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CCP releases EVE Online planetary interaction video tutorial
EVE Online's learning curve is somewhat notorious (if not downright legendary) and may even be part of the reason the game's hardcore fans are so hardcore. There is truly nothing like it in the MMO space (and not much in gaming period aside from Elite and the X series). Getting into the ebb and flow of New Eden is challenging even for seasoned video game vets, and that was before CCP added a new wrinkle in the form of planetary interaction. Luckily, the Icelandic development firm is also producing some spiffy video tutorials to help capsuleers wrap their brains around everything from scanning to harvesting resources from planets. A new planetary interaction video covers the basics including required modules, skills, and the successful manipulation of the new interface additions, all of it presented with in-game footage and voiceover narration. Check it after the cut or via CCP's YouTube portal.
iPad 101: Customize your wallpaper
Unlike the iPhone,* the iPad lets you customize wallpapers for, both, the lock screen and the home screen. While the default image is beautiful (unless you think the stars resemble scratches), many users will want to replace it with something personal. Here's how. Tap the Settings app and then select Brightness and Wallpaper. There, you'll find two options. First, you can enable auto-brightness, which adjusts the display's brightness by monitoring the environment's ambient light. Tap the images below to bring up the wallpaper settings. At the top of the page, you'll find the iPad's default images followed by your own pictures (if you've synchronized photos). Tap any image to bring up the full-screen view. Now, you've got three options: set the lock screen, home screen, or both. You're done! There are two things that you should note. The first thing is that your images are sorted by album, events, and then faces, which makes searching easier. Secondly, you can't adjust or re-size an image before setting it as a wallpaper like you can on an iPhone. *That's going to change this summer.
Tutorials as you like them with N.E.D. and its family
Nonlinear Educating Inc., has been selling tutorials on a wide variety of subjects for years. Their catalog of 146 video tutorials cover just about everything from all the programs in the Adobe CS4 Suite, to iLife 09 and iWork 09, or virtually anything you could want to learn about Mac software. To get a tutorial from Nonlinear in the past, you would buy it, download it, and play it on your computer. Things have changed with the introduction of new ways to buy and watch tutorials. Nonlinear now gives you three ways to learn on any Mac or iPhone/iPod touch running OS 3.0, using three N.E.D. (Nonlinear Education Device) products. Now along with buying individual tutorials, you can subscribe to their streaming library, giving you access to tutorials on demand either from the web using The N.E.D web player, or N.E.D.i [Free iTunes Link], an iPhone/iPod touch app. The idea of total flexibility is wonderful, but the complexity of all the subscription and purchase options are a bit daunting. The tutorials are excellent. The few I had a chance to go through were totally professional, complete and entertaining. The trainers are some of the best in the field, including Jim Dalrymple and Maria Langer. The tutorials are broken down into many 1-4 minute movies that progressively teach you the software. I'm not going to review the tutorials here, since I feel that they are just about perfect. The only problem I had with the catalog is that some courses are really quite old. The Mac OS X 101: Mastering Your Mac course was released in April of 2006 and deals with OSX 10.4.5. While it's true that a good deal of the information is still valid, there have been a lot of changes in the last two years and a new course for each major OS software release would increase the value of the instruction. The description of this US$29.50 course did not tell which OS version was addressed and I had to dig into the videos to find out.
CCP releases first video tutorial for exploration in EVE Online
Exploration is one of the more rewarding mini-professions a player can have in EVE Online. With the right skills you can scan down all types of hidden content, such as harvestable gas clouds, hidden asteroid belts, and combat encounters that take advantage of an explorer's skills like Archaeology and Hacking. The new exploration system that became part of EVE with the Apocrypha expansion last winter also made it possible for players to discover wormholes leading to uncharted space. However, exploration is also something a number of new players feel daunted by. (Truth be told though, the drag and drop system of manually guiding probes on a map and adjusting scan ranges is *far* easier than what many of the older players will remember from exploration pre-Apocrypha.) EVE Online currently has four different exploration tutorials in-game to help players get a handle on the profession, but sometimes it's easier to just sit back and watch how it's done. CCP has now released a video tutorial for exploration that teaches players how to scan down the hidden content. The EVE Online: Scanning Guide Tutorial is a tag team effort from EVE TV's CCP Charlie who goes through the steps while Stevie SG narrates. They show the viewer how it's possible to find a wormhole in just a few minutes. The video tutorial coincides with the free Zephyr exploration ship that players are receiving as a holiday gift from CCP Games. Stay with us after the jump for a video embed of the official Scanning Guide Tutorial for EVE Online.
