CnC Source Forums Community Blog List http://www.cnc-source.com/forums/index.php?app=blog Community Blog List Syndication Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:54:11 +0000 assassin@cnc-source.com (CnC Source Forums) IP.Blog 60 The Blog of BOB! - MechWarrior 5 in Trouble? MechWarrior 5 might find itself in legal hot water.

Maximum PC said:

Can’t wait for MechWarrior 5? Neither can we, but it looks like we might have to, because even hulking metallic monstrosities made primarily of guns aren’t immune to the American legal system.

But how can someone sue MechWarrior 5 when we know next to nothing about the game? Well, it’s complicated.


Follow the link for the rest.
To summarize, in the 90s the owners of the BattleTech (MechWarrior) franchise ripped some designs from Robotech and Macross among other franchises and got the pants sued off of them. Since then the BattleTech and MechWarrior franchises have changed hands, and recently a new MechWarrior game was announced. But then the owners of Robotech reared their heads again and started sending out cease-and-desist letters to sites hosting media for MW5. So maybe a legal battle is brewing even though it was supposedly already settled in the past.

Some digging on Gamasutra shows that the Robotech rights holders, Harmony Gold, believe that something in the released media for MW5 is infringing on their IP.

All I know is I want mah new mech game!@!! I'm sick of how our legal system lets anyone sue for any reason and get away with it.]]> Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:20:00 +0000 <![CDATA[Assassin's Blog - CommandCOM Over! C&C4 Revelations!]]>
First Impression(s)
Fun, its fun you drop your crawler onto the battlefield *which is pretty cool to watch* and then you can start building units which you'll need to deploy for. We played a mission from the Single Player campaign as well as 5 vs 5 Multiplayer matchs. In both case's I found the gameplay alot of fun, action packed, game speed was quite good it didnt seem too fast in the multiplayer. And the cool thing is if you die you respawn and drop a new crawler get right back into the fight! Which the multiplayer plays alot like Battlefield controlling nodes to earn points toward victory. First team to remove all points from the enemy's team *by controlling points* wins.

Story
Command & Conquer 4 takes place 15 years after the video showed as the C&C4 Trailer with Kane appearing before GDI with a plan! So 15 years have passed and now the Tiberium Control grid has been setup and ist near completion via the combined efforts of GDI and Nod. But aggressors on both sides having been fighting for the past 80 years or so there's still alot of hate and mistrust between the factions. And after 15 years of a shaky but working alliance, war breaks out. Sam Bass has been working indepth on the story and taking input from our resident C&C lore export over at PlanetCNC Cypher which is really cool. So if you're worried about continuity you shouldnt be. Also the story will be told from a mobile first person view. Instead of just standing still watching Michael Ironside chew your ass off for using he Tiberium weapon. You'll follow people acround corridors etc so the FMV's will be more immersive in Command & Conquer 4. There's also been terraforming efforts on more Tiberium infested zones on maps which creates some of the more lush environments we've seen in the screenshots. But there are still plenty of area's devastated by Tiberium and Tiberium Fauna & Flora is planned to go in but was not in the build we played.

Single Player
At first I was leaving my crawler behind like I would a base, but after playing for 10 minutes I always took my crawler with me as its very useful for supporting your forces. *as when it deploys it repairs units around it*. Which is true for all Crawler types now then. My first objective was to investigate some crashed drop pods which I recovered some GDI Engineers from and captured some old GDI Mammoth Tanks from C&C3 (C&C4 you can repair husks like C&C3) so C&C3 Mammoth Tank husks are around and GDI Mastodon's leave husks behind too.

Mutants!
Now when I got to these drop pods I encountered mutant forces! Which its great to see the Forgotten back and we had Mutant Hovel's spawning suicidal Visceroids that exploded in green tiberium gas's of death. The Mutant Gorilla which appears to be a hijacked Civilian Construction Mech of some kind being used for attack by the Mutants and the Mutant Bus. Similar to GLA's Battle Bus cept it has 4 Machine gun turrets. Killing the Mutant Hovel stopped the mutants spawning new units in the vicinity but the map was littered with them. On a gameplay side the Mutants are mostly used for XP grinding to level up early in the mission but its fun and great to see them back. Oh and Roasted Visceroid on a stick! was just a simply cool to see in the Mutant camps haha!

My next objective was to protect this crashed GDI Capital Ship its the Global Stratospheric Transport. I had to capture Tiberium Power Grid's which are part of the Tiberium Control Grid that Kane & GDI have setup which has created a golden age for Earth resource wise. It offers potentially unlimited power and resources and we'll need to tap into this grid to repair out Ship. The reason the Stratospheric Transport is so important is its the thing that drops Crawlers onto the battlefield. So in this mission if your crawler dies thats it (though I'll confess my Crawler didnt die so there may be a limited respawn).

