#I will expand the bot roster | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mentalmars · 4 years

Photo

What if Battleborn was a Smash Hit?

Different Universe Sadly Battleborn wasn’t the commercial smash hit we all hoped for. However, what would have become of this awesome game if Gearbox Software continued to actively support it? That’s the question I’m gonna try to answer. Of course, everything is speculation but there is solid reasoning behind it and I think these things would have made it to the game if the stars aligned. More Story Operations With the 1st Season Pass, Gearbox made 5 Story Operations for Battleborn. The last one, Phoebe and the heart of Ekkunar, was filled with details that expanded the game’s universe. But on top of that, it ended on a massive cliffhanger that still has fans speculating about what’s to come. The plot twist with Rendain returning from the void opens up a ton of possibilities on how the story would continue. Battleborn’s Creative Director, Randy Varnell, mentioned that if they did another season of content for the game, they would continue that story. The origin of this plot twist finds its roots in the mission, The Algorithm, where ISIC tries to destroy the universe. During the mission, Ghalt tries to stop ISIC by presenting him with a logical paradox. However, ISIC responds with some food for thought and one of them is about the Varelsi and their motivation for darkening the stars. You think the Varelsi are bad? What do you think they’re running from? C’mon, champ. Think about it! What do you think could possibly scare the Varelsi into leaping across the dimensional divide, snagging the very stars from the sky, and dragging ’em back with them? What do you think has THEM planning for the worst? What do you think that looks like, champ? Really… really think about it, champ. – ISIC So if the Varelsi are on the run, who are they running from? Are we getting a new enemy that threatens existence as we know it? Does this mean we will encounter Varelsi heroes? Why would Rendain return from the other side? What does he know that we don’t? Will he be our savior? More Playable Characters Battleborn is all about the heroes, the game event launched with 25 playable characters. With the 1st season of content, Gearbox Software even added 5 new heroes to the game, 1 for each faction. But Gearbox Software wasn’t out of ideas after releasing those additional characters. They not only had a big pile of character concept designs ready to go, but they also prototyped a lot of characters. Randy Varnell even mentioned that for a game like Battleborn the character roster could go up to 50!!! That’s an insane number but I would have loved to see what crazy designs they would have come up with. And while creating a new hero takes 100 men weeks to develop, the team was confident that they could outrun the “competition”. One of the new characters would definitely have been Nova in a robot suit. When the team caught on how popular she was, they already locked in their DLC characters. Seung Kim did create unofficial concept art for Nova in a Robot Suit. While it might be obvious that Nova would have been an LLC character, she could also be placed in one of the other factions except for the Eldrid. One of the things that got players excited was faction wars. However, this would also mean that each of the factions needed to be balanced. The Peacekeepers are missing a dedicated healer and this is something that Randy wanted to add to the game. When Battleborn was in development there were several quadruplets in the works. However, the team had some difficulty implementing these as they quickly got stuck on the terrain. While it would have been cool to see a character like Ejo-Lorr come to life, I don’t think he would have become a playable character. Maybe as a boss fight in a controlled environment. More Features Character Balancing: Of course Gearbox would have continued to try and balance all of the different characters. This would have been an ongoing thing as the meta would shift from week to week. Better Bot AI: One of the things that was on the Battleborn Roadmap was to improve the AI of the bots. They weren’t always that smart, especially Boldur as he was just broken and wouldn’t attack. One of the other noticeable things was that the CPU tried to retreat but would fail to notice that there is a giant cliff in front of them. Rework Gear: Randy Varnell did mention that they were looking into Gear Crafting, but later on he mentioned Reactive Gear. Ranked Mode: During the Choctaw Festival of Gaming live stream it was mentioned that Scott V. was working on the foundation of a Ranked Mode. This would have been great for the hardcore players. Bots in Story Mode: For the Kid Ultra reveal, 2K Games send me some footage so I could use that to showcase the character to you. What I noticed from that footage is that the characters that were running alongside Kid Ultra had the same nametags as bots would have in Bots Battle. Battleborn was promoted as a 5 player game. Having those bots around to support you would have made the story missions more enjoyable as not every hero was great in story mode. Some missions even came with a disclaimer, that the mission would be challenging with this hero. Having bots to help you out would be a warm welcome. What did you want to see coming to this game?

Continue reading on https://mentalmars.com/game-news/what-if-battleborn-was-a-smash-hit/

#Battleborn

3 notes · View notes

dailycharacteroption · 6 years

Text

Starfinder Stuff part 5

What’s Missing?

Today’s entry is going to end up being much like yesterday’s, in that I’m about to just talk about things and not have a specific system within the game to talk about. I’ll try to keep it focused though!

One of the biggest forms of whiplash associated with playing both Pathfinder and Starfinder is realizing the sheer difference in published content. This is natural. Pathfinder is ten years old at this point and only now is entering it’s second edition, whereas Starfinder only came out a few years ago.

Even still, one can’t help but hope for a glut of new content, similar to Pathfinder, but that is not going to happen at nearly the same rate thanks to the fact that Starfinder’s paperback books are pretty much limited to their adventures. There is no “Starfinder Campaign Setting” or “Starfinder Player Companion” series. At least not yet.

So today’s entry is pretty much going to be my wishlist on things I’d love to see in Starfinder.

I mentioned this yesterday, and as much as I do love the creative exploration Starfinder does with making all sorts of interesting playable aliens (and I do love it), I still really wish that they’d make more effort to go back and fill out the playable race roster with more mainstays from Pathfinder’s past.

How have these various races adapted to the starfaring age? How has it changed their philosophy and interactions with other races?

The augmentation system is a really fun one, and it makes a lot of sense, but there remains shockingly few ways to mount weaponry directly to one’s cybernetics. Sure, you’ve got optical lasers, and built-in holsters for quick-drawing weapons, and even the ability to take integrated weapons as upgrades for a prosthetic limb, but those integrated weapons are all mostly pretty low-power stuff, and there’s currently not a lot of variety in them. It’s a far cry from having a Mega Buster on your arm.

The current spellcasting dynamic in Starfinder doesn’t really allow for 7th through 9th level casting, particularly since with damage dice upgrades and the advent of really big guns, those higher-level spells would be kind of hard to integrate at this point, but at the same time, I wish there were more ways to use those classic higher-level spells.

Monster-wise, while I like what they did with the polymorph spells, I do feel that the summon monster spells were robbed of a lot of their original utility, since almost every single summon is basically an elemental base stats with a template thrown on. Suddenly summoning is less of a swiss army knife and more of a combat minion spell. Which is probably for the best, but I’d love to see an expanded list of summons.

On the other side of things: Robots. Both of the Alien Archives so far have a nice handful of various technological constructs, but the one thing those entries do not have is a price tag. Barring GM fiat, it’s generally assumed that your characters are not allowed to buy their own security bot for their ship, or their own AHAV to cart around the big guns.

And I get why that is, one wouldn’t want the players to just send in the robot army and not put themselves at risk, that’s not what adventuring is about, after all. However, I feel a price tag should be included to give a sense of scale at the very least. Knowing how much a robot costs shows how well funded a foe that has hundreds of them is.

Starfinder is still a very young game, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here. I hope that at least some of my wishes get fulfuilled in future publications, but we’ll have to see.

#starfinder

31 notes · View notes

thankyoukairi · 6 years

Text

PSA since I’ve gotten quite a few new followers:

Hi, hello, welcome. My name is Ashley/Ash. I follow back from my main blog @devilsparade and if it takes me a bit to follow you back, it’s nothing personal - I don’t get email notifications of followers on this blog and I also get a lot of spam/porn bots so I don’t always notice when someone legit has followed me right away (and we all know the tumblr note system is broken) I try to look at my follower count from time to time but that is broken for me as well on this blog 🙃 also if you post non-wrestling content, it’s likely I’ll reblog to my main! You don’t have to follow my main blog but if you see a like/reblog/message from that blog, it me 😊

I post/reblog a lot of women's wrestling content - I always liveblog WWE PPV (main roster and NXT). I sometimes liveblog Raw, Smackdown, & NXT, but usually lateblog. I post/reblog a lot of WWE content but also have ROH/NJPW/Stardom/Progress content on here and I'm trying to expand my horizons. Anyway, I just love wrestling and I might be shy, but I'm always willing to chat/check out stuff ✌🏻

Oh yeah and I do a lot of RPDR/wrestling crossovers lmaoooo cuz that’s my brand 💯

#intro post

10 notes · View notes

utopia-game · 4 years

Text

War Hungry War Birds 7:7

---------------------

UTOPIA NEWS

---------------------

JANUARY EDITION 1 Yr 4

WarBirds (7:7)

Aka Smiles’ Kingdom

Aka 99 Problems Today we are looking at Warbirds (7:7), a great story for anyone looking for guidance on how to build an organic 25 player kingdom! I spoke with the Monarch of Warbirds and this is what he told me about their kingdom.

What is your position and do you enjoy it?

My name is RedBird, and I am the elected monarch and co-founder of Warbirds, though most probably know us just as "smiles' kingdom" or by our server name "99 Problems". We are a warring kingdom that started out in age 83 as a teaching and training kingdom for new players that evolved rapidly as we found ourselves competing at higher and higher levels.

Why was the kingdom created and what is your modus operandi?

I was a few years off from Utopia (and enjoying sleep), it was in late 2017 I think, when Smiles asked me to come back for an age and play with him and puncher in a revived TFC. I was hesitant at first, but he sold me on the idea of a 25 faery kingdom, said he would be running the wars, and I couldn't say no to that -- I believe that Smiles is the best war leader in the game. It was a terrific age (age 81) with a killer setup and we crowned honor and WW, top 3 land and nw. I'd really only planned to come back for a single age, but that success made me want to stick around. I did one more age with TFC, but the magic was gone. Drama began to appear in the kd, there were personality conflicts etc., and it just wasn't a great age. I'd been bit by the uto bug though, so after age 82 I just decided to random into a ghetto and fool around for another age.

