Editors Desk ...2 Community

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Editors Desk ...2 Community The content of this magazine is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. For more information visit user http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 TM Issue #2 - May 2009 EDITORS DESK ................................ 2 COMMUNITY NEWS ........................ 3 REPLACING THE ARCH INITSCRIPTS ......................... 5 DISASTER PREPARATIONS: HOW PARANOID SHOULD YOU BE? ........ 6 GAMERS CORNER ........................... 9 TIPS AND TRICKS ........................... 10 LIVING AT THE COMMAND LINE .... 11 PIMP MY ARCH ................................ 12 SOFTWARE REVIEW ....................... 13 Q&A ................................................... 15 EEDDIITTOORRSS DDEESSKK Arch User Magazine Issue 2 Released! ARCH USER STAFF Daniel Griffiths (Ghost1227) ........... Editor ell, obviously Issue 2 has been released... You're reading it, right? Our first David Crouse (Crouse) .......... Contributor issue was met with overwhelming success. In the first two weeks alone we Denis Martinez (Denis) .......... Contributor W pulled in almost a thousand downloads! Those of you who read Issue 1 Kevin Eldridge (LeoSolaris) ..... Contributor might recall my promise that as long as interest was expressed, I would continue to write. I'd say that we far surpassed expectations. So what do we have in store for you this month? For starters, our friend David Crouse has given us another article in his series "Living at the Command Line," this one featuring a nifty little tool he wrote that many of you may find useful (I know I did). Denis Martinez has contributed his two cents with an article on a little project he has been working on called ArchInit, and Kevin Eldridge prompts our loyal readers to be prepared for when disaster strikes. We also have a bonus for you this month... check out page 8 for details. My only issue is that while we have had a great response from the community in terms of downloads and commends on the wall, no one has yet to use the forums or submit any suggestions for us. We have a great staff, but they can only come up WHAT IS ARCH LINUX? with so much. Without your help we aren't likely to last long. Hence, I must plead Arch Linux is a lightweight, flexible Linux® for your support in whatever small way you can contribute. Stop by our forums and distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. leave us an idea or two and I'll be happy. Our strong community is diverse and I hope that you all enjoy this months issue of Arch User Magazine, and I look helpful, and we pride ourselves on the forward to putting together yet another fine publication next month! range of skillsets and uses for Arch that stem from it. Please check out our forums Daniel Griffiths (Ghost1227) and mailing lists to get your feet wet. Also Editor, Arch User Magazine glance through our wiki if you want to [email protected] learn more about Arch. 2 NEWS CCOOMMMMUUNNIITTYY NNEEWWSS Is Linux Use Suspicious? "[The accused] uses two different operating desktop Linux applications. Weighing in at systems to hide his illegal activities. One is a tiny 48MB, xPUD still maintains binary Believe it or not, this may actually be a the regular B.C. operating system and the compatibility with most major Linux valid concern for Linux users everywhere. other is a black screen with white font distributions. Recently, Boston College Campus Police which he uses prompt commands on." siezed a significant amount of personal Although under heavy development, xPUD property belonging to a Computer Science I don't know about the rest of you, but this is an interesting project which enthusiasts major under the guise of searching for sounds a little like a witch-hunt to me. should definitely keep an eye on! evidence of "Obtaining computer services by Fraud or Misrepresentation" and Source: Source: "Unauthorized access to a computer http://eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston- http://xpud.org system." college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious But where do these charges come from? EVO - Open Source Gaming The student implicated was accused of sending an email to a school mailing list Streamline Your Desktop? US-based developer Envizions Computer identifying another student as gay. Entertainment Corporation has announced Unethical? Yes. Illegal? Probably not. But Although Linux is all about choice, it seems that its Advanced Open Source Game the Campus Police saw it differently and that nine out of ten new Linux distributions Console, called EVO Smart Console, has filed a search warrant application citing the are nothing more than a remastered copy been released for purchase by developers, following allegedly suspicious behavior: of an existing distribution. However, a new resellers, earlier adopters and potential player has recently appeared on the scene software partners. Envizions began "[The accused] is a computer science which caught the attention of our staff. This distributing the 100 available beta units on major who is considered a master of the upstart distribution is called xPUD, and April 10 at a cost of between $279 and trade amongst his peers." boasts an average boot time of about ten $350 per unit. The beta will run until June seconds. But what makes it so special? 