Voyages of Vanguard (and other fun and unusual games) #61
Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:01:00 GMT [download/play]
The highlights from this show:
The honorable Leala from Epic Dolls podcast (on Virginworlds) joins me again to discuss PERMADEATH!!!!!!!!!!
That’s right, we talk about how it might work, how it might make you feel, and how stupid I am.
Enjoy, Earthlings!
Beau
He was a good Raki, and I knew him well.
I recieved word about his death earlier today. I decided to get to writing this letter immediately, being that his business had several clients left that still needed answers. To those that he let down: I apologize on his behalf.
The last thing Rikoo would have done is quit on you before it was done. I will try my hardest to further his research, and at the very least will be refunding your deposit for the case/s. These things move fast, and hopefully I will find out soon if he left anything behind, if at all. he was a rich Raki at a few points in his short life, but mostly due to gifts. And he liked to pour his gold into a stein more often than not.
I will update everyone with news as soon as I hear from his family’s servant, as well as his cousin. Word has it that he was slightly involved with a Raki bar maiden in Khal, but I have yet to search after her. If anyone has known her, please pass on the news.
I am now going to go to his house and see what I can find. Hopefully there will be a will or last word, and we can sort out any legal issues quickly. He loved gold, but hated keeping track of it.
For now, I am to answer for his name,
Sincerely,
Grup.
Voyages of Vanguard (and other fun and unusual games) #60
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:08:00 GMT [download/play]
Voyages of Vanguard (and other fun and unusual games that you might try out for a few weeks and get sick of then you uninstall it, then later an expansion or patch or something comes out and you think that you will try it again so you patch it up and then make a blog about how it is the greatest game ever…) #60
We are in the last of days of the world (of warcraft) as we know it. It has been a truly amazing two years that has shaped what gaming means to me as a hobby. Burning Crusade brought massive changes to the massive genre and pushed WoW forward in lots of new directions. The experience for me though, starts at a time very similar to today.
Winter 2006 was one of the most exciting times in WoW for me. After playing for a little over a year or so I had two level 60 characters and was waiting on pins and needles for something new in WoW. I had started listening to podcasts, which added to the excitement on so many levels. I was learning more about the game and starting to see glimpses of the greater community of gamers.
Beau and I spent the holiday season that year lugging our two PCs with us his family’s house for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. We stayed in his two brother’s bachelor pad and set up all of our computers around their kitchen table and played WoW together. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had. We ran Strat, Scholo and Dire Maul like it was going out of style, which in fact it was. We were all members of a small social guild that was taking its first dips into raiding, going into the 10 person raid, UBRS. That Thanksgiving was my first raid and suffice it to say I got to see both the good and the very bad that is brought out of people in that situation. Guild drama ahoy! But it was OK. I was connecting with my family and having a blast.
New Friends
The pod waited, surrounded by cables, lights casting an errie glow upon it’s irradescent skin. Beauius was nervous, to be sure. She never enjoyed stepping into a pod, or leaving one for that matter. She loved the solace of the inside of the pod. The warmth, the joining of flesh and machine.
Soon enough she was settled into it, plugged into it directly. She could already feel her mind searching for the thought conduits that would carry her will into the various parts of her ships. For some reason it seemed different parts of her mind came forth during certain activities. When she launched a missle, her sense of smell seemed stronger than ever before. Launching a probe gave her a fuzzy stomach of nostalgia, and thoughts of holidays. Scanning a ship was always semi-sexual. Her body, mind and ship all seemed to carry each others weight. It was a glorious feeling.
Her pod slowly slid into the battleship. She could feel the vibrations of the engines start in her feet until her entire body hummed. She couldn’t believe how quickly her mund linked to the new ship. She heard stories of the reaction time of the newer BS’s, but she had never felt this speed of merging before. Her mind quickly scanned through all sub systems, and even performed dummy checks. Soon enough she felt as familiar in this new environment as in her old ship. Her money was well spent.
Meeting
The bar was dingy and loud, a place I would never visit normally. I had to book passage on a huge Caldari ship just to get here safely. If I get what I came for, however, it will be well worth it. Suddenly a small child walked up to me, wrapped in a cloak, the hood hiding it’s features. “Have a seat.” said a gruff voice under the cloth. It sounded very deep.
I sat down at a nearby table and the child pulled the opposite chair out and sat down, and dropped the hood. It was actually a man, middle aged, with flecks of grey at his temples. He was handsome, but worn, and a tattoo that looked like a gun barrel peeked out from under his coarse hair. HE looked at me sternly as I noticed across his knuckles the words “BOOM” on one hand and “BOOM” on the other.
