vignette
Latest
Warlords of Draenor introduces vignette encounters
Playing through the Warlords of Draenor alpha, it quickly becomes apparent that the Timeless Isle was a preview of the upcoming expansion's world design. While quests and quest hubs are still present in spades, the game world is littered with bonuses -- hidden caches of materials for your garrison, rare spawns, and little stories in out-of-the-way places. While questing through Frostfire Ridge, I saw a skull on my minimap in the region known as the Boneslag. Assuming it was another rare spawn of many, I rushed down and encountered Cindermaw. I didn't know it at the time, but Cindermaw isn't a standard rare spawn at all. He's something Blizzard is calling a vignette. I was able to solo Cindermaw, and quite easily at that, but the encounter was more involved than I'd expected. After beating on him for awhile, he burrowed underground and I was given a warning that he'd moved to the southeast. A few moments later, he reappeared far out of the standard combat range, where a normal mob would leash and reset. Instead, I remained in combat with the worm, needing to pursue him through the Boneslag, fighting through (or attempting to avoid) all of the orcs that stood between us. I reached him and managed to do only a little more damage before he burrowed again, causing me to pursue once more. On the third engagement, I used my cooldowns to kill him before he could flee any further. My efforts were rewarded with Cindermaw's Blazing Talon. Vignettes appear to bring a more dynamic type of encounter to the game world, something more akin to a dungeon boss than the typical overworld monster. Cindermaw was my first kill towards the achievement The Frostwind Slayer, which lists eight different vignettes in Frostwind Desert -- what I assume to be a deprecated name for Frostfire Ridge. If that's correct, it's safe to assume every zone in Draenor will have its own set of vignettes.
TUAW's Daily App: TiltShift Generator Free
I finally picked up an iPhone 4 last Friday, and one of the best things about the new handset is the beautiful shots I've taken with the camera. I'm not a professional photographer by any stretch, and people who have actually done tilt-shift photography might have a whole lot of bones to pick with the "'shopped" version of the technique, but I've already had plenty of enjoyment from TiltShift Generator Free. It's one of a few apps on the store that will edit taken pictures to give them the short depth of field and selective focus that creates the effect. The aptly named TiltShift and Tilt Shift Focus are two other (slightly more expensive) options, but TiltShift Generator Free worked great for just messing around, and it has the added bonus of being completely free. With the free app, you get options to blur or "vignette" (that's the shadow effect seen around the outside frame) the images, as well as adjust the saturation, brightness, and contrast. Once you save the image, you can put it back on your photo reel or export it out to email, Twitter, or Facebook. Getting the paid version for 99 cents allows a higher resolution for output, but as an amateur just having fun, I had no issues with the free version. Again, if you're a photographer who knows his or her way around Photoshop, something like this probably isn't what you need; you already know how to dive in and edit pictures, and your best shots probably aren't taken with an iPhone anyway. But as a super casual photographer who likes the tilt-shift look and playing around with the iPhone 4's great camera, I really enjoyed this free app. It's definitely worth a download.