17, 2009 and all beta units will have three "it is not uncommon for [the accused] to months of free phone support and a 30 day appear with unknown laptop computers xPUD was designed to be a fast-booting, money back guarantee for earlier adopters. which he says are given to him by Boston kiosk-like distribution that uses the Mozilla College for field testing or he is 'fixing' Gecko Runtime to display a simple user Being the first Linux-based Open Source them for other students." interface that allows you to launch normal game console, what can we expect from 3 NE WS CCOOMMMMUUNNIITTYY NNEEWWSS the EVO? The system will support both Easy Peasy Netbook OS released backup solution "Back In Time" digital distribution of content and games employs the use of the wonderful rsync from the Envizions cloud. The physical On April 20, a custom version of Ubuntu command, its easy of use makes it a viable game format will be on compact secure Linux known as "Easy Peasy" was option for less CLI-savvy users. digital (SD) cards. Each game will come released. Designed specifically for use on with a manual, packaging, support, free Intel Atom powered netbooks, Easy Peasy Back In Time allows you to set a custom expansion levels, and cloud game save 1.1 is based on Ubuntu 8.10 and includes automatic backup wait in hours, days, storage. Firefox 3, OpenOffice.org 3, and the months or even years, and gives you the Ubuntu Netbook Remix program launcher. same flexibility for configuring automatic As of now, games are slated to run at deletion of old backups. Since it creates around $19.95, although third party While most of this also applies to the multiple snapshots with only the most developers are encouraged to set their upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 release, Easy recent changes in each, it also saves you a own pricing standards. Additionally, Peasy creator Jon Ramvi says there are good deal of space compared to alternative Envizions has announced an open source plans to incorporate new features including backup solutions. Even its restoration 3D community known as "Our Universe" for better integration with web apps and functions are a breeze to understand and the EVO Smart Console. Expected to go services in Easy Peasy 2.0. activate - simply select a snapshot, choose live in the last quarter of 2009, Our what folder or folders you wish to restore, Universe will allow users to create their Source: and hit "Restore." own avatars and explore a real-time virtual http://www.jonramvi.com/easy-peasy-11- world. finally-released Currently available are two GUIs for Back In Time: one for GNOME, and one for The suggested retail price for the EVO is KDE4. Regardless of which GUI you use, $379.99, and will include nine classic Linux Back In Time all you have to configure is where to save games. Combining a PC, DVR, Gaming your snapshots, what directories you want Hub, Cloud, and Internet TV in an all-in- Those of you who have ever used a Mac to backup, and when backups should take one device, the EVO is definitely a platform might have wondered why Linux never place. that has the potential to revolutionize Linux offered a one click backup solution similar gaming. to Time Machine. Well, that same kind of Source: no-worry, space-saving snapshot http://backintime.le-web.org Source: protection has finally come to your favorite http://www.envizionscorp.com/news.html operating system! Although the recently- 4 RREEPPLLAACCIINNGG TTHHEE AARRCCHH IINNIITTSSCCRRIIPPTTSS BY DENIIS MARTIINEZ Have you ever wanted to speed up boot become significant. Replacing these of the /etc/rc.conf file. But what does this time? Do you find the standard initscripts interpreted scripts with native language mean to you? This means that if your clumsy? If so, you may find it worthwhile to provides better CPU usage, cuts down on configuration resembles the Arch defaults, check out ArchInit. ArchInit is a new boot system I/O, and can even help extend the there is nothing to do. Unfortunately, at the system for Arch Linux, designed with one life of laptop batteries! moment ArchInit will not parse multi-line simple goal in mind: to speed up the boot variables, shell commands (obviously), or process. With Windows, Mac and various WANT TO TRY ARCHINIT? syntaxic details. Linux distributions constantly vying for the title of "the fastest, most stable operating Although readily available through its REBOOT! system," Arch Linux already ranks among website (http://archinit.mupuf.org), the the leaders, thanks to its simplicity.
