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

Blood

Blood is a bodily fluid in humans and other animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells. When it reaches the lungs, gas exchange occurs when carbon dioxide is diffused out of the blood into the pulmonary alveoli and oxygen is diffused into the blood. This oxygenated blood is pumped to the left hand side of the heart in the pulmonary vein and enters the left atrium. From here it passes through the mitral valve, through the ventricle and taken all around the body by the aorta. Blood contains antibodies, nutrients, oxygen and much more to help the body work.

In vertebrates, it is composed of blood cells suspended in blood plasma. Plasma, which constitutes 55% of blood fluid, is mostly water (92% by volume), and contains dissipated proteins, glucose, mineral ions, hormones, carbon dioxide (plasma being the main medium for excretory product transportation), and blood cells themselves. Albumin is the main protein in plasma, and it functions to regulate the colloidal osmotic pressure of blood. The blood cells are mainly red blood cells (also called RBCs or erythrocytes), white blood cells (also called WBCs or leukocytes) and platelets. The most abundant cells in vertebrate blood are red blood cells. These contain hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein, which facilitates oxygen transport by reversibly binding to this respiratory gas and greatly increasing its solubility in blood. In contrast, carbon dioxide is almost entirely transported extracellularly dissolved in plasma as bicarbonate ion.

Monolith

, Brazil

A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive stone or rock, such as some mountains, or a single large piece of rock placed as, or within, a monument or building. Erosion usually exposes the geological formations, which are often made of very hard and solid metamorphic or igneous rock.

In architecture, the term has considerable overlap with megalith, which is normally used for prehistory, and may be used in the contexts of rock-cut architecture that remains attached to solid rock, as in monolithic church, or for exceptionally large stones such as obelisks, statues, monolithic columns or large architraves, that may have been moved a considerable distance after quarrying. It may also be used of large glacial erratics moved by natural forces.

The word derives, via the Latin monolithus, from the Ancient Greek word μονόλιθος (monolithos), from μόνος ("one" or "single") and λίθος ("stone").

Geological monoliths

Large, well-known monoliths include:

Africa

GT Interactive Software

GT Interactive Software Corporation (Good Times or GTI) was an American video game publisher and distributor, which later developed both video games and PC games.

GT Interactive ceased to exist in December 1999 when Infogrames Entertainment, SA (IESA) took a controlling stake and renamed the company Infogrames, Inc. In 2003, Infogrames Inc. changed its name to Atari Inc.

History

1993 – GT Interactive is founded

GT Interactive was founded in 1993 as a division of GoodTimes Home Video, a video-tape distributor owned by the Cayre family with Ron Chaimowitz as co-founder and President. That same year, the publisher saw the release of their first shareware title, the hugely popular Doom, eventually sell 2.9 million copies. In its first year, revenue reached $10.3 million.

1994 – 880% revenue growth

GT Interactive revenue soared 880% and reached $101 million on its second year of existence and profits reached $18 million. GT Interactive's partnership with id Software scored another hit with Doom II: Hell on Earth, which was released in October and sold over 2 million copies.

Build (game engine)

Build is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman for 3D Realms. Like the Doom engine, the Build engine represents its world on a two-dimensional grid using closed 2D shapes called sectors, and uses simple flat objects called sprites to populate the world geometry with objects.

The Build engine is generally considered to be a 2.5D engine since the basic world geometry is two-dimensional with an added height component, allowing each sector to have a different ceiling height and floor height. Floors and ceilings can hinge along one of the sector's walls, resulting in a slope. With this information, the Build engine renders the world in a way that looks three-dimensional, unlike modern game engines that create actual 3D environments.

Though the Build engine achieved most of its fame as a result of powering the 1996 first-person shooter Duke Nukem 3D, it was also used for many other games. It is usually considered that the "Big Four" Build engine games are Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Blood, and Redneck Rampage, although the latter is sometimes dropped leaving it as simply being the "Big Three".