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Sun Wukong returns to SMITE
Another god has stepped into the SMITE arena, and it's one who will be familiar to longtime players of the game. Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is making his return to SMITE with a new look and new abilities. Wukong is a physical melee character who has special protections against critical attacks depending on his health and uses his massive cudgel to dish out damage to enemy gods. Sun Wukong also has the ability to transform into an eagle, ox, or tiger, with each form bringing a special combat effect. As an eagle, he moves quickly and passes through enemies. As an ox he injures and knocks back any enemy in his path. And as a tiger he pounces on and stuns the first enemy he encounters. Check out the full reveal video from Hi-Rez after the break. [Source: Hi-Rez press release]
Turbine reveals shape-shifting DDO Druid class
Turbine has a present for all you would-be shape-shifters out there, and it takes the form of the new Druid class coming with Dungeons and Dragons Online's new Menace of the Underdark expansion. The content drops on June 25th, and the Druid will be available as a premium playable class (and free to VIPs). The Druid is primarily a caster, but he's also proficient with daggers, sickles, staves, and clubs. His signature ability allows him to transform into a winter wolf, a dire bear, a water elemental, or a fire elemental. Each shape has its own set of spells, and the class also features a Druidic oath that boosts resistances to entanglement, poison, and other natural ailments. More info on the expansion is available via Turbine's official website. [Source: Turbine press release]
The Road to Mordor: What if?
By the time you read this, I'll be scurrying around PAX East in Boston, feeling much like a Hobbit: unable to see over the crowd, far out of my element, and deeply wishing I purchased shoes. I'll of course be talking with the folks at Turbine to see what information I can wheedle out of them about the future of this terrific game, so if you don't hear from me again, I'm most likely languishing in a PR dungeon somewhere for being too nosy. It's a good week, therefore, to be thinking about the future. My mind never stops thinking about future possibilities for any franchise, and even if they never come to be, these speculations are a great pastime of any fan. I'm always wondering "What if?" as I play Lord of the Rings Online -- what if I could mug Frodo and become the Ring-bearer? What if those lazy bums finally finished the repairs to the tavern in Frogmorton? What if Elves could kill innocent woodland creatures and go to the dark side? Playing "What if?" with LotRO is tougher than with other games because of the limitations imposed by the IP. Despite what some say, Turbine's struggled hard to stay within the boundaries of lore and setting, and while that's helped the company to be creative in ways that it might not have otherwise, it does present some unique obstacles that aren't present in competing MMOs. So to celebrate PAX, LotRO, and the future, here's a column of "What ifs?" for your consumption!
Shifting Perspectives: A brief history of time
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we plagiarize from Stephen Hawking, jack a WABAC Machine, and begin a joyride through the evolution of the Druid class.Dear Blizzard,There are too many bosses to write about in Ulduar. I find this vexing. Please eliminate 5. Sincerely,Sleepless in SilithusSalutations, Druids. As is probably obvious, we're going to take a detour out of Ulduar class strategy this week, because I'm going to shoot myself if I have to write about another boss I haven't been able to smack around since the PTR. We'll be back for Freya, Thorim, and assorted vaguely Norse-sounding entitites wishing to destroy the world for some unspecified reason but they drop phat lewtz so who cares next week.Anyway, one of the things that's fascinated me about the Druid class since Burning Crusade is the growth in its popularity. Historically we have never been among the more commonly-played classes, and for a wide swathe of classic WoW and BC, were actually the least-played class or within the bottom 3. While there are various reasons for this (and I could devote a column to how this probably happened), Druids became more popular as time went on, and an increasing number of people began to play the class without knowing just how far it's come. A little time spent reading through Wowwiki's list of the game's patches makes for interesting reading. A little more than 5 years ago, Druids could Feign Death, the Feral 31-point talent was Improved Pounce, and Moonkin form wasn't even in a gleam in a designer's eye.
It's Pandemonium in Final Fantasy XI
News has spread of a grueling new enemy encounter in Final Fantasy XI. The Notorious Monster (NM) Pandemonium Warden is one of the strongest opponents players can face in the game. But it seems Square-Enix may have raised the bar too high, given the extremes to which players must go to defeat Pandemonium Warden. A linkshell (guild) called Beyond the Limitation recently faced off against Pandemonium Warden over an 18 hour period, but the NM was still going strong. The NM shapeshifts into multiple forms, making it even more of a challenge to defeat; Beyond the Limitations fought Pandemonium Warden through twenty of his possible forms, some of which took hours to kill. Pet Food Alpha, a Final Fantasy XI community site, quotes a member of Beyond the Limitation stating: "People were passing out and getting physically ill. We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible new story about how video games ruin people's lives."
