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Castle simulation goes MMO with Stronghold Kingdoms
Being a king will soon be as easy as logging into a game and doing what needs to get done, as Firefly Studios has announced Stronghold Kingdoms, a 2010 dated castle and kingdom MMO. Although they don't currently have a publisher, the Stronghold series is well, for lack of a better term, strong -- we have no doubt it'll find a happy publishing deal in the coming months.The game itself will be very familiar to fans of Firefly's previous works, with lots of besieging, battling and pillaging -- after the proper bankrolling of course. We'll warn the faint of heart now: delve into the official website at your own risk, this is not a casual game of "Let's build castles and play armies!" that Firefly creates. On the contrary, this looks to be a game with enough depth to drown a giraffe twice over.
Giraffe video conferencing robot to weird employees out
So your boss is home sick today, huh? On a business trip you say? Think twice. Thanks to HeadThere's new developments in Giraffe video conferencing robots, people can literally be in two places at once (and will look extremely creepy in one of those places). The 5-foot, 8-inch-tall Giraffe robot presents an awkward alternative to traditional video conferencing by creating an actual physical presence -- it even adjusts to a 4-foot, 5-inch height in case you interact with someone who's seated. Using special software and a webcam, the user can operate their robotic representative from a remote location: you can tilt the head, er, 14.1-inch LCD screen up and down and maneuver the robot about the office, while taking in sights and sounds with a 2.1-megapixel, 8x zoom camera and microphone. You definitely won't be shuffling through papers or sipping free coffee, however, you'd be able to chat with / micromanage your employees and coworkers thanks to a high-volume speaker placed appropriately where a mouth would be. Now word yet on availability, but we do know that one robo-doppelganger will run you somewhere between $1,800 and $3,000 (those pre-ordering will receive a discount).[Via Crave]
Hunters Hax
While the DS homebrew and hacking community doesn't quite hold a candle to the PSP's, there are still many a soul who live to exploit Nintendo's wonderful hardware. While many have managed to perform "good" by enabling things such as emulators and voice chat, there are those who would do malicious evil. This is one of those cases. A hacker named Legacy has released an application that grants players in Metroid Prime: Hunters access to several cheats, including infinite energy, infinite ammo, and levitation. Worst of all, these capabilities are also accessible in official Wi-Fi matches; before long, you may see a few of these cheats yourself. Tsk tsk, Legacy. Got rocked a few times too many?
The Robotic Giraffe
It's a bit hard to get noticed in all the mayhem of the Burning Man festival, so Linsday Lawlor did what any other self respecting engineer would do and built himself a 17-foot tall robotic giraffe. Named Rave Raffe, the huge robot runs off of three 450-amp batteries that are charged by a 12-horsepower propane engine. The whole unit can run for about 8 hours at Raffe's top walking speed: 1 mile per hour. The 1700 pound robot has a pneumatic powered 8-foot neck, 40 strobe lights, 400 LEDs and a killer speaker system. The bot walks by moving two of its wheeled legs forward at a time, and then locking them with hydraulic brakes while the other two shuffle ahead. Lawlor (a laser-light-show designer, can you tell?) isn't done yet though, he's working on computerized flashing giraffe spots, a light up circulatory system, and a gas grill to get Raffe ready for this summer's Burning Man. If we weren't allergic to sunlight this might be worth a trek down to Nevada all on its own.[Via MAKE]
