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GDC09: Massively previews Huxley, a hybrid sci-fi MMO and FPS
Huxley: The Dystopia is a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter (MMOFPS) in development at NHN USA. We haven't heard much about the title since mid-2008, so we were happy that NHN USA was willing to sit down with us at GDC 2009. We spoke with Andy Hong, Huxley's Project Manager, who showed us some of the basic concepts behind the game. Huxley is a persistent world built upon Unreal Engine 3 foundations and is a game that differs from many of the MMOs we cover at Massively. Like other titles entering the market such as Global Agenda, Huxley is a marriage of the twitch combat of a first person shooter with classes, skills, trading, banking, and player housing we associate with MMOs. "At the core of the gameplay in Huxley, at its heart, it's an FPS," says Hong. But the depth of the rest of Huxley's gameplay, not limited to its quest and crafting systems, makes it a title quite unlike any pure FPS. %Gallery-48874%
GDC09: Massively previews Huxley: The Dystopia page 2
Quests and PvP You can pick up quests in the city. Those are either story quests or instanced quests where you can either go solo or group up to wipe the map of enemy NPCs. Huxley's cities are large and while a player can navigate on foot, it's much faster to take a hoverbike, or travel by tram or train. The quests themselves often bring a player outside of the city (via train) or beneath the city, where they need to fight against the hybrids in the sewers. While the game's quests can either be handled solo or in squads, players can also advance in Huxley through PvP. "With PvP you earn experience points as with quests, but you also earn rank points which let you level up your rank, such as private, sergeant, lieutenant, and beyond. The benefit of higher rank is access to the most powerful S-type weapons and bragging rights. People see the symbol next to your name and see what rank you are," like a title system, says Hong.
Trampoline updates to 2.3.2
We reported on Trampoline a while back-- it's a radial application launcher that bills itself as a way to give you quick access to your "core set" of tools. A few people have marked it as very similar to Sapiens, and that's true-- both are circular launchers that allow you to fire off applications quickly when you need them. Sapiens is a great application, but it seems to have a little more under the hood in terms of learning your apps and where to place them, whereas Trampoline seems to be more interested in just providing quick access, not mapping your apps out for you. The other main difference in usage seems to be that Sapiens can be activated with a circular mouse movement (sometimes a bonus, sometimes an annoyance, if you didn't mean to activate it), while Trampoline is activated with a mappable hotkey. It's up to you whether one is more or less efficient than the other.At any rate, this is your Mac we're talking about, so you can use either or both or none. Trampoline's Joseph Wardell let us know that his application has just been updated to 2.3.2, which brings better compatibility with Leopard applications (including Time Machine), and some speed updates and improvements. Trampoline remains shareware (just like Sapiens, incidentally)-- use a trial for as long as you want, or support the application with a purchase for $19.95.
Sapiens: mouse-centric application launcher
We've mentioned Donelleschi software before in connection with Sticky Windows, which allows you to shrink windows to a tab on the side of your desktop. Now they're back with a new mouse-centric launcher application called Sapiens. In contrast to keyboard launchers like LaunchBar, Sapiens is supposed to allow you to launch applications with just your mouse. Basically, you activate Sapiens by moving your mouse in a circle, and up pops a radial dial menu with various applications on it. According to the developer Sapiens "can accurately learn and understand the applications you use and is therefore able to make reliable predictions about the set of applications you are most likely to launch." So you actually have to train it for a couple of days so that it can learn what applications you use. If the application you want does not appear initially when you invoke Sapiens, you can use the keyboard to search for it. Sapiens also interacts with drag and drop so that you can select and drag a file, invoke Sapiens with the circular mouse gesture, and then drop the file on your desired application. I've only been playing with Sapiens for a few minutes so I can't yet measure the developer's claims about its capacity to learn my habits. I should also point out that TUAW favorite Quicksilver has some mouse-centric plugins that will allow it to do some of the things Sapiens does, via mouse gestures and the Constellation menu.Sapiens is now $19.95 (introductory price, to go up to $25.95 at some point) and a demo is available. I also recommend checking out the slick introductory movie on the main Sapiens page for a visual demonstration of what it can do.[via MacMinute]