The Kingdom I randomed into in age 83 was a kingdom of 100% random provinces. No one in the kd had played with anyone else there before, so there was no leadership or discord or anything like that. I didn't really have any interest in trying to be in charge, this was supposed to be a sort of "age off" for me where I could just play casually. But when it became clear that no one else was going to step up, I just put myself out there and offered to do what I could. Little did I know...

A lot of the players were brand new to the game; some were experienced but had spent most or all of their time in the ghetto. There were a few people with more substantial experience as well, but I would only slowly discover that as we went along. I set up a discord (very trial and error, as I had never run a server before) and started teaching people how to use bot, and take intel before attacking, and how to properly do ops, etc. It was slow going. In the first week I got I think... 5 people into the discord server? Most people were shy, and just wanted to use the chat bar or in-game forums.

It took a lot of coaxing, but slowly more and more people started popping in. The first few people I trained became my "LS" by default, and they helped the new arrivals learn bot and all the rest. Very, very basic stuff. Expectations were minimal, it was all about making people feel comfortable and safe and welcome. Our kd location was 9:9, so we called ourselves "99 Problems" in honor of the basket case of a kingdom we all instinctively knew we were.

Well, little did I know, Smiles had done more or less the same thing as I had! He'd left TFC after age 82 as well, and randomed into the deep ghetto. Sure enough, he'd found himself flying his own little flock of misfit birds. We got to talking, and when we realized that we both had only like ~15 provinces each, and a couple of inactives apiece, we came up with a plan: we would war our two kingdoms against one another, purge our respective inactives in the eowcf, and then merge the kingdoms.

So we did. It was a rough and very basic little war. Lots of bounces. Activity sporadic. But it was good training for both kds. In the end, 99 Problems won, and smiles asked the admin to merge his remaining provinces into my kingdom, so I became monarch by default. I'm not a war leader though and never have been, so from the very beginning, smiles was the one calling the shots and doing the hard training. My role is and always has been to bring people together, problem solve, and make people feel safe, welcome, and appreciated as part of our community.

Once we settled into a system that worked for us we set about training our players and replacing inactives using the in-game recruiting tool. We finished 9th in kd honor that first age, as a kingdom of 22 completely random provinces, the only two of whom had ever played with one another before being myself and smiles. That was the beginning of our kingdom, and I was so very proud of all of our players.

We decided after our first age that we would be a teaching and training kingdom, and that we would prioritize giving as many people as possible opportunities to learn leadership, and that we would welcome brand new players and encourage players who were completely new to the game to play with us and learn with us. For the first three ages that remained our central focus, though we found ourselves creeping up the rankings charts every age. With Smiles as your war leader, that sort of thing is going to happen! It's only a matter of time until you find yourself competing at higher and higher levels. In more recent ages we have begun to shift our focus to crown goals, and recruitment strategies have shifted to attracting the best talent possible. As our community continues to grow we may consider starting a second kingdom based on the same principles that we started with only a little over a year ago -- those of teaching, training, and egalitarian spirit.

When was the kingdom started, how many founders?

The answer would be, age 83, and every one of the people who played with us in that first age can be thought of as the founders of our kingdom. There was no "core" group, and that principle of egalitarianism and equal ownership of the kingdom continues to this day. All of our players have an equal voice in setting the direction for our kingdom, and while seniority or status as an original member might hold special meaning for those of us who remember that first age together, seniority does not confer any special status or authority in our community.

How many actual members do you have and how do you recruit?

Currently we have an active roster of 25 players with four active former players standing by as potential substitutes. There are also around twenty former players. I try to stay in regular contact with everyone who leaves or decides to take a few ages off. Some are retired for good and others I hope will return at some point when they have more time. Our kingdom has a policy of filling any empty spots first from our veteran pool if possible before recruiting from the outside. In addition to the 50 or so players and former players our server is also host to a few dozen regular guests from various other kingdoms. Our numerous public channels are open to everyone, and we make no effort to hide our location at the start of the age, so all are welcome at any time. I encourage everyone to come join us in our public channels.

What about these 10 laws of effective leadership and 6 eternal principles of the constitution I hear about?

Well, I will start with the nuts and bolts, because I really enjoy talking about our kingdom's constitutional structure. Our kingdom has functioned as an elective monarchy since the end of our second age. At the end of every age our kingdom votes on goals and direction for the next age. Things like level of competitiveness and level of activity expected from players, criteria for recruitment, age goal, kd name, and theme for the age are decided by straw polls and secret ballot.

Once our age goals are decided upon, we hold a formal election to select a monarch for the next age. The only stipulation is that whoever is elected must accept the goals and direction that the kd chose for the coming age, and cannot try to change them or the constitutional nature of the kingdom. A Returning Officer is selected from the pool of original kd members, and they are entrusted with handling the nomination and selection process and ensuring a fair result of the vote.

Once a monarch is elected, the constitution stipulates that they must appoint a war leader to lead the kingdom, and a council of advisors to support the war leader. Once the war leader is appointed, the show is theirs to run however they deem appropriate. The monarch can change war leaders mid-age if they want, but not during a war in progress, and the monarch has no power to overrule or interfere with a war leader's conduct of a war.

The elected monarch has final say on withdrawing from war, recruitment, and removing players, or selecting people for leadership, but it is the war leader who is at the top of the org chart for most in-game decisions. So in some sense you could say that the kingdom runs on a consular system with two leaders; one civilian, and one military. In that sense the constitution is a formal description of the system that Smiles and I designed for ourselves out of necessity that first age. It worked well, so we made it official.

In practice, our core leadership has not changed much in 5 ages. Smiles and I have served as war leader and monarch respectively every age since our kingdom's foundation, though we do rotate people through council as often as we can to give people experience of war planning and wave leading. In the last three ages we have brought in some tremendously experienced and capable people from other kingdoms, and this expanded leadership capacity has added tremendously to our success. It also gives me great hope for the future of our constitutional experiment.

As for RedBird's ten laws of leadership, well, these are just the rules I expect my leadership team to lead and play by:

1. No topic of discussion is off limits in leadership council, and everyone has an equal voice there.

2. Morale is everything, and no negativity, complaining, or defeatist talk is permitted outside of council.

3. We reward initiative and encourage risk taking.

4. Everyone deserves a second chance. Most people deserve a third chance. Some people deserve a fourth chance.

5. We review personnel after every war and we are always looking for ways to make our kingdom stronger, and support players who are struggling.

6. We offer praise for positive actions, and gentle correction for mistakes. We always address the members of our kd using terms of affection and respect.

7. We always put the needs of the KD ahead of our own provinces.

8. We are decisive in giving orders and we do not argue or plead.

9. Life is more important than utopia.

10. Don't be a martyr: set a sitter and get some sleep.

---------

There are some goals that are so poetic as to be necessary goals. A crowning achievement for our kingdom would be to achieve a level of success greater than that crowning age Smiles captained for us in TFC in age 81. If we could do that, it would feel like a full circle and culmination of the first chapter of our kingdom's journey. It would be a crown for all of us, but for Smiles more than myself. A legacy for me would be seeing this constitutional and democratic model I am trying to create actually carry on after I am gone. I'm sure I still have plenty of ages ahead of me, but the time will come eventually when I either step aside or the members of my kingdom decide to hand the reins to a new king or queen.

If and when that day comes, if I could take a few ages off from utopia, and then come back and discover that the kingdom I helped to found was still going strong, and had stayed true to the systems and principles on which it was founded... well, that would be the crown for me.

Thank you for the interview opportunity!

Thank you Redbird and Thank you Warbirds for being part of the community! You have a very unique kingdom structure and a nice piece of history for anyone who many have missed the early 80’s. It also serves as a very inspirational story on building a kingdom from the ground up and how you overcame struggles you faced in order to maintain a presence in the war charts age over age.

I would like to thank Smiles for constantly commenting and participating in the MUGA chat especially when I mention him as he has been very transparent about sharing information and data. Thank you Smiles for your contribution!

For any Monarchs out there if you would like your kingdom/war featured please reach out to me in discord or at 1:1!

W1nD#9514

Reporter - w1nd 1:1

0 notes

entergamingxp · 4 years

Text

Rocket Arena Review — Remarkably Unremarkable

July 17, 2020 1:30 PM EST

Rocket Arena is a hero shooter that tries to make a mark, but doesn’t do nearly enough to help itself stand out.

The hero shooter subgenre is an odd one.

It’s not an oversaturated market, at least not yet, but instead, one that’s so dominated by a select few successes that it’s an uphill battle for any new game to come in and gain a foothold. For every Overwatch or Apex Legends, there’s a Battleborn and LawBreakers to match.

Rocket Arena — a debut project from Final Strike Games that released Tuesday under the EA Originals line — is the latest hero shooter looking to make its mark. But with minimal fanfare leading up to launch, a questionably high price of admission, and time spent playing a game that feels so derivative and uninspired, it’s a title that will have a hard time catching anyone’s attention, much less maintaining it.

youtube

“[Rocket Arena is] a title that will have a hard time catching anyone’s attention, much less maintaining it.”

Rocket Arena’s foundation is built with an amalgamation of elements from other games. Online shooter with a colorful, Pixar-esque art style? That’s Overwatch. A K.O. meter that fills up and sends opponents flying off the map after taking so much damage? That’s Super Smash Bros.

