Gaming A to Z

Gaming A-Z

Feel free to add information.

A

Assassin's Creed UbiSoft's latest action-adventure title set during the Third Crusade, the lead character is Altair. Fantastic high-resolution textures and particle effects and the ability to move horizontally and vertically through the environment with the entire population able to realistically react to you. The game medium is being pushed to the next-generation.Assassin's Creed website

Autodesk Now the proud owners of the most well known graphics softwares: 3d Studio Max and Maya as well as their original AutoCAD Gallery

Alien Just take a look! Alien hardware

Alien versus Predator 2 An awesome game with 3 species to play, play as an alien clawing your prey to death, a stealthy predator using tools to take down your enemies or a marine using a knife to sniper. Multiplayer is unique.

Amiga Fondly remembered personal computer, originally produced by Commodore Business Machines. It was involved in the creation of the graphics for Babylon 5 and Knightmare. Wiki reference

B

Bioshock A FPS by 2K Boston/2K Australia . Set in an alternative history 1960, you are a plane crash survivor named Jack, exploring the underwater city of Rapture. Mutated beings and mechanical drones populate it. BioShock for PC was the number one seller in August 2007.Bioshock Website

Beta Software distributed for the purpose of troubleshooting, testing, and evaluation.

BBC Micros (BBC Microcomputer System) A series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers Ltd for the BBC Computer Literacy Project operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

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C

'Call of Duty' - Awesome FPS

'Call of Duty:United Offensive' - Even better FPS

'Call of Duty 2' - More win

'Call of Duty 3' - Full of epic fail

'Call of Duty 4' - Full of epic win! (win.)

'Call of Duty: World at War' - Upcoming release, returning to Call of Duty 3 developers, Treyarch, potential fail.

Cyberdemon Dooms legendary big baddy, one of the first FPS examples of using sound to enhance the atmosphere! You could hear it but did not encounter it until later and then run!

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Cut Scene An animated or live footage sequence in a video game over which the player can not control. It breaks up the game to explain the plot, give information and set the atmosphere for the next level. Elder Scroll CutScene

D

Doom The John Carmack,(id Software) invented the technology that made FPS possible. Doom was a very influential game to the industry. Need i say more. Doom 95 demo

DirectX

Duke Nukem

Dead or Alive

E

Electronic Arts Founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins who graduated from Harvard and took his MBA at Stanford. A former Apple employee, Trip built Electronics Arts into the world's largest video game publisher at the time.He left to form 3DO in 1991, and created the most powerful and expensive! console of its time. In 2003 3DO went bankrupt selling most of its intellectual property to the publisher Ubisoft.

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Gamasutra - A History of Electronic Arts

EA CRYSIS playable demo

A Short History of Electonics Arts, Business Week August 2006

F

Fate By Numbers A graduate project by four students in the Netherlands. Their purpose to make a Full Motion Video (FMV) game to appeal to the old school adventure gamers and introduce new people to the genre. Filmed using actors, against a green screen and featuring 3D pre-rendered backdrops, it follows a private eye, Alice Sanger through the sci-fi/noir virtual environment. Download Fate By Numbers, 1.18Gb

Force Feedback Devices The variety of devices that can be used to enhance immersion through out haptic senses(touch). These include motion platforms, simulated rides, simulators and home hardware. Gloves and suits come under sensor or tracking devices which allow a virtual reality/game system to track the orientation and position of certain body parts. XBox360 Wireless Racing Wheel

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Final Fantasy I

A console role-playing game developed and published in Japan by Square in 1987, published in North America by Nintendo of America in 1990. Four youths called the "Light Warriors", set out to defeat the evil forces in one of the most influential and successful role-playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Square Enix website

Final Fantasy VII

Argued to be the best Final Fantasy game, and was the first in the series to feature 3-D graphics. Unlike most Final Fantasy games, it has both prequels and sequels, including the Advent Children, Before Crisis, Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, and Last Order. As well as spin-offs including Cloud's Snowboarding Mobile.

The game was released on the Sony Playstation on 3 discs and it was the first Final Fantasy not to be on a Nintendo console, due to the hardware capabilities of the PlayStation, it was later released for PC.

