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Chat with Stargate Worlds' community managers June 20th
Can you hear that? It's the sound of thousands of Stargates being activated all over the galaxy. You're probably wondering why it's happening -- you might even be a little scared. Well, don't be scared. It's just what happens when the Stargate community finds out they'll be able to ask Khatie and Scepter questions about Firesky's upcoming game, Stargate Worlds in an upcoming chat.The chat is schedule for Friday, June 20th and will take place at 1pm PST, 4pm EDT, 10pm BST and 9pm GMT according to a recent news post on the game's official website. A full hour will be spent talking about all things Stargate and attendees have been asked to come to the discussion early for the best chance to see their submitted questions answered. You've got a week to think up some clever questions so get to it. We'll be looking forward to seeing if any new juicy details are revealed by either Khatie or Scepter.
Summer to bring big announcements for Stargate Worlds
Get ready for information overload all you Stargate fans, because with summer setting in (at least for the upper half of the hemisphere) Firesky will be making big announcements for their upcoming MMO, Stargate Worlds. You can expect to hear new information about planets, racial abilities and even details on the origin of Op-CORE -- the evil human faction featured in the game. News of which expos the development team plans on attending are also soon to be announced but that information will be revealed at the Stargate Worlds official website. It's likely that Massively will be attending at least one of the expos that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment goes to, so expect us to poke and prod them for the sake of new and exciting information regarding their game. We especially want to know what they think of our Jaffa jokes, as everyone we usually tell them to just gives us strange looks before walking away slowly.
G4 claims the Trion/Sci-Fi project revolves around Stargate [UPDATED]
While the rest of the MMO community is happily buzzing about what Trion World Network is working on in conjunction with the Sci-Fi Channel, G4's The Feed has come right out and said it: "A Stargate MMO developed by Trion World Network and the SciFi channel is going to be integrated with the Stargate series sometime in 2010."Now, we're not out to immediately call shenanigans on G4, but our interview with Jon Van Caneghem doesn't mention any specific shows, and he should know, so ... where is G4 getting this information? A couple of the commenters for the post have noticed this as well, so we're glad it's not just us.[UPDATE: Our own Mike Schramm, who conducted the interview with Mr. Van Caneghem, had confirmed that this will be a new IP, so that rules out Stargate completely.]
MMO episodes to mimic TV shows
Massively's recent ION Game Conference coverage featured an article on developing MMO's as if they were TV shows. This idea was introduced by FireSky's Joseph Ybarra, Senior VP of Strategic Operations. FireSky hopes to run with the concept of dishing up MMO content updates in episodes, with predictable development cycles of roughly six weeks. This marriage between MMO and TV production could also lead to developing 'pilot games,' which makes sense from a company perspective. After all, it involves smaller budgets and entails less risk. The developer can expend a small amount (by standard game development budgets) and gauge player interest. If that title proves to be popular, future iterations of the game could be developed with larger budgets, building upon the storyline of the previous episodes. Do you think that gamers would have more of a say in what the creators do with these stories than they do with TV shows, since an episodic MMO is an interactive medium? Would this be a welcome change in the MMO industry, as opposed to waiting for a few years for that next game?
A chat with Stargate Worlds' Joe Ybarra
The guys over at MMORPG.com caught up with Joe Ybarra from Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's (or CME for short) Stargate Worlds last week at ION to talk about their upcoming MMO. If you didn't catch it when it originally went up, we sat in on his "MMOs and Hollywood" panel during the conference. Joe has a lot of interesting things to say about not only the industry at large, but his companies' game.Being that Stargate Worlds is expected to pull in both the TV series audience as well as MMO players, the team at CME is designing their title with a high level of accessibility. The title's story takes place in a modern -- or even futuristic -- setting, which means combat is similarly modern. We really love the idea that combat is being designed as a one-against-many affair in Stargate Worlds. Joe mentions that the minimum is one player-on-three NPCs and their median is about five or seven against one. That means you can expect battles to feel very action-packed, especially when you're in a group with four of five other players!
