LEGO Universe is an upcoming massively multiplayer online game. NetDevil is the company developing LEGO Universe. NetDevil is famous for Jumpgate one of the best known massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). Releasing date is uncertain, it was scheduled for a 2009 release. This date was postponed from its earlier scheduled date of late November 2008 and first release date of mid 2008. The NetDevil are considering releasing only the PC version of the game. Lego Universe will be available on DVD and internet.

A trailer showing concepts of the game was leaked on the internet. These include many features of the game like character customization using the traditional Lego method, a Lego city populated with sets from numerous different themes. A short theatrical battle between an eye-patched Lego minifigure and a “Darkling” was also shown in the trailer. It was confirmed by Lego that Lego Universe will be cooperatively played with others to complete various tasks. Just opposite to the player versus player (PvP) gameplay. Players can also customize their weapons once they reach level thirty. Although customizable weapons will be less powerful.

The Lego Universe website has gone through two main changes. First it was a website with a gallery, front page news, and an archive of past letters. In June 2008’s newsletter a new update along with the revelation of the Lego Universe was launched on Lego Universe’s new website. Lego is allowing fans to upload photos of Lego creation they have made into the Creation Lab so the Lego Universe Staff will have an idea of what to include in the game.

Wonderland is one of the Lego Universe areas. It was stated according to an image in the map section. The currency used in the game is plastic, which can be used to create Lego Bricks. On the main page of the Lego Universe official site there is a box to enter in VIP codes. You cam get these codes from the newsletter and from the events. You have to be careful while entering these codes, they are shown in all caps but do not have to enter in that way. They will allow you to downloads such as pictures and videos. It has been confirmed on the official website of Lego Universe that Lego Universe will be based on a subscription model. That means you have to monthly to play.

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L.A. Noire is an upcoming video game under the unique genre of detective action. It is being developed by Team Bondi. Two of the biggest names of the industry will publish L.A. Noire. Rockstar Games and PlayStation 3 are the two publisher of the game respectively. Rockstar Games is famous for producing blockbuster series of games like Max Payne and Grand Theft Auto and PlayStation 3 is one of the best game consoles of the seventh generation. L.A. Noire is often compared to Max Payne presented in the theme of detective action. Expected release date for L.A. Noire ism 31^st December 2009 for United States and European countries.

L.A. Noire is set in perfectly recreated Los Angeles of late 1940’s. Main motive of the players is to solve a series of murders. To complete the task they are given an open-ended environment. There players have to put pieces of puzzles together to solve a series of murders in the area. The post World War II settings will include the noir necessity of corruption, as well as drugs and jazz themes. The noire coloring-style are used in the game to give it a feel of detective movies of 1940’s. Very less information is out about the game but Rockstar Games has given some impression of the game in the first trailer. The “Noire” part of the name is reference to the film noir genre. It was a style of black-and-white movie which was popular from the 1940s to the 1950s. L.A. Noire is also notable due to the use of Lightsprint’s real-time global illumination technology. Team Bondi announced that the game is in its final phase. The game would be released soon.

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Brendan McNamara, Team Bondi’s president responded to the interview of Kristen Reed that stated that “the project is fully funded by Sony Computer Entertainment America. We have a long term exclusive arrangement with SCEA.” The announcement was made in February 2004. On June 11, Take-Two-Interactive, the sole publisher for Rockstar Games confirmed the date of release for PlayStation 3 version. The magazine listed it in the “announced to date” titles for “fiscal 2008.” However in an another meeting Take Two implied that both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version will be released and L.A. Noire is developed for next generation systems. However L.A. is officially announced only for PlayStation 3. Later in September Take Two announced the game was delayed until their 2009 fiscal year.

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Often called as PSN within the gaming industry PlayStation Network is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery. Provided by   Sony Computer Entertainment for use with the PlayStation 3, PSP (PlayStation portable), and on PlayStation.com. There were 14 million active registered PlayStation Network accounts worldwide. Users made 273 million downloads as last updated on 17, November. Taking into consideration last times Microsoft Xbox live was proved a big eat and cause major setback in PlayStation 2’s sales, PSN was included with PlayStation 3.

