So, many of you may be aware of an old SNES game called Earthbound. It is a masterpiece RPG created by Shigesato Itoi, and is certainly recommended for everyone to check out. In an ode to Earthbound, a group called Skyon has created a game to help spread awareness of the Earthbound and the community that loves it, as well as allow those who want an online "Mother"(the title of Earthbound in Japan) experience to have one.
Saturn Valley Online is currently in an open alpha stage, meaning anyone who wants to can see the SVO world take shape as the game nears its more polished stages. The game is very much playable at this point and is certainly worth checking out. I have contributed some work to the project as a member of its development team, but the environment is very open and all users are encouraged to give input and share ideas on how the game can improve and become more polished.
So, check out SVO and Earthbound!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Saturn Valley Online: Ode to Earthbound
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Huxley: The Concept Alone Made Me Write About It
There is a game coming out of Korea (lots of MMOs from there lately) called Huxley. From the footage I have seen from in-game, it is the closest thing to an FPS-MMORPG I have seen to date, and that makes me excited.
Huxley uses the Unreal3 engine, and the footage released by its developer, Webzen, looks pretty dang polished. The game involves two factions, the Sapiens (humans) and the Alternatives (mutated humans). Now, we could see this a lot like factions in other MMO games, where they fight against each other for certain objectives, but this game goes about it quite differently.
Gameplay videos look a lot like fast-paced kind of FPS gaming, but with integrated weapons and skill systems. That should keep things very interested, especially because many are either turned off by or getting sick of the semi-turn based gameplay style that is so prominent in the MMORPG world.
Check out Huxley's site and watch the videos they have up. Keep an eye out for closed and open betas in the early to late fall.
EFiX: The Hackintosh Dream
I have talked a few times about projects where I have put OS X on normal PC hardware, and the process has become less and less complicated as time has gone by. Now there is a group that is claiming to have simplified the process about as much as it can, and recent updates on their site are looking promising.
EFiX has been talking about a USB dongle that would allow you to install MacOS X from an official Apple disc straight to your generic, intel PC. In the past the process of installing Mac OS X to a normal PC has required a patched DVD that contains drivers and EFI emulation that would trick Mac OS X into booting from off-the-shelf hardware, which is why this project is so promising.
Their recent update to their site, though, not only speaks of an internal usb dongle that allows you to Macify your computer, but also a version made for notebooks and one that would plug into PCI slots. I have to admit, this sounds almost too good to be true, but they are saying models are ready.
Can't wait to see one of these in action. I'll keep details posted here.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Another Free TF2 Weekend
As many of you know, Valve released a whole bunch of sweet stuff for the Pyro this week, including new weapons and achievements. Also, they made a "Meet the Sniper" video, which was pretty dang funny. But, we also have some free TF2 coming our way again.
To check out the neat stuff going on with Team Fortress 2 this weekend, check here. You can also get an account setup and start playing TF2 for free this weekend at the same site.
Free gameplay starts tomorrow, Friday June 20th at 11 AM PDT. Enjoy!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Spore Creature Creator
So, I finally got around to checking out the Spore creature creator, and all I have to say is I'm more excited about Spore now than I was before. Details on why after the jump.
First off, the creature creator has already been widely spoken of as it has been demoed in a few different places. Most everyone has been impressed by how dynamic a creature creation system this really is. To kind of give it a comparison, one of the things that really drew me into the game Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion was the character creator. It gave you so much control over how your character would appear in-game. I had a very similar feeling when using the Spore Creature Creator, but this time I felt I had infinitely more control. The system starts you off with a basic, randomly generated torso, which you can then shape (by repositioning vertebrae) and add about anything to you can imagine. Eyes, arms, legs, mouths, anything. It was fun getting really creative and making some very bizarre animals. The Creature Creator is nearly a game in and of itself. Of course, the only thing that made me sad was not being able to actually see the things I made try and eat stuff and run around its environment.
This hasn't completely dispelled my cautious approach to the actual final version of Spore. There are are also a couple of little issues I had with the Creature Creator. Once you make a torso skinny, it cannot be fleshed out again, by what I could tell. Also, when trying to make a snake-like creature with no mouth, the creature creator assumed its head was what I assumed to be the tail. Oh well, minor things that don't keep the program from being fun. So, check out the creator program and enjoy!
Firefox Download Day
Most of you probably know that today is the day to download Firefox, as today is the day the Mozilla Firefox guys are trying to break the world record for getting tons of downloads in one day. This corresponds with their release of Firefox version 3.0, which adds a bunch of neat features and optimizations to the web browser so many have come to enjoy. Read after the jump for a link on where to download and why Firefox is so awesome.
So, if you haven't already, go to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html and get downloading. If you've never used Firefox, this is a great opportunity to get to use a browser that integrates very nice features while using very little memory, especially compared to Internet Explorer.
Firefox has proven, in my experience, to be very secure and speedy while I've used it. I've been using the beta releases of Firefox 3 for a while now, and during the whole time I never had any spyware issues (of course, I'm pretty cautious). Also, the way Firefox utilizes your browser history is really awesome. Finding a site that you have been to recently is much easier, as you don't have to just remember the address, you can actually type in words related to the site and Firefox will check the history and list which sites you may be looking for. Very awesome. Firefox feels a lot more graphically in-sync with all the OS's that I've tried it on, so that is always nice.
So, get Firefox!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Earthbound in Portuguese (Earthbound em Português)
Alright, first bi-lingual entry on my blog! Recently I started a translation project of the game called Earthbound. I will be translating it into Portuguese using some of the tools that can be found at starmen.net. For most of the details in English, check this forum post.
Para ler os detalhes em Português, clique "Read More!"
Este projecto é uma tradução do video game "EarthBound". É bem conhecido no Japão, e têm o nome de "Mother" lá. EarthBound é o segundo no série de Mother e têm montes de pessoas no mundo que realmente ama este jogo. O site starmen.net é um lugar onde montes de pessoas se juntam para falar do jogo e a esforça para ajudar todo mundo ter a oportunidade a jogar EarthBound. Recentemente o jogo foi traduzido pela línua Espanhola por um rapaz que se chama TurboNess, e me decidi que deve ser traduzido para a Português também.
A tradução vai ser no Português do Brasil, mas vou seguir tanto como possível o "Novo Acordo" da grámatica entre Brasil e Portugal para que a maioria das pessoas que quer conhecer este jogo pode.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
OS X Leopard in VMWare
I have always been a fan of Virtual OS stuff, and VMWare is especially awesome. With Apple's change of the OS X Server EULA, VMWare has been working on allowing OS X Server to be virtualized on Apple hardware. But, what if you could run normal Leopard in a VM on any OS you currently use?
Now, discussions of Agreements and EULA aside, people have been able to get OS 10.5 working in VMWare. The two I've found particularly interesting are:
Donk's guide to 10.5.2 on VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta
and
~PCWiz's Leopard on VMWare
PCWiz's version can readily be found online as a prepped and ready vmware install, and I tried it out the other day. It works great, despite not having VMWare tools to help it out. Big problem for me was the lack of Ethernet and USB support, though it looks like people are starting to figure that out.