Stargate Worlds studio head to appear live on Pwned Radio
Dan Elggren, studio head for Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's MMO Stargate Worlds, will be appearing on Pwned Radio on Sunday May 25th from 8-10 pm Eastern. Stargate Worlds is gaining some serious momentum, having accumulated 100,000 Beta registrants in just half a month, so we're keen to hear what Dan has to say.It's some time since the Stargate Worlds crew have given us a major update on what's brewing in their studio. Given the surge of interest, we're expecting DJ Shane Hamelin and the Pwned Posse to glean plenty of up-to-the-moment information. With two hours to fill, there should be a lot of meat to this interview. Dan will also be giving away prizes, including Stargate T-shirts and FireSky hats; but will he drop any hints of when Beta will actually begin? We can only hope.
Brilliant flora to permeate Earthrise
Masthead Studios has licensed SpeedTree modeling software to add a higher degree of realism to their upcoming MMO Earthrise. The software suite is now used extensively in the game industry for foliage modeling. What, you've never heard of SpeedTree? Well you've almost certainly seen it before. You're not likely to stop and notice the trees and shrubs as the FBI and military are trying to cut you down with automatic weapons in GTA IV. You probably won't admire the indigenous plantlife while you're trying to frag your opponents in Unreal Tournament III either. But the unnoticed backdrop for your carnage in these games was built with SpeedTree. While we may not pay attention to them directly, these details that permeate our virtual environments can have a big impact on our immersion in those settings. Neverwinter Nights 2, Crackdown and Viking: Battle for Asgard are other prominent titles enhanced by SpeedTree. Earthrise is in good company on the MMO front with Masthead's decision to use SpeedTree, joining the ranks of Stargate Worlds, Fury, and Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. If the actual game environments can live up to the screenshots Masthead Studios has released, Earthrise stands to be one gorgeous MMO.
Stargate Worlds reaches 100,000 signups for closed beta
There are plenty of people standing in a secret government lab eagerly awaiting the chance to waltz through a stargate. In fact, around 100,000 eager explorers have signed up for the Stargate Worlds' closed beta. 100,000 players is an improvement on the number reported earlier this month and registrations continue to climb. The closed beta registration has only been open for about half of a month, so the developers at Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment are pretty happy. So happy, in fact, that they actually shouted out with joy in their press release.Overall, the news is exciting since the Sci-Fi genre is well on the way to getting a nice, shiny, new game. The beloved series is coming to a computer screen near you and there is still time to get in on the action. Stargate Worlds is accepting closed beta applications and the sooner folks sign up, the better. Make sure you bring plenty of ammo and clean socks for the trip into this unexplored world!
SGW beta sign-ups hit 65k
Apparently there are a few Stargate fans out there. A day after officially announcing open beta sign-ups for Stargate Worlds the list has already hit 65,000. According to Senior Community Manager Katie Postma the overwhelming response by fans has given the dev team a huge boost of confidence and encouragement.Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment wants to remind everyone that the beta process for SGW has just begun, so they ask for your patience as applications are being sifted through as fast as possible. As with most betas, testers will be added slowly over time and will eventually ramp up to much larger numbers in the near future. Those of you who want a chance to jump through the gate and haven't signed up yet, get your money makers over to their site and drop in your beta application ASAP!
