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Myth: The Fallen Lords

Myth: The Fallen Lords is a 1997 real-time tactics video game developed by Bungie for Windows and Mac OS. Released in November 1997 in North America and in February 1998 in Europe, the game was published by Bungie in North America and by Eidos Interactive in Europe. At the time, Bungie was known primarily as developers of Mac games, and The Fallen Lords was the first game they had developed and released simultaneously for both PC and Mac. It is the first game in the Myth series, which also includes a sequel, Myth II: Soulblighter, set sixty years after the events of the first game, also developed by Bungie, and a prequel, Myth III: The Wolf Age, set one thousand years prior to the events depicted in The Fallen Lords, and developed by MumboJumbo.

The game tells the story of the battle between the forces of the "Light" and those of the "Dark" for control of an unnamed mythical land. The Dark are led by Balor and a group of lieutenants (the titular Fallen Lords), whilst the Light are led by "The Nine"; powerful sorcerers known as "Avatara", chief amongst whom is Alric. The game begins in the seventeenth year of the war in the West, some fifty years since the rise of Balor, with the forces of Light on the brink of defeat; almost the entire land is under the dominion of the Dark, with only one major city and a few smaller towns remaining under the control of the Light. The plot follows the activities of "The Legion", an elite unit in the army of the Light, as they attempt to turn back the tide and defeat Balor.

The Fallen Lords received positive reviews from critics. Reviewers praised its plot, graphics, gameplay, level design, online multiplayer mode, and differentiation from traditional real-time strategy games. The most often criticized aspects were the difficulty of the single-player campaign, which many reviewers felt was far too high, even on the lowest setting, and some awkwardness in controlling units. The game went on to win multiple awards, including "Strategy Game of the Year" from both PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World, and "Game of the Year" from both Computer Games Strategy Plus and Macworld. It was also a commercial success, selling over 350,000 units worldwide across both systems, earning back roughly seven times its budget. At the time, it was Bungie's most successful game, and served to bring them to the attention of PC gamers and, more specifically, Microsoft, who would purchase the company in 2000.

The Myth series as a whole, and Soulblighter in particular, supported an active online community for over a decade after the official servers went offline. The first formally organized group of volunteer-programmers was MythDevelopers, who were given access to the game's source code by Bungie. The most recently active Myth development group is Project Magma, an offshoot of MythDevelopers. These groups have worked to provide ongoing technical support for the games, update them to newer operating systems, fix bugs, release unofficial patches, create mods, and maintain online servers for multiplayer gaming.

Gameplay
Myth: The Fallen Lords is a real-time tactics game. Unlike real-time strategy games, the player does not have to engage in resource micromanagement or economic macromanagement, does not have to construct a base or buildings, and does not have to gradually build up their army by acquiring resources and researching new technologies. Instead, each level begins with the player's army already assembled and ready for combat. During the game, the player controls forces of various sizes made up of a number of different units, each possessing their own strengths and weaknesses. In single-player mode, only Light units are playable, but in online multiplayer mode, the player can control both Light and Dark units.

Basic gameplay involves the player selecting and commanding units. To select an individual unit, the player clicks on that unit. Once selected, the unit is surrounded by a yellow rectangle, beside which is a health meter, which diminishes as the unit takes damage. Units do not regenerate health, and there is no way to construct new units (although in some single-player missions, reinforcements are automatically received at predetermined points). To select all nearby units of a given type, the player double-clicks on any individual unit of that type. To select multiple units of different types, the player can either "shift click" (hold down the shift key and click on each individual unit) or use "band-selection" (click and hold the mouse button on a piece of ground, then drag the cursor across the screen. This causes a yellow box to appear, which grows and shrinks as it follows the cursor's movement. When the player releases the button, any units within the box are selected). The player can instantly select all units on screen, irrespective of type, by pressing the enter key. The player can also assign manually selected unit groupings to a specific key on the keyboard, and when that key is pressed, it instantly selects the desired group of units.

Once one or more units have been selected, the player can click on the ground to make them walk to the selected spot, or click on an enemy to make them attack. Units with projectile weapons, such as archers and dwarves can also be ordered to attack a specific spot on the ground, rather than an enemy. It is also important that the player have their units facing in the right direction. This is accomplished by "gesture clicking"—using the mouse to indicate which way the units will face when they reach their destination. Gesture clicking is especially important when using formations, of which there are nine available. After selecting a group of units, the player must press the corresponding formation button on the keyboard, and then click on the ground where they want the units to form. The player can also order all selected units to scatter and to retreat.

When a single unit is selected, information about that unit appears in the "Status Bar" at the top of the HUD; the unit's name, a brief biography, how many kills he has, how many battles he has survived, and (if he is capable of carrying items) his inventory. When multiple units are selected, the names, types, and quantity of units will appear, but there will be no biography or information on their kills or previous battles. If no units are selected, the Status Bar provides details of the current mission. The HUD also features a transparent overhead mini-map, which displays information about the current battlefield; the player's field of vision is indicated by a yellow trapezoid, enemy units appear as red dots, friendly non-playable units as blue dots, and the player's army as green dots. The player can click anywhere on the mini-map to instantly jump to that location. However, the mini-map does not initially display the entire battlefield; the player must explore the area for it to become fully mapped.

The player has full control over the camera throughout the game, and can move it backwards and forwards, left and right, orbit left and right (keeps the camera focused on a single spot while making a 360 degree circle around that spot), pan left and right (the camera remains in the same spot but the player's point of view moves from side to side), and zoom in and out. All movements can be carried out via the keyboard, although the mouse can also be used to move the camera forwards, backwards, left and right, by moving the cursor to the top, bottom, left or right of the screen, respectively.

Selecting and commanding units only forms the basic gameplay of The Fallen Lords. The battles are more complex than simply commanding units to attack the enemy, with strategy and awareness of the conditions of the battlefield, and even the weather, also playing important roles. For example, due to the game's physics engine, objects react with one another, with units, and with the terrain. This can manifest itself simply in a severed head bouncing off one of the player's units and changing direction, but it can also have more serious consequences. For example, a dwarf could throw a molotov cocktail at an enemy on a hillside and miss, with the projectile rolling back down the hill towards the player's own units. Projectiles in general, both those used by the player and the enemy, have no guarantee of hitting anything; they are merely propelled in the direction instructed by the physics engine. Arrows, for example, may miss their intended target due to a small degree of simulated aiming error that becomes more significant at long range, or the target may move out of the way, or behind a tree or building. If archers are firing at enemies who are engaged in melee combat, they may also hit the player's own units instead of the enemy, causing the same amount of damage. This is also true of dwarves' Molotov cocktails. As such, friendly fire is an important aspect of the game. The weather is also something the player must always bear in mind. For example, rain or snow can put out explosive-based attacks. It is also much easier for projectile units to hit enemies below them rather than above them, and as such, positioning of the player's units is an important aspect of the game.

Single-player
In the single-player campaign, the player starts each mission with a group of soldiers, and must use that group to accomplish a specific goal or set of goals. These goals can involve killing a certain number of enemies, defending a location, reaching a certain point on the map, escorting a unit safely to a certain area, or destroying a specific object or enemy. The focus of the single-player campaign is on a smaller force defeating a much larger enemy force; in every mission, the Light units are outnumbered by enemies, often vastly, and so the player must use the terrain, employ the specific skills of their individual units, and gradually decrease the enemy force, or attempt to avoid it altogether. Units in the single-player campaign acquire experience with each kill. Experience increases attack rate, accuracy, and defence, and any unit that survives a battle will carry over to the next battle with their accumulated experience (assuming the next battle features units of that type).

Multiplayer
When it was released, The Fallen Lords could be used for multiplayer gaming on Bungie, TEN, or via a LAN on PC or AppleTalk on Mac. In multiplayer, the player starts with an army, and can customize it by trading units with other players, using point values that approximate the value of the units being traded.

Multiplayer games include "King Of The Hill" (a hill on the map is marked with a flag, with the hill captured when one or more of a team's units move within a certain range of the flag and eliminate any enemy units in the same area; the winner is the team who controls the hill for the longest amount of time), "Steal The Bacon" (somewhere on the battlefield is a ball; the object is to get the ball and keep it away from the opponents, with the winner being the last team to touch the ball), "Balls On Parade" (each team has a ball; the object is to capture as many of the opponents' balls as possible, with winner being the team in possession of the most balls at the end of the game), "Flag Rally" (a number of flags are on the battlefield, with the winner being the first player to touch them all), "Territories" (a number of flags are on the battlefield, with the winner being the team to capture and hold the most flags), "Scavenger Hunt" (a number of balls are on the battlefield, with the winner being the first player to touch them all), "Captures" (a number of balls are on the battlefield, with the winner being the player who is in possession of the most balls at the end of the match), "Body Count" (team deathmatch), and "Last Man On The Hill" (whichever player owns the hill when time runs out is the winner).

History
In the history of Myth, one particularly celebrated legend is that of Connacht, who, one thousand years ago, saved the world from a race of flesh-eating monsters called the Myrkridia, which had hunted humanity to near extinction over the previous millennium. Coming from the eastern land of Gower at the same time a comet appeared in the western skies, Connacht was the first human to fight the Myrkridia and survive. However, not only did he survive, he defeated them, ultimately imprisoning them in a magical prison known as the Tain, built for him by the Dwarven smiths of Muirthemne. With the Myrkridia gone, Connacht became Emperor of the Cath Bruig, presiding over a prosperous era known as the Age of Light. Many years later, he disappeared from the historical records. It is unknown exactly what happened to him, although one theory suggests he went in search of powerful magical artifacts, fearful of the ramifications if such items should fall into the wrong hands. Whatever the truth about his disappearance, Connacht was never seen again.

In more recent times, fifty years prior to the beginning of the game, Balor, a mysterious and evil being, attacked the eastern Empire with an undead army, sacking Muirthemne. Aided by lieutenants known as "Fallen Lords", Balor turned the farmlands surrounding Muirthemne into a barren desert called The Barrier, whilst the Dwarven cities of Myrgard and Stoneheim were captured by Ghôls. The Dwarven population became refugees, travelling west, into the land known as The Province. Eventually, every human city to the east of the Cloudspine Mountains fell under Balor's control. Thirty-three years later, he headed west. Within two years, Covenant, capital city of The Province, had fallen. Tyr, the last free city of the south, was destroyed five years later, ten years prior to current events, leaving only the free cities of the west to stand against Balor.

