1.
Video game development
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Video game development is the process of creating a video game. Development is undertaken by a developer, which may range from one person to a large business. Traditional commercial PC and console games are funded by a publisher. Indie games can take time and can be produced cheaply by individuals. The indie game industry has seen a rise in recent years with the growth of new distribution systems. The first video games were developed in the 1960s, but required mainframe computers and were not available to the general public, commercial game development began in the 1970s with the advent of first-generation video game consoles and home computers. Due to low costs and low capabilities of computers, a programmer could develop a full game. The average cost of producing a video game rose from US$1–4 million in 2000 to over $5 million in 2006. Mainstream PC and console games are developed in phases. First, in pre-production, pitches, prototypes, and game design documents are written, if the idea is approved and the developer receives funding, a full-scale development begins. This usually involves a team of 20–100 individuals with various responsibilities, including designers, artists, programmers, Game development is the software development process by which a video game is produced. Games are developed as an outlet and to generate profit. Development is normally funded by a publisher, well-made games bring profit more readily. However, it is important to estimate a games financial requirements, failing to provide clear implications of games expectations may result in exceeding allocated budget. In fact, the majority of games do not produce profit. Most developers cannot afford changing development schedule and require estimating their capabilities with available resources before production, the game industry requires innovations, as publishers cannot profit from constant release of repetitive sequels and imitations. Every year new independent development companies open and some manage to develop hit titles, similarly, many developers close down because they cannot find a publishing contract or their production is not profitable. It is difficult to start a new due to high initial investment required
2.
Epic Games
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Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game development company based in Cary, North Carolina, partially owned by Tencent. Founded in 1991, they are best known for their Unreal Engine technology and it is the parent company of game developer Chair Entertainment, and also owns game studios in Seattle, Guildford, Berlin, Tokyo, and Seoul. Key developers at Epic Games include chairman, CEO and technical director Tim Sweeney, jerry OFlaherty was the studio art director from 2003 to 2007. Chris Perna has been the art director since OFlahertys departure from the company, Cliff Bleszinski, Epics design director, announced his departure on October 3,2012. Epic Games was founded as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991 by Tim Sweeney in Rockville, Maryland, releasing its product, ZZT. In 1996, Epic MegaGames produced a shareware isometric shooter called Fire Fight and it was later released commercially by Electronic Arts. In 1997, Safari Software was acquired in whole by Epic MegaGames, in 1998, Epic MegaGames released Unreal, a 3D first-person shooter co-developed with Digital Extremes, which expanded into a series of Unreal games. The company also began to license the technology, the Unreal Engine. In 1999, the changed its name to Epic Games and moved its offices, including its Rockville headquarters, to Cary. In 2006, Epic released the Xbox 360 and PC bestseller Gears of War and completed work on Unreal Tournament 3 for PC, PS3, on May 20,2008, Epic Games acquired Utah based Chair Entertainment. In summer 2009, Epic released the Chair developed Shadow Complex on Xbox Live Arcade, on November 7,2008, Epic Games released Gears of War 2, the sequel to their bestselling game Gears of War, which continues the story of humanitys struggle against the Locust Horde. Epic worked on an iOS game, Infinity Blade, which was released on December 9,2010 and they also released Gears of War 3, the third game in the Gears of War series on September 20,2011. In 2011, Epics subsidiary Titan Studios was dissolved, at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Epic Games announced their new game Fortnite. In June 2012, Epic announced that they were opening up a new studio, Epic Baltimore, Epic Baltimore was renamed to Impossible Studios in August 2012. However, the studio ended up closing its doors in February 2013, Tencent Holdings has the right to nominate directors to the board of Epic Games and thus counts as an associate of the Group. A number of staff left the company months after the deal was announced. In October 2012, Cliff Bleszinski announced he was leaving Epic Games after 20 years with the company and his official reason was Its time for a much needed break. Later in December 2012, Epic Games president Mike Capps announced his retirement and cite the reasons as the arrival of a boy he is having with his wife
3.