Recommended publications
  • First Stepsbeginner-Level Tutorials for Users Dipping Their Toes Into Linux
    First Steps Beginner-level tutorials for users dipping their toes into Linux First Steps with Change the way you consume blogs, news sources and loads of other stuff with the best technology you’ve never heard of, says Andy Channelle... technology/default.stm), find the RSS icon – a small orange square with a broadcasting-esque symbol and subscribe to the feed. Every few minutes, our software will check the RSS feed from the Beeb (the page itself is at http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/ rss/newsonline_uk_edition/technology/rss.xml) and if anything has been added, it will be downloaded to the reader. And so we don’t have to go to this site to check whether anything has been added, we’ll know through the magic of RSS. Smart. And while we’re using text in our examples below, RSS is sophisticated enough to cope with other content formats including audio (podcasting), pictures (photocasting) and even video (vodcasting?!), so these instructions could be repurposed quite easily for a range of different tasks. Setting up Liferea As you may expect there are many RSS readers available for Linux and for the main desktops. On Gnome, the ‘standard’ reader is Liferea, an application with a clumsy name (an abbreviation for LInux FEed REAder), but nonetheless has a powerful and intuitive featureset that is equally at home on a KDE desktop. The latest version of Liferea is 1.4.9 and is available from http://liferea. sourceforge.net. Source and binaries are available for a range of distributions and we grabbed the latest Ubuntu-specific package via the desktop’s Applications > Add/Remove menu.
    [Show full text]
  • Gscale: Scaling up GPU Virtualization with Dynamic Sharing of Graphics
    gScale: Scaling up GPU Virtualization with Dynamic Sharing of Graphics Memory Space Mochi Xue, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Intel Corporation; Kun Tian, Intel Corporation; Yaozu Dong, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Intel Corporation; Jiacheng Ma, Jiajun Wang, and Zhengwei Qi, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Bingsheng He, National University of Singapore; Haibing Guan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/xue This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC ’16). June 22–24, 2016 • Denver, CO, USA 978-1-931971-30-0 Open access to the Proceedings of the 2016 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC ’16) is sponsored by USENIX. gScale: Scaling up GPU Virtualization with Dynamic Sharing of Graphics Memory Space Mochi Xue1,2, Kun Tian2, Yaozu Dong1,2, Jiacheng Ma1, Jiajun Wang1, Zhengwei Qi1, Bingsheng He3, Haibing Guan1 {xuemochi, mjc0608, jiajunwang, qizhenwei, hbguan}@sjtu.edu.cn {kevin.tian, eddie.dong}@intel.com [email protected] 1Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2Intel Corporation, 3National University of Singapore Abstract As one of the key enabling technologies of GPU cloud, GPU virtualization is intended to provide flexible and With increasing GPU-intensive workloads deployed on scalable GPU resources for multiple instances with high cloud, the cloud service providers are seeking for practi- performance. To achieve such a challenging goal, sev- cal and efficient GPU virtualization solutions. However, eral GPU virtualization solutions were introduced, i.e., the cutting-edge GPU virtualization techniques such as GPUvm [28] and gVirt [30]. gVirt, also known as GVT- gVirt still suffer from the restriction of scalability, which g, is a full virtualization solution with mediated pass- constrains the number of guest virtual GPU instances.
    [Show full text]
  • Instant Messaging Video Converter, Iphone Converter Application
    Web Browsing Mozilla Firefox The premier free, open-source browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. Considered by many to be the world's best browser. Download Page Video Player, Torrents, Podcasting Miro Beautiful interface. Plays any video type (much more than quicktime). Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube and others. Download Page IM - Instant Messaging Adium Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, MSN, and Jabber. Beautiful, themable interface. Download Page Video Converter, iPhone Converter Miro Video Converter Convert any type of video to mp4 or theora. Convert any video for use with iPhone, iPod, Android, etc. Very clean, easy to use interface. Download Page Application Launching Quicksilver Quicksilver lets you start applications (and do just about everything) with a few quick taps of your fingers. Warning: start using Quicksilver and you won't be able to imagine using a Mac without it. Download Page Email Mozilla Thunderbird Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need. Download Page Utilities The Unarchiver Uncompress RAR, 7zip, tar, and bz2 files on your Mac. Many new Mac users will be puzzled the first time they download a RAR file. Do them a favor and download UnRarX for them! Download Page DVD Ripping Handbrake DVD ripper and MPEG-4 / H.264 encoding. Very simple to use. Download Page RSS Vienna Very nice, native RSS client. Download Page RSSOwl Solid cross-platform RSS client. Download Page Peer-to-Peer Filesharing Cabos A simple, easy to use filesharing program.