Plot
The game begins seventeen years after Balor crossed the Cloudspine, with the forces of Light losing the war badly. They are led by "The Nine", a group of avatara, chief amongst whom is Alric. The story is told through the journal entries of a soldier in "The Legion", an elite unit in the army. As the game begins, a berserk runs into the camp of The Nine, and gives them an urn. They extract a severed head, which opens its eyes.

The game then cuts to The Legion as they head to the city of Madrigal, headquarters of The Nine, which is under siege by Shiver (one of the Fallen), with the army planning to attack her from behind. The plan works, and after four days, the siege is lifted. Of particular significance is that Rabican (one of The Nine) kills Shiver in a "dream duel". Rabican had been advised by the Head, who claims to be an ancient enemy of Balor, that Shiver's one real weakness was her vanity, and his victory represents the first time one of the Fallen has been defeated. After this a detachment of the Legion is sent to the ruins of Covenant, a major city destroyed in the earlier years of the war, to find the Total Codex. The Total Codex is an ancient book that reputedly has the past, present, and future written within its pages. The Legion successfully retrieves the codex while skirmishing with the Fallen Lord known as the Watcher. During this time Alric, an Avatara of the Nine, is sent east with an army on the advice of the head to recover another magical artifact. The Legion then meet with Maeldun (one of The Nine) in the city of Scales, where they learn Rabican's army is heading to block Seven Gates and Bagrada, two of the passes through the Cloudspine Mountains, so as to prevent The Deceiver (one of the Fallen) crossing west prior to winter. Rabican holds Seven Gates, and The Legion hold Bagrada, but their victory is tempered by the fact that The Watcher (another of the Fallen) remains behind their lines, and Alric and his army are trapped beyond the Cloudspine.

News soon reaches The Nine that Alric's army has been destroyed, and he has been captured by The Deceiver. He was sent to The Barrier to search for a suit of enchanted armor by the Head, who now claims to have been an ally of Connacht, although some are beginning to doubt the veracity of its claims. A small group from The Legion fly over the mountains in a hot air balloon, and rescue Alric. The Legion is then ordered to Silvermines to look for The Watcher's arm, lost when Balor freed him from captivity beneath the Cloudspine, as The Nine believe the arm can be used to fashion a weapon to use against The Watcher. However, The Deceiver is also in Silvermines searching for the arm, as he and The Watcher were enemies before the rise of Balor. The Legion find the arm, but soon thereafter, a volcano erupts, melting the snow on the Cloudspine, and allowing The Deceiver to move west. At the same time, The Watcher attacks Rabican's army, crushing it. The army of The Deceiver, heading west, and the army of The Watcher, pursuing the remnants of Rabican's army east, begin to fight one another, with Maeldun using the distraction to retake the passes.

The following spring, Cu Roi and Murgen (two of The Nine) take four thousand men into occupied eastern territory to try to gain the support of the Forest Giants. They agree to join the Light, but Soulblighter (Balor's chief lieutenant) springs a surprise attack, trapping The Legion within the Tain; an artifact small enough to hold in one's hand, but which contains a pocket universe of limitless capacity. A group of fifty men led by Murgen find the battle standard of the long-dead Myrkridia, and shortly thereafter, Murgen finds a secret exit. He is able to open it, but the rest of the four thousand men are lost, as is Cu Roi, whilst Murgen is killed as he destroys the Tain. Shocked at their escape, Soulblighter flees, but news soon arrives that Maeldun has lost Bagrada, and The Deceiver has crossed west. Also, when the remainder of The Nine tried to destroy the Head, which they have come to believe has been betraying them, they were prevented from doing so by the army, with two of The Nine killed in the ensuing conflict. Meanwhile, Alric joins The Legion.

Rather than returning west, Alric leads The Legion north, moving towards Balor's fortress in Rhi'anon, capital city of the Trow, an ancient race of giants thought extinct until they joined the war against the Light. Believing they can do nothing to save any of the remaining free cities from The Deceiver, Alric hopes to achieve a more important victory; during his captivity in The Barrier, he learned that to ensure the obedience of the Fallen Lords, Balor bound them to his will, and is channeling his power to them. Thus, if he were destroyed, they would lose their power, ending the war. Leaving a garrison of men behind to delay the pursuing Soulblighter, Alric plans to attack The Watcher using arrows tipped with bone from his arm. The plan works; The Watcher is killed, scattering his army and clearing the way ahead, whilst Soulblighter breaks off his pursuit.

At the same time as a comet appears in the western skies, Alric orders the majority of the surviving members of the Legion, twenty-two hundred men, to launch a frontal attack on Balor's fortress in a suicide mission designed to cause a distraction, as he takes the remaining one-hundred men through a World Knot (a teleportation device) to a spot behind the fortress. As they near the fortress, Alric tells the stunned soldiers that Balor is in fact Connacht, and with this in mind, he intends to raise the Myrkridian battle standard found in the Tain, hoping to enrage Balor into making a tactical error. The plan works; furious at the sight of the flag, Balor leaves the fortress, and Alric immobilizes him with an Eblis Stone. The Legion kills him, and take his head to a bottomless pit known as "The Great Devoid", as only by throwing his head into the Devoid can he be destroyed. The thirty remaining members of The Legion are ambushed by Soulblighter as they approach the Devoid, but they fight their way through, and fling the head into the pit. Soulblighter turns into a murder of crows and flees, moments before a massive explosion erupts from within the Devoid. With Balor's destruction, the remaining Fallen are rendered powerless, and their armies collapse, bringing to an end the war between the Light and the Dark.

Origins
The Fallen Lords was originally conceived by Jason Jones as Bungie were nearing the end of development of Marathon Infinity in late 1995. They had planned to do another first-person shooter as their next game. However, the initial screenshots of id Software's Quake had just been released, and when Jones saw them, he felt Bungie's new game was shaping up as too similar. As such, he approached his colleagues with the question: "What do you think about having this world with 100 guys fighting 100 other guys in 3D?" Bungie had worked on several 3D action games for Mac OS, and Jones' idea was to bring that experience to a real-time strategy game rather than another first-person game. The team agreed with Jones that their new shooter could end up as being very similar to Quake, and, after working on the project for two months, changed it to a strategy game.

Dubbed "The Giant Bloody War Game", the team's initial inspirations for Myth were films such as Mel Gibson's Braveheart, "with its close-up portrayal of bloody melees between large forces," and literature such as Glen Cook's The Black Company series, "in which gruesome tales of battle contrast with engaging and intriguing characters." Speaking of the influence of Cook, Doug Zartman, Bungie's director of public relations and one of the game's writers, claimed:

"One of the things we liked was that Cook presents this pretty amoral world. One side is sort of the good guys, because the narrator is on that side, but they're not on a moral high ground over their opponents. It's not a simple good–evil dichotomy. We're dealing with a sophisticated world here, with politics and treachery and betrayal from both sides—as much conflict from within the ranks as from the enemy."

Similarly, programmer Jason Regier explained they wanted to set the game in "a dark, amoral world where opposing sides are equally brutal and their unity is torn by power struggles within the ranks. We dreamed of gameplay that combined the realism and excitement of action games with the cunning and planning required by strategy games." Zartman further stated: "we wanted to capture the feeling that you get watching large groups of people clashing on the open field. We wanted to recreate the blood-letting and grisly reality of large-scale battles." Although Myth is, by definition, a real-time strategy game, he was also eager to differentiate the game from other RTS games:

"We tried real hard to come up with a term that was different from 'real-time.' We're calling it a 'multimetric tactical game.' 'Multimetric'—I made that word up—because it's not an isometric game in the conventional sense. There are many angles a player can have and many views the camera can take. And we're calling it 'tactical' because there are no elements of the game that focus on resources or management. It's strictly a tactical game."

Once they had decided on the basic game mechanics, their first task was to draw up a list of elements they wished to avoid; specifically, RTS clichés, obvious references to J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, allusions to the Arthurian legend, or any kind of narrative involving "little boys coming of age and saving the world." On the other hand, elements they did wish to incorporate included "ideas that contributed to the visual realism of the game," such as a 3D landscape, polygonal buildings, reflective water, particle-based weather, battlefields littered with severed limbs, and explosions that damaged the terrain permanently. They were also determined to include a robust online multiplayer mode and allow hundreds of troops to appear on a battlefield at once.

Cross-platform
Work on the game began in January 1996, with four programmers, two artists, and a product manager. Originally, the game was to have no music whatsoever, but composer Martin O'Donnell, who had recently been hired by Bungie, convinced the developers this was a bad idea, and he, Michael Salvatori and Paul Heitsch were commissioned to compose a soundtrack and work on the sound effects.

A major early decision was to develop and release the game simultaneously on both Mac OS and Microsoft Windows, which would be a first for the company. Up to this point in their history, their only venture into PC gaming had been a port of Marathon 2: Durandal. Bungie had not been happy with the port, and were determined that The Fallen Lords be a genuine cross-platform release. This meant designing the game from the ground up to be cross-platform compatible, rather than developing it for one operating system and then porting it to another. As such, 90% of the game's source code was platform independent, with 5% written for PC subroutines and 5% for Mac-specific functionality. All of the game's data, from cutscenes to the number of warriors who are left-handed, was stored in platform-independent data files called "tags", which are automatically byte-swapped when necessary and accessed via a cross-platform file manager.

As the team was more familiar with developing for Mac OS, the initial coding was done on a Mac using CodeWarrior. When PC builds were required, the team switched to Windows, using Visual C++. Ultimately, the entire game was written in C. To ensure the game looked identical on both PCs and Macs, the team created and implemented their own dialog manager and font manager, which allowed them to use custom graphics for all interface items. The font manager supported antialiased, two-byte fonts, and a variety of text-parsing formats, allowing international localizations to be completed relatively easily.