The 3-v-3 team setup? Although it’s likely a means to help differentiate from Overwatch (6-v-6) and Valorant (5-v-5), the format, and the name Rocket Arena in and of itself, brings it awfully close to Rocket League. Hell, there’s even a handball-like mode to bring it closer with a sports-focused angle. And while we’re still at spotting influences, one of the playable hero’s special abilities feels like it’s pulled right out of Splatoon.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with taking inspiration from other games. It’s just that Rocket Arena doesn’t do anything new or interesting with ideas it’s pulling from. The aforementioned gameplay mechanics and rules function almost exactly like they do in the respective games that established them, leading it all to feel like they’re just included because they’re popular and familiar, not because the development team saw a way to expand or put a unique spin on them.

That isn’t to say Rocket Arena doesn’t try to do anything original. Its biggest selling point is that it’s a rockets (i.e. projectiles) only shooter, which on paper might sound cool. In practice, it’s quite literally hit or miss.

It takes some getting used to when you first start out. Most shooters make use of hitscan for the bulk of their weaponry (rifles, handguns, shotguns, basically anything that uses bullets), having hits register instantly so long as the aiming reticle is on target when you fire. Then projectiles (rocket launchers and grenades) are added in to help break things up, usually as secondary or special weapons that carry a blast radius, but need time to travel to their target. It’s risk vs. reward. If you connect, you can do tons of damage to one or multiple opponents, but you throw or pull the trigger knowing you might miss completely since they’ll have time to get out of the way.

Since Rocket Arena forgos hitscan almost entirely in favor of all projectiles, every shot has to be deliberate in order to consistently hit anything. At launch there are 10 playable heroes of varying skill sets, who each have their own weapons that come with different levels of forgiveness. For some, all you need to do is put a rocket within an opponent’s general area to connect, while others I’ve found you need to be dead-on with. And in the case of one hero, Plink, his automatic weapon is the closest that comes to conventional hitscan, which I found myself falling back on a couple times when I felt like things really weren’t going my way.

“The roster consists of archetypes and character designs you’ve seen before and have been done more interestingly elsewhere.”

There is a practice mode where you can take all the time you need firing away at bots to get acclimated with the game’s mechanics and find the hero or heroes that best suit your playstyle. I still found myself going back and forth on whether the rockets-only approach was a good idea or not once I jumped into online matches.

Small maps, the 3-v-3 format, timers, score limits and relatively fast respawn times are all there to keep rounds moving quickly and players constantly involved. Genuinely interesting means of traversal help out on this front, too. Shooting the ground below you mid-jump will give you an extra boost, and firing downward at a wall repeatedly will send you climbing up it in a way somewhat similar to Mega Man X’s triangle kick. It gives maps an extra layer of verticality, opening up chances to do a quick survey of the area or get the drop on opponents.

It’s mostly in combat itself where things felt like they were falling apart. Trying to anticipate an opponent’s movements and lead shots often felt like it was slowing the action down, and perhaps because the game just launched (at the time of this writing, Rocket Arena has only been out for a couple days), I’ve seen shootouts tend to devolve into just firing away and hoping for the best.

The game launched with five modes. Knockout, basically the Rocket Arena variation of Team Deathmatch; Rocketball, the aforementioned handball-style mode where goals are set up at the opposite end of each map; Treasure Hunt, a two-part mode that starts with competing for possession of a treasure chest (in simpler terms a game of keep away), then turns into a scramble to collect as many coins as possible; Mega Rocket, where teams fight to capture control points across the map; And Rocketbot Attack, a co-op horde mode. There are multiple ways to play and find success without having to deal damage thanks to the mode variety. Still, it doesn’t absolve Rocket Arena from the issues I’ve had so far with its gameplay, and the modes themselves have been seen before in dozens of other multiplayer shooters over the past decade, to the point where playing them here hardly feels like anything more than going through the motions.

Rocket Arena will reward you for mastery. Gameplay-wise, you can pull off techniques like comboing opponents off the map without filling up their damage meter through consecutive hits (another note taken from Smash Bros.). And in terms of progression, every hero has 100 levels of rewards, with experience going toward cosmetic unlocks like outfits, VFX trails, and parts for customizable banners referred to in-game as totems. Time spent playing also unlocks and levels up what are called artifacts, of which you can assign up to three to a respective hero to either boost certain attributes or reduce respawn and cooldown times.

That said, if the core gameplay isn’t enough to keep you going, progressing the heroes won’t do much to remedy the situation. The roster consists of archetypes and character designs you’ve seen before and have been done more interestingly elsewhere. The story and lore put behind them also, frankly, is nothing more than shallow justification for how a world can have pirates, magicians, dinosaur hunters, and underwater kingdoms co-existing all at once.

youtube

“Rocket Arena isn’t a bad game, it works exactly as advertised… I just found it to be really dull.”

Completing ranked and social matches also accumulates Rocket Parts, one of Rocket Arena’s two methods of in-game currency, which can be put toward purchasing specific cosmetic gear. The other is the paid currency, Rocket Fuel, which serves the same purpose. Yes, this game does have microtransactions.

On top of that, Rocket Arena has an upfront cost of $30 minimum for its standard edition (the base game only), and $40 for its Mythic edition, which comes with extra outfits, VFX trails, and enough Rocket Fuel to pre-order the game’s season 1 Blast Pass (a roughly $8 package that comes with more cosmetics and a temporary XP boost).

Maybe in isolation, there could be an argument to justify the game’s pricing model, and to its credit, the hero this season is adding will be free to everyone. The hang-up I have with it is that this game was published by EA, the same company that helped put out Apex Legends, one of the more popular hero shooters and battle royale games out there…and that’s free-to-play. By comparison, Rocket Arena is asking for way more for something that, to me, is way less exciting.

Rocket Arena isn’t a bad game, it works exactly as advertised — provided there wasn’t something else to it outside of that few minutes the game was given during the EA Play showcase a month ago — I just found it to be really dull.

It pulls from established ideas you’ve already seen elsewhere, and the one unique hook it puts at the forefront isn’t near stable enough ground for it to stand out.

The whole thing is just forgettable.

July 17, 2020 1:30 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/07/rocket-arena-review-remarkably-unremarkable/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rocket-arena-review-remarkably-unremarkable

0 notes

zooptek · 4 years

Text

<p>New Player Experience + Quality of Life</p>

Thanks to diligent feedback from new beta players, and suggestions from our veterans, we have released a big update improving everyone's experience, no matter where they are in the progression!

New Player Experience

About a month ago we had an influx of new players, which provided tons of helpful feedback on how to smooth out their experience.

All new players are now given two starting avatars: a dual pistoleer for rapid-fire ranged combat, and a spear and shield avatar for stabby melee combat. This should give brand new players to find an avatar immediately that more closely fits their play style, or better fits the combat situation. Also, dual pistols provides increased firepower over the original starting avatar, with a single pistol.

To give new players more flexibility and strategic options, we have made all item types available to unlock in any order. Fancy yourself an archer? Go head, unlock it first.

Similarly, account upgrades, such as the voxel shop (buy items) and voxel smith (crafting) are now available through unlocks; previously you had to complete campaigns to earn them.

One of the first things players ask is "how do I move faster?" We have now integrated the answer to that question in our tutorial, by giving all new players the sprint trait immediately, instead of requiring an unlock. Similarly, we have made the movement speed modifier immediately available to unlock. Doctore, the trainer of gladiators, will even reward you for using your newfound speed with a pile of voxels.

Of course, as with all games nowadays, some omniscient voice needs to explain everything to new players, and for us that comes in the form of Doctore. We have added sixty new phrases to Doctore, finally teaching players how to aim their swing and how to block.

Quality of Life

We didn't forget about the veteran players either, with a boat load of quality of life changes. First and foremost, the ability to add new campaigns at any time, but at a cost, to incentivize finishing existing campaigns.

We have also added a bunch of sliders to options for controlling various graphical settings, audio volumes, and controls! Although we had basic options like graphics quality before, these expanded options will allow players to customize their experience precisely, down to the decibel!

One thing that has plagued newcomers and veterans alike is an issue that reduced spear and one hand sword damage. Those have now been buffed, and should be equatable to other weapons available in the roster!

Players frequently found aiming push and shield bash difficult, especially in higher latency matches. We have greatly increased push and shield bash "size" to facilitate aiming. You can push bosses off ledges like never before!

In a similar vein, we have now significantly boosted glory (point) earnings for various actions, such as fighting in melee against a stronger opponent, and knocking opponents off the arena, as seen above!

Some of our veteran players may not like this improvement much, haha, but we have made the AI a bit more aggressive against rangers. No longer can you snipe without punishment!

Last but not least, we worked a lot on smoothing out various networking issues. The game will now attempt to reconnect if a player is disconnected as they join a match, and avatars will no longer "vibrate" around when joining mid-match.

But most importantly, knocked down avatars are now correctly synchronized, so you no longer miss when attempting to hit avatars on the floor! How embarrassing to miss a knocked out target!

Are you ready to join the ranks of gladiators? We are always looking for new beta players! Join our Discord and ask for a key!

Not brave enough for beta? No problem! Wishlist on Steam!

Full patch notes are listed below!

Complete Patch Notes

New Player Experience

All players start with two pre-made avatars, dual pistols, and spear and shield. Both are automatically equipped with sprint.(Thanks Fllad, ClassicDeems, and JBelay!)

All new players now have spear, shield, sprint, and headshot damage unlocked.

All item types are now immediately available to unlock, in any order, giving new players more flexibility in what to focus on first. (Thanks Fllad, ClassicDeems, and JBelay!)

Account upgrades, such as the avatar slot, voxel shop slot, and voxel smith are now immediately available to unlock, instead of locked behind campaign completion.

