

Telnet

(Network) Telnet is a protocol that allows you to connect to remote computers (called hosts) over a TCP/IP network (such as the Internet). You use software called a telnet client on your computer to make a connection; there is a telnet server on the remote host, which the telnet client negotiates with to establish a connection. Once connected, the client becomes a virtual terminal, and allows you to communicate with the host computer from your computer. In most cases, you'll be asked to log into the remote system. This usually requires an account on that system. Occasionally you can log in as guest or public without having an account. Telnet clients are available for all major operating systems.

Uploading

(Network) The process of transfering information from a client to a host. Ex: When you send a file from your computer to an FTP site.

Download

(Network) The process of transfering information from a host source to a client. Ex: When you surf the web you are downloading information from web sites.

attenuation

(Network) The reduction in signal strength during transmission over a network. Too much attenuation can render a signal incomprehensible. To solve this networks implement repeaters, and follow the maximum length standards for the medium (cabling) in use.

Latency

(Network) The time it takes for information to travel. Often measured in the time information can go across a network and return with the "ping" command. Sometimes called lag.

Lag

(Network) The time it takes information to go from one computer to another. Usually it is only refered to when it is noticeably slow. See latency.

TCP

(Network) Transmission Control Protocol, is used for reliable packet transfer. Packets are slower in nature as they are always checked and will arrive to the applications in the proper order.

UDP

(Network) User Datagram Protocol. An unreliable method of sending packets, UDP is faster but less stable in terms of reliable information than TCP. UDP is often used for faster transmission of data that is not useful at a later time.

Online

(Network) Usually refered to as being on the Internet or using the Internet.

VNC

(Network) VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is, in essence, a remote display system which allows you to view a computing 'desktop' environment not only on the machine where it is running, but from anywhere on the Internet and from a wide variety of machine architectures. VNC's Website

WAN

(Network) Wide Area Network. A network that spans a great distance, usually over a public network, such as telephone. WANs are typically 2 or more connected LANs. The Internet is the largest.

WinSock

(Network) Windows Sockets. An API for sockets through windows, which provides TCP/IP network programming support.

Crawford, Chris

(People) A pioneer in the games industry who left to pursue developing an Interactive Fiction 'engine' for creating story worlds. (WWW)

Shelly, Bruce

(People) Along with Tony Goodman, one of the masterminds behind the Age of Empires series. Currently designer and producer at Ensemble Studios.

Roberts, Chris

(People) Chris Roberts is best known as the creator of the Wing Commander series. He is one of gaming's most ambitious and influential designers. In 1996, he left Origin to found Digital Anvil.

Suzuki, Yu

(People) Creator of many of the most successful SEGA games, such as the "Sonic the Hedgehog" series, the Virtua Fighter series and the most expensive video game ever made: "Shenmue"

Kojima, Hideo

(People) Creator of the higly acclaimed Metal Gear series, which include such titles as: Metal Gear, Metal Gear: Snake's Revengene, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid VR Missions, Metal Gear Solid Integral [Japan], Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. KCEJ - Computer Entertainment Japan

Crammond, Geoff

(People) Creator of the legendary games F-1 World Grand Prix, Grand Prix 2, and soon to be released, Grand Prix 3. He was the first person to realistically simulate tracks, AI, and the feel of a race car on the PC.

Carmack, John

(People) John Carmack is lead programmer and co-owner of id software. He's known to be one of the top game programmers in the world. He develops core technologies for all id titles such as Wolfenstein 3d, Doom, Quake etc.

Steed, Paul

(People) Known primarily for his models and animations for Quake2 and QuakeIII:Arena while at id Software, Paul Steed has been in the game development industry since the end of 1991. He has written 13 articles for Game Developer magazine. He is author of the book Modeling a Character in Max and is currently wrapping up his second book entitled Animating Real-Time Game Characters. He has been a regular speaker at the Game Developer Conference since 1997.

Lanning, Lorne

(People) Lorne Lanning is one of the creators of the PlayStation's "Abe's Oddysse" [sic] and "Abe's Exoddus." He is one of the loudest detractors of the PlayStation2, and is the creator of "Munch's Oddysee."

Abrash, Michael

(People) Michael Abrash was one of the programmers of Quake, he is an expert in Artificial Intelligence. He has been one of the people who has dedicated more time in teach the tricks of programming, with his books, "The Zen Of Assembly", "Graphics Programming Black Book". He is currently employed at Microsoft.

Ethereal Darkness Interactive

(People) Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer founded by Raymond Jacobs and well known to GameDev.net; over the course of three years they designed, produced and sold the Indie game Morning's Wrath.

Adams, Scott

(People) Not to be confused with the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, Scott Adams was one of the pioneers of the text adventure genre. The first text adventure he wrote was titled "Adventureland." He still is a creator of text adventures to this day.