Programming
Although The Fallen Lords employs a fully 3D terrain, with 3D polygonal buildings, the characters are 2D sprites. To bring the 3D environment and the 2D characters together and construct each level, the team developed four separate programming tools; "Tag Editor" edited the constants stored in the cross-platform data files; "Extractor" handled the 2D sprites and the sequencing of their animations; "Loathing" acted as the map editor; and "Fear" dealt with the 3D polygonal models such as houses, pillars, and walls. Jason Jones explained:

"Myth lies on top of a flexible file system, and every one of those little bits that goes into Myth is called a Tag. The Tag Editor lets you edit everything from the physics of the game, to the color of the units, how they move, and how they attack. There's another tool that we use to import graphics called the Extractor, and there's a third tool called Loathing. Loathing is basically the map editor for Myth. You import your map into it, you change the heights, and you place your units on the map in Loathing. The fourth tool that complements Loathing is called Fear. Fear takes care of all the models; it is used to import the 3D rendered models into Myth."

Loathing was specifically built around the Myth engine and allowed the team to modify the 3D landscape, apply lighting, determine terrain type, script the AI, and position structures, scenery, and enemies. The artists used PowerAnimator on an SGI Indigo 2 to create polygonal models and render all the characters. The 3D models were imported into the game using Fear, while the 2D sprites were cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop and imported and animated using Extractor. To create the texture maps for the terrain, the artists used Photoshop to draw the equivalent of an aerial photo, and then applied it to the 3D landscape using Loathing. Initially, the developers had planned on using fractal-generated landscapes, but they felt the randomness of such landscapes would make it difficult to design interesting levels, and so all maps were instead constructed by hand.

Implementing pathfinding was a particularly difficult challenge. The terrain in the game is a 3D polygonal mesh constructed of square cells, each of which is tessellated into two triangles. Certain cells have an associated terrain type which indicates their impassability, and may contain any solid object. The team originally planned to use the A* algorithm, but soon realized this would create problems in terms of the realism they desired. As impassable obstacles can lie anywhere on the map, and as the square cells are quite large, the obstacles are not guaranteed to be aligned at their center. Furthermore, even if an obstacle did occupy exactly one cell, the A* algorithm would make a unit walk up to the obstacle, turn, and continue around it. The developers instead wanted their units to move to avoid obstacles ahead of time, as they approached them, such as smoothly weaving through a forest instead of continually heading straight for a tree, only to stop and suddenly walk around it. As such, they wrote their own pathfinding algorithm. As the terrain in the game never changes, paths could be calculated once and remembered. Then, the team factored in arbitrarily placed obstacles and periodically refined their pathfinding using a vector-based scheme. If the planned path caused the unit to hit an obstacle, the path was altered, with the AI choosing whether deviating to the left or the right was the shorter option. Their system worked for 90% of cases, but in testing, the developers discovered several scenarios where their pathfinding algorithm didn't work especially well. However, by the time they made this discovery, it was too late to implement the changes that would have been necessary to fully correct it. As such, their assessment of the pathfinding in the final version of the game was that "it works pretty well and provides the effect we sought, but there's definitely room for improvement."

Speaking of the game's physics engine, Jason Jones said:

"if you want to have an archer hit a target that's at a higher elevation and moving, you have absolutely no alternative but to solve the equation. It's not real, but it's about as real as you get, and if the arrow doesn't fly through the air right, or doesn't bounce off a tree like the gamer is expecting it to, they'll notice. There's just no good way to cheat with the physics."

By November 1996, Bungie had a demo with rudimentary gameplay in place. In an effort to create media buzz, they took the demo to several gaming magazines. Speaking in 2000, Doug Zartman explained that the physics engine was a major factor in the game even at that early stage:

"There wasn't much gameplay in what we showed them—two small groups on opposite sides of a small map rushing at each other, becoming a bloody knot at the middle where they all collided and blew each other up. And the AI was crude. But the reviewers could see that it had strategic combat on real 3D terrain—something no other game at the time had, something that radically changed how the game was played; an archer could fire farther from the top of the hill than from in the valley. It was easy to demonstrate to the press that an archer on high ground was going to defeat an archer down in the valley."

Release
Writing in 1998, programmer Jason Regier stated of the game:

"It doesn't take fifty people to create a major cross-platform software title. Period. Bungie Software has barely half that number of employees in the entire company, and we not only develop all our games, but publish and distribute them as well. Macintosh and PC versions of Myth, all our internal tools, and our online service were essentially developed by only six people, and everything shipped on time with no major glitches. There's no big quality assurance department here at Bungie; the public did our testing for us, and we listened to them as seriously as if they were coworkers on the project. We didn't hire any game designers, writers, or level designers to come up with our game concept and story line. Myth truly is the combined vision of our team, and each of us feels that it was our game. We came to work each day excited about the project, and we're damn proud of what we managed to create."

One of Regier's few disappointments was that during the early stages of promotion, Bungie advertised a scripting language that would allow players to modify elements of the game. As he explains: "We had hoped that user scripts could be written for extensible artificial intelligence, as well as custom formations, net game rules, and map behaviors." The team selected Java as the basis for the scripting language. Early versions of the game allowed some simple scripts to work for presentation purposes, such as instructing a unit to search the battlefield for the heads of the enemy and collect them in a pile. The programmer responsible for the scripting language left Bungie midway through production, and they were left with a number of features to implement and no library of user-friendly interfaces with the game code. Given its incomplete state at such a late stage of development, there was little choice but to drop this functionality.

Technology
The Fallen Lords originally supported both software rendering and 3dfx's Glide 3D acceleration. Shortly after the game was released, Bungie issued a v1.1 upgrade patch, which reduced the difficulty of the single-player campaign and added support for Rendition's Redline, and 3dfx's Voodoo Rush. Jason Regier wrote of working with 3D graphic accelerators:

"When the project started, 3D acceleration hardware was only just starting to become popular. Nevertheless, we tried to keep hardware acceleration in mind when designing our rendering pipeline. When the opportunity arose to add hardware acceleration, the implementation worked beautifully. We worked closely with people from 3dfx and Rendition and added support for their chipsets in about a week. It's amazing how much these accelerators add to the smoothness of the terrain, the fluidity of camera movement, and the realism of the units and effects."

Total Codex bundle
In 1999, Bungie re-released The Fallen Lords for Mac OS and Windows as part of a special edition called Myth: The Total Codex. The bundle included The Fallen Lords v1.3 (Bungie's last upgrade of the game ), Myth II: Soulblighter, the Soulblighter expansion pack Myth II: Chimera, and official Strategies and Secrets guides for both of the main games.

Community
Although the official Bungie Myth servers closed in February 2002, the Myth series continues to have an active online fanbase. After Bungie released the Total Codex bundle in 1999, which contained The Fallen Lords v1.3, Soulblighter v1.3 and the Soulblighter expansion pack, Myth II: Chimera, they ceased working to develop the game's source code, as Microsoft, who purchased the company in 2000, wanted them to concentrate on Halo. As such, they were approached by a group of programmers, artists and coders known as MythDevelopers, who asked for access to the code so as to continue its development. With the blessing of Take-Two Interactive, who had acquired the rights to the Myth intellectual property in 2000, Bungie released their entire archive of Myth-related materials to MythDevelopers, including the source code and all artwork featured in the game. MythDevelopers were also granted access to the source code for Myth III: The Wolf Age, which was developed by MumboJumbo in 2001. Bungie also open sourced their Myth metaserver source code in 2002.

MythDevelopers used this material to improve and further develop the games. Although their initial focus was on the bug-ridden release version of The Wolf Age, they also worked to update the first two games to newer operating systems on both Mac and PC, fix bugs, and create unofficial patches to enhance both the games themselves and the mapmaking tools which Bungie had released with Soulblighter.

MythDevelopers disbanded in December 2003, with Project Magma becoming the main development group for The Fallen Lords and Soulblighter, and FlyingFlip Studios for The Wolf Age.

Servers
Prior to disbanding, MythDevelopers created and operated PlayMyth.net, the most popular online Myth server after the official servers were taken offline. Although built using the Soulblighter server, PlayMyth could also run both The Fallen Lords and The Wolf Age, which was developed by MumboJumbo using a network gameplay system designed to run on GameSpy rather than Bungie.net. PlayMyth went offline in October 2007 after it was repeatedly hacked, with the most popular servers becoming MariusNet.com and GateofStorms.net.

MariusNet had been online since just prior to Bungie.net's Myth servers going offline, and was officially approved by Bungie. The original impetus behind the project was as a temporary replacement for Myth players in case the original servers were shut down, which had been rumored for some time. The Bungie servers had not supported The Fallen Lords since November 2001, and the community believed the servers would soon close for Soulblighter as well. When The Fallen Lords servers closed in November, the only way to play a multiplayer game was via a LAN or AppleTalk, and MariusNet was created as a Bungie.net "emulator", which, like PlayMyth, supported all three Myth games, and thus gave players a way to play The Fallen Lords online. At the time, Bungie had not open sourced the metaserver source code, so creating a network for The Fallen Lords was accomplished via reverse engineering. Dave Carlile, the main programmer of the server, explained:

"We started with some information about the Myth 2 network protocol, and hoped Myth 1 was the same or very similar. [Todd Snyder] then used a packet sniffer to look at the data being sent back and forth between the Myth 2 client and the server in order to learn more. We initially made a partial Myth 2 server to get the basics down, then spent hundreds of hours figuring out the differences in packet structure in Myth 1. For a few of the more difficult pieces we used a disassembler to take apart the client code, and also a debugger to trace through the code."

MariusNet closed in 2014 when the server company shut down, and the hardware was damaged whilst being moved to its new location. GateofStorms, which was created by Project Magma, and only supports Soulblighter v1.8 (released by Magma in 2013), remains active, and continues to host individual games and tournaments.

Reception
The Fallen Lords received universal acclaim upon release, and holds an aggregate score of 91 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on nine reviews. The game was seen as a defining title in the emerging real-time strategy genre, helping to solidify the elements of the genre both with gamers and in the gaming press. It also served to bring Bungie to the attention of PC gamers, and Microsoft, who would purchase the company in 2000 so that Bungie's new game, Halo, could be developed as a launch title for Microsoft's debut video game console, the Xbox.

