Computing platform
A computing platform or digital platform is the environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying software, as long as the program code is executed with it. Computing platforms have different abstraction levels, including a computer architecture, an OS, or runtime libraries. A computing platform is the stage. A platform can be seen both as a constraint on the software development process, in that different platforms provide different functionality and restrictions. For example, an OS may be a platform that abstracts the underlying differences in hardware and provides a generic command for saving files or accessing the network. Platforms may include: Hardware alone, in the case of small embedded systems. Embedded systems can access hardware directly, without an OS. A browser in the case of web-based software; the browser itself runs on a hardware+OS platform, but this is not relevant to software running within the browser.
An application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor, which hosts software written in an application-specific scripting language, such as an Excel macro. This can be extended to writing fully-fledged applications with the Microsoft Office suite as a platform. Software frameworks. Cloud computing and Platform as a Service. Extending the idea of a software framework, these allow application developers to build software out of components that are hosted not by the developer, but by the provider, with internet communication linking them together; the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook are considered development platforms. A virtual machine such as the Java virtual machine or. NET CLR. Applications are compiled into a format similar to machine code, known as bytecode, executed by the VM. A virtualized version of a complete system, including virtualized hardware, OS, storage; these allow, for instance, a typical Windows program to run on. Some architectures have multiple layers, with each layer acting as a platform to the one above it.
In general, a component only has to be adapted to the layer beneath it. For instance, a Java program has to be written to use the Java virtual machine and associated libraries as a platform but does not have to be adapted to run for the Windows, Linux or Macintosh OS platforms. However, the JVM, the layer beneath the application, does have to be built separately for each OS. AmigaOS, AmigaOS 4 FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD IBM i Linux Microsoft Windows OpenVMS Classic Mac OS macOS OS/2 Solaris Tru64 UNIX VM QNX z/OS Android Bada BlackBerry OS Firefox OS iOS Embedded Linux Palm OS Symbian Tizen WebOS LuneOS Windows Mobile Windows Phone Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless Cocoa Cocoa Touch Common Language Infrastructure Mono. NET Framework Silverlight Flash AIR GNU Java platform Java ME Java SE Java EE JavaFX JavaFX Mobile LiveCode Microsoft XNA Mozilla Prism, XUL and XULRunner Open Web Platform Oracle Database Qt SAP NetWeaver Shockwave Smartface Universal Windows Platform Windows Runtime Vexi Ordered from more common types to less common types: Commodity computing platforms Wintel, that is, Intel x86 or compatible personal computer hardware with Windows operating system Macintosh, custom Apple Inc. hardware and Classic Mac OS and macOS operating systems 68k-based PowerPC-based, now migrated to x86 ARM architecture based mobile devices iPhone smartphones and iPad tablet computers devices running iOS from Apple Gumstix or Raspberry Pi full function miniature computers with Linux Newton devices running the Newton OS from Apple x86 with Unix-like systems such as Linux or BSD variants CP/M computers based on the S-100 bus, maybe the earliest microcomputer platform Video game consoles, any variety 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, licensed to manufacturers Apple Pippin, a multimedia player platform for video game console development RISC processor based machines running Unix variants SPARC architecture computers running Solaris or illumos operating systems DEC Alpha cluster running OpenVMS or Tru64 UNIX Midrange computers with their custom operating systems, such as IBM OS/400 Mainframe computers with their custom operating systems, such as IBM z/OS Supercomputer architectures Cross-platform Platform virtualization Third platform Ryan Sarver: What is a platform
Ziff Davis
Ziff Davis, LLC is an American publisher and Internet company. It was founded in 1927 in Illinois, by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis. Throughout most of Ziff Davis' history, it was a publisher of hobbyist magazines ones devoted to expensive, advertiser-rich technical hobbies such as cars and electronics. However, since 1980, Ziff Davis has published computer-related magazines, its websites, derived from its magazines, have established Ziff Davis as an internet information company. Ziff Davis had several broadcasting properties, first during the mid-1970s, with its own technology network ZDTV renamed to TechTV, sold to Vulcan Ventures in 2001. Ziff Davis' magazine publishing and internet operations offices are based in New York City and San Francisco. On January 6, 2009, the company sold 1UP.com to UGO Entertainment, a division of Hearst Corporation and announced the January 2009 issue of the long-running Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine as the final one. Former Time Inc. executive Vivek Shah, with financial backing from Boston private equity company Great Hill Partners, announced on June 4, 2010, the acquisition of Ziff Davis Inc. as the "first step in building a new digital media company that specializes in producing and distributing content for consumers making important buying decisions."On November 12, 2012, Ziff Davis Inc. was acquired by cloud computing services company j2 Global of Hollywood, Calif. for $167 million cash.
