Taking Screenshots in Tabula Rasa

The last few times I have been playing the Tabula Rasa beta, I’ve attempted to take some screenshots of the action. It’s always nice to put something up to show everyone what you’re talking about. Alas, nothing seemed to work. Since there was no manual, I was left scouring the keybindings to see if there was some magical key combo required to work.

Seeing as that didn’t work I checked the forums. If all else fails…

It turns out that pressing the Print Screen (PrtScn) key does actually take a screenshot, but doesn’t save it to a the disk. Instead, the image is saved to the clipboard. So once you’ve hit that Print Screen key, you need to alt-Tab out of Tabula Rasa and paste to a graphics program. I use Paint.Net, but any paint program will do, including Windows Paint.

Once you’ve pasted into the paint program, it’s then easy to save it to where ever you like.

Here are a couple of images from the game.

I created a new character this evening to check out the Specialist branch of the the class tree. Her name is Angel Stropp and she was created on the second US server. After running through the recruit missions, she landed in the Wilderness Zone.

Please forgive the quality of this image, the map was cutoff because I made a mistake in pasting the image. Anyway, the starting area is Alia Das in the top right of the map. BTW, see that red spot in the middle right at the bottom. That’s the Landing Zone and it’s currently controlled by the Bane. The players will have to mount an assault to bring it back under control.

Anyway, for one mission I needed to take Angel into the caverns under Pinhole Falls.

There she met a bunch of lovely tentacled floaty Miasmas who just wanted to have her over for dinner. Unfortunately, Angel had to decline their offer. In fact she declined dinner so many times with her trusty Shinobi Shotgun that she ran out of ammo.

So there you have it. Unfortunately, taking screenshots at the moment is a real pain since you can really only take one at a time. I did read one forum post that indicated that the devs are going to implement a proper screenshot facility which saves to a file. Hopefully that will be soon.

Popularity: 8%

End of an Era - Goodbye NVidia

I realized yesterday that I have exclusively used NVidia based graphics cards for years. It would be at least ten years, I think, when I bought a TNT Diamond video card to replace a card that wasn’t particularly good.

That exclusivity ended yesterday. You might remember in some of my recent posts, comments about how I wasn’t able to properly evaluate the graphics in my Bioshock Review and in my First Look At Tabula Rasa. Well, yesterday I decided to do something about it.

I hopped in to my local IT Warehouse, and after grilling the salesdude, decided on an ATI Radeon based Sapphire x1950 Pro with 512MB DDR3 RAM for OZ$239 bringing to an end the continuous reign of NVidia cards on my computers.

The X1950 Pro is not the latest in the series. I could have spent another seventy dollars and bought the next step up, but they didn’t have the 512MB version in the store, and the salesdude made a fairly convincing argument that since I wasn’t getting Vista anytime soon, the DX10 features of the new cards wouldn’t make much of a difference.

It took about fifteen minutes to install, and then another fifteen minutes to install the drivers and software (the slowest driver install I can remember) and the computer booted with absolutely no problems whatsoever.

My first test was with Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. I loaded the game up, set the graphics settings to maximum, and with trepidation, logged in. My worries that the card or the computer wouldn’t handle the maximum setting was unfounded. It ran very smoothly, and Tabula Rasa looked pretty darn good.

Tonight I decided to see what Bioshock looks like with the graphics set to high. Wow! I’d seen the opening scenes before at the low setting, but the scene where you are descending for the first time in the bathysphere and Ryan is giving his spiel and the bathysphere comes into the first real view of Rapture. Well, it was jaw-droppingly stunning. As with Tabula Rasa, the gameplay was nice and smooth. In fact I reckon it was smoother than before when I played the game with the graphics set to low. Aiming my weapon was definitely a lot easier.

So now I have no excuse to write about the graphics of games in high detail modes. At least until the DX10 games come out since I don’t have, or intend to get Vista in the foreseeable future.

Popularity: 3%

Tabula Rasa Now 24/7

Last weekend when I had my first look at Tabula Rasa, the play times where quite limited during the week. That has now changed. I checked the forums tonight and there is an announcement that from now until release, the beta will be open 24/7.