Romero, John

(People) One of the designers of the original Quake and Doom games, is now mostly known for the critical fiasco of Daikatana. His early work, especially the Chulthu-style Quake levels, is still widely regarded as one of the best works of the period.

Spector, Warren

(People) One of the premier producers/designers in the game industry. After a start in board games and traditional role-playing games at Steve Jackson Games and TSR, Inc., he joined Origin Systems, where he was involved with Ultima VI and VII: Serpent Isle, Ultima Underworld 1 & 2, System Shock, Wing Commander, and others. From there, he moved on to Looking Class Studios, where he was the producer of Thief: The Dark Project, and then he founded ION Storm Austin, where he created the Deus-Ex line of games and continued the Thief legacy.

Garriot, Richard

(People) Richard "Lord British" Garriot is best know as the creator of the Ultima series of RPGs.

GOF

(People) Short for The Gang Of Four, who consist of: � Erich Gamma � Richard Helm � Ralph Johnson � John Vlissides They are the authors of the criticly acclaimed book Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (ISBN: 0-201-63361-2 Addison-Wesley) When using the term "GOF" one usually means that book. With this book they imprinted the phrase "design pattern" on every programmers mind. It even has its own category here on Game Dictionary, "Design Patterns".

Meier, Sid

(People) Sid Meier, one of the most creative, influential, and successful game designers of all time, is most well known for his classic strategy games, Civilization and Railroad Tycoon. Meier has designed over a dozen games, including the award-winning Colonization, Pirates, Gettysburg and Alpha Centauri and founded two companies: Microrprose and Firaxis.

Mencher, Marc

(People) Specializing in game industry careers, Marc Mencher has helped thousands of job seekers. He is author of the book, Get in the Game; Careers in the Game Industry. He worked for several game companies such as Spectrum Holobyte, Microprose and The 3DO Company, before joining GameRecruiter.com. Marc served as President of the International Game Developers Network. He has spoken and held roundtables at several Game Developers Conferences and The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). In addition to representing the game industry�s hottest talent, Marc also volunteers his time as a career coach for graduates from Full Sail Real World Education, helping them land their first game industry jobs. His articles have been featured in GIGnews.com, Gamasutra, and GameWEEK. He works with the IGDA on chapter development and Games-Florida, a non-profit organization formed with the intent of nurturing and expanding the interactive multi-media industry in the state of Florida. He is also Technical Advisor and Executive Producer for the recently released PC Adventure Game, Watchmaker. Currently, Marc is working on the release of the PC Adventure Game Tony Tough and The Night of the Roasted Moths (PC) and a Action Shooter, Tsunami 2265 (PC & PS2), published by Got Game Entertainment.

Banana

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) A check to see if someone is actually reading something or is listening to you by putting the word "banana" into the conversation just to see if they notice.

Hand Waver

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) A person who is great at performing animated, hand-gesture-laden lectures, but never actually rolls up his sleeves and does anything

Flusher

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) A phone conference where you're muted the whole way through (and probably not even listening.)

Pixel Wanking

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) Analyzing a single frame for something that should not be analyzed.

Sponger

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) Anyone who goes into a bathroom with their shoes off.

Paper Awesome

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) As in, "Dude, that guy is paper awesome. He writes up all this crazy stuff and can't implement any of it."

LSD

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) Light Sensitive Douche. A phase some developers go through where they get a bit of fame and feel that wearing sunglasses indoors is the right image for them.

Alt-Tab

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) People with a reputation for not spending their time efficiently at work.

Polishing the Bolts Before the Engines Are On

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) Spending time tweaking and arguing minutia when there are raging fires in core systems.

Idea Guy

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) Used to indicate a trench developer who doesn't want to do any work. Came about after a string of underperformers in other departments asked to transition to design and were thus (Prod&QA) tasks like "learn the editor and build a scenario" or "learn the database" but, faced with such, decided they wanted a more mythical designer job.

Learned Helplessness

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) When a developer persistently reacts helplessly to a problem he/she is perfectly capable of solving, usually because other members of the team can be relied upon to solve these problems for him/her.

NIH Syndrome

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) When the wheel is re-invented in code because it was "Not Invented Here."

Shiny Object

(Problems arose amongst the humans...) the method of distracting incompetent (but unfirable) developers from hurting the project by derailing them into a harmless area of the game's development.

Scoping

(Prod&QA) A process where leads remove features from a game to meet deadlines.

Going Down a Rabbit Hole

(Prod&QA) Discussing the full implications of an idea to its logical conclusion.

Soggy Scrum

(Prod&QA) When some elements of scrum are mixed in with a waterfall production method.

Offline

(Prod&QA) Where conversations are suggested to go if a meeting gets sidetracked by some off-topic discussion.

Chicken and Egg problem

(Programmers) A workflow or engineering problem where two things (usually code and content) depend on one to exist before the other.

