Cliff Bleszinski

Clifford Michael Bleszinski (born February 12, 1975), popularly known as CliffyB, is an American video game designer, former design director for the game development company Epic Games, and the founder of Boss Key Productions. He is most famous for his role in the development of the Unreal franchise, especially 1999's Unreal Tournament, and the Gears of War franchise.

Career

His first commercial game was made at age 17: an independently developed point-and-click adventure game called The Palace of Deceit: Dragon's Plight. Bleszinski created the game while he was a student at Bonita High School in La Verne, California, and released it in 1991 via his own company, Game Syndicate Productions. He also sent a copy of the game to Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games (then known as Epic MegaGames). Sweeney was impressed with the game and hired Bleszinski to work at Epic.

Epic Games

Gears of War

Gears of War is a video game franchise created by Epic Games, developed and managed by The Coalition, and owned and published by Microsoft Studios. The series focuses on the conflict between humanity, the subterranean reptilian hominids known as the Locust Horde, and their mutated counterparts, the Lambent. The franchise consists of four third-person shooter video games, which has also been supplemented by a comic book series and five novels.

The first installment, titled Gears of War, was released on November 7, 2006 for the Xbox 360. The game follows protagonist Marcus Fenix, a soldier in the Coalition of Ordered Governments tasked to lead a last-ditch effort to destroy the Locust Horde and save humanity. Two subsequent titles, Gears of War 2 (2008) and Gears of War 3 (2011), continued Fenix and humanity’s ongoing conflict with the Locust Horde and Lambent forces. In 2013, Epic Games and Microsoft released Gears of War: Judgment, a prequel to the series’ first title, which instead focuses on Damon Baird, one of Fenix's squad-mates. At E3 2015, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was announced for Microsoft Windows.

Artillery game

Artillery games are early two or three-player (usually turn-based) video games involving tanks fighting each other in combat or similar. Artillery games are among the earliest computer games developed; the theme of such games is an extension of the original uses of computer themselves, which were once used to calculate the trajectories of rockets and other related military-based calculations. Artillery games have been described as a type of "shooting game", though they are more often classified as a type of strategy video game.

Early precursors to the modern artillery-type games were text-only games that simulated artillery entirely with input data values. A BASIC game known simply as Artillery was written by Mike Forman and was published in Creative Computing magazine in 1976. This seminal home computer version of the game was revised in 1977 by M. E. Lyon and Brian West and was known as War 3; War 3 was revised further in 1979 and published as Artillery-3. These early versions of turn-based tank combat games interpreted human-entered data such as the distance between the tanks, the velocity or "power" of the shot fired and the angle of the tanks' turrets.

Gears of War 3

Gears of War 3 is a 2011 military science fiction third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360. Originally due for release on April 5, 2011, the game was delayed and eventually released on September 20, 2011.

Gears of War 3 made over one million pre-orders. It is the third installment of the Gears of War series. The story was written by science fiction author Karen Traviss. A sequel titled Gears of War 4 was announced in June 2015 and will be released sometime in 2016.

Gameplay

Like its predecessors, Gears of War 3 is a third-person shooter that emphasizes the use of cover and squad tactics in order to survive combat situations. The player's character can carry four weapons: one pistol, one set of grenades, and two primary weapons. Firearms can be swapped with other weapons dropped by fallen foes or at stockpiles throughout the game, along with ammunition. When the player reloads a weapons ammunition, they have an opportunity for an "active reload", shown by a small cursor moving over a line with a marked section on the player's heads-up display (HUD). If the player hits a control button when the cursor is in the marked section, they will reload faster with the resulting reload being slightly more powerful than normal bullets, causing more damage to opponents. If they press the button outside this section, this temporarily jams the weapon, leaving the player vulnerable and taking longer to reload. Alternatively, the player can opt to not try for the active reload, reloading the weapon at normal speed, but with no added damage.

Cliff

In geography and geology, a cliff is a vertical, or near vertical, rock exposure. Cliffs are formed as erosion landforms due to the processes of erosion and weathering that produce them. Cliffs are common on coasts, in mountainous areas, escarpments and along rivers. Cliffs are usually formed by rock that is resistant to erosion and weathering. Sedimentary rocks most likely to form cliffs include sandstone, limestone, chalk, and dolomite. Igneous rocks such as granite and basalt also often form cliffs.

An escarpment (or scarp) is a type of cliff, formed by the movement of a geologic fault, or a landslide.

Most cliffs have some form of scree slope at their base. In arid areas or under high cliffs, these are generally exposed jumbles of fallen rock. In areas of higher moisture, a soil slope may obscure the talus. Many cliffs also feature tributary waterfalls or rock shelters. Sometimes a cliff peters out at the end of a ridge, with tea tables or other types of rock columns remaining. Coastal erosion may lead to the formation of sea cliffs along a receding coastline.