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The Terms - A-M
A
ABI Stands for Audio Binary Interface. Specifically, the portion of the Nintendo 64's software libraries used to control the microcode for music and sound effects.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) A set of computer instructions or algorithms designed to simulate the actions of an intelligent being.
AL (Artificial Life) In a nutshell, AL is the antithesis of AI. While AI seeks to simulate real-world behavior by following a complex series of rules, AL starts with very simple rules for a system and enables complex behavior to emerge from them. Galapagos from Anark is the first commercial game to use AL, but rumors abound that several AL based RPGs are in the works.
Algorithm An algorithm is a group of instructions for performing a task or solving a problem, such as an algebraic formula or a program for a computer. Many 2D fighting games from the same companies have the same algorithms, except different graphics are used.
Aliasing A digital phenomenon. In the realm of graphics, when trying to display an image on a portion of the screen where the resolution is too low to display its details correctly, aliasing can occur. Edges look jagged instead of smooth, moire patterns develop in fine parallel lines and the image quality is degraded overall. The problem is most prevalent in diagonal lines.
Alpha The first playable version of a game. Alpha software generally barely runs and is missing major features like gameplay and complete levels. See also Beta.
Also: The transparency of pixels in bitmap images. See "Alpha Channel."
Alpha Channel The alpha channel is an extra 8-bits of information that is sent to the screen in the RGB color model (see RGB), it doesn't show up as red, green or blue, but it has uses in numerous special effects. It is particularly useful in communicating transparency in objects. An alpha value of 100% would be totally opaque, 50% would be translucent, and 0% is completely transparent.
Amiga Started by R.J. Mical and David Needle, this company made add-ons for the Atari 2600 before creating a true multitasking computer, the Amiga, which was released by Commodore. The company was acquired by Commodore and the name can also generally refer to the computer, which was not successful in the US except in vertical markets for video processing and editing. The Amiga attempted a comeback in 1997 with PowerPC based systems, but it never managed to stir mass market interest.
Analog Way of representing information (such as the position of a joystick or the height of a soundwave) that uses a continuous range of values. Contrast with digital.
Anisitropic Filtering Advanced filtering technique, even better than trilinear filtering. It creates an even more accurate image by obtaining more information from the surrounding textures.
Anti-aliasing A graphics procedure designed to eliminate a stair-stepping effect, known as jaggies, occurring at low resolutions. It works by blurring pixels at edges of lines to make the difference between two color areas less dramatic.
Arcade Perfect A term used to describe a flawless conversion of an arcade game to a home system.
ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Simply a custom chip dedicated to a single task, like processing graphics.
Atari 400/800 Atari's first line of home computers, the 400/800 computers were powered by a 6502 CPU (3 MHz) and were released in 1979.
Atari 600/800XL Atari's redesigned 8-bit home computers, released in 1983. Both offered 256-color graphics, a built-in cartridge slot, a maximum resolution of 320x192 (at two colors) and four sound channels.
The Atari 600/800XL are powered by a 6502C CPU (1.79 MhZ) and included 16k and 64k RAM, respectively.
Atari VCS/2600 The first home videogame system to achieve major consumer success, the Atari VCS
(Video Computer System), later renamed the 2600, sported an 1.19 MHz 6507 processor and 128 bytes of RAM. Games came on ROM cartridges. Graphically primitive to today's eyes, it was amazingly popular, creating an awesome boom and raking in hundreds of millions of dollars for Atari, a division of Warner Bros. Eventually the market became super saturated with bad games and crashed between 1983 and 1984.
B
Bandwidth A measurement of how many bits of information can be transmitted at a given time, it is generally used as a generic jargon term (e.g. "the Net doesn't have enough bandwidth to transmit video, dude") rather than a technical term (e.g. "the bandwidth of X is Y").
Battery Back-up In cartridges, a long life battery is often used to preserve the contents of small RAM chips, for the purpose of saving one's place in a game after the system is turned off. Battery back-ups are used in PCs to save preference settings, clock times, etc.
Baud Measurement of the data transmission speed of a telephone or network. At low speeds, the baud rate is equal to the number of the number of bits transmitted per second, thus it is often used incorrectly as a synonym for bits per second (see BPS).
