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Cloudflare's privacy-focused DNS app adds a free VPN
Cloudfare's 1.1.1.1 DNS service will add a VPN to its app for mobile devices. Known as Warp, the feature will gives users of the DNS resolver even more privacy while browsing the internet on their phone. Though the 1.1.1.1 DNS service already keeps your carrier from tracking your browser history, it doesn't encrypt your internet traffic. Setting up encryption manually on Cloudfare's DNS server, while possible, required some Linux prowess.
Merlin and Dubset strike a deal to help indie artists monetize DJ mixes
Last August, Sony Music made a deal with Dubset, a company that helps rights holders identify samples in songs to ensure they get paid. Apple and Spotify also connected with the licensing company for the streaming services' unofficial mixes, too. Now, indie label Merlin has struck a new deal with Dubset that will hopefully help independent musicians monetize their own samples.
See Ascent's warp effect in action
While it may look like a Photoshop paint smear effect, Ascent's new warp animation is certainly an improvement over nothing at all. The one-man team posted a short video showing various ships going through warp gates and bending the very fabric of reality as they lunge across the universe. Ascent is fresh off a successful Kickstarter campaign. You can watch the warp video after the jump.
EVE Evolved: EVE Online vs. Elite: Dangerous
Like many EVE Online players, I grew up playing early sci-fi games like Elite and its sequel Frontier. In fact, CCP's recently released stats on the distribution of ages within the EVE community shows a peak around 29 years old, meaning that most players grew up in that same gaming era. A big part of what initially drew me to EVE Online was the prospect of playing the same kind of massive trading and space exploration game with other people, and for over 10 years it's scratched that sci-fi sandbox itch. I've watched EVE grow from a relatively unknown game with around 40,000 subscribers and laggy cruiser skirmishes into a vast game where thousands of players wage war for territory, profit, or just the adrenaline rush of PvP with something valuable on the line. Now that Elite: Dangerous is finally here, I want to see whether it can scratch the same sandbox itch as EVE and to what extent the two games can be compared. Both feature customisable ship fittings, open-world PvP with a criminal justice system, and real financial loss on death, for example, but the end result is two very different gameplay styles. And both also have that same intoxicating notion of exploring the unknown and try to make you feel like you're in a living world, but they take very different approaches to world design, content, and travel. Elite may not be a full-fledged MMO, but with a sandbox made of 400 billion procedurally generated stars and an open play mode that seamlessly merges players' games together, does it matter? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I compare my experiences in Elite: Dangerous to my experiences in EVE Online and look at their differing strategies with regard to server model, active and passive gameplay, and the new player experience.
EVE Evolved: Grid-Fu and bending space
In last week's article, I described how EVE Online maintains the illusion of full-scale solar systems by dynamically creating small pockets of high-detail space called grids. It's within these discrete bubbles that everything we do in space takes place, from mining asteroids to running missions or shooting at other players. The system is designed to split up space into manageable chunks to reduce server load while still maintaining persistent 3-D space that appears to span the entire scale of a solar system. Grids have been in EVE since it was first created, but over the years people have noticed a few odd things about how the system works. Flying about 250km-400km away from a stargate causes your ship to disappear from that grid and pop into a newly created adjacent one, for example, but this doesn't always happen. Bizarre occurrences such as abnormally shaped grids and ships mysteriously disappearing and re-appearing on the same grid were always thought to be freak accidents or unintended bugs until an interesting document emerged in 2009. Titled Grid-Fu: A Practical Manual, the 18-page PDF described the process of bending and manipulating space for a tactical advantage. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the various ways that players have manipulated space to their advantage.
Legacy of Romulus adding warp cores to Star Trek Online ships
So, warp cores. Warp cores are a thing in Star Trek, but up until very recently they haven't been much of a thing in Star Trek Online. The upcoming Legacy of Romulus expansion will change that by adding cores to every ship in the game, according to the latest STO dev blog. Systems designer Jeff "AdjudicatorHawk" Hamilton pens the diary, and in it he talks about Cryptic's desire to alter the feel of STO's space combat ever so slightly while simultaneously providing captains with new tools for both exploration and conquest. If you're fond of space combat the way it is, though, don't worry. Hamilton says that the new warp core mechanics can be "largely ignored at little cost" if you prefer. Either way, you'll probably want to read up on all the little details at the STO website.
