Platform dependency |
Platform dependancy refers to whether or not a program is dependant on a single opperating system to work, for example a lot of video games will only work on windows and not mac OS this makes them platform depenant. On the other hand programs such as microsoft office can work on both windows and mac OS alike which makes them platform independant.
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Operating systems
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The operating system is the single most important pice of software to a device, it manages both software and hardware as well as all the computers memory and processes, not only this but operating systems simplify all of the processes down to make it easyer for the users to interact with them without having to learn unnecessary amounts of code.
For computers the three most common operating systems are Windows, mac OS and Linux: Windows was first released in 1985 and has grown to be the most popular operating system there is. it sells its self on being very user freindly and thanks to this it is the first choice for anyone interested in gaming on a computer. Mac OS is apple's own operating system and is Windows' main competitor. Mac OS is made exclusivly for apple's own products, it only been around since 2001 but had made a name as being the best OS for professional editing as it comes prepacked with many different editing suits. Linux is an open source OS that has been around since 1991. while not as popular as Windows or Mac OS its open souces nature allows for any companie to develop for it making it the most versatile of the three making it ideal for low end PCs |
Drivers |
A driver is a piece of software that allows communication between hardware and an operating system. Hardware such as graphics or sound cards will come packed with a basic set of drivers but more advanced kinds are avalible online.
A sound card driver is needed for any sound to be ouputted from the device they direct data between the sound card and the oporating system, this allows the soud card to send audio through speakers but also recive and trasmit audio from a microphone. Graphic card drivers are required to help your graphics card communicate with the rest of your system so it can correctly desplay images to a monitor. |
Application Software
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Application software is the scripting laguages used to create programs and applications, they are slipt into three main groupes, Interpreted languages, Compiled languages and Object-oriented:
Interpreted languages are the slowest of the three, the reason for this is when it is processed it is done so one line of code at a time, and if there is a loop in the code it will constantly process and re process that same line of code. Compiled languages are much faster and as a result are often used in more power extensive programs such as high end games, this is because each line of code isn't being read each time and rather are condenced down. The downside to this is once the code has been compressed it is irreversable. Objects-oriented works differently from the previous two methods rather than write each line of code when needed it instead writes the code and packages them into objects that can then be called upon at anytime. |
APIs |
When talking about API in video games you can ether be refering to Graphic APIs such as Direct X which was devloped by microsoft and released alongside Windows 95 and every subsequent version now currently on Direct X 12.
sound APIs include Open AL a cross platform API capible of three dimensional audio, thisis used to make games sound more immersive. |