Movement speed is now available to unlock immediately.

Added over SIXTY new phrases to Doctore, teaching new players each game mode, each weapon, and how to aim and block with melee weapons. (Thanks Fllad, ClassicDeems, and JBelay!)

Doctore now recommends equipping movement speed to new players.

Added movement speed quest to reward players for using movement speed.

Doctore's speaking causes other audio to be reduced.

Renamed critical damage to headshot damage, to avoid confusion.

Enemies in the training campaign no longer equip any avatar. They are limited to similar modifiers the player has, and usually very poorly chosen :-).

New players can now join custom matches, though not recommended.

Quality of Life

Players can create new campaigns at any time, at the cost of voxels. Cost is exponential to the number of incomplete campaigns the player has (Thanks Ami!).

Full control of volume in options!

Full control of post effects in options! (Thanks gxyooj and Xavier!)

Screen shake option. (Thanks Pancake!)

Can invert mouse in options. (Thanks Xavier!)

Can reverse left and right mouse buttons, Elder Scrolls style. (Thanks Xavier!)

Can no longer sell the critical upgrade, the voxel shop! (Thanks August!)

Electrocution isn't quite as bright anymore. (Thanks Mazur!)

Selling items no longer scrolls to the top of the page. (Thanks Pancake!)

Items in voxel shop will no longer have their prices increase over time.

Skins are now significantly cheaper, approximately one skin per victory. (Thanks Bubben!)

Reorganized unlocks page.

Full body armor now is visually apparent on the avatar, just like locational armor.

Combat

Spear damage increased. (Thanks Fllad!)

One hand sword damage increased. (Thanks Pancake!)

Throw weapon damage increased. (Thanks Bubben!)

Throw weapon velocity increased. (Thanks Bubben!)

Push, and shield bash traits are now much easier to land. (Thanks Pancake!)

Elemental effects now have a higher balance cost.

Locational body armor and full body armor now have a lower balance cost.

Arenas

Added team fortresses, making defending bases far more epic! (Thanks Mazur!)

Platforms now have dedicated player and flag spawn points.

Goal platforms now have dedicated goal area, instead of the entire platform.

Glory Scoring

In Flag Rush and Base Blitz, if the losing team scores, the amount of glory they earn is based on how far behind they are, giving the losing team a better chance to catch up.

Brutalizing (hits to knocked down or mid-air opponents) enemies now earns more glory.

Knocking opponents down now earns more glory.

Knocking enemies off the arena now earns more glory.

AI are now more aware of what counters ranged weapons, particularly pistols.

AI is now more aggressive toward rangers.

Network Improvements

Joining mid-game will no longer causes other avatars appear to be jumping around at the speed of light.

Knocked down avatars now correctly synchronize, making hitting downed enemies much easier!

Less likely to be mysteriously disconnected while joining a match.

Other

Name/currency bar is now wider. Veteran players earned too much stuff!

Bots and bosses now have icons above their heads indicating as such. Removed old boss HUD.

Flags will no longer fall below raised platforms.

Avatar elbows less shaky, particularly with bow.

Fixed potential crash loading main menu avatar if assets have changed.

Fixed bug with quests starting above 0% complete.

Refresh button in custom matches now matches the one in campaigns (Thanks August!)

Removed other GIF recording options besides recording the player or none.

0 notes

afterspark-podcast · 5 years

Text

G1 Episode 22: Transcript

Episode Show Notes

[This can also be found on AO3!]

[Stinger]

S: And, unfortunately, in this instance, I think, Ratchet has to be the cat.

[Intro Music]

O: Hello, and welcome to the Afterspark Podcast. An episode by episode recap of the generation 1 Transformers cartoon. I'm Owls!

S: And I'm Specs.

O: And today we're gonna be talking about episode number 22, Enter the Nightbird. Let's talk about giant robots today, shall we?

S: Sure. We open with a bunch of the Autobots working on the Ark.

O: Installing floor sensors to keep out Decepticons.

S: They fly! The Autobots aren't good at, you know, reasonable thinking or forward planning or, really, considering what their enemies are likely to do.

O: Yeah, I- like, um, this will come into play, specifically, in this episode but I-uh- with a Con who's not part of the normal roster but, I think, just in general, like, Ravage could jump across what little section of the floor they do this to.

S: And then-

O: Laserbeak can fly.

S: Yes! All of the Decepticons can fly in robot mode.

O: Well, do we ever see Ravage fly?

S: I feel like we do.

O: I don't- I don't remember. Probably, though, and we at least know- I'm still convinced he could jump over this or run, get enough momentum, turn into a tape, and go flying over.

S: Yeah, especially because, you know, with mass shifting- “I'm small and tiny and very, very light compared to how I am as a big honking cat.”

O: Exactly.

S: And then Cliffjumper comes running in and says, “There's a famous scientist that wants to talk to Optimus.”

O: I don't know why the line read on this was so funny to me but Cliffjumper sounded like super rushed. It was- it was like, “Hurry up, guys! I want to get back to watching my cartoons!”

S: [Laughter] And here, we’re introduced to Dr. Fujiyama. He's got a proposition for the Autobots.

O: He's also rightly worried about being eavesdropped on by the Cons but, of course, Ironhide tells him that's unlikely.

S: Oh, Ironhide, you’re about to be the wrongest you've ever been.

O: The good doctor here has invented a sexy robot- I mean, a girl robot- I mean, pretty robot- I mean, a ninja robot. [Laughter]

S: He does have the decency to say it's the, “Greatest robot created by man,” so no accidentally insulting the Autobots here.

O: However, Optimus says, “My curiosity is aroused.”

S: Oh, words Megatron's long wanted to hear and they're not for him.

O: [Laughter] The Autobots agree to attend Dr. Fujiyama's unveiling.

S: And, at the unveiling, Ratchet and Wheeljack are Mean Girling the shit out of this thing.

O: As they're joking back and forth, Optimus walks by and says, “We're here to guard the robot, not make jokes at its expense.” Personally, I really liked the line, “I wonder if batteries are included.”

S: And they snicker like middle school children here so it’s like, oh, those guys.

O: I love it, actually, but Dr. Fujiyama unveils the first female-ninja-robot!

S: This show is bad about stereotyping.

O: And we're not even to Carbombia yet and if you think I'm kidding, boy, do I have news for you.

S: Yeah. We’re not kidding, we’re really not kidding.

O: Ah, yeah. Can we talk for a moment that he specifies the first “female” ninja robot. What does this mean? Have there been other female robots? Have there been other male ninja robots?

S: Have there been, like, cat ninja robots?

O: Yeah! Yeah, he does not specify here. I have questions and these questions will never be answered.

S: Oh, so this robot- her name is Nightbird. We should probably mention she's black, grey, and purple.

O: And with that color scheme I think we all know what's coming.

S: We get a chorus of supposedly impressed sound bytes from the audience but one of the voices used is very definitely Ratchet’s voice actor, which is really jarring when Ratchet was insulting this thing, like, two seconds ago.

O: Poor Optimus has to ask what a ninja is.

S: Jazz is like, “Oh! I heard about these things. They’re deadly assassins.”

O: And one man rises from the audience to ask the important questions:

S: “I mustache you, why you decided to build a ninja robot?”

O: The doctor will, unfortunately, give a very unsatisfactory answer as to why he had to build a sexy lady robot as a sexy ninja lady robot other than, “Blah blah blah, expanding humanity's horizons.”

S: Expanding horizons? For what?

O: [Laughter] Uh, that sweet, sweet Robo love! [Laughter]

S: He says that she's not for battle but she has sais and nunchucks! Why would you arm her if she's not for combat?

O: It’s just lovingly ridiculous.

S: Suddenly, we see Trailbreaker get blown through the air as the door behind him explodes and the Decepticons are here.

O: Look! It's my garbage children! Hi, Rumble! Hi, Frenzy!

S: Laserbeak bursts through the ceiling as the last of the humans evacuate.

O: And then Megatron kicks his way through the human-sized door, taking out the wall for good measure, closely followed by Soundwave.

S: Megatron's just like a goddamn Kool-aid Man here.

O: [Laughter] Yep, can I just say how much I love all the destruction right now? Everything is exploding.

S: Megatron walks in and says, “I bring you greetings, Prime, lethal greetings.”

O: I love everything about this. [Laughter]

S: And then we do the weirdest time jump as Megatron goes to shoot Optimus. First, we see Megatron firing, then we cut to a view of Optimus as Bluestreak jumps in front of him as Megatron fires… again?

O: But it seems like it's the first time because Optimus clearly hadn't been hit prior.

S: Yeah.

O: It was weird. Soundwave finally seems to get some revenge on fucking Brawn, as Brawn attempts to shoot him but Soundwave shoots the platform out from underneath him.

S: And then Mirage shoots Soundwave before he can finish Brawn off.

O: Damn!

S: Megatron is super pissed about this but Optimus gropes, I mean, um, tackles him from behind, causing Megatron’s shot to miss. Elsewhere, Ironhide is fighting Laserbeak and gets stuck under a girder of his own making.

O: He's reaping what he sows, he's getting what he deserves. Yes, I know we used that joke already but I think of it every damn time.

S: And then Optimus tries to save his bud but Megatron shoots him in the back.

O: He looks so gleeful here.

S: Optimus gets back up with no ill effects and then decks Megatron as the Seekers rip off the top of the building to steal Nightbird.

O: And the Megatron decks Optimus and all the Cons fly off.

S: And how they pick up Nightbird is, like, super weird. Like, they send grappling hooks down?

O: Yeah and, basically, the Seekers all fly off with her.

S: Yes.

O: Very strange.

S: They're just dangling this robot lady underneath.