According to a late 2015 Fortune article, Ziff Davis comprises 30% of parent company j2 Global's $600 million annual revenue and is increasing 15% to 20% each year. Analyst Gregory Burns of Sidoti & Company calculates; the William B. Ziff Company, founded in 1920, was a successful Chicago advertising agency that secured advertising from national companies such as Procter & Gamble for all African American weekly newspapers. In 1923, Ziff acquired E. C. Auld Company, a Chicago publishing house. Ziff's first venture in magazine publishing was Ziff's Magazine, which featured short stories, one-act plays, humorous verse, jokes; the title was changed to America's Humor in April 1926. Bernard George Davis was the student editor of the University of Pittsburgh's humor magazine, the Pitt Panther, was active in the Association of College Comics of the East. During his senior year he attended the association's convention and met William B. Ziff; when Davis graduated in 1927 he joined Ziff as the editor of America's Humor.
Ziff, an aviator in World War I, created a new magazine, Popular Aviation, in August 1927, published by Popular Aviation Publishing Company of Chicago, Illinois. Under editor Harley W. Mitchell it became the largest aviation magazine, with a circulation of 100,000 in 1929; the magazine's title became Aeronautics in June 1929 and the publishing company's name became Aeronautical Publications, Inc. The title was changed back to Popular Aviation in July 1930; the magazine is still published today by the Bonnier Corporation. The magazine celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2017; the company histories give the founding date as 1927. This is when B. G. Davis joined and Popular Aviation magazine started. However, it was not until 1936 that the company became the "Ziff-Davis Publishing Company". Davis was given a substantial minority equity interest in the company and was appointed a vice-president and director, he was named president in 1946. Davis was a photography enthusiast and the editor of the Popular Photography magazine started in May 1937.
In early 1938, Ziff-Davis acquired the magazines Amazing Stories. These were started by Hugo Gernsback but sold as a result of the Experimenter Publishing bankruptcy in 1929. Both magazines had declined since the bankruptcy but the resources of Ziff-Davis rejuvenated them starting with the April 1938 issues. Radio News was published until 1972; the magazine Popular Electronics, derived from Radio News, was begun in 1955 and published until 1985. Amazing Stories was a leading science fiction magazine and Ziff Davis soon added a new companion, Fantastic Adventures. In 1954 FA was merged into the newer magazine Fantastic, founded in 1952 to great initial success. ZD published a number of other pulp magazines and digest-sized fiction magazines during the 1940s and 1950s, continued to publish Amazing and Fantastic until 1965. Ziff-Davis published comic books during the early 1950s, operating by their own name and the name Approved Comics. Eschewing superheroes, they published horror, sports and Western comics, though most titles didn't last more than a few issues.
Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel was the art director of the comics line. In 1953, the company abandoned comics, selling its most popular titles—the romance comics Cinderella Love and Romantic Love, the Western Kid Cowboy, the jungle adventure Wild Boy of the Congo—to St. John Publications. Ziff-Davis continued to publish one title, G. I. Joe, until 1957, a total of 51 issues. William B. Ziff, Sr. died in 1953 and son William B. Ziff, Jr. returned from Germany to assume his role in the company. In 1958 Bernard G. Davis sold his share of Ziff Davis to found Davis Publications, although Ziff-Davis continued to use his surname. With the younger Ziff's direction, ZD soon became a successful publisher of enthusiast magazines. Ziff Davis purchased titles like Car And Driv
Future US
Future US, Inc. is an American media corporation specializing in targeted magazines and websites in the video games and technology markets. Future US is headquartered in New York City with small offices in Minneapolis. Future US is owned by parent company, Future plc, a specialist media company based in the United Kingdom, its magazines and websites include: PC Gamer Official Xbox Magazine TechRadar Maximum PC Electronic Musician Guitar Player Guitar World Multichannel News Broadcasting & Cable TWICE Founded in 1985 in the UK by Chris Anderson Future Publishing was the fastest growing UK publisher of the nineties. From a start in computer and video games magazines, Future diversified into sports, entertainment and general interest magazines becoming the UK's fourth largest publisher. Anderson wanted to expand Future into the United States, bought struggling Greensboro video game magazine publisher GP Publications, publisher of Game Players magazine in 1993; the company launched a number of titles including PC Gamer, relocated from North Carolina to the Bay area, occupying various properties in Burlingame and South San Francisco.
