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City Creek (Salt Lake County, Utah)

City Creek is a small but historically important mountain stream that flows from City Creek Canyon and across part of Salt Lake City, Utah, and into the Jordan River which empties into the Great Salt Lake. City Creek's head is about 8 miles (13 km) up City Creek Canyon northeast of Downtown Salt Lake City. The entire stream measures only about 14.5 miles (23 km) long. Melting snow from adjacent mountains provides most of City Creek's currents, but the stream flows year-round because of natural springs at the head of the creek.

Until 1882 City Creek served as the city's primary water supply, and it continues to provide drinking water to The Avenues and northern parts of Salt Lake City.

History
Vanguards of the first Mormon pioneer settlers of Utah camped by the mouth of City Creek Canyon on July 22, 1847. This area is now about the intersection between State Street and North Temple in Salt Lake City. The stream originally forked into a stream heading south through Washington Square and the primary branch flowing west, toward Temple Square and approximately down North Temple Street. Both forks emptied into the Jordan River.

The vanguard, led by Orson Pratt, diverted the stream to soften the soil and plant crops. By July 24, when Brigham Young's party arrived, five acres (20,000 m2) of potatoes had already been planted. Young named the creeks in Salt Lake Valley on August 22, 1847, calling City Creek such because it was in the heart of the city that the pioneers planned. Early maps of the area retain the Shoshone people's name for this creek- "Nah-po-pah".

Young declared that the rights to all rivers were publicly held, and administration was initially carried out by the local LDS High Council, then by local wards (congregations). In 1850 Brigham Young gained sole rights to the water, although administration continued as usual. Ward Bishops transferred the responsibility of distributing water to the city council when Salt Lake City was incorporated in 1851.

City Creek was channeled along its western fork, and canals were dug on either side of every street of Salt Lake City. Opening gates delivered water to street canals. This system, administered by Bishop-appointed water masters, delivered drinking and agricultural water to ditches in front of every resident's plot.

A piped waterworks was built to serve downtown in 1876, and the initial system was complete by June 22, 1877. However, water was unavailable in parts of the city, notably The Avenues, then called "the dry bench" because water had to be carried uphill from City Creek below. In 1878 Avenues residents petitioned the city to tax property to expand the water system, and the territorial legislature authorized the levy. A diversion to the dry bench was made in 1884, piping water to residents on 6th avenue and below. Subsequent diversions fed higher parts of the city, but it was not until 1910 that a diversion was constructed high enough to provide water to the whole city.

Water became increasingly scarce in Salt Lake City in the 1860s, especially during drought. The Red Butte Creek, used by the eastern parts of the city, was appropriated by the US Army when Fort Douglas was built in 1862. Salt Lake also grew rapidly, prompting the city council to invest in a canal project to bring more water from Utah Lake 35 miles (56 km) to the south. In 1882 the Jordan-Salt Lake Canal was completed, allowing Salt Lake City to access reliable agricultural water. In 1888 the city entered an agreement with surrounding farmers to exchange volumes of the low-grade Utah Lake water for the purer water trickling from other mountain streams in the Salt Lake Valley.

In 1909 the creek was placed in an underground conduit down North Temple Street from outside of Memory Grove to west of the State Fairpark where the water exits into the Jordan River.

Flood of 1983
The stream remained underground until record precipitation in the winter of 1982/1983 produced an enormous snowpack in the Creek's watershed. The late onset of warmer temperatures and a sudden warm spell in May swelled the stream. Saturday night, May 28, the North Temple conduit became clogged, and the whole river overflowed into the streets, down Canyon Road, and onto State Street. Volunteers worked frantically that Sunday morning to protect local buildings by sandbagging State Street, channeling the current down the eastern half of the street to large storm sewers near the Salt Lake City and County Building at 400 South. When the sewers overflowed, the "State Street River" was extended to 1300 South, where the current flowed with other streams in conduits to the Jordan River. Temporary pedestrian bridges were built over State Street, which is part of US-89 and one of Salt Lake City's primary corridors.

The stream returned to its normal course on June 11, but cleanup took several more weeks. The flood had proved a popular attraction, and some residents suggested bringing the stream permanently above the ground and incorporating it into Salt Lake City in a more meaningful way. Attention to City Creek brought improvements to it.

By the next year, students from six high schools and local Boy Scouts constructed the "Freedom Trail" in the lower part of City Creek Canyon. In 1986 Salt Lake City drafted the "City Creek Master Plan" intending to maintain the canyon around City Creek "as a valuable watershed and recreation/open space amenity of city-wide significance."

When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints completed the LDS Conference Center in 2000, part of the stream again became visible. City Creek runs freely by the center in a rough-hewn granite bed, accenting the building's waterfall.

Fire
On July 29, 2008, a large grass fire started in a section of the canyon and had burned more than 180 acre by the following day. The cause of the fire had been determined to be of human origin as there was no lightning present on the day it started.

City Creek Canyon

For a brief time in 1873, City Creek Canyon was explored for mineral content. Silver, lead, and gold were found, and a town called Modoc City was established to house the miners. Although initial reports showed promising mineral values, this mining operation did not prove to be profitable and was discontinued in 1874.

Beginning in the early 20th century Salt Lake City and the US Federal government made a concerted effort to buy the watershed of City Creek. As of 2005, the drainage is mostly owned and preserved by the government. Originally this served to preserve clean water supply, but open space advocates cite it as a success of wildlife preservation. Less than one mile (1.6 km) from the Utah State Capitol and downtown Salt Lake City, the canyon around City Creek contains virtually no private developments. A single road extends up the canyon, accessible by walking up from Memory Grove Park or by Bonneville Boulevard, which circles the canyon, connecting The Avenues with Capitol Hill. Bonneville is a two-lane road, but cars are permitted in one lane only and must use this lane as a single-lane road. The other lane is shared by bicycles and pedestrians, which may travel in both directions. The canyon road is open to private vehicles for a small fee on even calendar days and holidays, from Memorial Day weekend to the last day of September. Bicycles are allowed on odd calendar days during the summer, except holidays. Picnic sites are available via reservation. The canyon is closed to vehicles during the winter but is open to bicycles and pedestrians. Dogs are allowed in the canyon on-leash below the water treatment plant and watershed area, whose boundary is marked by signage near the four-mile marker.

Crossings
The only road crossing of the canyon north of Fourth Avenue (200 North) is the winding one-way Bonneville Boulevard. However, plans have been made for a more direct crossing. For instance, in 1916, the Salt Lake City Commission asked for bids for a proposed bridge at 11th Avenue. Later, as a World War II national defense project, a 7 mi northerly bypass ("Bonneville Parkway") of downtown Salt Lake City was planned, connecting Fort Douglas with US-91 (now US-89) near North Salt Lake. The state legislature designated it to be State Route 231 in 1941, following 11th Avenue from the fort to a canyon crossing, and then curving north around Ensign Peak to North Salt Lake, but it was not built and was removed from the state highway system in 1945.

title: City Creek (Salt Lake County, Utah)


text:
City Creek

City Creek may refer to any of the following:
 * City Creek (California), a tributary of the Santa Ana River
 * City Creek (South Dakota)
 * City Creek (Utah), a tributary of the Jordan River (Utah)
 * City Creek Center, shopping center development in Salt Lake City

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

title: City Creek


text:
Horam (disambiguation)

Horam may have the following meanings

 * Horam, a village in the Weald of Sussex.
 * John Horam, a British politician and Member of Parliament
 * Horam, a name that appears in the Bible, meaning 'their hill'.
 * HoRam, a sometimes used nickname for pitcher Horacio Ramírez

title: Horam (disambiguation)


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Su Yu

Su Yu (August 10, 1907 – February 5, 1984), Courtesy name Yu (裕) was a Chinese military commander, a general of the People's Liberation Army. He was considered by Mao Zedong to be among the best commanders of the PLA, only next to Peng Dehuai, Lin Biao and Liu Bocheng. Su Yu fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War and in the Chinese Civil War. He commanded the East China Field Army (renamed Third Field Army in 1949) during the Chinese Civil War. His most notable accomplishments were the Battle of Menglianggu, the Battle of Huaihai, the Yangtze River crossing, and the capture of Shanghai.

After the Chinese Communist Party victory in the civil war, he held important posts in the new People's Republic of China, including that of PLA Chief of General Staff (1954–1958).

Early life
Su Yu was born in Huitong County, Hunan province on August 10, 1907, to an ethnic Dong family. He was the third child among six siblings. Su's father was Su Zhouheng (粟周亨), his mother was Liang Manmei (梁满妹), and the family depended on their 30 mu of inherited farmland for survival. By the age of 18, Su Yu entered the Hunan Provincial 2nd Normal School at Changde for his post-secondary education.

