May

Age of Empires III Expansion at E3 2006

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 4:55pm, Thursday, 2006-05-11
I was really geeked last year when we got to see all the previews of Age of Empires III. I figured this was the game worth upgrading my desktop for. Sadly, no upgrade came for me and I've yet to get at it. My desktop has been rejuvinated as a Linux server for a few months now, but that's another story. There's an expansion coming out for Age of Empires III. In this one they'll add 3 new races that are native to North America. But wait, you say, AoEIII already has Native Americans! In the expansion you'll be able to play as these civilizations though, instead of just allying with them. The three races will be Iriquois, Sioux, and ... Ha! They're holding out on the third. Everyone wants to keep us guessing on something. Playing as the Iriquois, one of your units will be a Warrior Chief. The Warrior Chief gets some special abilities, kind of like some of the heroes in Age of Mythology, iirc. One of the abilities is a binus for nearby units in his army. Another is the ability to heal. He can also convert some animals to work as units for his tribe. The (very helpful) guy from Ensemble who showed me the game said it's not uncommon to see a Warrior Chief leading a bunch of bears around and sending them into battle against the Europeans.

Supreme Commander at E3 2006

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 1:48pm, Thursday, 2006-05-11
To be honest, we sat down at NVidia's booth and listened to the talk about the Dungeon Siege II expansion because we were tired and just wanted to sit. Then we weren't going to hang around for the Supreme Commander demo, but it started before we got around to leaving. Let me just say that I apologize for not making time specifically to come and see this game.

Dungeon Siege II Exapansion - Broken World at E3 2006

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 11:11am, Thursday, 2006-05-11
We got to see a presentation at the NVidia booth by Gas Powered Games where they demoed an upcoming expansion for Dungeon Siege II (I think it was Daniel and Marcy who ran it). I should prefix this with a disclaimer: I've never played Dungeon Siege I or II, so my opinion's not relative to the original. I'm just relating what I remember from the presentation. It started out looking promising. The detail in the artwork impressed me and there are updates to some other effects with more custom shaders for water and reflections. There are two new classes that allow cross-overs from existing classes. I think they were Stone Fist Warrior, who gets some nature magic along with warrior abilities, and a cross-over ranger/mage class. The ranger gets the usual ranger ablities and some "sacrificial magic"; that is the magic abilities allow the ranger to trade some health for a more effective spell. The new ranger also gets some cool-sounding spells whereby she marks selected enemies with a rune, then activates a spell on the marked enemies. The more enemies, the more powerful the spell.

Pictures and Notes from E3 2006

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 8:40am, Thursday, 2006-05-11
As promised, I've got a whole bunch of pictures from today at E3 2006, and Candace has a whole bunch of her E3 pictures here. Most of them are screenshots of upcoming or recent games. Some are just the show floor. A word of warning: I'm no professional photographer and I'm trying to get as many photos up as I can as fast as I can, so the quality sufferes. Some are dark, some are blurry, if you look close you might find some that are both. Deal with it :P. So far Candace and I hit everything that's worth seeing that we could see in the South Hall. The official theme this year is: Expansions!

Lunch is Better than Lines

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 5:17pm, Wednesday, 2006-05-10
We're running a little behind schedule, as Candace mentioned, but that's fine by me. I've never been one for standing in line. We're just going to finish lunch and (hopefully) catch the tail end of the line picking up our badges. We'll see how that goes. Seeing as the last couple years we didn't even get here until the second day, we'll still end up with more oppurtunity to get sa much as we can out of the show. From what I read yesterday, it sounds like there's a lot more playable demos and less of the hype. The real thing never seems to measure up to all the hand-waving and "representative" pre-rendered video. While last year seemed to be all about numbers and specs for next-gen consoles, this year we'll see some real-life examples of the titles that are in production for the Wii and the PS3. And of course demos mean screenshots. Lots of screenshots. Watch this space, at the end of the day today we'll be in the hotel, eating Thai and uploading pics.

E3 2006: Waiting for WoW

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 5:00pm, Monday, 2006-05-08
Tomorrow night I'll be flying out to Los Angeles for E3. I've been over the floor plans and made some plans of my own. Last year we didn't make it through all of the South Hall in the first day. I've been playing a lot of WoW lately, so I'd like to check out Blizzard first thing. I'd guess they'll get a substantial chunk of the Vivendi booth (1224) in the South Hall.

Change of Address

Submitted by User ProfileRob on 3:38pm, Tuesday, 2006-05-02
I've been planning it for a while, but last night I decided to go ahead and move from the rather cryptic rr.latenightpc.com/wp/ address to the simpler http://www.latenightpc.com/blog/ at the same time as some other enhancements. I'll keep the redirect up for the foreseeable future, so most everything should keep working. There may be some hangups in some posts where I've used relative urls or something odd. I'll be watching for 404s - if you see anything let me know.