Marty
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Why putting googly eyes on robots makes them inherently less threatening
At the start of 2019, supermarket chain Giant Food Stores announced it would begin operating customer-assisting robots -- collectively dubbed Marty -- in 172 East Coast locations. These autonomous machines may navigate their respective store using a laser-based detection system, but they're also outfitted with a pair of oversize googly eyes. This is to, "[make] it a bit more fun," Giant President Nick Bertram told Adweek in January, and "celebrate the fact that there's a robot."
Paragon Studios introduces MARTy to City of Heroes for Issue 21
There's someone special for players to meet with the newest update to City of Heroes -- MARTy. From the name you might think that MARTy is a Clockwork NPC, or a Freakshow, or maybe even a new developer. But MARTy is none of the above. MARTy is an acronym for Metric Activated Reward Throttle (plus a "y"), and it's a new system being put into place to help ensure that the game remains free of exploits for free players and paying players alike. So what does MARTy do? Scan for exploitative behavior and cut it short. The system monitors player activity for exploitative experience, influence, or reward gains, and people who trip the system stop receiving rewards for a short time. The official FAQ on the system makes it clear, however, that even players aggressively leveling with experience boosters shouldn't hit MARTy's radar. The only way to hit it is by exploiting the game engine for overly accelerated gains, at which point you get shut down. And with City of Heroes Freedom opening the door to everyone, it might be good to have an anti-exploit gatekeeper in place.
More Halo 3 footage for your Halo obsessed soul
Bungie has posted a video featuring a behind the scenes look at the creation of the Halo 3 trailer, complete with commentary from several Bungie employees and footage of the orchestra and choir that was used to create the backing music. If, for whatever reason, you can't view the video, here's a quick summary of the content: Amusing quotes if taken out of context: Marty shows early signs of dementia with his paranoid "Where are we? Who is this? What's happening?" sound bite. A few snippets of unseen footage, mainly from different angles of the Halo 3 trailer. This could possibly be proof that the trailer was rendered in real time, although it's very likely that the sound, AI and everything else was pre-rendered. Some more mystery surrounding cortana: dare we say she's gone rampant? A lot of meaningless marketing lines that amount to not much more than hype. Phrases like "dynamic", "real stuff" and "that epic feel" don't tell us much about how Halo 3 is coming along. Overall, there isn't that much new to see here, although if you're a fan of Halo (who isn't?) the video is probably worth a few moments of your time. [Image: Emily Fulford]