Encirclement Campaigns and the Long March
In 1926, he joined the Communist Youth League of China, and in 1927 joined the Chinese Communist Party. He took part in the Northern Expedition and later the Nanchang Uprising. He emerged as one of the ablest guerrilla commanders in the Jiangxi Soviet during the 1930s. He did not join the Long March because he was tasked to fight against the Nationalist troops for a delaying action, and stayed in the south of Zhejiang until 1937.

Second Sino-Japanese War
After the breakout of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Su Yu was appointed Deputy Commander of the 2nd Detachment, and then in April 1938 commander of the Advanced Detachment of the New Fourth Army.

During the war, Su won the Cheqiao Campaign against the Japanese Army, where his troops won a victory in the first battle against the Japanese troops at Weigang. After this, he had some other campaigns in Central Jiangsu against the Japanese aggressors in Nanjing, Wuhu and Lishui.

During the war, Su Yu was the commander of the New Fourth Army's first division. He established himself as one of the Communist armed forces' most capable commanders, winning a series of skirmish campaigns against overwhelming enemies - the Kuomintang army, puppet regime forces and the Japanese army. By the end of the war, he was made Commander in Chief for the Communists' Central China's Military Region, covering a vast region in East Central China.

Chinese Civil War

During the Civil War, Su Yu started as the second in command of the Communists' East China Field Army, eventually becoming second in command of the Third Field Army by the end of the war.

The successes of the battle persuaded Mao Zedong to change his military strategy of the Chinese Civil War, from traditional guerrilla style warfare to a more mobile and conventional approach. In July 1946, he led 30,000 Communist troops which triumphed over 120,000 American-armed Nationalist troops in seven different engagements, captured and killed 53,000 Kuomintang soldiers and stunned the country. The Central Jiangsu Campaign was the first of many of the brilliant campaigns that defined his legacy. He was also the commander of the PLA in the famous and much propagandized Menglianggu Campaign. In this campaign, the elite Nationalist Seventy-Fourth Division was completely destroyed after Su Yu succeeded in encircling the unit.

He was the major commander during the Huaihai Campaign (November 1948 to January 1949). It was at his suggestion on January 22, 1948, that the two armies of Liu and Su followed a sudden-concentrate, sudden-disperse strategy that led to this decisive victory in late 1948, with the destruction of five Nationalist armies and the killing or capture of 550,000 Nationalist soldiers. Su's army alone destroyed four Nationalist armies, and was the decisive force in destroying the fifth.

After the establishment of the PRC

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, it was rumored that Su Yu was the commander that Mao wanted to lead the Chinese People's Volunteer Army into Korea, because of his experience of commanding a large number of troops. However, because of his illness (caused by shell fragments in the 1930s), neither Su nor Lin Biao (also rumored to be sick) was able to command the CVA. In the end, Peng Dehuai was selected.

He was made a da jiang (Grand General) in 1955, the most senior of the ten men to receive this rank. He served in numerous positions, including Chief of the People's Liberation Army General Staff Department in the 1950s. In his later years, he published The Memoirs of Su Yu (粟裕回忆录). He died in Beijing on February 5, 1984, at the age of 77. According to his last wish, his body was cremated and scattered to places he had fought in.

Family

Su Yu married Chu Qing (楚青) in February 1941. They had three children, all of whom joined the PLA. The eldest son Su Rongsheng (粟戎生) was born in 1942, followed by the second son Su Hansheng (粟寒生), and the youngest, a daughter Su Huining (粟惠宁), who married Chen Xiaolu (陈小鲁) in August 1975. Chen Xiaolu was the youngest son of Chen Yi who was Su Yu's direct superior during wartime. According to Su Rongsheng, Su Yu was an extremely strict father. When Su Rongsheng was only three years old, Su Yu forced him to learn how to swim by giving him only a piece of bamboo as a float, and pushed him into the water in front of his mother, and prohibited anyone from attempting to save Su Rongsheng. Su Yu's wife, Chu Qing was outraged and asked Su Yu angrily whether he was not worried about Su Rongsheng being drowned. But Su Yu answered that Su Rongsheng would have never learned how to swim any other way and besides, he was not being drowned. Aged 20, Su Rongsheng joined the PLA and remained in service for 45 years, rising from an ordinary soldier to a lieutenant general when he retired as the deputy commander-in-chief of Beijing Military District at age 65.

title: Su Yu


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Richard Joel

Richard M. Joel (born September 9, 1950) is a Jewish scholar who was the fourth president of Yeshiva University (YU), a Modern Orthodox Jewish university in New York City. He has written on topics that include Jewish leadership, the BDS movement on college campuses, and civil discourse.

Education
Richard Joel received his BA and JD from New York University, where he was a Root-Tilden law scholar. He received honorary doctorates from Boston Hebrew College and Gratz College. He was an assistant district attorney and Deputy Chief of Appeals in the Bronx. His career continued as associate dean and professor of law at YU's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Hillel presidency
From 1989 to 2003, Joel served as President and International director of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, an organization which supports Jewish life for college and university students throughout the world. In 1994, Joel orchestrated Hillel's independence from B'nai B'rith, its parent organization since 1925. While at Hillel, Joel attracted major philanthropists such as Michael Steinhardt, Edgar Bronfman, Sr., and Lynn Schusterman and Charles Schusterman. During his tenure, Hillel partnered with Birthright Israel, launching the Steinhardt Jewish Campus Service Corps, a group of recent college graduates tasked with engaging unaffiliated Jews and drawing them to Judaism and Jewish events. Hillel also expanded to the former Soviet Union and South America. Joel's tenure at Hillel has been criticized by some as providing stylish instead of substantive Judaism. However, he also received praise for his "skilled management, magnetism, personal warmth," as well as revitalizing the Hillel movement.

During his tenure at Hillel, Joel served as the head of the special commission impaneled by the Orthodox Union (OU) to investigate allegations that community leaders had ignored charges against the abusive outreach rabbi Baruch Lanner, an executive with the OU's National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY). The commission concluded that many OU and NCSY leaders had made serious errors in judgment.

Presidency of Yeshiva University

Joel became president of YU in 2003, succeeding Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, who had been president since 1976. He stepped down in June 2017. As YU President, Joel appointed new deans for Yeshiva College, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Syms School of Business, and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), and added faculty positions throughout the university. He facilitated the construction of the Jacob and Dreizel Glueck Center for Jewish Study, and established the Center for Jewish Future. Joel established the Katz School of Graduate and Professional Studies, and restructured Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Joel also worked to strengthen the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein and S. Daniel Abraham honors programs.

As president of RIETS, he established the Rabbinic Personal Development Program, a joint Graduate Program in Pastoral Counseling between RIETS and Ferkauf. The joint program provides opportunities for second-, third- and fourth-year RIETS students who plan to pursue a career in Jewish communal work. Additionally, President Joel established various centers and programs including the university's centers for Ethics, Public Health and the Jewish Future, and the Glatt Program on Israel and the Rule of Law. He also established a Presidential Fellowship program that provides training and professional development to recent graduates to further their path toward communal leadership.

He was appointed President Emeritus and continues as the Bravmann Family University Professor, teaching leadership courses across Yeshiva University.

Personal life
Joel was born on September 9, 1950, and was raised in Yonkers, New York. He and his wife Esther (née Ribner), who holds a PhD from YU's Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, have six children – all of whom have attended Yeshiva University schools – and thirteen grandchildren. They currently reside in Riverdale, New York.

title: Richard Joel


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User:Splattergnome

My name is David Joseph Clarke.

One can find more information about me and my projects on the following pages:

starflight III project (German translator)

the art of david j. clarke

interviews with webmasters

world of nixon - a postindustrial surrealistic world

splatty

title: User:Splattergnome


text:
Talk:Oath Against Modernism

[Untitled]
I suppose an entry on the Anti-Modernist Oath might be biased, but the interpretations currently here of what Modernism "means" are not anywhere near what Wikipedia standards might be. Any changes in this however are very likely to be vetoed as "original research." The non-Catholic Wikipedia reader should be warned to take this entry with a little skeptical reserve. --Wetman 01:02, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * The commentary seems highly POV, with no references. Since the source text is available elsewhere, maybe this should be cut down to the first paragraph or so. -Willmcw 11:17, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

Not just to non-Catholics. This is a defence of the text of the Oath, not an article. It also fails to put Catholic anti-modernism in its context - the softening of the line under Benedict XV, further change in the 60s, and the current mixed position. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.39.141 (talk • contribs) 21:45, 21 April 2005 (UTC)

