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Designing a Video Game: the Steps Involved

Edy — Sun, 20 May 2012 00:50:37 +0000

If you think about it, the Michael Douglas–Sean Penn movie The Game is about giving the rich and decadent the ultimate videogame-like experience.

The movie is about how you can take someone who has a regular life, and put them in fantastic James Bond-Lara Croft like situations where they have horrible things happen to them, but they somehow escape unscathed.

Well, designing a videogame is all about putting a person in the kind of situations that Michael Douglas found himself in in the movie. Except that it’s all virtual.

It’s about taking someone who has a regular life and elevating him to a different plane altogether.

When you come away from playing a game, you’re supposed to feel like you’ve been through an experience – not like you’re just playing a game.

Designing a videogame takes a designer who has a spectacular grasp over the nuts and bolts of programming, of design, art and at least a half-dozen other disciplines. It’s a wonder that there are as many people out there designing a videogame as there are.

There are lots of people out there who have the technical skills needed to program something. What they don’t have is the idea. An idea for what it is that they can do to turn a game into a mindbending experience. In fact, it’s this stage that trips up most game designers. if anything, you need to spend the most time coming up with what can really blow a gamer’s mind.

Once you have the idea, it’s practically like coasting after that. You need to create a rough sketch of everything in your game – the characters, the environment, the kind of action that will take place and so on, create a storyboard for two and so on.

The storyboard, as you draw it, will give you ideas on how to flesh out what you’ve started – the general character everything will have, the actual qualities you characters will have so on. You can list everything out that you think of, they can build your game universe.

In the end, you’ll put everything together and prepare a design document – a script for your game.

The storyboarding part happens to be the best way ever to build an idea for a videogame out. You just need to draw everything you just need to prepare rough sketches of everything that’ll go with the case – the environment, the characters, how the story will progresses a player plays the game and so on. Every drawing well have a descriptive paragraph attached, too. It’ll be kind of like comic strip. N

As you create your storyboard, you’ll see all kinds of details. What kind of powers does the character have? What kind of things can he do it will he do? What kind of music will you have in the background? And most importantly, what will the character look like?

Designing a Video Game: the Steps Involved is a post from: Computer Spot

Inexpensive Laptop Computers Are for Me

Edy — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:56:56 +0000

I have worked for a number of years as a freelance sports writer, where a laptop is an absolute necessity. Because the lifespan of a laptop in my line of work is about two years, I am always looking for inexpensive laptop computers to make sure that I am covered.

The first year that I started covering high school sports was 1999. I was not really sure at that point of all the things I would need, but I did know that I had to be able to keeps stats and produce a story in some form or fashion.

I had been made aware of some inexpensive laptop computers that I could purchase to use, but at that point, I was not even sure how I would use one in what I was doing, which was covering high school football, as all of our stats and stories were called in by phone.

So, off I went to my first high school football game with a note pad, a score sheet and two pencils, and man, did I feel stupid!

Every other reporter at the game had a computer, and it became pretty clear fairly early on that I was the rookie out of the bunch.

I got some looks, and after a few people had asked if I needed to plug in and I explained that I did not have a computer, I got some very interesting comments.

Several of the writers tried to tell me about places where I could go to get inexpensive laptop computers, and I think it was then that it finally started to sink in that I would actually need one. I made a trip to a local electronics store the next day.

The store I went to had a pretty impressive selection of inexpensive laptop computers, and I was able to get a pretty good deal on one of them.

I took it home, got it all set up, and felt a lot better about going to cover my next game with my new laptop. The reality of the matter is, however, that I really was not using the laptop the way that many of them were.

All I was doing was completing my write-ups on the word processing program that came with the computer. I was not entering stats, updating online or doing anything else that everyone else was.

Fast forward a few years, however, and now everything is online and done by laptop. I get paid an awful lot more for assignments now and am in the market for inexpensive laptop computers every few years these days.

It’s funny how things change, because something I hardly used when I first started freelancing and for which I really did not see much purpose is something I could not get along without these days!

