Shadow War

The Shadow Wars are a fictional series of wars involving the Shadows in the television science fiction series Babylon 5. There have actually been many Shadow Wars since ancient times in the galaxy. Roughly every thousand years, the Shadows begin a new Shadow War to promote chaos in the universe in accordance with their ideology of growth through conflict. During the first two seasons, "The Shadow War" typically refers to the previous Shadow War in the cycle, a thousand years earlier. At this point the one that takes place within the series itself is referred to as "the Coming Shadow War", as it is anticipated but not yet begun. This last war is mainly referred to as "the Shadow War" in the fourth and fifth seasons.

First Shadow War

In the "Shadow War" that occurred in the year 1260, the Shadows battled an alliance of races led by the Vorlons and Minbari. The use of Babylon 4, brought back in time from a thousand years in the future, was pivotal in the defeat of the Shadows. It is referred to by the Minbari as "The Great War".

Shadow

A shadow is a space where light from a light source is blocked by an opaque object. It occupies all of the three-dimensional volume behind an object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, or reverse projection of the object blocking the light.

Point and non-point light sources

A point source of light casts only a simple shadow, called an "umbra". For a non-point or "extended" source of light, the shadow is divided into the umbra, penumbra and antumbra. The wider the light source, the more blurred the shadow becomes. If two penumbras overlap, the shadows appear to attract and merge. This is known as the Shadow Blister Effect.

The outlines of the shadow zones can be found by tracing the rays of light emitted by the outermost regions of the extended light source. The umbra region does not receive any direct light from any part of the light source, and is the darkest. A viewer located in the umbra region cannot directly see any part of the light source.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is an open world action-adventure video game set within Tolkien's legendarium, developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Officially announced in November 2013, it was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in September 2014 and released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in November 2014.

The story of the game takes place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The players control Talion, a ranger who was killed by the Black Hand of Sauron. Talion's spirit merged with the wraith of the Elf Lord Celebrimbor, and together they try to avenge the death of their loved ones. Players can engage in melee combat, and utilize some of the wraith abilities to fight against enemies. The game uses the Nemesis System, which allows the artificial intelligence of non-playable characters to remember the death of the game's protagonist and react accordingly.

The game's development began in 2011. In order to create an accurate environment and be consistent with the books written by Tolkien, the developer consulted several people from Warner Bros., and Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series. In addition, the team received assistance from Weta Workshop, who gave advice to the team in creating special effects. Monolith focused on the development of the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions, while the development of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions was outsourced to Behaviour Interactive, and the port to OS X and Linux was done by Feral Interactive.

Monolith Productions

Monolith Productions (or simply Monolith) is a Kirkland, Washington-based computer game developer known for their games Blood, the No One Lives Forever series, F.E.A.R and more recently, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Monolith is also known for the development of the graphical game engine LithTech, which has been used for most of their games and premièred with Shogo: Mobile Armor Division in September 1998; they also used Brian Goble's Windows Animation Package 32 engine for their 2D games. Between 1997 and 1999, Monolith also published games, some developed by the studio, some by third parties.

In 2004, Monolith Productions was acquired by Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner.

List of video games

1997–2003

2005–present

References

External links