Summary
A concise summary of the Oath would be very useful, as currently the article only describes how the Oath has been treated, and not what it actually says. 24.252.195.3 (talk) 17:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

rescision date
I'm trying to find the exact date of the rescision of the Oath, as stated by Diligens as of 28 May 2006. If someone can produce a reference, it shall surely be welcomed. Otherwise, the statement may be deleted as undocumented. Louie (talk) 19:36, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Promulgation
The Oath was promulgated in 1910 via the Motu Proprio Sacrorum Antistitum, not by the encyclical Pascendi, which was issued in 1907. I've corrected this. Alan162 (talk) 22:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Requested move 8 June 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. No opposition and no reason to put the m in caps. (closed by a page mover) (non-admin closure).  Anarchyte  ( work  |  talk )   08:12, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Oath against Modernism → Oath against modernism – There is no reason to believe "modernism" should be capitalized. It is not the proper name of a movement, nor is it part of a proper title. The "oath against modernism" is a descriptive name not found in Sacrorum antistitum. There the name for the thing this article is about is given as iurisiurandi formula (not capitalized), which translates to "formula of the duty to be avowed". As far as which is most common, this NGram shows that it's really a mashup, with the proposed title coming out very slightly ahead of other capitalizations; so other considerations should be used instead. Jujutsuan (talk | contribs) 06:45, 8 June 2016 (UTC), edited 06:49, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Support: can't think of a valid reason to oppose. "Modernism" is not capitalization-worthy. DaltonCastle (talk) 02:43, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

title: Talk:Oath Against Modernism


text:
Talk:Lihi

I thought this was universal, hehe. I'm in Brazil and this belief is well-spread here.
 * The idea of pregnant women craving certain foods, etc is very prevalent here in the U.S. too, and in all Western culture as far as I know. The tone of the article in implying otherwise should probably be fixed. Kundor 08:22, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I think its fine as it is. If you want to describe that this idea is universal, you could put that in a different article, and link it to this one. This article merely explains what the Filipino word "lihi" means. No more, no less.121.96.255.157 (talk) 15:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Italic textIt is an idea that is pretty much universal however, I don't know of anyone who believed their baby would look like what they crave. Here in the US cravings are normal for a pregnant women and widely accepted. The idea of the article is not only about cravings, it is also about the effects of cravings. About the animals also, never heard anything about animals. The only exception maybe someone joking around about an unborn child. But no one would do that because most likely the mother would get mad at whoever thought her child may look like a rat.76.208.16.191 14:32, 8 July 2007 (UTC)Jennifer

title: Talk:Lihi


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Crab (disambiguation)

A crab is a water-dwelling creature. A related common meaning is crab meat.

Crab or crabs may also refer to:

Other animals

 * Anomura, an infraorder containing hermit crabs, king crabs, and other animals, a sister group to the true crabs
 * Horseshoe crab, a chelicerate that lays its eggs on beaches and is utilized by the biomedical industry

Mythology

 * Cancer (astrology), a sign in the zodiac
 * Cancer (Chinese astronomy)

Science

 * Cancer (constellation), a stellar constellation
 * Crab Nebula, the supernova remnant found in the constellation Taurus
 * Crab Pulsar, the central star in the Crab Nebula
 * Crab (unit), photometrical unit of X-ray astronomy
 * CRAB, an abbreviation for the symptoms of multiple myeloma
 * "Crabs", a colloquial term for Pediculosis pubis
 * Crab louse (Pthirus pubis), a type of parasitic louse

Technology

 * Crab (cipher), an encryption algorithm based on MD5
 * Crab landing, a method of landing a fixed-wing aircraft in a crosswind

Geography

 * Crab, Virginia, an unincorporated community
 * Crab Brook, a tributary of Stony Brook in central New Jersey
 * Crab Creek, in the U.S. state of Washington
 * Crab Creek (Little River), in North and South Carolina
 * Crab Run (Mahanoy Creek), Pennsylvania
 * Crab Run (West Virginia), a stream
 * Crab Island (disambiguation)
 * Crab Cay, Colombia, a small island in the Caribbean Sea

Music

 * Crab canon, a musical form
 * Crab Records, a defunct record label
 * Crab (scratch), a DJ technique
 * "Crab", a song from the album Weezer (Green Album) by Weezer

Other arts, entertainment and media

 * The Crab, an outdoor 1962 painted steel sculpture by Alexander Calder
 * Crab, a character from the animated children's television series WordWorld
 * Krabi (1976) aka The Crabs, a Czech animated short film

Sports

 * Crab (horse) (1722–1750), a British Thoroughbred racehorse
 * Basket Rimini Crabs, an Italian professional basketball team based in Rimini, Emilia-Romagna
 * Crab (posture) used in gymnastics, breakdancing, yoga
 * Crab or catch a crab, a rowing error

Other uses

 * Sherman Crab, a British World War II mine-clearing tank
 * Panhard CRAB, a French armoured combat vehicle
 * Roger Crab (1621–1680), English soldier, haberdasher, herbal doctor and writer
 * An athletic move akin to the float in breakdancing

title: Crab (disambiguation)


text:
Talk:University of Texas at Austin/Archive 1

Argh, I screwed up this page
I'm sorry. I'm trying to revert the page from the previous changes but I can't. I'm not a vandal. -- DraQue Star
 * No problem, it's fixed. See How to revert a page for future reference. - Hephaestos|§ 04:20, 24 May 2004 (UTC)
 * I am a vandal! mnemonic 00:04, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

image?
What happened to the image that was just added? Bevo 05:54, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * I lost a couple of images that I uploaded on 24/25 Jan. FWIW, I uploaded two JPEGs and one PNG, and only the JPEGs disappeared.  The image description pages did not disappear, so I just uploaded my images again with the same name as before, on the 29th.  (See image history log at e.g. Image:Guitar-and-lute.jpg.)  So far, the images haven't disappeared again.  I'm guessing that there was some kind of rollback on the database due to all the server problems we've been having. — B.Bryant 11:32, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC) [Also at UT — Hi!]

 * I still don't see it. Can you check to see if it renders on when you view the page? Bevo 03:34, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC) (I graduated UT in 1974...saw some really good UT football teams back then!)

 * Nope. Did you upload it again? The image history doesn't show a fresh upload. — B.Bryant 09:17, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

 * I've added a note to User talk:Decumanus requesting status. Bevo 05:34, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * User:Decumanus just uploaded an image that currently displays nicely. Bevo 06:27, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Where does the population estimate of 54,000 come from ? I haven't been a student for a while, but I thought UT-Austin was trying to keep their numbers around 48K ?

Hee hee! Jason Hunter as notable alumni?
Who added Hunter as a notable alum?? *laugh* We worked at the Texan together. Jason's gotta be a closet Wikipedia editor out there somewhere. Katefan0 21:44, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)


text:
BioShock

BioShock is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed by 2K Boston (later Irrational Games) and 2K Australia, and published by 2K. The first game in the BioShock series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007; a PlayStation 3 port by Irrational, 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of Rapture, built by business magnate Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with the few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them.

BioShock's concept was developed by Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine, and incorporates ideas by 20th century dystopian and utopian thinkers such as Ayn Rand, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley, as well as historical figures such as John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Walt Disney. The game includes role-playing elements, giving the player different approaches in engaging enemies such as by stealth, as well as moral choices of saving or killing characters. Additionally, the game borrows concepts from the survival horror genre, notably the Resident Evil series. BioShock is considered a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, on which many of Irrational's team, including Levine, had worked previously.

BioShock received universal acclaim and was particularly praised by critics for its narrative, themes, visual design, setting, and gameplay. It is considered to be one of the greatest video games ever made and a demonstration of video games as an art form. BioShock was followed by two sequels, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite, released in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Ports of BioShock were released for macOS and mobile following its console releases. A remastered version of the game was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch as part of BioShock: The Collection.

Setting
BioShock takes place in Rapture, a large underwater city planned and constructed in the 1940s by individualist business magnate Andrew Ryan, who wanted to create a utopia for society's elite to flourish outside of government control and "petty morality". This philosophy resulted in remarkable advances in the arts and sciences, which included the discovery of "ADAM": a potent gene-altering substance which is created by a species of sea slug on the ocean floor. ADAM led to the creation of "Plasmids", mutagenic serums that grant users super-human powers such as telekinesis and pyrokinesis. To protect and isolate Rapture, Ryan outlawed any contact with the surface world.

As Rapture flourished, wealth disparities grew, and criminal Frank Fontaine used his influence over the disenfranchised working class to establish illegal enterprises and obtain power—enough to rival Ryan. With doctors Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong, Fontaine created his own company dedicated to researching plasmids and gene tonics. As ADAM became addictive and demand skyrocketed, Fontaine secretly mass-produced ADAM through slugs implanted in the stomachs of orphaned girls, nicknamed "Little Sisters". Fontaine was killed in a shootout with police, and Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets, including control of the Little Sisters.

In the months that followed, a man amongst the poor named Atlas rose up and began a violent revolution against Ryan, with both sides using plasmid-enhanced humans (known as "Splicers") to wage war on one another. To protect the Little Sisters, Ryan created the "Big Daddies": genetically enhanced humans surgically grafted into gigantic lumbering diving suits designed to escort the sisters as they scavenged ADAM from dead bodies. Tensions came to a head on New Year's Eve of 1958 when Atlas ordered an all-out assault on Ryan and his supporters. The conflict turns Rapture into a war-torn crumbling dystopia, resulting in societal collapse, countless deaths, many Splicers becoming disfigured and insane from ADAM abuse, and the few sane survivors barricading themselves away from the chaos.

