Latest news with #ASCII
The Hindu
2 days ago
- Business
- The Hindu
India now sole govt. with vote in emoji, text standards body Unicode Consortium
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) rejoined the Unicode Consortium as a Supporting Member this year, becoming one of just two government members with a vote on the body. The consortium and its technical body are in charge of determining the text and emojis that are standard across the internet, and have played a major role in ensuring that languages around the world, including Indian languages, are recognised by computer systems globally. The IT Ministry was previously a member from 2000 to 2019, and then for one year in 2021. The IT Ministry has not issued any statement announcing its membership, which has been listed on the consortium's website as the 'Government of India', with a link to MeitY's website. The membership, which allows the Indian government a half vote in the technical committee's decision making — and a seat at the table at its meetings, mostly held in the U.S. and online — represents an annual $20,000 commitment, or about ₹17 lakh. The IT Ministry has been a member of the consortium as a part of the decades-old Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) initiative, which sought to promote, at first, an Indian alternative to ASCII, the pre-Unicode limited character set, and later on cooperated with efforts to internationalise Indian scripts by including them in Unicode. In 2023, The Hindu reported on how the Tamil Virtual Academy, an e-learning institute that operates autonomously under Tamil Nadu's Information Technology and Digital Services Department, had run up over $200,000 in membership fees over more than a decade, but did not attend a single meeting, or engage meaningfully with the body beyond 2016, while proprietary non-Unicode typefaces continued to be used across the State government's arms. The Tamil Virtual Academy remains a member, the only other Supporting Member globally apart from the IT Ministry. Other State governments, like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, have briefly held memberships, but discontinued them. The IT Ministry was not present at the latest series of meetings of the Unicode Technical Committee, held from April 22–24.
Hans India
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hans India
Safeguard credibility, define boundaries, communicate honestly, WAVES panel advises influencers
Influencers in the digital world need to safeguard their credibility, clearly define their boundaries, and communicate honestly with their followers, experts said on Sunday. The conversation centred around the growing influence of digital creators and the ethical, creative, and legal frameworks needed to build sustainable and credible influencer marketing. At a special breakout session at the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) 2025 here, film actor Shibani Akhtar highlighted that influencers should always stay true to their voice while collaborating on branded content. She stressed that for influencer marketing to work effectively, creators must be deeply involved in the content creation and branding process. Akhtar advised influencers to ensure that campaigns reflect their personal beliefs and values, which helps in maintaining authenticity in their partnerships. Pocket Aces Chief Business Officer Vinay Pillai emphasised that influencers must understand the unique nature of each digital platform they work with. He pointed out that audience engagement differs across platforms, and as such, creators should avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, he encouraged influencers to adopt platform-specific strategies and focus on building their brand consciously, based on data-driven content decisions that resonate with their audiences. ASCII's Saheli Sinha also contributed to the conversation by stressing the need for influencers to be transparent about their paid partnerships. She contended that influencers should disclose when content is promotional and ensure that the content they create is ethical and informative. Sinha also said that ASCII offers educational programmes to guide upcoming creators on the legal aspects of advertising, content standards, and maintaining audience trust. The panel underscored the importance of authenticity, transparency, and responsibility in content creation and advertising. The experts encouraged content creators to build strong, long-term relationships with their followers by ensuring transparency, trust, and clarity in their advertising intent. They also called for the industry to continue its efforts to uphold professionalism in the rapidly growing digital advertising space.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Even AMD is surprised by how fast it's gaining on Nvidia
AMD's RX 9000 series quickly joined the ranks of the best graphics cards, and it appears that its success came as a surprise to everyone — yes, even AMD itself. At a recent roundtable in Japan, the company revealed that its market share skyrocketed recently, reaching a whopping 45% in Japan. Although this refers to Japan, it's easy to imagine that AMD is gaining on Nvidia globally, too, although there are a few things to consider here. AMD's Yoshiaki Sato and Saki Suzuki shared a couple of updates during a Team AMD Roundtable held in Japan, which was later shared by ASCII. AMD was joined on stage by representatives of its many board partners, including ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, and Sapphire. AMD's add-in board partners (AIBs) reportedly shared that they wanted to make and sell more Radeon graphics cards, but were being held back due to a lack of GPUs. To this, AMD's Sato replied: 'AMD isn't used to selling [this many] graphics cards.' This got a laugh from the audience, and I admit, I chuckled, too. It's a candid response that shows that AMD maybe hasn't predicted just how much gamers would be willing to embrace its new GPUs. That 45% market share in Japan