Pimp the Tech

(Programmers) Doing something to show the engine at its best (used ironically when the opposite is clearly happening.)

Egyptian Braces

(Programmers) K&R bracing as referred to by Stack Overflow, due to the resemblance to "Walk Like an Egyptian."

Minute Man

(Programmers) The engineer who estimates every task, no matter how complex, in minutes.

Eating Your Own Dog Food

(Programmers) When programmers become users of their own tools to put themselves in the shoes of the designers who will eventually use those tools to do production work.

False start

(Programmers) When you start over a significant way through coding or designing a system because you realize that it won't work, or there's a better way.

Yoda Conditional

(Programmers) if ( CONSTANT == variable ) instead of if ( variable == CONSTANT ).

Object Oriented Designing

(Programming) "Object-oriented design involves classifying real-world objects and actions as classes that can be created,manipulated and destroyed. The class should provide an interface,which is used to manipulate objects that are created from the class while keeping as much possible the implementation details hidden from the user.Objects used in OO design usually have to be unique and have functions or methods that can be applied to change its state,or to take advantage of the object's properties. "(Mickey Williams , ESSENTIAL VISUAL C++ 4).

Glide

(Programming) A 3D API developed by 3DFX for their Voodoo chipset.

Direct3D

(Programming) A 3D API developed by Micosoft and part of the DirectX SDK. Contains two modes, one working at a higher level but slower which is Retained Mode, and a lower level, faster version called Immediate Mode. (WWW)

Morfit

(Programming) A 3d engine developed in the late 1990s based on DirectX. Now known as 3d State. It has generated a large following of programmers and is praised for it's ease of use and compatability with many programming languages and compilers such as Microsoft Visual C++, Borland C++, Delphi, and Visual Basics. More information can be found at thier website at www.3dState.com.

Bank

(Programming) A 64K segment of video memory commonly found in older video cards which were made during the times of 16-bit compilers which had a maximum word size of 2 bytes, allowing a programmer to linearly address only 65K of screen space at any time.

RapidQ

(Programming) A BASIC compiler/interpreter/IDE by William Yu. It's features are very similar to Visual Basic, and it is easy to use. (It's also free!) For more information, or to get a free download, check out the following address:( WWW)

CDX

(Programming) A DirectX 2D, 3D and sound wrapper with some very simple game basics such as tile/map support for 2D and sprite movement. (WWW)

Object Pascal

(Programming) A Pascal-based object oriented programming language.

Flowchart

(Programming) A chart or plan that is used to help out in designing a program by using standard ANSI symbols to present the detailed series of steps needed to solve a programming problem (in chart form).

Library

(Programming) A collection of routines that are stored in a .lib file to be used at the linking time and are included in the executable file that is made.

Java

(Programming) A cross-platform programming language developed by Sun Microsystems that often used on web pages and is capable of handling graphics.

MingW32

(Programming) A free Windows C/C++ compiler by Mumit Khan.

DJGPP

(Programming) A freeware C++ compiler for DOS created by DJ Delorie.

Perlin Noise

(Programming) A function, inveted by Ken Perlin, who invented it to generate textures for the movie Tron (1982). One of the first films to use computer graphics extensively, Tron has a distinctive visual style. He won a special Academy Award for Perlin noise in 1997. Perlin noise is widely used in computer graphics for effects like fire, smoke and clouds. It is also frequently used to generate textures when memory is extremely limited, such as in demos.

Allegro

(Programming) A game programming library which has been ported to a number of operating systems. (WWW)

Asset

(Programming) A generic term for graphics, sounds, maps, levels, models, and any other resources. Generally assets are compiled into large files. The file formats may be designed for fast loading by matching in-memory formats, or tight compressions for handheld games, or designed to otherwise help in-game use. It is often useful to have an asset tool chain. The original models may be high-density models with R8G8B8A8 images. You may have a model striper and image compresser that reduces the model for LOD, and compresses the texture to a DXT compressed image. These assets may then go through further transformations, and end up in the large resource file.

OpenGL

(Programming) A graphics API, primarily used for 3D, created by Silicon Graphics which runs on most platform OSes. The prime competitor is Direct3D. (WWW)

Specular Highlighting

(Programming) A graphics technique which creates the illusion of light reflected on a surface. A specular highlight is the brightest point on an object.

Function

(Programming) A group of instructions that perform one or more functions, mathematical or otherwise. (e.g.: main() )

Header Files

(Programming) A header file is a file that is included into your program source. For Instance: #include "gamestuff.h" Whatever is in gamestuff.h is availible to the program.

Python

(Programming) A high-level general-purpose programming language. It was created by Guido Van Rossum in early 1990. Python is quite commonly referred to as 'executable psuedocode' in reference to it's incredibly simple syntax. Python.org

Pascal

(Programming) A language created to teach structured programming. It was designed by Niklaus Wirth in the early 1970s and named after Blaise Pascal, a mathematician.