Plot

In 1960, the protagonist, Jack, is a passenger on a plane that crashes in the Atlantic Ocean. The only survivor, Jack makes his way to a nearby lighthouse; inside is a bathysphere that takes him to Rapture. Jack is contacted via radio by Atlas, who helps guide him through the ruined city.

Atlas requests Jack's help in saving his family, who he says are in a docked bathysphere. When Jack first encounters the Little Sisters, Atlas urges him to kill them to harvest their ADAM. Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum intervenes and insists Jack should spare them, providing him with a plasmid that can remove the sea slug from their bodies and free them of their brainwashing. Jack works his way to the bathysphere, but Ryan destroys it before Jack can reach it. Infuriated, Atlas has Jack fight his way through various districts toward Ryan's lair, forcing Jack to contend with Rapture's deranged citizens along the way, such as the surgical doctor J.S. Steinman and artist and musician Sander Cohen.

Jack enters Ryan's office. Ryan reveals the truth of Jack's origins: he is actually Ryan's illegitimate son, sold by Ryan's mistress as an embryo to Fontaine, who had Tenenbaum and Suchong rapidly age Jack into adulthood and turned into an obedient assassin, capable of accessing any of Rapture's systems locked to Ryan's genetic code and thus ensure Fontaine's victory in the war. Jack was smuggled to the surface with false memories of a normal life, waiting to be called back to Rapture when needed. Ryan takes control of Jack's actions by asking, "Would you kindly?"; a phrase that has preceded many of Atlas' commands as a hypnotic trigger, forcing him to follow any orders without question. Jack also realizes he was responsible for the plane crash, having read a letter onboard containing the same trigger phrase.

Ryan chooses to die by his own will and compels Jack to beat him to death with a golf club. Atlas reveals himself to be Fontaine, having faked his death and used "Atlas" as an alias to hide his identity while providing a heroic figure for the poor to rally behind. With Ryan dead, Fontaine takes control of the city and leaves Jack to be killed by hostile security drones. Jack is saved by Dr. Tenenbaum, who helps remove Fontaine's mental conditioning, including one that would have stopped Jack's heart. Jack pursues Fontaine to his lair, where Fontaine transforms himself into a hulking humanoid creature by injecting himself with a large supply of ADAM. The Little Sisters aid Jack in draining the ADAM from Fontaine's body and eventually kill him.

The ending depends on how the player interacts with the Little Sisters:
 * If the player rescues all or all but one of the Little Sisters, Jack takes them back to the surface with him and adopts five of them as his daughters. Tenenbaum happily narrates how they go on to live full lives under his care, eventually surrounding him on his deathbed. This ending is considered canon in BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea.
 * If the player harvests more than one Little Sister, Jack turns on the Little Sisters to harvest their ADAM. Tenenbaum sadly narrates what occurs, condemning Jack and his actions. A submarine comes across the plane's wreckage and finds itself surrounded by bathyspheres containing Splicers, who attack the crew and take control of it. The submarine is revealed to be carrying nuclear missiles, with Tenenbaum claiming that Jack has "stolen the terrible secrets of the world": The more Little Sisters Jack harvests throughout the game, the harsher and more furious Tenenbaum's narrative becomes.

Gameplay

BioShock is a first-person shooter with role-playing customization and stealth elements, and is similar to System Shock 2. The player takes the role of Jack as he is guided through Rapture towards various objectives. The player collects multiple weapons and plasmids as they work their way through enemy forces. The player can switch between one active weapon and one active plasmid at any time, allowing them to find combination attacks that can be effective against certain enemies, such as first shocking a Splicer then striking them down with a wrench. Weapons are limited by ammunition that the player collects; many weapons have secondary ammo types that can be used instead for additional benefits, such as bullets that inflict fire damage. Plasmid use consumes a serum called EVE which can be restored using EVE syringes collected by the player or by consuming cigarettes and alcohol. The player has a health meter that decreases when they take damage. The player can restore their health with food or medical packs found throughout Rapture. If the player's health is reduced to zero, they will be regenerated at the last Vita-Chamber that they passed with limited amounts of health and EVE. A patch for the game allows the Vita-Chambers to be turned off, requiring players to restart a saved game if the character dies.

The game provides several options to face challenges. In addition to direct combat, the player can use plasmids to lure enemies into traps or to turn enemies against each other, or employ stealth tactics to avoid detection by hostiles including the security systems and turrets. The player can hack into any of Rapture's automated systems; the hacking process is done via a mini-game similar to Pipe Mania where the player must connect two points on opposite sides of a grid with a limited set of piping within a fixed amount of time, with failure to complete in time costing health and potentially sounding alarms. Early in the game, the player is given a research camera; by taking photographs of enemies, the player will cumulatively gain knowledge about the individual foes which translates into attack boosts and other benefits when facing that enemy type in the future.

The player collects money by exploring Rapture and from the bodies of defeated foes; this money can be used at vending machines to restock on ammunition, health and EVE, and other items; like security cameras, vending machines can be hacked to reduce the costs of items from it. The player will receive rewards in the form of ADAM from completing some tasks, as well as from either saving or killing the Little Sisters after defeating their Big Daddy guardian. ADAM is used to purchase plasmids from Gatherer's Garden machines scattered around Rapture. In addition to plasmids, the player can collect and buy tonics that provide passive bonuses, such as increasing Jack's strength, using EVE more efficiently, or making Jack more resistant to damage. The player can only have a limited number of plasmids and tonics active at any time, and can swap between the various plasmids and tonics at certain stations located throughout Rapture.

Game design
Lead developer Ken Levine had created Irrational Games in 1997 out of former members from Looking Glass Studios. Their first game was System Shock 2, a sequel to Looking Glass's System Shock, and was met with critical success, though it did not prove a financial one. Levine had attempted to pitch a sequel to System Shock 2 to Electronic Arts, but the publisher rejected the idea based on the poor performance of the earlier game. Irrational developed other games, including Freedom Force, Tribes: Vengeance, the canceled title Deep Cover, and the completed The Lost which was never released due to legal complications. At this point, Levine wanted to return to a game in the same style as System Shock 2, a more free-form game with strong narrative.

In 2002, the team had come up with a core gameplay mechanic idea based on three groups of forces; drones that would carry a desirable resource, protectors that would guard the drones, and harvesters that would attempt to take the resource from the drones; these would eventually bear out as the Little Sisters, Big Daddies, and Splicers in the final game, but at the time of the concept, there was no set theme. They began working on creating a setting as to be able to pitch the idea to publishers. A 2002 demonstration version was based on the Unreal Engine 2 for the Xbox. This demonstration was primarily set aboard a space station overtaken with genetically mutated monsters; the main character was Carlos Cuello, a "cult deprogrammer"—a person charged with rescuing someone from a cult, and mentally and psychologically readjusting that person to a normal life. Ken Levine cites an example of what a cult deprogrammer does: "[There are] people who hired people to [for example] deprogram their daughter who had been in a lesbian relationship. They kidnap her and reprogram her, and it was a really dark person, and that was the [kind of] character that you were." This story would have been more political in nature, with the character hired by a Senator. The team collectively agreed that this game was not what they had set out to make, and were having trouble finding a publisher. Levine found that publishers were wary of immersive sims as they did not sell well. They considered ending development, but as news about their efforts to create a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 began to appear in gaming magazines and websites, the team opted to continue development, performing a full revamp.

By 2004, 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, offered to publish the game primarily based on the drone/protector/harvester concept, giving Irrational the freedom to develop the story and setting. By this point, the story and setting had changed significantly, taking place in an abandoned World War II-era Nazi laboratory that had been recently unearthed by 21st-century scientists. Over the decades, the genetic experiments within the labs had gradually formed themselves into an ecosystem centered on the three groups. This version included many of the gameplay elements that would remain in the final BioShock, themselves influenced by concepts from System Shock 2. These elements included the use of plasmids and EVE, the need to use stealth or other options to deal with automated security systems, direction through the environment from a non-player character relayed over a radio, and story elements delivered through audio recordings and "ghosts" of deceased characters. The funding provided by 2K Games in 2004 was a "modest budget", according to Levine, and when Irrational was acquired by 2K in 2006, the publisher put in a much larger set of funds to complete the game.