is a success, but AMD isn't resting on its laurels. Sato said that the 45% figure is a 'peak' for AMD, but one of its board partners chimed in with: 'No, we're below the majority. We're the opposition party, so let's aim for 70%,' which prompted another representative to say: 'We've never been the ruling party!' AMD is well aware of its market share compared to its rival, Nvidia. Worldwide figures usually pin AMD at anywhere between 10% and 18% of the GPU market. However, we might see an increase considering that AMD's RX 9070 GPUs are flying off the shelves … but that might put a stop to its market share gains, too. Although AMD was able to deliver more stock than Nvidia's RTX 50-series (which is sometimes referred to as a 'paper launch'), the GPUs are largely sold out at many U.S. retailers. When they're back in stock, they might be more expensive — and that'll put an end to AMD's performance-per-dollar argument. Let's hope that the company can find a middle ground with its board partners and deliver more cards to gamers at MSRP, or at least close to it. It's clear that the market is finally open to it. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Guardian
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
I made the worst role-playing game of all time – and loved every minute of it
It is said that every 100 years, a small fishing village on the southern coast of an unknown fantasy realm holds a magical artisanal cheese festival. As an adventurer and fan of ethically produced dairy products, you are determined to attend the fabled event, arriving at the dock on a small boat with only a few gold coins and a dream. This is the backdrop to the worst role-playing adventure I have ever experienced – and, entirely coincidentally, the only one I have ever designed. The game creation package RPG Maker has been around since 1992, the first version launching on the Japanese PC-98 computer. Since then, development has been passed from veteran Japanese developer ASCII to Enterbrain and then Chiyoda-based Gotcha Gotcha Games, and dozens of instalments have appeared. Although it has become increasingly complex over the years, RPG Maker remains a remarkably intuitive way to make adventure games with no development experience at all. The package comes with thousands of pre-made maps, buildings, characters and items, which creators can use and modify; but you can also start from scratch, crafting your own assets to make unique games. Your projects can be shared with the RPG Maker community and several acclaimed indie games have been built with the program, including To The Moon, Corpse Party and Omori. I can tell you that Artisan Cheese Quest will not be joining them. To be fair, the game only took me and my 19-year-old son Zac about two hours to make, using the PlayStation 5 version of RPG Maker (launching on 21 February). At first we chose the Swamp location from the huge variety of pre-made maps, which mostly offer traditional fantasy and sci-fi options. Then we selected a character – a cute little anime-style warrior. From here you start the actual process of making a game that offers challenging things to do. Everything that takes place in the world is called an Event, and to create one you need to construct a set of conditions using a very simple visual programming language. If you've ever tried Scratch, the popular coding tool used in schools throughout the world, you'll be right at home. Say you want to hide a magic key in a treasure chest: you place the chest on the map, then use the menu system to place a key inside it. Add a locked door then place a condition on that door: if the player has the key, the door opens, if they don't, they get a fail message. With the same system, you can add branching dialogue with characters, plan enemy patrol paths and eventually craft a combat system – everything is controlled via a series of if/then commands. During lockdown, Zac and I used Scratch to make a very simple maze game where you guided a mouse towards a block of cheese, so we decided to stick with our established game design expertise here. We built a tavern, attached the tavern interior to a building on the main landscape map, added characters to provide hints and hid an artisan cheese festival pass in a treasure chest on a small island. We didn't use any original assets but we did write all the dialogue, and the story – find the pass, open the tavern door, eat cheese – was entirely ours. Please keep us in mind for this year's Bafta games award for best narrative. Most importantly, the process was enormous fun. You're able to select background music and sound effects, and going for wildly inappropriate options had us crying with laughter: we put very dramatic combat music in the most innocuous areas; our treasure chest screamed when you opened it; villagers randomly barked and growled. And however basic the final result is, you still get that thrill at having made something that functions and looks a lot like an actual game. As you get used to the system, your ambitions grow: we later added a zombie who wanders around the map complaining about his lactose intolerance. I'm not going to lie – although the system is intuitive, it gets extremely demanding when you start thinking about creating multi-stage boss encounters or designing a levelling up system for your character. If you're not used to working with lengthy routines and sub-routines and game mechanics that all mess with each other, you've a long road ahead. True, any time we weren't sure how to make something work, the game's online community helped: there are hundreds of videos on YouTube and lots of helpful people on Reddit. But I feel we're some way from making anything even slightly resembling a commercial game. Perhaps at some point in the future, Artisan Cheese Quest will be one of the finest fromage-based fantasy role-playing adventures available on PlayStation 5. For now, we're just going to keep adding stupid sound effects until it stops being funny. Honestly, don't hold your breath.
