Who created Nihilistic Software?
Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption
The development of "Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption" began at Nihilistic Software in April 1998, shortly after the developer's founding in March that year. Its development was publicly announced in March 1999. Intending to move away from the first-person games the team members had worked on with previous companies, Nihilistic prepared a design and story for a futuristic RPG with similar themes and gothic aesthetics to those of the "" series. After publisher Activision approached the team using the White Wolf license, they adapted parts of their original design to fit the "Vampire" series, which became the original design for "Redemption". Endorsement by Id Software founder John Carmack helped Nihilistic decide to work with Activision. The Nihilistic team developed "Redemption" over twenty-four months; the team expanded to twelve members by the end of development. The development team included Nihilistic President and CEO Ray Gesko, lead programmer Rob Huebner, world designer Steve Tietze, level designer Steve Thoms, lead artist Maarten Kraaijvanger, artist Yujin Kiem, art technician Anthony Chiang, and programmers Yves Borckmans and Ingar Shu.
MANIAC I
The MANIAC (Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator, and Computer" or Mathematical Analyzer, Numerator, Integrator, and Computer") was an early computer built under the direction of Nicholas Metropolis at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. It was based on the von Neumann architecture of the IAS, developed by John von Neumann. As with all computers of its era, it was a one-of-a-kind machine that could not exchange programs with other computers (even other IAS machines). Metropolis chose the name MANIAC in the hope of stopping the rash of silly acronyms for machine names, although von Neumann may have suggested the name to him.