travel time
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Travel in traffic estimates return to Google Maps, promises not to suck this time
You might remember that, once upon a time, Google Maps offered you two estimates for your travel time -- ideal and in traffic. The problem was, Big G's estimates weren't so great. So, the web giant quietly removed the feature last year and simply started providing traffic-free travel times. Well, trip times in traffic are back, and this time Google promises their guess work won't suck. Using both live and historic traffic data Google Maps now offers an estimate of how long your trip will take in current conditions, directly under the congestion-free time. And, if you find the live traffic info in your area isn't particularly accurate, you can help improve that by turning on My Location in the Maps for Android app.
Age of Conan's next update promising alt leveling and travel improvements
Not every update is going to be a cavalcade of new and awesome systems, even though it feels really satisfying when they are. Craig Morrison, Age of Conan's director, has come out and said in so many words that unlike the game's recent 1.06 update, the upcoming 1.07 will largely feature changes under the hood that might not be as obvious to players. But his most recent letter to the game's fans is hardly all doom and gloom -- even with the lack of major new systems, there are still new things players will notice. Travel concerns are one of the two major issues that the next update aims to address, allowing quicker travel to quest hubs and faster returns from the field. The transport is limited to quest hubs, allowing players easier access to where they need to return but not cutting out a sense of exploration. That's hardly the only bombshell the letter has to drop -- subscribers will now slowly accumulate extra levels that they can allocate to their characters, even while offline. The system is intended to help with alt leveling rather than speeding through content, with Morrison stating that it would take nine months for a character to reach max level from this method. It's an interesting approach to helping alts keep up, and Age of Conan's players will soon get a chance to see how well it plays out.
A Star Trek Online interview about time travel and travel time
We've said before that the main source of information on Star Trek Online at this point is hints and implications peppered through interviews with Cryptic Studios' Jack Emmert. The latest of those interviews is lighter on details than were previous conversations, but it's still worth a read.Speaking to Ten Ton Hammer at Gen Con, Emmert started out vaguely answering questions about character customization. Nothing new there. But it got a bit more interesting when he used time travel as an example of something pivotal to the franchise, but that's made difficult to implement by technological and budgetary limitations. He spoke as if he'd already given a great deal of thought to it; perhaps that's a clue that despite the problems, time travel is something Cryptic intends to put in the game.Other topics included the uniqueness of Star Trek ship design, instancing, procedurally-generated areas for exploration, and travel time.
Player vs. Everything: Loading...
A few weeks ago, I was reading an Age of Conan interview with Shannon Drake where he was discussing several of the features that would be present in the game. One of the questions he was asked was why Funcom made the choice to use world zones for AoC instead of a seamless world. If you haven't heard the terminology before, games with world zones are games like EverQuest, EverQuest 2, and Guild Wars, where you have a loading screen when you pass from area to area. Seamless worlds include games like World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, where you can pass between different game areas without a loading screen. Seamless worlds still have loading screens, of course-- just not for most major zones that you'll be traveling through. Shannon's answer was interesting. He admitted that their choice was partially due to the trade-offs required when designing a next-gen game (graphics are a major resource hog), but then he also talked about immersion and world design. Although Hyboria was supposed to be an enormous landmass, they didn't want to make a game that took forever to walk across. On the other hand, they didn't want to reduce the epic scale of the world by reducing a cross-continent journey to five minutes. Now, maybe that's just their canned answer to keep the fans happy with loading screens, and maybe it really was part of their game design-- probably a nice helping of both. Either way, it's worth considering. Do loading screens really help your game immersion?
