Worms?

Worms? is a 1983 computer game written by David Maynard for Electronic Arts, released for the Atari 800 and Commodore 64. It was one of the original five games that launched the company. More a software toy than a game, Worms? is an interactive version of Paterson's Worms.

The game is abstract, like Conway's Game of Life, but the player's ostensible goal is to optimally program one or more "worms" (each a sort of cellular automaton) to grow and survive as long as possible. The game area is divided up into hexagonal cells, and the worms are essentially programmed to move in a particular direction for each combination of filled-in and empty frame segments in their immediate vicinity. Over the course of a game, the player needs to give his/her worm less and less input, and more and more moves by their worm result in the encountering of familiar situation for which the worm has already been 'trained'. As the worms move, they generate aleatoric music.

Reception

Orson Scott Card in Compute! in 1983 gave Worms? and two other EA games, M.U.L.E. and Archon: The Light and the Dark, complimentary reviews, writing that "they are original; they do what they set out to do very, very well; they allow the player to take part in the creativity; they do things that only computers can do".Compute!'s Gazette's reviewer called Worms? for the Commodore 64 "one of the most fascinating games I've played in a long time. It's so different from anything else that it quickly captivated me. Worms? tournaments become popular among the staff of Compute! ... [It] is as much fun to watch as it is to play". He added that part of its appeal was that "The game is hard to master. It's easy to play, but seems almost impossible to play well time after time".Compute! listed the game in May 1988 as one of "Our Favorite Games", writing that four years after its introduction "Worms? is still in a class by itself", requiring "a sense of strategy as well as proficiency at joystick maneuvers".

Worms 4: Mayhem

Worms 4: Mayhem is an artillerystrategy game in the Worms series developed by Team17. It is much like its 3D predecessor Worms 3D, except that players can customize their worm's appearance (hats/helmets, glasses, facial hair, gloves/hands) as well as create their own unique weapons in a new feature called "The Weapon Factory." The game also contains a shop where players can buy various items, using points won by completing story missions, challenges or unlocking trophies. Shop items include new maps, new accessories and attire, personality banks (voices) and game styles. There are several new weapons and utilities included in the new game such as Bubble Trouble, Icarus Potion, Poison Arrow, Sniper Rifle, Inflatable Scouser, Tail Nail and Starburst (which, in fact, only replaces the Kamikaze). Unlike previous Worms games, Worms 4: Mayhem provides cutscenes before each story mission to reveal background information.

Plot

The player's team of worms arrives at Worminkle University, where they meet Professor Worminkle, who trains the team to use various weapons. Worminkle then sets the team assignments to sneak into enemy buildings and destroy their construction sites. To flee government agents, Worminkle and the team travel back in time to the Middles Ages using the Professor's time machine, but the machine gets damaged and they get attacked by wizards and knights. After fighting through them, the team proceed to the Wild West to find gold to keep the machine powered, fighting Boggy the Kid in the process, and to Ancient Arabia to recover jewels stolen by Ali Baboon and his pesky thieves and keep the machine's navigation controls balanced.

Sun

The Sun (in Greek: Helios, in Latin: Sol) is the star at the center of the Solar System and is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. It is a nearly perfect spherical ball of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and it has a mass about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System.About three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen; the rest is mostly helium, with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.

The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V) based on spectral class and it is informally referred to as a yellow dwarf. It formed approximately 4.567 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became increasingly hot and dense, eventually initiating nuclear fusion in its core. It is thought that almost all stars form by this process.

Sol (given name)

Sol is a given name, usually a form of "Solomon". Notable people with the name include:

Sol (computer)

The SOL is a rugged, waterproof solar-powered laptop computer intended for use in African schools that do not have access to an electrical network. Sol was created by London, Ontario-based WeWi Telecommunications.

The laptop is preloaded with the Ubuntu variant of Linux.

Design and features

The SOL is available in two editions, a standard edition and the Marine edition which uses hydrophobic coating to provide water repletion instead of waterproofing the laptop. The laptop has a reinforced polymer-based clam shell casing that houses the solar panels and makes the laptop more durable. The device uses four detachable monocrystalline photovoltaic panels which fold into the unit.

Developer

WeWi Telecommunications was founded by David M. Snir in 2009 as an Internet service provider and then shifted to research and development. The company does ad hoc disaster recovery and connectivity services.

References

External links

Thy (district)

Thy (Danish pronunciation: [tˢyːˀ], local dialect [tʰyʲkʲʰ]) is a traditional district in northwestern Jutland, Denmark. It is situated north of the Limfjord, facing the North Sea and Skagerrak, and has a population of around 44,000. The capital is Thisted population of 14.000. Snedsted, Hanstholm and Hurup are minor towns in the area.

Since the Danish municipal reform of 1 January 2007, Thy is roughly identical with Thisted Municipality which belongs to the North Denmark Region. The southernmost part of Thy, the Thyholm Peninsula, belongs to Struer Municipality in the Central Denmark Region. Before the merger, Thy consisted of four municipalities: Hanstholm, Thisted, Sydthy and Thyholm.

Thy forms the western part of the North Jutlandic Island and borders Hanherred to the northeast with Vendsyssel even further northeast. In the Limfjord is the island of Mors, considered a twin district of Thy, and south of the fjord is Hardsyssel in western mainland Jutland. Thy is traditionally regarded part of northern and western Jutland alike. The dialect belongs to the West Jutlandic group.

Turkish Airlines Flight 981

Turkish Airlines Flight 981 was a regularly scheduled flight from Istanbul Atatürk Airport to London Heathrow Airport with an intermediate stop in Paris at Orly Airport. On March 3, 1974, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 operating the flight crashed into the Ermenonville forest outside Paris, killing all 346 people on board. At the time, it was the deadliest plane crash ever. It still remains the fourth-deadliest plane crash in aviation history, is the deadliest involving a DC-10, the second deadliest with no survivors, and the deadliest to have occurred on French soil. The crash was also known as the Ermenonville air disaster, from the forest where the aircraft crashed.