O: Yeah.

S: As they're flying and you know if someone saw it, they'd have to lay off the drink.

O: Yeah, that's a fair statement.

S: The Decepticons return to their extremely obvious temporary base. There is, literally, a giant, purple Decepticon badge sticking up out of the middle of nowhere.

O: Had the Autobots not seen this with the Sky-Spy or something? I feel like this is something that should show up on their scans or something.

S: It damn well should but maybe they forgot to send out a Sky-Spy today.

O: [snorts]

S: Who the fuck knows? Soundwave appears to be their new doorman, as his badge glows and a cave opens up, or a cavern, or something.

O: An entrance and, of course, he's their doorman- the Decepticon symbol’s based on his face after all.

S: It's only fitting. Bombshell shoves a bunch of shit inside of Nightbird and now she's evil. Whoo?

O: Bombshell is super fucking horny for mind control it is creepy as balls.

S: It's so creepy. Nightbird proceeds to sit up and Starscream says some non-complimentary things about her before she jabs him, knocking him over. Apparently Nightbird’s been programmed to steal the “World Energy Chip” from the Autobots.

O: A thing that's literally not been mentioned in this episode up to this point, let alone the series.

S: Yeah, we don't know what the fuck it is.

O: And I feel like their explanation later is kind of lacking.

S: Back with the Autobots, Dr. Fujiyama is begging the bots to get Nightbird back in one piece because she is apparently super important?

O: Uh, I think she was probably very expensive and his vest- investors are pissed at him. As the bots head back to base, Brawn is being an idiot and tries to refuse to ride back in Ratchet so he can walk home while being very damaged? I don't know why he does this or what relevancy this is- this has, sorry.

S: I think they just shoved him, I think Ratchet gives him a talking-to and he ends up getting shoved in.

O: Oh, he does, he does. That's why I'm like, what was the point of the scene? I don't think a place into anything else that happens other than Brawn’s just an idiot.

S: I think it's attempting to show him being a stubborn jackass. Establishing character-

O: It doesn’t have any relevancy in this episode, but okay.

S: Who knows. The Autobots new security system cannot hope to keep out ninjas, as Nightbird breaks in so very easily.

O: She enters through the top of the volcano and hops onto an elevator were Spike and Prowl are having a very ironic conversation about finding her.

S: Nightbird sneaks around the base and gets past the, “state-of-the-art,” floor panels by magnetizing her feet walking up the wall and walking on the ceiling.

O: Which also tells me these things have no sensitivity if something is going right above it, either. She steals the world energy cell or whatever and Ratchet and Optimus are alerted to this when the lights go out.

S: On her way out, she runs into Mirage and promptly kicks his ass.

O: Also, a nice detail, the Autobots are all using their headlights to get around the base since all the lights are off.

S: I'm not sure how Mirage has a light but he's got something. I mean, he's not a street legal car. Formula 1 racers don't have-

O: Headlights.

S: Headlights, yeah. It's just really weird.

O: I can only assume that they, regardless, of, like, what the vehicular alt mode they'd pick they'd have something. Maybe it's, like, default to their anatomy, or he had Ratchet add it. Nightbird unveils that she can shoot buzzsaws from her hands before disappearing.

S: She's a multi-talented lady.

O: Yes, she is.

S: The Autobots catch sight of her outside the Ark and Optimus hits her with a stun gun.

O: Bluestreak approaches her but she jumps up and punches him. Optimus says, “She was playing roboto-possum,” or robot- was it ‘roboto-possum or robot possum?

S: I feel like it was roboto-opossum.

O: Ok, roboto-opossum!

S: Optimussssss!

O: What even is that. Optimus, what even is that?

S: She then proceeds to chuck throwing stars at them.

O: Cliffjumper pulls out a gun, ready to fight, but he has stopped by Optimus and, oh no, now she's got a lightsaber.

S: She's got it all, man.

O: No, really, that was the lightsaber sound effect.

S: Optimus tries to talk to her but she knocks him down and then steals his laser rifle when Bluestreak shoots her sword out of her hand.

O: She runs off and seems to disappear. Again.

S: As a ninja does.

O: As a ninja does, ok. [Laughter]

S: Back at the Decepticon base, Megatron seems very impressed with Nightbird’s performance so far.

O: Starscream is jealous and I am convinced that their goal was to have Megatron talk about Nightbird like this so he sounded like he found her attractive. It really just seems like he's trying to make Starscream jealous, though?

S: And, back at the Ark, Ratchet is fucking amazing because he gets the power back on by, uh, [clicks tongue] futzing with two wires.

O: Yep, he then informs Optimus that Nightbird stole the World Energy Chip.

S: The World Energy Chip can, apparently, tap into any power supply onEearth. It’s like, okay?

O: I have so many questions, like--why do you guys have this? Like, there's gotta be a better way to get you guys power than, oh, by giving you this thing that would be really dangerous if the Decepticons got it, but whatever.

S: I mean, if it was something that just listed all the locations of energy sources that would be dangerous enough instead, no, they've got to give them-

O: Power over them?

S: Yeah. Some very stupid, ill-thought-out thing I can't imagine Earth's governments ever agreeing to.

O: Yeah, yeah. Optimus orders Hound to track Nightbird with his infrared and they corner Nightbird in some sort of canyon and the Autobots follow after her one after another.

S: Like ducklings. And then they have to jump up a cliff. And the only one who needs help is Cliffjumper.

O: You know, for a name like, “Cliffjumper,” he sure can't jump up cliffs very well.

S: He's all about jumping off them, you know. Not- not up them.

O: Obviously. Nightbird attempts to climb up another cliff to get away from the Autobots but falls off and then has to confront them.

S: Mirage proceeds to turn invisible and steals back Optimus’ gun. And here, we have one woman outsmarting five Autobots as they all try to take her down with their special abilities or weapons.

O: An earth made lady robot no less. What I was so-so- Uh, about Ratchet and Wheeljack being a dick, earlier. She's kicking their friends’ butts.

S: Yep. Megatron's watching all of this as he tells Starscream he's definitely going to replace him with Nightbird.

O: Of course, Starscream then tries to attack Megatron in retaliation to this comment but Megs just has him tossed into an energy cage.

S: And then Starscream pterodactyl screeches and, like, it's just.

O: It's very weird moment.

S: Yeah, apparently in the script or whatever, he's supposed to actually touch the thing but he doesn't actually do that in the animation. He just screeches.

O: He just screeches.

S: He's just a dramatic jet.

O: He is a very dramatic jet. Nightbird is finally captured and Megatron mobilizes the rest of the Cons to retrieve her.

S: The Autobots and Decepticons fight. Again!

O: Megs has a new toy, another gun: An antimatter blaster, which he uses to free Nightbird from an energy cage the Autobots have trapped her in.

S: And then we cut to the Decepticon base where Starscream is still trapped in his cage.

O: Why are there so many damn cages in this episode?

S: They just love cages, man.

O: All I can think is, “kinky.”

S: Yeah. Starscream fires the gentlest missile in existence that taps the button to release himself.

O: He then flies off to show up Megatron's precious ninja.

S: Nightbird is still kicking everyone's ass but Starscream shoots her with his Null Ray and Megatron chases after him with the rest of the Cons in tow. The Autobots then proceed to return Nightbird to Dr. Fujiyama, who's delighted that she doesn't have a scratch on her.

O: How was that even possible, given everything that happened in this episode? You know she got hit at least a couple of times!

S: She's a durable lady.

O: Earth technology!

S: They say she's deprogrammed but she honestly just looks pissed as hell about being locked up forever at the end of the episode.

O: Who knows?

S: Yeah.

O: And the episode cuts with basically her being super angry and her eyes glowing menacingly. Join us next time for Changing Gears. Helpful, happy Gears? The horror!

S: Mm-hmm.

O: And I hope you're ready for Don Messick because there's a lot of Don Messick in the next episode. So, something I wanted to talk about is in the Legend comics, apparently Nightbird actually got released and got an alt.

[It’s actually Transformers: Earth Wars where Nightbird gains an alt, not Transformers Legends, which is a mobile game ~Owls]

S: Ooooh!

O: Um, they actually released a toy of it recently. And it was looks pretty cool, so I have the link- I have the post queued up and I’ll- I'll post it when we post this episode.

S: Nice-

O: I just thought it was neat.

S: Was it a retool of one of the Arcee toys?

O: It actually wasn't Arcee, I don't think. You know what, I'll pull it up.

[There’s been two toys of Nightbird. The Transformers Legends version is a retool of Arcee, while the Generations version is the retool of Chromia ~Owls]

S: Oh yeah.

O: It is a- it is a retool of Chromia, actually.

S: Nice.

O: And it does look pretty neat, so-

S: It does look kick-ass.

O: Uh, if uh-

S: I wouldn't mind having one of her.

O: Yeah, I've had that thought, too. So, if you either go looking for this or you see Nightbird and think her design actually looks kind of neat, there is actually a Transformer available or a, you know, a figure available of her now.

S: And it actually looks pretty- pretty much like her. Actually, if you could pull it up again I'd like - it's like, yeah, we've got the right head, she's got-

O: Like, it's obviously not perfect. Especially, you know, being a retool of a different one, but- but- but I think it's a good version of, like oh, if she could transform kind of thing, you know.

S: It's got this- it's got the general, um, silhouette of her.

O: Yeah.

S: Except with, you know, transforming parts which she obviously didn't have.

O: Yeah, she- she didn't have any kibble.

S: Yeah but, I mean, none of the lady bots- none of the female bots have kibble.

O: A bunch of them don’t, yeah you’re right. They've gotta look like sexy, lady robots, don't you know?

S: They gotta be, uh, obviously, visibly girls.