If you are at all interested in this game, but not sure if it will be worth a long term investment, I suggest you go to the PlayNC Store and purchase the preorder. This will allow you to get into the  beta for 4.99 US dollars. You’ll then have a month to decide if the game is for you or not. If you don’t like it, then you haven’t flushed the price of a full game.

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First Look at Tabula Rasa

Imagine if you were sitting at home, minding your own business watching reality tv, and a honking great spaceship crashed through your roof. Now imagine that you managed to escape the devastation and the relentless onslaught of alien troops to be evacuated from Earth and conscripted into a new military force to fight this enemy across countless worlds.

Welcome to Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa.

I purchased the preorder on Friday evening and then spent the next couple of hours doing the download and install. Unfortunately, the available beta times don’t really work well for us Aussies. Our weeknights don’t fall into the available times. However, the beta servers are open all weekend US time. That meant up early Saturday morning, ready for enlistment and training and to kick some Bane backside.

I’ll note at this point that I just want to give my first impressions of Tabula Rasa in this post. I don’t think it’s fair to give a review, or even a preview since I haven’t played enough to see all that it has, or doesn’t have to offer.

I did enjoy the time I spent playing over the weekend. I created a character called John Stropp. When you create your first character, you pick a surname and a first name. The surname will then be used for all the characters you create on that account. The character creator is fairly flexible, but is still limited. It’s nothing like NCSoft’s stellar character creator in City of Heroes/Villians. I ended up created a fairly tall guy with dirty blond hair, a handle bar moustache and sunnies who looked a little like a 70’s pornstar. Play that funky guitar riff!

Once I created my pornstar character, I was dropped into the tutorial. It’s pretty basic as tutorials go, and is mission based in your own instance much like COH\V and LotRO. I was instructed in the use of the UI and weapons. I was also given my first taste of Logos which was a energy attack.

There is also the need to pick the right weapon for the right opponent. Some of the enemies are immune to physical attacks but will get taken down easily by an energy weapon, while others are immune to energy weapons. This will probably mean that players will need to keep a reasonable stock of weapons in their backpack for the right occasion. I like this, it reminds me of Asheron’s Call where players needed the right combo of weapons and armor to be effective. Lugians if I remember, were highly vulnerable to electical weapons.

Weapons come in four types. Projectile, energy, canister, and rockets. I haven’t picked up any canister or rocket weapons yet, but I’m finding the projectile and energy weapons suitable for nearly everything I’ve encountered. There are pistols, rifles, shotguns and chainguns, at least that’s what I’ve picked up so far. I find I need to switch fairly often. As I said above, the right weapon for the right opponent.

The environment was well done. The first major area is called Wilderness, and it’s pretty much a forested area with rivers and waterfalls. Again, I have a low end video card, so I didn’t see the game in high detail mode, but the graphics are still very nice. I’m seriously considering a new video card just so I can see these games in all their glory. I didn’t notice any major graphical bugs.

The missions and NPCs seem to be reasonably well thought out. What I saw was pretty much standard fare for the MMO genre. There seems to be a decent number of missions to do, and it looks like the missions will take a player through the levels required to get to the next area. Speaking of which, the wilderness area is pretty big. It will take a while to get through.

The main enemy is a species called the Bane. It’s probably more correct to say that the Bane are made up of multiple species. It reminded me a lot of the enemies in games like Unreal 1 and Halo. So far, I haven’t had much trouble with any of them except for the bosses. By crouching and using cover, my attacks were more effective. The enemy AI is pretty standard, that is to say dumb. I did notice from time to time that they tried to outflank me, but it didn’t make that much difference.

My benchmark for game betas is Lord of the Rings Online. Say what you will about lack of content at the high end for LotRO, it was one of the smoothest betas I’ve ever seen. When Lord of the Rings Online was released, it was ready to be released.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes on the other hand was released way too early. It was full of bugs, unpolished, and really needed six to twelve more months of development. The Vanguard developers didn’t listen to their beta testers.

