SWTOR Class: Sith Warrior

Please go to our New Sith Warrior Page for the latest Information!  
CHAMPION OF THE DARK SIDE

An unstoppable force of darkness, the Sith Warrior is entrusted with the task of destroying the Empire’s enemies and enforcing Sith domination across the galaxy. The Warrior channels the destructive emotions of fear, anger, and hatred to purge weakness from body and mind and become a being of pure, brutal efficiency.

Destined to eradicate the incompetent chaos created by the Jedi, the Sith seek to rule the galaxy through power and intimidation. The armies of the Sith Empire are trained to accomplish this task, but they require the leadership of bold Sith Warriors—loyal and mighty overlords—who will drive them to conquest and victory.

These cold-blooded conquerors waste no time with cunning manipulations and carefully-crafted plans. Sith Warriors crush their opponents and stride toward their goals with dreadful determination, leaving ruin and annihilation in their wake. Emanating awe and terror at every step, they accept nothing but absolute obedience from their followers. In turn, Sith Warriors can serve as loyal subjects to their own dark masters, often surprising enemies and allies with their rigorous honor and perfect discipline.

Whether they align their ambitions with those of the Dark Council or become renegades in pursuit of their own goals, they are never far from the action. Their fierce hatred of the Jedi keeps Sith Warriors at the forefront of any conflict with the Republic. The passion to eradicate the Jedi Order fuels many of their actions, but that does not make them single-minded fools.

Ultimately, the destiny of any Sith Warrior is his own to choose… and woe to those who would stand in his way.

Read on

SWTOR Class: Jedi Knight

Please go to our New Jedi Knight Page for the latest Information!  
  VALIANT, DETERMINED, GUARDIAN OF PEACE

A symbol of hope in dark times, the Jedi Knight stands for the legacy of the Jedi Order—more than twenty-thousand years of protecting the Republic and keeping the peace across the galaxy. Though Jedi Knights have served as generals, guerilla fighters, and warriors for generations, their legendary combat prowess faces its greatest test during this age.

Through years of disciplined training and meditation, the Jedi Knight hones body and mind into perfect harmony. Combining the foresight of the Force with unrivaled reflexes and practiced physical precision, the Knight turns combat into an art form, gracefully executing acrobatic feats in tandem with elegant lightsaber tactics.

A source of inspiration to allies and intimidation to adversaries, the Jedi Knight’s presence is welcome in any confrontation. The Order’s long history of fighting for justice has earned the trust of countless friends and the hate of innumerable enemies. Few, though, are foolish enough to challenge a seasoned Jedi Knight unless they have the skills and technology to even the odds.

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Choose your own adventure. The pitfalls of MMO

Recently I decided to give RIFT another go. I got an email stating that they made all these changes and added new content .. blah blah. So I thought, what the hell? My account is still active until October ... I'll give it another shot.

The first thing I was asked to do was to change realms as the realm I was on had been allocated as a trial realm. This is a really good idea. This allows the developer to have trial accounts that don't get used by spammers, and real players with real accounts are guaranteed that they're dealing with and speaking to other real players with real accounts.

So I transferred over to the new oceanic servers. TRION, the developer of RIFT, created two new oceanic specific servers about a month ago. Although this might have been six months too late for a lot of oceanic players, I was surprised to see the server full, in the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday. Although TRION didn't listen to the community that begged and pleaded with them to create an oceanic server when the game began, they have eventually seen sense.

If you haven't tried RIFT yet, I do recommend that you give it a go. The levelling and the  storyline/quests are not bad ... but, where RIFT seems to be lacking is with a real in-depth story. I couldn't even tell you the name of the world I'm in, and I've played the game on and off for over two months ... let alone tell you anything substantial about the main characters. The lack of cut scenes and true story-telling really let this game down. The graphics, interface, classes, and general world are all pretty good. I'd be so bold to even say that those elements are better than WoW but WoW also had the story-telling, dramatic heroes and villains, and cut scenes. In WoW I built up a true relationship with my character that was maintained over several expansions. It wasn't until they tried to re-hash old content that I found it was time to move on. Even with the best interface, if an MMO doesn't have a compelling story that attaches a player to their character, players will not spend real time in a game.