Unreal Engine
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The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has successfully used in a variety of other genres, including stealth, MMORPGs. With its code written in C++, the Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability and is a used by many game developers today. It has been awarded by Guinness World Records as the most successful video game engine, the current release is Unreal Engine 4, designed for Microsofts DirectX11 and 12, GNM, OpenGL, Vulkan, Metal, and JavaScript/WebGL. Unreal Engine 1 provided a software rasterizer and a hardware-accelerated rendering path using the Glide API, specifically developed for 3dfx GPUs. The release of Unreal Tournament marked great strides in both performance and Direct3D and OpenGL support. The second version was released in 2002 with Americas Army, a free multiplayer shooter created by the US Army and this generation saw the core code and rendering engine completely re-written. In addition, it featured UnrealEd 2, a level editor and this physics engine powered the ragdoll physics in Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Championship. Other engine elements were also updated, with improved assets as well as adding support for the GameCube, support for the PlayStation 2 console was previously added in UE1. Taking Xbox aside, both GameCube and PS2 were never supported directly by Epic, support being instead farmed out to Secret Level. As such, third parties looking to use further Unreal Engine revisions had to do their own throughout the generation, as they had to in more recent years with the Wii, X360, PS3, PSP. UE2.5, an update to the version of UE2, improved rendering performance and added vehicles physics, a particle system editor for UnrealEd. A specialized version of UE2.5 called UE2X was used for Unreal Championship 2 and it features optimizations specific to that console. EAX3.0 is also supported for sound, in March 2011, Ubisoft Montreal revealed that UE2 was successfully running on the Nintendo 3DS. The first screenshots of Unreal Engine 3 were presented in 2004, unlike Unreal Engine 2, which still supported fixed-function pipeline, Unreal Engine 3 was designed to take advantage of fully programmable shader hardware. All lighting calculations were done per-pixel, instead of per-vertex, Unreal Engine 3 supports a gamma-correct high-dynamic range renderer. Initially, Unreal Engine 3 only supported Windows, PlayStation 3, OS X support was added in 2011. Its renderer supports techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows, in October 2011, the engine was ported to support Adobe Flash Player 11 through the Stage 3D hardware-accelerated APIs
4.
Nvidia
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Nvidia Corporation is an American technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It designs graphics processing units for the market, as well as system on a chip units for the mobile computing. Its primary GPU product line, labeled GeForce, is in competition with Advanced Micro Devices Radeon products. Nvidia expanded its presence in the industry with its handheld SHIELD Portable, SHIELD Tablet. Since 2014, Nvidia has shifted to become a company focused on four markets – gaming, professional visualization, data centers. In addition to GPU manufacturing, Nvidia provides parallel processing capabilities to researchers and they are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world. More recently, It has moved into the computing market. In addition to AMD, its competitors include Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia is now focused on artificial intelligence. The name of the company comes from Invidia in Roman mythology who corresponds to Nemesis, RIVA TNT in 1998 solidified Nvidias reputation for capable hardware. Autumn 1999 saw the release of the GeForce, most notably introducing on-board transformation, running at 120 MHz and featuring four pixel pipelines, it implemented advanced video acceleration, motion compensation and hardware sub-picture alpha blending. The GeForce outperformed existing products by a wide margin, due to the success of its products, Nvidia won the contract to develop the graphics hardware for Microsofts Xbox game console, which earned Nvidia a $200 million advance. However, the project drew the time of many of its best engineers away from other projects, in the short term this did not matter, and the GeForce2 GTS shipped in the summer of 2000. In December 2000, Nvidia reached an agreement to acquire the assets of its one-time rival 3dfx. The acquisition process was finalized in April 2002, in July 2002, Nvidia acquired Exluna for an undisclosed sum. Exluna made software rendering tools and the personnel were merged into the Cg project, in August 2003, Nvidia acquired MediaQ for approximately US$70 million. On April 22,2004, Nvidia acquired iReady, also a provider of high performance TCP/IP, in December 2004, it was announced that Nvidia would assist Sony with the design of the graphics processor in the PlayStation 3 game console. In March 2006, it emerged that Nvidia would deliver RSX to Sony as an IP core, under the agreement, Nvidia would provide ongoing support to port the RSX to Sonys fabs of choice, as well as die shrinks to 65 nm. This practice contrasted with its business arrangement with Microsoft, in which Nvidia managed production, meanwhile, in May 2005 Microsoft chose to license a design by ATI and to make its own manufacturing arrangements for the Xbox 360 graphics hardware, as had Nintendo for the Wii console
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Intel