Hungarian Notation

(Programming) A list of suggested prefixes to variable and function names created by Charles Simonyi. There are different versions for both Visual Basic and Visual C++. VC++: b - boolean operator by - byte (unsigned char) c - char cx / cy - size stored in a short dw - DWORD; double word, unsigned long fn - function h - handle i - integer l - long n - short int p - pointer s - string sz - ASCIIZ string terminated with a zero (null-terminated) w - WORD (unsigned int) x, y - short used as coordinates These can be combined in many cases. For instance, lpsz - long pointer to a null-terminated ASCII string. Visual Basic (almost all Visual Basic notations are three letters long): bln - Boolean chk - Check box cbo - Combo box cmd - Command button cur - Currency dtm - Date/Time (variant) dlg - Dialog Box (also used for common dialog control) dbl - Double (double-precision float) frm - Form fra - Frame hsb - Horizontal scroll bar img - Image box int - Integer lbl - Label lst - List box lng - Long mnu - Menu opt - Option (radio) button pic - Picture box shp - Shape or Line sng - Single str - String txt - Text box vnt - Variant vsb - Vertical scroll bar

Assembly Language

(Programming) A low level programming language that uses hexadecimal values in the form of mnemonics. Each mnemonic corresponds to one or a set of instructions which is specific to the processor that the code is being written for. This means that assembly language is not very portable but is extremely powerful for optimizations. In fact many C/C++ compilers today come with inline assemblers for optimization. However unlike C/C++ and other higher level languages, which shields the programmer from a lot of what's going on, in assembly language the programmer must enter every instruction that the computer is to do. That also means that to write anything useful takes many more lines of code.

Abstract Data Type

(Programming) A mathematically specified collection of data-storing entities with operations to create, access, change, etc. instances.

Paradigm

(Programming) A model or pattern. Specifically in programming, the way in which your code is organized, be it functional, modular, or object oriented.

Euphoria

(Programming) A new programming language. Remarkably simple, flexible, powerful language definition that is easy to learn and use. Euphoria runs under Windows, Dos, and Linux. Available memory usage equals the amount of onboard memory. Not an "object oriented" language yet achieves the benifits of these languages in a much simpler way.

DirectX

(Programming) A package of APIs developed by Microsoft to give developers greater control in developing applications for Windows. Individual APIs can normally be distinguished by having the prefix of Direct, as in DirectSomething. (WWW)

Variable

(Programming) A place in the computer's main memory in which a certain piece of information is stored. Each variable is composed of four parts: The memory location in which the information is stored; The type of information which will be stored in that location; The information which is stored in that location. An identifier (The name of the variable) When the programmer declares a variable, he is telling the computer to set aside a certain amount of space in memory. The computer needs to know how much space to set aside, and the programmer gives this information by declaring what type of information will be stored. (Some types of data require more space in memory than others.). The programmer must also have some way of keeping track of which information is stored in which location. Modern computer games require tremendous amounts of information. Keeping track of the exact memory location of each piece of information would be tedious. So the programmer assigns the variable an identifier. This is the name by which the programmer will refer to the variable. Suppose a programmer needs to retrieve the hit points of a character named Toadbottom. If the programmer needed to refer to this as "the information stored at 00FF 92CA" it would be a nightmare. But by using an identifier, the programmer could refer to this information as "Toadbottom.hitPoints", or something equally nice.

Pointer

(Programming) A pointer is a variable which stores the memory address at which certain information is stored. A pointer may hold the address of another variable, an object, a function, or other important data.

Dev-C++

(Programming) A popular free IDE (Integrated Develpment Environment) for varius C++ compilers. Comes packaged with the MinGW compiler but can be used with almost any command-line compiler.

Game Engine

(Programming) A program code that runs all aspects of the game.

Interpreter

(Programming) A program that executes programs. Different from a compiler which turns a source code into an executable, the interperter will run interpret-compile each command while running.

Compiler

(Programming) A program that translates a computer language into object code which can then be assembled into machine language. This is necessary for programming in all high level languages (like C/C++ and Pascal) which are not interpreted (like BASIC).

C++

(Programming) A programming language derived from C, based on Object Oriented Programming (OOP) using classes. The programming model for OOP focuses on the data being used instead of procedures.

Heuristic

(Programming) A rule of thumb or educated guess that reduces or limits a search on a domain that is difficult to search.

Algorithm

(Programming) A series of instructions for performing a task. This is the backbone of all programming.

Array

(Programming) A set of characters and/or numbers defined within a variable. Used in programming to store data, create matrices, and other. C++ Example: char array[11]="Hello world"; ^ ^ ^ ^ | | | | | | | contents | | | | | number of characters | | | variable name type

Wrapper

(Programming) A set of code that creates an interface for another set of code. For instance there are many kinds of wrapper for DirectX which simplify initialization and other processes.

