Guide:Glossary

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Revision as of 06:35, 15 May 2017 by Rjt (talk | contribs) (Added 'Videogames' seciotn, and 'Turn-Based')

Explanation of jargon used on this blog. Please ask if there's something you don't understand!

Terms are linked here with anchors (I guess this is the best way???)

3-D Modelling

Normals

The typical way to render a polygon is with a single side. The 'normal' is the side that is able to be seen.

Primitives

Primitives are basic, building-block shapes. For example spheres, cubes, planes, toruses, pyraminds... I guess they're usually generated procedurally.

Audio

DAW

DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation; a program for recording and manipulation audio.

General Computing

API

Open-Source

Procedural Generation

Procedural generation describes content that it generated by a program (algorithmically) rather than being made specifically. A common use it to provide random and effectively infinte level layouts, but it can also be used for sound, textures, terrain, and much more.

Workflow

WYSIWYG

Pronounced whizzy-wig, stands for What You See Is What You Get. Used to describe software that lets you edit in a form that looks like what the end user will receive. Think MSWord over writing your document in markup or LaTex.

Virtual Machine

A virtual machine (or VM) is an emulation of one computer system within another. For example a person may run Windows XP as a virtual machine from within their main Linux operating system to give them access to older Windows programs. Some people do it for security reasons too. Virtual Box is a common tool, and allow you to save configurations for multiple systems, which you can quickly launch.

Videogames

=Turn-Based