First of all let me say that I like this game. I had fun playing it, even when things didn’t really work perfectly.

It’s also a beta, and yes there are bugs. Nothing spectacularly show stopping mind you. Most of the issues I had were with getting stuck in the terrain, a few invisible walls where there shouldn’t be, and some slight targeting problems. In fact, the issues were really to do with lack of polish. I did hear some beta testers talking about unfinished missions, which may be why I couldn’t complete one or two of the missions I did. On the other hand, I might simply have just not found what I was looking for.

As I said earlier, it’s too early to really make a judgement about Tabula Rasa. However, I’ve read a number of commentors say that they think that the game is a bit thin. Sadly, I think I have to agree.

The problem I think is that the gameplay will turn out to be fairly one dimensional. There seems to be only one real style of play, and that is using guns with some Logos action in the mix. Games like WoW, LotRO, and the like have a number of classes which allow a player to mix it up. Mages can be Frost, Fire or Arcane. There are Tanks, Rogues, Hunters with lots of variations. Tabula Rasa does allow specialisation of your character into a Guardian, Ranger, Demolitionist, Medic and the like later in the game, so it’s hard to say for certainty on this, but I’m not sure it will really make all that much of difference to mix up the gameplay.

Overall, Tabula Rasa is way closer to LotRO on the scale than it is to VG:SOH. However, that is not to say that it is ready. The game is scheduled to be released on October the 19th which is less than a month away. I think it’s too soon.

The impression that I got after a weekend in the beta is that there is probably at least three months necessary to polish up the game. Unfortunately that will push the release out to January/February when every other MMO is set to release. I’m not sure TR can stand up to Warhammer, Age of Conan, or the Wrath of the Lich King.

Will I buy Tabula Rasa? I’m not sure at this stage. I had fun this weekend, and it has science fiction, lots of guns, evil aliens, and tons of potential. Is that enough?

Popularity: 11%

Mister Bubbles

Happycat on the World of Warcraft forums posted a couple of pics of the new Bioshock\World of Warcraft crossover. There were rumours of a new Blizzard MMO in the works, weren’t there?

Here they are

I suggest reading the post and following the links there to see these in their full glory. Unfortunately resizing loses some of the clarity. It took a bit of fiddling to get these where the captions were readable.

In anycase, well done to Happycat.

Popularity: 4%

Tagged For Four

Tag, I’m it.

DM Osbon at Sweet Flag has tagged me with the four things meme. Who am I to refuse?

Four Jobs I’ve Had In My Life (not including current)

1. Data Entry Clerk for an Insurance Company.
2. Line Worker at a Plastics Factory.
3. Lawn Mower Man.
4. Software Engineer. (Okay this is my current job, but it was my last one too.)

Four Films I’ve Watched Over and Over

1. Lord of the Rings Trilogy. It’s fun to watch all three extended editions back to back with friends. Start early morning, end up around midnight, and make sure to break for a barbie.
2. The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly.
3. Once Upon a Time in the West.
4. The Terminator 1 & 2.

Four Places I’ve Lived

1. Baltimore, Maryland, USA
2. Golden Grove, Adelaide, South Australia. My current residence. Aside from Baltimore, I’ve only ever lived in the Adelaide Metro area.

Four Programs I Love to Watch

1. Doctor Who, new series.
2. The Simpsons.
3. Lost.
4. Firefly.

Four Places I’ve Been on Vacation

1. Kangaroo Island, South Australia.
2. New Zealand.
3. All Over the USA. My 9400 mile road trip.
4. Hawaii.

Four Favorite Foods

1. Indian Curries. Vindaloo, Rendang, Rara Punjabi, doesn’t matter what the meat is, and the hotter the better.
2. Steak. Big, Juicy, and rare.
3. Barramundi.
4. Buffalo Wings. We don’t have them here in Oz, I wish we did.

Four Favorite Drinks

1. Coffee.
2. Red Wine.
3. Makers Mark.
4. Coopers Pale Ale. The best beer on the planet.

Four Places I’d Rather Be Right Now

1. Yellowstone National Park. I only spent two days there on my 9400 mile roadtrip. I reckon I could spend a month easily.
2. France. My road trip buddy has been hinting at a European vacation.
3. China. Don’t ask me why, I’d love to see this country sometime.
4. Alaska. Scenically one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever been.

