* 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.

(3D Engine List)

(Amit's Game Programming Information)

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.

Also called Transparency.

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.

Book: The Art of Computer Game Design. 1982

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.

For vectors A, B, and a resultant C :

A X B = C

Or in component form :

( A.x , A.y , A.z ) X ( B.x , B.y , B.z ) = ( A.y * B.z - A.z * B.y , A.z * B.x - A.x * B.z , A.x * B.y - A.y * B.x)

This is commonly utilized to compute something known as a surface normal. As by the cross product formula, a normal is simply a vector that is perpendicular to some plane. In graphics, this plane is usually a polygon of some type.

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.

See OpenGL, Glide.

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.

Here is a typical representation of a dot product for vectors A and B:

Or we can describe the same equation in terms of vector components:

Using a Dot Product, we can obtain the angle between two vectors A and B as follows:

Okay, lets break down what just occurred above. What we are saying is that the cosine of theta is equal to the dot product of A and B divided by the product of A and B's magnitudes. The magnitude of a vector V is denoted by : |V|

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.

The data often works on a system of patterns being repeated in larger and smaller forms with the same algorithm.

The Ultima series began with Akalabeth (Ultima 0), which was released in 1979. Many sequels followed: Ultima I - IX, and Ultima Online.

One of Richard Garriot's wonderful contributions to game design was introduced in Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (released in 1985). The game kept track of the character's choices and actions. The player's goal was to live a life of virtue. Good actions, such as charity and sacrifice, were rewarded. But evil actions, such as lying or stealing were also taken into account. The player could not complete the game unless he were sufficiently virtuous. While this may sound a bit odd, it was a wonderful innovaiton. It is a rare game which can so successfully boost a player's self-esteem!

The Ultima series has had a profound impact on subsequent games, influencing games such as: Fallout I & II, Baldur's Gate I & II, Icewind Dale, the Final Fantasy series, Neverwinter Nights, Arcanum, Pools of Radiance, and Dark Sun.

Richard Garriot's games usually take advantage of the best available technology. Richard Garriot has recently left OSI, and has founded a new company called Destination Games. This company has formed a partnership with NCSoft, an Asian company.

He is currently working on a translation of NCSoft's Lineage: The Bloodpledge for the U.S. market, a new MMPORPG code-named Tabula Rasa, and the mysterious "Project X".

Common fixes to this problem are to use matrix multiplication for rotations or quaternions.

Glide was once a very popular API, as it was the first available to utilitize hardware acceleration for the general gamer. Since the proliferation of Direct3D and OpenGL, Glide's usefulness has waned because it only works on 3DFX cards.

See OpenGL, Direct3D.

(Glide Underground)

This series gained a wide variety of fans due to it's witty humour and interesting gameplay.

See Direct3D, Glide.

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.

Book

If there was a 320x240 sized screen, there would be 320 rays cast out to get a sliver for each pixel of the screen.

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.

Also called Blending.

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.

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.