Inexpensive Laptop Computers Are for Me is a post from: Computer Spot

ASUS Republic of Gamers G74SX-AH71 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black)

Edy — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:56:38 +0000

In general, if we want a good gaming laptop, the laptop should be able to play all the games that you wanted and you can take it anywhere with ease. Game never is separated from the computer. Be it a PC or laptop.

Not infrequently we find in offices, when there are breaks or leisure time, some people play games on their computers. This is fine, as long as not to interfere with work. If the office does not allow, play games on a laptop can be an option.

As I said above, Gaming Laptop is supposed to be able to be used for any game you like and convenient to carry wherever you like.

One best laptop that you can use to enjoy the games is ASUS Republic of Gamers G74SX-AH71 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black). Performance of G74SX-AH7 has no doubt.

By combining the second-generation Intel ® Core ™ i7-2670QM CPU and NVIDIA ® GTX 560M GPU with GDDR5 VRAM 3GB, G74SX-AH7 will satisfy users to play any games. G74SX-AH7 was asked as the fastest notebook in this country because it has a score of P2008 in 3DMark Vantage 3DMark11, and P9180.

If you have this notebook, you not only have the fastest rig in the city, but also the ability to play the game in a long time. This could happen because it is supported by DirectX ® 11.

Overall, the ASUS Republic of Gamers G74SX-AH71 is the best choice for gamers who want to feel the sensation of playing games with a maximum capacity. If you claim to be a true gamer, you should immediately have it.

ASUS Republic of Gamers G74SX-AH71 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black) is a post from: Computer Spot

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ASUS Gaming Laptop G74SX-AH71 17.3-Inch

Edy — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:07:29 +0000

As I said above, Gaming Laptop is supposed to be able to be used for any game you like and convenient to carry wherever you like. One best laptop that you can use to enjoy the games is ASUS Republic of Gamers G74SX-AH71 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop (Black). Performance of G74SX-AH7 has no doubt.

By combining the second-generation Intel ® Core ™ i7-2670QM CPU and NVIDIA ® GTX 560M GPU with GDDR5 VRAM 3GB, G74SX-AH7 will satisfy users to play any games.

G74SX-AH7 was asked as the fastest notebook in this country because it has a score of P2008 in 3DMark Vantage 3DMark11, and P9180.

If you have this notebook, you not only have the fastest rig in the city, but also the ability to play the game in a long time. This could happen because it is supported by DirectX ® 11.

ASUS Gaming Laptop G74SX-AH71 17.3-Inch is a post from: Computer Spot

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What is iTunes U and what does it Do?

Edy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:00:27 +0000

Here’s an interesting concept – attend university for free – on a computer, through iTunes. If you’ve been hearing a little bit about something called iTunes U and have been meaning to look it up, this is what it is.

The answer to the question of what is iTunes U is simple – it’s a feature on iTunes that universities pipe their free courses to you through. But it isn’t just university courses that you get, of course. K-12 education is available on a separate channel, as well. There are 800 universities around the world that participate.

Now that you know what is iTunes U, you’re probably anxious to get started. And you probably have lots of questions. Let’s get right to it. Let’s see how it works.

If you have iTunes on your computer, you’re already halfway there. There is an iTunes U button on the toolbar on the front page.

It takes you straight to where you’re going. Right away, you get your full selection of subjects, schools, the top 10 and so on.

Click on it, and you get a full series of lectures or books or anything else. Once you have the course content on your computer, you can port it to your iDevice (which is an easy way to say iPhone, iPod or iPad), or you could read on your computer.

There’s no homework and there’s no one pushing you to go faster. It’s completely user-determined, how fast you go.

If you’re wondering about what is iTunes U good for if there’s no one pushing you, this is probably not the application for you.

You don’t get any university degrees or credits at all. This is just for those who pursue knowledge for the sake of it.

If you find that this is a great concept, to get great lectures and books and study material to take you step-by-step right from the basics to the most advanced levels, if you really want to have the benefit of the kind of education the ivyleaguers get, then this certainly is for you.

So is this a great idea or not? It depends on what you’re looking for. Of course, if you’re looking to your iPhone to substitute a college degree, you’re pretty much going to be out of luck.

But if what you’re looking for is education in something new for a practical purpose – you are in luck. And just think about all those people all around the world who just don’t have access to reasonable education.