O: Again, I’m convinced the only reason they have them in there is because they're, like, “Oh, no!”

S: “We’ve gotta cover our asses.”

O: Pretty much!

S: Yeah.

O: Anyway, she does look cool and we will be posting- at least, posting pictures. I don't think I'll actually have a link on this but somebody had- had actually posted pictures online. I was like this looks neat!

S: Yeah, I think it's cool.

O: So, Specs, what is our fanfic for today?

S: We have two fanfiction recommendations for today, one which I will be covering and the other Owls will be covering.

O: Yep.

S: The first is “Return of the Nightbird” by Zilly. It's uh, continuity-wise, it's G1 cartoon with G1 comic elements. I don't remember if those are IDW elements or Marvel elements. It's been a while since I've had a- since I put this on the list.

O: Whoops.

S: Yeah, it's been a while. This is one of the-

O: It says G1 comic elements, so I'm gonna assume it's the G1 comic?

S: Yes, but it could be G1 Marvel comic or it could be IDW G1.

O: Oh, okay, when I put them on here I usually specify IDW or G1 comic so...

S: I did that- I've been doing that recently, but I hadn't-

O: But this is an older rec, right.

S: Yeah, this is one that I put on, like, at the very beginning- when we started this, so this has been on the list for like, six months.

O: Yeah.

S: So it's a rated T, it's Gen, there's no pairings. Characters: Marissa Faireborn, Nightbird, and Earthforce. So I'm guessing Marvel Comics, maybe?

O: Okay.

S: Marissa and the Earthforce reactivate the robot Nightbird and learn her origin is far more complicated than anyone expected. And the character for this one is obviously Nightbird.

O: I've read this one, too, and I actually- I like it. I think it works better as an explanation for all the stuff that Nightbird did in this episode, if that makes sense. Like, the whole, the Autobots can't even put a scratch on her it seems kind of ridiculous that she has the origin we're told she has in here.

S: That's cool, because I'm pretty sure I read it, I just don't remember. Let's go to yours.

O: So, um, my recommendation is, “Two Good Old Boys,” by Not_Whelmed_Yet. And the continuity is IDW, it's rated G, it's Gen, there are no pairings. The characters are Ratchet, Rung and some original alien characters

And in summary: Ratchet is taking his first vacation in a millennia and he's going to- wait? He's going to a model ship hobbyists conference? That can't be right. Ratchet gets some bonding time with the ship's most popular and only therapist on a relaxing vacation that definitely won't turn into a bit of an adventure.

And the theme for this is, uh, basically, “free space,” in that Specs forgot to make it- to add a second- second fic and I have decided that if that happens I'm going to recommend fics that I don't actually see a chance for me to recommend in any other context. Namely because most of the characters involved are characters from the IDW comics which I don't see us covering any point in the near future or maybe ever. Um, so I would like to start tossing some of these in here. Or it's, like, some pairings and stuff that don't exist in other continuities aside from the comics. It is actually very fun, though so I do recommend reading it, cuz it's just sort of this fun weird adventure romp with a, you know, Ratchet and Rung, who's just a delightful, nice guy. So enjoy!

S: Well I haven't read that so I'm going to.

O: You should read it, I think you'll like it. I want to see- say it was part of, like, Secret Solenoid or something last year, so I saw it get posted either from- from the person who it was gifted to or by the person who did it. I don't remember which one.

S: All right, let's get to that outro! And that just about wraps it up for us today! Remember to check us out on Tumblr or Pillowfort as Afterspark-Podcast for any additional information, show notes or links we may have mentioned. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter @AftersparkPod (all one word) and at various other locations by searching for Afterspark Podcast. Such as: AO3, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and Youtube, just to name a few. Till next time, I'm Specs.

O: And I'm Owls!

S: Toodles!

[Outro Music]

#g1 episode 22 #transcript #afterspark podcast

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

Link

For over 50 years, Disneyland and its sister parks have been a showcase for increasingly technically proficient versions of its “animatronic” characters. First pneumatic and hydraulic and more recently fully electronic — these figures create a feeling of life and emotion inside rides and attractions, in shows and, increasingly, in interactive ways throughout the parks.

The machines they’re creating are becoming more active and mobile in order to better represent the wildly physical nature of the characters they portray within the expanding Disney universe. And a recent addition to the pantheon could change the way that characters move throughout the parks and influence how we think about mobile robots at large.

I wrote recently about the new tack Disney was taking with self-contained characters that felt more flexible, interactive and, well, alive than ‘static’, pre-programmed animatronics. That has done a lot to add to the convincing nature of what is essentially a very limited robot.

Traditionally, most animatronic figures cannot move from where they sit or stand, and are pre-built to exacting show specifications. The design and programming phases of the show are closely related, so that the hero characters are efficient and durable enough to run hundreds of times a day, every day, for years.

The Na’avi Shaman from Pandora: The World of Avatar, at Walt Disney World, represents the state of the art of this kind of figure.

However, with the expanded universe of Disney properties including more and more dynamic and heroic figures by the year, it makes sense that they’d want to explore ways of making the robots that represent those properties in the parks more believable and active.

That’s where the Stuntronics project comes in. Built out of a research experiment called Stickman, which we covered a few months ago, Stuntronics are autonomous, self-correcting aerial performers that make on-the-go corrections to nail high-flying stunts every time. Basically robotic stuntpeople, hence the name.

I spoke to Tony Dohi, Principle R&D Imagineer and Morgan Pope, Associate Research Scientist at Disney, about the project.

“So what this is about is the realization we came to after seeing where our characters are going on screen,” says Dohi, “whether they be Star Wars characters, or Pixar characters, or Marvel characters or our own animation characters, is that they’re doing all these things that are really, really active. And so that becomes the expectation our park guests have that our characters are doing all these things on screen — but when it comes to our attractions, what are our animatronic figures doing? We realized we have kind of a disconnect here.”

So they came up with the concept of a stunt double for the ‘hero’ animatronic figures that could take their place within a show or scene to perform more aggressive maneuvering, much in the same way a double replaces a valuable and delicate actor in a dangerous scene.

The Stuntronics robot features on-board accelerometer and gyroscope arrays supported by laser range finding. In its current form, it’s humanoid, taking on the size and shape of a performer that could easily be imagined clothed in the costume of, say, one of The Incredibles, or someone on the Marvel roster. The bot is able to be slung from the end of a wire to fly through the air, controlling its pose, rotation and center of mass to not only land aerial tricks correctly but to do them on target while holding heroic poses in midair.

One use of this could be mid-show in an attraction. For relatively static shots, hero animatronics like the Shaman or new figures Imagineering is constantly working on could provide nuanced performances of face and figure. Then, a transition to a scene that requires dramatic, un-fettered action and boom, a Stuntronics double could fly across the space on its own, calculating trajectories and striking poses with its on-board hardware, hitting a target dead on every time. Queue re-set for the next audience.

This focus on creating scenarios where animatronics feel more ‘real’ and dynamic is at work in other areas of Imagineering as well, with autonomous rolling robots and — some day — the holy grail of bipedal walking robots. But Stuntronics fills one specific gap in the repertoire of a standard Animatronic figure — the ability to convince you it can be a being of action and dynamism.

“So often our robots are in the uncanny valley where you got a lot of function, but it still doesn’t look quite right. And I think here the opposite is true,” says Pope. “When you’re flying through the air, you can have a little bit of function and you can produce a lot of stuff that looks pretty good, because of this really neat physics opportunity — you’ve got these beautiful kinds of parabolas and sine waves that just kind of fall out of rotating and spinning through the air in ways that are hard for people to predict, but that look fantastic.”

The original BRICK

Like many of the solutions Imagineering comes up with for its problems, Stuntronics started out as a research project without a real purpose. In this case, it was called BRICK (Binary Robotic Inertially Controlled bricK). Basically, a metal brick with sensors and the ability to change its center of mass to control its spin to hit a precise orientation at a precise height – to ‘stick the landing’ every time.

From the initial BRICK, Disney moved on to Stickman, an articulated version of the device that could now more aggressively control the rotation and orientation of the device. Combined with some laser rangefinders you had the bones of something that, if you squint, could emulate a ‘human’ acrobat.

“Morgan, I got together and said, maybe there’s something here, we’re not really be sure. But let’s poke at it in a bunch of different directions and see what comes out of it,” says Dohi.

But the Stickman didn’t stick for long.

“When we did the BRICK, I thought that was pretty cool,” says Pope. “And then by the time I was presenting the BRICK at a conference, Tony [Dohi] had helped us make stick man. And I was like, well, this isn’t cool anymore. The Stickman is what’s really cool. And then I was down in Australia presenting Stickman and I knew we were doing the full Stuntronic back at R&D. And I was like, well, this isn’t cool anymore,” he jokes.

“But it has been so much fun. Every step of the way I think oh, this is blowing my mind. but,they just keep pushing…so it’s nice to have that challenge.”

This process has always been one of the fascinating things to me about the way that Imagineering works as a whole. You have people that are enabled by management and internal structure to spool out the threads of a problem, even though you’re not really sure what’s going to come out of it. The biggest companies on the planet have similar R&D departments in place — though the ones that make a habit of disconnecting them from a balance sheet, like Apple, are few and far in between, in my experience. Typically, so much of R&D is tied to a profit/loss spreadsheet so tightly that it’s really, really difficult to sussurate something enough to see what comes of it.

The ability to kind of have vastly different specialities like math, physics, art and design to be able to put ideas on the table and sift through them and say hey, we have this storytelling problem on one hand and this research project on the other. If we drill down on this a bit more — would this serve the purpose? As long as the storytelling always remains the North Star then you end up having a a guiding light to serve drag you through the pile and you come out the other end, holding a couple of things that could be coupled to solve a problem.

