enhancements
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DDO Update 20: The past lives of robots and vampires
With two Forgotten Realms-themed expansions under its belt, Dungeons and Dragons Online might look like a game that's focused on this popular setting while sweeping its "other" world of Eberron under the rug. However, Update 20 shows that Turbine has love for both worlds and the playerbase spread across them. DDO's Update 20 has three important features on the docket: an Eberron dungeon, a Forgotten Realms dungeon, and changes to the reincarnation system and enhancement tree. This looks to be a good update for the thrifty subset, as all of its content is coming to the community free of charge. This update's coming next Tuesday, November 12th, so forge ahead and prepare yourself for the adventures to come.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Digital Enhancements
Last week, I covered the raw basics of Enhancements in City of Heroes. This was a good place to start, but it also glossed over everything but the basics. It's telling that glossing over everything but the basics still involves stuff that's as bogglingly complicated as diversification, but then, there's a reason I decided to do these columns in the first place. But with all the basics out of the way, what more could there be to cover? Lots, as it happens, because last week didn't touch upon dual Enhancements or Inventions, both of which cover the same ground and take into account the specifics of Enhancement Diversification and so forth. So for those of you wondering why I didn't talk about IOs, those still trying to get a handle on the system, or those just morbidly curious about how the game works, it's time to start in with the enhancements that broke the entire system in half more or less the second they were introduced: Inventions.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Some Enhancement evening
Using the Enhancement system is pretty important to playing City of Heroes successfully. It's a combination of both gear and (arguably) character specialization, and it's the main way that you increase your power over the course of your leveling. Sure, you get new powers as you level up, but your earlier powers remain your steadfast workhorses. Mastery of Enhancements is the path to being imbalanced. Unfortunately, the Enhancement system is also really, really complicated. I don't say this lightly; in fact, I say this specifically after a conversation with a fellow Massively staffer who has never fully understood how this system is supposed to work. Said staffer is an intelligent man, but the system is rife with corner cases, strange rules, exceptions, and several elements that are never really explained in full. So for all of the newer free-to-play people or old hands at City of Heroes who never really got the system, here's a primer on how Enhancements work.
Windows 8 file management: you ask, Microsoft listens
After augmenting Windows 8 with some mobile-friendly features, it looks like file management is next to go under the knife. Not the sexiest part of an OS, granted, but one you'll use almost every day -- a fact not lost on Redmond. Based on newsgroup feedback, Windows 8 will sport a stack of tweaks hoping to make some of the more mundane tasks, well, less mundane. For example, if you copy duplicate files to a directory, it'll make decisions based on size, name and modified date to determine if it's the same file or not. For long copy jobs, error messages will be mercifully left until the end, allowing the rest to complete. Other simple touches include EXIF orientation data, which will be reflected in Explorer's preview, updates to the slightly contentious Ribbon, plus a bunch more user-driven goodies. We're reserving judgement until we get hands-on of course, but if you want to know more, there's a full rundown in the source after the break.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The power reset
Respecs are a powerful tool in MMOs. They're a way for you to feel confident that no matter what choices you make when developing a character, you can make better ones further on down the line. Instead of worrying with each character decision that you're locked in to something you never wanted, you know with confidence that you can always back out if turns out that your abilities are actively causing you to die in horrible and unwanted ways. And in City of Heroes, you get three of them. This is the sort of thing that raises a few eyebrows, since having a limited number of choices to rectify your already-limited number of choices is not something to inspire confidence. And I'm not going to lie to you: It's certainly not the brightest decision in the world. But the hard limits on the total number of respecs you get doesn't actually mean you're forever locked in to terrible decisions. The fact of the matter is that for a number of reasons, you won't really care.
Directing the devs for a day in Asheron's Call
Turbine may be best-known to modern MMO gamers for its F2P games Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online, but veteran gamers know that the company has a tiny little subscription sandbox game operating a bit outside of the limelight: Asheron's Call. Yes, AC is still chugging along, thanks in part to the devs' interaction with their small but faithful community. In fact, to reward that community, the development team has in the past asked its players for ideas on how to enhance the game. The catch is that said enhancement has to be something the devs can do in a single day. Today, Turbine has posted up the best of the best ideas from the recent round of submissions from the playerbase, and apparently, AC players want their team working on everything from casino tweaks to tailorable undergarments (really!). Check out the whole list of itty-bitty incoming enhancements on the official forums.
Paragon Studios answers our questions about Issue 19 of City of Heroes
Just three months after the major upheaval of Going Rogue, City of Heroes is getting another big update in the form of Issue 19. Bringing with it new task forces, the first part of the new Incarnate system, the long-awaited baseline Fitness pool, and several other quality-of-life improvements, the issue is packed to bursting with things for players to enjoy. So we naturally had a few questions, even above and beyond our first impressions of both the Incarnate system and the new Apex task force. Of course, this issue isn't the work of just one or two people within Paragon Studios, but the whole team. So it was fitting that we got our questions about the newest update to City of Heroes answered by several members of the team. Melissa Bianco, Matt Miller, Sean McCann, and Tim Sweeney all took the time to answer some quick questions about the substance of the update, so click on past the break to see our questions and their responses.
iPad adds Screen Rotation lock. Recumbent users scream "Finally!"