Popularity: 4%

Return to Middle Earth

Rapture has been my gaming home for much of September. The underwater world of Bioshock has provided some of the most fun that I’ve had gaming for quite some time. At least in the single player world. Last night I finally got to the end of the game, knocked off the big nasty guy, and watched the final cutscene. No spoilers here, but the final scene in the game is dependent on how you treat the Little Sisters on the journey. Since I’d harvested a few, even though I’d stopped a long time before the end, I received the bad man version. Naughty Stropp, no praise for you!

I was tempted to start over, this time making sure that none of the Little Sisters come to harm, just to see the good guy version. If I do, I figure I’ll do it on the easy mode. But I’m not going to do that, not right away anyway. I might pick it up down the track, if I can pull myself away from any of the numerous games coming out in the near future.

In the mean time I loaded up Lord of the Rings Online today.

The last time I played, I had just got a new Dwarf Champion up and running, but hadn’t taken any of the online quests yet. Surprisingly, he was still guilded with Eventide Revelry, even after three months offline. I wasn’t expecting that. My timing was good though, because a few minutes after I logged in, the GM came online and started removing guildies who hadn’t been online for three months or more. Hmmm. Perhaps my psychic abilities aren’t that rusty after all.

I spent a couple of hours with the starter quests during the afternoon, and reached about halfway into level 6. Once I did the final quest in that sequence, which involved accompanying Dwalin on a quest to save an Elf ally, prevent Skorgrim from being resurrected by the Dourhands, and keep Dwalin alive in the process, I was able to enter Thorin’s Hall.

One of the things I like about the Champion class is the survivability. The Champion is perhaps not as much of a tank as the Guardian, but the dual wielding and damage dealing along with the hard to kill factor makes this class fun. It’s possibly one of the reasons that the Champion is such a popular class.

Anyway, now that I’m in Thorin’s Hall the fun really starts. I’ve got access to the rest of the world now, and also the professions. I decided to pick Armsman, so I’ll be knocking up a few tidy weapons in the future. There’s still a lot of quests to do before I get to Bree, but it won’t be that long before I get there,

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Quick Update

Just a quick update tonight. I’ve been pretty busy this week with work and general life stuff which is why I haven’t posted much. I figured I’d put up a post to let you know I’m still alive.

I also almost forgot that Stropp’s World celebrated its first anniversary this week. Yep, one year ago on the 11th of September I put out my Welcome mat. I’ll make a full post about this later in the week.

It was cool to see that the South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. While I’m not really a South Park fan, being far more into The Simpsons, I thought this episode was the best South Park episode I’ve seen. Much better than The Simpsons take on MMORPGs.

I’m also working on a post response to the comments made to my article Why World of Warcraft Needs Gold Sellers. I received some good well thought out responses to that article, and started to reply in a comment when it became clear that I’d effectively be writing another full post. So why not put that in a post?

Anyway, that’s all for now. Must keep slogging.

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Richard Garriotts Tabula Rasa - Golden

The other big news of the last couple of days is the announcement of a release date for Tabula Rasa, and the lifting of the NDA for the beta testers. Officially called Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa, the game will be released on the 19th of October. For the beta testers there will be an official end of beta event.

The lifting of the NDA has had another effect. Bloggers and game reporters are finally allowed to press the publish button. A number of articles are springing up across the web. I’ll post links to the articles that I’ve seen below.

For links to some of these articles you might want to check out Kill Ten Rats. He’s already gathered a few to various blogs.

I’ve been interested in Tabula Rasa for quite a while. It’s a sci-fi themed game, which in itself holds a lot of appeal for me. I love fantasy books, games and movies, but I’ve been a sci-fi nerd since I was four years old. No joke, I used to chuck a tanty if I wasn’t allowed to watch Lost in Space. My first sci-fi book was 2001: A Space Odyssey which my Grandma bought for me when I was eight.