“We’re set up to do the really high risk stuff that you don’t know is going to be successful or not, because you don’t know if there’s going to be a direct application of what you’re doing,” says Dohi. “But you just have a hunch that there might be something there, and they give us a long leash, and they let us explore the possibilities and the space around just an idea, which is really quite a privilege. It’s one of the reasons why I love this place.”

This process of play and iteration and pursuit of a goal of storytelling pops up again and again with Imagineering. It’s really a cluster of very smart people across a broad spectrum of disciplines that are governed by a central nervous system of leaders like Jon Snoddy, the head of R&D at the studios, who help to connect the dots between the research side and the other areas of Imagineering that deal with the Parks or interactive projects or the digital division.

There’s an economy and lack of ego to the organization that enables exploration without wastefulness and organically curtails the pursuit of things not in service to the story. In my time exploring the workings of Imagineering I’ve often found that there is a significant disconnect between how fascinating the process is and how well the organization communicates the cleverness of its solutions.

The Disney Research white papers are certainly infinitely fascinating to people interested in emerging tech, but the points of integration between the research and the practical applications in the parks often remain unexplored. Still, they’re getting better at understanding when they’ve really got something they feel is killer and thinking about better ways to communicate that to the world.

Indeed, near the end of our conversation, Dohi says he’s come up with a solid sound byte and I have him give me his best pitch.

“One of our goals of Stuntronics is to see if we can leap across the uncanny valley.”

Not bad.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

admanofchaosvr · 7 years

Text

From Other Suns Beta: First Try VR! in blog form

So, I still have a full roster of games and videos planned for the youtube channel, but sometimes that feels limiting. I occasionally want to play new games, but feel that A) I'd have to push my production schedule back to make room for more titles and/or B) I feel I need to do videos on new releases right away while they are still in the public eye.

Well, we all have only so much time and can only work so fast. So I figured, since I'm expanding my online presence, I can use my new outlets in social media to have my cake and eat it too! I can blog about some of these new games and experiences without taking away too much time from my video making schedule.

So, for those unfamiliar with “First Try VR!” (gasp!), these will not be full-game reviews. “First Try!” is me giving you my first impressions, be it a game, an app or the like. I'll maybe play anywhere from 30 minutes, to 2 hours, however long it takes for me to feel I have a good sampling of the software, enabling me to report back to you, the reader/viewer.

Last night I saw a new title in the Oculus Store called "From Other Suns." Currently, it is in free open beta until October 1st, 2017. I'll get download virtually anything if it's free (lame joke, had to be done). But the way it’s promoted, it sounds like it’ll be a good title.

Upon first launching it, I was placed alone in a very tron-esque blue room where absolutely nothing happened. I poked around, thinking I was thrown into an escape room of some sort. Turns out the tutorial glitched out. Very forgivable, considering it's in beta. That's why we are here. I’m a bit embarrassed how long it took to realize this.

I relaunched it. It worked fine. I went through the tutorial and jumped into the main game. The game boasts a fun looking multiplayer mode, but that wasn’t working. I played through in the single player campaign.

The story is you are testing a ship’s new faster-than-light engine and have gone further into space than ever before. Success, it worked. But the thing is, you don’t have the fuel use it again when going home to Earth. The player will be captaining the ship, making several smaller jumps to stations, refueling and taking missions along the way. But it turns out some evil alien invaders are following you, so you can’t stay in any one place for too long.

You start in the ship. I found the ship to be sectioned off into a few different rooms, each having its own function, like med bay, tactical, shields, etc.

I was glad to see that there are NPC's on board, working on whatever room they are in. However, I was disappointed by how "non-VR" they behaved. I’m going to make another article on this concept later. But for now, let’s just say that some things that work in non-VR games that break the immersion in VR games. In this case, it was the lifeless feel of the crew. They looked human, but feel robotic. They don’t look at you. The don’t talk to you. They don’t acknowledge you in any way. They are strictly a game mechanic and strongly remind me that I’m playing a game.

Although I want to dwell on that, it was the rest of the game that I really enjoyed. The game and story has a unique mix of qualities from both Star Trek and Star Wars. First, it begins as a tale of a crew boldly going where no one has gone before. Next you're something of a mercenary being hired out for dangerous missions, like clearing out space pirates or renegade robots.

I genuinely enjoyed the missions, even if the gameplay was a bit simple. It plays like a typical VR FPS (virtual reality first person shooter). You really feel like a Star Trek landing party, using teleporters to board other vessels. But you’re also like a bounty hunter, sneaking around corners to get the upper hand on pirates.

This is the first game I’ve played in a while that supports using the joysticks for locomotion (another topic I need to make an article on). This type of motion feels a little awkward at first, but it is far more practical for gameplay than VR teleporting. But I give them points that players can chose the locomotion options.

When it comes to the actual combat, you’ll find dodging to be pretty hard, so taking cover is important. You can either sneak up on patrols or just go in blasters a-blazing. I found sneaking more fun and more realistic.

But, there really isn’t much variation in the combat. Each mission you’ll be given a goal of how many pirates/bots are on-board to be eliminated. The pirates seem to operate all the same, while the bots have more variations (ball bots, humanoid bots, humanoid bots with extra arms) and behave differently. The only other mechanic needed to win is the occasional card key to get to the next area. Ok, and you can root around for some loot like health items. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a terminal listing all the ship-related items on board (fuel, missiles, etc), which you can try to hack and take the stuff for yourself.

I did really enjoy all the different types of blasters located in each level. Rapid lasers, fireballs, fire beams, nanite guns and a bunch others. Each gun has it’s own stats, so you may later find a blaster you already have, but fires with more damage. So it’s good to keep an eye out. But it is a little unsettling seeing the pirates in agony. I think that needs to be dialed back a notch. Let’s just say I won’t be using the fire type weapons again anytime soon.

There is a ship vs ship mechanic in the game. While this was in the beta, it wasn’t very prominent or useful. It really feels like it wants to be a simplified version of the VR game “Star Trek: Bridge Crew”. From your ship’s bridge, you can control a few different functions of your vessel. From the captain’s terminal, you can control everything. Set new destinations, command crew mates to repair damaged rooms on the ship, take calls on your space skype, etc. I suspect in the full game, you can find yourself being attacked, but that never happened once. That is, unless you count me turning the ship around to try pursuing the evil aliens pursuers. I got roasted. Maybe that’s their idea of the kobayashi maru? Who’s to say.

You can still attack other ships and salvage the parts if you really want to, but that feels kinda wrong when every populated ship is asking for your help. I mean, I did attack a ship that I had just saved from pirates… but I just wanted to see if I could. If it makes you feel better, I lost that battle too.

I will give credit to the characters on the space phone. They were animated and well voice acted. Not mind blowing or anything, but having anyone to “talk” to in a VR game is a big boost to the immersion. Some of these NPCs calling out for help, I did want to help them, and that’s a good thing for any game.

But I have to talk about the inventory system. I feel like this is something that is great on paper, but just awkward to use. You have two inventories, one for weapons, one for other items. On either hand these are opened by holding one of the A, B, X or Y buttons. You open the holographic storage with one hand, and reach into it with the other. Sounds good, right?

After an hour or two, it never felt natural. I kept trying to open with one hand, and reach in with the same hand. Frankly, I wish you could use it one handed! To use it as designed in combat means you have to stop shooting to do anything. That’s tricky if you wanna switch blasters mid-battle if you need to get a healing item. Worse yet, the open inventory menu is tracking the motion of the hand opening it. I was regularly unable to coordinate myself. Everything always felt an inch out of reach. I think it would be ideal if the storage was tracking the headset position instead, and that either hand can reach in at a time.

I think I missed out on a lot in this game. I’m under the impression that playing with people is what really makes this shine. Sadly, as I said, the option was there, it just didn’t do anything when I tried it.

It’s funny to think, if this was a game released on a non-vr platform, this would be a pretty bland game. A very simple space shooter with lots of rinse, lather and repeat. But as a title in our new industry of VR, it is totally something we need. While there are things I want to see improved, it takes on far more life because it’s a VR game.

It even gave me a nice buzz of nostalgia when I played it. The shooting and exploring parts of the game reminded me a lot of “Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire” on Nintendo 64. I was excited to explore and battle with my trusty blaster at my side. And that musical score during missions was perfection! I know I’m making a lot of these comparisons, but the orchestra was soooooo the kind of thing you’d expect from Star Wars.

So, from what I played, there is a balance of good and bad traits at this time in the beta version. How I wanted to conclude this was as a “Pros and Cons” kinda thing. But each thing I wrote sounded like it had a mirror opposite. Two sides to the same coin. For every bit of potential, there was something holding it back. Let’s try it this way...

The story sounds like it will develop as I get closer to Earth. There may be more story after I reach Earth in the full version. But as it is right now, the beta opens with the story in the intro, and completely stops after that. Ok, the robots-going-rogue epidemic might be leading somewhere.

This original IP borrows elements from classic sci-fi in a way that just works.

The missions are fun. I enjoyed the exploring of the maps. They had good designs and a smooth layout. However, the current missions are very repetitive. They are all the same mission, only the enemies change.

I really liked the level design on the missions. And the graphics as a whole were nearly top notch. But I am surprised that my shiny, new, experimental ship has such a dingy, grungy look to it.

The characters that call your ship are well made, animated and voiced. You can’t help but want to help them. However, I can’t overlook the very artificial crew on the player’s ship. I’m not asking for a Lone Echo quality of characters. But in VR, it is critical to flesh out all NPCs more than this.