Or else, think of all those young people in this country who would like to give a college course a dry run before they actually commit.

It’s a winner of a concept, and it’s the promise that the Internet came with, all along.

What is iTunes U and what does it Do? is a post from: Computer Spot

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Fake Antivirus gets Sophisticated

Edy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:01:40 +0000

Fake antivirus designers can get their work done in some ingenious ways. Around the time the British royal wedding spectacle was going on, one particular malware designer thought of a pretty clever way of exploiting the Royal wedding craze to his advantage.

He put up very a popular portrait of Princess Diana on a website (because he knew people would be searching for Princess Diana).

When people clicked on the website, they got redirected time and again until they suddenly found themselves on a website that came up with a very Microsoft-ey-looking dialog box – that said that their computer was infected, and they needed to pay $60 then and there to get rid of it.

This was fake antivirus, of course. And if nothing else, people can always tell a fake antivirus pitch by how they demand money right away. Reputable companies always offer you a free one month trial.

Anyway, reputable companies never pop up a warning like that. Fake antivirus isn’t some kind of fringe business. The FBI believes that they make will that’s the one billion-dollar industry every year.

They steal money, they take control of computers, they steal information, and they turn your computer into a kind of remote-controlled robot to make it send out lots of spam to everyone else.

The problem with fake antivirus is so bad, the normally immune Macintosh operating system has just had its first fake antivirus announced. [Score for Macintosh: 01, and Microsoft 10,000].

Fake antivirus makers use every trick in the book to get through. Sometimes, they use simple spam and online advertising.

At other times, they do it through actually calling you at home and asking you to visit their website for something or the other. Once you get there, you’ll find familiar fake antivirus running putting up.

Most of these attacks come from countries in Eastern Europe and China. There are set on stealing from the West. When fake software detects that your computer uses Chinese or Russian something, it just won’t try to steal from you.

Some of these businesses make such a great living from what they do. They try pushing fake software with convincing-sounding names like Win Drive Cleaner or XP Internet Security Organization and just get past a lot of people’s defenses.

And since they actually ask you for permission and get you to pay, your antivirus software is often a little unsure whether it needs to stop this thing that you paid money for.

Some of these organizations actually have 1000 employees and proper offices in Eastern Europe. Just imagine – some of these companies make $200 million a year. That’s more money than Twitter makes.

When these fake antivirus companies are so big, they can afford to constantly rewrite their malware code so that your antivirus software has a very hard time indeed detecting anything. As usual, personal vigilance is all that will protect you.

Fake Antivirus gets Sophisticated is a post from: Computer Spot

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Computer Equipment Leasing Can Make A Lot of Sense for your Business

Edy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:49:41 +0000

Starting a new small business is never easy. As you indulge yourself in the initial responsibilities to do with putting everything together, you shouldn’t be surprised to find that the costs of equipping your new office are kind of on the high side.

A new business basically can have a healthy appetite for investment. Luckily, there are all kinds of options around that can help take the sting out of how much it costs.

Take for instance how expensive equipping your office with computers can be. The good part is that you don’t even have to buy anything these days. Computer equipment leasing businesses can juice you right up at practically no charge at all.

For those who’ve never actually been formally introduced to computer equipment leasing, it’s pretty much like a car lease or like leasing office space.

A leasing company that specializes in the kind of equipment you’re looking for makes the investment and they let it out to you under contract.

You just make regular payments towards the equipment that you lease for the duration of the contract. At the end, you can either drop the equipment off and walk away or you can simply pay something more and own the equipment outright.

Come to think of it, when it comes to computer equipment, leasing is an excellent option. These are things that go out of style really quickly.

At the end of the year or two that your contract keeps you tied to the equipment for, you’ll find that the equipment isn’t really as good as the newest stuff. If you owned the equipment, you’d probably be worried about how much you’ve invested in it to throw it away or to sell it.

When your lease runs out, you’ll probably the able to get much better equipment for much less. Computer equipment leasing businesses don’t just lease out the hardware either. They deal in software to.

And once every couple of years, any software brand is going to come out with a software upgrade or two. Basically, leasing makes a lot of sense when it comes to computer equipment for the small business.