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Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California that was founded by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. It is the worlds largest and highest valued semiconductor chip makers based on revenue, and is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, Intel supplies processors for computer system manufacturers such as Apple, Lenovo, HP, and Dell. Intel Corporation was founded on July 18,1968, by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, the companys name was conceived as portmanteau of the words integrated and electronics. The fact that intel is the term for intelligence information made the name appropriate. Intel was a developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips. Although Intel created the worlds first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, during the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry. The Open Source Technology Center at Intel hosts PowerTOP and LatencyTOP, and supports other projects such as Wayland, Intel Array Building Blocks, and Threading Building Blocks. Client Computing Group – 55% of 2016 revenues – produces hardware components used in desktop, data Center Group – 29% of 2016 revenues – produces hardware components used in server, network, and storage platforms. Internet of Things Group – 5% of 2016 revenues – offers platforms designed for retail, transportation, industrial, buildings, non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group – 4% of 2016 revenues – manufactures NAND flash memory products primarily used in solid-state drives. Intel Security Group – 4% of 2016 revenues – produces software, particularly security, programmable Solutions Group – 3% of 2016 revenues – manufactures programmable semiconductors. In 2016, Dell accounted for 15% of Intels total revenues, Lenovo accounted for 13% of total revenues, in the 1980s, Intel was among the top ten sellers of semiconductors in the world. In 1991, Intel became the biggest chip maker by revenue and has held the position ever since, other top semiconductor companies include TSMC, Advanced Micro Devices, Samsung, Texas Instruments, Toshiba and STMicroelectronics. Competitors in PC chip sets include Advanced Micro Devices, VIA Technologies, Silicon Integrated Systems, however, the cross-licensing agreement is canceled in the event of an AMD bankruptcy or takeover. Some smaller competitors such as VIA Technologies produce low-power x86 processors for small factor computers, however, the advent of such mobile computing devices, in particular, smartphones, has in recent years led to a decline in PC sales. Since over 95% of the worlds smartphones currently use processors designed by ARM Holdings, ARM is also planning to make inroads into the PC and server market. Intel has been involved in disputes regarding violation of antitrust laws. Intel was founded in Mountain View, California in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore, a chemist, and Robert Noyce, arthur Rock helped them find investors, while Max Palevsky was on the board from an early stage. Moore and Noyce had left Fairchild Semiconductor to found Intel, Rock was not an employee, but he was an investor and was chairman of the board
6.
Software license
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A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law all software is copyright protected, in code as also object code form. The only exception is software in the public domain, most distributed software can be categorized according to its license type. Two common categories for software under copyright law, and therefore with licenses which grant the licensee specific rights, are proprietary software and free, unlicensed software outside the copyright protection is either public domain software or software which is non-distributed, non-licensed and handled as internal business trade secret. Contrary to popular belief, distributed unlicensed software is copyright protected. Examples for this are unauthorized software leaks or software projects which are placed on public software repositories like GitHub without specified license. As voluntarily handing software into the domain is problematic in some international law domains, there are also licenses granting PD-like rights. Therefore, the owner of a copy of software is legally entitled to use that copy of software. Hence, if the end-user of software is the owner of the respective copy, as many proprietary licenses only enumerate the rights that the user already has under 17 U. S. C. §117, and yet proclaim to take away from the user. Proprietary software licenses often proclaim to give software publishers more control over the way their software is used by keeping ownership of each copy of software with the software publisher. The form of the relationship if it is a lease or a purchase, for example UMG v. Augusto or Vernor v. Autodesk. The ownership of goods, like software applications and video games, is challenged by licensed. The Swiss based company UsedSoft innovated the resale of business software and this feature of proprietary software licenses means that certain rights regarding the software are reserved by the software publisher. Therefore, it is typical of EULAs to include terms which define the uses of the software, the most significant effect of this form of licensing is that, if ownership of the software remains with the software publisher, then the end-user must accept the software license. In other words, without acceptance of the license, the end-user may not use the software at all, one example of such a proprietary software license is the license for Microsoft Windows. The most common licensing models are per single user or per user in the appropriate volume discount level, Licensing per concurrent/floating user also occurs, where all users in a network have access to the program, but only a specific number at the same time. Another license model is licensing per dongle which allows the owner of the dongle to use the program on any computer, Licensing per server, CPU or points, regardless the number of users, is common practice as well as site or company licenses
7.