Beta Software nearing the release stage of development that still contains bugs or other problems. At the beta stage, software is stable enough to distribute to reviewers and to show retailers: All the final play elements should be in place.
Bilinear Interpolation A technique used to improve the appearance of a textured surface when viewed at a given distance by blending the colors of adjacent texels.
Bit 1) Contraction of Binary digit. The smallest discrete unit of information available to a computing device. Since all non-esoteric modern computing devices are binary, a bit is usually represented as a 1 or a 0, meaning on or off. 2) The bit is the basic measuring device for information in computers and videogames. It used to measure computing power of systems, referring to how many bits the microprocessor or CPU of the system could process at once. An 8-bit system, like the original NES, works with 8-bit "words" and is less powerful than a 16-bit system, like the Genesis or Super NES, which can process 16-bit "words". This is confusing because often a system will have different processors using differently sized bit "words". The NEC TurboGrafx had an 8-bit CPU but a 16-bit graphics chip. The Atari Jaguar uses 16-, 32-bit and 64-bit chips but has a 64-bit wide bus. 3) The color generation capability of a system is also measured in bits. Color on a computer screen is made up by combining different intensities of red, green and blue in a pixel. The number of colors a system can generate is measured in bits. In general, the formula is 2^x, where X is the number of bits, shows how many colors can be generated. number of colors a system can be generated. Thus, 8-bit color is 256 colors, 4-bit color is 16 colors, and so on. Sometimes with 16- and 32-bit color, some bits are used as check-bits or for generating alpha channels, and are unavailable for actual color generation.
Bitmap A 2D digital image. A bitmap exists in the computer's memory as an exact representation of the image. Strictly speaking, a bitmap refers to images that are bi-level (that is, each pixel in the image is either "off" or "on" as in black or white), but the term is commonly used in place of the correct term, "pixmap" to describe color digital images (similar to the way that "font", which means one typeface at a specific size, and style has come to be synonymous with the term "typeface" which refers to every font of a given typeface). Every pixel in the image is stored (mapped) in memory at a specific location. ("Pixel 1, line 1 has a color value of X, pixel 2 line 1 has a color value of Y, etc.) Backgrounds and sprites are examples of bitmaps. Storing bitmaps takes a very large amount of computer memory.
Blast Processing A marketing term coined by Sega to promote Sonic 2. It referred to a then-new graphics routine which supposedly gave the Genesis faster graphics processing.
Blitter Stands for Block Image Transferer.
A blitter is a device that enables a system to copy data directly from memory to the screen without going through a graphics processor. It is the fastest way to put an image on screen but it is very crude graphics can't be altered when they are "blittered."
Boot, Boot Up To start a computer system - the term was originally called IPL (initial program load), but later the word "boot" came as a shortening of the phrase "boot-strap process." During the boot, a computer checks set locations on a disk to be told the location of the machine's operating system.
BPS An acronym for bits per second. It is a technically accurate term for measuring the speed at which data can be transmitted over a telephone or a network line.
BSP (Binary Space Partition ) Tree The Binary Space Partition Tree is a somewhat new and very popular method of backface culling. It allows the game to "walk" a tree which tells how objects relate to one another in the 3D world. The file ends up looking graphically like a tree, with recursive branches going out all over. To perform the action, a head object is chosen. The program follows the tree, and must decide to go left or right down the tree. By progressing in this manner, all objects can be drawn in proper order, eliminating improper polygon drawing. This technique is used in games such as Quake. Note: BSP Trees can only be used for objects which do not move such as walls or immovable objects in an arena.
Bug An unintentional flaw in a computer program. When encountered by the user it often generates unexpected or erroneous results. For example, a bug in EA's NHL Hockey '95 prevents players with extremely good records for their hockey teams in the regular season from entering the playoffs.
Bump Mapping A technique used in graphics to simulate rough or bumpy textures with irregularities in shading.
Bus The pathway between devices (usually chips) on a circuit board. A wide bus carries more bits of information and is thus faster than a narrower bus.
Byte The standard size "word" used in computer memory. It is comprised of eight bits.