3D Engine

(Programming) A set of code that creates graphics that looks 3D. An engine would have all the necessary components from loading the models and data to drawing them on the screen.

Technical Design Document

(Programming) A specification for all of the programming algorithms, data, and the interfaces between the data and the algorithms.

Big-O Notation

(Programming) A theoretical measure of the execution of an algorithm, usually the time or memory needed, given the problem size n, which is usually the number of items. Informally saying some equation f(n) = O(g(n)) means it is less than some constant multiple of g(n). More formally it means there are positive constants c and k, such that 0 f(n) cg(n) for all n k. The values of c and k must be fixed for the function f and must not depend on n.

XBasic

(Programming) A true compiler for the BASIC language by Max Reason. www.xbasic.org

Delphi

(Programming) A visual development environment created by Borland/Inprise, based on Object Pascal. Intended for use in Rapid Application Development.

Slerp

(Programming) Abbreviation for Spherical Interpolation, based on Lerp for Linear Interpolation. Spherical Interpolation is used in Quaternions.

BSOD

(Programming) Acronym short for "Blue Screen Of Death", commonly displayed after a major system error under numerous versions of Microsoft Windows. Seeing a BSOD generally means a reboot is soon to follow.

ActionScript

(Programming) ActionScript: A ECMAScript-based programming language used for controlling Macromedia Flash movies and applications. More

Visual C++

(Programming) An Integrated Development Environment used to create C++ programs.

IDE

(Programming) An Integrated Development Environment. An IDE consists of all the basic tools a programmer needs to create a program. Typically, an IDE consists of a text editor, a compiler, a debugger, and other necessary tools.

Minimax

(Programming) An algorithm for searching through possible moves. Used in turn based AI to calculate best move.

Sieve of Eratosthenes

(Programming) An algorithm to find all prime numbers up to a certain N. Begin with an (unmarked) array of integers from 2 to N. The first unmarked integer, 2, is the first prime. Mark every multiple of this prime. Repeatedly take the next unmarked integer as the next prime and mark every multiple of the prime.

Reference

(Programming) An alias of a variable.

Interpolation

(Programming) An approximation between two known values. In graphics, this is a process in which the software increases the resolution of an image by first filling the image with blank pixels and then coloring the blank ones based on the color values of its surrounding pixels.

Adaptive Learning

(Programming) An artificial intelligence system that can re-program itself based on environmental factors and influences.

Assembler

(Programming) An assembler is basically a low level compiler which translates assembly instructions into object code, which can be read by the processor. See also: Assembly language.

shader

(Programming) An assembly-like program which replaces part of the rendering pipeline with custom code. Shaders that affect vertices (vertex shaders) replace the normal transformation and lighting stage of the pipeline, while shaders that affect pixels (pixel shaders), work at the rasterization stage, affecting how the final screen color is determined. Shaders are supported in DirectX 8 and later, and in OpenGL through extensions (and as part of the proposed OpenGL 2.0 standard).

Boolean

(Programming) An expression resulting in a value of either true or false. In general, zero is considered false while any other value is true. Also used as a variable type in some languages for storing boolean results.

GDI

(Programming) Graphics Device Interface. The standard way to do graphics within Windows.

HAL

(Programming) Hardware Abstraction Layer. The driver used by DirectX to perform functions using hardware such as a graphics card.

Smalltalk

(Programming) An object-oriented programming language designed in the early days of Xerox PARC. Popular for its powerful English-like syntax and array of features only now coming to other programming languages (such as Java and C#). More information can be found here. It is extremely unpopular in game development, particularly due to the lack of large corporate backing -- it is nonetheless a good environment for learning and playing with the extremely powerful API.

Genesis3D

(Programming) An open source 3D engine which has recieved a large amount of community support. (WWW)

Binary Operator

(Programming) An operator(like +, -, *, or /) that take two operands.

Ternary Operator

(Programming) An set of operators that take three operands. In C, the ternary operators are ? and :, and the syntax for their use is ? : .

API

(Programming) Application Program Interface. A set of routines which acts as a go-between for the operating system and a program. For instance, DirectX is a Windows API.

ANN

(Programming) Artificial Neural Net: A structure based on several weighted nodes used to process inputs. Particularly useful to Artificial Intelligence, because they aren't perfectly precise, and can be "trained" in a more realistic fashion.

Hierarchical Artificial Intelligence

(Programming) Artificial intelligence that is build on several levels, in order to produce concrete and local actions from a global concept or strategy. Mostly used in Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games, in order to simulate military hierarchy.

DarkBasic

(Programming) Basic based lenguage made by The Games Creator which features easy direct 3d use provided by his functions

BASIC

(Programming) Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Originally created to teach the basics of programming, it uses a loose type casting system and has been brought back into the mainstream by Microsoft's Visual Basic.