The joystick for locomotion is the best way to play this game, but even the sound of your own footsteps don’t fool your perception. You can’t help but feel your floating or sliding around the floor. This can be resolved using the non-VR technique in other FPS games. Allow the camera/headset to bob around as you move around.

It was good on paper, but the player’s inventory is a huge chore. It needs to be heavily reworked.

All things considered, I’m looking forward to the full release. But I wouldn’t pay more than $30 for it. If this game got all the polish it deserved, I’d rate it for a higher retail value.

Hmm, maybe I should make that my rating system? “How much this game should be.” It certainly be a fresh change from the typical “A+” system or giving out stars.

What do you think? How did you like the beta? Any thoughts or ideas? How about having a hypothetical retail price as a rating system? Please be sure to leave a comment. Be sure to follow me here, and especially subscribe to my youtube channel for my best content!

https://www.youtube.com/user/admanofchaos

Take care and see ya later!

0 notes

lyncnews · 8 years

Link

Hello readers. I hope you're well. This is just a quick post on some new features that have landed in Microsoft Teams as of March 9th 2017. First things first. Since when do I blog about Teams? Well, I've been wanting to write about Teams for a while. I was going to wait until GA and do a full post on what Teams is once it is launched. After that, you'll probably see many more posts on Teams alongside my usual Skype for Business related stuff and product reviews. I will say, that I have been evaluating Teams since a few minutes after it was launched into preview in November. I'm really excited for teh future of Teams. Especially after having a good chat with some of the product managers at a recent event. For those that don't know, you can see what's new in Teams in the T-Bot chat in the Release Notes tab. March 9th was one of the biggest updates I have seen and they added a ton of stuff. The below is directly from the release notes. I have added a few comments here and there in Blue so you know it's me speaking. New compose box: ICYMI, your compose box got a complete redesign. We improved the experience behind a lot of the actions surrounding composing and editing messages. Now, you have separate icons for the following actions:

Expanding your compose box

Adding an emoji to a message

Sending a GIF

Creating and sending a custom meme or sticker

Attaching a file

Scheduling a meeting

One thing I would say is that I previously found that adding Memes and GIFs etc. was a bit hit and miss. I'd get the spinning wheel while the app though long and hard about actually adding the thing to the chat or converstion. Since this update, graphics are added instantly. Nice one!

You'll find that your expanded compose box still offers all the same formatting options, but you’ve got a lot more space to play around with creating custom memes and stickers, or searching for popular or trending GIFs. Clicking the meetings icon below your compose box will take you straight to our meeting form, where you can immediately schedule a meeting with whoever you're talking to in a channel or chat. Check it out; we hope you like it! The expanded compose box is really cool. You can really add some richness and uniqueness to your conversations by changing everything from the font type, size and colour, to adding highlights, bullet points and lists. Another recent update added something called "Markdown". Which, to be honest, I'd never heard of. Apparently it was a feature in a competing product and it was added to Teams because of a public outcry. This is where you can format text by wrapping it in certain characters. For instance, adding an asterisk to the beginning and end of a block of text will make that block of text bold. It also does this while you're typing do you don't have to click anywhere or use keyboard shortcuts. The reason I mentioned this feature was more to do with the fact that it was added because many people requested it. That's interactive development! And that is cool. If you use Teams and want it to do more, use the feedback button. They really do listen.

Meetings got a lot smarter.

Schedule a private meeting: Schedule a private meeting with anyone in your organization! They'll be able to join by clicking "Meetings" on the left side of the app.

Meetings have a smart new scheduling assistant: Our new scheduling assistant will let you know when all your invitees are free to meet. The scheduling assistant also provides a calendar view of the coming week that will show you when all your meeting attendees are busy or unavailable.

I'll also say that I haven't done a lot in meetings thus far. For one, meetings with internal staff that are using Teams isn't as important as meetings that mix internal and external people. So far, all I've done is tested scheduling meetings to see what was possible. I also hit the join button in one that was actually a Skype for Business meeting and it just launched the meeting in SfB. As soon as the doors are opened to external participants, I am sure this will change, and I'll use it more. Bots now work in teams!

New Bots tab in your team page: You might have noticed there's a new tab in your team view. The Bots tab gives you a list of all the bots that have been added to that team. It's also the place to go if you want to discover new bots or get started creating a custom bot or tab!

Brand new bot gallery: We built a new bot gallery that will show you a list of all the bots that are currently available in Microsoft Teams. Alongside the Bots tab, the bot gallery is also the place to go when you want to find out which bots have already been added to one of your teams.

Discover bots via search: To see a list of all available bots, just click on the search bar at the top of the app and then select "Discover bots". Click on a bot to start a one-on-one chat or click "Add" to add it to a team.

Add a bot using an @mention: To add a bot to a channel, just type '@' in your compose box, then select "Add a bot".

Custom bots: Now, you can quickly and easily integrate an external service with one of your teams by adding a custom bot! Established and aspiring developers can sideload a bot or tab or even create a custom bot using a call back URL. Just head to the new Bots tab and click the links at the bottom right to get started.

The inclusion of more bots is cool. However I urge some caution here. If you add a Bot, it pops up to say what access the Bot has. This bot has the following permissions:

Receive messages and data that I provide to it.

Send me messages and notifications.

Receive messages and data that team members provide to it in a channel.

Send messages and notifications in a channel.

Access my profile information such as my name, email address, company name, and preferred language.

Access this team's information such as team name, channel list and roster (including team member's names and email addresses) - and use this to contact them.

Some of it I understand. For instance, sending and receiving messages. You need that to chat with a Bot. The last one, I think, requires some caution. The Bot can access team info, channel list, members etc. What does the Bot company do with this informantion? If anyone cares to comment here, I welcome it. Public teams are here: With public teams, anyone can search for, view, and join your team! This means that when anyone from your organization clicks through "Add a team", they'll see a collection of public teams that they can browse and join. If you want to create a new public team, you'll be able to choose 'public' or 'private' settings for your team privacy as you go through the steps of creating a new team. Public teams is pretty cool. This could be used for a lot of things. I think of this as an internal social media network. Check out the new Notes tab: We've reimagined the way you collaborate. The Notes tab is a great place for you to draft or edit documents and communicate in real time. It's a full-fledged text editor that lets you @mention teammates right on the page, leave comments when you're editing someone else's work, or respond to feedback! This is like a blank online Word document that you can work on with other people. You can also @mention people in the doc. Not sure about this just yet. But it must have a use or it wouldn't be in there. Even more new tabs: We've been quietly adding new options to the tab gallery so you can connect all your favorite external services. Now, you can add a tab to integrate services like Zendesk, Asana, and more. Head over to the desktop app to see what's available. The tab gallery is getting bigger and bigger every day. And I expect this to get a log bigger over time. One cool recent addition is the ability to pin a Website. Now you can add a website you (or your team) access frequently as a tab in a channel. Another one I like is adding an Office document as a tab. The cool thing is that the document is open in the tab.

Feeds got a makeover: We've redesigned your Activity feed so it's more transparent and gives you more control over what you see. Click on the Activity icon on the left side of the app; you'll be taken right to your feed. You'll be able to filter your feed by notification type (if you just want to check your mentions, replies, likes, or news from channels you follow). You also have the option of opening Team activity (which will show you all the latest news from your favorite channels) or My activity (which will give you a list of all the actions you've performed recently in Microsoft Teams). Hope you like it! Email integration with Microsoft Teams: You can now post a forwarded email to a channel in Microsoft Teams, thanks to channel email addresses. Click on the "Get email address" option in your channel menu to start sending emails to a channel. Once an email is forwarded, you can have a conversation about it directly in the channel (FYI, any comments or messages that are posted in a channel about an email will only be visible from Microsoft Teams). You'll also have the option of restricting who can send emails to a channel. I tested this as soon as I saw it. You hit the 3 dots next to the channel name and click on get email address.

You have some control over who can email the channel. Everyone, internal only or by domain which is cool. I sent a message from an external domain and it arrived as a conversation. Sadly, my reply from within the chat (see the reply button) never arrived.

The message arrives directly in the conversation tab, but the EML file is also uploaded to Teams so you can open it using Outlook and respond directly. I think the reply button is a better idea personally, but it's a start. Microsoft Teams will show up in apps view: If you've got the right license, Microsoft Teams will now show up in your apps view for your desktop (when you press the Windows key) along with all your other Office 365 web apps. This must be for when you have your Office 365 Apps in your start menu, which I don't. This coincides with the Teams app showing up as a "waffle" tile in the Office 365 Portal page. T-Bot speaks French: Pour nos utilisateurs francophones, nous sommes heureux d'annoncer que le contenu de T-bot et de l'aide prend désormais en charge le français. Vous êtes le bienvenu :) Translation: "For our French speaking users, we are happy to announce that T-bot and Help content now supports French. You're welcome :)" I don't speak French, but for those that do, this is cool. Accessibility improvements: We take accessibility seriously, and we’re very proud of our continued commitment to making our product a great experience for users of all abilities. With that in mind, we've been hard at work improving accessibility across Microsoft Teams. Please don't hesitate to get in touch should you have concerns or comments! Improvements in your Files tab: The Files tab has a new look and feel! Now, there's an action bar that includes an option to open the SharePoint site for your team. Additionally, you can get links to folders so you can easily share files within Teams. All very cool! I thought I would leave you with one last thing I just found. You know I love a Keyboard Shortcut. So I thought it was cool to have a list right in the app. This is going to be an expanding list for sure, as they add more features. But this is what you get right now. As soon as there is an SDK for Teams, I'll work on porting StatusKey to work with Teams too!

As always, I thank you for reading. If this or any other post has been useful to you please take a moment to share. Comments are welcome.

#Skype4B

0 notes