Stargate Worlds developer chat on May 9th
Do you have any burning questions about Stargate Worlds? Something on your mind? The admins of SGWirc have announced a Stargate Worlds special event for May 9th, a developer chat with Aruspex of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. The dev chat kicks off at 4pm EST, or 9pm for those of you on UK time, and is slated to last for one hour. Here's where to find him:Address: irc.sgwirc.comChannel: #stargate-worldsJava: http://www.sgwirc.com/chatWho, or what, is Aruspex? Well the May 9th dev chat announcement is a bit clearer than Aruspex's hidden message from back in January, which was written in Ancient -- or really some variant of a Caesar cipher. His game ultimately revealed that he's in charge of Stargate Worlds' crafting system. While it hasn't been announced exactly what sort of questions Aruspex will field, a moderator at the Stargate Worlds forums hinted that Aruspex may also discuss minigames in addition to crafting. So get your questions into the IRC bot early to grill Aruspex about anything and everything your heart desires -- and if it's about crafting in SGW, so much the better. [Via Curse]
Stargate Worlds gets updated
Fans of the upcoming sci-fi MMO Stargate Worlds can finally freshen up their websites with a brand spanking new Web kit. The kit includes two exclusive wallpapers, new SGW logo, a logo branding guide (which explains how you can use/not use the logo), favicons, avatars, and an updated FAQ and legal. Plus, four new images have been added to the SGW gallery. These new images show off the planets of Lucia, Tollana, Agnos (nothing really "new" per se since we've seen images of them before). The last new image though is a dozy. How about the very first look at a female Jaffa (seen above)! She's one bad mutha. Look at the legs on her!
April Fools' in Stargate Worlds
view original : close The dev team for Stargate Worlds has decided to change the direction of the in-game armor. Apparently, this decision was based on how much everyone loved the human body armor seen in the SGW trailer. Due to that overwhelming love fest... all races will now have the same exact armor. SGW Creative Director Chris Klug is ecstatic about the decision: "We'll have a lot more time to work on other ideas, such as Asgard golf." Oh fun... golf. Technical Director Demetrius Comes said, "It's going to so be much easier to code now that we will have only one kind of armor for all player characters." Senior Marketing Manager Kevin Balentine chimed in with: "I don't think it's necessary to distinguish the different races by different armor sets." It seems there are other ways to distinguish species on the battlefield. In fact, they're painting the bad guys red and the good guys blue (see the above pic). Balentine, obviously stuck far too long with only his marketing companion cube as company, doesn't think that's ever been tried before. Nope... not ever.
Watch a Stargate Worlds artist's video dev diary
Cheyenne Mountain has released a developer profile of Stargate Worlds artist Jake Johnson, who works on all sorts of visual assets -- most prominently the attractive skies of the game's many planets. Johnson talks about how he landed the Stargate gig, the assets he had the most fun creating, and the process he employs to create sky domes. Oh, and his favorite season of SG-1 -- Season 2. Good choice, Jake! Every one knows Sokar was the coolest SG-1 villain!SGW's skies aren't just skybox textures, apparently; Johnson composes a geosphere to blanket the game world. Planets and other celestial objects can be placed inside it after the fact. The video includes a sneak peak at the sky of the planet Dakara, so that's pretty cool. Also, there's a gigantic Stargate replica in the studio lobby. Nice!The clip is worth a look, if only for snickering at all the miscellaneous gaming memorabilia littering the art department's desks, including a copy of Battlefield 2, Mario 1UP mushrooms, and an XBox 360 controller. But don't take the controller as a hint; Cheyenne's Joe Ybarra made it clear in an interview a few days ago that the team is focusing on the PC for now.
SGW images depict spacesuits, Egyptian mythology
Outer space and Egyptology; it was out of the marriage of these two things that the original Stargate movie was born. While the popular TV series Stargate SG-1 and even more so its spinoff Stargate Atlantis have moved away from Ancient Egypt over the years to explore other mythologies or Star Trek-style science-driven-concepts like self-replicating nanobots gone mad, rest assured that the Egyptian motif is still intact in Cheyenne Mountain's MMO Stargate Worlds.The evidence: the above, decidedly-Egyptian screenshot, which is one of four new images just released to the game's official gallery. Note the awesome-looking disintegrating moon in the sky. Sweet! To cover the outer space side of things, one of the other images depicts artist's conceptions of humans' spacesuits. The other two images: concept art of a war-torn, bunker-type area, and yet another screenshot of forest ruins.
