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Archive for June, 2009

12
Jun

New Halo Wars map information – Beasley’s Plateau

halowars

Need help negotiating around Beasleys Plateau? Confused about when you should attack the large group of rebels in the middle? Well fear not as Programmer Chris Stark and designer Justin Rouse lay down thier top tips in the latest map blog! :

http://www.halowars.com/GameInfo/maps/beasleys.aspx

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10
Jun

Age 3 Patches have been released!

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Quick heads up to Age of Empires players who have been awaiting the latest round of patches this time from Robot Entertainment, the patch is now available for auto download and manual download on the AgeCommunity website. Information can be found below:

Patch Notes:

Age of Empires III: 1.13
Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs 1.05
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties 1.02

Download:

Click here and choose your game from the list

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10
Jun

Players invited to discuss Title Update 3 for Halo Wars on official community forum

halowars

Never say the Robots dont listen! Tim “Timotron” Deen has kicked off a discussion thread on the HaloWars.com forums to announce some of the intentions Robot has for balancing the game in Halo Wars title update 3. The changes suggested so far are as follows:

1.  Gauss warthog gauss cannon damage bonus against units with heavy armor (Scorpions, Wraiths, Scarabs, Locusts) reduced so that tanks will stay as a viable option to counter warthogs.

2.  Warthog build time slightly increased to restrict how fast players can mass and replace warthogs during the game.

3.  Anders bonus to tech build rate reduced to further balance the leader.

4.  Base turrets attack and health boosted slightly to increase turret viability in early and late game.

5.  Elephant health increased to improve survivability and viability as a unit.

6.  Grenade/ Plasma grenade / RPG damage against medium armor (warthogs, ghosts, choppers, wolverines and cobras) increased to both better balance marines/ grunts against warthogs and to improve marines overall against players who try to turtle with wolverines and cobras.

7.  Recycle basic cost return fixed to be 50% for constructed buildings.  (While a technically a bug, this directly impacts many slightly exploitive strategies)

Any thoughts? You can let Robot know by posting in the official thread over here:

http://www.halowars.com/forums/1/618956/ShowThread.aspx

See you in the discussion!

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10
Jun

Robots react to community feedback with Halo Wars title update 3

halowars

A third title update is underway at Robot Entertainment and is once again aimed at addressing issues raised by the community at www.halowars.com . Community Manager “Aloysius” announced on the website today that title update 3 will fix some the most talked about issues including the nerfing of the Warthogs. Team killing will also be getting a review. You can find the full statement below, stay tuned for more Halo Wars title update news!

“We’ve been listening to fan feedback since our release of Title Update #2 and DLC pack #1 Strategic Options and are pleased to announce that we are working on title Update #3. TU #3 is aimed at balance changes and a few bug fixes. We’re looking in to a variety of things such as reducing the effectiveness of Warthogs, friendly fire/team killing and a few other balance issues. We’re also planning on making Invisible Unit’s health bars invisible, among other fixes.

Stay tuned for more details on the upcoming Title Update, including more details on the balance changes. “

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7
Jun

Graeme Devine working at Apple’s iPhone group on mystery project

graeme

Graeme Devine who was Ensemble’s Lead Designer and Lead Writer for Halo Wars has now confirmed that he is working for Apple in the companies iPhone group. It seems yet another ex-Microsoft employee is working for products on Apple’s iPhone along with the Bettner brothers (NewToy) and FuzzyCube software.

What is Graeme working on at Apple? Well we wont have much longer to wait to find out as he is currently preparing for the WWDC on Monday. Perhaps he will be leading a new in house Apple games unit? Who knows, but hes certainly someone to be looking out for at the WWDC.

More news tomorrow when we should find out what hes up to! Good luck at the WWDC Graeme!

Link: http://kotaku.com/5281682/halo-wars-7th-guest-dev-lands-job-at-apple

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4
Jun

DevelopMag writes about Shane Kim’s statement “Ensemble wasn’t the right studio for Natal”

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To continue from my last blog post where I picked up on Shane Kim’s explanation about the cutting loose of Ensemble Studios a magazine has stepped forward to formally express the same viewpoint. I would direct Ensemble fans to the link below for a write up by a professional magazine.

http://www.developmag.com/news/32096/Report-Axed-Ensemble-not-the-right-studio-for-Natal

Update: Here’s IGN following suit :

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/47943/Ensemble-Studios-Denied-Natal

It is possible more information develops on this over the next few days and I shall keep readers informed. I will be adding these news articles into the press archives.

