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'Hitman' players can soon port their Stadia saves to other platforms
With Stadia set to be shut down next month, players have been understandably worried about losing game progress on the platform.
What economic sanctions mean for Russia's space program
The shockwaves created by these sanctions will impact every strata of Russian society with far reaching consequences for Roscosmos and the continued safe operation of the International Space Station.
Carbon's Trainer is a smart mirror designed to deliver guided workouts
Carbon’s Trainer smart mirror is now available for pre-order at $1,750 on Indiegogo.
Vital Russian cargo ship reaches the International Space Station
After two failed attempts in a row, the International Space Station is once again getting fresh supplies. Russia's Progress 60 cargo spacecraft has successfully docked, bringing with it important batches of equipment, food and fuel. While the station already had enough supplies to hold out until October, the arrival is a huge relief -- the string of disasters (including the Orbital Sciences explosion last year) was spurring talk of returning the crew to Earth if things got much worse. And this isn't the only resupply mission this summer, either. Japan's H-2 craft should launch on August 16th, so the ISS may resume some semblance of normalcy before long. [Image credit: NASA TV]
Watch Russia launch crucial Space Station cargo at 12:55AM ET
The International Space Station has had a tough time getting supplies lately between two rocket explosions and an orbital failure, but it's going to get an important lifeline in the near future... hopefully. Russia is about to launch Progress 60, a cargo ship that will ferry over 3 tons of much-needed food, fuel and other equipment to the ISS. You won't have to wait until its expected Sunday arrival to find out how it fares, though. NASA is streaming the launch at 12:55AM ET -- tune in below and you'll have a sense of whether or not Progress 60 fares any better than its ill-fated predecessor. Update: After a successful launch, Progress 60 is on its way to the ISS. It's scheduled to dock with the station at 2:30AM ET Sunday, which will also be covered live on NASA TV.
Russia's broken ISS supply vessel burns up in the atmosphere
An out-of-control Russian spacecraft has finally met its demise after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Progress M-27M was supposed to perform a resupply mission with the ISS, but ground control quickly lost contact after its launch on April 28th. Since then, the craft has been orbiting and slowly descending towards the Earth due to natural atmospheric drag and the planet's gravitational pull. Now, Russia's Roscosmos space agency has confirmed that Progress M-27M broke through over the central Pacific Ocean on Friday morning (May 8th). Most of the craft is expected to have burnt up during re-entry, but there's a chance some debris survived. Engineers are still trying to work out why they lost control in the first place -- it occurred after separation with the Soyuz 2-1A rocket, although reports suggest the rocket, rather than Progress, was to blame. Thankfully, no-one was hurt and the ISS is in no immediate danger, given the crew still has plenty of supplies.
Russia's latest ISS supply ship is spinning out of control
The International Space Station has yet another problem on its hands. Russia's Progress 59 supply ship (you're looking at Progress 47 above) appears to have suffered a communications breakdown shortly after entering orbit, and it's been spinning out of control ever since. As you can see in the dizzying video below, it's not about to dock with the ISS any time soon. Ground control had originally hoped that it could get things in order for an April 30th rendezvous, but it's scuttling those plans unless it can rein in this wayward spacecraft. It's safe to say that the station crew would like a recovery as soon as possible. When Progress 59 is carrying 6,000 pounds of food, fuel and other essentials, a significant delay could cause more than a few headaches. [Image credit: NASA]
The Soapbox: Better models for MMO endgame progression, part three
Today marks the last entry in my better models for MMO endgame progression series, the follow-up to my series on why MMO studios should abandon raiding. And that means providing two more possible models along with something of a thesis statement. But it also means that at this point I'm far more willing to wander off into the woods with these ideas. The first part had slight twists on standard formulas, the second had ideas that was a bit further afield, and this one features two ideas that are still almost entirely unrefined. More specifically, today's concepts are more about tackling the very principle that progress has to be tied past a certain point to things that you get. You earn a thing and then you're better. But there's no reason that progress can't be oriented the other way, with the gear (etc.) just being a gating mechanism for your actual forward motion. The funny part is that a lot of these systems aren't really at odds with one another; they can coexist without too much trouble. But then, that's the nature of the beast.
The Nexus Telegraph: Is WildStar's raid size change too late?