Personal computer
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A personal computer is a multi-purpose electronic computer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. PCs are intended to be operated directly by a end-user, rather than by an expert or technician. In the 2010s, PCs are typically connected to the Internet, allowing access to the World Wide Web, personal computers may be connected to a local area network, either by a cable or a wireless connection. In the 2010s, a PC may be, a multi-component desktop computer, designed for use in a location a laptop computer, designed for easy portability or a tablet computer. In the 2010s, PCs run using a system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux. The very earliest microcomputers, equipped with a front panel, required hand-loading of a program to load programs from external storage. Before long, automatic booting from permanent read-only memory became universal, in the 2010s, users have access to a wide range of commercial software, free software and free and open-source software, which are provided in ready-to-run or ready-to-compile form. Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems and Intel hardware have dominated much of the computer market, first with MS-DOS. Alternatives to Microsofts Windows operating systems occupy a minority share of the industry and these include Apples OS X and free open-source Unix-like operating systems such as Linux and Berkeley Software Distribution. Advanced Micro Devices provides the alternative to Intels processors. PC is an initialism for personal computer, some PCs, including the OLPC XOs, are equipped with x86 or x64 processors but not designed to run Microsoft Windows. PC is used in contrast with Mac, an Apple Macintosh computer and this sense of the word is used in the Get a Mac advertisement campaign that ran between 2006 and 2009, as well as its rival, Im a PC campaign, that appeared in 2008. Since Apples transition to Intel processors starting 2005, all Macintosh computers are now PCs, the “brain” may one day come down to our level and help with our income-tax and book-keeping calculations. But this is speculation and there is no sign of it so far, in the history of computing there were many examples of computers designed to be used by one person, as opposed to terminals connected to mainframe computers. Using the narrow definition of operated by one person, the first personal computer was the ENIAC which became operational in 1946 and it did not meet further definitions of affordable or easy to use. An example of an early single-user computer was the LGP-30, created in 1956 by Stan Frankel and used for science and it came with a retail price of $47, 000—equivalent to about $414,000 today. Introduced at the 1965 New York Worlds Fair, the Programma 101 was a programmable calculator described in advertisements as a desktop computer. It was manufactured by the Italian company Olivetti and invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto, the Soviet MIR series of computers was developed from 1965 to 1969 in a group headed by Victor Glushkov
8.
Tripwire Interactive
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Red Orchestra won top prize in the nVidia-sponsored Make Something Unreal competition. Their first retail product, Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45, was released over Valve Corporations Steam service on March 14,2006 and they are also a licensee of Epics Unreal Engine 3. Tripwires second game, Killing Floor, was released on May 14,2009, like Red Orchestra, this game also began development as a Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, later becoming a standalone retail title. Tripwire released their game under the title Red Orchestra 2, Heroes of Stalingrad. The game is a World War II-themed first-person shooter that was developed and published by themselves, the title focuses heavily on the Battle of Stalingrad. The game was released on 13 September 2011. and uses the Unreal Engine 3, on May 30,2013, the expansion pack Rising Storm was released, focusing on the Pacific War with real life battle locations such as the Battle of Iwo Jima. Tripwire Interactive announced their fifth game, Killing Floor 2 in May 2014, in 2015 Tripwire announced Rising Storm 2, Vietnam at E32015. Killing Floor, Calamity The Ball Dwarfs
9.
Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45
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Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45 is a tactical first-person shooter video game based on its predecessor Red Orchestra, Combined Arms. Set on the Eastern Front during World War II between 1941 and 1945, Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45 depicts the struggle between Soviet and German forces. The games creators, Tripwire Interactive, developed the game out of the previous Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, Red Orchestra, as of April 2009, the game has sold around 400,000 copies. Red Orchestra concentrates mostly on the aspect of the game. The players movements are realistically modeled, giving them the ability to lie and move prone, sprint, Red Orchestra is notable for its emphasis on realism in comparison to other World War II-based FPS games. The former requires compensating for the breathing of the character and natural sway from holding the gun, while the latter is much quicker, the player must also keep track of their ammo usage mentally unlike many other FPS games, most of which use an ammunition counter. Rifles usually kill players in one if they connect with the torso or head. Vehicle support is also a prominent feature of the game, the player can operate the combat vehicles as one of the crew members. When operating a tank solo, the player can perform one of the roles at a time. The game also features artillery support in some maps which can be utilized by both leaders and tank commanders. Red Orchestra features 16 official maps and 10 community-made maps supported by the developers, the Red Orchestra SDK, though never gone beyond beta version, has allowed the production of hundreds of user-created maps. Red Orchestra features several different map types, infantry maps focus on infantry combat, but can occasionally include APCs. Tank maps focus on tank combat, Combined Arms features gameplay which makes the coordination of infantry and armor its focal point. However, in many maps only when something on the map such as a wall or a fence is part of an objective or blockade can it be interacted with. The maps feature many broken buildings and vehicles as well as propaganda posters, Red Orchestra began development as a single player game based on the Red Orchestra spy ring, during World War II. The Red Orchestra developers, Tripwire Interactive, entered the NVIDIA Make Something Unreal Contest, the Combined Arms aspect of the game in version 3.0 was brought about by heavy suggestion that vehicles should be included to secure progression in the MSUC. Further refinement of the Red Orchestra total conversion led to version 3.3, on Monday 21 November 2005 Tripwire Interactive announced that they would be releasing Red Orchestra, Ostfront 41-45 over Steam, Valve Corporations digital content distribution platform. The game was released on Tuesday 14 March 2006 on the Steam network, pre-purchasing and pre-loading began one month prior on 14 February