You can register for PSN through PlayStation 3 console, a PSP or a PC. You can register for two kinds of accounts as: Master accounts and Sub accounts. Master accounts allow full access to all settings and only consider above 18 users, whereas sub accounts has its own limitations set by the master account holder. There can be multiple master accounts to PSN for access to PlayStation store as no PlayStation 3 serial no is required.

PlayStation store is an online shopping based service provided on the PlayStation network. Many downloads are free on PSN store but for premium content like full version download of PlayStation classic games, PSP and other downloadable content for full fledge experience of PlayStation 3; you have to pay for it. You can pay either by physical currency or by PlayStation network cards. PlayStation network cards are prepaid cards used to buy PlayStation 3 contents. They are available on various stores. PlayStation store updates every Thursday, with full content as game demos, game trailers, movie trailers, and game add-ons.

Observing the grown enthusiasm of PlayStation fans Sony computer entertainment decided to launch a PlayStation dedicated magazine named as Qore. This will be a weekly publication. In addition, adding to that Sony announced a virtual online community based service, PlayStation Home. Users can create their own Avatars that will have their own Home Space. A user can decorate it items, either by purchasing or by receiving through various achievements attained from certain games. With these add-ons, Sony’s PlayStation product is reaching the heights. Last time PlayStation 2 was lagging due to absence of an online service that proved lethal for Sony as Microsoft’s Xbox gain market. However, this time they are the front-runners. With already 16.84 million PlayStation, console’s sold Sony is still wrapping up the market.

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One of the most anticipated features of the PlayStation 3 is the new GPU that was created for it — the RSX “Reality Synthesizer”. Sony designed the RSX with graphics-card manufacturer Nvidia. The RSX is based on Nvidia’s GeForce graphic technology. It’s a 550-Mhz, 300-million transistor graphics chip. The main base line for RSX is Nvidia 7800GTX graphics processor, and is a G70/G71 hybrid with some modifications. To put that in perspective the number of transistors on the RSX are more than the total number of transistors in both the central processing units and the graphics processing units of the three leading of the three leading current generation systems combined.

Unlike the GPU in the XboX 360, the RSX is built on the traditional independent vertex/pixel shader architecture. Shaders are computer programs that determine the final look of what you seen on the screen when you’re looking at computer animation. The level of graphic details of PlayStation is never seen on a video game console.

With one HDMI output, the PlayStation 3 supports 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Some of the relevant facts about RSX are:

* 8 vertex shaders at 500Mhz

* 28 pixel shaders at 550Mhz

* 8 Raster Operation Pipelines units (ROP’s).

* Includes 256 MB GDDR3 650Mhz clocked graphics memory

* GDDR3 Memory interface bus width: 128bit

* Rambus XDR memory interface bus width: 56bit out of 64bit (serial)

* Extra texture lookup logic (helps RSX transport data from XDR)

Its the RSX technology that makes Playstation 3 a real time leader in the gaming world.

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A nonlinear gameplay is a gameplay that offers players with challenges that can be completed in a number of different sequences. A more linear game will allow a player with fix sequence of challenges and a less linear game is the one allowing a grater freedom. For example, a non linear game may allow you a choice between paths to victory or in better words permit multiple sequences to finish the game. Some games are released with both linear and non linear elements, and some of the games offers sandbox mode which allows player to explore the game environment independently from main theme of the game.

Most games feature linear storyline, which runs on a fixed plot in a single sequence. A true linear game is the one which doesn’t have a story at all. A truly nonlinear story is the one which completely depends on the actions of players completely. A non linear story is comparatively difficult to design. Non linear stories usually preserve the overall story arc while allowing multiple solutions to a specific challenge, or a choice between multiple challenges. Most of the non linear games come with a dynamic feature for game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty called the Director. The way of directors working is called “Procedural narrative”. Instead of just having a difficulty level which just runs up to a constant level. The director analyzes how the players fared in the game so far, and tries to add subsequent events that would gave them a sense of narration and nonlinear game gameplay.