Very few people are going to contest that scaling WildStar's biggest raid down to 20 people is a good move. Some will, yes, but when 400 players are working on content five months after release, that's a good sign that it's not doing the most basic job of getting people to play it. Bringing Datascape's size down is an indisputable good thing. The question, of course, isn't about that. It's about whether it's too small a change too late in the game. Make no mistake, this is a change that is significant enough to merit an announcement, but it's one that just missed the big patch we finally received not too long ago. (My initial reaction to that is middling, for the record, neither bad nor really a break from form or something that justifies its long delay.) I would be surprised if we see this change actually live in the game before next year. And it's a change of more conceptual significance than anything else because unless someone very quietly managed to clear Datascape without telling anyone, the end of that raid has gone unseen.
Global Chat: Going negative
It's hard to be positive as a blogger, I'd say. It's not only really easy to get whipped up into a writing lather when you're upset about something, but negativity sells as well, at least in the short-term. People love a good rant, especially when it mirrors their line of thinking and doesn't bash a game they like. Even I, though I try to stay positive as a rule, have fallen into such patterns. This week in Global Chat, we're going to see more negativity than normal -- or perhaps, more critical analysis with vivid metaphors. That doesn't mean it's all downers nor mindless emotional wordsplosions. But I thought it was fascinating how these stories caught my eye over the past couple of weeks of MMO blog reading.
The Daily Grind: Do you track your progress?
For most of my time in MMOs, I have had a spreadsheet. It tracks my levels in various game-relevant categories, it tracks my income over the past several days, it tracks my assets, and so forth. At a glance, it tells me everything I know about where I am in a given game... even if I know that it's largely irrelevant and I should really just be having fun and not worrying so much about transcribing every relevant bit of financial data. In a game like EVE Online, of course, there's a lot of benefit to keeping close track of your money and making sure that you know exactly how your assets are allocated. This is slightly less important in, say, Wizard101. But there's still a sense of fun to be found from tracking your progress in the game as a whole. So do you track your progress? Do you have a spreadsheet? Do you keep a list? Or do you just play the game without worrying too much about that sort of thing? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Ultima creator's Shroud of the Avatar seen in six-month progress video
Led by Ultima creator Richard Garriott, indie developer Portalarium released a new update video for Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues detailing the game's progress over the past six months. The 25-minute video covers the scenic towns of Kingsport and Owl's Head, dipping into the types of homes that players can own before showing the game's crafting system and the first prototype of its combat. Garriott and company earned $1,919,275 on Kickstarter in April to develop the game, and has hauled in an extra $698,480 since then through independent funding on Portalarium's website. Shroud of the Avatar is a fantasy RPG for PC that leans heavily on world exploration. The game features single-player and online multiplayer modes reminiscent of Ultima Online. It is currently on pace for a late 2014 launch with backer-exclusive early access planned for late 2013.
The Mog Log: Straight on down the line of Final Fantasy XIV's endgame
Well, what do you know. Just before I was going to write a column about Final Fantasy XIV's endgame, the development changed the entire thing. And with such a little change, too. Before Tuesday, the endgame was pretty simple. You had two main instances to worry about and three primals, one of which was only really relevant for a single quest. If you were decked out from all that, you had another challenge to undertake. The actual makeup hasn't changed since Tuesday, but which instances matter and how they're run has, since you now have two ways of getting those all-important Mythology tomestones. For some of you reading, this is all stuff you don't even need to worry about yet. For others, it's the right here and right now that you deal with on a daily basis. So let's look at what the endgame is, what it was, and why I find myself oddly satisfied with it despite the overall sparse landscape.
Lost your Grand Theft Auto Online character? Have some money instead!
For all the problems of online games, there's a certain assumption that your character is safe no matter what technical problems might hit the server. Sure, Grand Theft Auto Online has had some growing pains, but if your character vanishes for some reason you can still -- wait, no, apparently your character is lost forever and will never return to you. That's kind of the opposite of news you were hoping for. So in the hopes that you'll be distracted, Rockstar is throwing half a million dollars at you. Before you get too distracted, you should know that this is in-game money. Two payments of $250,000 in-game will be provided to players on two distinct dates, hopefully by the end of next week. While this won't exactly replace the time and effort lost via vanishing characters, it should at least take the edge off of Grand Theft Auto Online's unexpected problems.