Another perfect example of this is Star Wars Galaxies. When the game was first released it was classified as a sandbox game. It was a massive open world, with no real guides but it was a world created within the Star Wars universe. The majority of the gamers were there because they love Star Wars. It was a buzz just hanging out at Anchorhead cantina, or going to Jabba's palace for the first time. The story was engrossed in the game and the complex character development system suited it perfectly. It wasn't until Sony was put under the pump by Lucas Arts to show a massive improvement that Sony made a critical error. They stopped listening to their community. They tried to copy the WoW model and at that very time destroyed everything that was potentially unique about the game. The simplistic character levels that they implemented just didn't work with the complex world they created.

So, back to my point, it doesn't matter how simplistic or complicated the MMO world is, the story is king. If you can't make a gamer get attached to his character, develop fps instead! If you are looking for a general idea of what Star Wars the Old Republic may be like, I suggest you download and play Mass Effect II. This will give you a general idea on what is possible with real story development.

PC Perspective's John Carmack Interview: GPU Race, Intel Graphics, Ray Tracing and Voxels and more!

I just got a chance to sit through PC Perspective's John Carmack Interview: GPU Race, Intel Graphics, Ray Tracing and Voxels and more!

For anyone interested in gaming and the future of gaming technology this is a must see!!

"Now to things of recent debate – infinite detail engines. He first clarifies that voxel engines and infinite detail topics are not the same thing and should not be treated as such. Carmack then states he believes “procedurally generated detail is usually not what you want.” A discussion that has been around for over a decade, truly useful procedurally generated content has never materialized though the ability to easily and efficiently manage the real data that you do create HAS. My favorite line? “Proceduralism is just a truly crappy form of data compression.” He continues to state that infinite detail isn’t really what’s important to future game development and instead we should be focusing on the “broad strokes” of artistic visions and build on them. “If you take uninspired content and go look at it at the molecular level, it’s still uninspired content.”

Also head on over to PC Perspective for a full transcript! 
   

Death of the GPU as we Know It?? Re-post from March 19 2008

This is a re-post from March 19 2008 on my old site www.tkarena.com.

Unlimited Polygons A Reality?

Well actually that sub-title is a white lie to get your attention. But don’t be too angry. What this article is about is something even better than unlimited polygons, it’s about unlimited voxels.

The legendary games programmer John Carmack, in an interview on PC Perspective in mid-March 2008 , spoke of a new technology he is working on:


“It involves ray tracing into a sparse voxel octree which is essentially a geometric evolution of the mega-texture technologies that we’re doing today for uniquely texturing entire worlds. It’s clear that what we want to do in the following generation is have unique geometry down to the equivalent of the texel across everything.”

Kind of a slim Friday update this week...

STAR WARS: The Old Republic Fan Friday

URL: http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20110812-0


With each Fan Friday, we feature creations from some of the clever members of the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ community. This time around we’re shining the spotlight on some of the incredible artwork done by our fans.

Be sure to check out this month’s Fan Site Spotlight where we talk to Chimaera, a great French site dedicated to bringing you the latest from The Old Republic. Also, we compiled a number of images from the “Return” cinematic trailer for you to download and use as your desktop wallpaper.

Read more…

Euclideon's Unlimited Detail in SWTOR or Another MMO?

As some of you may have seen I interviewed Bruce Dell on behalf of [H]ard|OCP and the video was published on Wednesday. I’ve had a couple of friends ask me whether Bruce’s Unlimited Detail technology would be viable for games like SWTOR. I have no doubt that the technology would improve games like SWTOR

but it’s far too late to make these ground breaking changes for that game, but they are working on technology that enables them to convert polygons into their engine, so conversions might actually be possible in the future. If this technology eventuates, it’s will make amazing changes to open world games. Read on

Euclideon's Unlimited Detail in SWTOR or Another MMO?

