http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk Just another WordPress weblog Sat, 26 Jun 2010 09:39:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The following is almost my own idea. It's actually a combination of several ideas I've see thrown around on the STO forums made a little more concrete. First I'm going to provide a quick overview of how equipment in STO works: Most equipment comes in ten levels, starting at "Mk I" and ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/06/21/improving-crafting-in-star-trek-online/ One of the things that worried me about touchscreen phones (before I got one) was typing with an onscreen keyboard. Therefore, the first touchscreen phone I got was the T-mobile G1, a phone with a hardware keyboard. Since then I had an opportunity to get a Nexus One which I couldn't ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/06/16/swype-is-amazing/ Perhaps I should just go ahead and rename my blog "Star Trek Online Forum Highlights"... Pendra37 on the STO forums has come up with the first idea to improve sector space in Star Trek Online that actually seems it could be done without majorly overhauling the game engine. The coolness basically boils ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/06/11/improving-sector-space-in-star-trek-online/ Another pair of interesting ideas for STO I found on the forums. The first is "The Voyage Home", a framework around exploration type missions based on the story of Voyager. The second is Bridge Officer Story Arcs, missions based around your bridge officers, after you set up some personality options (most importantly, ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/06/10/the-voyage-home-and-boff-story-arcs-in-sto/ Yesterday EVE Online broke the peak concurrent user record again for an online game with 60,453 players online simultaneously. Just for the record, the reason World of Warcraft doesn't hold this record (despite having by far the most subscribers of any MMO) is because of it's sharded nature. All sixty thousand ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/06/07/eve-breaks-pcu-record-again/ Yes, it seems I'll be obsessed with Star Trek Online for a while... For those of you (at least in the UK) who would like the chance to become obsessed, Zaavi are selling the Gold Edition of STO for £17.95 £23.95 (oddly enough the normal version is £29.95). The Gold Edition comes ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/06/01/star-trek-online-gold-edition-going-cheap-at-zaavi/ A few people on the Star Trek Online forums (notably ThomastheCat) have come up with ideas for minigames (discussed here). The idea is that they would replace the "find an item and press F" mechanic with something more interesting and situation specific. The forum post has more detail, but a lot ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/05/27/star-trek-online-minigame-ideas/ I've been playing Star Trek Online since the open beta at the end of January and my opinion of it is generally positive. That isn't to say there aren't problems, in fact I agree with most of the complaints about it (and the forums have a lot). The difference with ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/05/21/some-cool-ideas-for-star-trek-online/ I've uploaded some screenshots of my upcoming Xbox Live Indie Game, Gravitas. http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/05/09/introducing-gravitas/ Cryptic Studios have just launched the Star Trek Online referral program. They encourage old players to bring in new players by giving them free in game stuff (specifically the future Enterprise from All Good Things with three warp nacelles as a ship option). To make it easier to persuade people, referred ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/05/07/play-star-trek-online-for-free-for-a-bit/ A few days ago Facebook announced their new Open Graph Protocol. It's basically a way for people to interact with pages on the internet (in theory pages representing real world items, but it will be hard to moderate) in basically the same way as they do with existing Facebook pages. For ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/04/29/open-graph-protocol-seems-pretty-cool/ There is a mission in Star Trek Online that is causing no end of problems. It caused problems in the beta and people assumed it was bugged. It was the same in headstart, and it is the same now. Everyone assumed it was just broken. But apparently someone submitted it ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/02/07/salvaged-relationships-in-the-neutral-zone/ Some screen shots I took during the end of beta event for Star Trek Online. http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/01/28/star-trek-online-end-of-open-beta-event/ For the past week or so I've been playing the open beta of Star Trek Online. And I have to say, after some initial concerns my overall opinion is very positive. There has been quite a lot of negativity about the game on the forums, and on the whole I agree ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2010/01/20/star-trek-online/ Some enterprising folks have release a modified version of the Google Maps app for android with navigation enabled that can be install on any Android 1.6 (or higher) device. Best of all is that it doesn't require any hacking or even root access. It's simply a matter of downloading the ... http://www.oliverbrown.me.uk/2009/12/01/google-maps-with-navigation-available-outside-the-uss/