But the good news doesn’t end there. Consider how the IRS allows you to completely claim deductions for any payment to make on computer equipment.

The 10% that they allow could be a spectacular reprieve. And even if you do decide midway that you would like to keep the equipment for yourself, you can just prepay right away with no penalty.

And you’d save on all the interest.

Computer Equipment Leasing Can Make A Lot of Sense for your Business is a post from: Computer Spot

What to Look for to Pick the Best Tablet PC

Edy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 07:12:42 +0000

It’s like there’s always something on the horizon trying to wipe established laptops and computers out. At first, when Asus came out with its EeePC mini laptop four years ago, people couldn’t stop wondering if a small portable laptop that did most things well was all you needed and how a full-fledged laptop was overkill.

These days, iPad-like tablets have all but left netbooks in the dust and there’s talk of how the big computer manufacturers are scared of how the tablet is going to put everything out of the running.

If you’re looking to jump on the handheld computer bandwagon, should you go with the iPad or should you go with one of the alternatives? Which is the best tablet PC on the market for your money?

The thing is, choosing among the different tablets doesn’t work the way it does when you’re trying to choose from among different kinds of laptop. There are different kinds of things you need to compare – not just power and screen size.

For instance, when you buy a laptop, you get just one of two different operating systems to choose from – Windows or MacOS.

Go over to tablets, and you have iOS, Android, BlackBerry OS and Windows 7. Since all of these have comparable feature sets, and you can’t really go by those to make a distinction.

And of course, there is HP’s sad WebOS – an option you could choose if you wanted a tablet just for the fun of it. HP’s WebOS-powered TouchPad came out to much fanfare just a few months ago, and then sold so poorly that the company just abandoned tablet computers altogether.

If you’re not worried about buying a dead-end product, you can get one at Best Buy on firesale for $99.

If you’re looking for the best tablet PC out there, there are two kinds of ways you can judge a product for its OS. You can either look at how beautiful, elegant and easy-to-use it is, or you can look at how many downloadable apps there are available for it that will help you do all kinds of things with your purchase.

When it comes to OS elegance, Apple’s iOS is certainly the winner. But HP’s a WebOS is widely recognized to be extremely beautiful too. But HP’s product, when you buy it, is a dead end. There are no programs or applications for it.

You only have more or less what this product comes with. Apple’s App Store on the other hand is insanely well-stocked – with hundreds of thousands of apps.

Android is certainly not as slickly designed or is visually pleasing as Apple’s iOS. But it does have a very complete App Market.

So basically, picking the best tablet PC on the market comes down in one measure, to the kind of applications that are available for its OS.

You can also pick a tablet for the kind of specifications you look for in a laptop. Apples iPad happens to be about the lightest for the kind of performance you get. If you want something even lighter than the iPad, you could look at 7 inch tablets such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab or even smaller ones by Dell.

In the beginning, about 20 years ago, people would say that if you wanted to pick the best computer for your needs, you’d first pick the kind of software you planned to use on it, and then just look at the kind of computer you needed to get to run it properly.

The same would apply today to tablet PCs. Pick the apps that are the most attractive, and then pick the tablet that would run that app.

What to Look for to Pick the Best Tablet PC is a post from: Computer Spot

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The Scourge of Fake Antivirus Software

Edy — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:46:42 +0000

It’s actually an ingenious way to attack someone – pretend to be a cop, a security guard, a watchdog. people take one look at your badge and trust you – while you rob them blind.

It’s trick, whose efficacy is not lost on those who make viruses and other unworthy software – pretend to be antivirus software, and people actually pay you to have your infect their computers and rob them blind.

Google finds that this message is increasingly popular among makers of scammy software. So how do these people actually get people to believe in fake antivirus software?

They seek the good old trusted route of going with spam, ads all over the place and clever search engine manipulation to place their fake antivirus software websites on top so that people will click on them.

But they adopt all kinds of creative new ways from time to time. For instance, in spring this year, people using Firefox on Windows found themselves the target of a fake antivirus software attack.

These users would be minding their own business when they would find a pop-up sitting in the middle of their screen that looked exactly like a Microsoft update dialog box.