While the gameplay with the 2004 reveal was similar to what resulted in the released version of BioShock, both design and story changed, consistent with what Levine says was then-Irrational Games' guiding principle of putting game design first. These areas were also issued due to some internal strife and lack of communication between the various teams within Irrational, part of the result of having to expand the team from six to sixty members for the scope of the project. The environment was considered bland, and there were difficulties by the team's artists to come up with a consistent vision to meet the level designer's goals. A critical junction was a short experiment performed by level designer Jean Paul LeBreton and artist Hoagy de la Plante, setting themselves aside to co-develop a level that became part of the "Tea Garden" area in the released game, which Levine used as a prime example of a "great BioShock space", emphasizing the need for departments to work together. Levine found that the cyberpunk theme had been overplayed considering their initial reject from Electronic Arts for System Shock 3, leading towards the underwater setting of Rapture.

The game's lead level designer was Bill Gardner. He cited Capcom's survival horror series Resident Evil as a significant influence on BioShock, stating there are "all these nods and all these little elements that I think you can see where Resident Evil inspired us". The team were particularly influenced by Resident Evil 4, including its approach to the environments, combat, and tools, its game design and tactical elements, its "gameplay fuelled storytelling" and inventory system, and its opening village level in terms of how it "handled the sandbox nature of the combat" and in terms of "the environment".

Story and theme development
The thematic core of BioShock was born when Levine was walking at Rockefeller Center near the GE Building in New York City. He saw the uniqueness of the art deco styling of the building along with imagery around the building such as the statue of Atlas near it, and recognized that these were spaces that had not been experienced in the first-person shooter genre. The history of the Rockefeller Center also fed into the story concept; Levine noted how the center had started construction prior to the Great Depression; when the primary financiers had pulled out, John D. Rockefeller Jr. backed the remaining construction to complete the project himself, as stated by Edge magazine "a great man building an architectural triumph against all the odds". The history of Rapture and the character of Andrew Ryan is loosely based on Rockefeller's story. He also considered that many of the characters of Rapture were all people who were oppressed once before in their lives and now free of that oppression, have turned around and become the oppressors, a fact he felt resonated throughout human history.

At this point in the development, the backdrop of Rapture had been fleshed out, but they had yet to come on how to represent the drones, protectors, and harvesters from their original game idea. The Big Daddy concept as the protector class was developed early in the process, but the team had yet to reach a satisfying design for the drones, having used several possible designs including bugs and dogs in wheelchairs. The team wanted to have the player care for the drones in some way and create pathos for these characters. The idea of using little girls came out of brainstorming, but was controversial and shocking within the team at first, recognizing that they could easily be killed and make the game more horrific in the style of Night Trap. However, as Levine worked on the story, he started to incorporate the ideas of dystopian and utopian thinkers from the twentieth century, including Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell, and considered their ideas "fascinating". He brought in the ideas of Objectivism that Rand primarily outlined in the book Atlas Shrugged, that man should be driven by selfishness and not altruism, and used this to inform the philosophy behind the city of Rapture and Andrew Ryan's work, viewing them as quite ludicrous, and primed to be applied to an antagonist, tied in with his previous observations on Rockefeller and his writings. This was extended to the use of the little girls as drones (now Little Sisters), particularly the question whether the player should try to save the girls or harvest the ADAM for their benefit. 2K Games expressed concern about the initial mechanic of the Little Sisters, where the player would actively prey on the Little Sister, which would have alerted a Big Daddy and set up the fight with the player. This approach did not sit well with Levine, and 2K Games asserted that they would not ship a game "where the player gets punished for doing the right thing". They altered this approach where the Little Sisters would be invulnerable until the player had dealt with their Big Daddy, though LeBreton considered this "a massive kludge" into the game's fiction. The idea of creating the Little Sisters and presenting the player with this choice became a critical part of the game's appeal to the broader gaming market, although it was met with criticism from some outlets. Levine desired only to have one ending to the game, something that would have left the fate of the characters "much more ambiguous", but publisher pressure directed them to craft multiple endings depending on the choice of harvesting Little Sisters. Levine also noted that "it was never my intention to do two endings for the game. It sort of came very late and it was something that was requested by somebody up the food chain from me."

Other elements came into the story design. Levine had an interest in "stem cell research and the moral issues that go around [it] ". Regarding artistic influences, Levine cited the books Nineteen Eighty-Four and Logan's Run, representing societies that have "really interesting ideas screwed up by the fact that we're people". The idea of the mind control used on Jack was offered by LeBreton, inspired by films like The Manchurian Candidate, as a means to provide a better reason to limit the player's actions as opposed to the traditional use of locked doors to prevent them exploring areas they should not. The team had agreed that Jack's actions would be controlled by a key phrase but struggled with coming up with one that would not reveal Atlas' true nature. Levine happened upon "Would you kindly" after working on marketing materials for the game that asked the reader hypothetical questions such as "Would you kill people, even innocent people, to survive?", later working that phrase into the first script for the game.

Numerous tensions within the team and from publisher 2K Games continued during the development process. According to LeBreton, Levine was distrustful of some of the more egotistical newer hires and was often arguing with them to enforce his vision of BioShock. 2K Games was concerned with the growing budget for the title, and told Levine to market the title more as a first-person shooter rather than the first-person shooter/role playing game hybrid they set out for. Near the targeted release date, Levine ordered the team into round-the-clock development, creating more strife in the team. Paul Hellquist, the game's lead designer, was often omitted from key design meetings, which he later recounted was due to his contrary nature to Levine, questioning several of his choices; he used his frustration to put into the design efforts for the Medical Pavilion level that he was in charge of at that time. Near the anticipated completion date, 2K decided to give Irrational another three months to polish up the game, extending the current crunch time the studio was already under. This left some hard-to-discover bugs and issues in the game undiscovered. One such case was an apparent Easter egg found in the remastered version in 2018, where under certain conditions, the player can end up looking at an object with the description "Paul Hellquist did not do his Job". Both Levine and Chris Kline, the game's lead programmer confirmed the message was a cheeky jab at Hellquist left as a debugging message; Kline and Hellquist were developing the systems to show descriptions of objects to players when looked at, and Hellquist offered to complete all the necessary descriptions in-game; to jokingly help prod Hellquist along, Kline put "Paul Hellquist did not do his Job" as the default message within the executable code. While the code message was changed for the original release, the remastered version likely used a pre-final version of the BioShock code, according to Kline. Hellquist took the revelation in good humor and tweeted that other Easter eggs should have been added to the game to display: "If you are enjoying this, Paul Hellquist did his job."

A critical playtest of the game occurred in January 2007, where initial feedback from the players was mostly negative, including issues of the setting being too dark, having no idea where to go, and distrusting Atlas, who at the time was voiced in a southern drawl, described as a "lecherous Colonel Sanders". The team took this criticism to heart, revamping several elements during those extra months such as improving the lighting, implementing a quest marker, and using an Irish voice for Atlas to make him sound more trustworthy. During another late-stage playtest with the title "ninety-nine percent" complete according to Levine, the playtesters did not like the game at all as they felt no connection to the player-character Jack, and the person overseeing the tests told Levine that the game was likely to be a failure. At this point, BioShock did not have many cutscenes, as Levine was ideologically opposed to them. However, the following day, Levine and the lead group came up with a "cheap" way to correct this, by adding the initial cut scene within the plane and the subsequent plane crash, as this helped to set the time frame, place the player in the role of the character, and alluded to the "would you kindly" line later in the game. Levine likened this approach to the initial aircraft crash at the onset of the television show Lost to quickly establish character and setting.

The game was successfully released in August 2007 with a final budget of about $25 million. In a 2016 interview, Levine felt that the game could have used about six more months of development to improve the gun combat system and fix lagging issues that occurred during the final boss fight. Despite the critical success of the title, many of those on the team would leave Irrational to pursue other projects due to late development strife that occurred.

In an interview in 2018, Levine had come to recognize that BioShock reflected several Jewish themes, though this was not intentional. Levine, who considers himself culturally Jewish but does not follow Judaism, had grown up in New Jersey but spent much of his childhood time with his father who worked in Manhattan's Diamond District and visiting his grandparents in Queens, a neighborhood with a large proportion of Eastern European immigrants. Thus, Levine was exposed to much of the Jewish culture that flourished in the area following World War II and understood some of the anxiety Jewish people faced. In the 2018 interview, Levine recognized several of the characters, including Andrew Ryan (who was inspired by Ayn Rand who was also Jewish), Sander Cohen, and Brigid Tenenbaum, were written all as Jewish, and all seeking to escape a world they felt they did not fit into by going to Rapture; Levine said: There's literal displacement and then there's a feeling of not fitting in, of 'I don't really belong here'. I think Jews are always going to feel a little bit like they don't belong wherever they are. There's always that 'what if we have to flee' mentality."

Game engine
BioShock uses a heavily modified Unreal Engine 2.5 with some of the advanced technologies from Unreal Engine 3. Irrational had previous experience with modifying and expanding on the Unreal Engine in SWAT 4, and continued this advancement of the engine within BioShock. One significant improvement they added was improved water effects, given the nature of the game's setting, hiring a programmer and artist to focus on the water effects. This graphical enhancement has been lauded by critics, with GameSpot saying: "Whether it's standing water on the floor or sea water rushing in after an explosion, it will blow you away every time you see it." BioShock also uses the Havok Physics engine that allows for an enhancement of in-game physics, the integration of ragdoll physics, and allows for more lifelike movement by elements of the environment. The Windows version was built to work in both Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) and DirectX 9, with the DirectX 10 version supporting additional water and particle effects.

