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Peacock is turning a viral ‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ trailer into a series
Peacock signed a two-season deal for a modern-day version of 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.'
SWTOR Alderaan warzone playable at Gamescom
It's no secret that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be making a big splash at this year's Gamescom. What we didn't know prior to today, however, was the fact that one of the title's PvP warzones will be playable in a dedicated area "away from the rest of the hustle and bustle of the show floor." BioWare's Chris Collins gives us the details on the official SWTOR boards, and you'll need to sign up via email ahead of time if you and your mates want to get in on the action. The warzone matches will feature eight vs. eight teams and will pit Republic forces against their imperial counterparts in the Alderaan Civil War scenario. Whether your taste runs to the clumsy randomness of a blaster or elegant weapons from a more civilized age, you'll need to get your signups in by Monday, August 8th.
APB's Chris Collins talks music, customization
Realtime Worlds Community Manager Chris Collins lends his mug to a new video featuring the various customization options found in the forthcoming All Points Bulletin urban crime MMORPG. Collins talks about everything from the in-game paint program to the musical death themes we first heard about back at PAX East 2010. "Players can create what we call death themes, so every time that you kill a player they're forced to listen to your music," enthuses Collins in the video, currently hosted over at GamesXtreme.net. The two-and-a-half-minute teaser, compiled at the EA Showcase London event, features brief snippets on the player music creation system and the Forza Motorsport-like graphical layering app that facilitates the game's extreme customization options. The video also features a smattering of new gameplay footage including a few glimpses of the action and social districts. Check it out over at GamesXtreme.net.
APB's Chris Collins details zoning, missions
Many of us here at Massively are anxiously awaiting the release of Realtime Worlds' urban crime MMORPG All Points Bulletin. Though the title is currently deep into beta, there hasn't been a huge helping of news regarding the city of San Paro as of late. Now, German fan site OnlineWelten has come to the rescue courtesy of an interview with Community Manager Chris 'Deum' Collins. Collins highlights the game's talking points including creativity, conflict, and celebrity, in a wide-ranging piece that discusses everything from PvP, to mission systems, to server structure and player population. "Servers (or worlds as we refer to them as) consist of 100,000 players. These servers then break down into a number of districts. These districts hold between 100 and 250 players at any one time, so if one version of a district is 'full', another will be available for them to join. If you have friends or clan-mates that are in another district, then you can simply pull up the social panel and join them. The game will then spawn you in their district," Collins says. Check out the full interview at OnlineWelten. [Thanks Trikki!]
APB video podcast Ep. 17 talks more music creator and player
The last All Points Bulletin video podcast featured a pretty in-depth look at the music creator coming with the game, but afterwords the community still had several questions. So this week, community guy extraordinaire Chris Collins presents viewers with some more answers on the music creator from the game's audio lead, Roland Peddie. Plus, we get an in-game example of how the music player functions when driving or walking around San Paro. Between creating music and playing whatever you like while cruising around the city, we suspect All Points Bulletin will garner quite the creative following, and we're very excited to hear and see what comes of the game. Next week, we should be getting the final part of this "music trilogy" of APB podcasts, complete with a community Q&A. Find the full video podcast after the break.
All Points Bulletin video podcast shows off the music editor
Fans of the upcoming urban crime game All Points Bulletin may have noticed there's been a bit of a hiatus with the video podcasts that Realtime Worlds has been releasing. (Although Massively did have a good interview with Chris Collins and EJ Moreland about APB this week.) The APB video podcasts are back for 2010 now, though, and Collins has announced that the next few will focus on the game's audio features. They're beginning the series by showing fans the game's music editor, demonstrated by Stuart Ross, All Points Bulletin's Senior Sound Designer. These in-game audio tools in the Music Studio will allow players to create "death themes" -- very short sound clips that play when you take out another player -- or even create loops and tracks from scratch using software instruments. While the tools look fairly comprehensive, there are simple preset themes for those not familiar with audio tools. Even better, player-created themes and songs are fully tradeable. Players will be able to place their tracks on market for other Criminals or Enforcers to purchase. Stick with us after the jump for a video embed of the All Points Bulletin podcast episode 16: The Music Editor.
