LucidMagic.net

Looks like the new Neverwinter game being developed by Cryptic Studios isn't going to be a MMORPG after all. It's going to be a cooperative RPG (whatever that means):

Gamespot Article

Should be out in Q4 2011.

-420

I tried to post a .jpg pic and I get this error:

Cannot access attachments upload path!

-420

This is just wrong:


Full Article

-420

Don't know how I missed this one. Apparently it came out last summer:
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

Remake of the original with updated graphics and live sound. Make sure to check out the video.

-420

There is a new government official dedicated to internet security. Their logo apparently contains a secret code on the inner ring and some web site is offering a prize to the first one that breaks it:
Secret Code in U.S. Cyber Command's Logo

Here is the code and a pic:

Code: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a



-420

The official site for Fallout Online is now up. Expect long loading times and timeouts as they seem to be getting a ton of traffic. If you can get the page to load you'll have the opportunity to sign up for the beta.

-420

Stumbled on this today: Origin of Liar Liar Pants on Fire

?Liar, liar, pants on fire. Hangin? on a telephone wire!? is a paraphrased version of the 1810 poem ?The Liar? by William Blake.

Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Shall they dangle in the night?

When I asked of your career
Why did you have to kick my rear
With that stinking lie of thine
Proclaiming that you owned a mine?

When you asked to borrow my stallion
To visit a nearby-moored galleon
How could I ever know that you
Intended only to turn him into glue?

What red devil of mendacity
Grips your soul with such tenacity?
Will one you cruelly shower with lies
Put a pistol ball between your eyes?

What infernal serpent
Has lent you his forked tongue?
From what pit of foul deceit
Are all these whoppers sprung?

Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Do they dangle in the night?

Sweet,
420

Quote from the NY Times:

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war," General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter.

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I was all excited about Dragon Age until I found out it wasn't multiplayer. I was hoping it would be the next gen NWN-style construction RPG instead it's just another NWN2.

-420

You know, I used to like YouTube. It let you stream rare video/audio clips of obscure stuff without delay. Now the worthwhile content has all been removed and what's left seems to be a mishmash of incomplete tidbits, misleading links or just broken/removed entries.

Comments?

-420

Game Banshee posted a press release by HanbitSoft stating that they have acquired the rights to distribute to North America and Europe from Namco Bandai.

What do you want to bet that they won't restore our characters or honor the lifetime subscription?

-420

So, there was this piece of art that Throbble liked at one of the local bars. I had planned to buy it for her birthday in December but last month we saw some jacktard come in and buy it. D'oh!

I had a few options:

1. Chase down the guy and offer to buy it off him  (for more money no doubt).

2. Chase down the guy, kneecap him with an old man's cane and take the piece.

3. Recreate the piece from memory.

4. Burn down the bar.

5. Get in touch with the artist and see if she has another, similar piece for sale.

After a few days of grappling with the options I realized the ship had already sailed on #1 and #2. #3 was unlikely as i never really got a good look at it in the first place. #4 was out of the question because their happy hour is from noon to 7pm ($3 tap beer and 1/2 price pizza), and hey, who is going to burn down a bar with that kind of happy hour?

So I opted for option #5 and the artist told me she'd be happy to make me a piece just like it. Well, it turns out she made one better than the first and it was waiting for me at the bar yesterday. So, not wanting to find a place to hide this thing for two months, I took Throbble out to the bar and gave her an early birthday present.

Check it out:

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Too many games to place too little time.

Dragon Age will be coming out in Nov.

Before you decide to get Dragon Age you should check out what the devs posted to the Dragon Age forum.

DavidSims
Technical Designer

Posted: Thursday, 20 August 2009 04:19PM

First, if you’re looking at making custom content, I would advise not straying too far from the main campaign in terms of setting. Modules don’t necessarily have to be set in Thedas, but if you have a vision for your world that is very different from Thedas in terms of creatures and architecture, you’re going to have to make a massive amount of custom resources at a much higher graphical fidelity than NWN. We’re only providing the assets we needed to make the game. There wasn't much thought given to what creatures and placeables might be useful to a community module.

In terms of limitations, here’s what I can think of.


The following aren’t in the game, probably as no surprise to anybody at this point:

-Multiplayer/DM client.

-Climbing.

-Jumping.

-Swimming.

-Mounts.

-Pushing/grabing objects around in real time.

-Path over path. You can do this but the pathfinding doesn’t support it. In drive mode it works fine, but if you move with point and click or use scripting to move a creature it fails.


The following can be done, but only in hacky ways and were rarely done in the main campaign:

-Day/night. This can only be done with area transitions. No real time

-Placing/picking up objects in the world. Unlike NWN, you can’t drop items into the world, or pick up anything that’s not in a container. For picking up you have to put placeables into the world (and no model exists for most items). For placing you’d have to put an invisible placeable into the world which you click on, which spawns another placeable.

-Destroyable environments. Placeables can be destroyed, but they tend to stick beucase the lighting is different, especially large ones that you’re trying to disguise as part of the background level art. Our artists have found ways to bake the lighting texture into the diffuse texture to pull a decent blend off, but it’s hacky and hard to maintain.

-Ambient usage of objects. You can’t hook an extra object up to an animation. So for instance, outside of a cutscene, you can’t have people drinking from mugs, or working a forge with tools. We actually figured out too late that you can do this with visual effects, so hopefully the community can do a better job of it that we did.


Things that were in NWN that are different/missing from DA:

-Runtime local variables. All variables stored on an object have to be declared in a 2da.

-Custom equipment. NWN was more flexibile in allowing outfits to be made piece by piece and selecting different colours. DA’s armors are one piece and the tinting is limited.

-Accessing objects. You can only grab/effect objects which are in the player’s current area. If you want to change things in other areas, you set plot flags and update the other area in the area load script.

-Beam Effects. DA doesn’t have beam visual effects.

-Using items. Plot items can’t be usable in DA, and generally making items that are not consumed when used is a bit painful.

-Instancing. NWN allows you to modify any property of a placed object. DA has a much smaller list of instanced properties, and expects you to use more templates. I quite like the system, but it might take getting used to.

-Scaling. Creatures and placeables have a fixed size. NWN didn’t have scaling, and neither does DA.

-Putting items into containers. DA doesn’t let the player drag items from their inventory into a container. This functionality is actually included in the engine and can be accessed by changing a parameter in the function call to open the inventory, but users of the custom content probably won’t realize they can do this.

-Placeable actions. Unlike NWN where the player can pretty much do any action on any placeable, DA only supports one action per placeable at a time. The state controller has a list of states and each one has an action. So a placeable can be bashed, or it can be examined, or it can be used, or it can be a container, or it can be an area transition or it can be locked, but it can’t be multiple of these simultaneously. We did at one point have a second action accessed by shift-click, but I think we cut every place we used it in the main campaign and we might have cut the functionality from the engine. It’s something to look into, but even then you’re looking at two actions per placeable and not a radial menu.

I’m sure there are other differences and limitations, but that’s what comes to mind. I have no doubt once people get their hands on the toolset, they will start running up against unanticipated walls.

All that said, it's a very powerful tool that can do a lot of things, especially when it comes to conversation staging and cutscenes. I hope people don't find my list discouraging.

-420

Yes! The monk is back from the Hellfire expansion to Diablo. I will definitely be playing this class.

Diablo III Monk Class

D3 Monk Gameplay Movie

-420

If anyone is interested take a look at the Diablo 3 skill trees for the Barbarian, Witch Doctor and Wizard. Never to early to start planing your build.

-420