Soundtrack
BioShock contains both licensed music and an original score. The licensed music from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s can be heard playing on phonograph throughout Rapture. In total, 30 licensed songs can be heard throughout the game. The original score was composed by Garry Schyman. He composed his pieces to blend with the chosen licensed music as to keep the same feel, while also trying to bring out something that was "eerie, frightening and at times beautiful" to mesh well with Rapture's environments.

2K Games released an orchestral score soundtrack on their official homepage on August 24, 2007. Available in MP3 format, the score—composed by Garry Schyman—contains 12 of the 22 tracks from the game. The Limited Edition version of the game came with The Rapture EP remixes by Moby and Oscar The Punk. The three remixed tracks on the CD include "Beyond the Sea", "God Bless the Child" and "Wild Little Sisters"; the original recordings of these songs are in the game. BioShock score was released on a vinyl LP with the BioShock 2 Special Edition.

Release and promotion
An initial demo of the game was made available in August 2007 for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. This demo included cutscenes to introduce the player to Rapture, the game's tutorial section, and its first levels; the demo also included weapons, plasmids, and tonics that would otherwise be introduced later in the full title, as to give the player more of the features that would be found in the published game. The Xbox 360 demo was the fastest demo at that time to reach one million downloads on the Xbox Live service. The full game was released for these platforms on August 21, 2007.

The first patch for the Xbox 360 version was released about two weeks after release to fix some of the game stability issues players had reported. The patch was found to introduce more problems to the game for some users, including occasional freezes, bad framerates, and audio-related issues, though methods to resolve these issues through the console's cache system were outlined by Irrational Games.

In December 2007, a common patch was released for both the Xbox 360 and Windows version. The patch included additional content such as new Plasmids, new achievements for the Xbox 360 version, and additional graphics settings to address some of the field-of-view issues identified by players. (See below). The patch also added in an option to disable the use of Vita-Chambers, a feature requested by players to make the game more challenging, as well as an achievement to complete the game at its hardest setting without using a Vita-Chamber.

Ports
In an August 2007 interview, when asked about the possibility of a PlayStation 3 version of BioShock, Ken Levine had stated only that there was "no PS3 development going on" at the time; however, on May 28, 2008, 2K Games confirmed that a PlayStation 3 version of the game was in development by 2K Marin, and it was released on October 17, 2008. On July 3, 2008, 2K Games announced a partnership with Digital Extremes and said that the PlayStation 3 version is being developed by 2K Marin, 2K Boston, 2K Australia, and Digital Extremes. Jordan Thomas was the director for the PlayStation 3 version. While there were no graphical improvements to the game over the original Xbox 360 version, the PlayStation 3 version offered the widescreen option called "horizontal plus", introduced via a patch on the 360 version, while cutscene videos were of a much higher resolution than in the DVD version. Additional add-on content was also released exclusively for the PlayStation 3 version. One addition was "Survivor Mode", in which the enemies were made tougher, and Vita-Chambers provided less of a health boost when used, forcing the player to be more creative in approaching foes and to rely more on the less-used plasmids in the game. BioShock also supports Trophies and PlayStation Home. A demo version was released on the PlayStation Store on October 2, 2008. An update for the PlayStation 3 version was released on November 13, 2008, to fix some graphical problems and occasions where users experienced a hang and were forced to reset the console. This update also incorporated the "Challenge Room" and "New Game Plus" features. BioShock was bundled with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a double pack on PC and Xbox 360 on July 7, 2009.

A port to OS X systems was made by Feral Interactive and released in October 2009.

In early 2008, IG Fun secured the rights to develop and publish a mobile phone version of BioShock. This version was developed as a top-down, two-dimensional platformer that attempted to recreate most of the plot and game elements of the original title; IG Fun worked with Irrational to determine the critical story elements they wanted to keep in the game. IG Fun recognized they would not be able to include the full storyline within a single mobile title, and so planned to split the title into three "episodes". Only the first episode was released.

Another mobile port was developed by Tridev, known as BioShock 3D, released in 2010. Several parts of the game were reduced to single image graphics and the main gameplay engine had to use low-resolution and low-polygon models due to the limitations of mobile phones at the time of its release.

A port to iOS devices done by the 2K China studio was released on August 27, 2014. The iOS version is content complete and functionally equivalent to the original Xbox 360 and Windows version, featuring either the use of touch-screen virtual gamepad controls or the use of a Bluetooth-enabled controller, and with a graphics engine optimized for iOS devices. The game was later delisted from the App Store in September 2015; the game had become unplayable for many that upgraded to iOS 8.4 on their devices, and while a patch had been discussed, a 2K representative stated that the decision to remove the game came from the developer. 2K later clarified that they will be working on resolving the issues with the game's compatibility with the new firmware and will re-release the title once that has been completed. However, by January 2017, 2K officially stated that it will no longer working to support the game's compatibility with newer iOS system.

Critical response
BioShock has received "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator Metacritic, with the game receiving an average review score of 96/100 for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, and 94/100 for PlayStation 3. , it is one of the highest-rated games on Metacritic, tied with several other games for the fourth-highest aggregate score. Mainstream press reviews have praised the immersive qualities of the game and its political dimension. The Boston Globe described it as "a beautiful, brutal, and disquieting computer game ... one of the best in years", and compared the game to Whittaker Chambers' 1957 riposte to Atlas Shrugged, "Big Sister Is Watching You". Wired also mentioned the Ayn Rand connection (a partial anagram of Andrew Ryan) in a report on the game which featured a brief interview with Levine. The Chicago Sun-Times review said "I never once thought anyone would be able to create an engaging and entertaining video game around the fiction and philosophy of Ayn Rand, but that is essentially what 2K Games has done ... the rare, mature video game that succeeds in making you think while you play".

The Los Angeles Times review concluded: "Sure, it's fun to play, looks spectacular and is easy to control. But it also does something no other game has done to date: It really makes you feel." The New York Times reviewer described it as: "intelligent, gorgeous, occasionally frightening" and added: "Anchored by its provocative, morality-based story line, sumptuous art direction and superb voice acting, BioShock can also hold its head high among the best games ever made."

GameSpy praised BioShock "inescapable atmosphere", and Official Xbox Magazine lauded its "inconceivably great plot" and "stunning soundtrack and audio effects". The gameplay and combat system have been praised for being smooth and open-ended, and elements of the graphics, such as the water, were commended for their quality. It has been noted that the combination of the game's elements "straddles so many entertainment art forms so expertly that it's the best demonstration yet how flexible this medium can be. It's no longer just another shooter wrapped up in a pretty game engine, but a story that exists and unfolds inside the most convincing and elaborate and artistic game world ever conceived."

Reviewers did highlight a few negative issues in BioShock, however. The recovery system involving "Vita-Chambers", which revive a defeated player at half-health, but do not alter the enemies' health, makes it possible to wear down enemies through sheer perseverance, and was criticized as one of the most significant flaws in the gameplay. IGN noted that both the controls and graphics of the Xbox 360 version are inferior to those of the PC version, in that switching between weapons or plasmids is easier using the PC's mouse than the 360's radial menu, as well as the graphics being slightly better with higher resolutions. The game has been touted as a hybrid first-person shooter, but two reviewers found advances from comparable games lacking, both in the protagonist and in the challenges he faces. Some reviewers also found the combat behavior of the splicers lacking in diversity (and their A.I. behavior not very well done), and the moral choice too much "black and white" to be interesting. Some reviewers and essayists such as Jonathan Blow also opined that the "moral choice" the game offered to the player (saving or harvesting the little sisters) was flawed because, to them, it had no real impact on the game, which ultimately led them to think that the sisters were just mechanics of no real importance. Daniel Friedman for Polygon concurred with Blow, noting that the player only loses 10% of the possible ADAM rewards for saving the Little Sisters rather than killing them, and felt that this would have been better instituted as part of the game difficulty mechanic. Former LucasArts developer Clint Hocking wrote a noted essay that claimed that BioShock exhibited "ludonarrative dissonance" between its story and mechanics, as while he saw the story as advocating selflessness in helping others, its gameplay encourages what he views as selfishness by preying on Little Sisters.

Awards
At E3 2006, BioShock was given several "Games of the Show" awards from various online gaming sites, including GameSpot, IGN, GameSpy and GameTrailers's Trailer of the Year. BioShock received an award for Best Xbox 360 Game at the 2007 Leipzig Games Convention. After the game's release, the 2007 Spike TV Video Game Awards selected BioShock as Game of the Year, Best Xbox 360 Game, and Best Original Score, and nominated it for four awards: Best Shooter, Best Graphics, Best PC Game, and Best Soundtrack. The game also won the 2007 BAFTA "Best Game" award. X-Play also selected it as "Game of the Year", "Best Original Soundtrack", "Best Writing/Story", and "Best Art Direction". Game Informer named BioShock its Game of the Year for 2007.

