With modern consoles offering gamers graphics so photorealistic that they blur the line between CGI and reality, it's easy forget just how cartoonishly blocky they were in the 8-bit era. In his new book, Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Arcade Games, legendary game designer and programmer Warren Davis recalls his halcyon days imagining and designing some of the biggest hits to ever grace an arcade. In the excerpt below, Davis explains how the industry made its technological leap from 8- to 12-bit graphics. Santa Monica Press©2021 Santa Monica PressBack at my regular day job, I became particularly fascinated with a new product that came out for the Amiga computer: a video digitizer made by a company called A-Squared. Let’s unpack all that slowly.The Amiga was a recently released home computer capable of unprecedented graphics and sound: 4,096 colors! Eight-bit stereo sound! There were image manipulation programs for it that could do things no other computer, including the IBM PC, could do. We had one at Williams not only because of its capabilities, but also because our own Jack Haeger, an immensely talented artist who’d worked on Sinistar at Williams a few years earlier, was also the art director for the Amiga design team.Video digitization is the process of grabbing a video image from some video source, like a camera or a videotape, and converting it into pixel data that a computer system (or video game) could use. A full-color photograph might contain millions of... Continue reading at 'Engadget'
[ Engadget | 2021-12-25 16:30:11 UTC ]
I borrowed William Faulkner’s book Light in August from the university library three days before the first strikes on Kyiv in February. My electronic reader card shows the date. There were no people in the reading room; everyone was at home updating the news and packing their bags. The librarian... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-08-30 08:59:00 UTC ]
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With schools and libraries under increasing political pressure, Kathy Zappitello, director of the Conneaut Public Library and the 2022 President of the Association of Rural and Small Libraries, is standing up by standing for public office. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-08-26 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The Gale-Bodleian Libraries partnership is in its second year of Asia-Pacific research into digital humanities fellowships. The post Cengage’s Gale and Bodleian Libraries: Asia-Pacific Fellowships appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2022-08-24 20:19:36 UTC ]
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The union of HBO Max and Discovery+ is already causing pain through layoffs, and now the move is affecting some shows. Warner Bros. Discovery has confirmed to Variety that it's removing 36 titles from HBO Max as soon as this week while it prepares for the Discovery+ platform merger. Most of the... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-08-18 20:30:29 UTC ]
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What public libraries in flooded regions of Missouri and Kentucky are doing for their communities + how you can support them. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-08-16 13:01:51 UTC ]
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ALA says it is “developing guidance” for libraries and library workers and working with other organizations to “oppose any efforts to limit access to constitutionally protected information or limit privacy protections” for library users. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-08-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
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People trying to remove books from libraries insist it's not a book ban. Everyone wants to ban a book, but no one wants to be a book banner. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-08-03 10:40:00 UTC ]
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The president of the Louisiana Association of School Libraries speaks at a local library board meeting and met with harassment. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-08-02 15:08:14 UTC ]
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Being able to play modern, high-quality video games on just about any kind of PC is the big pitch of the handful of cloud gaming services out there. Using a subscription model, these services allow people with a strong internet connection to tap remote servers in order to play video games of... Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2022-07-29 10:30:00 UTC ]
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Comics Plus readers drove nearly half a million checkouts of digital comics, graphic novels, and manga through more than 2,000 schools and libraries through the first half of 2022. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-07-29 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Following the "Don't Say Gay" bill, Florida teachers have been told to pull their classroom libraries until each title has been approved. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-07-25 17:58:04 UTC ]
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These were the most popular in-demand books in US libraries from April to June 2022. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-07-25 10:40:00 UTC ]
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Is there anything you can't find at a library? These 10 scenes from horror movies and TV shows prove that libraries save lives. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-07-25 10:36:00 UTC ]
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Data scientists working in Python or R typically acquire data by way of REST APIs. Both environments provide libraries that help you make HTTP calls to REST endpoints, then transform JSON responses into dataframes. But that’s never as simple as we’d like. When you’re reading a lot of data from a... Continue reading at O'Reilly Radar
[ O'Reilly Radar | 2022-07-19 11:16:39 UTC ]
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We know and love the magic and power of the library and the bookstore. But...what happens when things go sideways in them? Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-07-15 10:38:00 UTC ]
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Well, we still have some nice things—or rather, dogs do. While walking through my neighborhood in Missoula recently (a neighborhood that features seven Little Free Libraries for humans, it should be said), I stumbled across a very cute sight: some good Samaritan (by the looks of it, a small one)... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-07-14 14:30:34 UTC ]
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The 2022 Urban Libraries Unite Trauma Study addresses a "crisis of trauma" in urban public libraries. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-07-07 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Libraries from California to North Carolina to Utah to New York have seen their Pride displays challenged or removed this month. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-06-30 10:41:00 UTC ]
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Many libraries are looking for cataloguing techniques as an alternative to the Dewey Decimal system. Here are a few options. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-06-22 10:35:00 UTC ]
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It’s a weird year for video games. We’re 19 months into a fresh console cycle and support for the PS4 and Xbox One is finally tapering off as developers shift focus to the PS5, Xbox Series X and PC cloud gaming platforms. The pandemic slowed or paused development on a generation of games, and... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-06-20 14:00:16 UTC ]
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