When Anderson sold Future to Pearson PLC he retained GP, renamed Imagine Media, Inc. in June 1995, operated it as his sole company for a few years. However, when Future bought itself out from Pearson in an MBO, Anderson came back on board, when Future floated on the stock exchange in 1999 Imagine's print magazines were merged with Future Publishing to form the Future Network PLC, a company floated on the London Stock Exchange; the on-line properties, including IGN, were put into a separate company snowball.com. Buoyed by the Internet economy and the success of Business 2.0 in the US, Future rode the boom of the late nineties. During this period the company won the exclusive worldwide rights to produce the official magazine for Microsoft's Xbox video game console and cemented its position as a leader in the games market. In the spring of 2001, buffeted by economic factors and the market downturn, Future Network USA went through a strategic reset of its business that included the closure of some titles and Internet operations and the sale of Business 2.0 to AOL/Time Warner.
By early fall 2002, Imagine Media had refocused on its core business, publishing five games and technology magazines: Official Xbox Magazine, PC Gamer, PSM: 100% Independent PlayStation 2 Magazine, Maximum PC and MacAddict. It was that Imagine became Future Network USA, adopting the name of its parent company, Future plc. Future used this strong portfolio and its strength in creating media for young men as a platform for growth into the action sports and music markets. In December 2005, after three years of organic growth and strategic acquisition, Future Network USA became Future US, to reflect its diversification into markets beyond games and technology. In 2005, Future US made its first venture into the women's market with the launch of Scrapbook Answers and with the addition of Women's Health & Fitness and Decorating Spaces, to its portfolio of titles with the Future plc acquisition of Highbury House plc. On September 19, 2007, Nintendo and Future announced that Future US would obtain the publishing rights to Nintendo Power magazine.
This came into effect with the creation of issue #222. On October 1, 2007, it was announced that Future US would be making PlayStation: The Official Magazine, which ended up replacing PSM and first hit newsstands in November 2007. With this launch, Future US is the publisher of the official magazines of all three major console manufacturers in the US. In 2012, NewBay Media bought the Music division of Future US. In 2018, Future reacquired majority of the assets sold to NewBay by buying NewBay outright for US13.8 million. Future used this acquisition to expand its US footprint in B2B segment. CD-ROM Today Daily Radar Games Radar Decorating Spaces Do! Future Music Future Snowboarding Magazine Game Players Guitar One Guitar World Acoustic Guitar World Legends Guitar World's Bass Guitar Maximum Linux Men's Edge Mobile PC netPOWER Next Generation Magazine Nintendo Power Official Dreamcast Magazine PC Accelerator PlayStation: The Official Magazine Revolution Scrapbook Answers Skateboard Trade News Snowboard Trade News T3 The Net Total Movie Women's Health & Fitness Official website
The Neverhood
The Neverhood is a point-and-click adventure video game developed by The Neverhood, Inc. and published by DreamWorks Interactive for Microsoft Windows. The game follows the adventure of a claymation character named Klaymen as he discovers his origins and his purpose in a world made out of clay; when the game was released, it was unique in that all of its animation was done in claymation, including all of the sets, rather than 2- or 3-dimensional computer graphics, like many other games at its time. The gameplay consists of the player guiding the main character Klaymen around and solving puzzles to advance in the game; as the player advances through different areas of the game, there are various video sequences that help advance the plot. In addition to being unique, The Neverhood aimed at being quirky and humorous, as is evident by the characters, the music, the plot sequence of the game; the Neverhood is a point-and-click adventure game which emphasizes the solving of puzzles through character action rather than inventory usage.
The titular Neverhood is a surreal landscape dotted with buildings and other hints of life, all suspended above an endless void. However, the Neverhood itself is bizarrely deserted, with its only inhabitants being Klaymen, Willie Trombone and various fauna that inhabit the Neverhood. Much of the game's background information is limited to the'Hall Of Records', notorious for its length, taking several minutes to travel from one end of the hall to the other; the game begins with Klaymen waking up in a room and exploring the Neverhood, collecting various discs appearing to contain a disjointed story narrated by Willie. As Klaymen travels the Neverhood, he crosses paths with Willie, who agrees to help him in his journey while Klogg, spying on Klaymen from afar, tries to threaten Klaymen into giving up his quest. Klaymen's quest directs him to Klogg's castle, for this Klaymen enlists the help of Big Robot Bil, a towering automaton and a friend of Willie's; as Bil marches to Klogg's castle, Klogg unleashes his guardian, the Clockwork Beast, to intercept Bil.