Massively interviews All Points Bulletin's Chris Collins and EJ Moreland
If you're anywhere as excited as us for All Points Bulletin you'll be happy to know we had the chance to ask Lead Designer EJ Moreland and Community Manager Chris Collins a bevy of questions, which they answered with supreme openness. We've got the scoop on all sorts of topics, from Realtime Worlds' stance on community interaction, whether or not the game will have official forums, content updates post-launch and plenty more. We hope you enjoy reading the interview as much as we did conducting it!
Educators find common ground in Second Life, for now
There's no doubt in our minds that virtual environments are here to stay, for a significant fraction of the foreseeable forever. Love them or loathe them they're in their third decade now, and like the Web, it's now more a matter of how they fit in to the rest of the world, rather than if they do. In education, virtual environments are now a part of an educator's toolbox and as education continues to combine, refine, and recombine tools, virtual environments will find increasingly better, more effective uses in education. There's no doubt about that among educators, even if the technologies aren't ready for widespread educational uses today.
All Points Bulletin video podcast a first look at gameplay
It's no secret that some of us at Massively are looking forward to playing All Points Bulletin, an urban crime title on the way from Realtime Worlds. We learned a bit more about the game at PAX 2009 but we're always hoping to find out more. Fortunately, the company released a new video podcast today filmed at GamesCom 2009 in Cologne that many of our readers have been waiting for -- one with actual gameplay.The series of videos released prior to this focused on the extensive customization options All Points Bulletin will offer. Although we see quite a bit of gameface from the audience in this latest video podcast, we also see a bit more of that attention to detail emphasized in the previous video footage playing out in the mean streets of the waterfront district. Among other things, the footage shows some very detailed gun animations w. shell ejects and, unsurprisingly, a lot of polish on the look of the vehicles. The user interface is also rather unobtrusive, particularly with the clear compass to guide players. Interested in checking it out? We've got an HD video embed of APB Video Podcast 9: Viva Cologne for you after the jump.
PAX 2009: Massively's first look at gameplay in All Points Bulletin
All Points Bulletin was representing at PAX and while the game wasn't playable I did manage to see a very cool PAX-only gameplay video presentation. Epic Games' Mark Rein and Realtime Worlds' community officer Chris Collins – you know, that dashing gentlemen in all those cool video podcasts – played a bunch of the game and edited it into a nicely narrated sample of what playing the game is like. What I ended up seeing was a game that by all accounts looks very ready for launch, so I wasn't surprised to be told beta was "a few weeks" away and not months. And while that date is still a little ways off, most other attendees who saw the video seemed to agree that launch day couldn't come soon enough.
PAX 2009: Massively's first look at gameplay in All Points Bulletin part 2
In fact, Chris' narration made certain to point this fact out. There isn't any back-snapping to walls and peeking around corners, but you'll want to crouch behind a sturdy object when reloading or trading bullets with an opponent behind some cover of their own. Although I wouldn't hide behind cars, because they can explode in a very kill-you-good fashion.
All Points Bulletin video podcast fields questions from the fans
The team at Realtime Worlds has been releasing a series of video podcasts about All Points Bulletin, their upcoming urban crime MMO. The term "MMO" isn't an exact fit for this game though, as anyone who's been following our coverage of APB will have noted. In fact, the game is so different that this latest APB podcast is basically a Q&A with Design Lead EJ Moreland. He answers a barrage of questions, ranging from the game's business model to whether or not we should expect a console release. In addition to all that, Moreland drops some info about All Points Bulletin's current state of development, and when beta testing is expected to begin. For those of you wanting to see a little more of the game, the video also gives us a look at emotes, explained by Senior Animator Ben Stanton, who shows off some avatar dance moves and taunts along the lines of bird flips. He also says that emotes will be gender specific, so the ladies will get a slightly different array of emotes than the guys. We've got an HD embed of the video for you, so stick with us after the jump.
