dark forces
Latest
Refresh Roundup: week of August 1, 2011
Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging to get updated. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery from the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy! Official Android updates Verizon and Motorola have finally begun rolling out the Gingerbread update for the Motorola Droid X2. [via PCMag] Sticking with Verizon, the LG Revolution is in the process of receiving maintenance update VS910ZV6, which consists of a few new features and bug fixes. This is not a major refresh. [via AndroidCentral] The HTC Desire Z has been updated to Gingerbread in the UK. As of now, only those devices without carrier branding are seeing the OTA show up. [via PocketNow] Unofficial Android updates / custom ROMs / misc hackery Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play, Neo, and Arc should soon be added to the CyanogenMod repository. Once approved, we'll likely see nightlies appear in the near future. [via PocketNow] Did somebody say Xperia Play? Yes, we did. It looks like the phone's finally been rooted, and the bootloader's been cracked. [via Droid-Life] The Motorola Photon 4G came out last Sunday, but XDA was able to root it within a couple days. [via SprintFeed] XDA's also the provider of a Froyo update to the Samsung Continuum. [via XDA] Along with an official update for the Droid X2, an SBF is now available for download. [via Droid-Life] Other platforms The Dark Forces Team has released tools to enable custom ROMs to be used on your first-gen Windows Phone device. Currently, the supported phones are: the HTC Mozart, HTC Surround, HTC Trophy (excluding Verizon's version), and the HTC 7 Pro (excluding the HTC Arrive). [via Windows Phone Hacker] Shortly after this, the HTC HD7 also got its first custom ROM courtesy of XDA. The downloadable package consists of a ChevronWP7 unlock, a Mango Beta 2 update, and the ROM. Head over to XDA to grab it. [via Windows Phone Daily]
Hyperspace Beacon: More hidden messages
A little over a month ago, I mentioned there were hidden messages within the Star Wars: The Old Republic website. Site designer Alyssa Gobelle had some fun and riddled all the pages with Aurebesh phrases. This gives the site not only an interesting aesthetic but also a direct tie to the story being told. Gobelle said to The Holonet Project in an interview, "[W]e planned to add some generic Aurebesh to start. But we also wanted to add some hidden teases and notes for you guys to devour and ponder upon and play with. Give some more fuel to the speculation festivities." For those who aren't aware what Aurebesh is, I will explain briefly. Obviously, since Star Wars happens a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the language is not going to be the same as ours. The accepted history of the "language" starts in 1993 when a graphic designer for West End Games, Stephan Crane, wanted to add some extra flavor to the Star Wars Miniatures Battles Companion. So based on symbols seen in Dark Forces and monitor readouts from Return of the Jedi, he created one corresponding Aurebesh letter for every English letter. And the name Aurebesh, like the English word alphabet, is derived from the first two letters: Aurek and Besh. (Alphabet is from the Greek letters Alpha and Beta.) This week we dive into the messages hidden within the Biography pages and into a bonus screenshot that may give us some insight into a PvP mechanic. Follow me after the break to help me unravel these mysteries.
ESRB rates Star Wars: Dark Forces for PS1 Classics re-release
Though we've all played some form of Jedi-centric game throughout the course of our lives, some of our younger readers may have missed out on the ground floor of the Star Wars FPS movement by not checking out the 1996 PlayStation classic, Star Wars: Dark Forces. Fear not -- you won't have to go hunting through pawn shops to get your Kyle Katarn fix. The game recently showed up on the ESRB's list of adjudicated titles, slated to land on the PSOne Classics platform. We've contacted LucasArts to find out a time frame for the game's arrival on the PSN. As for the new listings for XS Junior League Dodgeball and XS Airboat Racing, we ... man, we just don't know who we'd contact about those.
