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iPads sent out to select developers, kept under cover for now
Last week at GDC 2010, I talked to quite a few iPhone developers, big and small, and they all told me exactly the same thing when I asked about the iPad: "No, I haven't gotten my hands on one yet." But apparently there are at least a few developers out there who've gotten test models from Apple, according to Business Week, and the requirements that come with them are as strict as you can imagine. There are 10 pages of rules and regulations, and those include that the iPad has to be kept secured to a fixed object in a windowless room, and the company actually requires photographic proof of compliance before they'll actually ship the device out. Sounds crazy, but clearly there's reasons for such a strict agreement from both sides: developers really want to get a head start on what will surely be a huge market for apps and content starting on the iPad's release, and obviously Apple wants to make sure that the device stays under cover until it releases. You might think that they'd actually benefit from a little exposure, but don't forget: this is Apple -- they depend on the hype and interest that secrecy before release creates. After it comes out, seeing the iPad out in the world will likely sell even more units, but pre-release, Apple's customers are happy to stand in line to be the first to use the iPad. Of course, this is all from anonymous sources -- it'll be interesting to see if any of these "iPads in the wild" find their way out to the public in the form of pictures or video. Until then, the rest of us (including many developers who've played big parts in building up the App Store to where it is today) will have to wait until April 3rd. [via Engadget]
GDC 2010: Ngmoco's Neil Young on how freemium will change the App Store world
On the third day of GDC 2010, Ngmoco's Neil Young took the stage in one of the largest rooms at the conference to talk about what his company had "unlearned" in its time in the App Store. Ngmoco has become a large and polarizing figure in the world of App Store development -- after starting out with a big investment from the iFund, it's moved quickly to become one of the biggest iPhone-only developers, and after starting out with a few premium titles like the very successful Rolando, have recently made waves with its "freemium" business model. Young talked about the company's history so far, and went in-depth on Ngmoco's plan for ruling the App Store and why he believes it's the "most significant shift and opportunity for [game developers] since the birth of this business." We've summarized Young's long address in this post. It was pretty incredible -- not only did Young lay out his idea of a clear plan for building and developing a large portfolio of very profitable App Store titles "at scale" (the company plans to release twenty new freemium products on the iPhone in the near future, as well as six titles on the iPad), but he made it very clear that he fervently believes that freemium and the model he's structured is the future of the video game business.
Tesla Roadster to bid adieu in 2011, successor coming in 2013
Much like the replicants of Philip K Dick's fertile imagination, it seems like Tesla's Roadster will live a famous, but short life. In its pre-IPO filings to the SEC, the company has cited "tooling changes at a supplier" as the reason it will stop selling its current gen Roadster and Roadster Sport EVs after 2011. Given that all Roadsters are built at the Lotus factory in England, this probably suggests new Elise or Exige models are on the way and the manufacturing facilities are being updated accordingly. It also means Tesla will be left without any product to sell until the planned 2012 launch of the Model S sedan, while its next generation of two-door sporty supercars won't be arriving until 2013. Sigh.
Tesla pulls in $465 million government loan to build Model S electric sedan
The Detroit News is reporting that Tesla has closed on a $465 million low-cost loans from the Energy Department to work on its next electric vehicle, the Model S sedan.The funds will apparently be used by the company to build manufacturing plants in California. The loan, which closed on Monday and was approved back in June, will come from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which has about $25 billion to dole out to automakers manufacturing energy efficient vehicles. The Model S will, when complete, boast an up to 300-mile driving range, and will hit up to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds. It's supposed to hit production in 2012 with an output of 20,000 units (that means cars) per year.
Breakfast Topic: Is it time to update WoW character models yet?
Ok, I'm going to come right out and admit it: I'm thinking of cheating on WoW. No, I don't mean like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, I mean seriously playing another MMO and sticking with it. I'm talking in specific, of Lego Universe, the upcoming title from NetDevil. I've been a Lego Maniac from a pretty young age. One of the best days of my childhood was the day my parents bought a massive bin of Legos from a garage sale. I created my own massive Lego castle village. My birthday and Christmas wish lists invariably consisted of Lego sets. Even to this day I sometimes think I should have pursued a master builder career. So the chance to do this all again in an MMORPG? You know I'll leap at it. Of course, other MMOs are usually the purvey of our sister blog, Massively, but in this case, something caught our eye in a recent report on the making of Lego Universe by the Denver Westword News: The article claims that the number of 3-dimensional surfaces on a single 16-stud Lego Universe brick is twice as many as found on your average World of Warcraft character.
