protean

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  • Designing the missions for City of Heroes

    by 
    Eliot Lefebvre
    Eliot Lefebvre
    06.18.2011

    With more than seven years of content, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes of City of Heroes when new content is being developed. The regular developer dispatch newsletter, The Intrepid Informer, has just kicked off the first in what promises to be a series of writeups about the process of creating new task forces, missions, and other content. In the first entry, John "Protean" Hegner details the role of the Lead Mission Designer in the process. As Hegner explains, the game's storylines and overarching foci are all planned out, with certain elements coming into prominence or moving to the background depending on the focus of a given issue. The early part of development centers around figuring out which parts of the game's ongoing story will be explored and how much space the designers have been given to do so. If you're a City of Heroes veteran, the full dispatch is well worth a read for a look at how missions get made at Paragon Studios.

  • Protean Electric in-wheel motors have the stuff to make an F-150 turn green

    by 
    Christopher Trout
    Christopher Trout
    04.21.2011

    An energy efficient Ford F-150 certainly sounds like an oxymoron, but the folks at Protean Electric have proven that even this gas guzzler can go green. So how'd they do it? Well, with in-wheel motors of course. This isn't the first time we've seen this technology put to use, but if things go according to plan, Protean's version of the in-wheel motor could be road ready as soon as next year. The things weigh 68 pounds (31 kilograms) a piece and offer 110 horsepower per wheel. When pared with this F-150 -- rocking a custom battery -- they offered up 100 mile-per-hour speeds and a range of 100 miles. That might not be enough to take you across the great state of Texas, but it's certainly sufficient for tooting around the ranch. Head on over to the source link for more on Protean's in-wheel technology.