Despite Square Enix (the publisher of the Final Fantasy series) having categorically stated that Final Fantasy X-2 is the only game that is directly related to any previous game - being that it is Final Fantasy X's sequel - some still believe the series is linked, albeit produced out of chronological order. There are players that believe Final Fantasy X and X-2 are prequels of Final Fantasy VII. Possible clues pointing to this include a character called "Shinra" (Shinra being the name of the enemy corporation in VII) and the discovery of "Mako energy" in X-2.

G

GoldenEye 007 Based on the James Bond film GoldenEye, Rare developed GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64 video game console. Argued by many to be one of the best FPS which has sold over 8 million copies. GoldenEye 007 trip back in time

GDC Game Developer's Conference GDC Website Pics of GDC04, San Jose, USA

GeForce A brand of PC graphics chipsets designed by NVIDIA. It is the direct rival of ATI's Radeon series for the graphics processing chips market. The name originated from a contest held by NVIDIA in early 1999. There were over 12,000 entrants, the 7 winners received a RIVA TNT2 Ultra graphics board. The latest model: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT offers 112 stream processors, a 256-bit frame buffer, standard-setting GeForce 8 Series features and a strikingly immersive DirectX 10 gaming experience. Nvidia Website

GtkRadiant A level design program developed by id Software and Loki Software. Used to create maps for a number of computer games. Download the new development version ZeroRadiant

Grand Theft Auto A video game series created by Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design), published by Rockstar Games. Part 2 in the next generation series, Vice City was shortlisted for the new Designer of the Year award 2003. A best-selling video game known for its design, free roaming game play and violence. RockStar Website

GTA and GTA2 are available for free download, from Rockstar Games Classic's page.

H

Halo

A science fiction video game series created by Bungie Studios. The series follows Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced human super-soldier and his artificial intelligence (AI) companion, Cortana in their fight against the Covenant. The term "Halo" refers to the Halo megastructure, a large orbital construction. A great FPS with incredible multiplayer action. It is said to be Microsoft Xbox's "killer app". All three Halo games combined have sold more than 20 million copies and it has developed into a franchise with novels, action figures and other licensed products. Are you part of the "Halo Nation"? Halo Website

Hitman A video game franchise available on PC as well as several video game consoles, developed by Danish developer IO Interactive, now a division of Eidos Interactive. The games follows Agent 47, an assassin-for-hire. The games are third-person shooters, although it is possible to switch back and forth between third-person and first-person perspective in 2,3 and 4. A Hitman film adaptation was released on November 21, 2007. Hitman Movie Website

Havok provide interactive software and services for digital media creators in the games and movie industries with their world leading expertise in physics, animation and tools. Their products have been used in the making of Halo 3, Halo 2, Stranglehold, BioShock, Crackdown, MotorStorm, and films like Poseidon, The Matrix, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Havok Website

I

Id Software

J

Japan

K

Kingdom Hearts

L

Lego Star Wars

M

Master Chief

Image from Halo 3D

Multi-player

Metaplace

MMOG

Machinima

N

Nvidia

O

Origami

Microsoft Origami is a set of additional programs to help improve the UMPC experience of Vista users, providing a set of shell-improvements to aid touch-screen navigation. Origami in action (Flash movie)

P

Pong

PSP

Pencil 'n' Paper

PCGamer

Q

Quake

R

Resident Evil

S

Steam

Steam is a content-deployment platform produced by Valve. It combines digital-rights-management, digital distribution, multiplayer, social networking, and e-commerce to create a "one stop buy / download / play" infrastructure for gamers.

We have a Steam Community group, Uni of Wolverhampton. Come and join up, and get ready for the launch of the SCIT HL2 DM gaming server!

Silent Hill

Stalker

Simulators

T

Tekken

U

UbiSoft

Unreal

V

Valve

Visual Studio 2008

The latest IDE from Microsoft. Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions are available for free, VS 2008 Pro will be available from MSDNAA for free sometime after its official release in March '08.

VS 2008 includes many updates, and includes the release of C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0, as well as .NET 3.5. New features include LINQ, XAML editting, multi-targeting (The ability to code applications against .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 from a single IDE), improved AJAX for ASP.NET, a new ASP.NET rendering engine, Javascript intellisense, and much more besides.

W

Warrock

Wii

World of Warcraft

Blizzards MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) you are invited to take on a role in a fantasy world and quest through Azeroth and Outland. This game is addictive and full of epic win. (fin.)

X

X Box

X Box 360

XNA

X Mesh

Y

Y - Luminance

Z

The Legend of Zelda

Z Brush

Z-Buffer