Potential character model revisions in Cataclysm
WoW's fifth anniversary and the interviews surrounding it have ended up providing us with some previously-unknown tidbits of information -- which is a good thing, especially when it comes to stuff we've been wanting to hear about for a long time. This particular tidbit comes from the Warcry network interview with J. Allen Brack and Samwise Didier about the game's anniversary, and it's about a subject near and dear to our constantly-complaining hearts: new character models. They might even be coming in Cataclysm. Says Brack: "Even though things would be better with new (character) models, we'd probably spark a lot of player outrage. So we've talked about giving players a choice between the classic models or the new ones, but it might not be something we want to take on at the same time as we remake Azeroth." That's pretty big news.
Rawr updated to 2.2.25 [Update: 2.2.27]
Rawr is a great third-party app (it's open source, and doesn't interface with the game at all) that's designed to help you figure out everything you need to know about your character, including how to best buff, enchant, and gem up your gear and set up your stats for whatever you'd like to do. It started out as an app strictly for tanking druids, but recently, it's grown to include pretty much all classes and stats. Our good friends at sister site Download Squad just recently found out about it, and they've got a nice basic writeup posted that serves as a good overview if you've never used the app before. They also mention that the app just got another update, to version 2.2.25, and all of the release notes are posted over on their site. They're also looking for help -- if you're a C# developer, or know one who can work on their rogue and hunter models, be sure to let them know. Since the program is open source, anybody who knows the code can jump in and add their own features, or fine-tune the class choices, which then helps out everyone who uses the software. Rawr is definitely an excellent resource for anyone looking to get their gear perfected -- it's a free download for Windows on their site right now. Update: Since this post was written, the app has been updated to 2.2.27. That was fast!
Tesla Model S platform to be used for electric vans and other vehicles, airbrushing optional
Tesla Motors may now be banking on its Model S to help it snag a bigger piece of the electric car market, but it looks like the car's platform may be the real key to the company's near-term success. As just revealed in an official blog post by VP of Business Development Diarmuid O'Connell, Tesla will also be using the platform for a range of other "derivatives," including a minivan, a cross-over utility vehicle and, yes, a full-fledged utility van for both industrial and civic use. Unfortunately, O'Connell didn't have much to say about anything like a launch timeframe or any other details, for that matter, but we wouldn't let that stop you from your starting to plan out some van art. Trust us. It's coming back.[Via Autoblog Green, image courtesy dcdan]
Interview focuses on creating the ships of Black Prophecy
In a massively multiplayer online game where a player's avatar is essentially a spaceship, the designs of those spacecraft have to be appealing. After all, the look of a ship is generally not as customizable at the appearance of an avatar in most other MMOs. In fact, the ship avatar may not be customizable at all, so ship aesthetics are important to some players. This is the focus of an interview with Rocketbox Studios, the people who created the 3-D models for ships and space stations in the sci-fi MMO Black Prophecy. Rocketbox Studios worked from the concept art provided by Black Prophecy developer Reakktor Media and (according to their portfolio) created 165 spaceship modules, 70 weapons, 5 space station module systems, and 5 level locations. The main requirement Reakktor had was that, given that Black Prophecy is a space-based MMO, these assets would look good even from great distances while holding a significant amount of details and textures up close. And although Black Prophecy is clearly focused on the ships, it's been mentioned that there will be 3-D mini avatars seen in player-to-player communication. This is evidenced by the fact that Rocketbox Studios built 27 character models for the sci-fi title, albeit without heads.
WoW Mountain Dew ad was directed by Tarsem Singh
A number of sites have done a post-mortem on the Mountain Dew WoW Game Fuel ad (featuring two ladies battling it out through their WoW characters in a live-action supermarket), and they've uncovered a really interesting fact: the ad was actually directed by Indian director Tarsem Singh, one of my favorites -- he not only did the visually stunning sci-fi/horror flick The Cell a few years ago, but more recently made The Fall, which is an very well-done kind of mirror-life fairy tale. He's directed a number of commercials before, including some for Nike and Levi's, and teamed up with a company called Zoic Studios (they've done a few other spots for video games already) for this WoW commercial.The original CGI models for the ad did come from Blizzard (I'd guess that they're the original models from the WoW CGI trailer), though they were spruced up quite a bit by Zoic to add facial expressions and dynamic costumes and hair. They were then connected to motion captures from stunt artists (which were probably also tweaked to seem a little more than human, and then composited all together in the supermarket scene.Very cool stuff. This isn't the first time WoW characters have been used to sell soda, but hopefully we'll see more fun sequences like this come out of the deals between Blizzard and their partners.