    [Show full text]
  • A Full GPU Virtualization Solution with Mediated Pass-Through
    A Full GPU Virtualization Solution with Mediated Pass-Through Kun Tian, Yaozu Dong, David Cowperthwaite Intel Corporation Abstract shows the spectrum of GPU virtualization solutions Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) virtualization is an (with hardware acceleration increasing from left to enabling technology in emerging virtualization right). Device emulation [7] has great complexity and scenarios. Unfortunately, existing GPU virtualization extremely low performance, so it does not meet today’s approaches are still suboptimal in performance and full needs. API forwarding [3][9][22][31] employs a feature support. frontend driver, to forward the high level API calls inside a VM, to the host for acceleration. However, API This paper introduces gVirt, a product level GPU forwarding faces the challenge of supporting full virtualization implementation with: 1) full GPU features, due to the complexity of intrusive virtualization running native graphics driver in guest, modification in the guest graphics software stack, and and 2) mediated pass-through that achieves both good incompatibility between the guest and host graphics performance and scalability, and also secure isolation software stacks. Direct pass-through [5][37] dedicates among guests. gVirt presents a virtual full-fledged GPU the GPU to a single VM, providing full features and the to each VM. VMs can directly access best performance, but at the cost of device sharing performance-critical resources, without intervention capability among VMs. Mediated pass-through [19], from the hypervisor in most cases, while privileged passes through performance-critical resources, while operations from guest are trap-and-emulated at minimal mediating privileged operations on the device, with cost. Experiments demonstrate that gVirt can achieve good performance, full features, and sharing capability.
    [Show full text]
  • Portable Apps Fact Sheet
    Gerry Kennedy- Fact Sheets Pottable Apps xx/xx/2009 PORTABLE APPS FACT SHEET What is a portable program? A Portable App or program is a piece of software that can be accessed from a portable USB device (USB thumb or pen drive, PDA, iPod or external hard disk) and used on any computer. It could be an email program, a browser, a system recovery tool or a program to achieve a set task – reading, writing, music editing, art and design, magnification, text to speech, OCR or to provide more efficient or equitable access (e.g. Click ‘n’ Type onscreen keyboard). There are hundreds of programs that are available. All of a user’s data and settings are always stored on the thumb drive so when a user unplugs the device, none of the personal data is left behind. It provides a way of accessing and using relevant software – anywhere, anytime. Portable Apps are relatively new. Apps do NOT need to be installed on the ‘host’ computer. No Tech support is required on campus. No permissions are required in order to have the software made available to them. Students can work anywhere - as long as they have access to a computer. The majority of programs are free (Freeware or Open Source). Fact sheets, user guides and support are all available on the web or within the Help File in the various applications. Or – have students write their own! Be sure to encourage all users to BACK UP their files as USB drives can be lost, stolen, misplaced, left behind, erased -due to strong magnetic fields or accidentally compromised (left on a parcel shelf in a car, or left in clothes and washed!).
    [Show full text]
  • Download Original Super Mario for Windows 10 Download Mario Forever for Windows 10 and Windows 7
    download original super mario for windows 10 Download Mario Forever for Windows 10 and Windows 7. Download failed. Sorry for the inconvenience, we will fix the error as soon as possible. Thank you for your confidence. Success to download. Wait a few seconds until the download begins. Versión : Mario Forever 7.02 File Name : super-mario-forever-v702e.exe File Size : 29.87 MiB. You're downloading Mario Forever . File super-mario-forever-v702e.exe is compatible with: Windows 10 Windows 8.1 Windows 8 Windows 7. Mario Forever is one re lecture of the classic Nintendo game, Super Mario Bros 3 in which the main theme relates of a plumber that should rescue the princess of the "claws" of Koopa, a malicious dragon that will try. View More. Windows 10 was released on July 2015, and it's an evolution of Windows 8 operating system. Windows 10 fix many of the problems of the previous operating system developed by Miscrosoft. And now, it return the desktop as a fundamental element of this brand new Windows version. Windows 10 received many good reviews and critics. Thank you for downloading Mario Forever. Your download will start immediately. If the download did not start please click here: Download Mario Forever for Windows 10 and Windows 7. Clean File 0/54 Virus Total Report. Other programs in Games. Pioneers. Pioneers is a free board game based on The Settlers of Catan board game. Pioneers can be played online against other players, or locally, directly against the computer. In Pioneers settlers will find themselves in virgin places that man has.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Sourcing De Imac =------Jan Stedehouder