C
Cache Special RAM (sometimes built into the processor) in which frequently accessed pieces of information can be stored to avoid having to search the entire memory bank for them. Caches can greatly speed the execution of a program.
Cache Coherent Memory Systems which have more than one processor (like Sega Saturn) often have more than one cache. Cache coherent memory means that the processor will check both its own, and any other processors' caches, when writing to or reading from memory, to make sure it is always writing to or reading from the most up-to-date memory, whether that's in another processors' cache or general memory.
Cartridge A small device, containing chips, designed to be inserted into a computer or system. It contains either ROM chips with program information or RAM chips (generally for saving information). Before the advent of CD-ROMs, most videogames for home systems used to come on cartridges (also called "carts").
CD-i A CD-ROM standard designed by Philips that could only be played in its proprietary CD-i consoles. Marketed as a high-end multimedia machine, it was slaughtered in the marketplace by cheap multimedia PCs. A last ditch attempt in 1994 to emphasize the gameplaying aspects of the system failed as well.
CD-ROM A compact disc, similar to an audio CD, containing information that can be read by a computer or console. Since CDs can only be written to once (using special equipment), they are functionally read-only in nature, hence the suffix ROM (see ROM). CD-ROMS can hold about 650 megabytes (650 million bytes), far more than a magnetic disk or cartridge, allowing them to store memory intensive data, like video. Reading from a CD-ROM is far slower than reading from a cartridge or magnetic disk.
CD-X Compact Sega Genesis/Sega CD combo that sold at $399, it barely made it into production. If you've got one, it's a collector's item.
Cel Shading Cartoon rendering for 3D polygons. The technique is used to give a 3D object a 2D and cartoon-like appearance. It's also known as Toon-shading. It's used in games like Jet Set Radio for the Dreamcast and Klonoa 2 for the PlayStation 2.
CES Consumer Electronics Show. A huge trade show for consumer electronics, like stereos and TVs. Until E3, it was also the premier trade show for video and computer games. Although some companies still have a presence at CES, its influence is greatly diminished.
CGA (Color Graphics Architecture) A graphics standard designed for XT machines. CGA cards were capable of displaying graphics at 320x200 and 4 colors - black, white, magenta, and cyan. Even for the time (early 1980s), these graphics were terrible, paling in comparison to other color machines available on the market.
Chip A generic term for a semi-conducting integrated circuit. Chips are generally nearly flat black quadrangles a few millimeters thick. They are far faster than transistors or vacuum tubes (to put it mildly).
Cinepak Compression Video compression standard developed by Apple. It provides excellent compression and good video quality. It is an asynchronous compression process - it takes orders of magnitude longer to compress video than to play it back.
CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) The traditional architecture of a computer processor, it accepts instructions which it then interprets. CISC chips can process more complex instructions than RISC chips, which makes them easier to program for, but they deliver slower performance at comparable speeds. Thus, a 20 MHz CISC chip will, all things being equal, be slower than a 20 MHz RISC chip. The Motorola 680X0 and Intel X86 and Pentium chips are examples of CISC chips. Contrast with RISC.
Clipping A process that occurs in 3D graphics. If an object in 3D space cannot be viewed, it is not drawn by the computer. If it can be seen, it is drawn. If only part of the object can be seen, it is "clipped" and the visible portions are drawn. Computing the portions which are visible takes many more processor cycles than simply drawing or not drawing an object. Sloppy programming can result in improper clipping, so that when the view is very close to the edge of an object, it may not be drawn when it is supposed to be
Clock Speed The speed at which a computer chip operates, usually measured in Megahertz (MHz).
Coaster A CD-ROM which is so terrible that it has more functionality as a coaster for drinks than it does when inserted into a computer or game system.
Codec A piece of software which Compresses and Decompresses a stream of data, typically video or audio. MPEG and Cinepak are examples of video codecs.
Coleco A videogame pioneer, Coleco designed the first digital home videogame system in 1976, the TelStar arcade, which could only play one type of game, Pong. A cartridge-based system, the ColecoVision, followed in 1982. The ADAM computer (1984) was released just as the home computer and videogame industries crashed simultaneously. Coleco is actually an acronym for Connecticut Leather Company.