World of WarCrafts: From Naxx to Pinky Street
World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by contacting our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) -- not-for-profit work only, please.Is there somewhere in game that feels like home to your character? Reader Asphydel's characters hail from Pinky Street – literally. Pinky Street is a line of four-inch anime figurines that come with interchangeable parts, allowing you to create trendy, custom figures with your own look. The line encourages customizations, from swapping out parts and accessories to adding entirely new paint jobs. Asphydel of Ghostlands-US took the look a step farther, bringing her figurine into the World of Warcraft with Pinkycized versions of her Priest and her boyfriend's Mage. "I actually have a background in art and had taken a class in 3D," she explains. "We had a small section on making molds, so it was pretty darn easy for me to follow various suggestions and ideas I had found online. I can imagine that it can be a little overwhelming for anyone who has never looking into it ... O_o I knew it was for me in my first classes."
Tesla, Ford, Nissan all receive electric car development loans from US government
High five, Tesla fans -- everyone's favorite incredibly controversial electric car company has just been granted $465m in loans from the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program. The bulk of the money will go towards that postponed Model S factory, while the remaining $100m will be used to fund an electric powertrain manufacturing facility that will sell parts like motors and battery packs to other carmakers. Tesla wasn't the DOE's only big winner: Nissan received $1.6b (billion!) to build batteries and EVs in Tennessee and Ford received an undisclosed amount to build two upcoming electric cars, but since those companies have largely drama-free upper management that isn't constantly involved in lawsuits, it feels a little more routine. Still, it's an exciting time -- let's hope all these tax dollars turn into affordable, convenient electric transportation sooner rather than later.Update: A "congressional source" has told the AP that Ford's getting $5.9 billion, so yeah, the Oval's still the big dog. Read - Tesla Read - Ford Read - Nissan
The mystery of the missing Ulduar models
Back at the very end of last year, the folks at MMO-Champion did their usual excellent work in mining up a heap of models from Ulduar. Now that it's six months later, I have to ask: what happened to all of them? Take the sword pictured above. If you've raided Ulduar, you've seen this model wielded by the Twilight's Hammer cultists in the hallway to the Descent Into Madness. Why, then, is it the case that there are four 2h swords available in 10 and 25 man Ulduar and none of them use this model? Furthermore, why do all four of them in fact use the same model instead?As you can see from the older post, there was an alternative two handed mace model, two more 1h sword models, another crossbow model and an alternate gun model as well. You may not love all of them (our own Alex Ziebart felt that the crossbow model lacked) but you have to wonder, why does every Ulduar gun, crossbow, mace and 2h sword look identical? Why are there only two one handed sword models when there could have been four? Are these models coming in a later instance or are they just there to dress up some NPCs? I actually think that the sword model alternative rocks pretty hard. I realize the mace says 'aspect' instead of 'ulduar' meaning that it might be intended for a later Chamber of Aspects instance, but even so, there was clearly a lot of work making new gear for Ulduar that didn't even get used outside of some NPCs. Any opinions on why we got one model for most drops in Ulduar instead of using some of these?
Daimler buys 10% stake in Tesla, offers parts and know-how
Daimler and Tesla have been working together in a limited capacity for some time now, but the two made their relationship official in a pretty big way earlier today, with Daimler announcing that it has bought a 10% stake in Tesla, and that it'll be lending a hand with both parts and engineering. Of course, as with most things Tesla, there's no firm price tag attached to the deal, although it's said to be in the "double digit millions." They're a bit more specific when it comes to the working relationship, however, which will apparently include Tesla "leveraging Daimler's engineering, production and supply chain expertise" in ways that'll "accelerate" bringing the Model S to production. Tesla will also reportedly work on battery pack integration and battery management systems for Daimler from here on out, and the two will continue to collaborate on Daimler's second-generation Smart ED electric vehicle that's slated to go into production later this year. Interestingly, as AutoBlog points out, the deal also gives Tesla access to the automotive lithium-ion cells being produced by Daimler subsidiary Li-Tec which, when we're talking about electric vehicles, is no small thing.
