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The guys over at Penny-Arcade have The Old Republic as the focus for today’s strip, check it out here:
In an interview with CVG, Game Director James Ohlen discusses a new end-game planet named Denova, the full release of the “Legacy” system, Guild Banks and much more!
Here’s a snippet:
Well Game Update 2 is much bigger in scope. It’s further out from launch, so we can have much more of the team focussed on it. There’s Part 2 of Rise of the Rakghouls, a brand new planet called Denova which has an 8-16 man Operation and a new Warzone. So that’s three big pieces of content.
We might also be able to get some new space game missions into it. In addition to that we have single player content that you’ll be able to go through as well…
In terms of game systems we’re releasing the full Legacy system. It’s a system that really benefits players who like to play alts – instead of having characters who have no relation to each other you can create a family, and when you’re playing any member of that family you earn experience points for your Legacy tree.
You can read the entire interview here, courtesy of CVG.com:
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/332031/interviews/star-wars-old-republic-11-weve-already-got-people-working-on-content-for-2013/?page=1
GameSpy have interviewed BioWare Austin’s Game Director James Ohlen, in the interview you’ll find information about the upcoming patch (hits Tuesday) that focuses around the Rakghoul creatures.
Here’s a snippet:
GameSpy: So, what’s got the Rakghouls so angry that they’re rising up?
James Ohlen: If you’re familiar with Knights of the Old Republic, or the world of Taris in The Old Republic for that matter, they’re the creatures that, if they infect you, you can turn into a Rakghoul yourself. The Rakghoul plague is becoming weaponized, there’s a danger of seeing it spread throughout the galaxy.
So Rise of the Rakghouls is a Flashpoint that’s for level 50 characters. We’ve been working on it for more than a year. It’s pretty epic, it’s really huge, it’s got a vast scope in the story. It’s story-heavy — we have some Flashpoints that are story-heavy and some that are story-light. The first ones that you played were the story-heavy Flashpoints, and that’s the type of Flashpoint that Rise of the Rakghouls is going to be. Part one comes out with our game update next week, and then part two comes out in our game update that comes in March.
Here’s the full interview:
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/bioware-mmo-project/1216434p1.html
Natural-Selection 2 has been updated to include the following changes:
Balance
- Buying mines now gives you 2 mines instead of 3.
- Increased mine arm time from 3 seconds to 4 (to reduce them in-combat).
- Mine health, armor, and point value lowered.
- Mines now set off other nearby mines when they explode.
Fixes
- Alien commanders are no longer able to see flamethrower effects when they don’t have LOS to the Marine firing it.
- Dropped weapons no longer collide with the player controller.
- Fixed bug where console commands on the server were not properly verified to be coming from a local client.
- Fixed bug where players were not always frozen during the round start countdown period.
- Fixed bug where sometimes ready room players could become frozen during the round start countdown period.
- Fixed bug where the game did not use the Lua entry points specified in the game_setup.xml file.
- Fixed rally points.
- Fixed various script errors (thanks dePara!).
- Prevent slowing down of leap when leaping off a wall.
- Removed additional resource display for alien buy menu.
- Restored docking props to the build.
- Changed nano-shield "create" and "take damage" sounds from 2D to 3D (so you don’t hear them everywhere).
- Skulks will not land on their back anymore when jumping from the ceiling in tight corridors.
- Less dubstepy nano shield damage sound.
Restart your Steam client if the auto-update didn’t kick in.
Patch 1.0.2d is now live, here’s the changelog:
1.0.2d Patch Notes 1/12/2012
Items
- Fixed an exploit that allowed the removal of Armoring item modifications that were not intended to be available for removal on Artifact quality items.
Flashpoints and Operations
- Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from resetting their active Flashpoint.
- Using “Reset All Active Operations” no longer causes Soa and the Ancient Pylons to respawn even if the player is currently locked out of these encounters.
Flashpoints
Bug Fixes
Operations
-
Eternity Vault
Restart your Steam client if your build hasn’t auto-updated. Here’s the changelog:
Features
- Added Whip "bombard" ability. Mature Whips can throw ball projectiles to destroy metal structures and corrode marine armor.
- Added skill-based movement to Skulk: try jumping off walls and props for a small speed boost
- Added support for ladders
- Added loading screens
- Added the ability to connect to a server while it is still loading
- Added changemap console command to the server to change the map while keeping the clients connected
- Pressing tab when running the dedicated server opens the console window
- Added average packet choke percentage to the net_stats display
- Added net_snapshot command on the server to log information about the state snapshots being sent to clients
- Changed the net_classes console command to output information about the size of the individual fields in the class
- Changed the net_log console command to accept a number specifying how verbose it is
- Added net_log, net_loss and net_lag console commands to the server
- Added retry console command to reconnect to the server last connected to (Thanks acid_rain!)
- Added an option in options.xml to disable multi-threaded rendering
- Added an option in options.xml to restrict the number of frames the CPU can get ahead of the GPU (defaults to 1)
- Added multiple collision representations for objects to make some targets easier to shoot, movement collision smoother, etc.
Balance
- Flamethrower and shotguns don’t slow you down quite as much now
- Hydras have more forgiving collision shapes
Fixes
- Reduced input latency
- Parasite is no longer removed when a Marine enters the command station (Thanks Motig!)
- Fixed teamNumber out of range error message for doors
- Removed duplicate error messages when a file could not be precached
- Leaping while Parasite is the active ability will now play the leap sound effect
- Fixed bug where ARC cannot deploy during attack mode
- ARCs will stop their charge up effects when undeploying
- Fixed issue where the server would choke client snapshot packets incorrectly
- Alerts that trigger when a Hive or Command Station are taking damage will now always be heard by players no matter how far away from the structure they are
- Fixed the mouse cursor not being properly displayed
- Voice over will no longer announce "Command Station is under attack" when the Infantry Portal is being attacked
- The backpedal step sound will no longer play while side stepping, the normal step sound plays in this case now
- Changed how potential Egg spawn points are calculated to ensure enough exist around each Hive (Thanks Matso!)
