Orcs Must Die coming late August / September – previews galore!
With E3 having drawn to a close previews are now being published by various gaming websites who visited the Robot Entertainment booth at the event. RTS Guru, Joystiq and Sarcastic Gamer are just some of the websites who have published their previews. There has also been some excellent game play footage from the likes of GameTrailers. It’s great to see Orcs Must Die getting the press attention it deserves. Read more
Six questions with Chris Moffitt
Chris Moffitt, Remember ES’s partnered artist in the Robot art blog has taken some time to answer some burning questions! As a partnered artist Remember ES had the opportunity of asking Chris some questions about his Robot profile, AOE-O and projects out of work. I hope these Q&A’s give you a small insight into the life of the Robot Moffitt. Here goes with the Q&A!
Q1: The competition was tough and the art was varied. – What do you think of the art from your fellow Robots?
I love all of it. Each artist brought a unique style/process to the challenge and it’s really great to see what everyone came up with. Read more
Robot Entertainment art blog voting closes and website data loss
Its all over! After a week (and a few more days!) the voting for the art blog has completed. There were plenty of votes cast and in the end it looks like the winning art was Nate “N8” Stefan with his awesome military spider drone:-
Voting begins for your favourite robot artist!
Its time to get your voting fingers at the ready as Robot Entertainment has opened up the poll for folk to vote for their favourite robot art in the community art blogs. Recently six artists at Robot Entertainment have paired up with six community websites, including Remember ES. Each artist has produced an amazing piece each based on the “robots” theme. Now the time has come the the masses to vote for which artist they think is the best. The winning artist will have its community partner sent a whole bunch of Robot Entertainment swag to give away to the masses in any way they choose. So if you fancy getting your hands on some Robot swag be sure to vote for an artist on the blog and keep your eyes peeled on the winning community website! Read more
Won Choi and Bart Tiongson upload their art for the art blog
Two more art blogs are now available on the Robot Entertainment website. First up is Won Choi who is partnered with Planet Age of Empires. Won has come up with something a little different, something more lighthearted than previous art blogs in the series. Take a look at the below: Read more
Chris “muPPetman” Moffit posts his art blog in partnership with Remember-EnsembleStudios.com
Todays Robot Entertainment art blog comes from Remember ES’s partnered artist Chris Moffitt who has produced an absolutely awesome piece based from inspiration from films like District 9 – a walking, half alien looking Robot. Take a look at this amazing 3D artist talent:
Andrew Olsen paints a sad picture with a broken robot for the community art blog
Robot Entertainment concept artist Andrew Olsen has blogged with his entry into the community art blog partnering with the bitbag a video game news and review website. The latest art entry is as follows:
(click to enlarge) Read more
Nate Stefan’s community art entry with Age Heaven
Robot Entertainment concept artist Nate Stefan has published his art entry in the community art blog. Sticking with an army theme similar to the previous entry by Gene Kohler, Nate has produced a military spider drone looking like something out of War of the Worlds.
I looked at a lot of photography for this one as well as images created by other artists. For some reason my TV has been tuned to the Military Channel lately and that’s basically where I found my inspiration. There is always some high testosterone show with the latest in military tech. After one such show that featured a predator drone I decided I would try to create a desert spider type unmanned drone. Read more
Robot Entertainment’s community partnered art blog begins
Robot Entertainment has lauched its next topic of art blogs with the latest theme being.. robots! Unlike previous art blogs this time Robot has offered community websites to partner with an artist and a poll will be opened so that members on the Robot Entertainment website can vote for their favourite art piece. The community site partnered with the artist that wins will have a whole bunch of Robot goodies such as games, shirts and robot buttons to give away however they please. Read more
Dave Kubalak talks about AOEO art style. Plus news about PAX
Robot Entertainment’s art director Dave Kubalak has been blogging about the art style in Age of Empires Online. There is no denying that the art style is very different in AOEO compared to Age 3 and even Age 1 which was set in the same time zone. If you would like a trip down memory lane the below screenshots compares the Age 1 days with the new look AOEO.
The excellent blog describes in detail Robot’s vision plan for the game and how the changes make the experience much better for the user. The vision plan is as follows:
- Create a timeless, bright, and visually appealing game that can technically run on a wide range of PCs, and still look good for years to come.
- Create a bold and more graphic look with a lot of character. That means a lot of different things.
- Less obstructive user interface and a more ‘graphic look’ to our iconography
- Make the terrain vivid, but less ‘noisy’ so the buildings and units ‘pop’, and are easily identifiable.
- Explore exaggerated and unique silhouettes to create a large variety of units and buildings. This helps give even inanimate objects more character and appeal.
- Use animations, in addition to the units’ unique proportions, to better differentiate and emphasize roles and classes
- Give the world and its inhabitants character and ‘life’, creating a digital terrarium for the player to control
Looking at the various in game screenshots it is clear how these points have been addressed. Units are now much bigger and are intentionally not in proportion to the size of buildings. Buildings are much more unique with a very distinguishable look making them much easier to identify at a glance. Animations of units are also very unique and the amount of screen view has vastly increased with the removal and transparency of the UI.
You may be wondering how these changes impact the user, for that you should head over to the full blog on the Robot Entertainment website where Dave goes into alot of detail about the changes – a must read for any Age fan!
Read the full blog
In other news.. PAX
Two of the Justin’s from Robot Entertainment, Justin Korthof and Justin Moe are on the way to PAX this weekend. Community Manager extraordinaire Justin Korthof will be hosting his own community manager panel titled “So I have this website”. The panel includes Justin Korthof from Robot Entertainment and a number of other Community Managers including Jon Goff from 343 Industries who looks after HaloWars.com. The blurb of the panel is as follows below as found on Justin’s blog at www.sixokay.com
You’ve spent the time and money building your community site, and now you’re looking to take it to the next level. Maybe you want to get a job as a professional Community Manager, or maybe you’re just looking for tips on how to get publishers to pay more attention to your site. Whether you’re just starting out, or have been running a site for years, this panel is the best place to get your questions answered. Together, these community managers have represented some of the biggest franchises, developers, and publishers in the game industry, and most of them started out just like you – running a fan site.
Panelists include: Justin Korthof [Community Manager, Robot Entertainment], Matthew Pruitt [FPS Community Manager, Electronic Arts], Jon Goff [Community Manager, 343 Industries], James Stevenson [Senior Community Manager, Insomniac Games]
Place/Time/Date: Sunday, September 5th, 12:30pm in the Wolfman Theater
I wish Justin the best of luck with his panel and look forward to reading more about it. There is no doubt about Justin’s passion with online communities and this is evidenced by the outstanding job he has been doing at Robot Entertainment so far in team work with Duncan Stanley and others.
Age of Empires Online will be playable at PAX so anyone lucky enough to be going should check out booth number 670 for a chance to play with six stations in total.
A note about AOEO beta invites
There have been concerns on Age Community and other sites about the way the process works. Currently the first wave has gone out and if you were in the first wave you should of had an email by now advising you of your download key. The waves are a random lottery irrespective of the answers you put in the questionnaire, providing that you are 18+ years of age everyone has an equal chance of getting in. The second wave is expected soon. MGS is stated that they plan to do waves over the coming months so I would expect there to be a wave every month so keep your eyes peeled. If you did not get a key this time keep an eye out for another wave soon. I’ll keep this blog up to date with all the beta invitation information and wish you all the best of luck getting in!