GameSpot's Michael E. Ryan said the initial release had "an absurd level of difficulty, a poorly implemented unit-facing command, and a handful of nitpicky flaws.", which were all dealt with in the v1.1 update. He praised the plot, the different styles of gameplay, the level design, and the range of available units. He was also impressed with the graphics. He concluded "When you combine the excellent multiplayer support, the great graphics, and the dramatic gameplay improvements offered by the 1.1 patch, you get a truly remarkable real-time strategy game."

PC Zone's Jamie Cunnigham praised the interface, the range of units, the level design, multiplayer mode, and the use of the camera during battles. He also made note of the 3D physics and use of shadows. However, he was critical of the difficulty, writing "Myth is let down by what can only be described as an overwhelming frustration whenever you play it for any length of time. So much attention has been paid to the technology that some of the fun element has suffered."

Game Revolution's Calvin Hubble called it "one of the most impressive looking strategy games to hit the market." He also lauded the online multiplayer mode. However, he was critical of the difficulty level, finding the game too hard on even its easiest setting. He concluded "After beating the first couple of levels, the enjoyment could quickly turn to nausea as try after try fails to pass one single level. The graphics and realism are breathtaking, if only the single player game wasn't so difficult."

Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, and stated that "With a large and complex control scheme, Myth's learning curve starts higher than anything else on the market. Yet, for the kind of players who paint their own miniatures and build sets, it's a challenge of fabled proportions."

GamePro commented that the game "simply does everything right", particularly mentioning the extensive gore, the ability to save and replay battles at varying speeds and from different angles, the crisp sound effects, and the networked multiplayer contests. They remarked that the game is immediately accessible, with only the camera requiring any time to learn, and gave it a perfect 5.0 out of 5 in all four categories (graphics, sound, control, and fun factor), concluding that "today's bloated real-time strategy market could use a swift kick, and Myth: The Fallen Lords is one big-ass boot."

Sales and awards
According to Alex Seropian, co-founder of Bungie, The Fallen Lords cost roughly $2 million to develop and market, by far Bungie's most expensive game up to that time, and as such, they needed it to be financially successful, especially as it was their first original PC game. The game did prove a commercial success, selling over 350,000 units worldwide at roughly $40 per unit, earning the company $14million, and becoming Bungie's most successful game thus far. In the United States, the game sold 40,617 copies during 1997. By 2000, the game had over 100,000 people registered with online accounts at Bungie.net. The success of the game also helped Bungie rank #101 in Inc.'s 1998 list of the 500 fastest growing private corporations in North America. Primarily due to the success of The Fallen Lords, Bungie's profits had increased by 2,228% from 1993 to 1997.

The game also won numerous awards, including "Real-Time Strategy Game of the Year" from PC Gamer, "Strategy Game of the Year" from Computer Gaming World, and "Game of the Year" from both Computer Games Strategy Plus and Macworld. Online Game Review named it one of the fifty greatest games ever made. In 2012, The Fallen Lords was listed on Time's All-TIME 100 greatest video games list.

In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 19th-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "a breath of fresh air" and "a modern classic". In 2003, The Fallen Lords was inducted into GameSpot's list of the greatest games of all time.

title: Myth: The Fallen Lords


text:
Blindness (novel)

Blindness (Ensaio sobre a cegueira, meaning Essay on Blindness) is a 1995 novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago. It is one of Saramago's most famous novels, along with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Baltasar and Blimunda. In 1998, Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Blindness was one of his works noted by the committee when announcing the award.

A sequel titled Seeing was published in 2004. Blindness was adapted into a film of the same name in 2008.

Plot summary
Blindness is the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel follows the misfortune of a handful of unnamed characters who are among the first to be stricken with blindness, including an ophthalmologist, several of his patients, and assorted others, who are thrown together by chance. The ophthalmologist's spouse, "the doctor's wife," is inexplicably immune to the blindness. After a lengthy and traumatic quarantine in an asylum, the group bands together in a family-like unit to survive by their wits and by the good fortune that the doctor's wife has escaped the blindness. The sudden onset and unexplained origin and nature of the blindness cause widespread panic, and the social order rapidly unravels as the government attempts to contain the apparent contagion and keep order via increasingly repressive and inept measures.

The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined. Hygiene, living conditions, and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period, mirroring the society outside.

Anxiety over the availability of food, caused by delivery irregularities, acts to undermine solidarity; and lack of organization prevents the internees from fairly distributing food or chores. Soldiers assigned to guard the asylum and look after the well-being of the internees become increasingly antipathetic as one soldier after another becomes infected. The military refuses to allow basic medicine to be delivered, which ensures that a simple infection becomes deadly. Fearing an imminent escape, soldiers shoot down a crowd of internees waiting for a food delivery.

Conditions degenerate further as an armed clique gains control over food deliveries, subjugating their fellow internees and exposing them to violent assault, rape, and deprivation. Faced with starvation, internees battle each other and burn down the asylum, only to discover that the army has abandoned the asylum, after which the protagonists join the throngs of nearly helpless blind people outside who wander the devastated city and fight one another to survive.

The story then follows the doctor's wife, her husband, and their impromptu “family” as they attempt to survive outside, cared for largely by the doctor’s wife, who can still see (though she must hide this fact at first). At this point, the breakdown of society is near total. Law and order, social services, government, schools, etc., no longer function. Families have been separated and cannot find one another. People squat in abandoned buildings and scrounge for food. Violence, disease, and despair threaten to overwhelm human coping. The doctor and his wife and their new “family” eventually make a permanent home in the doctor's house and are establishing a new order to their lives when the blindness lifts from the city en masse just as suddenly and inexplicably as it struck.

The doctor's wife
The doctor's wife is the only character in the novel who does not lose her sight. This phenomenon remains unexplained through the novel. Unwilling to leave her husband to be interned, she lies to the government doctors and claims to be blind. As such, she is interned with the rest of the afflicted. Once inside, she attempts to help the compound organize, but she is increasingly unable to hold back the animality of the compound. When one ward begins withholding food and demanding that the women of other wards submit to being raped in return for food, she kills the leader of their ward. Once they escape the compound, she helps her group survive in the city. The doctor's wife is the de facto leader of their small group, although in the end, she often serves their disabled needs and acts as a nurse to them.

The doctor
The doctor is an ophthalmologist stricken blind after treating a patient with what will come to be called "the white sickness". The doctor is among the first to be quarantined along with his wife. Due to his medical expertise he has a certain authority among those quarantined. However, much of the doctor's authority stems from his wife not having gone blind; she is able to see what is going on around the ward and relays what she sees to her husband. When the group from his ward finally escapes they end up travelling to and staying in the doctor and his wife's apartment. Several of the other main characters had been visiting the doctor's office when the epidemic begins to spread.

The girl with the dark glasses
The girl with the dark glasses is a former part-time prostitute who is struck blind while she is with a customer. She seemingly contracted the “white-blindness” while visiting the doctor due to conjunctivitis (hence the dark glasses). She is unceremoniously removed from the hotel and taken to be quarantined in the asylum. Once inside, she joins the small group of people who were contaminated at the doctor's office. When the car thief gropes her on the way to the lavatory, she kicks him with a heeled shoe – giving him a wound which will eventually lead to his death. While inside, she also takes care of the boy with the squint, whose mother is nowhere to be found. At the end of the story, she and the old man with the black eye patch become lovers.

The old man with the black eye patch
The old man with the black eye patch is the last person to join the first ward. He brings with him a portable transistor radio that allows the internees to listen to the news. He is also the main architect of the failed attack on the ward of hoodlums hoarding the food rations. Once the group escapes the quarantine, the old man becomes the lover of the girl with the dark glasses.

The dog of tears
The dog of tears is a dog that joins the small group of blind people when they leave the quarantine. While he is mostly loyal to the doctor's wife, he helps the whole group by protecting them all from packs of dogs who are becoming increasingly feral. He is called the dog of tears because he bonded to the group when he licked the tears off the face of the doctor's wife.

The boy with the squint
The boy with the squint was a patient of the doctor's, which is most likely how he became infected. He is brought to the quarantine without his mother and soon falls in with the group in the first ward. The girl with the dark glasses assumes a motherly role for him, as she takes care of him and ensures his safety.

The car thief
After the first blind man was struck blind in traffic, a car thief brought him home and, subsequently stole his car. Soon after he went blind, the car thief and the first blind man re-encounter one another in the quarantine, where they soon come to blows. They have no time to resolve their conflict, though, since the car thief is the first internee killed by the guards. He is gunned down while trying to ask the guards for medication for his infected leg.

The first blind man
The first man to go blind is struck blind in the middle of traffic, waiting at a stoplight. He is immediately taken home and then to the doctor's office, where he infects all of the other patients and the doctor. He is one of the principal members of the first ward - the ward with all of the original internees. When the epidemic is finally over, he is the first person to regain his sight.

The first blind man's wife
The wife of the first blind man goes blind soon after helping her husband to the quarantine. They are reunited by chance in the quarantine. Once inside, she also joins the first ward with the doctor and the doctor's wife. When the ward of hoodlums begins to demand that the women sleep with them in order to be fed, the first blind man's wife volunteers to go, in solidarity with the others.

The man with the gun
The man with the gun is the leader of the ward of hoodlums that seizes control of the food supply in the quarantine. He and his ward take the rations by force and threaten to shoot anyone who doesn't comply with their orders. This ward extorts valuables from the other internees in exchange for food and, when the "goods" (such as bracelets and watches) run out they begin to rape the women. He is later stabbed to death by the doctor's wife.

The blind accountant
This man is not one of those afflicted by the "white sickness"—rather he has been blind since birth. He is the only one in the ward who can read and write braille and who knows how to use a walking stick. Additionally, he is the second in command to the man with the gun in the ward of hoodlums. When the doctor's wife kills the man with the gun, the blind accountant takes the gun and tries to seize control but he is unable to rally support. He dies when one of the rape victims sets fire to the ward.

