Spore hasn’t had a meaningful update in a while. Apparently they’re doing alpha testing right now (handing it to testers, probably testers related to the authors, and getting feedback… which is probably biased.)
They didn’t even present at E3. Why? They said “nothing new.”
Apparently the game is by Hungarians, which promises to have badly worded English instructions (if history repeats itself, although the press releases about the game were well phrased so I might just be prejudiced) and beautiful graphics.
The story line that has been released so far is reminiscent of a mix of C&C (Tiberium spreading across the world, changing the face of the Earth) and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (A giant meteor impacts with the Earth, spreading a plague of alien spirits that eat the human soul, forcing man to live in specially designed megacities fighting a losing war.)
The game appears to be an interesting take on RTS (real time strategy) games that has never been done before. Firstly, there is no technology tree. You customize your fighting force by collecting “artifacts” that alter the way your units fight (it has not yet been made clear how this happens) Also, they intend to develop the game to permit cooperative online play for certain scenario content to acquire more powerful objects. (Sort of like a cross between Battle.net or GameSpy and raiding PvE content in an MMOG.)
There will be three playable races.
Gamespot has a good review of this game. It appears from the review that the game returns to the original C&C formula of tanks, tanks and more tanks for victory assurance. Tiberium is back and lethal as ever. In fact, it seems to have covered more than 70% of the globe. Of course, those who have been hardest hit by the Tiberium are either dead or changed. Tiberium is reshaping both man and Earth in it’s image.
Naturally, this creates contention between those who are unaffected (yet) by Tiberium (around 20% of the world’s remaining population) and those who live with it daily (the other 80%). This forms the basis for the Brotherhood of Nod creating a rift and launching yet another Tiberium War.
The game play has returned to the interface “goodness” of the original C&C. The story line partakes a bit of the C&C 2: Tiberium Sun style of story development. Although there are 3 campaigns (one for each faction, GDI, Nod and Scrin), there is only one ending. (Unlike the original C&C, where each campaign ended with total victory of that faction, something that was inherently contradictory, since if Nod won, none of the sequals would make sense… and if GDI won, how could Nod win also?)
If you look at the C&C website you’ll find that (C&C Publisher) Electronic Arts is aiming to make the tournament play a spectator sport. They also run a ticker across the top of the website with some tips and tricks.
C&C was the first RTS (real time strategy) game I played. Before that, I was hooked on TBS (turn based strategy) games. Civilization, Colonization, and sim games such as Populous and SimCity. And some turn-based RPGs like Starflight and Starflight 2.
http://games.kikizo.com/news/200708/015_p1.asp?id=nn#
Peter Molyneux of Fable, Black & White, Dungeon Keeper, Syndicate & Populous fame has set out to create a followup to Fable that will surpass modern computer RPGs and melee combat simulators.
Enter Fable 2.
Not only will your character appearance be dependent upon your play style, but so will the behavior and appearance of your pet (this hasn’t been repeated in recent interviews though) and child. Yes, that’s right, I said child.
Plus, unlike in Fable where you could only play a male character, in Part Deux, you can choose your gender. You will be able to plant the fabled acorn and watch it grow in to a tree in Fable 2. You’ll be able to have a job, invest your money. Slay towns, sleep with whores, fall in love and get married. Hopefully not all at once 
The combat system is “one button” button-mashing. Apparently it will rely more on rythm than combinations. Music and combat graphics will respond to the rythm you choose, which in turn leads the rythm for your attacks. So the “combat music” will be essentially conducted by you and your button-mashing style.
Fable 2 is at least a year away, according to the interview.
I arrived here on Monday and will leave Friday. I was sent to learn about the NSNA 4050 Switch (Nortel Secure Network Access Switch). While the topic is very interesting to me, I don’t think I could keep people’s attention if I got all work focused.
So instead, I’ll talk about the clouds. I brought my digital camera and decided to play with the circular polarizer and take photos of clouds. The Dallas area suffers from (I say suffers because I don’t like) high humidity. Combine high temperature and high humidity, and I’m absolutely miserable.
But, the humidity does make a nice environment to support a plethoria of clouds, like this:
or this
and this
and
and
and
and
and this one, which is my favorite of the bunch
Now, if you don’t know anything about polarization then you could always check out Wikipedia. The summary is, it brightens the blues by blocking specular reflections.
Now, wasn’t that much more enjoyable?
I thought so.
Global Knowledge is pretty much the single source for training information for Nortel products. I’ve been providing support for Nortel products for 8 years now, and the one thing that I think really hurts them is the lack of material that gets published on their products. Cisco training material is readily available at Amazon or Borders. Nortel training material is highly out of date and often no longer in print.
I’ve regularly considered writing a “Nortel PBXs for Dummies” book. But, how would you go about doing something like that?
Global Knowledge is a spin off from Nortel’s Professional Services division. The relationship is still very close and they often share staff. Nortel’s main office in the South is located in Texas, where I went this week.
Sadly (for Nortel) they’ve had to divest themselves of a number of buildings in both the Dallas, Texas area and in the San Francisco, California area. Why? The company had a huge accounting scandel much like those that came out during the end of the dot.com decline. Although not anywhere near as bad as Enron or MCIWorldcom scandels, it was the only major Canadian company that I know of that was caught performing “creative accounting.”
At the GK training facility, they had these kiosks for internet access that I don’t recall seeing the last time I came here…
The one on the left is broken, don’t use it
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