As some of you may have seen I interviewed Bruce Dell on behalf of [H]ard|OCP and the video was published on Wednesday. I’ve had a couple of friends ask me whether Bruce’s Unlimited Detail technology would be viable for games like SWTOR. I have no doubt that the technology would improve games like SWTOR but it’s far too late to make these ground breaking changes for that game, but they are working on technology that enables them to convert polygons into their engine, so conversions might actually be possible in the future. If this technology eventuates, it’s will make amazing changes to open world games.

In the demo, I found in excess of a hundred different items but yet people all over the net are criticizing the demo because it looks repetitive. I guess people just aren’t used to seeing that much information on the screen at once. 

If you go into WoW or and look at the zone Nagrad, for instance,

you can only see a max of three different tress in one scene, if that. There is far less detail and variety in WoW than in the Unlimited Detail video, and there will be less variety in SWTOR as well.

Euclideon are in need of a good map maker for their future projects. I look forward to seeing some well constructed maps to explore. You don’t realise how important view distance is until you get to experience something like this demo in real time. I watched the RAGE trailer this week after seeing Euclideon’s demo on Monday, and the graphics in RAGE looked horrible in comparison.

Having seen Euclideon’s technology first hand, now I feel like someone who got to see Blu-ray backs in the 80s, but then left stuck with VHS. Imagine standing in a world with this view:

This island was built to look like their logo and you are literally a pin-prick on the logo. each color is a major item like the purple dot is the elephant the light green is the cactus etc.  

This map would be as large as all of WoW … old and expansions put together. And there’s no loading between zones. This shot is looking over an area  the size of just 1 letter in the logo name.

Euclideon & Unlimited Detail - Bruce Dell Interview

[H]ard|OCP is proud to present this full feature video, behind the scenes interview I did with Bruce Dell, the founder and CEO of Euclideon and the original creator Unlimited Detail technology.

I interview's Bruce Dell for a full look into the past, present and future of Euclideon and the Unlimited Detail technology.

The small company of only 9 people in Brisbane Australia, were in the news again in early August 2011 after having released a demo video to give their fans a one year update. This video received almost 2 million hits in the first 4 days.

Euclideon are a very secretive bunch who normally decline interviews, but the public outcry for them to respond to their critics has been so great that they kindly agreed to this exclusive interview, letting [H]ard|OCP in before, the say, they must get back to work and disappear again until they have a final product.

Please head over to [H]ard|OCP for all the info.

Diablo 3 Beta Test Key! I Want it!!!

Diablo 3 beta announcement;

Countless hours of consulting the ancient prophecies and poring over dusty tomes have resulted in the unearthing of new information about Diablo III. The upcoming Diablo III beta test will introduce a treasure trove of exciting new features, including a new Auction House that will provide a powerful new way for your characters to acquire the implements of war. Prepare yourselves!

With the upcoming launch of the Diablo® III beta test, the armies of the Burning Hells will march forth from their forgotten lairs to besiege the mortal realms anew.

To prepare for this renewed demonic invasion, the Blizzard Insider has secured an exclusive interview with Lead Content Designer Kevin Martens as he shares his thoughts and insight on Diablo® III's upcoming beta test. So read on, and prepare yourself for the next chapter in the Diablo® saga.

Insider: Aside from the story elements, how are you tuning the game's combat encounters?

Kevin Martens: We want the game's difficulty to hit a range of "peaks" and "valleys" as the player progresses from battle to battle. During the "peaks", the challenge level spikes and players will be tested to their limits. In the "valleys", the difficulty relaxes and players can build up their health and energy again. From a gameplay standpoint, valleys are important because they allow players to learn and experiment with their abilities without too much fear of failure or death. It's the skills and techniques developed during the valleys that enable players to survive the peaks, which tend to be much tougher encounters, like ambushes, large groups, rare monsters, or even bosses. The peaks will require players to think quickly, spend their resources carefully, and move around the battlefield to avoid getting surrounded. Read on