Direct3D. Part of the API DirectX for Windows, it handles 3D rendering.

Digital audio tape -- a very common means of digital recording.

The term coined for multiplayer games in Doom, usually consisting of all players trying to see who can get the most kills.

Debugging is the process of tracking and eliminating errors or bugs from your source code.

The second part of an ADSR envelope. The amount of time, after the attack time has elapsed, that it takes for the note?s volume to drop to sustain level.

A logarithmic scale of an audio signal?s intensity.

An effect where the original signal is repeated after a short interval.

A visual development environment created by Borland/Inprise, based on Object Pascal. Intended for use in Rapid Application Development.

See Also:Object Pascal

A scene effect to make objects that are farther away from the camera are rendered with a lighter color so that they are given the illusion of distance

A game released in 1995 by Interplay Productions and Parallax Software, Descent was the first commercial game to feature full 6-degrees-of-freedom movement inside a structure. The player?s objective is to destory haywire mining robots, save hostages, destroy the mine?s reactor and escape before it blows the whole mine to kingdom come. Descent also features an excellent enemy AI which learns the player?s combat style, forcing him to change his tactics or die. Interplay has since released two sequels to this popular game.

see "design document"

A document that the designer creates which contains everything that a game should include. Sometimes referred to as a "design bible", this document should list every piece of art, sound, music, character, all the back story and plot that will be in the game. Basically, if the game is going to have it, it should be thoroughly documented in the design document so that the entire development team understands exactly what needs to be done and has a common point of reference.

Short for design specification; A document that is a technical version of the design document. The design spec is like a "map" for how the game will be constructed. Here the designer must include what the game needs to be put together, including a list of materials, required people, and so on. The design spec is a way to detail the construction of the game.

The underlying and abstract thought behind the simple idea of making games ?fun?. Simple to understand, hard to master. Anybody can write up a design document with countless revolutionary, inventive, and well-documented ideas. It is only a true Design Theorist who can make that design document produce a fun and addictive game.

A basic summary description of the concept of the game, explaining what the game will be like. Mainly, the design treatment should discuss the game?s basic plot, gameplay, general discussion of the target audience(age and gender), the basic presentation of how the game would be constructed, and other features. The treatment is made to be short and simple.

The game designer is the one who takes a game from an initial concept and flushes out all the components of a game until it is totally complete on paper. The designer usually writes this information into a design document.

A popular free IDE (Integrated Develpment Environment) for varius C++ compilers. Comes packaged with the MinGW compiler but can be used with almost any command-line compiler.

This term refers to anyone who is involved in the process of development of games. This could include anyone in a game company, or it could only mean those who are directly involved in creating the game such as the artists, designers, programmers and musicians. Developer is also sometimes used as a synonym to a programmer.

Development is a process of creating something.

Criterion RenderWare 3.x 3D model/object file format.

A dungeon based shooter with Isometric graphics and dynamic map creation system that has enormous popularity. Diablo 2 is currently scheduled for release.

Like music or theatre, video games often have a pattern of action that starts low, then steadily rises through the game, and climaxes near the end. This means that the challenges faced by the player are not equal in difficulty as the game progresses. Games tend to start with simple challenges and build to a higher difficulty level as the game nears completion.

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.

A college for Game Programming.

An amplifier that emulates the characteristics of other amplifiers, allowing for near authentic tone with much more versatility and a vastly lower price.

Synthesizers where sound is generated much like it is with analog synthesizers, though all processing and filtering is done digitally. Usually capable of much more realistic reproduction of natural instruments, though this is not always desirable. A common complaint is that digital synthesizers sound colder than their analog counterparts.

A round connector with a number of pins. MIDI connectors are 5-pin DIN connectors.

A 3D API developed by Micosoft and part of the DirectX SDK. Contains two modes, one working at a higher level but slower which is Retained Mode, and a lower level, faster version called Immediate Mode.

See OpenGL, Glide.

The initial API needed to manipulate anything regarding graphics through the DirectX API. Includes functions on setting the screen size and resolution.

Introduced in DirectX 8; DirectGraphics combines both Direct3D and DirectDraw. (DirectDraw was removed after DirectX 7)

The API needed to closely access hardware through Windows, such as the keyboard, mouse, joysticks and joypads.

In game industry there is no real director position, besides possibly a corporate position like "Director of Technology". The position which is closest to this film position in games would be a designer or producer, depending on the company.

The API needed to connect over networks through DirectX.

The API developed for easily playing media such as AVIs and MPEGs.

The API needed to play sounds through DirectX.

A package of APIs developed by Microsoft to give developers greater control in developing applications for Windows. Individual APIs can normally be distinguished by having the prefix of Direct, as in DirectSomething.

A method of updating only the changed parts of the screen. The screen is divided up into rectangles and only rectangles that have changes are makred "dirty" and then are redrawn to clean them up. Increases drawing speed as less is drawn.

