Not sure if this is going to be a MMO or what. Found the link over on the EPU forums.

Transformer: War for Cybertron trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XinVIq8VN4s
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

...but I couldn't help but keep laughing at how terribly illiterate the bio was for one of my teammates on Virtue last night:



It's got that "so bad it's good" vibe going for it, in my opinion.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

In trying to come up with new stuff for the new wiki, I tried to formalise my thought son how speed drives could work (given the known limitations). I didn't get much.

What I do have is below, so have at it.

I was just reading the article in the Fenwiki on Kaboomite when I noticed that it claims that
the Stellvians gathered all the 'easily accessible' fissionables. That got a raised eyebrow from me. The other eyebrow went up at the mention that
they only had three warheads (though I'm pretty sure they went through their share of test warheads).

BTW: Nice stroke of genius in having the Bubbleheads fire those shots - most Fen would figure that the Navy would naturally bring nukes to the table anyways.

Now, I'm not disputing either of those claims, but it does make me wonder what constitutes 'easily accessible' in this case, becaus there honestly
has to be a lot more fissionable materials out there than only enough to make three warheads.

Reason I'm wondering is because Fenspace!Ben is interested in wave-enhanced nuclear energy. Sure, people are tinkering with some interesting stuff, but
that doesn't mean he won't do any tinkering himself and basing it off of something that's tried and true 'Dane tech.

(Although, whereas nuclear power is concerned, I understand that some people feel that a grand total of two catastrophic accidents constitutes the abandonment
of progress. Wonder how many catastrophic wildfires got started by cavemen?)

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/01/14/lin-i-chen/]This weekend's "fine art" gallery at Sankaku Complex (warning: it's at Sankaku Complex) actually is fine art - it's a collection of pieces by a Taiwanese artist named Lin I-Chen (who also goes by the name "Eat" for some reason). Many of them bring various game scenarios to mind... or, at least, they do for me. But I don't have time to write up 42 different plot or character seeds, and I don't game in some of the genres shown.

So I thought I'd open this up to everyone to take part. Pick an image and tell us how it can be used in a game.

The files are named in the format "lin-i-chen-eat-###.jpg", with ### replaced by a number from 001 to 042. Let's refer to them as "Image ###" with ### replaced by the appropriate number. For example:

• Image 13 is obviously set in a supernatural wuxia setting. The young lady is the sister of a swordsman who you defeated last game session; in her grief and anger, she has made a pact with the undead in order to take revenge upon her brother's killers. Can you defeat her and her spectral minions? A heel-face turn on her part isn't possible, because of her pact - you'll have to defeat her in combat... or some other way.
  
• Image 13 (again) is obviously set in a fantasy setting. The young lady is a summoner/fighter, using her skills to defend her homeland against an even worse threat. But there's a battle coming that she knows she isn't powerful enough to win on her own, so this mysterious stranger has come to a tavern...
  
• Image 13 (yet again) is obviously set in a fantasy setting (again). This swordswoman has been cursed; can you help her retrieve the rare item needed to break the curse? Time for an old-fashioned dungeon delve!
  
• Image 37 is a picture of your Illuminati University character's NPC love-interest. What is that... whatever-that-is under her arm, that she's brought to Esoteric Engineering class today?
  

The light stopped pulsing and suddenly coalesced to form a
holographic image of Usagi in "princess mode", complete with all
the accessories she'd acquired in the last moments of the battle
against Beryl -- the golden breastplate over her gown; the crown
with six points, one each of earth, water, fire, ice, lightning
and light; and God's Toothpick (!) with the crescent moon wand
mated to one end to turn the whole thing into something like a
bishop's crozier, with the Ginzuisho blazing like white fire at
its center. Her eyes were closed, and there was an expression of
(forgive me) serenity on her relaxed face.

"Ohmygod!" Dawn screeched. "That's... That's Serena!"

"Usagi," I corrected absently. "Her name is Tsukino Usagi."

"But..." Dawn began, and at that moment the image's eyes snapped
open. It looked straight ahead, as if into some unseen camera,
and did not seem to acknowledge either of us.

"Hello, Doug-Sensei," the image of Usagi said in faintly-
accented English, and I smiled fondly at the sound of it. (Need
I note that she sounded nothing like the actress in the cartoon?)
Usagi could speak English perfectly without an accent -- like
Dee, she'd acquired complete fluency from a magical accident --
but she loved the idea of sounding "exotic" to native speakers,
even ones who knew better (like yours truly). It was one of her
few concessions to a minor streak of vanity she normally kept
well suppressed. "I'm not entirely sure this will work, but if
it does, yay me." She grinned without quite looking at me, and I
suddenly felt a pang of loss. Usagi and the other Sailor Senshi
-- Makoto especially -- had been like daughters to me. And I had
seen all of them but Usagi fall to Beryl's forces before I'd
suicided to take out the dark queen's fortress.

