While I sit and stew because I can’t play Rock Band 2 on my PS3 yet, news comes that LittleBig Planet, the multi-player platformer where building your own levels is part of the game, will be out in less than a month. It’s a game that, like Spore, runs on player creativity. Good stuff :) I’ll definitely be checking it out. They have some early adopter rewards – you can see those and get more detail at the writeup on Wired.com. ...
I was exploring further up the galactic arm that is home to my main system, when after a small gap in the arm (easily bridged by Interstellar Drive 5), I came across a small T1 planet circling a yellow star… There was no animal life on Earth, but Mercury and Titan both were harboring nests of pirates. All I can think is that pirates wiped out life on Earth. ...
Gas Powered Games, creators of Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege II, Space Siege, and Supreme Commander, is bringing the Warcraft III “Defense of the Ancients” mod to your computer in an entirely new game. Raise a demigod, crush the enemy, it looks like a cross between DotA and Shadow of the Colossus. If you’re at all interested in multiplayer tactical PvP, they’re letting people who pre-order by September 19th into the beta. ...
God, I miss Rock Band so much. When I started working for Massively, my son had just joined the Marines, and nights were quiet and free of any family obligations or having to make dinner (I eat mostly steamed rice and vegetables when I’m by myself). Every evening while the rice was cooking, I’d sit down with Rock Band, go online, and duel people on drums on HARD. THAT was a workout. I bought a mike stand so I could two-box, singing and guitar. ...
`` I promise, after this, no more Spore posts. The most fun in the game is creating creatures and space ships. Tonight I made a Pierson’s Puppeteer from Larry Niven’s “Known Space” stories – it’s been done by others, but I like mine best. I made Corporal Legs and the spaceship Serial Peacemaker from Howard Tayler’s “Schlock Mercenary” web comic, and a couple others. I was surprised nobody had done stuff from Schlock already. ...
Baby Diver looks for food, flagella and true love in the primordial goo of Spore’s Cell Phase. If there’s one lesson to be learned from playing Spore, it’s that you are unimportant, life will go on without you, and your only legacy left to an uncaring universe might be that some bit of you will live on afterward in something – or someone – else. MMOs and other single player games try to reassure us that we’re important, at the center of the universe. Spore has no such comforts. You’re a faceless minion and you’re gonna die. At some point you have to give up your false notion that you’ll go on forever, and just enjoy being where you are, living in the moment. ...
I know, you want to see pictures :/ But when I’m home, I’m playing Spore! I’ll put some up tonight. If you have Spore, you can see all my stuff by putting “tipadaknife” on your buddy list. I put Bildo and Darren on, and now I have some of their stuff trundling along in my world. It’s always fun to see a friendly face, though most of the stuff on the worlds I encounter are the things I made in Sunday’s game. ...
I’ll have a better review up in a day or two when I have played through more of the Galactic Conquest game, but basically, here’s what I thought of it. The game is split into a bunch of stages, most of which are very short. You aren’t in the cell stage for more than half an hour – in fact, it’s really hard to slow things down much. I found it difficult as a herbivorous single-celled animal to find new parts, since I couldn’t kill other creatures for theirs. ...
Was checking up on Metaplace’s progress – Areia will always be in my heart as the one game developers who actually read my resume – and got to playing with their tile transition tool. It does two things: Makes any pattern tile with itself, and then calculates transition tiles to smoothly transition from one tile to another. It’s meant to make it easy to construct tile-based landscapes, either the 2D ones like in the Legend of Zelda, or the 2.5D games like Ultima Online and other isometric games. ...
I can’t believe you guys had NEVER heard of the bands I listen to. I mean, I’m hardly on the cutting edge, and these bands aren’t that obscure… Okay, backstory here for those who weren’t on Vent last night during our Veksar run. Rogbog was web-casting our Nostalgia night to the world (interest when it was us killing dragons: high. Interest when it was us grinding levels and AA: low). Anyway, he was running some music behind the video, I asked him who it was, he said , I thought they reminded me of and I happened to mention some of the bands I listened to, and nobody had heard of any of them… Now usually people make fun of my musical tastes because I like 70s bands like Jethro Tull and Blue Oyster Cult, but THESE bands aren’t old… so I was surprised. ...