The aging horror of Kenji Eno's D
This is Making Time, a column about the games we've always wanted to play, and the games we've always wanted to play again. The inspiration to whip up a new column about an old game can come from anywhere, even a sad loss for the video game industry. In February, upon hearing about the death of Kenji Eno, I scanned Amazon and eBay for copies of his games, thinking I might write them up in remembrance, but ultimately never pulled the trigger on a purchase. Two months later, I walk into a recently-opened used game shop (named ThrillHouse, if you can believe it), and what should I see under the glass? A boxed Sega Saturn copy of Kenji Eno's D in great condition, the creepy cover just as effective now as it was seventeen years ago. I gladly paid $30 for it. Having played it for the first time since I was thirteen, D isn't as scary as I remember. While it isn't a very good game, I still find myself enjoying the experience.
D creator Kenji Eno dead at age 42
One of the most fascinatingly creative voices in the Japanese game industry has died. Kenji Eno, designer of the D series, the 3DO's most interesting games, and most recently, WiiWare's You, Me, and the Cubes, died yesterday of heart failure at the age of 42.Along with the creepy D games, Eno developed unusual games like Real Sound, an audio-based adventure game designed to be playable by the blind. His career also included non-game tasks like development of mobile payments for soda machines, and DJ sets.
EVE Evolved: Getting people to actually fight
EVE Online has always been strongly focused on PvP, from the obvious activity of smashing ships together to the more subtle cutthroat nature of competitive market trading and corporate politics. EVE is testament to the fact that if you put enough people in one place and ask them to share and play nice, pretty soon they'll be tearing each other's eyes out. Though the lack of direct flight controls and steep death penalty turn a lot of people off trying EVE, I have to admit that I've yet to find a better PvP experience in any MMO -- when I can actually get a good fight, that is. Everyone who engages in PvP regularly will have stories to tell of some of the awesome fights he's had, but in truth they're few and far between. For every fight so spectacular that its story is retold for years, there are hundreds of quiet nights, failed roams, and encounters that end in disaster. Lowsec is particularly troublesome as the lack of warp disruption fields can make it hard to deprive enemies of an escape route and get them to actually fight. Warp bubbles bring their own problems, so what can be done to add more PvP opportunities to lowsec without allowing players to use area-effect warp disruption? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the factors that prevent good fights and stifle PvP in lowsec.
EA Indie Bundle challenges your definitions, is live on Steam now
The EA Indie Bundle (yes, we assure you, it is barely-100-percent-mostly-ish possible for EA to have an indie bundle) is live on Steam, offering 70 percent off a package of six titles from four indie developers, or half off each individual game.Included in the sale is Warp, Shank, Shank 2, DeathSpank, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue and Gatling Gears. The DeathSpank titles are $7.50 individually and are available on PC and Mac through Steamplay, while the rest of EA's indies cost $5 and are PC only.Indie Game Magazine first spotted the bundle in the super-secret Steam registry files this morning. The sale is now officially on, set to disappear from Steam in one week on May 9.
New Zelda: Ocarina of Time bug beats game in 23 minutes as child Link
Just because a game has been played by millions of people, millions of times over, doesn't mean we've uncovered all of its secrets. Case in point: YouTuber ZeldaFreakGlitcha recently used a bug in Ocarina of Time that allows him to complete the game in 23 minutes. The glitch involves defeating Queen Gohma and activating, but not traveling through, the warp gate, which then drops child Link in Ganon's castle, and miniaturized missions ensue.Usually we'd say defeating Ganon is no small feat, but with this, well... you know. ZeldaFreakGlitcha is live-streaming more attempts to beat his best bug time today on TwitchTV.
Nokia Creative Studio brings panorama capture to Lumia handsets (hands-on)
Nokia recently launched a new photography app called Creative studio which is available in the Windows Phone Marketplace exclusively for its Lumia handsets. Part panorama stitcher, part photo filter and part image editor, the app lets you take new pictures or chose shots from existing albums and tweak them to your heart's content. It features ten Instagram-like effects (including vignette and auto-enhance) plus seven common adjustments (such as crop and sharpness). We took the app for a spin and the UI is pretty slick, with an optional side-by-side before and after view of the photo you are currently editing. Once done, you have the option to continue applying additional effects and making further adjustments, save the image or share it. Twitter, Flickr and Facebook are supported, but sadly there's no integration with Windows Phone's People Hub -- you'll have to login to each service in the app itself. Check out the screen shots in the gallery below and hit the break for more impressions and some samples.
PSN releases: Journey, Shoot Many Robots, Warp
Several high-profile downloadable titles hit the PSN this week, with Journey being the can't-miss experience from thatgamecompany. Our Jordan Mallory was smitten by Journey, calling it a "beautiful, evocative and unequivocally transcendental experience." He may have used such words to describe a burrito he once had, but, in fairness, it was a really fabulous burrito.If you're looking for a co-op, run-'n'-gun shooter, it's worth trading a Hamilton for Shoot Many Robots. For something a little more cerebral, stealth action puzzler Warp is also available. Head on over the PS Blog for all the details on this week's PSN update.