Character creation in Earthrise an open system
The latest Earthrise Question of the Week from the Masthead Studios developers -- "The Blank Slate" -- gives us another glimpse at the underlying game mechanics of this post-apocalyptic MMO. When you begin as a newly cloned character, reborn in a sense, all knowledge and skills gained in your life before the apocalypse are gone. (On the bright side, you're one of the old world's elite chosen to carry on humanity's legacy.) In this respect, you are essentially a blank slate and must quickly learn how to survive in a radically changed society through initiation training. These initial training missions let a new player get a feel for their options in Earthrise, checking out the various skills available to them. Initiation training is a time when players can determine what they like, what they don't, and how they'd like their character to develop over time. This approach means that Earthrise's character creation system will be a relatively open system, emphasizing freedom for players.
Patch 3.3 PTR: New tutorial gallery
As we've mentioned in a previous post, there are a new set of tutorials on the public test realm designed to help out new players when patch 3.3 launches. This should help smooth the overall experience for people who are completely new to the world of both MMOs as well as video games in general. While they aren't nearly as amusing as the fake one I posted above (although, that one needs to get added at some point), they do walk characters through a lot of the major tasks. Currently, there are sixty different tutorial windows explaining things from food to durability loss. There is still plenty of room for additions, but these are a great start. While my gallery may not show it, a lot of the tutorials highlight parts of your screen like your enemy health bars, your minimap, or your action bars themselves to help show what new players are supposed to be looking at. Just a reminder that this is the PTR and these might end up changing or getting re-worded before they hit the live realms. If you have any constructive feedback on any of the tutorials in the gallery, please be sure to hit the US PTR forum or the EU PTR forum and let Blizzard know your thoughts on what they've already done or should add in the future. %Gallery-76529% Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.
Found Footage: Snow Leopard hidden features, great video by a 16 year-old
Matt Fisher is a 16 year old high school junior and Apple enthusiast who has been putting up tutorial videos on all things Macintosh since December of 2008. I just saw one that is so good I wanted to bring it to your attention. Matt has created a video on hidden features in Snow Leopard and although we have covered some of these before, this you have to see. In four minutes and twenty-nine seconds Matt covers more content than most people can cover in an hour, and he does it with grace and total clarity. Matt found hidden features in: Coverflow Spotlight Resizing of icons Preview viewing modes Hiding windows in dock icons More organized keyboard shortcuts Location based setting of time and date Showing the date in the menubar Stacks Text and symbol substitution The re-emergence of the trash 'put back' feature. Take a look and I think you'll not only be impressed, but pick up a few things you didn't know. Thanks go out to Mustafa Histoni for sending in this tip.
EVE Online devs seek your input on improving the New Player Experience
EVE Online can be a daunting game to get a handle on. Still, the New Player Experience (NPE) that greets rookies today is far better than the early tutorials that some of us at Massively, and no doubt a number of our readers, experienced 'back in the day'. There are many careers and mini-professions a player can choose to pursue in EVE, but conveying this in the NPE -- and guiding these new players towards these playstyles -- remains a challenge for CCP Games. This is the focus of the latest dev blog by EVE Online developer CCP Soundwave. He explains how player feedback has made those first weeks of gameplay a much smoother learning experience for the game's rookies. However, he notes that they're continuing to improve the NPE for the next expansion. To that end, CCP is seeking input from the players on these questions:
An angle on EVE's New Player Experience and the game's harsh realities
There are few MMOs on the market today that can seem as intimidating to a new player as EVE Online. Some of this comes from the infamous things people have heard about the game, tales of deception and betrayal, but there is a fair amount of complexity to EVE as well and no shortage of digital villains prowling New Eden's thousands of solar systems injecting risk into the game. The first days and weeks of gameplay experienced by many pilots has led to more than a few descriptions of the experience as an initiation of sorts, conjuring up images of hazings, an analogy that actually holds true in many respects. Anyone who sticks with the game learns through trial and error that the setting of New Eden, by design, can be quite harsh. Even if you're not into PvP, it pervades EVE Online; at the very least players who are to succeed in the game must ultimately learn to adapt and evade the more malevolent players, if not defend themselves from attackers directly.While EVE will likely never be as easy to get a handle on as some other MMOs out there -- the game's depth and complexity actually being a major draw for its subscribers -- CCP Games has taken steps to better ease new players into New Eden with the New Player Experience (NPE) which was part of the Apocrypha expansion launch. But is EVE's New Player Experience, which does not separate rookie pilots into a safe zone to learn the ropes, the right way to introduce players to the game? This is the focus of a WarCry article by Steven Croop titled "Aura is Aura by Any Other Name".