A world or game level can be linear or non linear as well. In the game with linear levels, there is only one route that the players must use through the level. In the games with nonlinear levels, players might have to revisit locations or choose from multiple paths to finish level. Like other game elements, linear level design is not absolute. While a non linear may offer players the freedom to explore or backtrack there are still fixed sequences of challenges that player must solve in order to progress in the game. Even if a player has to encounter the challenges in a fixed sequence, they must be given the freedom to identify the challenges without having presented one after the other. In a more linear game, in order to finish game player has to finish the levels in the sequence. The ability to choose between levels, skip, and repeat makes game less linear. A sufficiently large and open ended level may be described as open world or sandbox. In a sandbox mode of a game, player may turn off or ignore game objectives. This can give rise to possibilities that were not intended by the game designer.

Non linear games are preferred more compared to linear games as modern day players want to be the part of the game more and more. The feeling of narration gives players feeling of enjoying every corner of the game, as they are unable to do this with traditional linear games. Non linear games also proved to be commercial hits. Some of the famous non linear games are: Assassin’s Creed, Left 4 Dead, Grand Theft Auto franchise, Freelancer, Crackdown, Elder Scrolls series.

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Atari is a corporate and brand name, oftenly called as creators of electronic gaming world. It was established in the year 1972 by an ex electrical engineer Nolan Bushnell and his friend Ted Dabney. From the date of its establishment it was owned by various business entities. Now it is owned by, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Infogrames Entertainment SA . Atari interactive in return licensed the brand names and Assets to Atari, Inc. a 51% majority is owned by Infrogames Entertainment SA, encompassing its north American operation. Original Atari Inc. was considered as pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company’s main products, such as PONG and the ATARI 2600, helped define computer entertainment industry from 1970s start to mid 80s.

Atari Inc. (1972-1984)

Atari was incorporated in the state California on June 27th, 1972.

Atari’s first product to be launched commercially was Atari 2600 which was the result of Bushnell’s effort to produce a flexible video game console that was capable of playing all four Atari’s game of that time. Bushnell was well aware of the fact that bringing the machine into the market will be extremely expensive. Looking for outside investors, in 1976 Bushnell sold Atari to Warner communications for around $28- $32 million.

Under Warner’s banner Atari achieved its greatest success, selling millions of 2600’s and computers. At that time the home computer revolution was taking off, so new machines were adapted, with the audition of a keyboard and various inputs, Atari 800 was launched with its smaller cousin, the 400. Due to some reason’s they were found less attractive than Apple II. But still Atari was making amore than $2 billion per year and was the fastest growing company in the history of America. However Atari ran into problems in mid 80’s, they loss around $500 million following the famous video game crash of 83’. Adding to their wounds a small but innovative company come in their contest and soon Atari was nowhere on the gaming map. Finally in July, 1984 companies that time president James Morgan sold his stock to Jack Tramiel for $240 million in stocks who then used it to create a new company Atari corporation. Warner retained the name but sold it to Namco in1985.

Atari Corporation (1984 – 1996)

Under Tramiel’s ownership, Atari Corp. released two consoles in the year 1986—the Atari 2600jr and the Atari 7800 console. Atari rebounded, making $25 million profit that year. In 1989 Atari launched a hand held game console Atari lynx with color graphics, but unfortunately lack of parts kept the system to launch the console for the Christmas and the lynx lost to Nintendo’s game boy which only has a black and white and display but was available. Game boy proved a blockbuster and removed Atari from any of left over business. By the 1993 Atari released a 64 bit interactive media system which sold around 200,000 units. But it was not enough to keep Atari in business because market was full of competitors like Nintendo, Sony, and e.t.c.