As mentioned before, I think Microsoft made a big mistake in not having faith in the Ensemble guys, those prototypes we saw could of been made into great Natal games.

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3
Jun

Lead Designer talks Halo Wars bases

halowars

Lead Halo Wars designer at Robot Entertainment Dave Pottinger today blogs about the reasoning behind the socket based bases found in Halo Wars. The forums have often had questions like “How come I cant place buildings anywhere on the map” and “How come the game doesn’t look like it did at E3 2007?” Halo Wars was completed in 2009 so its inevitable there would be some differences between the released version and the E3 2007 demo. However it is always interesting to know how ideas and changes developed and the reasoning behind the changes.

Think of it as a look into a Robots head, here’s Dave Pottinger with the low down and a link to the full blog post at the bottom:

“Most strategy games are noted for their deep city building and economic elements. WTF Halo Wars??? Why don’t you have an Age of Empires-like infrastructure game where the truly skilled players can “out econ” the newbies? The fairly un-sexy answer is that we just wanted a faster game with a larger focus on combat. Okay, fair enough. Let’s look at the iterations that base building went through to achieve those goals.”

http://www.halowars.com/news/devblog/archive/2009/05/18/How-to-Build-a-Base-in-the-26th-Century.aspx

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3
Jun

Shane Kim: “Talent at Ensemble wasnt right for Natal”

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With the E3 expo coming to a close today and after some very interesting announcements at Microsoft one of these was the revolutionary controller free full body motion capture device called “Natal“. Shane Kim an executive at Microsoft Game Studios discussed in an interview with Venture Beat that they have put significant investment behind the project. I imagine the cost of implementing hardware and software into Project Natal must be very expensive. But what other costs would there be for having this motion free technology. It seems as though to make way for Natal Microsoft’s internal studios Flight Sim and Ensemble Studios were the casualties.

The Venture Beat interview finally demonstrates the financial reasons why Microsoft decided to close its incredibly successful internal studio Ensemble Studios. Quoting from the interview Shane Kim responds:

VB: You cut some studios like Flight Simulator and Ensemble Studios.

SK: We also acquired Big Park Studios. I don’t know how constant the ebb and flow will be. It’s not unidirectional. We made some hard decisions in the past. We made good decisions. We are still committed to first party. The Big Park acquisition should demonstrate that to folks. We were positioning for things like Natal and I don’t think the talent at Ensemble or Flight Simulator were necessarily the right studios for that.

So there you have it – Project Natal is one of the reasons Microsoft thought was better to invest more in than its long standing internal studios. Will it be the right choice? I am confident that the talent at Ensemble Studios could have made things work with Natal. The studio has some industry visionary legends including Bruce Shelley, Graeme Devine, Sandy Petersen not to mention the rest of the team. Some of the prototypes could have been modelled to work fantastically with Natal including the prototype “Agent”.

It is sad to be blogging about the closing of Ensemble Studios again but it is interesting to find out about the thought process behind the decision. Moving forward though we must support all these talented individuals who have formed new studios. No matter what, we will still see great games from these talented people.

You can read the full interview here:

http://venturebeat.com/2009/06/02/microsoft-games-executive-describes-origins-of-project-natal-game-controls/

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2
Jun

Halo Wars artwork amongst “Into The Pixel” Winners

corey_halowars_anders

Congratulations to Corey Butler, Ensemble Studios and Blur who today found out that their image of Professor Anders landing on a flood planet in Halo Wars has been selected in the Top 10 best artwork of 2009. There has been alot of excellent artwork demonstrated in Halo Wars and I am sure you can appreciate that this is a well deserved recognition. You can view the other winning art pieces and an enlarged image of the Halo Wars artwork below:

http://www.intothepixel.com/artwork/2009_contest_winners.asp

Congratulations Corey Butler again!

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1
Jun

Age is not forgotten! – New patches for Age of Empires 3

age3tad_header

Robot Entertainment has today demonstrated its continued support for the Age of Empires 3 series by releasing a new patch for all three Age 3 games and expansions. I have included a link to the patch notes. The patch should be auto downloaded by your Age client in the next few days. One of the most important things is that the almost rampant double decking glitch has now been fixed – Age players can now rejoice!

Feel free to discuss more in the community forum.

And heres the links to the patch notes:

http://agecommunity.com/downloads/patch_-_1_13.rtf
http://agecommunity.com/downloads/xpatch_-_1_05.rtf
http://agecommunity.com/downloads/ypatch_-_1_02.rtf

Over and out!

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