The two giants clash and Bil proves victorious, but as he forces open the castle door for Klaymen to enter, Klogg gravely injures Bil by firing a cannon at him. Klaymen manages to get in, but Bil loses his footing and falls into the void with Willie still inside. Alone in Klogg's castle, Klaymen finds a terminal, should he collect all of Willie's discs, the full extent of his tale is revealed. Realizing that he was still alone, Hoborg creates himself a companion by planting a seed into the ground, which grows into Klogg; as Hoborg welcomes Klogg to the Neverhood, the latter tries to take Hoborg's crown, which Hoborg forbids Klogg from doing. Envious, Klogg manages to steal Hoborg's crown, rendering Hoborg inert in the process, the crown's energies disfigure Klogg. With Hoborg lifeless, any further development of the Neverhood ground to a halt. Having witnessed this, Willie discovers that Hoborg was about to plant a seed to create another companion. Willie takes the seed and plants it faraway from Klogg, with Willie hoping that whoever grew from the seed would defeat Klogg.
That seed in turn grew into Klaymen. Afterwards, Klaymen manages to reach the throne room, with Klogg and a motionless Hoborg waiting for him. Klogg tries to dissuade Klaymen from reviving Hoborg by tempting him with Hoborg's crown. From here, the player may choose to take the crown to revive Hoborg. If the player chooses to take the crown for himself, Klogg gloats at his apparent victory, only for the crown to disfigure Klaymen to Klogg; the now-villanous Klaymen declares himself the new ruler of the Neverhood. If the player chooses to revive Hoborg, Klaymen distracts Klogg and manages to put the crown atop Hoborg's head, reviving him; as Hoborg thanks Klaymen, Klogg attempts to ambush them both, only to set off his own cannon which blasts him out of the castle and into the void. Returning to the building where Klaymen first started, Hoborg continues populating the Neverhood and orders a celebration when he is finished. However, Klaymen remains sorrowful over the loss of Willie and Bil, Hoborg decides to use his powers to save Willie and Bil, as well as create a bunch of new friends for Klaymen.
The game ends with Hoborg telling Klaymen "Man, things are good". Doug TenNapel came up with the idea of a plasticine world in 1988, creating 17 structures. Due to his dissatisfaction with the way David Perry ran Shiny Entertainment, TenNapel left the company in 1995. Two weeks he announced at E3 that he started his own company The Neverhood, Inc. which consisted of a number of people who worked on the Earthworm Jim game and its sequel. Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Interactive, which had started, needed fresh and unusual projects and TenNapel approached Spielberg with the idea of a claymation game, with Spielberg accepting it for publication; the Neverhood, Inc. made a deal with DreamWorks Interactive and Microsoft, the game went for development. According to the developers, creating the game's characters and scenery used up ov
Game engine
A game engine is a software-development environment designed for people to build video games. Developers use game engines to construct games for consoles, mobile devices, personal computers; the core functionality provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection, scripting, artificial intelligence, streaming, memory management, localization support, scene graph, may include video support for cinematics. Implementers economize on the process of game development by reusing/adapting, in large part, the same game engine to produce different games or to aid in porting games to multiple platforms. In many cases game engines provide a suite of visual development tools in addition to reusable software components; these tools are provided in an integrated development environment to enable simplified, rapid development of games in a data-driven manner. Game engine developers attempt to "pre-invent the wheel" by developing robust software suites which include many elements a game developer may need to build a game.
Most game engine suites provide facilities that ease development, such as graphics, physics and AI functions. These game engines are sometimes called "middleware" because, as with the business sense of the term, they provide a flexible and reusable software platform which provides all the core functionality needed, right out of the box, to develop a game application while reducing costs and time-to-market — all critical factors in the competitive video game industry; as of 2001, Gamebryo, JMonkeyEngine and RenderWare were such used middleware programs. Like other types of middleware, game engines provide platform abstraction, allowing the same game to be run on various platforms including game consoles and personal computers with few, if any, changes made to the game source code. Game engines are designed with a component-based architecture that allows specific systems in the engine to be replaced or extended with more specialized game middleware components; some game engines are designed as a series of loosely connected game middleware components that can be selectively combined to create a custom engine, instead of the more common approach of extending or customizing a flexible integrated product.