Any alteration of a signal -- can be desirable, with controlled distortion through effects boxes, overdrive, etc., or unwanted, such as with noticable distortion in hi-fi equipment caused by poor components.

Someone who distributes items to retail stores. For instance, a publisher will have a game printed into its material/box for and then send them to distributors who will store them in warehouses and distribute them to retail stores when they are needed.

A business that buys, warehouses, ships, invoices and sells to retailers for non-competing products. Contrast to a wholesaler which carries non-exclusive lines of products.

The process of creating an illusion of more colors than are really available in the current color depth by creatively arranging individual pixel patterns.

A freeware C++ compiler for DOS created by DJ Delorie.

Dynamic Link Library. Used to contain code that can be ran from executable but does not have to be compiled each time, practical to distributing abstracted functions.

Downloadable Sounds. A standard that encorporates custom samples into MIDI sequences. DLS samples are distributed in conjunction with a SMF and are played back as part of the sequence. DLS ensures that a sequence played back on one system sounds the same as the original.

Dungeon Master. The term is trademarked to TSR/Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro and refers to the player who runs a session of Dungeons & Dragons. The generic term is Game Master.

An early production name for the IBM/ATI-based Nintendo GameCube.

See Also:GameCube

Doom is a game that is a landmark for the first person shooter game genre. Wolfenstein3D was the first FPS game but Doom took this idea to the next level. With unique monsters, dark levels, motivating music and the monster noises designed to give you nightmares for weeks the game is a classic. There were 4 dooms released. Ultimate Doom, Doom ][, Doom: TNT, and Doom: Plutonia. The sucess of these games has spawned off many first person shooters and has made the market what it is today. These games were developed by ID software. Other titles made by ID include Quake 1, Quake 2 and the new Quake 3: Arena.

Disk Operating System. A text-based operating system that is a descendant of CP/M (another text-based OS). Many companies created their own distributions of DOS, but the original two were PC-DOS (IBM), and MS-DOS (Microsoft). MS-DOS is the foundation of Microsoft Windows ME and earlier versions of Windows. i.e. Windows can?t run without DOS.

Dot Product (Scalar Product)

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:

A · B

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

A · B = A.x * B.x + A.y * B.y + A.z * B.z

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

Cos q = (A · B) / (|A| · |B|)

q = arcCos ((A · B) / (|A| · |B|))

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|

One can calculate the magnitude of a vector simply by taking the square root of each term

in the vector squared. Ie.

|A| = sqrt (A.x * A.x + A.y * A.y + A.z * A.z)

A video buffer consists of a memory allocation for the information that is drawn to the screen. The first buffer is what is actually drawn to the screen, a second and third buffer are used to create a workspace to draw to that doesn?t require synchronization to the vertical retrace of the monitor.

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 process of transfering information from a host source to a client. Ex: When you surf the web you are downloading information from web sites.

The Sega Dreamcast is the last console of Sega Enterprises, which was released in 1998 in Japan and 1999 in North-America and Europe. Since 2000 various freeware games are available thanks to the open source and free development kit KallistiOS. The Dreamcast is the one and only videogame console which makes it possible due the free development libraries like SDL to create software legal without using any Sega libraries. Three commercial games without Sega licence were released 2003 and 2004 this way. Still, there are publishers like www.dreamcast-scene.com or www.goatstore.com who even help out single programmers to release their software commercially on CD.

The latest console from Sega. (WWW)

A top down Action/Adventure game. The game follows the character Ryan, who hears voices which urge him to assassinate people.

This game featured an interface which was innovative, but not very good. The game had good atmosphere. But many people found the puzzles to be overly difficult. It was given an 18 Certificate in the U.K. for violence and sexual content.

A drop out occures when a few polygons vanish because there are too many polygons being displayed on screen for the computer to handle.

A device that simulates percussion patterns. Used often when band members are short, for practice (to lay down a beat to use as reference), or in certain musical genres (hip hop, house).

Every linear program has a corresponding linear program called the dual. It is maxy {b · y | ATy c and y 0 }. For any solution x to the original linear program and any solution y to the dual we have c · x (AT y)T x = yT(Ax) y · b. For optimal x and y, equality holds. For a problem formulated as an integer linear program, a solution to the dual of a relaxation of the program can serve as witness.

Duke Nukem 3D was a game designed by 3d Realms. It uses portals and sectors (similar to Doom) in order to give the illusion of 3d space using a 2d mapping system. The mapping system and level designer are called Build. In addition, the Build Engine was used in other games such as Blood. At the time of release the Build engine was eclipsed by the Quake engine developed by ID software. Duke Nukem 3d was still a successful game due to the nature of the main character and the interactive enviroment.

DVD (Digital Versatile Disk) DVD storage capacity is: 17 Gbyte DVD delivers the data at a higher rate than CD-ROM. This technology could replace the Video Cassett tape due to the high quality of the sound and video. Unlike video cassett tapes, DVDs do not degrade in picture quality over time.