*Before I'd *suicided*...*

A surge of hope washed away the loss as I realized something that
should have been painfully obvious to me years earlier.

"I wanted to let you know that in the end, I beat Beryl, and with
the leftover power given to me by everyone I told the Ginzuisho
to bring you all back, which it's done. It's also going to set
things up so that you can move on. But before that, I wanted
to..." Her eyes grew shiny. "I wanted to tell you that we're
all okay, even after everything that happened, and that we love
you, and that we'll miss you. And please come back to us some
day, if you can."

"Oh, Usagi-aijou..." I murmured.

"Wow," Dawn breathed. "What did you do?"

"I taught them," I said softly. "And advised them. And died for
them."

Dawn looked at me with wide eyes. "You went to the Negaverse
with them!"

"Dark Kingdom. Yeah," I said, studying the holograph, which
seemed to have paused itself while we spoke. "I used my metagift
to basically detonate a nuke in the heart of Beryl's palace."

"Whoa," she breathed. "That's nothing like how the cartoon
ended."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't know about a cartoon. I just know about
real life."

Dawn turned from me and was studying the quiescent image. "And
what she's wearing is different, too. I mean, she had the dress
in the cartoon, too, but not the armor stuff. And the crown...
wow. That's just amazing."

"You really think so?" The image suddenly turned to look
directly at Dawn, who shrieked and jumped back.

"It talked to me!"

The image of Usagi blinked, and looked Dawn up and down. "Oh,
I'm sorry, I thought you were Rei for a moment."

"That's been going around," I muttered under my breath.

Trembling, Dawn raised her arm and pointed a finger at the image.
"I thought *you* were a *recording*!"

Usagi gave an embarrassed smile and rubbed the back of her head
with her right hand. "Um. Well, I *am*. Kinda." She emitted a
very familiar nervous chuckle.

"Usagi," I said, dropping back into my "sensei voice" with her
for the first time in decades, "what did you *do*?"

Her smile shifted from embarrassed to sheepish and her affected
accent disappeared. "I guess I sorta kinda put too much of
myself in the message? And I forgot to put a terminal condition
on the enchantment."

"So I've been carrying a soulprint of you in my head for all
these years? Why the hell haven't you played before now?"

"Um." She looked over at Dawn, who was still staring with wide
eyes, and then back at me. "I think I flubbed the activation
conditions, too." I rolled my eyes, but when I opened my mouth
to comment, she scowled at me. Which on her just looked
adorable. "Give me a break, Sensei! I'd just had everyone die
on me, even the ones who were dead to start with, I'd just beaten
Beryl, I'd resurrected *everyone* the Kingdom had killed, *and*
I'd rewound the whole planet a year to give us all a 'do-over'.
*Plus* I set myself up as the guardian to watch over everything
in case some other threat popped up. *And* I made sure you got a
portal that would carry you toward your home world! You're not
going to get on my case for messing up a... a... a phone message,
are you?" Her lower lip began to quiver, and as her eyes began
to swim with tears, all the confidence of Serenity II vanished
from her; light rippled across her form, and then she was back in
her school uniform. She looked more like the schoolgirl I'd
first met one busy night than the Queen she had become.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

But vote for which three cities you want to see on the planned revised Monopoly Canada board. http://www.monopolyvote.ca/en_CA/world]The poll can be found here.

(All three of the cities I vote for are currently on the leader board! Yay!)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Star Trek Online started Open Beta on Tuesday. Now, I figure everyone here's a gamer, and an MMO gamer, at that. So here's a look at my past couple days, boldly going where...okay, a few hundred thousand beta players have already gone before. But still...



This is a pretty game. This is a very pretty game. My graphics settings are actually pretty low, because I want better framerate - but even with stuff dialed down, it looks incredible. The visuals need to be awesome in a Star Trek game, I think. And they've delivered on that score.
Feels good, too. Once you've got the hang of it, controls in this game, both in space and on the ground, are very logical and very tight. It's a joy in particular to fly around adjusting power levels and shields, while banking and turning...


Obviously the primary attraction for many players is the space gameplay. And the space environments here are brilliant - they actually manage to make space a real landscape. Star systems in this game actually do look unique. And pretty.

Starships are customisable - you get to configure the look, within a given layout for your ship type. The starter level-1 ships are all variations of the Miranda-class from Star Trek II, but as you can see from my example...you can do quite a bit to make it look different.
After all, your ship's essentially a second avatar - and much like how characters in City of Heroes and Champions are all about the customisation, so are the starships here.


Starship combat in this game is highly tactical. Think of slow-moving wet navy ship combat, from the age of sail...with everyone trying to get in position for a broadside. Except it's in space. In three dimensions.

