Quake (series)

Quake is a series of first-person shooter video games, starting with the game of the same name.

Overview

Setting

The Quake series is somewhat unusual in that its focus changes frequently; the story of Quake II has nothing to do with the original Quake. This is mostly because Quake II was originally intended to be a separate franchise (Quake II was initially only a tentative title), a plan that was thwarted when most of the other names id Software had tried to use were already taken. Quake III Arena has little to do with either of its predecessors, shedding the single-player missions in favor of deathmatch against the A.I. or online. One of the few unifying elements for the first three titles was the Quake logo-shaped rune for "quad damage" that made the player's weapons and attacks several times as powerful for a short duration. The first three titles pioneered id Software's next-generation graphics engine before it was licensed out.

Strogg

The Strogg are an alien race who serve as the primary antagonists in Quake II and Quake 4, with the Makron being their leader. In Quake II, Makron uses the battle-mech style vessel Jorg. They are a playable faction in Quake III: Team Arena and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The Strogg are a warlike cybernetic race, infamous for the systematic replacement of their ranks with prisoners of war, "stroggified" and assimilated through the modification of their bodies with mechanical weaponry and prosthetics. They maintain a massive global military-industrial complex with mines, ore refineries, light production plants, and heavy industrial manufacturing facilities throughout Stroggos. Their heavy reliance on industry has created a toxic environment that has killed much of the native plant and animal life on Stroggos, and the remaining animals are subject to horrible mutation.

Quake (Transformers)

Quake is the name of several fictional characters from the Transformers series.

Transformers: Generation 1

The first Quake figure was a Decepticon Targetmaster with two transforming weapon-partners: Tiptop and Heater. He transformed into a Leopard 2 A4.

Quake's original Transformers Universe biography painted him as little more than a raging berserker, barely controllable by even his fellow Decepticons. While Quake's lust for carnage and battle is an asset in a fight, even Megatron wonders if it is a good idea to give Quake a gun. Quake's only weakness is his poorly designed cooling system, which is prone to shut down during battle, leaving Quake's innards to melt.

His Nebulan partners are little better. Tiptop is an embittered former strongman. Fired by his employers after injuring several other performers he joined up with the Decepticons to get revenge. Heater was a con-man and thief who joined up with the Decepticons to escape the wrath of Nebulos' law enforcement officials.

Quake engine

The Quake engine is the game engine developed by id Software to power their 1996 video game Quake. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

After release, it immediately forked, as did the level design. Much of the engine remained in Quake II and Quake III Arena. The Quake engine, like the Doom engine, used binary space partitioning (BSP) to optimise the world rendering. The Quake engine also used Gouraud shading for moving objects, and a static lightmap for nonmoving objects.

Historically, the Quake engine has been treated as a separate engine from its successor id Tech 2. The codebases for Quake and Quake II (id Tech 2) were separate GPL releases.

History

The Quake engine was developed from 1995 for the video game Quake, released on June 22, 1996. John Carmack did most of the programming of the engine, with help from Michael Abrash in algorithms and assembly optimization. The Quake II engine (id Tech 2) was based on it.

Solar (room)

The solar was a room in many English and French medieval manor houses, great houses and castles, generally situated on an upper storey, designed as the family's private living and sleeping quarters. In such houses, the main ground-floor room was known as the Great Hall, in which all members of the household, including tenants, employees and servants, would eat. Those of highest status would be at the end, often on a raised dais, and those of lesser status further down the hall. But a need was felt for more privacy to be enjoyed by the head of the household, and, especially, by the senior women of the household. The solar was a room for their particular benefit, in which they could be alone and away from the hustle, bustle, noise and smells (including cooking smells) of the Great Hall.

The solar was generally smaller than the Great Hall, because it was not expected to accommodate so many people, but it was a room of comfort and status, and usually included a fireplace and often decorative woodwork or tapestries/wall hangings.

Solar (Taeyang album)

Solar is the first full-length solo album by Korean singer Taeyang, member of Big Bang. The album was released in two forms: the "Regular Edition" and the "Deluxe Edition" which is limited to 30,000 copies worldwide. The lead-single was "I Need a Girl" featuring his bandmate G-Dragon. On July 9, 2010, Taeyang's solo album Solar hit second place on iTunes' Top R&B-Soul albums chart in the United States and first place in Canada, the first time for an Asian musician. In Solar, Taeyang put much effort into enhancing his vocal skills as well as his composing, co-writing as many as four songs ("Solar", "Where U At", "Wedding Dress", and "Take It Slow") and writing lyrics for "Take It Slow".

Taeyang's first international album, Solar International, is the first ever K-Pop music release to be sold worldwide on iTunes as both an audio and video album. The audio version (complete with a digital booklet) hit iTunes stores on August 19, 2010, while the video version (bundled with bonus, behind the scenes documentaries) arrived by September 10, 2010. The audio album combines both English and Korean hits from his past and present albums including "I'll Be There", "Connection" (feat. BIG TONE), "Wedding Dress" and "I Need a Girl (feat. G-Dragon)". On August 26, 2010, Solar's International album made it to fifth place on iTunes' Top R&B-Soul albums chart in the United States and Japan, and third place in Canada.

Solar (composition)

"Solar" (/ˈsoʊlər/ or /soʊˈlɑːr/) is a musical composition attributed to Miles Davis on the studio album Walkin' (1954), considered a modern jazz standard. The tune has been played and recorded by many musicians including his former bandmates/collaborators Lee Konitz, Bill Evans, Dave Holland, Keith Jarrett or Jack DeJohnette. A controversy exists over authorship of this composition and one current consensus holds that Davis' "Solar" is essentially an earlier song, "Sonny", written by Chuck Wayne.

The first two measures of this song adorn Miles Davis' tombstone in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Chord structure

Solar is considered a blues by most listeners, and the commonly accepted chord structure for this piece is:

Recordings