Style
Like most works by Saramago, Blindness contains many long, breathless passages in which commas take the place of periods, quotation marks, semicolons, and colons. The lack of quotation marks around dialogue means that the speakers' identities (or the fact that dialogue is occurring) may not be immediately apparent to the reader. The lack of proper character names in Blindness is typical of many of Saramago's novels (e.g. All the Names). The characters are instead referred to by descriptive appellations such as "the doctor's wife", "the car thief", or "the first blind man". Given the characters' blindness, some of their names seem ironic ("the boy with the squint" or "the girl with the dark glasses").

The city afflicted by the blindness is never named, nor the country specified. Few definite identifiers of culture are given, which contributes an element of timelessness and universality to the novel. However, there are some signs that hint that the country is Saramago's homeland of Portugal: the main character is shown eating chouriço, a spicy sausage, and some dialogue in the original Portuguese employs the familiar "tu" second-person singular verb form (a distinction absent in most of Brazil). The church, with all its saintly images, is likely of the Catholic variety.

Sequel
Saramago wrote a sequel to Blindness in 2004, titled Seeing (Ensaio sobre a lucidez, literal English translation Essay on lucidity), which has also been translated into English. The sequel novel takes place in the same country featured in Blindness and features several of the same nameless characters.

Adaptations

An English-language film adaptation of Blindness was directed by Fernando Meirelles. Filming began in July 2007 and stars Mark Ruffalo as the doctor and Julianne Moore as the doctor's wife. The film opened the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2007 the Drama Desk Award Winning Godlight Theatre Company staged the New York City theatrical premiere of Blindness at 59E59 Theaters. This stage version was adapted and directed by Joe Tantalo. The First Blind Man was played by Mike Roche.

An outdoor performance adaptation by the Polish group Teatr KTO, was first presented in June 2010. It has since been performed at a number of venues, including the Old College Quad of the University of Edinburgh during the 2012 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Shortly before his death, Saramago gave German composer Anno Schreier the rights to compose an opera based on the novel. The libretto is written in German by Kerstin Maria Pöhler. Like the German translation of the novel, the opera's title is "Die Stadt der Blinden". It saw its first performance on November 12, 2011 at the Zurich Opera House.

In August 2020, the Donmar Warehouse produced a socially-distanced sound installation based on the novel. BLINDNESS was adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Walter Meierjohann. Juliet Stevenson voiced the Doctor's Wife.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Blindness (novel)


text:
Assault Amphibious Vehicle

The Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV)—official designation AAVP-7A1 (formerly known as Landing Vehicle, Tracked, Personnel-7 abbr. LVTP-7)—is a fully tracked amphibious landing vehicle manufactured by U.S. Combat Systems (previously by United Defense, a former division of FMC Corporation).

The AAV-P7/A1 is the current amphibious troop transport of the United States Marine Corps. It is used by U.S. Marine Corps Amphibious Assault Battalions to land the surface assault elements of the landing force and their equipment in a single lift from assault shipping during amphibious operations to inland objectives and to conduct mechanized operations and related combat support in subsequent mechanized operations ashore. It is also operated by other forces. Marines call them "amtracs", a shortening of their original designation, "amphibious tractor".

In June 2018, the Marine Corps announced they had selected the BAE Systems/Iveco wheeled SuperAV for the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) program to supplement and ultimately replace the AAV.

Development
The U.S. Marine Corps became interested in replacing the LVTP-5 due to its limited range, slow water speed and the difficulty of maintaining the aging platform. In 1964, the Marine Corps solicited proposals to replace meet its requirement. The Marine Corps selected a proposal by FMC. FMC delivered the first of 15 prototypes, designated LVTPX12, in October 1967. Marine Corps testing concluded in September 1969. In June 1970, the Marine Corps awarded FMC a $78.5 million contract for the production of 942 vehicles.

The LVTP-7 was first introduced in 1972. In 1982, FMC was contracted to conduct the LVTP-7 Service Life Extension Program (SLEP), which converted the LVT-7 vehicles to the improved AAV-7A1 vehicle by adding an improved engine, transmission, and weapons system and improving the overall maintainability of the vehicle. The Cummins VT400 diesel engine replaced the GM 8V53T, and this was driven through FMC's HS-400-3A1 transmission. The hydraulic traverse and elevation of the weapon station was replaced by electric motors, which eliminated the danger from hydraulic fluid fires. The suspension and shock absorbers were strengthened as well. The fuel tank was made safer, and a fuel-burning smoke generator system was added. Eight smoke grenade launchers were also placed around the armament station. The headlight clusters were housed in a square recess instead of the earlier round type. The driver was provided with an improved instrument panel and a night vision device, and a new ventilation system was installed. These upgraded vehicles were originally called LVT-7A1, but the Marine Corps renamed the LVTP-7A1 to AAV-7A1 in 1984.

Another improvement was added starting in 1987 in the form of a Cadillac Gage weapon station or Up-Gunned Weapon Station (UGWS) which was armed with both a .50 cal (12.7 mm) M2HB machine gun and a Mk-19 40 mm grenade launcher.

Enhanced Applique Armor Kits (EAAK) were developed for the AAV-7A1 in 1989 and fitted by 1993, and the added weight of the new armor necessitated the addition of a bow plane kit when operating afloat.

The Assault Amphibious Vehicle Reliability, Availability, Maintainability/Rebuild to Standard (AAV RAM/RS) Program was approved in 1997. It encompassed all AAV systems and components to return the AAV to the original vehicle's performance specifications and ensure acceptable readiness until the EFV should become operational. The program replaced both the AAV engine and suspension with US Army M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) components modified for the AAV. Ground clearance returned to 16 in and the horsepower to ton ratio increased from 13 to 1 to its original 17 to 1. The introduction of the BFV components and the rebuild to standard effort was expected to reduce maintenance costs for the expected remaining life of the AAV through the year 2013.

In March 2015, SAIC was awarded a contract to perform an AAV Survivability Upgrade (SU). Marine Corps and SAIC officials unveiled the AAV SU prototype in January 2016, with survivability enhancements including replacing the angled EAAK with 49 advanced buoyant ceramic armor panels, a bonded spall liner, armor-protected external fuel tanks, an aluminum armor underbelly providing Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP)-equivalent blast protection, and blast mitigating seats as well as a more powerful engine, new suspension system, and increased reserve buoyancy. The AAV SU program was intended to upgrade 392 out of the some 1,000-vehicle fleet to keep them operational through 2035 as the ACV gradually entered service. However, in August 2018 the Marine Corps terminated the AAV upgrade program, instead opting for increased procurement of the ACV.

Combat history
Twenty U.S.-built LVTP-7s were used by Argentina during the 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands with most returning to the Argentine mainland before the war ended.

From 1982 to 1984, LVTP-7s were deployed with U.S. Marines as part of the multi-national peacekeeping force in Beirut, Lebanon. As Marines became increasingly involved in hostilities, several vehicles sustained minor damage from shrapnel and small arms fire.

On October 25, 1983 U.S. Marine LVTP-7s conducted a highly successful amphibious landing on the island of Grenada as part of Operation Urgent Fury.

It was heavily used in the 1991 Gulf War and Operation Restore Hope.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, AAV-7A1s were criticized for providing poor protection for the crew and passengers compared with other vehicles, such as the M2 Bradley. Eight were disabled or destroyed during the Battle of Nasiriyah, where they faced RPG, mortar, tank and artillery fire. At least one vehicle was destroyed by fire from friendly A-10 Warthog aircraft.

On 3 August 2005, 14 U.S. Marines and their Iraqi interpreter were killed when their AAV struck a roadside bomb in the city of Haditha in the Euphrates river valley in western Iraq.

During the 2010 Rio de Janeiro security crisis, the Brazilian Naval Fusiliers used AAV-7A1s in support of their operations to occupy the Complexo da Penha and Complexo do Alemão favelas, where the vehicles were used to clear barricades left by the Red Command.

Eight U.S. Marines and one U.S. Navy sailor died on 30 July 2020, when their AAV sank in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Clemente Island, California, during a training exercise, ahead of an upcoming deployment. As a result of the incident, on 15 December 2021 the U.S. Marine Corps announced that it has banned its fleet of amphibious armored personnel carriers from maritime operations except in emergencies.

Cancelled: Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle
Renamed from the Advanced Assault Amphibious Vehicle in late 2003, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) was designed to replace the aging AAV. Able to transport a full Marine rifle squad to shore from an amphibious assault ship beyond the horizon with three times the speed in water and about twice the armor of the AAV, and superior firepower as well it was the Marine Corps' number one priority ground weapon system acquisition. The EFV was intended for deployment in 2015. However, in January 2011, United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced plans to cancel the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. In 2012, the USMC dropped the EFV and cancelled the program.

Replacement: Amphibious Combat Vehicle
In June 2018, the Marine Corps announced they had selected the BAE Systems/Iveco wheeled SuperAV for the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV) program to supplement and ultimately replace the AAV.

Variants

 * LVTP-7: Original series introduced from 1972. Originally armed with a M85 12.7 mm (.50cal) machine gun.
 * LVTP-7A1: 1982 upgraded. Renamed to AAVP-7A1 from 1984.
 * AAVP-7A1 (Personnel): This is the most common AAV, as it carries a turret equipped with an M2HB 12.7 mm (.50 caliber) heavy machine gun, and a Mk19 40 mm automatic grenade launcher. It carries four crew radios as well as the AN/VIC-2 intercom system. It is capable of carrying 21 combat equipped Marines in addition to the crew of 4: driver, crew chief/vehicle commander, gunner, and rear crewman.
 * AAVC-7A1 (Command): This vehicle does not have a turret, and much of the cargo space of the vehicle is occupied by communications equipment. This version only has two crew radios, and in addition to the VIC-2, it also carries two VRC-92s, a VRC-89, a PRC-103 UHF radio, a MRC-83 HF radio and the MSQ internetworking system used to control the various radios. This AAV has a crew of 3, and additionally carries 5 radio operators, 3 staff members, and 2 commanding officers. Recently, the C7 has been upgraded to use Harris Falcon II class radios, specifically the PRC-117 for VHF/UHF/SATCOM, and the PRC-150 for HF.
 * AAVR-7A1 (Recovery): This vehicle also does not have a turret. The R7 is considered the "wrecker", as it has a crane as well as most tools and equipment needed for field repairs. It is by far the heaviest of the three, and sits considerably lower in the water. Crew of three, plus the repairmen.