At IGN's "Best of 2007" BioShock was nominated for Game of The Year 2007, and won the award for PC Game of the Year, Best Artistic Design, and Best Use of Sound. GameSpy chose it as the third-best game of the year and gave BioShock the awards for Best Sound, Story, and Art Direction. GameSpot awarded the game for Best Story, while GamePro gave BioShock the Best Story, Xbox 360 and Best Single-Player Shooter awards. BioShock won the "Best Visual Art", "Best Writing", and "Best Audio" awards at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards. During the AIAS' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, BioShock received the most nominations of the ceremony with twelve, including notable categories such as "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming", "Action Game of the Year", and "Overall Game of the Year"; it was ultimately awarded with outstanding achievement in "Art Direction", "Original Music Composition", "Sound Design", and "Story Development". Guinness World Records awarded the game a record for "Most Popular Xbox Live Demo" in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. BioShock is ranked first on Game Informer list of The Top 10 Video Game Openings. GamesRadar placed Bioshock as the 12th best game of all time. In 2011 BioShock was awarded the number 1 spot in GameTrailers' "Top 100 Video Game Trailers of All Time", for submerging the viewer into the BioShock universe and its enduring impact. In August 2012, IGN gave it the top spot on their list of the Top 25 Modern PC Games, a ranking of the best PC games released since 2006. In November 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time. In July 2015, the game placed 9th on USgamer The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list.

Sales
The Xbox 360 version was the third best-selling game of August 2007, with 490,900 copies. The Wall Street Journal reported that shares in Take-Two Interactive "soared nearly 20%" in the week following overwhelmingly favorable early reviews of the game. Take-Two Interactive announced that by June 5, 2008, over 2.2 million copies of BioShock had been shipped. In a June 10, 2008 interview, Roy Taylor, Nvidia's VP of Content Business Development, stated that the PC version has sold over one million copies. According to Take-Two Interactive's chairman Strauss Zelnick, the game had sold around 3 million copies by June 2009. By March 2010, BioShock had sold 4 million copies.

PC technical issues and DRM
The initial Windows release was criticized by players for several perceived shortcomings. The game was shipped with SecuROM copy protection that required activation from 2K Games' servers over the Internet; the unavailability of these servers was reported as the reason for the cancellation of the game's midnight release in Australia. Players found that the SecuROM limited the number of times the game could be activated to two; user feedback led to 2K Games to increase the activation count to five, and later offer a tool that allowed users to revoke previous activations on their own. Ultimately 2K Games removed the activation limit, though retail versions of the game still required the activation process. Levine admitted that their initial approach to the activation process was malformed, harming their reputation during the launch period.

The SecuROM software also caused some virus scanners and malware detector to believe the software was malicious. 2K Games assured players that the software installation process did not install any malicious code or rootkit. However, players observed that some of the SecuROM software was not entirely removed on uninstallation of the game.

Some of the graphic capabilities of BioShock were criticized by players. The initial release of the game was found to have cut off the top and bottom of the field of view in order to fit widescreen monitors, resulting in less vertical view instead of more horizontal view compared to 4:3 monitors, conflicting with original reports from a developer on how widescreen would have been handled. 2K Games later stated that the choice of the field of view was a design decision made during development. Irrational included an option for "Horizontal FOV Lock" in the December 2007 patch that allows widescreen users a wider field of view, without cutting anything off the image vertically. BioShock was also criticized for not supporting pixel shader 2.0b video cards (such as the Radeon X800/X850), which were considered high-end graphics cards in 2004–2005, and accounted for about 24% of surveyed hardware collected through Valve's Steam platform at the time of BioShock release.

On July 8, 2014, 2K Games released a DRM-free version of BioShock on the Humble 2K Bundle, and then re-released on the Humble Store.

On December 17, 2018, BioShock and BioShock 2 remastered were released DRM-free on GOG.

Legacy
BioShock has received praise for its artistic style and compelling storytelling. In their book, Digital Culture: Understanding New Media, Glen Creeber and Royston Martin perform a case study of BioShock as a critical analysis of video games as an artistic medium. They praised the game for its visuals, sound, and ability to engage the player into the story. They viewed BioShock as a sign of the "coming of age" of video games as an artistic medium. John Lanchester of the London Review of Books recognized BioShock as one of the first video games to break into coverage of mainstream media to be covered as a work of art arising from its narrative aspects, whereas before video games had failed to enter into the "cultural discourse", or otherwise covered due to moral controversies they created. Peter Suderman for Vox in 2016 wrote that BioShock was the first game that demonstrated that video games could be a work of art, particularly highlighting that the game plays on the theme of giving the illusion of individual control.

In February 2011, the Smithsonian Institution announced it would hold an exhibit dedicated to the art of video games. Several games were chosen by the Smithsonian's curators; when the public voted for additional games they felt deserved to be included in the exhibition, BioShock was among the winners.

The game's plot twist, where the player discovers that the player-character Jack has been coerced into events by the trigger phrase, "Would you kindly...", is considered one of the strongest narrative elements of recent games, in part that it subverted the expectation that the player has control and influence on the game. In homage to BioShock, Black Mirror video game-centric episode "Playtest" includes the phrase.

Sequels
In response to the game's high sales and critical acclaim, Take-Two Interactive chairman Strauss Zelnick revealed in a post-earnings report call that the company now considered the game part of a franchise. He also speculated that any follow-ups would mimic the release cadence of Grand Theft Auto, with a new release expected every two years. 2K's president Christoph Hartmann stated that BioShock could have five sequels, comparing the franchise to the Star Wars movies.

BioShock 2 was announced in 2008, with its development led by 2K Marin. Levine stated that Irrational (then 2K Boston) was not involved in the game's sequel because they wanted to "swing for the fences" and try to come up with something "very, very different", which was later revealed as BioShock Infinite. BioShock 3 was also announced, with its release assumed to likely coincide with the BioShock film. BioShock 2 takes place about ten years following the events of the first game. The player assumes the role of Subject Delta, a precursor of the Big Daddies who must search the fallen city of Rapture for his former Little Sister, Eleanor. BioShock 2 was released for Windows PC, Mac, Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3 worldwide on February 9, 2010.

While BioShock Infinite, developed by Irrational Games and released in 2013, shares the name and many similar gameplay concepts with BioShock, the title is not a sequel or prequel of the original story, but instead takes place aboard the collapsing air-city of Columbia in the year 1912. It follows former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt as he attempts to rescue a young woman, Elizabeth, from the angelic tower in which her father has imprisoned her. Infinite involves the possibilities of multiple universes. In one scene, the game take place at the lighthouse and bathysphere terminus of Rapture as part of this exploration. However, no direct canonical connection is given in the main game. The episodic expansion, Burial at Sea, takes place in Rapture in 1959, before the war between Atlas and Ryan, while continuing the story of Booker and Elizabeth. This content links the two stories while providing expansion on the causes and behind-the-scenes events alluded to by the in-game background from BioShock.

After completing BioShock Infinite and its expansion, Levine announced that he was restructuring Irrational Games to focus on smaller, narrative-driven titles. 2K Games continues to hold on to the BioShock intellectual property and plans to continue to develop games in this series, considering the framework set by Levine and his team as a "rich creative canvas" for more stories.

Limited edition
Following the creation of a fan petition for a special edition, Take-Two Interactive stated that they would publish a special edition of BioShock only if the petition received 5,000 signatures; this number of signatures was reached after just five hours. Subsequently, a poll was posted on the 2K Games operated Cult of Rapture community website in which visitors could vote on what features they would most like to see in a special edition; the company stated that developers would take this poll into serious consideration. To determine what artwork would be used for the Limited Edition cover, 2K Games ran a contest, with the winning entry provided by Crystal Clear Art's owner and graphic designer Adam Meyer.

On April 23, 2007, the Cult of Rapture website confirmed that the Limited Collector's Edition would include a 6 in Big Daddy figurine (many of which were damaged due to a dropped shipping container; a replacement initiative is in place), a "Making Of" DVD, and a soundtrack CD. Before the special edition was released, the proposed soundtrack CD was replaced with The Rapture EP.

Remastered edition
BioShock was remastered to support 1080p and higher framerates as part of the 2016 BioShock: The Collection release for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One systems. The remastering was performed by Blind Squirrel Games and published by 2K Games. A standalone version of BioShock Remastered was released for macOS by Feral Interactive on August 22, 2017. The standalone version of the remastered version of BioShock along with The Collection were released on May 29, 2020, on the Nintendo Switch.