ColecoVision A cartridge system introduced by Coleco in 1982. It was far more powerful than the other systems available at the time (the Intellivision and Atari 2600). Although it sold more than 500,000 units in two years, it didn't have the installed base to survive the crash of '83-'84 and was discontinued in '84.
Color Palette Can refer to two things. The color palette may be the total number of colors a system is capable of generating, even if they cannot all be displayed at once (the Genesis can display 64 colors from a palette of 65,000), or it may refer to the (64, say) colors that are being used on-screen at that time, in which case it would more correctly be referred to as a CLUT. Since 32-bit systems can generally display thousands or millions of colors simultaneously, discussion of color palettes is rapidly becoming archaic. Creating custom, well designed CLUTs is still a factor on PCs which can display only 256 colors, however.
Conversion A game originally written for one platform (Nintendo 64, for instance) that's translated to work on another platform (like Saturn); also called a port.
Copy Protection Special code in a program that prevents a disk from being copied using conventional measures. Copy protection may also require a "key disk" to be inserted every time a game is played, or information to be retrieved from the manual (such as a series of numbers) every time the program is started. Designed to foil piracy, copy protection is such a hassle for end users that few programs employ it. The fact that most games now ship on CD, which makes them more difficult to copy, is about as strong as copy protection gets in the industry today.
Counterfeit Bootleg software presented as the legitimate article. The counterfeit software trade costs the industry billions of dollars a year worldwide, although it's a problem more in countries with less stringent intellectual property laws, like Hong Kong, India, and South America than in the US.
CPU (Central Processing Unit) The "brain" of a computer (including a game system). It accepts instructions from a program, executes them via the ALU (arithmetic logic unit) and generates an output. While graphics output is generated by the CPUs in most PCs, many game systems use dedicated graphics co-processors to speed the generation of complex graphics, like 3D polygon spaces.
Culling A way of rasterizing convex objects, culling tells the rasterizer not to bother drawing polygons on the back of convex objects, like spheres, that will be hidden from view.
D
Data Path The physical path that bits (in the form of electrons) travel between components on a circuit board. Measured in bit-width (i.e. a 64-bit data path).
Depth Shading Also known as distance shading, fog shading, or depth cueing. To prevent a processor from rendering objects in a 3D environment out to infinity, which would cause monumental slowdown, many games employ depth shading. After a certain arbitrary distance, every object is considered to be out of the view volume and left unrendered. To compensate for objects suddenly popping into view, objects at the far edges of the view volume are shaded to appear as though they are coming out of a fog.
Design Document The complete "script" for a game, it contains (or should contain) every piece of information needed by programmers and artists to create a game.
Designer The designer is the person who specs out the game, coming up with the plot, the format, the puzzles, and the goals. She or he does not (necessarily) program the game or create the artwork.
Developer Refers to the company that actually creates the game versus the company that publishes it (duplicating the discs, printing the boxes, working out distribution, etc.). Often, the developer is given a brief initial specification sheet by the publisher.
Digital A way of representing information (such as the height of a sound wave or the color of a pixel) that uses a number of discrete values. Where a sine wave would be analog, a digital representation of a sine wave would be made of tiny stair steps.
Digitize To convert a photograph or video image, etc. from analog form into digital form.
Dither A process by which a system creates the illusion of displaying more colors than it can actually generate. Dithering is accomplished by placing dots of different colors next to each other in a variety of patterns. For instance, placing red and yellow dots next to each other in a checkerboard pattern will create an impression of the color orange.
DIVX Ill-fated DVD medium designed primarily for "Pay-Per-View Rental" use. Though some DIVX-compatible players were sold and DIVX was backed by some major movie studios, the format was never widely accepted and went under in 1999.
Dolby Digital 5.1 Discrete 5.1 channel soundtrack encoded to an AC-3 bitstream. If played with Dolby Digital decoding circuitry, discrete sound can be heard from six speakers (five audio channels plus a .1 LFE subwoofer channel).