Many P7s have been modified to carry the Mk 154 MCLC, or Mine Clearance Line Charge. The MCLC kit can fire three linear demolition charges to breach a lane through a minefield. MCLCs were used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and again in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

In the 1970s, the U.S. Army used an LVTP-7 as the basis for their Mobile Test Unit (MTU), a ground-based high-energy anti-aircraft laser. After several successful test firings at Redstone Army Arsenal, the laser was reportedly transferred to NASA.
 * KAAV7A1: KAAV7A1 amphibious vehicle series based on AAV-7A1 by Samsung Techwin (now Hanwha Defense) and BAE systems developed and manufactured in South Korea by Samsung Techwin.

Training systems
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) under the Virtual Training and Environments (VIRTE) program, led by then LCDR Dylan Schmorrow, developed a prototype training system called the AAV Turret Trainer. The system consists of an actual surplus turret mounted with ISMT (Indoor Simulated Marksmanship Trainer) weapons firing on a projected screen displaying the VIRTE Virtual Environment. A total of 15 systems were produced for the USMC and one system for Taiwan.

Operators

 * 🇦🇷 Argentina: Naval Infantry Command originally received 21 vehicles (19 LVTP-7, 1 LVTP-7 and 1 LVTR-7), 11 of them (9 LVTP-7, 1 LVTC-7 and 1 LVTR-7) were upgraded locally by MECATROL with Caterpillar C7 diesel engines and minor changes to running gear and other components
 * 🇧🇷 Brazil: Brazilian Marine Corps has 49
 * 🇬🇷 Greece: 76 will be procured for use with the Hellenic Marine Corps of the Hellenic Navy
 * 🇮🇩 Indonesia: 15 in service with the Indonesian Marine Corps; donated by South Korea.
 * 🇮🇹 Italy: Due to be replaced by the Italian Marines.
 * 🇯🇵 Japan: Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade has 58 (46 personnel, 6 command and 6 recovery) After a period of testing 6 AAVP-7A1s, Japan on 7 April 2016 announced it would purchase 30 systems. Vehicles are AAV7A1 Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability/Rebuild to Standard (RAM/RS) versions, with a more powerful engine and drive train and an upgraded suspension system, providing improved mobility, command, control and repair capabilities. Deliveries to take place in mid to late 2017.
 * 🇵🇭 Philippines: Philippine Marine Corps All 8 AAV units have been delivered as of 2019 and currently operated by the Philippine Marine Corps, plans to order at least 16.
 * 🇷🇴 Romania: 307th Marine Infantry Regiment Romania purchased 21 AAV-7A1 in three configurations: AAVP-7A1, AAVC-7A1, AAVR-7A1. The vehicles will enter service with the naval infantry.
 * 🇹🇼 Taiwan: Republic of China Marine Corps has 90 (78 personnel, 8 command and 4 recovery) and 1 AAV Turret Trainer. Thirty-six currently on order for $375 million USD.
 * 🇪🇸 Spain: Spanish Navy Marines have 19 (16 personnel, 2 command and 1 recovery)
 * 🇰🇷 South Korea: Republic of Korea Marine Corps has approximately 168 KAAV variants
 * 🇹🇭 Thailand: Royal Thai Marine Corps has 36, AAVP-7A1, AAVC-7A1, AAVR-7A1. Upgraded locally by Chaiseri to match with the BAE Systems's AAV7A1 RAM/RS standard. On March 10, 2022, it is reported that Chaiseri will create a local version, known as the AAVP1A1.
 * 🇺🇸 United States: United States Marine Corps possesses 1,311 of them.
 * 🇻🇪 Venezuela: Venezuelan Marine Corps

title: Assault Amphibious Vehicle


text: Category:Pitcairn Islands

title: Category:Pitcairn Islands


text:
Category:Martinique

lb:Kategorie:Departement Martinique

title: Category:Martinique


text:
INS Mysore (D60)

INS Mysore is a Delhi-class destroyer guided-missile destroyer currently in active service with the Indian Navy.

History
INS Mysore was built at Mazagon Dock Limited in Mumbai. Her keel was laid down in February 1991 and she was launched on 4 June 1993. Sea trials began in the Arabian Sea in March 1999, and she was commissioned on 2 June 1999 with the then Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the Chief Guest. Her first CO was Captain Rajiv Dhamdhere.

She is the successor to INS Mysore that served in the Indian Navy from 1957 to 1985. Her crest features a double-headed eagle (Gandaberunda) from the sigil of the erstwhile House of Wodeyar of Mysuru.

Colombo, 2008
In August 2008, Mysore along with the destroyer INS Ranvir (D54), were anchored just outside Sri Lankan territorial waters to provide security for the Indian prime ministers Dr Manmohan Singh, and other high-ranking officials at the 15th SAARC summit.

Gulf of Aden, 2008
In November 2008, Mysore was deployed to the Gulf of Aden to replace the frigate INS Tabar as part of the Indian Navy's efforts to combat piracy off Somalia. On 13 December 2008, Mysore captured 23 sea pirates along with arms and ammunition when the pirates were trying to capture MV Gibe, a ship sailing under the Ethiopian flag.

Libya, 2011
On 26 February 2011, Mysore deployed with the amphibious transport dock INS Jalashwa to the Mediterranean Sea under Operation Safe Homecoming to evacuate Indian citizens from Libya in the aftermath of the turmoil from the 2011 Libyan civil war. They carried their full air wings and a contingent of Marine special forces.

Indian Ocean, Independence Day Weekend 2011
On 12 August 2011, the Indian Navy discovered an Iranian cargo vessel, Nafis-1, was off course. After two days of surveillance, it was suspected that the ship was hijacked by pirates. On 14 August, Mysore was called in to intercept the ship. The crew of nine hijackers, frightened after seeing Mysore, did not attempt any resistance. A helicopter with nine MARCOS Marines on board was sent to detain the suspects. The pirates' automatic assault weapons were found hidden in storage aboard the hijacked vessel.

Persian Gulf, 2014
On 27 June 2014, Mysore deployed to Persian Gulf to evacuate Indians from Iraq during 2014 Northern Iraq offensive. During the operation, she was accompanied by the frigate INS Tarkash (F50) which deployed to the Gulf of Aden.

Relocation
The Delhi class destroyers will be re-based to the Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam. Along with Nilgiri-class frigate, these will form a part of the carrier battle group of INS Vikrant (2013). INS Mysore (D60) has already reached its new base and is undergoing refit.

title: INS Mysore (D60)


text:
INS Mumbai

INS Mumbai is the third of the Delhi-class destroyer guided-missile destroyers in active service with the Indian Navy.

Mumbai was built at Mazagon Dock Limited in her namesake city Mumbai, launched in 1995, and commissioned in 2001. The ship completed it's Mid life upgrade in 2023 and joined Eastern Naval Command on 8 December 2023 to replace the retiring Rajput-class destroyers.

The ship's crest depicts the gateway entrance to INS Angre (named as such in honour of Admiral Kanhoji Angre). The gateway has a watch tower with three look-out posts and stands against the backdrop of the ramparts of the fort. Two Ghurabs (or Grabs), depicted on either side of the fort, signify the seafaring traditions of the Marathas. INS Mumbai has been the Flagship for various combat operations like Op Parakram and many Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations

Operation Sukoon
In July 2006, Mumbai was part of Task Force 54, on its way back to India from the Mediterranean, when the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out. Mumbai was redeployed to assist the evacuation of Indian citizens from Lebanon as a part of Operation Sukoon.

Operation Raahat
In March 2015, Mumbai was deployed with INS Tarkash (F50) and INS Sumitra (P59) as part of Operation Raahat to provide protection and support to Indian ships and aircraft involved in the evacuation of Indian citizens from Yemen during the military intervention. For this operation, the ship's commanding officer Captain Rajesh Dhankhar was awarded the Nao Sena Medal for gallantry.

title: INS Mumbai


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title: Template:Five Grand Palaces (Joseon)


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title: Category:Anguilla


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Béla Károlyi

Béla Károlyi (born September 13, 1942) is an ethnic Hungarian Romanian-American gymnastics coach. Early in his coaching career he developed the Romanian centralised training system for gymnastics. One of his earliest protégés was Nadia Comăneci, the first Olympic Games gymnast to be awarded a perfect score. Living under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Károlyi frequently clashed with Romanian officials. He and his wife defected to the United States in 1981.

Since their arrival in the United States, Béla and his wife Márta Károlyi have been credited with transforming the coaching of gymnastics in the US and bringing major international success. They have both been head coach of the United States women's national gymnastics team, as well as national team coordinator for United States gymnastics at the Olympic Games. They have also been severely criticized for their coaching style, which many gymnasts have called abusive. They have claimed to have been unaware that Larry Nassar, the national gymnastics team doctor who was convicted of sexual assault of minors, was assaulting young female gymnasts in their care at their Karolyi Ranch training facility in Texas. The Karolyis and their ranch are central figures in the 2020 film Athlete A, a documentary about the scandal.

Károlyi has coached many notable national, European, World and Olympic gymnasts, including Nadia Comăneci, Ecaterina Szabo, Mary Lou Retton, Julianne McNamara, Betty Okino, Teodora Ungureanu, Kim Zmeskal, Kristie Phillips, Dominique Moceanu, Phoebe Mills, and Kerri Strug. In total, Károlyi has coached nine Olympic champions, fifteen world champions, sixteen European medalists, and six U.S. national champions. Béla Károlyi was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1997. Béla and Márta Károlyi as a coaching team were inducted into the US Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2000.

Early coaching career
Károlyi was born in Kolozsvár, Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Skilled as an athlete, he became a national junior boxing champion and a member of the Romanian hammer throwing team. He enrolled at the Romania College of Physical Education, studying and practicing gymnastics after having had trouble with a mandatory skills test in the sport.

In his senior year at the college, Károlyi coached the women's gymnastics team, whose star was Márta Erőss. They later started a relationship and married in 1963. They moved to a small town in the coal-mining region where Béla had grown up, where they started a gymnastics class in the elementary school. Later they were invited by the government to create a national school for gymnastics.