Very basically, you need to gun down enemy shields, and then fire torpedoes at their exposed hull. But there's all sorts of wrinkles there; relative speed and turn rate...different weapon firing arcs, different weapon types (Cannons, Torpedoes, Turrets, Mines, Single Beams, Dual Beams)... and then there's special abilities like Tractor Beams, Boarding Parties...yeah.
It's easy to learn, hard to master. The basics are easy to comprehend, but there's lots of complexities. Which is cool. It feels starship-y.


Instead of a world map, interstellar space is a 'galaxy map'. The game calls this 'sector space'...you're actually flying your starship through a giant map.

It's an interesting stylistic choice. Not everyone likes it, but I do. I think it's really awesome and classy. A really smart way to depict interstellar travel, instead of just warping from point A to point B.
It also seems to be the place to hang out and chat...or look for groups, the old fashioned 'broadcast' way. Though that's a lot less necessary in this game. More on that later.

Character customisation in this game is...something else. Champions Online took what CoH had to a whole new level. This game goes Champions one better. The face and body sliders are just awesome. There's several sliders for scar and tattoo scaling alone. And a shiny-slider for the hair. I've been fairly traditional in my own design choices, but you can actually make, like, superdeformed anime proportions in this game. And if you wanna give your character a beer belly, you can...

But the canon races like Vulcans, Klingons, Ferengi and so on have a narrower range of customisation options - the character creator actually limits what you can do based on your race preset. It works VERY well.

You have full customisation for both your own avatar, and those of your bridge crew. Yeah. I said crew.



Because in STO, you don't just play a captain. You play a captain AND crew. You get to choose and customise your supporting cast. In space, they provide most of your abilities. And on the ground...if you're solo, they come with you as NPCs.

The ground game is always based around a five-man team - even if there's only one human player. Of course, human teammates will occupy slots as you bring 'em on board, but there's a robust system for handling the NPCs. This isn't Guild Wars...this is more like Mass Effect. Seriously, think Mass Effect. NPCs whom you can command to shoot, move around, use abilities...

You can even pause the game to issue commands. That's right. There's a pause button. In an MMO.
Generally, ground combat is very much like Mass Effect as well - quasi-shooter, with crouching, ducking, rolling. Weapons are your main firepower, backed up by special abilities. Positioning is quite important. The core mechanic is expose/exploit - get 'em vulnerable, and then crit 'em for massive damage.



The game isn't all combat, though most of it is. But there's a LOT of content in this game. Tons. The tutorial alone is like a two hour mission.

Then there's the random stuff. Instead of newspaper missions, STO has 'Exploration Missions'. But even this is awesome.

The devs have a procedural generator to churn out tons of random missions with scenery and maps pieced together - it actually constructs different architectural and geographical styles. So the missions LOOK different, even if the structure is the same.

But then...the mission text isn't 'madlib', because each 'random' mission has had unique text written for it. The devs have gone in and hand-written dialogue for each generated mission. And there are reportedly thousands of missions. Even the random stuff has storylines.



Missions in STO take you between space and ground - often a few times during the same mission. I'd say a slight majority of the game still takes place in space - at least in the content I've done so far. But it's a fair mix.

I honestly think they've succeeded in making this not just a great Star Trek game, but a great MMO in general. There's a lot of innovative ideas - the Exploration Missions, for instance. PvP is genuinely pretty damn fun. Not balanced - but what PvP is? Fun, though. That's important.

Then there's auto-grouping. This is an optional feature - by default it's turned on, but it's easily disabled. Some folks, of course, don't like it. But design-wise, for the average player, it's brilliant. When you enter a mission instance, the game automatically tracks other players just starting that mission...and puts together the team for you. The game PuGs FOR you.

And most of the auto-PuGs I've been on - all but one - worked out damn well. Imagine that.



Of course, this is just a beta. But strangely, it's a lot more stable than some launch MMOs I've played. Definitely better than Champions. The server was laggy as hell on the first day of beta, but it's totally fixed now. No crash or disconnect issues for me.

No real showstopper bugs either; most bugs being reported are things to do with quests and game balance, items and NPCs with incorrect stats, menu quirkiness, that sorta thing...rather than major functionality issues.

In summary - I'm really liking this. When I played Champions, it was a clear case of...I like this about the game, but that really sucks...the game's not bad when you get around that problem...

I've found nothing to hate about STO. I'm a Trek fan, you understand. But that doesn't mean I'm gonna be forgiving. Rather, my expectations are higher. And this game's pretty much meeting them. Maybe I'll be more cynical once I've been playing this for longer - but so far? It looks good.
-- Acyl

... and I discovered that of the whole bunch, only Kat and I are counted among the Secret Masters of Fandom. I am amused and curious -- may I ask how that
determination was made?
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

New thread marker placed.