Apple has finally added a screen rotation lock to one of its iPhone OS computing products. The button, which appears on the side of the new iPad will lock the device into its current orientation, preventing the unit from responding to re-orientation events. For everyone who has ever tried to play a game while lying down on a couch or a bed, let me say: Thank you, Apple! Finally, we'll be able to lock our orientation in place and not worry about an overly helpful system trying to do its best to keep up with the way we hold our screens. If you've ever tried reading a webpage, scanning mail, or just playing a game on the iPhone while lying on your side, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Can't wait for this to appear on the next iPhone as well! Thanks, Attila – hat tip to The Loop
New Issue 17 details for City of Heroes
If you play City of Heroes, you're looking forward to the upcoming Issue 17. We've heard some of what can be expected from the big pre-expansion drop, but much of it was cloaked in vague terms -- improvements that didn't have any hard data attached to them, like the promise of new missions and UI revisions. But the official site has put up a page on the coming features for the update, and it helps clarify some things we didn't know about, as well as offering some excellent news besides. And it promises the end of Positron's dreaded unending task force! (It'll still be there, but it will be split into two parts and improved all around.)
The Light and How to Swing It: Holy paladin gear enchants, part 1
A few months back, I did a rogue column on how rogues can enhance their gear with enchantments, gems, armor kits and the like. Well, it's time for paladins to get a similar guide -- in three different forms! Yes, since paladins have three main specs for three different roles, they need some wildly different enchantments. Today, we'll look at above-the-belt enhancements for a regular ol' endgame healing paladin, soon to be followed by prot and ret recommendations. (Shockadins, just grab the caster junk like usual.) Head Glyph of Renewal: This item, available for 90g once you get revered with Honor Hold or Thrallmar, gives you a one-time boost to your head item's healing and mp/5. Revered with HH/Thrall isn't too hard, and you need all the mp/5 you can get, so pick this up if you're planning on any serious healing. 10/10 PVE, 7/10 PVP. Glyph of the Gladiator: On the other hand, if you're the arena type and find yourself a bit lacking in the two key PVP stats, you might want to pick up this stam/resil item from revered with Shattered Sun Offensive. It's pretty useless for PVE, though, so save it for your _____ Gladiator's set piece. 3/10 PVE, 9/10 PVP.
TUAW makes Jisho better, version 2.1.1 out now
The other week, we posted about Jisho, a Japanese to English translator for the Mac, and James, the developer, sent us another notice today that he's since updated to version 2.1.1. I can't find a changelist anywhere (and the site still says version 2.1) but James says there's a new intro splash screen, and an enhanced interface and accuracy. So if you grabbed it when we mentioned it last week, make sure to get the upgrade as well.He wants to personally thank you, the readers of TUAW, for helping him make his software better, and we must echo his sentiments-- you guys rock. We are nothing but proud to bring developers like James a great audience like you, thanks very much.
TabExpos: Safari gets Expos for its tabs
Move over Shiira, cuz there's another browser in town that can bring the power of Exposé to its tabs. Cocoamug Software's TabExposé enables Safari (even the new v3 beta) with a configurable shortcut key to display the current window's tabs in an Exposé-style layout. To be sure, however, it only works on the current window and the tabs that window contains; if you have more than one window open with tabs in Safari, the others will sit in the background.TabExposé works well in Safari 3 beta on my MacBook Pro, and with extra options like applying a color bar to the top of the tabs when TabExposé is invoked, $4.90 is a very, very tiny price to pay for such a handy Safari tab management tool.
Digg Podcasts
Digg just went through a interface overhaul, adding a few new features and surprises to its collection of user-powered ranking tools. A new "Podcasts" ranking area joins the News and Videos sections, allowing users to view and rank popular audio broadcasts, as well as link to those podcasts for download. Unfortunately, this new feature proves to be less compelling than News and Videos because of the relatively stagnant nature of the listings. Unlike the other features which ebb and flow over time, few new podcasts are introduced on a daily or even weekly basis and the popular items tend to float to the top of the list and just stick. Digg's strength lies in tracking trends, and podcasts, unfortunately, don't seem to have trends.Update: read more about Digg's new features here.
BlueBox intros miJam iPod toys
If it wasn't yet clear to you that the age of the DIY mashup is upon us, a new set of toys from a company called BlueBox -- which let even iPod-toting tweens "enhance" their tunes by dropping beats and sound effects -- should remove any lingering doubts. The three members of the new miJam series, which all attach to standard headpone jacks - a guitar, mixing board, and electronic drumsticks -- bear little resemblance to their non-toy counterparts, as all of the effects are triggered by buttons instead of real drumming or thrashing. Even the mixer sounds like it would be a letdown for budding DJ's, delivering canned scratches that will in no way prepare them for the beat-matching they'll being doing in a few years on their Numarks. Still, kids are pretty easily entertained, so the flashing lights and loud noises should probably hold their interest for a few minutes longer than your average gimmicky accessory. Like so many other pre-release products we bring you, we have no idea when these are coming out nor how much they'll sell for.
Review: iWeb's enhancements are exactly what it needed
In the most recent iLife '06 software update that Damien mentioned, iWeb understandably received the largest bump of new features and bug fixes; after all, it is the latest to arrive at the iLife party. Considering that I've been pretty vocal about my gripes with this otherwise fantastic addition to both iLife and .Mac, you can imagine my enthusiasm for Software Update to work its magic asap.After tinkering with the new features in iWeb 1.1 like blog comments and drop-dead simple photo album page creation, I thought I'd post a quick review of what's new, as I think iWeb is finally starting to fit into its role of a strong, WYSIWYG 1.0 application from Apple.