Double Buffering Double Buffering is an animation technique that uses two frame buffers. One frame is displayed while the other one is being rendered into, then the two change places. Provides smoother animation and higher frame rates than single-frame buffering.
DRAM (Dynamic RAM) DRAM is RAM made out of capacitors as opposed to flip-flops (SRAM).
Draw In In a 3D game, whole objects sometimes suddenly "pop" into the view volume. This is draw-in. It occurs because of either sloppy programming of clipping areas, or a lack of processor power, which causes the system to not render objects until they are very close and important in the game.
Dreamcast Sega's 128-bit videogame console, released on November 27, 1998 in Japan and on September 9, 1999 in the US. The system runs a customized Sega OS as well as a custom flavor of Microsoft Windows CE. The Dreamcast media format, dubbed GD-ROM, is capable of holding 1GB of data.
Drop Out When too many polygons are being displayed on screen for the computer to continue to update the display at a constant rate, some of the polygons may "drop out" and disappear. This effect can be very disconcerting.
DTS Stands for Digital Theater Systems. DTS signals are discrete 5.1 channel recordings that must be played with DTS decoding circuitry (ie you need a DTS playback device and DTS receiver). Discrete sound can be heard from six speakers (five audio channels plus the .1 subwoofer channel). The PlayStation 2 is DTS compatible
Dual Shock 2 Updated version of the PSX Dual Shock Controller for use with the PlayStation 2. Although similar to its predecessor, the Dual Shock 2 features analog buttons and a pressure-sensitive digital pad.
DVD Originally stood for Digital Versatile Disk, now commonly: Digital Video Disk. A new standard for optical discs, DVD is the next step beyond CD. It holds up to 10 times the storage capability of current CD-ROMs.
Dynamic Play Adjustment An AI routine, pioneered by Sega, that adjusts the difficulty of the game on the fly to the user's skill level.
E
E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) An annual computer entertainment and videogame trade show. Since its debut, it has taken on an increasingly large role in the gaming industry
ECTS (European Computer Trade Show) The European equivalent of E3, ECTS is held in London every March and September.
Edge Anti-aliasing Anti-aliasing is a graphics procedure designed to eliminate a stair-stepping effect, known as jaggies, occurring at low resolutions. It works by blurring pixels at edges of lines to make the difference between two color areas less dramatic. Edge Anti-aliasing only works on the edges of polygons and doesn't remove artifacts that are not situated on the edges, so it will not solve the moiré patters. It's a post operation, which means that it's applied to an already finished image. The available detail is used and blurred to avoid the staircase effect.
EISA (Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture) Invented by a group of electronic manufacturers to answer the proprietary Microchannel architecture released by IBM. The EISA specifications consisted of a 32-bit bus, a method for machines to look at what cards were in the system, and what resources those cards need. This ability to look at the card's resource requirements was one of the big factors in developing a plug-and-play operating system.
Emotion Engine Name of the PlayStation2's 128-bit CPU.
Emulation A mode which enables a computer to simulate the operation of another computer. The universal computing nature of modern computers means that any computer (given enough time and storage space) can emulate any other computer. In game terms, many classic games are being released for next generation systems in emulated form. That is, instead of rewriting a game for PlayStation, you simply write an emulator of the original computer or arcade board for the PlayStation and let the emulator run the original code. For classic games, this is considered preferable than rewrites of the games, since some of the most warmly remembered "features" of classic games were actually bugs.
Encryption To prevent unauthorized use, many consoles require that their cartridges or CDs have specially encrypted code on them before they will work in the console. This encryption can only be placed by the console manufacturer, which allows them some measure of control over who produces games for the system. Most encryption routines can be bypassed, some more easily than others. The PlayStation1, notably, has an almost criminally easy way to bypass encryption.
Engine A collection of software routines that perform a specific task.
Environment Mapping A rendering technique used to create realistic-looking reflections on a surface. Reflections are everywhere in the real world but are usually absent from videogames due to the extremely high performance required to process reflections in real time.