It would say that it was the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and that there was an update due. Anyone who believed that and accepted the update would end up installing a virus.

The remarkable thing about this particular example of fake antivirus is that they’ve done a spot on impersonation of a Windows Update dialog box.

In general, you can be sure that you’ve downloaded fake antivirus software when you find that it asks you to pay right away without offering you a trial.

Basically, you don’t even need to go that far to know that you’re dealing with fake antivirus. Real antivirus will never just pop up when you’re minding your own business, and tell you that you’ve been infected.

The reputable software makers just wait for you to come looking for them. So if you are actually infected, how do you get rid of the infection?

Sometimes, they just won’t let you even run your antivirus. They keep nagging you and telling you that something isn’t right.

Usually, if you dismiss the message enough times, you can actually go and fire up your antivirus and get rid of the problem. If that doesn’t work, you could try renaming your antivirus software explorer.exe. That usually works.

In general, if you have trouble using your computer in any way after fake antivirus software infects it, try to boot into Safe Mode to try regaining control over the computer. You can do that by pressing the F8 key when your computer is starting up.

The Scourge of Fake Antivirus Software is a post from: Computer Spot

New Cell Phone Radiation Facts Emerge

Edy — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:39:31 +0000

In a time when people use their cellphones so much, they might as well surgically attach them to their ears, it’s a pain that after all these years, we still shouldn’t know for certain if pressing a powerful radio transmitter to your ear causes cancer.

There are times when scientists seem to believe that it doesn’t do any harm; and then again, there are scientists who believe it definitely does. So where exactly do we stand? What are the cell phone radiation facts that really matter?

For now, new cell phone radiation facts state that radiation from a phone could actually change the way your brain works. And it’s pretty credible stuff – published in the Journal of the American Medical Association as it is.

How exactly does it change the way the brain works? Well, as far as research at the National Institutes of Health goes, they’ve found that using a cellphone for an hour makes your brain metabolize glucose differently – more quickly.

Is this actually bad for you? Well, no one’s sure just yet. But just to know that using a cell phone makes your brain do things differently is spooking people.

The scientists behind the study aren’t really asking anyone to throw away their iPhones just yet. But they’re asking them to use them far less for conversations.

And if you do need to be on your phone a lot, you don’t have to give the cell phone up and switch to a landline just yet.

Using something like a wired hands-free headset would be a great way around the problem. If that’s just too cumbersome for you, you could go with a Bluetooth headset.

The Bluetooth headset isn’t completely radiation-free of course; but its transmitter is so weak, it is close enough.

When people look up cell phone radiation facts, they just think about how there is this “radiation” that they need to run away from.

Not all radiation is the same. For instance, radiation that’s even slightly less powerful – as from a Bluetooth headset – is far less risky.

And every single hair’s breadth that you manage to put between your ear and your cellphone, the less harmful the radiation becomes.

A good way to stay safe if you don’t have a headset handy, would be to try turning the speaker on and holding the phone an inch away from your ear.

Basically, it would be a good idea to never press your phone tightly to your ear to be able to hear better in a noisy room. A far better idea would be to get outside for the duration of such a call.

But it isn’t by any means just your head that’s sensitive to cell phone radiation. Facts points to how carrying your phone anywhere on your person could be risky.

In your shirt or pants pocket, it could still be quite risky. Basically, you want use any means available to you to put at least an inch between your body and any part of your phone.

The sad part in all of this is that the radiation problem is only getting worse. As phones become more complex, they need to put out stronger signals than ever before to make sure that all the information they try to communicate gets through. Smartphones do that a lot.

But there things you can do to minimize your exposure to radiation. Make sure that you don’t ever put the phone to your ear until the call actually goes through and it starts ringing. It’s that period of time that every phone emits the strongest signal.

And once you do start talking, you could hold the phone away from your ear when you do some actual talking and put it close to your ear when you listen. This kind of back-and-forth motion does a lot to protect you.

You could also stop moving when you talk. Walking and talking, your cell phone has to work harder to keep up. And that means a stronger signal.

New Cell Phone Radiation Facts Emerge is a post from: Computer Spot

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