Breakfast Topic: Awesome Animations
So hot on the heels of the best mob noise in game discussion, I thought I'd ask another question: What about the animations? We probably don't think about it too much, but the sounds and animations of PCs and NPCs alike probably end up making a lot of atmosphere we take for granted. It fills out the world and makes it feel more immersive, more real.With that in mind, the noise topic got me thinking of what animations I really like. There's a lot of them that at least deserve a mention, from the howling of Coyotes to the nervous skittering of the Silithid. In the new animations, we get stuff like Stinker's escapades and the wildlife of Grizzly Hills going on with their every day activities. Beyond that, even PC animations can have their awesome looks, such as a Draenei twirling a Polearm to attack or a male Blood Elf dying with Shakespearean dramatics. Ethereals also have some pretty graceful moves overall, even in the way their bandages move and their energy pulses.What animations and graphics have you encountered in WoW that have made you stop and say, "Hey, that's pretty neat?"
Tesla CEO says Model S isn't really expensive, when you think about it
With a promised price tag of less than $50,000 (after a $7,500 federal tax credit), the new Tesla Model S sedan is certainly a good deal cheaper than Tesla's pricey roadster, not to mention its competitors, but according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it's actually quite a bargain compared to your run-of-the-mill sedan as well. As Musk tells it, "the ownership cost of Model S, if you were to lease and then account for the much lower cost of electricity versus gasoline at a likely future cost of $4 per gallon, is similar to a gasoline car with a sticker price of about $35,000." Musk further adds that the Model S would still be a bargain "even if gasoline were $1 per gallon," saying that it costs just $5 to drive 230 miles. Of course, all of that assumes that you'll actually be able to get your hands on the car one of these days, but Musk seems confident that'll happen as well, saying that the company is "close" to receiving $350 million in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy, which would be used to build the plant in California that would manufacture the Model S.
Tesla Model S now official
After a brief period of unofficial officialness this morning, Tesla has rolled out the Model S to a sea of eager photographers. The company's also revealed specs for the EV: this seven-seater can go from 0 to 60 MPH in 5.6 seconds, boasts a top speed of 120 MPH, features a dashboard display and a 17-inch main touchscreen monitor. It's fully 3G capable, sports HD and satellite radio, uses LED and neon exterior lights, smart-key power, and push button gear selector. While that $49,900 base price will get you a battery that's good for 160 miles per charge, 230-mile and 300-mile range packs will be available. On a 220V outlet, the company says it'll charge in four hours with a 45 minute "QuickCharge" option, and you should be able to swap batteries if necessary in under 8 minutes. Excited? Find a way to control yourself, this baby isn't going into production in Q3 2011. Check out a brief glimpse of the interior after the break.
Tesla Model S official shots unofficially unveiled
Kevin Rose has some Tesla Model S imagery up on his Flickr account, including the first unshrouded pictures of the car, along with a rather wild interior shot. The all-electric sedan is styled beautifully -- if rather predictably -- but things start to get weird on the inside. In what looks to be a concept car mockup of the interior, there appears to be a large touchscreen taking the place of the entire center console, wrapped irregularly by dashboard padding. The instruments panel also appears to be a screen, though it could just be a mockup at this stage. Concept cars typically have rather strange and unlikely interiors compared to their tame street-legal counterparts, but even so, if this indeed isn't some sort of cruel Photoshop trickery, we'd say Tesla really outdid itself here. Besides, who needs safe, tactile ways of adjusting climate and audio settings when you're living life this large?[Via Autoblog Spanish]
Tesla Model S priced just under $50K, rest of car still shrouded in mystery
While much of the Tesla Model S is still a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in an inconvenient white cloth, the company has revealed the EV will list for $57,400, which after the $7,500 federal tax credit puts the final price at just a Benjamin under $50,000. That's almost $40,000 less than the Fisher Karma and $10,000 more than the estimated price of Chevy Volt. Of course, we still haven't actually seen the thing, but at least we won't have to wait much longer for that -- the grand unveiling is set for this Thursday at Tesla's design studio.[Via NPR; thanks, mitchell]
Tier 8 Ulduar weapon models previewed, Val'anyr included
3.1 and Ulduar are coming soon. No doubt a lot of you have been looking forward to seeing what your reward for hacking apart a variety of priceless Titan artifacts and servants of the Old Gods would be. MMO-Champion, as always, has your back! They've released a preview for the weapon and accessory models that'll be in Ulduar, and they look fantastic. The theme of the instance seems to carry through into all of its gear, and I'm going to love just how good my guild and I will look after a bit of time in there. The image above is a paladin holding one of the Ulduar shields and the much-touted Val'anyr, Gavel of Ancient Kings, and that's just the tip of the iceberg from MMOC, who promises a video of it in action very soon. Bear in mind these are still tentative models and the art may change, but even then, what are you waiting for? Santa won't get mad if you peek. Go go go! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