TERA producer's letter discusses new launcher, development progress
A new holiday edition producer's letter has been published on the official TERA site, and in it Chris Hager announces that he is currently using the studio's new launcher to log in to the game. Why is this such a big deal? Hager explains that it "represents a huge leap for us here at En Masse." He goes on to tell how, over the past year, the team has worked "directly and intimately with the Bluehole development team to... add features that appeal to western gamers." But why is the new launcher so important? Because it's one of the features that the studio built from the ground up. Hager also notes that the game has been in alpha for "about 4 months" and that this week is the last week of alpha testing. He says the team is also looking forward to "the next step in TERA's journey toward launch next spring." Here's to hoping that next step is a beta test. For the full letter, just click on over to the official TERA site.
Visualized: an interactive timeline of the web
Ever wondered what the World Wide Web's illustrious history would look like if plotted in timeline form? Well, thanks to Google's "Evolution of the web," you won't have to. The delectable chart traces the evolution of HTML, the web technologies that came alongside it and the browsers that've held it all together -- all in a seriously meta HTML5 package. Ready for a trip down memory lane? Hit the source, friend, and revel at how far we've come.
Wasteland Diaries: Exploring the Citadel
Normally, I prefer to PvP in Fallen Earth. It gives me the biggest sense of accomplishment and it's a handy way to gain tons of faction rep. But, while I'm leveling up my PvP clones and getting used to the new combat system, I've been doing mostly PvE. I went to Alpha County and ran some missions, but I'll go into more detail on that later in this post. I also got a chance to check out the progress towns. I have to admit, they are fun, and rewarding too! I actually had more fun messing around in the progress towns back in Deadfall than I did roaming around in Sector 4. Sure, I didn't do every mission in Alpha -- I probably didn't even do half of them. After a while, I decided to put my time to use in the progress towns. After the cut, I'll tell you why I left Sector 4 and came back to Deadfall.
Nothing Gold Can Stay: Change and the game's development
There was a time when the following were all known truths, enshrined in the game by its developers and its players. Raids all require 40 people to run. To run a 5-man instance, you have to assemble the group via friends or through people on your realm. The only acceptable warrior is a tanking warrior. The only acceptable tank is a warrior tank. Hybrids heal. If they don't heal, they're not hybrid. More importantly, if they don't heal, you don't bring them to your group. In order to understand how to use a weapon, you must learn how from a trainer and then go out and attack things with it hundreds of times. These are just a few of the sacred cows that WoW inherited from other games and at one time treated as if they were bedrock assumptions, virtually built into the DNA of the MMO genre. And to paraphrase, if you meet the ancient MMO truth on the road, WoW must kill it. I would argue that in nearly every case that the development team has looked at a truism (even one enshrined in their current design paradigm) and decided to change or remove that sacred cow, it has been for the good of the game. Perhaps this has not always been the case, but certainly very often.
A sneak peek at Fallen Earth's Progress Towns
Coming soon to a public test server near Fallen Earth is one of the more exciting pieces of content the game has seen: Progress Towns! Icarus Studios wanted to take the concept of a player-built town and make it something truly special. Progress Towns are the next iteration of Fallen Earth's attempt to include player housing, which started with patch 1.2's camps. With the this new system, players will be able to build up their own towns from the ruins of old ones. Three such towns will be in place for testing: Progress in Sector 2, Stronghold in Sector 3, and Citadel in Deadfall. Before players can move in and start performing stunning makeovers, they'll have to fight enemy mobs who've declared squatter's rights. Once the battle is won, the area becomes player-controlled and can be improved upon by using the construction skillset. Progress Towns can be built up to house many useful features, such as merchants, mailboxes, and defensive structures. Once enough construction takes place, special merchants will appear and offer unique crafting components in exchange for a new form of currency. Don't get too comfortable, however. These towns will always be under the threat of enemy raiders looking to take back what once was theirs! This slice of player-generated content will appear on the test servers next week, but you can get a sneak peek at Progress Towns in the gallery below right now! %Gallery-48606%
Poll: Has Blu-ray secured its place as heir to the DVD throne?
It's been a while since we asked how you feel about the progress Blu-ray is making, so let's hear it. Whether you're an owner with a massive library, occasional Netflix renter, stubborn holdout or somewhere in between we've spent years debating whether or not Blu-ray's 50GB movie platters would find a place in the market, and they have, but is it enough? %Poll-50082%
