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Funcom prepping The Secret World for reticle combat
Most of you Secret World fans know that the game has featured a changing of the guard in its development ranks. While Ragnar Tornquist remains as Creative Director, former Lead Content Designer Joel Bylos is now the Game Director, and as such he's penned his first state-of-the-game letter which just went live on TSW website. After a lengthy introduction, Bylos gets down to the business of update schedules. First up is Issue #4 and the long-awaited New York City raid. More importantly, the update will introduce reticle combat. Bylos says it's something the game has needed for a long time, but he's also conscious of the fact that some players may prefer to do without. "I feel it makes combat a lot more direct and exciting. We are not forcing it upon anyone, though. You will be able to freely switch between traditional targeting and the reticle depending on what you feel is best for you," he explains. Bylos also hints at "an entirely new animation backend for the Dreamworld engine," which should allow the firm to address common complaints regarding TSW's avatar movement. There's more, too, including a bit on puzzle raids, but you'll need to head to the official website to read it all.
New laser sighting system enlists electronic sensors to make sure snipers hit their marks
Anyone who's ever picked a flea off a dog's back with an automatic weapon knows there's a fine line between a crushed bug and a bloody mutt. Fortunately for flea-bitten K9s, a team of researchers are working on a laser-packing fiber-optic sensor system to guarantee that your rifle's crosshairs are always dead on. Known simply as the Reticle Compensating Rifle Barrel Reference Sensor, the setup enlists the exterior grooves, or flutes, on a typical rifle as a receptacle for glass optical fibers. These fibers direct beams of light along the top and side of the weapon to precisely measure just how far off the gun's sights are from the barrel's actual position. A set of algorithms and sensor inputs are then employed to adjust for distance and other factors that affect a bullet's trajectory, providing the shooter with crosshairs that adjust to environmental changes in real time. Unsurprisingly, the system is being targeted at military and law enforcement, which means it probably won't make it into the hands of anyone who uses firearms as an alternative to Advantage. Sorry, Rover. Full PR after the break.
Red dot sight for hotshoes makes shooting tangos a viewfinder-free experience
If you've been playing Modern Warfare 2 so much that you've studied Arabic just to learn what the OpFor team is saying, yet you're more interested in photographing birds than capturing flags, this is the hotshoe accessory for you. Thanks to Brando it's easy to make your camera a little more lethal looking with the Tactical Four Reticle Sight, an adapter that screws into a camera's hotshoe and then enables the addition of an included sight, which has four separate crosshairs, two colors, and three laser strengths. Yes, we know people have been doing this for years on their own, but this is the cheapest ($45) and easiest way we've seen to get such a thing secured on your SLR. Oh, and "Tango sakat?" It means "tango down," duh. %Gallery-93035%
Sega gives up the Ghost Squad site
We've already seen dozens of screenshots and videos for Ghost Squad, Sega's arcade on-rails shooter adapted for the Wii, so what else can its newly-released official website offer? Well, uh, not much.If you've yet to see any media for the game, though, it's all collected at the site for you to preview. Other than that, the only interesting item of note is the target reticule that replaces your mouse pointer, mimicking the in-game crosshair. There aren't any enemies for you to shoot at, but several menu buttons are available for you to aim and click. Pew pew!Ghost Squad goes on sale this November 20th in the states -- that leaves plenty of time for Sega to fill the site with desktop wallpapers, AIM buddy icons, and other trivial "bonuses."