Atari Inc., a division of Infogrames (2001 to present)

In October In October 2001 Infogrames announced about  “reinventing” the Atari brand with the launch of three new games. On May 7, 2003, Infogrames had its majority-owned, but discrete US subsidiary Infogrames NA officially renamed Atari, Inc., renamed its European operations to Atari Europe but kept the original name of the main company Infogrames Entertainment. Atari tried its level best to gain the same fame again but was not successful because this era is of techno freaks like Sony and Microsoft who shares more than 60%of gaming industry. And those consoles include cutting edge technologies like perfume synthesizer, black box and many like them.

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Any one all over the earth ever played any game on P.C or on gaming console like Xbox or ever got into any kind of media file on a Microsoft platform is surely aware of DirectX.Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interface (APIs) for handling tasks related multimedia. This includes mainly game programming and video on Microsoft platforms. Microsoft start naming its APIs all starting with Direct, for example-Direct3D, DirectDRaw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so on. Direct X then was the generic term for all of the Microsoft APIs and became the name of the collection. Microsoft also released a multiplatform game development APIs such as Xinput, which are designed to supplement or replace individual DirectX components, after the release of Xbox. The DirectX software development kit or SDK consist of runtime libraries in redistributable binary form, along with accompanying documentation and headers for use in coding. But in the start runtimes were only installed by games or explicitly by the user. Windows 95 was originally not launched with DirectX, but it was included with Windows 95 OEM service release 2. Windows 98 and NT 4.0 both was launched DirectX, and after that DirectX was part of every Window release after that. The SDK available as a free download. While the runtime are proprietary, closed source software.

Success of Microsoft in software is very much dedicated to DOS. DOS allowed direct access video cards and mouse, sound devices, and all other parts of the system.

Microsoft needed a way that could let programmers what they wanted, and they wanted it quickly; the operating system was only month away from being launched. Eiser, St John, and Engstorm worked together to fix this problem, with a solution that they eventually named DirectX. The first version of DirectX was released in September 1995 as the Windows Games SDK. It was Win32 replacement for the DCI and WinG APIs for Windows 3.1.

DirectX allows all versions of Microsoft Windows to incorporate high quality multimedia.

In console specific version, DirectX was used as a basic for Microsoft Xbox and Xbox 360 console API was developed jointly between Microsoft and Nvidia, who developed the custom hardware used in the original Xbox. The Xbox was code named DirectXbox, but this was shortened for it’s commercial name. In 2002 Microsoft released DirectX 9 with support for the use of much longer shader programs than before with pixel and vertex shader version 2.0. Since then Microsoft is updating DirectX suite. Although there are alternatives of the DirectX family of APIs, but with a combination of libraries –SDL, Allergo, OpenMAX, OpenML, FMOD, etc.—its hard to catch DirectX.

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A graphic processing unit or GPU is a dedicated graphics enhancing device for a personal computer and game console. GPU is sometime called as visual processing unit or VPU. Some people define GPU as “a single chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second.” Modern GPUs are very effective at manipulating and displaying computer graphics, and their highly parallel structure makes them more effective than general purpose CPUs for a range of complex algorithms. A GPU can be directly fitted into the motherboard or on top of a video card. More than 90% of new desktop and computers have integrated GPUs, which are usually far less powerful than those on a video card.

The GPU can change everything you have ever seen or experienced on your PC. As 3D becomes more pervasive in our lives, the need for faster processing increases. With the advent of the GPU, computationally intensive transform and lighting calculations were off loaded from the CPU onto the GPU—allowing for faster graphics processing speeds. This means all increase in detail and complexity without sacrificing performance. In essence, the GPU gives you truly stunning realism for free. The difficulty in virtual representations of the real world is how objects interact with one another and their surroundings, due to the intense, split-second computations needed to process all the variables. That speed is only possible with GPUs. The GPUs on your video card of your system will determine what games you can play, how good they’ll look, and how well they’ll run. Having a powerful GPU loaded on your graphic card lets you increase screen resolution and graphic-quality settings while still maintaining playable frame rates (how quickly game updates on screen). Faster frame rates help games help games run without any choppiness and smoothly.