F
Field The image on a TV screen is drawn in two parts. First, the odd lines (across) are drawn, then the even lines are drawn (see interlace). Together these two images are known as a frame. A field is one half a frame, one scan pass of the electron gun that draws the image on the TV screen
Fill Rate Fill rate is the rate at which pixels are drawn into the screen memory. Fillrate is a common measure used to illustrate the capabilities of today's 3D graphics processors. It depends on the width of the memory bus, the speed of the memory transactions, and the 3D processor's ability to saturate the memory interface with transactions. Fill rate is usually measured in millions of pixels/second (Mpixels/sec).
First Party The manufacturer of a hardware system. The term is used to describe the origin of software for a given system. First party software comes from the manufacturer. For instance, Nintendo is the first party publisher for the Super NES and N64. See also second party and third party.
FMV (Full-Motion Video) Having FMV cut-scenes in games has gained vogue since the rise of high capacity CDs as storage devices, and many games based entirely on FMV have been released. How much FMV cut-scenes add to a game is still a very open question and few entirely FMV-based games have risen above mediocre. The quality of FMV in games is generally below that of TV or VHS video.
FPS 1. Frames Per Second
2. First-Person Shooter
Frame Made of two scan fields (see field, interlace), it is the "complete" image that appears on a TV screen.
Frame Buffer An area of RAM used to store the pixel data for a single screen image, or frame.
Framerate The number of complete screens or frames drawn per second (FPS). Higher frame rates provide smoother motion.
Frames Per Second (FPS) A measure of how many frames are drawn per second on a screen. In standard US NTSC TV broadcasts, 30 frames (and 60 fields) are drawn on the TV screen per second wherease standard motion pictures run at 24 FPS. The more frames drawn per second, the greater the realism of the motion shown on the screen. Many games draw less than 30 frames per second to the screen. The TV image is still refreshed at a rate of 30 FPS, but a new image simply isn't drawn with each new pass.
Full Scene Anti-aliasing Anti-aliasing is a graphics procedure designed to eliminate a stair-stepping effect, known as jaggies, occurring at low resolutions. It works by blurring pixels at edges of lines to make the difference between two color areas less dramatic. Full Scene Anti-aliasing uses something called supersampling, which means that the image is rendered internally at a higher resolution than the screen resolution and then downsampled to the actual screen resolution. This is done on a per tile base, which means that a 32x16 microtile will be downsampled using bicubic filters to a 16x8 tile before it's written to the screen buffer.
G
Game Boy A portable game system by Nintendo introduced in November 1989. Games come on cartridges. It has a monochrome LCD screen which can display 16 shades of gray. Thanks largely to the pack-in game, Tetris, the Game Boy was a major success, despite being the most technically inferior hand-held on the market today. It is powered by a 1 MHz processor.
Game Boy Advance Nintendo's backwards-compatible 32-bit handheld, to be released in 2001. GBA features a 2.9 inch (40.8mm x 61.2mm) reflective TFT color LCD screen and uses Nintendo-made game paks.
Game Over Message which appears on screen when a game is over. Also, a book on the history of Nintendo, by David Sheff.
Gamecube Nintendo's follow-up to the Nintendo 64. This 128-bit console uses 405mHz IBM PowerPC copper chip technology and uses Matsushita's proprietary mini-DVD format for data storage (1.5GB). The system is scheduled to be launched in 2001.
Gameplay The key element in any game, the gameplay is in fact the game itself: the act of bouncing the dot which represents the ball off the line that represents the paddle (as in Pong); the way one moves the plumber around, jumping on heads when rescuing the princess (as in Super Mario Bros.), etc. The art and sounds in a game are merely dressing for the gameplay.
GD-ROM Proprietary CD-based media format used for Sega Dreamcast. The disks, which are the same size as CDs, are capable of holding 1 gigabyte of data.
Gekko IBM's 405mhz 0.18 Micron copper chip that's at the heart of Nintendo's Gamecube console.
Genre A game category that can be generally described as having similar styles of gameplay and goals, like fighting, driving, shooting, action, puzzle, etc. Many games fit into one genre or another, and many are hybrids.
Glitch Synonym for bug. In the next generation, it often is used in the phrase "polygon glitch" to refer generically to drop-out and draw-in.