- Fixed bug in Egg spawn time calculation code when a player spawns from an Egg (Thanks Matso!)
- Whips will now trigger mines when walking over them
- Fixed bug where mines would play the spawn item effect each time they get revealed for a player
- Player names won’t get truncated anymore at the first space in the spectator message
- Mini-cysts may no longer be connected through walls and ceilings (Thanks Matso!)
- Flamethrower will no longer do more damage the faster the trigger is pressed
- Resource points will show the steam effect when the attached resource tower is visible
- Smashed tech points will now only adjust their animation state once they have been scouted (prevents early scouting of alien start point by marine commander)
- Egg mist effect will now be triggered client side only if that egg is visible (prevents early game hive scouting through the egg mist being visible)
- Med/ammo packs cannot be used anymore to scout alien start locations
- Gorge will no longer be spammed with messages if they hold down the build Hydra button in an area it cannot be built
- Marines that are Parasited or on standing on Infestation will now be sighted and show on up the minimap (Thanks Matso!)
- Fade may no longer stab while blinking
- Fixed calculation of ping times
- Fixed a networking bug with acknowledging reliable packets
- Marine rifle bash will no longer hit the wall behind the Marine
- Fixed bug making it appear that Parasite can be used more often than it actually can be used
- Structures/units will not update their energy anymore until the round has started
- Fixed a bug where marines blood effect plays at world origin when hit by spikes or heal spray
- Health circles will properly display for each individual entity selected as commander now instead of sharing one health circle
- Fixed bug where players were not always frozen during the round start countdown period
- Fixed bug where sometimes ready room players could become frozen during the round start countdown period
- Fixed unclean shutdown of the dedicated server
- Fixed shutdown process when exiting from a script error or an assert so that it doesn’t crash or generate additional errors
Sound
- Hooked up special hit sound effect for the Lerk spike played on the Marine
- Hooked up special hit sound effect for the Gorge spit projectile played on the Marine
Optimizations
- Path is no longer constantly generated for AI units (Thanks Matso!)
- Improved performance of code that searches for nearby usable entities for a Marine on the Client
- Inventory weight is only calculated when the inventory changes instead of every frame
- Some of the sentry effects are now handled client side only (reduces network traffic)
- Optimized Lua memory allocator
- Changed physics objects to use instancing and aggregates
- Server no longer simulates rag dolls unnecessarily
SDK
- New CSS-based UI layout system (not in use yet)
- Changed child entities to only be relevant if their parent is relevant (used to force the parent to be relevant if a child was relevant)
- Removed redundant Client.SetMouseCaptured function
- Added collision representation parameter to sweep API functions
Now we’re back to work on "Gorilla", which will include the Onos, Jetpack and some other juicy features…
Natural-Selection 2 gets better with every update! Some would say it’s evolving nicely…. Haha! Get it? Because Darwin… forget it.
Source: http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2012/1/build_190_released
First up, maintenance. The official blog has this to say:
Hi everyone,
We wanted to let you know that we have rescheduled last Tuesday’s maintenance for tomorrow, January 12th. All game servers will be offline starting from 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) until 6AM CST (4AM PST/7AM EST/12PM GMT/1PM CET). This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended.
Rescheduled Maintenance
Date: Thursday, January 12th, 2012
Time: 2AM CST (12AM PST/3AM EST/8AM GMT/9AM CET) to 6AM CST (4AM PST/7AM EST/12PM GMT/1PM CET).
All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours.
Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.
Secondly, the issue of your characters having low-resolution textures during game-play but high-resolution textures during cut-scenes… apparently that’s not a bug, it’s as intended.
Baffling stuff.
Stephen Reid starts his explanation on the official forums with this:
Hey everyone, thanks for bearing with us as we investigated the concerns raised here.
After investigation, it seems that the confusion here is a combination of a UI issue that’s been resolved and a feature that’s working as intended, but the reason why it’s ‘working as intended’ needs explanation.
First, the UI issue. The preferences menu as it is seen on the Public Test Server for version 1.1 of the game is correct – there are only supposed to be two texture choices, ‘Low’ and ‘High’. This replaces the original three-choice preference of Low/Medium/High because in reality, there was never supposed to be a ‘Medium’ choice – that was a bug.
Here’s where we need to explain. As many of you have noted, your character in the game world is rendered using lower resolution textures than inside of cinematic conversation scenes. This was a deliberate decision by the development team. To understand why this was done, I have to briefly talk about MMOs and their engines.
You can read the entirety of it here:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1478869#edit1478869.
It’s a weird decision by the development team but apparently a higher-resolution option is on the way but a long way off as it’s “significant piece of development work”.
Bashiok’s Twitter feed was updated earlier today with a post that confirmed Blizzard are working on porting Diablo 3 to consoles.
There’s no mention of which consoles but I think the Xbox 360 and PS3 are a safe bet.
Source:
https://twitter.com/#!/Bashiok/status/156215812473098240
We’ll be sure to post more news regarding all things Diablo 3 as soon as we have it.
NS2HD has posted a new Natural-Selection 2 video that looks at the technical side of things as they work on optimizing the game to improve stuff like load-times, frame-rates, etc.
The Natural-Selection 2 team is pretty small but their custom-built engine is taking shape nicely and I eagerly await the release of beta build 190.
The WoWHead owners (ZAM Network) have TORHead up but it’s rather lacking and slow to update.
So here’s a nice alternative created by one guy from Reddit:
Go give it look. I personally am enjoying the item set page.