Modern GPUs use most of their transistor to perform calculations related to 3D computer graphics. Initially they were built to accelerate the memory-intensive work of texture mapping and rendering polygons, later adding units to accelerate geometric calculations such as the rotation and translation of vertices into different coordinate systems. Some recent developments in GPUs include support for programmable shaders which can manipulate vertices and textures with many of the same operations supported by CPUs, oversampling and interpolation techniques to reduce aliasing, and very high precision color spaces. Because most of this computation involves matrix and vector operations, engineers and scientists have increasingly studied the use of GPUs for non-geographical calculations. In addition to the 3D hardware, today’s GPUs include basic 2D acceleration and framebuffer capabilities (usually with VGA compatibility mode). In addition, most GPUs made since 1995 support the YUV color space and hardware overlays (important for digital video playback). And GPUs made since 2000 support MPEG primitives such as motion compensation and iDCT. Recent graphic cards even decode high definition video on the card, taking some load off the central processing unit.

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Nolan Bushnell, inventor of Pong and founder of Atari, is rightly considered the father of electronic gaming.

He was born in Utah on 5 feb.1940, was a typical childhood inventor. He won a third grade science project on the theme production of electricity. He nearly burned his home garage while trying to launch a roller skate mounted rocket using a home made liquid fuel. His father died when he was just fifteen, so he took over his concrete business.

Bushnell’s career plans got anew boost when he was attending the University of Utah. At that time he was learning the basic of computer graphics, while managing park and playing chess tournament side by side. He was fascinated by the combination of computers, images, and fun. Inspiring from this he went on to invent the first computerized game of human history in the year 1970. The game was named as “Computer space”. This game was like a prototype of the later launched game “Asteroids”, and was little bit of complicated and too cumbersome for launching it publicly.

So learning from that he simplified it and launch it next year as “Pong”, with the help of young computer engineer Allan alcorn. Pong was the video version of ping- pong, whose ball was a blip that bounced back and forth on the screen between two “paddles” that were moved up and down by control knobs in the hands of the players. They installed there first machine in bar in Sunnyvale, California an evening in1971. The game was proved to be a blockbuster as the machine nearly broke down after being stuffed too full with quarters.

Knowing that he had a winning product he founded a company with his friend Ted dabney with only mere 500 $ in the year 1972. games that were produced by there company in next few years, including Asteroids, gave rise to not only the video arcade, but to an entire industry which is still growing today. In 1975 Bushnell made an agreement with sears to sell home version of Pong. This was even a greater milestone, for the first time TV can be used to do something other than watching it. TV become more

In 1976, Bushnell took an intelligent decision by selling Atari to Time Warner for a whooping 28$ million dollars. By the arrival of mid 80’s Atari’s total business was more than 2 $billion dollar’s annually. Meanwhile Bushnell had already founded a company named as Chuck E. Cheese pizza restaurants (1977), which gave kids the chance to enjoy, simultaneously, the fun of playing electronic games and having fun out of eating out.

To date, Bushnell has founded 18 companies. He has worked in many fields, including personal computers and robotics; but his real love remained the same developing computer games. For example, Bushnell now works on “cybersports” internet-based game that could accommodate thousands of persons per team. Bushnell has always been convinced that computer games are an excellent way to foster your curiosity and creativity in a social context. In other words, Bushnell has always seen computer games as a mean of education. And certainly his own game crated that pavement that leads to development of today’s educational games. For his support to gaming industry he was awarded Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame. He is currently the founder and CEO of uWink, a game-based restaurant startup, and the Chairman of the board at NeoEdge Networks, an advertising-based video game company. At the very last Nolan Bushnell has revolutionized entertainment, in public and at home; and he will doubtless continue to do so. So it’s not wrong to call him father of the electronic gaming.

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With an overall turn over of 27.5$ billion this industry even leads the music and movie industry combined.

But this modern video game industry had a humble start, but steady

In winters of the year 1966, a New Hampshire engineer earlier working for a defense contractor making electronic gears for military came up with a breakthrough idea that got video games out of the lab and into the living room. Looking at his TV he thought what else you can do with your TV besides watching “My three sons?”

