The Electronic Entertainment Expo. This is the main event of the year for the game industry for publishers to woo retailers and show off games that will hopefully be ready for the Christmas sales season.

Something in a game that has nothing to do with the main game or is an unnecessary bonus. For example, some games have hidden pictures of their developers that can be viewed by pressing special key combinations.

Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Primarily used on mainframe computers, EBCDIC is used to represent data.
See Also:ASCII

An effect where the original signal is repeated after a small delay.

Acronym: "European Computer Trade Show". This is Europe's premier industry trade show and is roughly analogous to the US' own E3 (q.v.). It is held in London and usually uses one of the sprawling Earls Court exhibition complex's many halls. The ECTS is specific to computer games and the interactive electronic media industry. Although there were attempts to run it twice a year initially, it is currently held only in September to coincide with Christmas release schedules.

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A type of unit that alters the signal in a wide variety of manners.

EGA - Enhanced Graphics Array IBM defined graphic card. Followup to CGA. Provides up to 16 colors out of a palette of 64.

Released in 1984, Elite was a milestone in the history of gaming - it was the first truly 3D game on home computers, and was one of the first open-ended games, allowing the player to freely explore a galaxy without tying him to a linear plot. It went on to sell over a million units, and was released on a multitude of platforms. It was followed by two sequels, Frontier and First Encounters (released in 1993 and 1995 respectively). Elite 4 (working title) is currently scheduled to be released in 2002. For more information see www.frontier.co.uk

Behavior that was not explicitly designed but occurs from the existing routines. Usually implemented by defining simple rules that allow some overlapping.

The act of simulation a set of circumstances out of the original context. Emulators often simulate hardware calls so that different machines can run each others software. This has been seen in the game world by programs like MAME which emulate old arcade machines on current machines and operating systems.

Something which performs like something else. In the game world, this is usually one system being able to run software that was created to be run on a different system.

A display that is placed at the end of a retail shelf and considered the premiere placement. Publishers will pay extra for end caps so that their games are more prominent to customers.

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This refers to the value of bits which comprise a number. Binary numbers are made up of 1s and 0s. A typical eight bit binary number looks like this: 1000 0101

Using a little endian system, the leftmost bit represents a high value, while the rightmost bit represents a small value. A 1 in the rightmost position (0000 0001) represents the number 1. A 1 in the leftmost position (1000 0000) represents 128. Using eight bits, any number from 0 to 255 may be represented.

A big endian system orders the bits in the other direction. In this case, a 1 in the rightmost bit (0000 0001) has the value of 128, while a 1 in the leftmost bit (1000 0000) has the value of 1.

Generally, PCs use a little endian system, while Macs use a big endian system.

Visit the site below for more information and a history of the problem. http://www.mackido.com/General/endian.html

The base unit of a design. This is anything that can react with anything else in any way: For instance in an adventure game, every inventory object, every item that the player can interact with, every NPC and the player themselves are all entities. In a FPS, any missile that an NPC fires is an entity, as is an exploding section of wall or an exploding dustbin. As a game has more entities, the ways that they can react together increases geometrically. Thus entity relationship management becomes necessary.

Managing the relationship of game design entities (see Entity). As the number of entity types in a game increases, the relationships between them increases geometrically, so for instance in a game with 3 entity types there are 3 possible relationships. For a game with 4 entity types there are 12 and so on. For games such as large adventure games where there may be many different entities, it will become necessary to manage this in some way, by creating standard interactions, or reducing the number of entities available in any one scene.

A representation of the dynamics of a single note.

In synthesizers, a device that produces a volume envelope. Some common types are ADSR and AR generators.

An effect where an object reflects its surroundings, much like chrome.

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The manual shaping of various frequency ranges.

Northampton, Massachusetts based Independent Game Developer founded by Raymond Jacobs and well known to GameDev.net; over the course of three years they designed, produced and sold the Indie game Morning's Wrath.

A path through a graph which starts and ends at the same vertex and includes every edge exactly once. Also known as an Eulerian path, Euler tour, etc.

A new programming language. Remarkably simple, flexible, powerful language definition that is easy to learn and use. Euphoria runs under Windows, Dos, and Linux. Available memory usage equals the amount of onboard memory. Not an "object oriented" language yet achieves the benifits of these languages in a much simpler way.

Euphoria is a new programming language. A remarkably simple, flexible, powerful language definition that is easy to learn and use. Euphoria runs under Windows, Dos, and Linux. Available memory usage equals the amount of onboard memory. Not an "object oriented" language yet achieves the benifits of these languages in a much simpler way. The language definition is easy to learn and use.

A massively multiplayer online RPG. Takes place in a fantasy world and is based on the user to create a character using different races and classes in order to survive the harsh realms of Norrath.

An executable binary file. Some operating systems (notably MS-DOS, VMS, and TWENEX) use the extension .EXE to mark such files. This usage is also occasionally found among Unix programmers even though Unix executables don't have any required suffix. From The Jargon Dictionary

An expansion to a previously sold game which usually includes new characters, enemies, levels, stories, and bug fixes. Sometimes refered to as Mission Pack.

Often used in Role Playing Games (RPGs), experience points are a way of measuring how much the player has experienced to grant them additional benefits often in the form of increased statistics or skills.

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