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Well, Kemosaabi and I were just sat on axon chatting about MMO’s and what we like and after chatting about Firefall (which we both love so far as you can read in Kemosaabi’s Firefall Open Beta – Initial Impressions article)
Well, the other new MMO that we’re excited for is from the ex-World of Warcraft crew, Carbine studios, WildStar
I am looking forward tot he new style of action and the humour aswell (some of which is very tongue in cheek)
Want to sign up for the beta? Head over to the Beta Sign up
New: Brand new tool to create bridges, overpasses, and tunnels when you draw your roads.
When building your road, pressing the , key or . key will lower or raise the road accordingly creating overpasses, bridges and tunnels.
Note: Existing road layouts cannot be raised or lowered
New: Improvements for Traffic behavior to make it smarter. This should reduce the number of lines formed by all available vehicles converging on a single spot. This affects all vehicles including Police, Fire Trucks, Moving Trucks, Garbage Trucks, Recycling Trucks, Resource Trucks, Buses, Ambulances, and Civilian vehicles going home, to work, or shopping.
New: Tree tools – Place individual trees around your city. These tools are located at the end of the Nature Parks palette.
Terrain: Fixes an issue some player’s see where terrain covers sections of roads while the camera is zoomed out.
Fixed an issue where the fire animation would sometimes continue when fire was extinguished.
Parks: Sports parks are now accepting Sims 24 hours a day.
Airship: The number of Airship passenger trips should now be correct over multiple days.
Vehicles: Vehicles now accelerate and decelerate faster, allowing them to leave buildings and go through intersections more efficiently.
Freight: Freight trucks now only leave factories if they have a valid delivery destination.
Gifting: Money gifting should be more reliable.
*Remember, you can join us on the Sanitarium.FM Region on SimonCity by dropping Lonesamurai a friend request and he’ll invite you!
Dammit Google. Every time I feel like you are taking the next big step in communications technology, you do something baffling like this.
A lot of people were very excited when Google initially announced that they would be laying infrastructure to provide free fiber optic internet connection in a number of U.S. Cities in the form of Google Fibre. This was especially exciting for consumers as Google spent years fighting for net neutrality policies to be put in place, keeping ISPs from restricting their customers’ internet use for financial gain.
On Monday however, Google responded to an informal complaint that was filed with the FCC claiming that net neutrality does not give citizens a right to run servers out of their homes, an act that violates Google Fibre’s terms of service. While many people picture servers as big expensive computers that only large companies use to move large amounts of data around, any personal computer can act as a server for any variety of common reasons. Running a mail server from home? That violates Google Fibre’s Terms Of Use.
Using SSH to access files on your home computer from work? Google Fibre doesn’t want that.
Monitoring your household remotely through a webcam?
Net neutrality states that “Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.” Google claims that hosting a server from a residential location falls under the provisions for reasonable network management, but these provisions allow ISPs to take action should congestion occur, not to create policies that pro-actively prevent congestion. Furthermore, the majority of people who use their home computers as servers will not have any significant impact on congestion for a 1Gbps network.
Google’s support representatives have been hitting the forums to assure people that the policy is not meant to restrict use of reasonable uses of their service, such as those listed above, however forum posts are not legally binding. Terms Of Use are, and we can be sure that, as soon as a single user falls into the gray area of network use, Google’s black and white policies will take that user down.
To see Google’s response to the informal complaint that the FCC forwarded to them, go here: *Warning: PDF File*
To see the FCC’s policies regarding Open Internet and Broadband Industry practices go here: *Warning: PDF File*
The No Blocking rule is on page 2, in section ii of paragraph 1, and the Reasonable Network Management provisions are on page 47, in paragraph 80.
Just how crazy is the new Saint’s Row IV, you ask? Crazy enough that the Australian Classification Board has given it the distinction of the being the first game to ever achieve a “refused classification”, effectively banning it from being sold, demonstrated, or even advertised for in Australia.
The reasoning behind it being that the game contains “drug use related to incentives and rewards”, which is not permitted by the National Classification Scheme, which outlines the conditions required for a game to be distributed in Australia.
The full statement from the board can be viewed here: *Warning .PDF file*
The board initially rejected the game on June 19th due to the game including “depictions of implied sexual violence which are not justified by context,” but publisher Deep Silver appealed the decision. Following today’s announcement, developer Volition has announced that they are planning to alter the game to meet the review board’s criteria.
Personally, I was very impressed by the way Saint’s Row The Third managed to present all of the hyper-sexualization and violence of games in a completely tongue-in-cheek way, without giving offence. And I’ll take offence at anything.
Although, with trailers that have been released so far, it’s clear that Volition is attempting to top the ridiculousness of the previous games, so it’s not hard to believe that there is a line that could have been crossed, resulting in the board’s ruling. I mean, this is a game series where I have spent an unreasonable amount of time throwing farts in jars at crowds of people. And they’re trying to best that top-notch entertainment.
I guess we’ll just have to wait until the game gets released on August 23rd to find out just how far the envelope can be pushed.