Romania's famed centralized training program has its roots in the 1950s; Károlyi helped develop the program further in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He worked as a coach at the boarding school in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (now named Oneşti), training young girls specially chosen for their athletic potential. One of the first students at the school was six-year-old Nadia Comăneci, who lived near the town and commuted from home.

Károlyi debuted as an international coach in 1974. He had to persuade the Romanian gymnastics federation to have Comăneci and his other athletes named to the 1975 European Championships and the 1976 Olympic team, because the federation favored athletes from the competing Dinamo club in Bucharest. At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, he was head coach of the Romanian squad, and most of the members of the team were Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej athletes. The team took the silver medal, and Comăneci was one of the outstanding performers of the Games, scoring the first-ever perfect 10 in Olympic competition. Altogether, the Romanians won seven medals in Montreal: three gold, two silver, and two bronze.

After Comăneci's astounding success in Montreal, Károlyi's importance as a coach was recognized. He was named head coach of the Romanian team at the 1980 Olympics. However, he came under fire from Romanian officials because of his score protests at several international meets, including the 1980 Olympics.

Defecting to the United States
After the Olympics, Károlyi again clashed with Romanian Federation officials, and tension escalated. During a 1981 gymnastics tour, Romanian team choreographer Géza Pozsár and the Károlyis defected and sought political asylum in the United States, temporarily leaving their seven-year-old daughter Andrea with relatives in Romania. They settled in Texas.

1980s
In 1981, a group of businessmen invited Károlyi to join a gymnastics business venture. He decided to invest in the business, and the Károlyis relocated to Houston. The gym ran into financial problems, and Károlyi ended up buying it.

Károlyi's status as "Nadia's coach" quickly attracted gymnasts to his club. Three years after his defection, he attended the 1984 Olympics as the individual coach of Mary Lou Retton, who won all-around champion, and Julianne McNamara, who won the gold medal for uneven bars. Olympic rules at that time did not permit a gymnast's personal coach to be present on the competition floor. Only the national coach Don Peters and his assistant were allowed on the floor. Károlyi obtained a maintenance man's pass so he could be near Retton and McNamara during the competition. ABC television network commented on this controversy during its broadcasts and often showed Mary Lou Retton and Julianne McNamara running over to the stands to speak to Károlyi. During the 1984 Olympics, Károlyi did not have an official position with the delegation. He slept in his car, and ignored Peters' instructions by holding supplementary workouts for his gymnasts. Károlyi's clout in the United States increased after the victories of his students in 1984, but so did resentment against him. After Retton's success in 1984, Károlyi purchased the Karolyi Ranch. He was paid by McDonald's to have their golden arch logo as part of his sleeve design. His new gym, run from the ranch, attracted many of the country's top gymnasts.

Following the 1984 Olympics, USGF decided to replace Peters with Greg Marsden as Olympic coach. Marsden was a college coach with no private students and no financial interest in promoting one gymnast at the expense of another. Marsden said that he "thought some of the concerns the other coaches had about Károlyi were legitimate," and selected Donna Cozzo as assistant national coach. Károlyi was furious and had to be dissuaded from boycotting the 1987 Pan American Games. Károlyi did not attend the meet, complaining that he was not allowed to coach although he was "providing fifty percent of the team". Károlyi's star gymnast Kristie Phillips competed in the meet, finishing second behind Sabrina Mar, who trained with former Olympic coach Don Peters at SCATS gym.

The United States did not do well in the 1987 World Championships, finishing 6th. Marsden resigned from his position as national team coach in November 1987.

After Marsden resigned, Károlyi lobbied to be appointed as national coach, but he was opposed by the other coaches. Don Peters was restored to the position in January 1988. Peters chose Béla's wife Márta Károlyi to serve as assistant national coach. Károlyi told USGF that he would not attend the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, unless he was the team coach.

At the 1988 Olympic Trials in August, Károlyi's gymnasts earned 5 of the top 8 spots. These five gymnasts were Phoebe Mills, Brandy Johnson, Chelle Stack, and the two team alternates Rhonda Faehn and Kristie Phillips. Phillips, who had left Károlyi's gym and trained with Peters for a short time following her disappointing performance at the 1987 World Championships, said that Peters' workouts were "not half as intense (as Károlyi's)". Phillips told reporters it would hurt the national team if they had to leave Károlyi's gym and train with Peters at SCATS. USGF executive director Mike Jacki said, "The women's coaches are all private businessmen. ... The more kids you put on the team, the better it is for your business."

Peters resigned as national coach after the trials. Following Peters' resignation, the USGF decided against having a national team coach. They decided to allow personal coaches to accompany the gymnasts to the competition. The U.S. Olympic team finished fourth in Seoul. East German gymnastic official Ellen Berger raised a valid objection, since a U.S. team member had violated one of the obscure competition rules. After the springboard had been used at the start of another gymnast's uneven bars routine, the U.S. alternate, Rhonda Faehn, had pulled it away, but had stayed on the podium to watch, instead of stepping off again immediately, as required by the rule. Had Faehn stepped off the podium, the US team would have won the bronze medal. Because of this small points deduction, the East German team overtook the American team and won the bronze medal. An incensed Karolyi said the rule was invoked in order to "keep the scores down" because the East German team was "fighting desperately to keep their place". The obscure rule cited more that no assistance can be given during a performance. It did not specifically mention athletes on the podium. A jury dominated by Soviet Bloc officials voted to maintain the deduction. Despite the fact that the U.S. team had indeed committed an infraction, he said that application of the scoring penalty was "dirty cheating". A photograph of Karolyi embracing and consoling the disappointed American girls appeared in most U.S. newspapers the following day.

After the 1988 Olympics, Károlyi's sphere of influence continued to grow, as did the number of elite gymnasts training in his gym. At one meet in 1990, a journalist dubbed six top Károlyi gymnasts the "Karolyi six-pack." Although the members of the six-pack would change, the name stuck and increased Károlyi's prominence in the sport.

1990s
At the 1991 World Championships, four of the six athletes on the U.S. women's team—Kim Zmeskal, Betty Okino, Hilary Grivich, and Kerri Strug—were trained by Károlyi; the other two, Shannon Miller and Michelle Campi, were trained by ex-Károlyi club coaches. The situation was almost repeated at the 1992 Olympics, where Károlyi was head coach and five members of the seven-gymnast squad (six competitors and one alternate) were either trained by him or one of his protégés.

Károlyi primarily served as a personal coach for Dominique Moceanu and Kerri Strug at the 1996 Olympics, but he still managed to draw the spotlight. His motivational speech to Strug after she injured her ankle on her first vault ("Shake it off! You can do it!") was broadcast on television and was widely viewed. After Strug's successful final vault, Károlyi carried her to the podium to accept her gold medal. The moment was photographed and widely publicized.

Károlyi retired from coaching after the 1996 Olympics. He and Márta still have a ranch and gymnastics camp in New Waverly, Texas. In 1997, Károlyi was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

1999–2000
Following the success of the U.S. team, dubbed the "Magnificent Seven," at the 1996 Olympics, USA Gymnastics experienced a lull. A new requirement that competitors be at least 16 years old in the calendar year of the competition (up from the previous 15) kept some top gymnasts out of the World Championships in 1997. While American gymnasts did win medals in international competitions such as the Goodwill Games and the Pacific Alliance Championships, they were largely unsuccessful in most major meets. In both 1997 and 1999, the American team left the World Championships without a single medal.

After the 1999 World Championships, USA Gymnastics tried to revamp its program by hiring Károlyi as national team coordinator. Károlyi required that all national team members attend frequent, grueling camps at his ranch north of Houston. Some observers believed that selection procedures for international meets became more arbitrary. Coaches resented what they felt was Károlyi's intrusion onto their domain, and athletes were under a considerable amount of stress. The tension had escalated to the point where gymnasts were openly speaking out against Károlyi. At the 2000 Olympics, the U.S. originally placed fourth, but the Chinese team had an underage athlete, so the U.S. team was ultimately awarded the bronze in 2010.

In 2001, Marta Károlyi was selected for the national team coordinator position. While she retained some aspects of her husband's program, such as the training camp system, she reduced the frequency of the camps. Her different approach met with more acceptance by both coaches and gymnasts. Between 2001 and 2007, American women won a combined total of 34 medals in World Championship and Olympic competition. Between 2001 and 2016, they won five World Championships team titles (2003, 2007, 2011, 2014, and 2015) and two Olympic team titles (2012, 2016). Additionally, the team won four consecutive Olympic all-arounds (2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016), Eight World Championships all-arounds (2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017), and eighteen individual event World Championships titles.

Later career
Márta Károlyi remained the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics until 2016. During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Béla Károlyi appeared as a guest commentator for NBC News. He claimed that the Chinese women's gymnastics team was cheating by using athletes who did not meet the minimum age requirement. He and his wife said, "They are using half-people. One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid."

Károlyi said that he disagreed with the age limit, and called for the International Olympic Committee to abolish it. He said that if a gymnast was good enough to earn a spot at the Olympics or World Championships, he or she deserves to go. He praised the Chinese for their competitiveness and skills during the competitions, and said that he objected to the possibility that they were being used by their government. "They do good gymnastics and are a good service for the sport," he said. "They have the ultimate effective training program. That’s why I am more upset that they are cheating. They don’t need cheating. They would be just as good with a lineup of eligible athletes."

Controversy
Several of Károlyi's athletes from the "six-pack" era have criticized his training methods. Some of his former athletes, including Kristie Phillips, Dominique Moceanu, and Erica Stokes, have stated publicly that Károlyi was verbally and psychologically abusive during workouts. Károlyi's constant critical remarks about weight and body type were said to drive some gymnasts to develop eating disorders and low self-esteem. Some gymnasts, such as Phillips, Moceanu, and 1988 Olympian Chelle Stack, have also said they were compelled to continue training and competing even when coping with serious injuries such as broken bones. In one interview, Moceanu, who was one of Károlyi's final protégés, said: "I'm sure Béla saw injuries, but if you were injured, Béla didn't want to see it. ... You had to deal with it. I was intimidated. He looked down on me. He was six-feet something, and I was four-foot nothing."