MacThemes 2 public voting has begun
Phill Ryu writes in to tell us that public voting has begun for the latest MacThemes contest (in which three of the themes will be chosen to win $1000 in software and become available for ShapeShifter). There are tons of entries (55, to be exact), and they all look pretty darn good in my civilian opinion.Overall, the public is being pretty discriminating-- the highest score I can find is 3.5 out of 5. Standouts so far are Pluto, AOR, California, and Plexis, but voting just started, and it's supposed to go through next Wednesday, so I'd expect things to change between now and then.If you're bored, head over to MacThemes and pass out a few ratings for the cause. I guess the public rating will count for half of the final score (with judges accounting for another part of the score), so every vote counts. We should see the winners sometime after the 15th.
TUAW Desktop of the Week
This week's Desktop of the Week may include a little Windows paraphernalia action, but don't let that distract you from some of the mod action that Flickr user dannyuncensored has going for his brand new black MacBook. First up is the wallpaper he's using - it appeared in a February rumor we ran of a possible Black iMac. The actual image was linked by TUAW reader Smitty, and is part of a wallpaper pack at - where else - deviantART. Here are the rest of the resources dannyuncensored is using in a handy list format: ShapeShifter theme: TenFive from InterfaceLIFT Byte Controller (free) for iTunes in the menubar MacBook icon from InterfaceLIFT Windows Vista icon for the Boot Camp partition created by dannyuncensored's friend (perhaps they would be willing to share it?) Statistics in the middle of desktop are, again, provided by Panic's popular Stattoo The clear Dock is provided by Unsanity's free ClearDock Dannyuncensored also included a nice touch with changing Photoshop's icon, though I have to admit that since installing the CS3 Web Premium suite (as well as After Effects CS3 which runs like butta'), the default 'periodic table of Adobe applications' branding philosophy has grown on me. If you'd like to see your unique, functional or otherwise interesting desktop featured in our TUAW Desktops of the Week series, check out past featured desktops as well as the original post for the rules and to get an idea of what we're looking for. Then, upload your desktop screenshot to our TUAW Desktops Flickr group. We'll feature one or more desktops each weekend, giving credit to the desktop owner, wallpaper creator and any apps featured in the screenshot (if available). Keep those desktops rolling in!
TUAW Desktops of the Week for 4/30 - 5/5/07
This week I found it impossible to choose just one image from our TUAW Desktops Flickr group, so I chose four - two desktops and two honorable mentions. The first, simply titled My Current Desktop (how about some more unique names for these desktops, eh?), is from Flickr user tj scenes and is quite the melding of OSes, interesting wallpaper, minimal icon design and unique choices in applications. What you're looking at is not yet another ShapeShifter theme, no - it's Parallels running in Coherence mode with a black Windows XP theme and the Windows taskbar stifling Mac OS X's menubar. You're also looking at the custom icon set Amora, ClearDock and - believe it or not - Winamp, the good ol' media player for Windows that could. It's quite an interesting setup, though tj scenes neglected to mention one thing: what wallpaper he's using, and where he got it (ok fine that's technically two things). Next up is Mac OS X Desktop in a Mosaic from Flickr user blumensath, a desktop that is interesting primarily due to the way it was created. Blumensath used MacOSaiX, a mosaic generating app, and plugged in Flickr pictures tagged with "osx" to create a cool mosaic of... well, Mac OS X. These next two images from t_szuba receive honorable mention for their minimal setup and shout out to the old school days of Apple. They're both running Panic's Stattoo and Sophia Teutschler's CoverSutra, and both feature custom app icons for the left-aligned Dock and Unsanity's ShapeShifter. While t_szuba mentions the wallpaper designers for both desktops, no link was provided (yet). If you'd like to see your unique, functional or otherwise interesting desktop featured in our TUAW Desktops of the Week series, check out past featured desktops as well as the original post for the rules and to get an idea of what we're looking for. Then, upload your desktop screenshot to our TUAW Desktops Flickr group. We'll feature one or more desktops each weekend, giving credit to the desktop owner, wallpaper creator and any apps featured in the screenshot (if available). Keep those desktops rolling in!
Desktops of the Week for 3/11 - 3/17/07
Our TUAW Desktop of the Week is a triple play this time around, and we have a little bit of everything to show. The first of this week's three featured desktops is at the top of this post, and it hails from Flickr user jcsizmadi. We dig it both for the subtle style of icon organization and use of the iStat app, but also because the wallpaper is home-grown. Jcsizmadi runs Dangergraphics.com, and this image is freely available in two different resolutions.