Warp review: Patchwork puzzle action
The premise behind Warp is as easy to remember as its name. Captured by a group of scientists and their dimwitted security squadron, an adorable alien named Zero breaks free from his shackles to run amok throughout an underwater installation. How does he move about? He warps, of course, from one spot to the next and even into solid objects.Warp borrows heavily from multiple sources to craft its world. It may be immediately compared to the puzzle propensity of Portal, the stealthy progression of Metal Gear Solid, and the chaotic tone of 'Splosion Man, but the game follows the longstanding blueprint we've all come to regard as Metroidvania. Zero uses his warp ability to get around, first through walls and then into objects.It all looks innocent -- especially when Zero cutely chirps and animates his emotions -- but it's all a ruse. Zero eventually earns the ability to warp into humans, where a few liberal shakes of the left stick causes them to explode. Like the remnants of a popped water balloon, Zero's victims are splattered all over the laboratory's pristine interior. It goes from cute to horrifying very quickly -- in a good way.%Gallery-147694%
New Warp gameplay trailer totally explodes some dudes
Warp will be the first title released during the 2012 XBLA House Party that starts this Wednesday, and from the looks of this latest gameplay trailer, it seems as though your 800 Microsoft Points will net you a lot of adorableness, as well as an unquenchable thirst for exploded human bodies.
Warp: From a hypothetical question to an interesting puzzle game
Warp is one of those instances in which one "What if" question has blossomed into an entire game. In this case, the question is, "What if we had the power to teleport through objects at will? Wouldn't that be cool?" Yes, I do think it's pretty cool, even if I'd rather be able to forgo the twelve hour flight to Europe than warp around my house. But then, I'm not in a Martian lab desperately trying to escape annihilation, in which case I imagine even short-range teleportation would be preferable to nothing at all. That's the premise of Warp, though that wasn't the case from the beginning. "The inception point had nothing to do with stealth," Trapdoor founder Ken Schacter told me during the demo. "Our prototype was a cylinder where we just played around with warping."
Warp teleporting to PC and PSN March 13
The debut of Warp may be reserved for the Xbox Live House Party next month, but PC and PS3 users won't have to wait too long to get their hands on the horribly violent (and bizarrely cute) action puzzler. Warp is headed to PSN and PC on March 13, according to a tweet from developer Trapdoor.The PC version is currently up for pre-order on Origin, though Trapdoor promises it will be available on Steam as well.%Gallery-145461%
XBLA House Party kicks off on Feb. 15 with Warp
We knew that Warp, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, Nexuiz, and I Am Alive would be participating in Microsoft's 2012 Xbox Live Arcade House Party promo, and we knew that the party would start on February 15, but we didn't have a clue as to how the specifics of the boogeying would progress. Today, Microsoft revealed that Warp will be the party's first attendee, arriving on February 15 for the nice price of 800 MS Points ($10), followed up in the proceeding three weeks by Alan Wake's American sojourn, the almost-but-not-quite-Quake multiplayer shooter Nexuiz, and one man's journey through the depths of human survival in I Am Alive.Like Warp, Nexuiz will only cost 800 MS Points ($10), while the other two titles will run 1200 MS Points a pop ($15). As always with these XBLA promos, Microsoft is offering an extra 800 free MS Points to anyone who grabs all four games within a defined time period (between Feb. 15 and Mar. 13 in this case). As for what to do with those extra points ... well, might we suggest hanging onto it for the upcoming launch of Fez? 'Cause that's totally what we're doing.
Xbox Live Arcade 'House Party 2012' begins Feb. 15
Microsoft plans to kick off the Xbox Live Arcade House Party for 2012 on February 15, releasing the four previously revealed titles back-to-back. At this time, Microsoft isn't revealing pricing nor the order in which it plans to release the titles. Yeah, our definition of "House Party Details" varies greatly.A company rep confirmed that the order listed on Xbox guru Major Nelson's site is simply alphabetized. So, beginning February 15, for some price and in some order, folks will be able to pick up Alan Wake's American Nightmare, the long-awaited I Am Alive, Nexuiz and EA's Warp.%Gallery-141956%
Alan Wake's American Nightmare, I Am Alive part of XBLA's 'House Party 2012' [update: Now with trailer!]
Microsoft is set to throw another House Party in 2012. In attendance will be Alan Wake's American Nightmare, EA's Warp, Nexuiz and the long-awaited I Am Alive. The trailer for the XBLA House Party promotion, which was apparently posted by accident, does not reveal any release dates. Out best guesstimate, if history serves, would be late February like last time. We've contacted Microsoft for launch details. Update: We snagged the trailer and have embedded it above! [Thanks, Joey]