Emergent Behavior

(Programming) Behavior that was not explicitly designed but occurs from the existing routines. Usually implemented by defining simple rules that allow some overlapping.

CVS

(Programming) Concurrent Versioning System: A system for managing simultaneous development of files. It is in common use in large programming projects, and is also useful to system administrators, technical writers, and anyone who needs to manage files. More info at http://www.cvshome.org/

CMS

(Programming) Content Management System: A backend portal system which assists in the management (creation, deletion and modification) of content on web pages. Some examples are PHPNukeor GeekLog.

Debug

(Programming) Debugging is the process of tracking and eliminating errors or bugs from your source code.

Fuzzy Logic

(Programming) Developed by Lofty Zadeth (UC Berkeley), it is based on a system of logic what uses 0s and 1s instead of True and False to attempt to more accurately represent a conclusion that cannot be a True or False result.

D3D

(Programming) Direct3D. Part of the API DirectX for Windows, it handles 3D rendering.

DLL

(Programming) Dynamic Link Library. Used to contain code that can be ran from executable but does not have to be compiled each time, practical to distributing abstracted functions.

Parallax Occlusion Mapping

(Programming) Employs per-pixel ray-tracing for dynamic lighting of surfaces in real-time on the GPU. The method uses a high precision algorithm for approximating view-dependent surface extrusion for a given height field to simulate motion parallax and perspective-correct depth. Additionally, the method allows generation of soft shadows in real-time for surface occlusions. Alternatively, POM can be coupled with well-known bump mapping algorithms such as normal mapping if physical accuracy can be sacrificed for greater computational efficiency.

Euphoria

(Programming) Euphoria is a new programming language. A remarkably simple, flexible, powerful language definition that is easy to learn and use. Euphoria runs under Windows, Dos, and Linux. Available memory usage equals the amount of onboard memory. Not an "object oriented" language yet achieves the benifits of these languages in a much simpler way. The language definition is easy to learn and use.

FSM

(Programming) Finite State Machine. A "machine" called every frame to control an object. An FSM can take care of allmost everything by looking at the current state, plus the input provided for it, and thereby achieving a new state.

Foo

(Programming) Foo is a generic word that game designers use to stand for any object.

Recursion

(Programming) For a computer programmer, this is when a function you've written has to call itself in order to get a result. (The classic, textbook example is a routine which works out the factorial of a number.) It can be very elegant if done right. It can also be a complete bastard to debug if done wrong.

Tutorial

(Programming) For game programming turoials of all type go to the: GameDev.net Programming Reference section.

C-Script

(Programming) Formally "WDL". C-style programming langauge used in Conitec's game developing kit "3D GameStudio", available at http://www.3dgamestudio.com

Tribology

(Programming) From the Greek root "Tribos" which means 'to rub'. Tribology is the science or study of rubbing. Used in physical simulations to determine friction of two objects, such as tires on a road for a driving game. This discipline includes the study of two interacting (sliding)surfaces, the materials that make-up the surfaces, the space between the surfaces and lubricants used to reduce friction between the surfaces. Tribology is used in many industries including Automotive, Research, Manufacturing, and High Tech.

GLFW

(Programming) GLFW is a free, open source, portable framework for OpenGL application development. In short, it is a link library that constitutes a powerful API for handling operating system specific tasks, such as opening an OpenGL window and reading keyboard, mouse and joystick input.

GUID

(Programming) Globally Unique Identifier

HEL

(Programming) Hardware Emulation Layer. The driver used by DirectX to perform functions that cannot be performed by hardware (and therefore cannot be done through the HAL).

HLSL

(Programming) High-Level Shading Language. A C-like language developed by Microsoft for DirectX Graphics. Shader programs, such as vertex and pixel shaders, can be written and compiled in HLSL rather than the various hardware shader assembly languages. The resulting compiled can then be loaded onto modern graphics hardware that supports programmable shaders.

source code

(Programming) In compiled languages, such as C++ and Java, this is the set of instructions which the programmer types and edits. Source code is not understood by computers. One of the advantages of source code is that it is easy for a person to read and understand. A computer needs its information in the form of numbers. But 0068 3A6C doesn't make much sense to most people! So when creating a program, the programmer uses instructions such as "currentHitPoints -= damageAmount;". This is much easier to understand than 06FF 3D4A! A compiler later converts these instructions into a form which a computer can understand.

Variables

(Programming) In most programming languages, there are areas of memory abstracted to contain certain values. Since most languages higher than C, do not worry about Registers and Memory Addresses, Variables are an abstract concept for those higher languages to store values that are not constant. In most languages, constants are not much use, as you may be required to gather user input, or change various states of the program. Constants generally include anything not put into variables. Just for further knowledge: [code] six = 4 + 2; # In this fictional example, six is a variable, while 4 and 2 are constants (or atleast as far as the interpretor/compiler is concerned). [/code] Generally the interpretor has the job of alloting various areas of memory for the variables to be put into and referenced from. In some languages (mostly compiled ones) variables may also be put into Registers--however that should be done with utmost caution.

