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An artillery game, somewhat akin to scorched earth, but in 2D, set in space and featuring different planets with gravity you have to slingshot your shots around. Primarily a multiplayer game supporting four local players it’s excellent for parties and an absolute bargain for $1.

Although I may have a slightly biased opinion.

Star Trek Online recently gained a new loot drop that has been generating strong opinions, a Cardassian Lock Box. Inside each lock box is a random item. Possible items include a special tribble, some special team commodities, some cross faction consoles, a DS9 uniform set, or a few others. On the whole people aren’t interested in those, the only item they actually want is the Cardassian Galor class cruiser.

The actual odds of getting a cruiser are unpublished but assumed to be very low, possibly in the 0.5% range. This wouldn’t be very interesting in itself without one final piece to the puzzle: you require a “Master Key” to open the box and the keys have to be bought on the C-Store for real money. They cost 100 c-points each, or 10 for 900, making them £0.72 each (I think).

Many people have complained about this, and with some justification. My post isn’t really going to touch on that. Instead I’m going to reveal that I got one, and without spending any money on keys. You see, the ship is tradable via the exchange for normal in game energy credits. When it first launched prices were around 500 million. In three days they were down to 100 million. I snagged one for 82 million.

This amount of in game cash is not a small amount by any means. In fact when I bought it, 82 million was the most I’ve ever had at once, but at level cap there is very little else to spend energy credits on. There are also a couple of ways to earn a lot quickly. The first is Ker’rat. It’s a space warzone in Eta Eridani that features the Federation fighting the Klingons while simultaneously trying to complete some Borg related objectives. If you can win the warzone you get a very rare drop. If you’re second or third you get a rare drop. If you’re at max level the drop will be at least MK X, sometimes even MK XII. Also, all the ships you destroy drop loot in the MK X to XII range. The second way is STFs. Most STF runs on normal succeed with the optional these days. They also drop quite a bit of loot now (especially Cure). Between those two methods you should be able to amass your millions with relative ease (I had 40 million when the Galor was first released and reached 82 million in a week). Also, as an extra bonus, Ker’rat has a wrapper mission that gives you 1440 dilithium for every three completions (and is not a daily so you can just keep running it).

So with all that information aside, here’s a couple of pictures of the Galor in an STF:

It’s been a while since I reported that Gravitas was in final play testing. To be honest the process didn’t actually take that long, I just became busy in the meantime. But I have now finally submitted Gravitas for peer review and it’s currently marked as “60% complete”. Based on what I’ve seen of other games as a reviewer that means it should be a few days before it’s eligible for release.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been some work not related to the release. Firstly, the game now runs successfully on a Mac thanks to MonoGame which I hope will lead to a Mac App Store release. Secondly, I’ve been cleaning up the code (mainly separating out anything that isn’t Gravitas specific in preparation for beginning my second game, which for the moment I’m going to keep quite about.

To keep up to date on that and any other Gravitas news, visit Gravitas on Google+.

I’ve submitted Gravitas for what will hopefully be a final playtest.

Here are some screenshots: https://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

CCP have just announced DUST514 will be exclusive to the Playstation 3. Which is a shame (check out the EVE Online forums for some stronger opinions). Unfortunately it makes sense for a few reasons (well making it exclusive to one console makes sense - whether the 360 or the PS3 was the better choice is more debatable).

Developing for a single console is quicker and easier - especially important for a game that will probably have more updates than the average game.

There are suggestions that one or both of Sony and Microsoft aren’t happy about cross-platform multiplayer games.

Since the idea of the game (a console FPS interacting with a PC MMO) is quite revolutionary they could get a lot of support (both financially and in terms of marketing and other benefits) from the console manufacturer, but only if it’s exclusive.

That being said, it may not be the end for the Xbox 360 and DUST.  Sony have suffered recently and definitely have lower consumer confidence (will players have to give Sony any personal information to play DUST?) and this decision will have been made long before Sony’s hacking problems. If sales are lower than CCP hope they may rethink the plan. And remember, “exclusive” in the games industry can be a vague and rarely lasts for ever.

The game is scheduled for a Spring release so at least 360-only owners have a while to decided if they want to get a PS3 just for this game…

CCP recently announced that their long awaited “walking-in-stations” feature will now include an item store selling character customization options exclusively for real money (actually for Aurum another in game currency only available for real money).

Some people have lamented the idea of EVE finally entering this area and selling items for real money. After all today you can buy a monocle, tomorrow a ship. This is a slippery slope that will lead to death of EVE Online as we know it. Except, of course, it won’t. Since PLEXs were introduced anything in game has essentially been purchasable for real money. Take the price in ISK, devide that by approximately 350 million and multiply by half the price of a 60 day gamecard. These items are slightly different since they aren’t available in game without using real money at some point (but it is possible to trade them between players so you don’t personally have to spend real money).

One final note: the same customization opens are likely to be available to DUST 514 players once it’s released.

One of my most read (and most commented on) posts was the one claiming “ASP.NET sucks”, which only goes to show being a little offensive goes disappointingly far on the internet. Since it has now been five years since I posted that, I thought a quick follow-up was in order.

I stand by most of what I said my initial post, but with a little specificity. It’s not ASP.net that’s the problem but Webforms. Unfortunately at the time Webforms was all you ever saw. There are alternatives around today (and may have been back then but none were especially high profile and none were by Microsoft). These days of course Webforms are very much out of fashion. Following on from the success of Rails Microsoft realised that Webforms weren’t an idea that could keep up with modern web development. A quick glance at the ASP.net home page today shows four out of five articles talking solely about ASP.net MVC and one article talking about both MVC and Webforms (of course that will vary by day I but I doubt the result will be very different).

So taking into account a minor title change (ASP.net Webforms suck!) I’d say my original point stands.

Google continue to improve upon Google Docs today with the release of Google Docs motion which will “introduce a new way to collaborate - using your body”. Anything else I saw will be underwhelming compared to the article form Google, especially some of the pictures of some of the more advanced gestures it supports.

I figured any effort to get back to regular posting would only be helped by starting on today of all days… XBMC have announced a new partnership with Sony.

It will include the assimilation of the XBMC team into Sony’s Home Theatre and Console division and the closing of the XBMC source. Presumably a PS3 port will be forthcoming.