Károlyi was also said to strictly monitor his gymnasts' food intake: Moceanu, for instance, stated that at meets away from home, gymnasts were limited to consuming as few as 900 calories a day. Even Károlyi's supporters have admitted that at certain competitions, his gymnasts ate so sparingly that members of the men's gymnastics team smuggled food to them in their hotel rooms.

However, many of Károlyi's most prominent gymnasts have vehemently defended him against these allegations. Nadia Comăneci, in her 2004 memoir Letters to a Young Gymnast, remarked that she literally trusted Károlyi with her life. She also stated that in Romania, the gymnasts at Károlyi's school consumed well-balanced diets and, in fact, ate better than most other civilians in the country at the time. Olympic medalists and Károlyi gymnasts Mary Lou Retton, Phoebe Mills and Kim Zmeskal, among others, have also praised Károlyi and his training regimen.

A number of former Károlyi gymnasts, both supporters and detractors, have acknowledged that some of the allegations about Károlyi were true, but have also claimed that the ends—medals—justified the means. In Joan Ryan's 1995 Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, 1992 Olympian Betty Okino said: "What Béla did worked. He motivated me by getting me mad." Some have claimed that Károlyi stopped treating gymnasts harshly when parents directly requested that he do so. In a column she wrote rebutting many of the claims of Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, Okino wrote: "Károlyi structured his training in a way that built your physical and mental strength to such a remarkable level that even he couldn't tear you down. Béla wanted to know that when push came to shove, his athletes could handle any situation thrown at them."

In an interview in the edition of December 8, 2007 of the Romanian newspaper Evenimentul Zilei, Adrian Goreac, the coach of the Romanian national gymnastics team from 1981 to 1990, after Károlyi left, spoke of Károlyi's "dictatorial regime" during his time coaching the Romanian gymnastics team.

In November 2008, Emilia Eberle, a Romanian national team member during the Károlyi coaching era, gave an interview to KCRA-TV in Sacramento, California, claiming that while she was on the national team, both Béla and Márta Károlyi regularly beat her and her teammates for mistakes they made in practice or competition. "In one word, I can say it was brutal", she told KCRA. Other Romanian team members, including Ecaterina Szabo and Rodica Dunca, as well as Géza Pozsár, the team choreographer who defected with the Károlyis, have made similar charges of physical abuse. When asked in 2008 to comment on the allegations, Béla said: "I ignore it. I'm not even commenting. These people are really trash."

Role in sexual abuse scandal
While Károlyi has not been personally implicated in the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal that was reported beginning in 2016, gymnasts said that many instances of sexual abuse perpetrated by former team doctor Larry Nassar occurred at the Karolyi Ranch. Nassar reportedly groomed athletes for abuse and gained their trust in part by covertly providing them with food in defiance of Károlyi's strict dietary guidelines. Some gymnasts also said that the strict discipline and conditions at the ranch made them feel inhibited from reporting Nassar's abuses. As a result of the scandal, in July 2017 USA Gymnastics cancelled its plans to buy Karolyi Ranch. In January 2018 USA Gymnastics announced they were cutting ties with Karolyi Ranch altogether.

Television
Béla Károlyi was in the episode "At the Edge of the Worlds", in the ABC Family series Make It or Break It. He portrayed Coach Sasha Belov's father.

title: Béla Károlyi


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Changgyeonggung

Changgyeonggung is a palace located in Seoul, South Korea.

The palace was built in the mid-15th century by King Sejong for his father, Taejong. It was originally named "Suganggung", but it was renovated and enlarged in 1483 by King Seongjong, at which time it received its current name. Many structures were destroyed during Japan's multiple late 15th to 16th (1592) century attempts to conquer Korea and invade China. It was rebuilt by successive Joseon Kings but was once again largely destroyed by the Japanese in the early 20th century. This time, it was torn down methodically to make room for a modern park, a showplace for the empire, akin to Tokyo's Ueno Park. During the Japanese colonial period, the Japanese built a zoo, botanical garden, and museum on the site. It was called "Changgyeongwon park", the "won" standing for the Korean word 'zoo'. After independence in 1945 and the turmoil and destruction of the 1950-53 Korean War, the zoo was restocked through donations of wealthy Koreans as well as gifts from foreign zoos. In 1983, the zoo and botanical garden were relocated to present-day Seoul Grand Park.

Composition and buildings
Today its main points of interest are as follows:

 * Honghwamun
 * Honghwamun is the palace's main gate and faces eastward like the central part of the palace. First built in 1484, it burned down during the Japanese invasion of 1592 and was rebuilt in 1616. A ball pavilion (skipjack) was built on either side of this two-tiered wooden gate. As you pass through the gate, Okcheongjo Bridge comes into view. Between the arches under the bridge's parapet are carved goblins (dokkaebi) that are intended to ward off evil spirits. Okcheongjo Bridge was built approximately 500 years ago and serves as a symbolic entry to the courtyard.
 * At this gate the king met the citizens: King Yeongjo (1694–1774, r. 1726–1774) collected  public opinion here in 1750 when enacting Gyunyeok Act (Equalized Tax Act);  Here, King Jeongjo (1752–1800, r. 1776–1800) handed out rice to the poor in 1795.
 * Honghwamun was designated as South Korean National Treasure 384 on 12 January 1963.

 * Munjeongjeon
 * Munjeongjeon is a council hall where the king dealt with routine state affairs. Unlike the throne hall, which faces east, this building faces south. Such a palace layout with a secondary structure facing a different direction than a throne hall is highly unusual in Korea. Munjeongjeon was also used to enshrine royal tablets after funerals. It was dismantled during the Japanese occupation. Munjeongjeon as it stands today was restored in 1986 along with Munjeongjeon Gate and the eastern part of the roofed corridor. According to the nineteenth-century "Painting of the Eastern Palace", Munjeongjeon was partitioned from Sungmundang and Myeongjeongjeon by a wall, and had a small annexe; the courtyard was surrounded by a wall-like corridor. This part has not yet been restored.
 * Built in 1483, destroyed in 1592, rebuilt in 1616, burnt down in 1830 and again rebuilt in 1834. King Jeongjo and King Heonjong were born here.
 * First built in 1484 during the reign of King Seongjong, destroyed in 1592, rebuilt in 1616, burnt down in 1830 and again rebuilt in 1834.
 * Originally named "Sunyeongjeon", it was first built in 1484, rebuilt most recently in 1834; main building in the Yeonjo area where kings and their families lived.
 * Constructed in 1909 during the reign of Emperor Sunjong, with 366-square-meter island and bridge added in 1984. The smaller pond is 1,107 square meters and the larger one is 6,483 square meters.

On May 13, 1762, that courtyard in front of Munjeongjeon witnessed the most tragic incident of the century. It had been reported to King Yeongjo that Crown Prince Sado was mentally ill and behaving erratically. Furious with the Prince, his father ordered him to be sealed alive in a large rice chest, where he died eight days later at the age of 27. King Yeongjo later became remorseful and gave his son the posthumous title 'Sado' ("thinking in sorrow"). It is often believed that Crown Prince Sado was a victim of a conspiracy by his political adversaries, but this is rebutted in the Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong, which was written by Prince Sado's wife Lady Hyegyeong.

title: Changgyeonggung


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Gyeonghuigung

Gyeonghuigung (, lit. 'Palace of Serene Harmony') is a palace located in Seoul, South Korea. It was one of the "Five Grand Palaces" built by the Joseon Dynasty.

History
Construction began in the 1600s during the reign of King Gwanghaegun. In the latter Joseon period, Gyeonghuigung served as the secondary palace for the king, and as it was situated on the west side of Seoul, it was also called Seo-gwol (西闕, a palace of the west). The secondary palace is usually the palace where the King moves to in times of emergency.

From King Injo to King Cheoljong, about ten kings of Joseon dynasty stayed here at Gyeonghuigung. This palace was built using the slanted geography of the surrounding mountain, has traditional beauty in its architecture and a lot of historical significance. For a time, it was of a considerable size, even to the point of having an arched bridge connecting it to Deoksugung palace. For the king's royal audience, there were the Sungjeongjeon and Jajeongjeon buildings, and for sleeping, Yungbokjeon and Hoesangjeon buildings.

Most of Gyeonghuigung was lost to two fires that broke out in the 19th century, during the reigns of King Sunjo and King Gojong. The Japanese dismantled what remained of the palace during their occupation of the Korean peninsula, and a school for Japanese citizens was built on the site. Two major structures of the former palace — the Sungjeongjeon throne hall and the Heunghwamun gate — were disassembled and moved to other parts of Seoul. Reconstruction started in the 1990s as part of the South Korean government's initiative to rebuild the "Five Grand Palaces" that were heavily destroyed by the Japanese. However, due to urban growth and decades of neglect, the government was only able to reconstruct around 33% of the former Palace.

Heunghwamun
Heunghwamun is the main entrance door to the palace. The entrance was built in 1616, but it was briefly moved to be an entrance for the after the destruction of the palace, and later used as a main entrance for the Silla Hotel of Jangchung-dong until it was finally restored to its original purpose. Heunghwamun is designated as Municipal Treasure 19.

Geuncheongyo
Geuncheongyo is a bridge at the route passed through the Heunghwamun. It was built in 1619, but was buried into soil during Japanese rule until it was restored in 2001.

Sungjeongjeon
Sungjeongjeon is the main hall of the palace. It was built in 1616 but was moved to Dongguk University in 1926 and repurposed as a buddhist temple in Japanese colonial times, and moved back to original location and renovated between 1988 and 1994. Its considered an example of mid-joseon period architecture. Sungjeongjeon is designated as Municipal Treasure 20.

Jajeongjeon
Jajeongjeon is a hall restored following depictions in .

Taenyeongjeon
Taenyeongjeon is a hall restored following depictions in Seogwoldoan.

Present use
It is Historic Site No. 271.

In the palace grounds today are the Seoul Museum of History and The Seoul Museum of art. It also housed Prada's Transformer in 2009.

title: Gyeonghuigung