Getting technical with a Stargate
Stargate Worlds' Technology Director, Demetrius Comes, recently got technobabbley about what goes on behind the curtain of their upcoming sci-fi epic.SGW uses Epic's Unreal 3 engine under the hood for the graphical shock and awe. Big World technologies powers the servers, but did you know that neither engine is exactly what they needed? As Comes put it, they rolled their own glue to get the two engines to work together. But there's a third component - a powerful content creation tool - they call "SpecSuite." It's used to create spawns, enter the data for the AI, create items, mobs, loot tables, etc.
Cheyenne Mountain working on second MMO
Gamasutra spoke with Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's Joe Ybarra about the Phoenix-based company's ambitious plans for the future. And boy are they ambitious -- especially for a company that has not yet released a single title, as Gamasutra noted.Ybarra revealed that the Cheyenne has four active studios, and that Stargate Worlds isn't the only MMO in development. He didn't offer many details about the other title, except to say that it's "considerably less in scope" and that it uses a free-to-play/microtransactions model. Seems like everyone is going that direction these days.He also touched on the company's desire to develop original intellectual properties, and noted that it's considering changing its name to something representative of its now-broad scope, as "Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment" is a reference to Stargate franchise lore. Cheyenne Mountain is the compound in which the Stargate secretly program operates.
Beau Bridges steps out of Stargate, onto set of Max Payne
The list of names for the upcoming Max Payne movie adaptation continues to grow as Stargate SG-1's Beau Bridges has become the latest actor to join the cast, following the addition last week of That 70s Show and Family Guy's Mila Kunis as an as-yet-unnamed assassin. Bridges looks to step into an altogether different role as a character named B.B. Hensley, which The Hollywood Reporter describes as "a former cop and mentor figure to Max Payne, who helps him track down a cunning, ruthless killer." The storied actor has played a number of different roles over the course of his career, but after three years of associating his face with that of Stargate's Major General Hank Landry, it's difficult for us to imagine him watching Mark Wahlberg's back without wanting him to pull out random quotes from Patton or Dr. Phil.
New SGW stuff comes through the gate
The Stargate Worlds website recently released four new images (2 screenshots and 2 concept pieces). The concept artwork details an Asian-themed world while the two screenshots show off Agnos and Lucia.But it's not all about the images though. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment wants to hear from you if you operate a fan web site about their upcoming sci-fi MMO. They're updating their database and want to make sure your site gets on their list. And no, it's not so they can send you a cease and decease letter. On the contrary in fact! When CME releases news and information about Stargate Worlds they want to make sure you know about it.So if you fit that bill, be sure to check out the list of needs at the SGW website.%Gallery-18767%
Game Informer gets some Stargate goodies
A new issue of the popular print magazine Game Informer has an in-depth Q&A with creative director Chris Klug and studio head Dan Elggren from Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment about Stargate Worlds. While you can get a sneak peek from Game Informer's website, you need to have a subscription to access it. Or, you can just pick it up at the newsstand like the rest of us schlubs. And according to the Stargate Worlds website, you'll want do just that. Apparently the magazine has some never-before-seen content - including the very first look at what combat will look like in the game itself. They also give a snipet from the interview which talks about how players can use the environment as a buff in combat (players will receive a boost not only in damage dealt, but how much damage can be taken). This feature sounds a lot like what's already in place in Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa.The exclusive images found in Game Informer will eventually be posted on StargateWorlds.com, so if you can't get the mag (or just don't want to)... stay tuned.
Behold SGW's Battle Walker
The Stargate Worlds site revealed three new screenshots and piece of concept art yesterday. The three screenshots show the planets Lucia, Anima Vitrus and Tollan, while the concept art sketch shows the badness that is the Battle Walker (seen above).If those things are playable... I want one!Expect to see more new images In the coming weeks. Check out the Stargate Worlds Gallery for the visual treats.