Cold Space
It was hard for LoHeil to believe what he was seeing. The space around him not only glowed, but PULSED, and throbbed. Just like Afran said, the walls of his ship started to hum with the vibrations from the sector, and soon he heard beautiful moanings in his mind, they tickled the very nerve receptors his spine was plugged into. He opened as many views as he could, he released all of his camera drones and even his heavy combat units.
He looked thru each of their electronic eyes in turn, just to see his ship at a different angle floating like a bug on a beautiful body of water, during a storm of color. In his ear Afrans voice popped: ” I told you it was pretty–huh?” He laughed at her. She had such a way of shrugging off the largest things. “It is STUNNING, Afran. Where the hell ARE we?” He willed his map to come up. Where it said he was..well, it was NOT THERE.
Everytime the map would close in on his location it would shudder and restart the zoom into the map. He felt his mind trace over the fine lines of the code for the map. Everything was fine. “I don’t know, all I know is how to get here. I have flown here so many times now I just know when to stop, when to turn. That last gate back there…that has no place on any map. Or at least I can’t remember.
So, Rikoo will now be allowed to rest if it happens. Also, I have decided on a brand new Immersion Project character in Ryzom: my main, Beau.
I have discovered that as I have allowed myself to talk about other games that my main Rikoo is not the only character I want to play, so I won’t have such an issue “letting him go!” lol
So keep an eye out, if any of them die, there will be a post and a “Memorial” section.
Wish me luck!
Beau
Voyages of Vanguard (and other fun and unusual games) #59
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:29:00 GMT [download/play]
The highlights from this show:
I explore what “sandbox” means. I covered this topic a few times, but wanted an update. I think it is thrown around as much as “polish” and needs to be stopped.
Life is a sandbox, and yet we don’t go around slaying orcs.
Enjoy!
Beau Turkey
http://www.mmocam.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/beauturkey
The reporter sat down to my right, on a dark leather chair. It made a noise, and she smiled. She was young and new at this, so I did her a favor and asked for her directly for this interview.
“Sarah..is it?” I asked. “Yeh, and you’re Check!” She smiled. I nodded back. She seemed on the verge of giggles, her excitement bothered me. “Well, Sarah, I asked you here to announce something. We have been friends with your paper for a long time, they’ve always covered us fairly.
We thought it best to let them be the first to know.” “Know what?” she asked, writing and looking down at her pad. She didn’t notice the huge thin grey hand reaching for hers. When she looked up, startled by the cold skin upon hers, she gasped. Before her stood a tall, very tall, thin woman. Her hair brushed the ceiling. Her skin was grey, almost dark grey. .
OK so here is the list…just download em as you see fit. I am still missing a few, but am tracking them down. Honestly, some of the sound quality is embbarasing! lol But some of the subjects we talked about were a lot of fun. I just wanted to get these out of the way so I can move on to newer ones, talking about Ryzom along with all my other games.
Cast 2 (missing still)
While I’ll normally tend to write more about my night job as a dagger wielding, dragon slaying rogue, I’m going to diverge a bit to share a little trick I’ve learned in my day job. I’ve been a designer for 5+ years and I’ve most recently been spending a lot of time working on a fashion catalog. This means lots and lots of studio photography that sometimes I need to jazz up with a new background. Shooting on white gives us the opportunity to shoot lots of photos at once then use them in a variety of ways. The one big challenge though is masking the soft edges of the model’s hair in a way that actually makes the shot look somewhat realistic. There are lots of ways to deal with this that vary as much as the context in which you are using the photo. But there is one easy way that I’ve found to work around the issue that won’t take you hours of messing with alpha channels in Photoshop.
So curiosity beheaded the cat. The long awaited Age of Conan came out and I thought I wasn’t interested in trying it out. But, as with any new game, Beau and I always break down and want to see what all the fuss is about. We got the game the weekend after release and I’ve been playing it a bit since. I’ve even surprised myself with my reaction, so here are my thoughts.
It was a while after I had finally retired from Everquest that I found my next and probably most favorite incarnation of “Leala” in City of Heroes. Yet again it began with Beau bringing home a game that I initially called “stupid” and ended up learning to love. After quitting EQ I took a huge hiatus from games in general. I was really let down by my inability to do well in EQ and was thinking that it was all just becoming too difficult. But after seeing that character creation screen again I just couldn’t resist. This time though was a little different. All my other mains had been named some form of “Leala”. What can I say? I like my name.