Artificial Intelligence

(Programming) Intelligence that mimics human intelligence. The main types of Artificial Intelligence used in games currently are State Machines, Expert Systems, Fuzzy Logic, Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks.

MaxScript

(Programming) MaxScript is a built in feature of 3D Studio MAX. Is a very basic scripting language that allow you to customize the program (i.e. Macros). With MaxScript you can add buttons and tabs to the 3D Studio MAX interface, create small automated tasks, program shortcuts or just write a quick script to help you in a everyday task. MaxScript is versitle and very straight forward. You tell it what you would like it to do. It also comes w/ many functions that are in the Max/help/scrips file.

MFC

(Programming) Microsoft Foundation Class library. This is an API which programmers may use when writing programs for Windows operating systems.

NLP

(Programming) Natural Language Processing

NAN

(Programming) Not a Number; usually refers to the result of an unsuccessful floating point operation. A NaN is generated when the result of a floating-point operation cannot be represented in Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) format. To check if a floating point value is Not A Number, use the function _isnan(). NaN is also the name of a 2D game engine created by Andrei Bazhgin. View the website here.

OOP

(Programming) Object Oriented Programming. The paragidm that models data and the functions that operate on that data together(in classes or object types) rather than separately(as functions and variables).

OpenAL

(Programming) OpenAL is a cross-platform 3D audio API appropriate for use with gaming applications and many other types of audio applications. Visit site for more information.

Bitwise Operators

(Programming) Operators (such as And, Or, Not, and Xor) that do operations on the bits of an integeral type.

Unary Operator

(Programming) Operators that take only one operand, like Not, the minus sign, and the plus sign.

PHP

(Programming) PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. For more information, visit the official website.

Qbasic

(Programming) Qbasic stands for Quick Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.It was originaly made in 1975 by Biil Gates and Paul Allen. QBASIC is one of many BASIC programming launguages.

QuickBASIC

(Programming) QuickBASIC stands for Quick Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.It was originaly made in 1975 by Biil Gates and Paul Allen. QBASIC is one of many BASIC programming launguages.

Carmack's Reverse

(Programming) Refers to a modification to Heidmann's original stenciled shadow volumes technique generally attributed to John Carmack, although others came up with the same modification at about the same time. Rather than incrementing and decrementing for the front and back faces (respectively) when the depth test passes, the method increments for back faces and decrements for front faces when the depth test fails. This prevents shadow volumes from being clipped by the near plan, but introduces the problem of them being clipped by the far plane.

Ruby

(Programming) Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in Perl). It is simple, straight-forward, extensible, and portable.

SCUMM

(Programming) Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. The first scripting engine based on the "point-and-click" principle, written in 1987 by Ron Gilbert and Aric Wilmunder of LucasArts Entertainment. Still being adapted and enhanced for use in LucasArts' adventure games today.

Collisions

(Programming) See Collision Detection.

CoDec

(Programming) Short for Compressor/Decompressor. The name used for libraries that will compress and uncompress data in various kinds of ways, such as video and audio.

Meat Shield

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) When middle management protects subordinates from the whims of upper management.

Repro

(Programming) Short for reproduce. When testing the game, defects are typically logged into a database system. Bugs are then repro'ed (reproduced) according to directions left in the database to help the software engineer(s) locate and correct the defect.

SDL

(Programming) Simple DirectMedia Layer. A cross-platform game programming library. SDL uses the OS's native multimedia support to provide fast graphics, sound, and input processing on several platforms. SDL also provides a portable way to create OpenGL contexts, and can be used as a much more powerful replacement for the GLUT toolkit. SDL currently supports Win32, Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX, MacOS, and BeOS. It is covered by the GNU Library General Public License, and it may be used in commercial projects. SDL's website is http://www.libsdl.org.

File Formats

(Programming) So that files can be loaded by different programs, there are different formats that are adhered to for compatibility. Examples of file formats would be .BMP, .TGA, .JPG, .WAV, .TXT. (Wotsit's Format)

SDK

(Programming) Software Development Kit.

DirectPlay

(Programming) The API needed to connect over networks through DirectX. (WWW)

DirectSound

(Programming) The API needed to play sounds through DirectX. (WWW)

Standard Template Library (STL)

(Programming) The STL is a set of template classes included as part of the C++ standard library. They provide support for standard containers (such as linked lists, hash tables, and dynamic arrays) and algorithms (such as sorting and searching).

Parsing

(Programming) The act of extracting strings from a larger string to gather elements that are needed. Usually referred to when extracting data from a text file, which may or may not be formatted specifically for this purpose.