    Copyright: DOSgg ProgrammaTheek BV SoftwareBus 2007 3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------= Open Sourcing de iMac =--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jan Stedehouder Inleiding Het kan dus betrekkelijk onschuldig wor- Het zijn er niet veel, maar zo nu en dan den geïnstalleerd (betrekkelijk, want heb ik een uurtje over voor wat extra het kan altijd misgaan, de risico’s zijn speelwerk. Bij voorkeur doe je dan iets voor uzelf). wat zowel leuk als interessant is en in dit geval stond mijn trouwe iMac Blue Fink sluit bij de uitvoering heel sterk (733 MHz, 768 MB RAM en een 20 GB HD) aan bij Debian en maakt gebruik van de te smeken om onder handen genomen te pakketbeheermogelijkheden die worden worden. De afgelopen maanden heeft ’ie worden geboden door dpkg, dselect en namelijk wat te lijden gehad onder (1) apt-get. Fink Commander is een grafi- een gebrek aan tijd en (2) een reeks ex- sche interface die wel iets weg heeft perimenten met Linux voor de PowerPC van Synaptic. De lijst van beschikbare (zie tekstvak). Het uitgangspunt was nu: programma’s is niet gek. Zo kunnen we ‘Hoe ver kan ik gaan met installeren van KDE en Gnome installeren. In vergelij- open source-software met Mac OSX als king met de complete Debian reposito- platform?’ De speurtocht leverde weer ries (softwarelijsten) is het wel beperkt. voldoende inspiratie op voor dit artikel Mijn Fink-installatie geeft aan dat er en op die wijze kunnen we ook onze Mac- ruim 2500 pakketten beschikbaar zijn, liefhebbers van dienst zijn. We beginnen tegen bijna 20.000 voor de Debian- met Fink, een project om Unix-software repositories.
    [Show full text]
  • Re-Purposing Commercial Entertainment Software for Military Use
    Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive Theses and Dissertations Thesis Collection 2000-09 Re-purposing commercial entertainment software for military use DeBrine, Jeffrey D. Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School http://hdl.handle.net/10945/26726 HOOL NAV CA 9394o- .01 NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL Monterey, California THESIS RE-PURPOSING COMMERCIAL ENTERTAINMENT SOFTWARE FOR MILITARY USE By Jeffrey D. DeBrine Donald E. Morrow September 2000 Thesis Advisor: Michael Capps Co-Advisor: Michael Zyda Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE Form Approved OMB No. 0704-0188 Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instruction, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to Washington headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, 1215 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 1204, Arlington, VA 22202-4302, and to the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reduction Project (0704-0188) Washington DC 20503. 1 . AGENCY USE ONLY (Leave blank) 2. REPORT DATE REPORT TYPE AND DATES COVERED September 2000 Master's Thesis 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5. FUNDING NUMBERS Re-Purposing Commercial Entertainment Software for Military Use 6. AUTHOR(S) MIPROEMANPGS00 DeBrine, Jeffrey D. and Morrow, Donald E. 8. PERFORMING 7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) ORGANIZATION REPORT Naval Postgraduate School NUMBER Monterey, CA 93943-5000 9. SPONSORING / MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES) 10. SPONSORING/ Office of Economic & Manpower Analysis MONITORING AGENCY REPORT 607 Cullum Rd, Floor IB, Rm B109, West Point, NY 10996-1798 NUMBER 11.
    [Show full text]
  • Quake Manual
    The Story QUAKE Background: You get the phone call at 4 a.m. By 5:30 you're in the secret installation. The commander explains tersely, "It's about the Slipgate device. Once we perfect these, we'll be able to use them to transport people and cargo from one place to another instantly. "An enemy codenamed Quake, is using his own slipgates to insert death squads inside our bases to kill, steal, and kidnap. "The hell of it is we have no idea where he's from. Our top scientists think Quake's not from Earth, but another dimension. They say Quake's preparing to unleash his real army, whatever that is. "You're our best man. This is Operation Counterstrike and you're in charge. Find Quake, and stop him ... or it ... You have full authority to requisition anything you need. If the eggheads are right, all our lives are expendable." Prelude to Destruction: While scouting the neighborhood, you hear shots back at the base. Damn, that Quake bastard works fast! He heard about Operation Counterstrike, and hit first. Racing back, you see the place is overrun. You are almost certainly the only survivor. Operation Counterstrike is over. Except for you. You know that the heart of the installation holds a slipgate. Since Quake's killers came through, it is still set to his dimension. You can use it to get loose in his hometown. Maybe you can get to the asshole personally. You pump a round into your shotgun, and get moving. System Requirements General Quake System Requirements IBM PC and Compatible Computers Pentium 75 MHz processor or better (absolutely must have a Math Co-Processor!) VGA Compatible Display or better Windows 95 Operation: 16MB RAM minimum, 24MB+ recommended CD-ROM drive required Hard Drive Space Needed: 80 MB Specialized Requirements For WinQuake (WINQUAKE.EXE): Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 For GLQuake (GLQUAKE.EXE): Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 Open GL Compatible Video Card GLQUAKE supports most 100% fully OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator cards.