We [heart] Icons really does [heart] icons
One of the most common ways to customize your tried-and-true desktop is by changing the wallpaper. While easy and effective, the wallpaper switcheroo is not the only trick up the sleeves of the customizers among us. For some, the most rewarding customization results from replacing icons. There are many reasons to do this, including replacing system and application icons to create an overall aesthetic, easing the identification of a particular external hard drive by using its product image as an icon, or even replacing poorly-designed icons entirely (we're looking at you, Adobe).We Love Icons aims to make it easy for icon lovers to discover new icons from around the web that are free for personal use. In their own words, designers Dan Wiersema and Nando Albuquerque started We Love Icons because, well... they love icons! The site itself is very well designed and easy to navigate; there is even an easy-to-spot option for filtering icons based on type: Mac-compatible, PNG file format, or Windows-compatible.Further adding to the greatness of this site, the How-To page is a great resource for those new to the icon-customization game. There are links to external content on the history of icons, tutorials on changing icons, and even design-related icon articles. The How-To area also features an Apps section which lists several useful programs for replacing and creating icons. Each application list item includes a one-sentence summary, the application's platform (web, Mac, or Windows), and also the application's price.Overall, I am impressed with the content of the site and the quality of its presentation. We Love Icons has secured a bookmark in my "Icons" folder right next to the link to InterfaceLIFT's icon section. Dear readers, I present this question to you: in my never-ending search for the best icons, do you have any favorites that you have either designed or found? Hit up the comments and share the love.
Pixelmator 1.4.1 brings noise filter, Pixelmator Learning with it
Our friends over at Pixelmator have released a new update, and while it's not quite as big as their point versions, it does add a few new features and a nice online guide to the program. The main new feature in-app is a noise filter that allows users to add random specks and pixels to an image, creating a little more realism and mess to whatever shapes they're working on. But the bigger addition is out-of-app: they've created an online Learning database with tutorials, tips, and lessons on how to make the most of the image-editing app. There's actually quite a bit of stuff there now, from text and video tutorials to even third-party tutorials submitted by users. If you are interested in learning more about how to use Pixelmator, definitely give it a look. They've also updated the user manual, too, so if you haven't seen that in a while, that's worth checking out as well.There are also a few performance updates and bugfixes -- here's the list if you want to check it for something you're interested in. I still don't see my personal issue on there: it seems like whenever I switch between the Spaces on my Mac that hold iTunes and Pixelmator, the OS doesn't want to stay put -- it keeps jumping back to the iTunes Space while I'm trying to work on Pixelmator. Of course that might be an iTunes issue, but hopefully the Pixelmator team is looking into it.Other than that, it's still a great app for editing and resizing images, and at $59, is definitely cheaper and simpler than investing in a big Photoshop suite. The 1.4.1 update will show up automatically for current users, and the app can be downloaded as a free trial from their site.
Apple's handy "Find Out How" pages
Here's a useful corner of Apple's enormous website. The "Find Out How" pages feature tutorials on things like Mac and wireless basics as well as web, music and MobileMe tips.We've written about it before, but Apple has recently added tutorials for iLife '09 apps, including iPhoto and an iLife '09 overview. The tips are super handy, and even an old salt like me learned something new. For example, did you know you could publish to FTP with iWeb? I didn't (of course, I never use iWeb).Of course, you can check out our own Mac 101 series as well. Here's to education!
Learning from the newbies
Playing over someone's shoulder is always an interesting experience. You get to learn from what they do and interpret their experience from an outside perspective. But what's really interesting is not what the experienced player does -- rather it's what the inexperienced player does.Psychochild just tackled this very topic over on his blog as he watched his better half get addicted to playing Lord of the Rings Online. While she avoided the temptations of Meridian 59 and World of Warcraft, Psychochild notes that it was a familiar setting that got her into the game.
Apps Amuck gives you free iPhone app tutorials
Since Apple dropped the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) from the iPhone SDK, iPhone developers everywhere have started some awesome projects. From writing a book, to providing examples like Apps Amuck is doing, the development spectrum has exploded. The idea behind of Apps Amuck is to build on the iPhone app tutorials that Apple provides for developers. They are currently giving away one app per day for the next 31 days. The tutorials they provide are small, one trick ponies that allow you to perform tasks like finding your location, building a fire, figuring out your IP address, and more. The site allows you to see a screenshot of the application, read a description, and download the source code to play around with. If you have a developer provisioning file (meaning you've been accepted into the developer program), you can even sync the applications over to your iPhone or iPod touch.If you are not an iPhone developer and wish to play around with the applications, you will soon be able to download them from the iTunes App Store. For more information about the project, visit the Apps Amuck website.Thanks for tip, Chris!