I have a special place in my heart for science fiction. Which is why I’m heartened by the upcoming sci-fi MMO releases. Tabula Rasa is just the first. Stargate Worlds is in development, as is Star Trek Online. Both promise to be true to their universes. There’s even a post apocalyptic MMO in the style of Fallout in the works. Fallout itself is supposed to be getting the MMO treatment, though I haven’t heard much lately.

So I’m hoping Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa will do really well. I’ve heard good and bad things said about it, the bad mostly about lack of content. That can be remedied though with regular content releases like LotRO.

Whether I have time to play it is another thing. I might just have to make some. Pity I don’t have a TARDIS.

Popularity: 9%

Bricks and Blocks - Lego Universe

One of the coolest series of games to be released in the last few years were the LEGO Star Wars games. The player got to be incarnated as a LEGOized Luke and play through all of the original Star Wars Trilogy. Running through virtual LEGO levels and knocking off LEGO enemies who exploded in a shower of bricks. The second game opened up the second Star Wars Trilogy and had the added bonus of being able to repeatedly whack Jar-Jar, he deserved it for being an empire patsy. These games were surprise hits, proving that innovation wasn’t dead after all.

Now NetDevil, the developers of the late Auto Assault, have announced that they are partnering with the LEGO company to bring the LEGO brand to persistant online gaming. Hmmm. Maybe that’s partly why Auto Assault was canned. The game, called LEGO Universe, is scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2008.

LEGO Universe looks like it will offer a Second Life style of gameplay. Like those blocks you played with when you were a kid, the sky will be the limit with what you can build. It sounds pretty cool. I imagine a lot of grown-up former LEGO lovers will let their inner children run free.

Speaking of children running free, LEGO Universe promises a child safe environment as well.

The full press release is below.

The LEGO Group announces LEGO Universe as official title for branded MMOG

The LEGO® Group today announced LEGO Universe as the official title for the upcoming MMOG being developed by NetDevil® to further engage the company’s dedicated and active community. LEGO Universe, currently planned for launch in the fourth quarter of 2008, is designed as the first MMOG professionally developed for LEGO fans and supported by community members from around the world.

“LEGO Universe ties together all aspects of our community and line of products in an online environment that can be enjoyed by LEGO fans of all ages,” said Mark William Hansen, Director of Business Development, LEGO Universe. “By merging the online world of social interaction with the LEGO concept of play, LEGO Universe will provide our community with an entirely new way to experience LEGO and connect with other players in a fun and imaginative setting.”

The full featured MMOG will be complete with character advancement, expansive social and community features, and provide a child safe alternative to other MMOGs on the market. As a player, you’ll be able to customize your mini-figs and interact in the universe as any character you choose, providing unique opportunities for players to expand and explore with their creations.

“LEGO Universe is being built as a place where fans and community members can discover nearly unlimited play possibilities,” said Ryan Seabury, NetDevil Lead Producer on LEGO Universe. “Given the strength of the LEGO community, a large part of bringing the game to life will be working hand in hand with them to ensure that the core values of creativity, connectivity, and imagination are reflected in the end product.”

About NetDevil, LTD
NetDevil is a leading independent game development company that specializes in the development and construction of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). Founded in 1997, under the inspiration of Jumpgate(TM), the world’s first massively multiplayer space simulator, the company carries on a commitment to creating interactive, virtual worlds in unique and elaborate settings. Led by a development team of talented and experienced industry veterans, NetDevil has grown to over 50+ employees with plans to hire and retain top industry talent for work on its large scale projects in development. All NetDevil employees share a common vision to bring the mysteries of new and exciting worlds to life as immersive online universes. NetDevil is a privately held company, with headquarters in Louisville, CO.

For further information, please contact:
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA CONTACT:
Helle Winding
The LEGO Group
Mobile: + 45 20 30 88 12
helle.winding [at) LEGO (dot] com

U.S.A. MEDIA CONTACT:
Audra McIver
NetDevil/Kohnke Communications
Phone: + 212 730 9744
audra [at) kohnkecomm (dot] com

Popularity: 5%