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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the planet Chiron ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system. As the game progresses, Planet's growing sentience becomes a formidable obstacle to the human colonists.
Sidney K. Meier is a Canadian-born Swiss-American programmer, designer, and producer of several strategy video games and simulation video games, including the Civilization series. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with Bill Stealey and is the Director of Creative Development of Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. For his contributions to the video game industry, Meier was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.
A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software industry.
Game Developer was a magazine for video game creators, originally started in March 1994 by Miller Freeman, Inc as quarterly, later bimonthly, and finally monthly. In each issue, industry leaders and experts shared technical solutions, reviewed new game development tools, and discussed strategies for creating innovative, successful video games. Monthly postmortems dissected the industry's leading games, from AAA console to social and mobile games and beyond, and columns gave insight into deeper development practices from across all disciplines, from design, to programming, to art, to business, and audio. It was closed in 2013 as part of a restructuring at parent company UBM Tech that included the closing of all print publications owned by that company.
Havok is a middleware software suite developed by the Irish company Havok. Havok provides a physics engine component and related functions to video games.
Civilization IV is a 4X turn-based strategy computer game and the fourth installment of the Civilization series, and designed by Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and his video game development studio Firaxis Games. It was released in North America, Europe, and Australia, between October 25 and November 4, 2005, and followed by Civilization V.
Gamebryo is a game engine developed by Gamebase Co., Ltd. and Gamebase USA, that incorporates a set of tools and plugins including run-time libraries, supporting video game developers for numerous cross-platform game titles in a variety of genres, and served as a basis for the Creation Engine.
A physics processing unit (PPU) is a dedicated microprocessor designed to handle the calculations of physics, especially in the physics engine of video games. It is an example of hardware acceleration.
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite.
Autodesk Softimage, or simply Softimage was a 3D computer graphics application, for producing 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling, and computer animation. Now owned by Autodesk and formerly titled Softimage|XSI, the software has been predominantly used in the film, video game, and advertising industries for creating computer generated characters, objects, and environments.
SpeedTree is a group of vegetation programming and modeling software products developed and sold by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV) that generates virtual foliage for animations, architecture and in real time for video games and demanding real time simulations.
Telekinesys Research Limited (TR), doing business as Havok Group, is an Irish software company founded on 9 July 1998 by Hugh Reynolds and Steven Collins, based in Dublin, Ireland, and owned by Microsoft's Ireland Research subsidiary. They have partnerships with Activision, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Xbox Game Studios, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Bethesda Softworks and Ubisoft.
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution is a 4X, turn-based strategy game developed in 2008 by Firaxis Games with Sid Meier as designer. It is a spin-off of the Civilization series. The video game was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Windows Phone, and iOS. A Wii version was originally expected but was cancelled. The absence of a PlayStation Portable version was attributed to a lack of development manpower.
ZeniMax Online Studios LLC is an American video game developer and a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media, specializing in massively multiplayer online games. The company developed The Elder Scrolls Online and its downloadable content. ZeniMax Online Studios had around 250 employees in 2012. In addition to the main Hunt Valley, Maryland based office, ZeniMax Online also maintains a satellite studio in Budapest, Hungary as well as a customer support center in Galway, Ireland and an additional office in Austin, Texas.
Trinigy was a German software development company.
Silicon Studio is a Japanese computer graphics technology company and video game developer based in Tokyo. As a technology company, Silicon Studio has produced several products in the 3D computer graphics field, including middleware software, such as a post-processing visual effects library called YEBIS, as well as general real-time graphics engines and game development engines, such as OROCHI and Mizuchi, a physically based rendering engine. As a video game developer, Silicon Studio has worked on different titles for several gaming platforms, most notably, the action-adventure game 3D Dot Game Heroes on the PlayStation 3, the two role-playing video games Bravely Default and Bravely Second: End Layer on the Nintendo 3DS, and Fantasica on the iOS and Android mobile platforms.
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth is a turn-based strategy, 4X video game in the Civilization series developed by Firaxis Games, published by 2K Games and released for Microsoft Windows on October 24, 2014, the Mac App Store on November 27, 2014 and for Linux on December 18, 2014. A spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, Beyond Earth shares much of that game's development team, as well as some concepts which were introduced in the 1999 title. The game's setting is unique to the Civilization series in that it takes place in the future, with mankind traveling through space and founding colonies on extraterrestrial planets after Earth becomes uninhabitable due to an undescribed disaster known as "the Great Mistake".
Nvidia GameWorks is a middleware software suite developed by Nvidia. The Visual FX, PhysX and Optix SDKs provide a wide range of enhancements pre-optimized for Nvidia GPUs. GameWorks is partially open-source. The competing solution being in development by AMD is GPUOpen, which was announced to be free and open-source software under the MIT License.
References
- ↑ Dobson, Jason (August 1, 2007). "Fork Particle Joins Xbox 360 Tools & Middleware Program". Gamasutra . UBM plc . Retrieved November 27, 2016.
- ↑ "Trickstar Games Adopts Particle Effects Middleware Technology by Fork Particle". Gamasutra . UBM plc. May 18, 2011. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
- ↑ Remo, Chris (March 15, 2010). "ZeniMax Online Adopts Fork Particle Tech For MMO". Gamasutra . UBM plc . Retrieved November 27, 2016.
- ↑ Caoili, Eric (October 6, 2010). "Firaxis Using Fork Particle Toolset For Civ V's Visual Effects". Gamasutra . UBM plc . Retrieved November 27, 2016.
- ↑ "Trinigy Integrates Fork Particle Effects Into Vision Engine". Gamasutra . UBM plc. January 27, 2010. Retrieved November 27, 2010.