In the midst of my stint in UO, I found out that my dad was into a 3D game called Everquest. He told me it was so much cooler and I should go and check it out. I resisted for a while then finally gave in and retired from UO to start my second “Leala” in Norrath. My friend Brian came with me and we started characters together. I picked first so I made a High Elf because I wanted to be like the girl from the box. The whole class system was new to me so I didn’t know what to pick. I read the descriptions and picked “Paladin” (a word I had never heard before) because it said something about them being able to heal themselves which sounded good.
Hiya there reader. Welcome to the cozy little corner of the interwebs that belongs to Leala Turkey. “Who are you?”, one may ask. Well I’m a lot of things actually. I’m a short, giggly, goofy, sometimes grumpy, intropsective, rebellious (former teenage punk rocker), passionate, sarcastic, excitable, geeky, optomistic, messy, irresponsible, creative, smart (well, most of the time), liberal, forgetful, pseudo-feminist, red-headed, twenty-something, wife, daughter, sister, ISFP, graphic designer, MMO gamer, guild leader, dog owner, podcaster, music lover and now blogger. And this is the place where I’ll get to talk about all of those things on any given day as it strikes my fancy. Enjoy.
So, as I’ve said, I’ve been playing MMOs for a while. Long enough to make me feel old in fact. The “I remember when we had to grind 5 miles in the snow both ways and we LIKED it” kind of old. Not really, but its fun to say.
There have been many Leala’s in many worlds in the past 8 years or so and it seems fitting that you should get to know all of them. I’ve posted screenshots of most of my characters and it is so funny to think of all the different forms I have taken. A punk rock superhero, an elf, a fairy and more. Its taken a long time but it seems that I am really at the point of no return. This is part of my life now, a big part in fact. So each of these games had something special about them for me. So lets take a brief look.
Voyages of Vanguard (and other unusual games) #58
[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/virginworlds2/058-VoVPodcast-11-2-08.mp3]
Mon, 3 Nov 2008 02:56:00 GMT [download/play]
The highlight from show 58!:
* I am switching formats! (Wait, am I? Not sure if that’s the right word.) Basically, I am using the show to talk about not only my main game, Vanguard, but all the other games I play. I am in love with quite a few MMO’s, and will switch around sometimes to check out updates and expansions.
I talk about my Vanguard play this last week or so, some updates in Ryzom, and close it out after around 30 minutes. I am going to try to keep them at the 30 minute bite size, not only because it’s easier to edit but easier to record and much more enjoyable!
Get the Vanguard Trial HERE.
Get the Ryzom trial HERE.
Email me at voyagesofvanguard@yahoo.com
See you next time, now go LOG IN!
Beau
I talked a bit about the weather systems in Vanguard and in Ryzom in my last podcast, number #58. There is almost nothing that sucks me into a game more than a killer weather system.
In one interview with Silius, lead designer for Vanguard, he talked about their weather system being on a completely separate server than the regular game. I loved that though SO much, but only asked a question or two about it before moving on. I love the idea of a real time weather system, and Vanguard has one. It’s beautiful, and Vanguard has some of the prettiest weather skies I have ever seen. Sundown is remarkable.
Vanguard does lack of lightning and sounds, however, which would add so much if added. Also, it would be nice to see much heavier rains, although a storm in Vanguard is indeed a storm.
Ryzom’s weather actually affects digging nodes and even certain mobs. Some types of animals migrate during certain seasons, and certain types of mats are only available at certain times of the year in certain areas. The wind and rain in Ryzom is second to none, and when you look up, the rain comes down at you and not sideways like static on a TV screen.
What I would like to see more of with both (or with any future MMO’s 
) is weather that makes my character change for the time he is out in it. A wet adventurer should act MUCH more differently than a dry one, and there should be the potential for tornadoes or damaging winds. I love that kind of thing.
In fact, my new favorite past-time is to lay there in those few minutes before I fall asleep, after I have kissed the wife and we have talked for a while, and dream about a weather system that is one of the main enemies of the player…storms so bad your character would have to stay indoors or be caused damage, and seasons so extreme that food would become scarce (and food would be needed for life) or damage would be taken from the cold. 
I picture a very dark game, and players needing to find each other to survive (safety in numbers) but have to work their way through intense stormy nights, lit up by lightning. Could you imagine if you had to consider the weather in your night of adventuring?
But I wouldn’t want the weather to turn into a hassle, but into part of the game, just like dealing with mobs or healing potions. It would not only be something to consider as you went out to conquer a hilltop, but something of a mystery: what would the weather do next? You could even learn the weather patterns, just like in real life. A seasoned player could help “younger” ones by acting as a guide in notorious stormy regions.
I love this stuff: basic survival stuff. Maybe games like Ryzom and Vanguard will lead the way into games that use weather more.
Beau
