A method of indirect lighting which calculates the light diffusion/deflection off of not only the light to face angle to viewer (specular) but calculates the diffused light coming from the light source, hitting the faces in the scene and diffusing light from those faces onto other faces then to the viewer.

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Basically you can connect normal IDE drives onto your RAID controller and then select a mode for operation, most controllers at time of writting support 4 modes, stripping (RAID 0), Mirroring (RAID 1), stripping and Mirroring (RAID 0+1) as well as the SPAN mode.

To Use RAID 0 or 1 you need 2 hard drives (any normal IDE), and for 0+1 you need at least 4 drives, while for spanning you can have any number greater then 2.

RAID 1 impoves your proformence by turning your connected hard drives effectively into one large one, as well as sharing the work between them, which doubles the proformence of the drives.

RAID 0 creates and stores a on the fly copy of your first hard disk onto the seccond drive in case of failure.

RAID 0+1, you have a RAID 0 working which is backed up onto other drives which are running in RAID 1.

SPAN connects any number of drives >2 togethor so that they appear as one big drive, however it DOES NOT share work between them like RAID 0, so you don?t get a proformence increase.

Created in 1998 by Red Storm, who was founded by Tom Clancy, Rainbow 6 is a first-person tactical shooter and a major revolution in FPS games, bringing in a new level of depth.

A BASIC compiler/interpreter/IDE by William Yu. It?s features are very similar to Visual Basic, and it is easy to use. (It?s also free!) For more information, or to get a free download, check out the following address:

The process of creating an image from 3D components.

Raycasting is a technique used to produced 3-D worlds based on a 2-D matrix. In this technique, rays are shot out from a specific point and their intersections with the world (as represented by the matrix) are recorded. The information recorded from these intersections is then used to create a 3-D perspective.

Graphics technique used in Wolf3D where a number of rays (or lines) where drawn from the current position out to the obstacles they would encounter. The distance of the line and the surface they hit would determine what would be drawn to the screen.

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

A game that proceeds constantly which the player needs respond actively as it changes from second to second matching natural time progression.

A game usually based on controlling many units in real-time (as opposed to turn-based). Often the perspective is an overhead view to give a better overall view of the playing field.

For a computer programmer, this is when a function you?ve written has to call itself in order to get a result. (The classic, textbook example is a routine which works out the factorial of a number.) It can be very elegant if done right. It can also be a complete bastard to debug if done wrong.

An alias of a variable.

The rate at which the screen is drawn, usually measure per seconds as frames per second (FPS) in software and Hz in hardware.

Also called the View-Centered Coordinate system. The Viewpoint (camera) is always at coordinates <0,0,0> and everything else in the Universe is based relatively to this home position.

The fourth and final part of an ADSR envelope. The amount of time it takes after a key is released for the note?s volume to drop from sustain level to zero.

A Remake is generally a newly programmed version of an existing (usually quite old) game. Remakes can be true to the original, but most tend to use improved graphics or enhance gameplay with new ideas. There are several websites dedicated to making Remakes.(e.g. http://www.remakes.org)

A ren?ai game, also known as a dating sim, is a popular genre of game in Japan but hasn?t made it to western gaming very much. In this game the player plays one main character, (usually) male, and the game objective is to court and impress one or more (usually) female NPCs. Gameplay usually relies heavily on dialogue choices and may contain sim or adventure elements. There is not usually any combat. Perhaps the clearest western examples of this genre would be the Leisure Suit Larry games. There are also X-rated versions of these games known as hentai games, h games, or ecchi games.

aka: RC The active area of memory that OpenGL writes information derived from the Model View, Projection View and Texture matrices, that is displayed on screen. Similar to the Device Context (DC) used by Windows when drawing graphics with GDI.

Developed by Criterion Software Limited in 1993, RenderWare (RW) is a 3D "middleware" applications programming interface (API) graphics rendering engine that has become more popular since version 3 and the Playstation 2 video game console where it has been used in various games (most notably Grand Theft Auto 3), many of which have been ported to the PC.

Device used in networks to regenerate analog and digital signals. Analog signals are simply amplified, while digital signals are nearly reproduced.

Short for reproduce. When testing the game, defects are typically logged into a database system. Bugs are then repro?ed (reproduced) according to directions left in the database to help the software engineer(s) locate and correct the defect.

An alteration of sampling rate without changing the pitch or speed of the sample.

The accuracy of something. Often used as the resolution of a screen, the number of pixels in X and Y dimensions.

When something is sold, it is said to be a retail item.

A retailer is someone who sells things. For instance, the store CompUSA or Babbages are computer software retailers.

Red, Green, Blue. The 3 primary colors that make up all other colors by being displayed at different intensities next to each other. In a monitor this is referred to as a triad, which equals one pixel.

A 3D CAD NURBS modeller.

A version of the Cartesian coordinate system where positive X points right of the origin, positive Y points up from the origin, and positive Z points behind the origin.

A ring modulator is used in analogue synthesis. A ring modulator takes two different tones, and plays the sum, and difference frequences of them both. Example: if you run a 500 Hz sine wave and a 600 Hz sine wave through a ring modulator, it produces two sine waves with the frequencies 100 Hz (600 - 500 Hz) and 900 Hz (600 + 500 Hz). With such simple ingredients it is not very useful, but using more complex tones, it generates more interesting results. Nowadays it is rather simple to produce digitally, but back in the old days when everything was analogue, it was a bit more complicated. The most common way to do it involves a ring of four diodes, hence the name, Ring Modulator.

A fast and highly-efficient RISC based operating system. Boots in under 10 seconds due to being ROM-based as opposed to disc-based like most other OS?s.

Originally developed by Acorn, a British hardware manufacturer who had previously been responsible for the BBC microcomputer.

The OS is now actively developed by RISC OS Ltd. and is property of Pace, another British hardware manufacturer, this time specialising in set-top boxes.

Run Length Encoding. A type of compression that reduces file sizes by shortening sequential "runs" of color of the same amount.

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.

Chris Roberts is best known as the creator of the Wing Commander series. He is one of gaming?s most ambitious and influential designers. In 1996, he left Origin to found Digital Anvil.

Role Playing Games have been a popular paper game system since Dungeons & Dragons and before. This genre has enjoyed a good amount of attention in software form as well, with some of the original titles being Ultima, Wizardry and Bards Tale. Software Role Playing Games usually give the player more than one character which they can build into a powerful fighting force by slaying monsters and gaining experience points and then levels.

One of the designers of the original Quake and Doom games, is now mostly known for the critical fiasco of Daikatana. His early work, especially the Chulthu-style Quake levels, is still widely regarded as one of the best works of the period.

To change the angle an object is being drawn at, or the camera is looking at.

A type of matrix that, when applied, rotates a point.

Real video is shot and then drawn over to give very accurate looking cartoon animation. This was done on movies such as The Lord of the Rings and was also done on the game Prince of Persia.

A router is a piece of hardware that directs network traffic from one network to the other, and can also act as a firewall.

Roleplaying Game. A game that is usually based on controlling one or more characters to finish some large and more minor quests while fighting and gaining experience points.

Read The Fu****g Manual. Usually said to people who keep bugging others with their questions BECAUSE they didn?t RTFM. :-)

Real Time Operating Systems, the OS used when deterministic system behaviour is necessary even in boundary operatinal conditions.

Real-time (not turn-based) Strategy.

Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in Perl). It is simple, straight-forward, extensible, and portable.

Guides for actions. Rules for board games are usually given as written instructions, which the players then opt to follow. In a computer game, the rules are inherent and the player is forced to follow them.