TUAW Desktop of the Week for 3/04 - 3/10/07
Our TUAW Desktop of the Week didn't make the cut because of some wild assortment of applications or montage of interestingness. No, this week we decided to keep it simple and old school with think different from Flickr user 1000things (though the roaming ladybug is a nice, yet weird, touch). The old-school Apple logo is keeping it real front and center, while the 'think different' writing actually belongs to 1000things herself. Don't adjust your ColorSync settings, however - the black appearance of the menubar and iTunes are courtesy of Unsanity's Shapeshifter, an app that can skin Mac OS X with new colors, icons and styles. If you'd like to see your unique, functional or otherwise interesting desktop featured in our TUAW Desktops of the Week series, check out past featured desktops as well as the original post for the rules and to get an idea of what we're looking for. Then, upload your desktop screenshot to our TUAW Desktops Flickr group. We'll feature one or more desktops each weekend, giving credit to the desktop owner, wallpaper creator and any apps featured in the screenshot (if available). Keep those desktops rolling in!
Roundup of 10 Mac OS X UI modification apps
Mac OS X's Aqua UI is a mighty purty thing, what with its oh-so-slightly transparent menus, gun metal finish and lickable blue dialog buttons. But what if you want to mold the look of the Mac OS to your bidding or apply a new theme? We've blogged about the likes of ShapeShifter and CandyBar here at TUAW before, but Appleication just put together a roundup of 10 UI modification apps that can enhance your Mac's look and feel in just about every way possible. Armed with this list, you'll have everything you need to set movies and websites as your desktop background, dim apps in the background to get your concentration on, bring that unified look to all your apps and even add the power of multiple desktops to your workflow. Even better for those of you still trying to recover from the blow to your budget after the holidays, most of the apps on this list are free.
Unsanity updates ShapeShifter and Mighty Mouse
I know there are some serious haxie haters out there, but for those who heart haxies, you'll be happy to know that Unsanity recently updated 2 of their most popular apps, ShapeShifter and Mighty Mouse. Both are now Universal Binary and sport a few bug fixes and new features.ShapeShifter is a very cool "GUI tweaker" that enables you to change virtually everything about the appearance of OS X with various themes (of which there are a great many to choose from). Version 2.4 adds support for windows with a "Unified" toolbar, and includes several bug fixes and speed improvements. ShapeShifter now requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.Mighty Mouse is for customizing your cursor - all your cursors - on the fly and with ease. The interface is drag & drop and copy & paste. Doesn't get much easier than that. You can add animations, change cursor sizes and even create your own custom cursors. Version 1.3 requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later and includes a more streamlined interface and a handful of bug fixes.More detailed info about each can be found on Unsanity's blog.
The TUAW Interview: 3 Developers behind My Dream App
A few days ago I sat down (virtually) with the 3 developers who will be coding the winning ideas from My Dream App (they are also judges). Austin Sarner (AppZapper), Jason Harris (Shapeshifter, ThemePark, and Chicken of the VNC to name a few), and Martin Ott (SubEthaEdit) have a big task ahead of them. At the moment over 1700 ideas have been submitted to My Dream App and not only will these guys be programming the final 3, they also help choose them.After the jump is a longish chat that I had with Austin, Jason, and Martin. We go over their programming chops, why they decided to join up with MDA, and why they are so excited about the concept.
Unsanity releases beta of Universal ShapeShifter
In a post aptly titled 'At Long Last!', Unsanity announced a beta of a Universal version of ShapeShifter, their UI haxie for skinning Mac OS X. As the post states, your Intel Mac can finally "get its spank on" (what on Earth are those guys at Unsanity selling??). Obviously, as their post states, this is a beta so things could very well go wrong with it. On the upside this Universal version should work just fine with any guiKit (skin) that you throw at it.This ShapeShifter 2.4 beta version is a free upgrade for registered 2.x owners and is available from this Unsanity blog post.
ShapeShifter now Tiger Compatible
Have you found yourself wishing that Tiger's entire interface were actually lined with Tiger fur? If so, you should consider skinning OS X. MacThemes.net has announced a new Tiger-compatible version of ShapeShifter, the program / hack that lets you customize the look and feel of OS X. This new version "includes support for the new system's spotlight metadata searching, the ability to skin the Dock, a new installer, several Tiger specific skinning abilities, and various bug fixes. Though themers should update their themes to take advantage of the update's new features, ShapeShifter will automatically upgrade themes on application for basic Tiger compatability." ShapeShifter costs $20. You can either download themes for free or hack your own.