Baer started development of the “Brown Box” console video game system and other prototypes in 1966 for the defense electronic company sanders associates in Nashua, New Hampshire. In late 1971 it was licensed to Magnavox. The console was launched in 1972 after being renamed as Magnavox odyssey. Many other looked down on game development, but it was sanders earning most of the profit.

By the mid of 70’s sanders and company rock the gaming market and made widespread development of video games as much as possible. But not far from it a new company came into existence. And it was soon seen all over the gaming map. It all started when an electrical engineer turned entrepre Nolan Bushnell hired a young Berkeley engineer Al Alcorn and gave him a base to get his feet wet in game design. “The idea was to build a video game that was the simplest thing you could think of” said Alcorn “so I just went to Walgreen’s drug store and bought a 75$ black and white TV.” They used black and white television and the computer system was 74 series TTL chips.

Bushnell and Alcorn named the game as pong and installed the first ping machine for a trial run at a bar in Sunnyvale, Calif., earlier known as Andy capps tavern. What happened next made Andy capp’s the  name scribbled in the history with golden letters. One day within the first week, “I got a call in the evening saying that the machine stopped playing, and could I come down and fix it cause they got customers that want to play the game,” said Alcorn.  “So I drove down to Sunnyvale and went to see the machine, opened the coin box up and there was this big fistful of quarters (that) just gushed out of the machine. … All of a sudden we had a real hit on our hands.”

Soon there was competition seen as companies like midway, which before that used to make equipment for amusement parks started getting into video game business. One of very famous and innovative company of that time which bought space invaders to America had invaded the market space of Atari- then the industry leader in a big way.

Rather involving into fighting Atari CEO Ray Kassar choose the better and beneficiate way and licensed the home rights. And guess what kassar won. Sales of the attari VCS console doubled in a single year. And then in summers of 1982 Japan invaded this time with a blockbuster: PACMAN. “When they were making the PacMan, the guy who was leading the project took his team to lunch,” said Steven L. Kent, Author of “Ultimate History of Video Games.” “They went for pizza in Tokyo.  And somebody had taken the first slice of pizza.  And then he looked down, and there was PacMan staring at him.” Japan was in the game and American’s were well aware what Japan had done to them in the past, nearly close down there world praise automobile industry. Japan had started a global epidemic.

Whole 80’s were dedicated to Japan’s NINTENDO had a whooping 90 % share of the video game market. And till 1989 company’s domination increase further and nigger as it launched its video game equivalent of Sony’s Walkman –game boy. And guess whom Nintendo was thankful to for its success none other than ex Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev. Well, sort of. At the end of the cold war, a soviet computer engineer named Alexy Pajitnov created a puzzle game called Tetris. When the iron curtain lifted, Nintendo got its first look at Tetris and start talking for rubles. Nintendo was well aware that it could be a killer game (launch title) on game boy. And it was, Tetris game boy became an instant hit. Selling over 32 million units in first three years. Nintendo seemed unbeatable until one more Japanese company earlier depending on other launched its own game platform, PLAYSTATION, in the mid -1990s. And still, this company is unbeatable.

Sony was planning for future as its products was loaded with such technologies that gamers was never heard of, like sound cards, video enhancers and the best perfume synthesizer.

After the mid blowing success of Playstation and its sequels Sony was saying “this is gonna replace PC, will replace DVD player. It’s going to be base of your home entertainment experience and can go beyond as well.” Replacing PC was not what MICROSOFT want to hear as they were the leading computer software makers in the world. And adding to that playstation was outselling the top 5 PC makers in the world. This sort of messaging catalyzed lot of competitive spirit among Microsoft people. And these lead to Microsoft’s X-BOX it soon ate a lot of Sony’s market but couldn’t able to over run Sony completely.

Today, the video game platform arms race is in full swing. In a matter of days, Sony’s new Play station 3 and Nintendo’s Wii will finally join Xbox on store shelves that Microsoft has enjoyed all to itself for an entire year. And another marketing shoot-out for gamer dollars will begin, let’s wait and watch what development we’ll see next. May be virtuality reality matrix.

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