All Points Bulletin video podcast shows off some ink
All Points Bulletin is one of those upcoming games that tends to defy easy categorization. It's an urban crime game that has persistence, quests (missions), and fantastic customization options. It's not an MMO as we'd typically define it, and APB developer Realtime Worlds has also hinted that it may eventually become something of a virtual world. Maybe this is part of why we're interested in this game, it seems to be breaking new ground in online games. We've been checking in now and again on the All Points Bulletin video podcast which always gives us some new perspective on this title. Realtime Worlds often emphasizes how deep the game's customization options are going to be in these videos, and this week's is no different. Given that you'll play a criminal (or a vigilante who hunts them) in APB, what self-respecting felon doesn't overload on tattoos? The fifth APB video podcast shows us some of the ink players will soon be sporting in the game. Chris Collins from the ABP team visits Metalurgey tattoo and piercing parlour in the Realtime Worlds hometown of Dundee, Scotland, to see how the game's ink compares to the real thing. Stay with us after the jump for a video embed of APB Podcast Episode 5: APB Tattoos vs. RL Tattoos.
All Points Bulletin video podcast shows off symbol creation and character customization
Since E3 2009 the All Points Bulletin team at Realtime Worlds has been releasing video podcasts showing aspects of the urban crime title, and no doubt gaining some new fans in the process. We mentioned an earlier video that focused on customization options players will have, but Realtime Worlds is taking that a step further in their latest video podcast, which walks the viewer through the layer-based symbol customization players will use in All Points Bulletin.The demonstration from senior concept artist Jon Stockwell shows how simple it is to create and manipulate layers in a symbol, resulting in your own unique look. As the video shows, that symbol can be applied to characters in the form of tattoos or graphics on clothing, and even used to detail your vehicles. Have a look at the video we've embedded for you below, and let us know what you think.
All Points Bulletin video podcast shows off scope of customization
Things were very quiet on the All Points Bulletin front for quite some time, but now we're seeing why. Realtime Worlds has been busy, and since E3 2009 the APB team at Realtime Worlds has revealed a ton of info about their upcoming game. Massively interviewed APB lead designer EJ Moreland who gave us some perspective on what the title will be like, but we're always looking out for more info. On that note, the All Points Bulletin game site revamp was accompanied by a new series of video podcasts, the second of which is now out. This second All Points Bulletin video podcast "E3 and Beyond" has Chris "Deum" Collins from the APB community team speaking with lead gameplay designer Jesse Knapp about the game's extensive customization options, and is in two parts. Actually it's largely a montage of the E3 customization videos with commentary from the APB devs, where they answer questions posed to them by the game's fans. It's a great look at what's possible in the game and we highly recommend you give it a look. However, if that's not enough to get you to check it out, we've got two words for you: Suicide Girls. We've got YouTube embeds of both parts for you below the cut. Have a look:
All Points Bulletin newsletter updates fans on game features
Judging from the response we've seen from some our readers in the past, All Points Bulletin from Realtime Worlds is a hotly-anticipated MMO. And why wouldn't it be? APB may very well be a refreshing change from the tried-and-true marriage of fantasy and massively multiplayer games, and is one of the first urban crime MMOs we can see on the horizon. The most recent All Points Bulletin newsletter addresses some of the input from APB's growing fan community on the types of weapons available, mini-games, and leisure activities they feel should be in the game. Realtime Worlds confirms that a few of the player-suggested features will, in fact, be present in the title.
Second Life's Chris Collins talks, but doesn't say much
Duncan Riley from TechCrunch recently had a little time to speak with Chris Collins from Linden Lab, where Mr. Collins holds the intriguing title "Technical Assistant to the CEO". I'm not entirely clear on what exactly that position entails, but more substantially, he's also responsible for the LindeX, the currency exchange service in Second Life.Mr. Riley took this opportunity to pose some strong questions to Mr. Collins, which got some pretty tepid and by-the-book answers. Unfortunately, this is typical of LL, which usually sticks to saying things like 'we're working on it', and 'it's not easy'. Well, sure, this is a given. If it were easy, not only would everyone be doing it, but it probably wouldn't be worth doing. But when you're given a chance to give some definitive answers to questions a lot of people are asking, it behooves you to provide something more. Otherwise, why do an interview? LL is already way out there in terms of being ahead of its time, challenging frontiers, etc. Wouldn't it be nice to let the people who truly care about SL in on a few things, O Lindens? Chances are we'd be a lot more understanding and cut you all a lot more slack when things go wrong, as they so frequently do. Remember: your residents are a passionate crowd, and we only scream so loud because we love SL so much. Give us the truth; we can handle it.