PAX08: Hermann Peterscheck interviewed on all things Jumpgate Evolution, page four
Dude, I dunno if you saw that but I got a nice green item there. br> Massively: That's pretty intense, you're getting flanked. br> Hermann: Yeah that's what I'm talking about.
WoW Machinima: The basics
(Dell is holding a machinima contest, which we'll discuss shortly. They asked me to write a tutorial to help new machinimators get their start.)Every day, I feature a video by some brave soul that dived in head first into the world of machinima. For those that aren't familiar with the term, it stands for machine and cinema. The literal definition is movies made in a 3D gaming platform. Using this basic guide, as well as the other tutorials and resources available to you, you'll be creating your first project in no time!Here is what you'll need if you want to make a machinima for free: WeGame camera - A free capturing program GIMP - A free image editing program Audacity - A free audio editing program Windows Movie Maker/iMovie - Free video editing programs that should have come with your appropriate system [Thanks for originally suggesting this, Bryan!] Read on for optional and advanced tools, plus additional resources ...
Have Clone, Will Travel: Ambulation in the EVE tutorial
EVE Online is like no other MMORPG. In this sci-fi virtual world you are your ship, and the ship is you. Indeed, despite the fact that a great amount of time is spent creating a specific look for their avatars, many new players are surprised to see all their efforts being wasted, once they realize that their avatar ends up being nothing but a small head shot. This is one of the major differences between EVE Online and the rest of the MMORPGs. You are not your avatar. But that is about to change.Most MMORPG players enjoy associating themselves with their characters, but for the last 5 years, EVE capsuleers have never seen theirs, nor have they had a chance to control its movements. This deficiency has been recognized by CCP, the developers behind EVE. After looking into the matter, they came to the conclusion that it was hard for their players to emotionally identify themselves with a spaceship, especially the female minority (about 20%).Ambulation is CCP's answer.
Adobe's virtual library open to the public
Users of any of Adobe's products (at least the current ones) will want to check out Adobe TV. With a smorgasbord of tutorials and informational videos on a broad range of topics, it has something for everyone. The content ranges from Photoshop tutorials from Layers Magazine to tips on dynamic media creation in Visual Communicator. Beginners and long-time users – be they web developers, graphic designers, video professionals, photographers, you name it – should be able to find something right up their alley... from down-to-earth Lightroom tutorials to the ridiculous (but informative) antics of Dr. Brown. The site is well organized and easy to navigate, and thankfully provides Youtube-style embed code for deep linking within the Flash site. It sounds like the content will be updated regularly, keeping the collection current with Adobe's ever-growing lineup. Even if I often choose alternatives to Adobe's products in my workflow (don't worry, InDesign, you're safe for now...), I'm already gleaming useful information from Adobe TV. I find it a testament to Adobe's growth (and the power of acquisition) that the entire site is built with Adobe products, from video capture to final delivery. So, here's a toast to all-encompassing media production empires, so entrenched in the industry that they can afford to miss 64-bit boats and shirk interface conformity. Cheers!
Cinemassively: Getting started with voice chat in Second Life
Torley Linden is a tutorial-making machine! Her how-to's are great for the starting resident of Second Life, but might also teach the older enthusiast a thing or two. If you need instruction on a specific subject, there's actually a video tutorial wiki page.Yesterday, Torley did a whole series of them on voice chat. The video above is on getting started, but she also has videos on who's speaking, etiquette, improving your hearing, private calls, speech gestures, and disabling it for yourself and your land. These clips are in easy to digest lengths of just under one minute to almost four, depending on the complexity of the problem!
OS X Help simplifies the Mac segue
My mom and dad just purchased their first Mac. Unfortunately, it turns out I'm not a great teacher because I get overexcited about advanced features and take the basics for granted when I try to explain things. Fortunately for me, my father shares my autodidactic personality (might be where I got it...) and has been taking the learning curve in stride. I've felt like there are a lot of things they need to know about my favorite platform, though, that I haven't been very good at communicating. I've been wishing there was an all-inclusive, step-by-step resource that could better convey all of the information I try to share in my not-so-good-for-switchers way. Enter OS X Help, which debuted in January and has built up a nice catalog of articles for people just getting their first taste of OS X. The site features the tag "Insanely simple tutorials for the first time Macintosh user." I immediately thought, "son of a switcher! This could be the answer!" From hardware tips to an in-depth look at Safari and Finder, Scott Haneda and Caroline Merchiers have compiled a well-organized collection of brief introductions to Macintosh topics. The email to my parents is on its way. [Ed. note: Brett's modesty forbids any mention of our own Mac 101 series for new and returning Mac users... but look there, it got mentioned anyway!]