Gouraud Shading Also known as smooth shading, this is a method of shading polygons. In Gouraud shading, colors are first calculated at each of the vertices in a polygon. Then the surface of the polygon is shaded to give a smooth transition between the different colors at each vertex.
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) A special processor dedicated to graphics, it enables low cost systems to process graphics, particularly 3D graphics, that would be impossible using a general purpose CPU.
Graphics Simply put, anything that is not text that appears on a computer or TV screen. Often, a distinction is made between the art quality in a game and the representation of that art on-screen, the graphics.
Graphics Accelerator A daughterboard or add-on chip that enables a computer to off-load any graphics-oriented instruction to a separate processor. By including tricks and cheats that help draw certain objects and shapes faster and free up valuable CPU cycles, these boards can improve graphics-intensive software (like games) performance by leaps and bounds.
H
Hack 1) The process of breaking into a proprietary system without the owner's consent. 2) The practice of taking an existing program or hardware, and reverse-engineering it to modify or improve the software or system. In the case of software, the result can be a similar program, but changed with the addition of new levels, graphics, features, etc. For hardware, it may be the addition of new peripherals or removal of territorial lockouts.
HDD (Hard Disk Drive) In the general sense, this refers to any sort of immovable disk storage device for a computer or what-have-you, but in the particular context of the PlayStation2, it is the Japanese designation for the system's hard drive/network access peripheral. A small device about one-third the height/length of the PS2, which connects to the console via its PCMCIA slot, it provides high-capacity storage and potential broadband network access (cable modem or DSL) via a built-in Ethernet connection.
High-Res An image or game that has a high resolution. See resolution
I
Icon A small, abstract graphic representation of an object (a free life or power-up, perhaps). Generally, a game character needs to touch an icon to gain its power.
IDSA Stands for Interactive Digital Software Association. A computer game industry trade group active in a variety of sectors, ranging from copyright to First Amendment protection and Internet regulation.
Intellivision Classic console introduced by Mattel in 1982 that had greater graphics power than the dominant Atari 2600. It was slower than the 2600 and had less software available, but it was known for its superior sports titles.
Interface Anywhere the user interacts with the software is interface. This includes everything from select screens to character control. The term interface, though, is generally used as a noun to describe the part of the software designed with user interaction involved. Thus, if you must go through 20 select scenes before you start playing the game, you can say the game has a poor interface
Interlacing Because the electron guns that draw pictures on TV screens were initially too slow to draw the screen in one pass - the first lines at the top of the screen would be fading by the time the last lines were drawn - pictures on TVs are drawn using what is known as interlacing. First, the odd lines down are drawn (line 1, 3, 5, etc.), then the even lines down are drawn (line 2, 4, 6, etc.). The image shown by one pass is known as a field, and the complete image drawn by two passes is known as a frame. Standard TV broadcasts run at 30 frames per second. In an effort to boost hype for a product, sometimes ads or press releases will state that their games are "60 fields per second," instead of 30 frames per second. Most computer monitors are noninterlaced, and many arcade screens are noninterlaced as well (one of the reasons arcade screens always seem to look sharper than TV screens, other than their often higher resolution).
Interpolation Generically, it determines from two or more values what the "in-between" values should be. Gamers will be more concerned with graphic interpolation, particularly the "bilinear" interpolation of texture maps, which reduces the blocky Doom effect. For instance, when one approaches a wall in Doom, the texture maps scale up to such a degree that a single texel is often spread over many pixels, causing the wall to look extremely blocky and destroying the realism of the scene. Bilinear interpolation (so called because it works in two dimensions, x and y) lessens this effect by looking - for each pixel - at the texel which should be drawn to it, but also at the three other nearest texels. It then interpolates this texel data to determine a color for the pixel, so that two adjacent pixels, which would have had the same color if the texture map was point-sampled, will likely have different colors when the texture-map is bilinearly interpolated. The end result is that when viewed at close range, the texture map has an apparently higher resolution than it actually does, keeping magnified texture maps from looking blocky.
Inverse Kinematics (IK) A method used to produce natural movements of animated characters by using the mathematical principals governing the behavior of connected parts and joints.