However extensibility is achieved, it remains a high priority for game engines due to the wide variety of uses for which they are applied. Despite the specificity of the name, game engines are used for other kinds of interactive applications with real-time graphical needs such as marketing demos, architectural visualizations, training simulations, modeling environments; some game engines only provide real-time 3D rendering capabilities instead of the wide range of functionality needed by games. These engines rely upon the game developer to implement the rest of this functionality or assemble it from other game middleware components; these types of engines are referred to as a "graphics engine", "rendering engine", or "3D engine" instead of the more encompassing term "game engine". This terminology is inconsistently used as many full-featured 3D game engines are referred to as "3D engines". A few examples of graphics engines are: Crystal Space, Genesis3D, Irrlicht, OGRE, RealmForge, Truevision3D, Vision Engine.
Modern game or graphics engines provide a scene graph, an object-oriented representation of the 3D game world which simplifies game design and can be used for more efficient rendering of vast virtual worlds. As technology ages, the components of an engine may become outdated or insufficient for the requirements of a given project. Since the complexity of programming an new engine may result in unwanted delays, a development team may elect to update their existing engine with newer functionality or components; such a framework is composed of a multitude of different components. The actual game logic has to be implemented by some algorithms, it is distinct from sound or input work. The rendering engine generates animated 3D graphics by any of a number of methods. Instead of being programmed and compiled to be executed on the CPU or GPU directly, most rendering engines are built upon one or multiple rendering application programming interfaces, such as Direct3D, OpenGL, or Vulkan which provide a software abstraction of the graphics processing unit.
Low-level libraries such as DirectX, Simple DirectMedia Layer, OpenGL are commonly used in games as they provide hardware-independent access to other computer hardware such as input devices, network cards, sound cards. Before hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, software renderers had been used. Software rendering is still used in some modeling tools or for still-rendered images when visual accuracy is valued over real-time performance or when the computer hardware does not meet needs such as shader support. With the advent of hardware accelerated physics processing, various physics APIs such as PAL and the physics extensions of COLLADA became available to provide a software abstraction of the physics processing unit of different middleware providers and console platforms. Game engines can be written in any programming language like C++, C or Java, though each language is structurally different and may provide different levels of access to specific functions; the audio engine is the component which consists of algorithms related to the loading and output of sound through the client's speaker system.
At a minimum i
Gear (Image Comics)
Gear is a six-issue comic book limited series written and illustrated by Doug TenNapel. It was published in six issues by a production company and publishing house; the issues were reprinted in trade paperback form by Image Comics in 2007. Many of the characters presented in the book were retooled for TenNapel's Nickelodeon cartoon series Catscratch. Gear featured black-and-white artwork created with an ink brush by TenNapel. Many of its covers were photos of 3D sculptures, owing to TenNapel's affinity for stop motion animation; the Image Comics collection presents the artwork in full color. Gear tells the story of a podunk town of squat, hominid-like cats who are bordered on all sides by bigger and more war-like animals; the town's only protection comes from a gigantic battle robot in disrepair. The town elder sends four brave cats out to capture an enemy guardian to further defend the town; the cats are named Waffle, Mr. Black and Gordon, they were named after TenNapel's actual pet cats. After tragedy strikes the cats in a battle with the neighboring dog faction's guardian, causing the death of Simon, Waffle begins blaming himself for the trouble and goes into the woods to end his own life.
There he meets an insect from another warring faction. The two befriend each little knowing of the role they will both play in the oncoming battles; the name "Gear" comes from a mystical artifact existing in the land which promises to increase a Guardian's powers. Many parties search for the Gear, including a secret ninja-like Gear cult; the main plot revolves around the appearance of the gear and the subsequent mysteries it creates. Further themes in the story are the politics of the animal towns, the friendship of the four cats, the afterlife, giant robot combat; the six issues of the comic where reprinted as a trade paperback by Fireman Press at the end of the comic's initial run in 1999. The full color reprinting by Image Comics was printing in January 2007 Gear was loosely adapted into a Nickelodeon cartoon series entitled Catscratch, though most elements from the comic book do not appear; the series main characters are Mr. Blik and Waffle; the characters of Simon and Gear do not appear, but the name Gear is used for Mr. Blik's beloved monster truck.
A review of TenNapel's Gear at The Daily Cross Hatch, from March 4, 2007
Iron West
Iron West is a western steampunk graphic novel by American comic book creator Doug TenNapel. It was published by Image Comics in 2006; the story features modern day objects such as robots. TenNapel Strikes Gold in "Iron West", Comic Book Resources, May 17, 2006 Iron West Review, Comics Bulletin Iron West Review, IGN
