Guide:Glossary

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Revision as of 14:05, 11 July 2017 by Rjt (talk | contribs) (→‎Open-Source: Added description)

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

Open-source is a term used to describe software who's source code has been made availible. Open this is done to encourage others to contribute to the software's development, and to assist in the development of new software. A common system used for contributing to open-source software is Git, and the most common website for sharing Git projects is GitHub.

You will probably also encouter the acronym FOSS.

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