Printed media
BioShock: Breaking the Mold, a book containing artwork from the game, was released by 2K Games on August 13, 2007. It is available in both low and high resolution, in PDF format from 2K Games' official website. Until October 1, 2007, 2K Games was sending a printed version of the book to the owners of the collector's edition whose Big Daddy figurines had been broken, as compensation for the time it took to replace them. On October 31, 2008, the winners of "Breaking the Mold: Developers Edition Artbook Cover Contest" were announced on cultofrapture.com.

A prequel novel, titled BioShock: Rapture written by John Shirley, was published July 19, 2011. The prequel book details the construction of Rapture and the events leading to its demise. The book follows multiple BioShock characters.

Canceled Universal film adaptation
Industry rumors after the game's release suggested a film adaptation of the game would be made, utilizing similar green screen filming techniques as in the movie 300 to recreate the environments of Rapture. On May 9, 2008, Take-Two Interactive announced a deal with Universal Studios to produce a BioShock movie, to be directed by Gore Verbinski and written by John Logan. The film was expected to be released in 2010, but was put on hold due to budget concerns. On August 24, 2009, it was revealed that Verbinski had dropped out of the project due to the studio's decision to film overseas to keep the budget under control. Verbinski reportedly feels this would have hindered his work on Rango. Then Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was in talks to direct with Verbinski as producer.

In January 2010 the project was in the pre-production stage, with director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Braden Lynch, a voice artist from BioShock 2 both working on the film. By July, the film was facing budget issues, but producer Gore Verbinski said they were working it out. He also said the film would be a hard R. Ken Levine, during an interview on August 30, 2010, said: "I will say that it is still an active thing and it's something we are actively talking about and actively working on." Verbinski later cited that by trying to maintain the "R" rating, they were unable to find any studios that would back the effort, putting the film's future in jeopardy.

Levine confirmed in March 2013 that the film had been officially canceled. Levine stated that after Warner's Watchmen film in 2009 did not do as well as the studio expected, they had concerns with the $200 million budget that Verbinski had for the BioShock film. They asked him to consider doing the film on a smaller $80 million budget, but Verbinski did not want to accept this. In February 2017, Verbinski said that his crew was about eight weeks from starting filming, with plans for many elaborate sets given that the setting of Rapture could not be something easily shot on existing locations, requiring the $200 million budget. Verbinski was anticipating on releasing the film with an R-rating when Universal approached him about changing the film's direction. Universal requested that he tone down the film and aim instead for a PG-13 movie, which would be able to draw more audiences to the film and recoup the larger budget he asked for. Verbinski insisted on keeping the R-rating and refused the smaller budget Universal offered to make the R-rated version. Universal felt that expensive a film with the limited R-rating would be too much of a risk, and pulled him from the film. Universal then subsequently brought in a new director to work with the smaller budget, but Levine and 2K Games did not feel that the new director was a good fit with the material. Universal then let Levine decide to end the project, which he did, believing that the film would not work with the current set of compromises they would have had to make.

In January 2014, artwork from the canceled film surfaced online, showing what an adaptation could have looked like. Verbinski said that there is "all kinds of crazy stuff" from the pre-production stage that still exists, such as screen tests for characters. He noted in the 2017 Reddit piece that with the success of the 2016 film Deadpool, he believes that there is now justification for his vision of the BioShock film.

Netflix film adaptation
In February 2022, Netflix announced it would be adapting the BioShock franchise into a film with Vertigo Entertainment and 2K, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc producing. Francis Lawrence was slated to direct with Michael Green to write, as of August 2022. Green and Lawrence were collaborating on a new draft as of October 2023.

title: BioShock


text: User talk:69.161.49.117

title: User talk:69.161.49.117


text:
Louis Willett

Private First Class Louis Edward Willett (June 19, 1945 – February 15, 1967) was a soldier in the United States Army who received the Medal of Honor posthumously for his actions during the Vietnam War as a member of Company C, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Richmond Hill, New York of Irish and French Canadian extraction, Willett was a graduate of Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens, New York, withdrew from SUNY Maritime College at Fort Schuyler, Bronx, New York in 1965, was drafted while working as a lineman for the telephone company.

Medal of Honor citation
His Medal of Honor citation reads:

 * For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. PFC Willett distinguished himself while serving as a rifleman in Company C, during combat operations. His squad was conducting a security sweep when it made contact with a large enemy force. The squad was immediately engaged with a heavy volume of automatic weapons fire and pinned to the ground. Despite the deadly fusillade, PFC Willett rose to his feet firing rapid bursts from his weapon and moved to a position from which he placed highly effective fire on the enemy. His action allowed the remainder of his squad to begin to withdraw from the superior enemy force toward the company perimeter. PFC Willett covered the squad's withdrawal, but his position drew heavy enemy machinegun fire, and he received multiple wounds enabling the enemy again to pin down the remainder of the squad. PFC Willett struggled to an upright position, and, disregarding his painful wounds, he again engaged the enemy with his rifle to allow his squad to continue its movement and to evacuate several of his comrades who were by now wounded. Moving from position to position, he engaged the enemy at close range until he was mortally wounded. By his unselfish acts of bravery, PFC Willett insured the withdrawal of his comrades to the company position, saving their lives at the cost of his life. PFC Willett's valorous actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country.

title: Louis Willett


text:
Talk:Corinth Canal

Comments
Does the picture of the bungy jumping business really belong here? — B.Bryant 01:12, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I took the photo so i'm pretty biased, but it seems relevant to me. If you can legally bungy jump somewhere, why not mention it? Those places are rather few and far between. --Alterego 04:40, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)

I'm curious about one datum that's missing: how high are the canal's "walls" at their highest? —Tamfang 20:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Sirparkinson (talk) 16:53, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Another fact missing that I am curious about; what did they do with the 10 million odd cubic meters of rock and soil they removed? Hunted all over and nothing!! Anybody have any idea?

Sirparkinson (talk) 16:53, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Cleaning Up
I dont know anything about this place but it seems that it needs clearing up and less pictures on it.

The grammar in this article needs cleaning up. Also, sentences just seem to stop in mid-stream. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eilish99 (talk • contribs) 01:28, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Height of canal walls
The wall height at the highest point is 52 meters [170.6 feet].www.corinthcanal.com 24.15.3.112 20:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)tvbanfield

90m http://www.gosubscriber.com/2013/11/corinthos-canal-greece-history-height.html

170' (51.81m) http://www.marineinsight.com/marine/the-corinthian-canal-a-narrow-man-made-shipping-canal/

63m http://www.sailingissues.com/corinth-canal-diolkos.html

79m (implied) Diolkos

76m http://bashny.net/t/en/11366 Tonyf1 (talk) 02:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Improvements
This could benefit from a current map showing the location within Greece for those around the world who may not know where this is, and for those who cannot make out much from the old map in the history section. It would also be nice to have the costs of construction given, numbers of laborers, and just in general how the modern one was built (steam powered excavators? dynamite? Zeus used a thunderbolt?). And it needs to have the conversions from metric to imperial measurements added, convert can be used for this. Aboutmovies (talk) 10:29, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

It would also be nice to know if the canal has locks or is this a water-level canal? --Paul E Musselman —Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulmmn (talk • contribs) 16:53, 5 September 2010 (UTC) Water-level, no locks, see layout Tonyf1 (talk) 03:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Citation NOT needed...
I don't think the "Citation Needed" at the start of the history section is needed. After stating that several rulers dreamed of a canal "citation needed," the author goes on to list several attempts and plans to do just that. Citation included! --Paul E Musselman

History
What of the German capture of the bridges during World War II? The canal was a strategic barrier. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.121.204.129 (talk) 18:19, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

My great uncle Joseph William Nugent from the 17th Brigade, 2/6th Division Australian Army was killed on 26th April 1941 defending this canal. The wikipedia entry only mentions British forces. Would appreciate this oversight being fixed. Here is the reference The battle at Corinth in Australia in the War of 1939–1945. Series 1 – Army - Volume Vol2 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.165.176 (talk) 11:33, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

 * Done. Gould363 (talk) 13:05, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Portage railway?
This article has a "see also" link to portage railway. And the article portage railway asserts that the Corinth Canal is a portage railway. Granted, prior to the canal, there was an overland portage route here. But there is no indication there has ever been a railway there. Geo Swan (talk) 01:30, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Added see also Diolkos, this article discusses the function of the wheel grooves and whether they constitute a railway Tonyf1 (talk) 02:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Re-opened
Re-opened July 2022, according to the Daily Telegraph of 2022-07-13. 94.30.84.71 (talk) 13:07, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Width?
"it can accommodate ships only of a width up to 17.6 metres (58 ft)"

but

"In October 2019 ... a 22.5 metres (74 ft) wide ... cruise ship successfully traversed the canal" 2A02:AA1:102B:6CF6:8C10:53DC:2590:EBA0 (talk) 20:13, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Corinth Canal