    [Show full text]
  • High-Performance Play: the Making of Machinima
    High-Performance Play: The Making of Machinima Henry Lowood Stanford University <DRAFT. Do not cite or distribute. To appear in: Videogames and Art: Intersections and Interactions, Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell (eds.), Intellect Books (UK), 2005. Please contact author, [email protected], for permission.> Abstract: Machinima is the making of animated movies in real time through the use of computer game technology. The projects that launched machinima embedded gameplay in practices of performance, spectatorship, subversion, modification, and community. This article is concerned primarily with the earliest machinima projects. In this phase, DOOM and especially Quake movie makers created practices of game performance and high-performance technology that yielded a new medium for linear storytelling and artistic expression. My aim is not to answer the question, “are games art?”, but to suggest that game-based performance practices will influence work in artistic and narrative media. Biography: Henry Lowood is Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections at Stanford University and co-Principal Investigator for the How They Got Game Project in the Stanford Humanities Laboratory. A historian of science and technology, he teaches Stanford’s annual course on the history of computer game design. With the collaboration of the Internet Archive and the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, he is currently working on a project to develop The Machinima Archive, a permanent repository to document the history of Machinima moviemaking. A body of research on the social and cultural impacts of interactive entertainment is gradually replacing the dismissal of computer games and videogames as mindless amusement for young boys. There are many good reasons for taking computer games1 seriously.
    [Show full text]
  • Level Design Histories and Futures”
    Level Design in a Day: “Level Design Histories and Futures” Robert Yang @radiatoryang About this talk ● Concepts and language to help you be critical about “level design” ● Not about “how to do level design” ● Heavy bias toward 3D character-based games (like everyone else) (The PERFECT level designer?) (one can dream...) Four (4) possible dimensions of contemporary level design ● as a material, as data ● as industrial process ● as architectural space ● as community politics 1:1: LevelLevel designdesign asas MATERIALS,MATERIALS, CONSTRUCTION,CONSTRUCTION, andand DATADATA “LEVEL” = a bunch of data (asset) that references a bunch of other data (other assets) “LEVEL EDITOR” = software that enables human visualization and modification of this data LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: text editor as level editor LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: studying tool interfaces / workflow LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: one 2D floorplan pane AutoCAD (1982) DoomEd (~1992?) LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: the asset browser Hammer (2004) Hammer (2006?) LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: 3 pane, 3D preview + floorplan + elevation QuakeEd (1996) (great ancestor of “Radiant” level editors) LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: mouse-look / WASD more emphasis on 3D camera view, more emphasis on “wandering” as workflow LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: 4 pane, 3D preview + 2D ortho views 3D Studio (1990) Worldcraft (Hammer) (1996-2012?) Unreal Dev Kit (UE3, 2009) LEVEL EDITOR HISTORY: (from left to right:) - Unity one big interactive 3D view - Unreal 4 - SketchUp to rule them all and in the darkness bind them - Trenchbroom (Quake 1) - CryEngine3
    [Show full text]
  • Fedora 14 User Guide
    Fedora 14 User Guide Using Fedora 14 for common desktop computing tasks Fedora Documentation Project User Guide Fedora 14 User Guide Using Fedora 14 for common desktop computing tasks Edition 1.0 Author Fedora Documentation Project [email protected] Copyright © 2010 Red Hat, Inc. and others. The text of and illustrations in this document are licensed by Red Hat under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license ("CC-BY-SA"). An explanation of CC-BY-SA is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. The original authors of this document, and Red Hat, designate the Fedora Project as the "Attribution Party" for purposes of CC-BY-SA. In accordance with CC-BY-SA, if you distribute this document or an adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version. Red Hat, as the licensor of this document, waives the right to enforce, and agrees not to assert, Section 4d of CC-BY-SA to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law. Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Shadowman logo, JBoss, MetaMatrix, Fedora, the Infinity Logo, and RHCE are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. For guidelines on the permitted uses of the Fedora trademarks, refer to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ Legal:Trademark_guidelines. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries. Java® is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates. XFS® is a trademark of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries.
    [Show full text]