After years of following the development, Star Trek Online is finally in closed beta, and the game is on track for a early 2010 release
The cryptic character creator will allow you to invent new species for the game, and I might go for something like this:
Or if that is not possible my character will be Andorian (assuming this fits well with a tactical/dps character). I’m in the “guild” called “12th fleet”, and we are now the second largest guild on the STO forum. So if you want to play with the pro’s, head over to http://www.12th-fleet.com
In addition to the brand new game, a remake of the original Secret of Monkey Island with better graphics/audio will be released on Steam in 7 hours from now. I’m really looking forward to this as the graphics in the original is not really great and does not compare well to Monkey Island 2 (which still looks great)
I guess this is the summer of the Monkey, which is AWESOME
Update – June 20th
Now I finally played trough the whole thing, and it was great!
The new graphics/effects/music/speech really made it much more playable than the original version, which really has started to show signs of old age with pretty gloomy and ugly graphics.
The game only cost 9€ on Steam.. I would gladly pay 30€ for a similar remake of Monkey Island 2 which is 5 times better than the first one, but I think I might start playing the second game now anyway, since the graphics there are way better than the original Secret of Monkey Island.
The latest Monkey Island game called “Tales of Monkey Island” came out about a week ago. The game is divided up into 5 episodes, and one episode will be released monthly by telltale games.
I am a HUGE Monkey Island fan, and have played all the game several times, but I was somewhat skeptical of this new game. I had previously tried the Wallace & Gromit and the Sam’n'Max game from Telltale games and I hated them (both were the demos on steam).. Did not like them.. The controls were awkward and I did not like the game engine at all. The stories also did not seem very good.
Luckily after playing for 10 minutes I was glad to know that the first episode of the game “Launch of the screaming narwhal” was nothing like this.
The gameplay was fun, but maybe a bit to easy (used a little under 4 hours on it) compared to the other games. I like the environment, the atmosphere and the gameplay. It really feels like a Monkey Island game and is definitely worthy of the Monkey Island name
update: May 10th 2011
So, I just finished chapter 5 (last one).. I must say that Telltale did a really good job on all of the chapters and stayed true to the Monkey Island feeling. The story was great right up until the very end. Also I might also have a crush on Morgan LeFlay now
Who can’t remember that godawful piece of crap video format/player called Real Player?
Seeing that format and player failed miserably, RealNetworks inc had to invent another way to push crappy malware infested junk on people, and voila: RealArcade is born.
RealArcade.com is a site which has lots of small games you can buy and download (It’s a really crappy version of Steam).
Here are the effects that have manifested themselves so far while trying to install a Demo of tropix 2:
It first nags you to install a browser toolbar (always a good indicator of crappy unprofessional software)
You get to select a install directory, but it places a xml file in the parent directory just for fun
It installs lots of files directly on your C: drive (RealArcade.exe, lots of DRM crap, and some directories).
Uninstalling does NOT remove all the files this shitty software leaves around your computer
It seems to mess with the Windows firewall, which now tries to block everything (including Firefox).
So my advice to anyone who is contemplating getting a real arcade account or downloading anything from it:
Easter is almost over, and I used most of the time to complete the Trekwar shipdesigner, and set up lots of hulls for it.. I also created a chat system for the game.
ShipDesigner:
Faction Hulls:
x
Chat:
I was planning to implement the ship actions, like colonization and ship combat this easter. But I think I’ll work on the Starsystem management system instead, as I redesigned it heavily this easter.
I decided to add Deuterium as a resource in Trekwar, it can be collected from nebulas or by owning star systems that have gas giants in them. Ships also now need deuterium to move, and can run out of gas if you don’t plan your logistics.
Deuterium and maintenance has been added to the menu bar, and fuel to the temporary fleet box
I finally got around to implement the new ship system for the Trekwar game.
Ships are no longer static objects with fixed attributes (weapon, shields, armor, etc..).
All ships are no based on a specific hull, which has some base armor and crap, + X number of slots you can put equiptment in. Below is the starting ship of all factions in the game:
If you noticed that this is the design of a Maquis raider, give yourself a cookie!
I got lot of Starship components to add, and so far I’ve just added ‘Warp Core’, ‘Colonization module’, ‘armor’, ‘beam emitters’ (phasers) and ‘Shield emitters’.
One new thing I implemented today was ship speeds. Unlike in Civilizzation / Birth of the Federation, where units can only move 1 or 2 tiles each turn. Ships in Trekwar can have a speed of 1.0 (which lets it always move 1 tile each turn) or 0.7 like the colonization ship in the screenshot below:
The upper most ship is a scoutship with a speed of 1.0
The lower ship is a colonization ship with a speed of 0.7, that means when it starts moving it will generate 0.7 movement points.. this is not enough to move a full tile. The next turn it generates 0.7 more and then gets 1.4 movement points.. It can the move 1 tile, and has 0.4 movement points “to spare”.. On the third turn in this example it gets 1.1 movement points and can move again..
Ships with a speed below 1.0 will occationally “miss” a movement while moving a distance. Ships with speeds greater than 1.0 will occationally move 2 (or maybe even 3) tiles in a single turn.
Recently much of my spare time programming has gone to giving the Trekwar client a graphical overhaul.
Now I’ve managed to get most of what I broke, working again (Research and Starsystem Control), and I’ve added a glasspane that shows up and prevents the clicking of buttons (and thus creating a weird state of the client) while each tick is being processed by the server.
Currently the test galaxy is 100×100 tiles and takes about 0.5 seconds to load to client
Unlike the previous version of the game, it is now possible to have many windows active on top of the actual game map.
The system box (far left of the screen) has been changed to display more information, and next up is a complete redesign of the fleet box.
But before making the new fleet box and fleet management system, I’ll have to do some major rewrite of the internal ship system and logic, to support user created ship classes.
I’m looking forward to 8-10 hours of pure java and logic.. There is only so much Swing a man can take