Emulation

(Programming) The act of simulation a set of circumstances out of the original context. Emulators often simulate hardware calls so that different machines can run each others software. This has been seen in the game world by programs like MAME which emulate old arcade machines on current machines and operating systems.

Alpha Testing

(Programming) The first phase of testing, where the software is tested in-house. The code is normally mostly functional, but some minor design decisions may still be tested.

DirectDraw

(Programming) The initial API needed to manipulate anything regarding graphics through the DirectX API. Includes functions on setting the screen size and resolution. (WWW)

crunch mode

(Programming) The last phase of development when people work day and night to complete the project on time.

Interface

(Programming) The means by which an entity interacts with something. In programming, an interface is often used to provide abstraction of functions. The interface defines what methods that a function or class MUST possess. This allows the simple replacement of functions with any other function which also meets the requirments, without requiring any modification elsewhere in the program (particular useful when porting to a different platform, or using an alternate rendering system, etc).

String

(Programming) The name for a group of more than one characters stored as a single unit. Often stored in classes or as an array of characters in memory ending with a "null terminating" character.

Scripting

(Programming) The process of using an interpreted language, from a "script" file which is normally text, rather than a compiled executable which is binary. Scripting allows for higher level functions which can be changed without having to rebuild an executable.

Beta Testing

(Programming) The second stage of testing where software is given to a group of users to test it in a real world environment. Software is usually functionally complete by this point and the goal is to work out the glitches.

Buzzword Compliance Pass

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) Adding a bunch of bullet-points to a presentation that have nothing whatsoever to do with the game but will certainly be brought up at the meeting by an exec, e.g., "I don't see anything on this update about leveraging social networking or microtransactions. How do you plan to ensure that your game has a high retention index?

Yellow Pixel

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) Counter-strategy to the phenomenon where each manager in the review process felt the need to "fix" something regardless of its relevance or value. It entails adding something obviously broken so that a producer could point it out and feel good about adding value.

Quacking Duck

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) If something is blatantly wrong somewhere on the screen, it gives the execs an obvious aesthetic error to focus on instead of tearing something else apart which may have nothing wrong with it.

Pink Lightsaber

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) Something thrown in to give the IP Police a safe item to reject from your build because they operate under a directive to find at least one item to reject.

Peter Principle

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) The concept that all employees eventually get promoted to one level beyond their actual level of competency.

Ivory Tower

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) The floor where all the execs work and hand down decrees to the rest of the underlings.

Reality Distortion Field

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) The phenomena that exists in the Ivory Tower that allows execs to set completely unrealistic goals and/or deny the obvious.

Failing Upwards

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) The phenomenon relating to high profile individuals who get placed in higher-profile positions with each successive failure.

Seagull

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) Used as a verb to describe when a high level executive swoops in and craps all over a decision made in the trenches.

Publership

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) When team leaders distance themselves from the actual workload and behave more like publishers than leaders.

Eye of Sauron

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) When the project suddenly endures the fiery gaze of publisher executives and marketing people who have recently decided to start paying attention to the previously autonomous development team.

Feature Creep

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) When unplanned features creep into the game through subtle and unofficial channels.

Management Roulette

(Relationships across hierarchies became strained...) When you have every producer and lead coming around your desk several times over the course of a day to see if a feature that has been deemed important by upper management is complete yet, generally resulting in being pulled out of your train of thought every 20-30 minutes. You never know which manager will be around next, but you know it's just a matter of time.

Shelf Moment

(The game was just not fun...) A point of frustration or boredom you hit on a game where you decide to put the game down and never return to it.

Dead Monkeys

(The game was just not fun...) Ideas, particularly design-related, that the champion will not let go of regardless of the evidence that they should not be done. Came from a documentary about monkeys where a mother would carry its dead offspring around for some time before finally acknowledging that it was actually no longer alive.

Design Grenade

(The game was just not fun...) When a non-designer identifies a problem and comes up with their own solution to replace the existing design... Oblivious to how their solution will blow up the rest of the game and disrupt any developer within that vicinity.

Ugly Baby

(The game was just not fun...) When someone in power has a favorite design or idea that the team doesn't like, and it will be a very uncomfortable conversation to let them know.

Flame Shirt

(Token of Shame - bulid breaking) A XXXL black shirt with a skull, ace playing cards, and flames.

Shame Monkey

(Token of Shame - bulid breaking) A screeching mechanical Shame Monkey that could be passed around with the nice addition that you could touch a switch on the foot and have it screech in an irritating manner for maybe 15 seconds after you really wanted it to stop.

Broken Controller Award

(Token of Shame - bulid breaking) Another version of the shamebrero.

The Dance

(Token of Shame - bulid breaking) Performed around/for someone who has broken the build, usually accompanied by body percussion and impromptu singing/lyrics.

Shamebrero

(Token of Shame - bulid breaking) Some object of public shame or indignity that you have to wear or keep at your desk for a while after a particularly heinous build-breaking.