Isometric View A game perspective that presents the action as if viewed from above and at an angle. Zaxxon was the first game to be seen this way, and later examples include Populous, Landstalker, and Captain Quazar. Also known as a 3/4 view.
J
Jaggies A stair-stepping effect in graphics caused when the resolution of the display device is too low to accurately simulate a diagonal line or curve.
K
Kilobyte One thousand bytes. A measure of memory storage capacity. Abbreviated, "K." Can also refer more precisely to 1024 bytes, depending on the usage.
L
Load Time The time it takes for information to transfer from a storage device, like a CD-ROM or cartridge to RAM. Long load times from CD-ROMs were initially thought to be a potential problem with next-generation systems. However, few consumers have complained.
Low-Res An image or game that has a low resolution. See resolution
M
Megabit (archaic) A megabit is one million bits, equal to 128 kilobytes, or .125 megabytes. During the cartridge era, cartridge size was usually given in megabits. Abbreviated, it's "Mbit." Example: Super Mario 64 shipped on a 64Mbit cartridge, which translates to 8MB (megabytes).
Megabyte 1024 K (kilobytes. 1K=1024 bytes). A measure of memory storage capacity. Abbreviated, it's "MB."
Memory card/cart A cartridge that contains RAM instead of ROM and is used to save games when a battery back-up isn't possible (i.e. on CD-ROM based systems).
MFLOPS Millions of Floating Point Operations per Second. A measure of the math prowess of a processor. Floating-point operations are more costly in terms of processor power, but they're also more precise. They are used extensively in 3D rendering.
MHz (Megahertz) A megahertz is one million cycles per second and is used as a measure of computer chip speed, with higher numbers being better. A quartz crystal with a specific resonating frequency is in every processor, and the frequency at which it vibrates regulates the cycles of current going through the processor which allow it to perform tasks.
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) MIDI is a standard that enables electronic musical devices to communicate with each other. Music can be stored in MIDI format, which contains instructions for playing the music rather than the digitized music itself, which drastically lowers storage requirements.
Mip-Mapping When viewing a distant texture-mapped object in a 3D world, many texels make up each pixel seen on the screen, causing the textures to often appear aliased or distorted, if point sampling, the most common texture-mapping technique, is used. Mip-mapping solves that problem by precomputing (that is, prefiltering) different levels of detail of your texture image, and accessing the appropriate level according to the object's distance from the camera. For example, a texture image which is 16x16 texels, will have four more mip-maps at lower resolutions, 8x8, 4x4, 2x2 and 1x1. Bilinear mip-mapping chooses the closest mip-map image to your pixel's level of detail, then performs a bilinear interpolation upon that texture image to get the color value for the pixel. Trilinear mip-mapping requires over twice the computational cost, as it chooses the two closest mip-maps, performs a bilinear interpolation on each, then averages the two results to arrive at the final screen pixel value.
MIPS Millions of Instructions Per Second, a measure of the computing power of a processor.
Modem Contraction of MOdulator/DEModular, a modem is a device which converts digital computer signals into analog signals so that computers can send data over phone lines to other computers.
Motion Capture A process by which an object's motion through 3D space is digitized. Sometimes mechanical systems are used, but the most common capture method uses an array of video cameras operating in infrared frequencies to capture the motion of special markers (usually balls of reflective tape) in 3D space. The object being captured (a human making a pitching motion, for instance), has several reflective balls attached at key points, like the head, hands, joints, etc., and is then filmed by the cameras (most often an array of six cameras is used). The video is composited by a computer, and since the base position of the cameras is known, the 3D location of the balls can be interpolated by the difference in ball position in the camera views in each frame. The end result from motion capture is basically the motion of the skeleton of the thing captured, around which can be "wrapped" a 3D modeled character, to generate extremely life-like animation.
Multimedia At its most basic, multimedia is an experience that involves more than one medium. TV, with the sound turned up, is multimedia. In general, though, multimedia refers to PC entertainment software that features sound, animation, possibly FMV, and interaction by the user. Most "interactive multimedia" products are far more restrictive than games, particularly in what you can do. Some multimedia products present themselves as games, while others are of an educational, reference, or nebulously defined "entertainment" nature.