Now this is when Nod came onto the battlefield, multiple crawlers from all directions so I was carefully battling my way through Nod forces to get to each Tiberium Power Node. Which Nod forces are pretty cool and powerful, the Scorpion Tank which is literally a Scorpion which tail looks like an Obelisk. The Raider buggy makes a return, theres also the Avenger tank and some others. Fighting Nod was alot of fun and i liked how they just appeared from every nook and cranny very sneaky and Nod style.

My last objective was to protect the GST (Global Stratospheric Transport) while the Tiberium Power Grid repaired my Strato Carrier and this took a while and alot of battling with Nod. Which was very awkward when i had 2 crawlers attacking my ship. But I managed to win out in the end and escape! :)

Economy
Time is the economy in Command & Conquer 4 as I mentioned above about the Tiberium Control Grid creating a Golden Age with unlimited power and minerals essentially. This has removed Tiberium Harvesting from the equation it is obsolete, there is still Tiberium Crystal Nodes scattered on the map here and there. So Time is the ecomony in C&C4 you cannot run out of resource's but you need time to muster your forces. There is a Command Point Cap though which limits your unit building. Its intended you wont have more then 15-20 units or so at any one time. So massive tank rushs are a thing of the past *yay*. *well unless all 5 enemy players band together in multiplayer.

Class's
*Note each class has a different crawler details below
Offensive - The Offensive Class is your aggregator class lots of ground units that start off with light units and lead up to some pretty powerful ones like the Titan Mk2. Has a good selection of different ground units and anti AA units which are good against the Support class. The Offense Crawler is the one we've seen in screenshots it can be upgraded with a heavy gun thats pretty good and it can also crush smaller vehicles however it incurs small damage when crushing units. Offesnive class also gets an Engineer on a jetpack *as does Nod they get this cool Cyborg Engineer jetpacker thing* which has a repair gun similair to Renegade and can also capture tech structures etc.

Support - This class is about quickly traveling across the battlefield to support your teammate's forces and can be quite good for direct assaults too. Mostly specialising in Air units, Orca Fighters, Bombers. Nod has similair air units like the Cobra. The Support class's Crawler can fly and Nods Support Crawler is a Flying Stealth Crawler that unstealths to deploy. Support class instead of an Engineer has a Repair Drone which flys around repairing aircraft.

Defensive - Was not available for play at CommandCOM. However the Defensive class is the only class which can construct structures which are mostly defensive structures to help you turtle/control an area of the map. Details of the Defensive Crawler at this stage are unknown.

I'll post more details later including more on the Multiplayer which was insanly fun, but I wanna get touring Cologne its my last day. So enjoy!]]> Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:51:00 +0000 <![CDATA[Assassin's Blog - Live from GameCOM]]>
CommandCOM has officiallz begun Ive been catching up with friends in the Community and EA, a shout out to Jason Bender, Aaron Kaufman, 2Poc. And in the Community Renardin, Mauler, JohnWE, theGunRun and more. Its an awesome event never seen so many Community members in one place.

Lots of cool stuff happening so many developers here showing lots and lots of cool stuff. EAs showing C&C4 (which is looking pretty sweeeet!), the new Need for Speed, the Sims 3 has a stand, Mass Effect 2 and much more! Blizzards on the scene with Diablo III, StarCraft 2, and WOW. Square Enix is here, 2K Games, Rockstar, and so many more. Well theres lots to see and do here so Ill get back to the show and have a complete report for you upon my return from the battlefield.

Transmission Ends]]> Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:48:00 +0000 <![CDATA[Assassin's Blog - Leaving Aus, to Germany we Go!]]> Hardly a blog this one, but leaving for the airport now for my 24 hour flight to Germany for CommandCOM! Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:54:00 +0000 The Blog of BOB! - Social Networking Leads to Suicide?

Maximum PC said:

Archbishop Warns Email could Lead to Suicide

Cyber-bullies aren't the only dangers today's teens face when staying connected through social networking sites and other forms of digital communication. According to Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, excessive emailing and text messaging is leading young people to form "transient relationships," putting them at a higher risk of suicide when the friendships break down.

"I think there's a worry that an excessive use, or an almost exclusive use of text and emails means that as a society we're losing some of the ability to build interpersonal communication that's necessary for living together and building a community," said the 63-year-old Archbishop in an interview published on Sunday.

According to Archbishop Nichols, networking sites encourage kids to put a greater importance on the number of friends they have rather than the quality of friendship. When that network collapses, it can be "a key factor in their committing suicide," he said.



Original link here with plenty of article comments.

What do you think? Are we losing our ability to build inter-personal communication or is it a crock?

I think it has merit only with unregulated out-of-control social networking, by which I mean, use moderation folks! Doing anything to excess is bad for you. Otherwise this is really a crock. Today's youth are more connected than any other generation. Take my younger sister for example. She sends probably 3,000+ text messages to her friends every month about every little thing. She's constantly connected to friends and being social with them. As for me, I only 'friend' people I actually know on Facebook. I never saw the point of 'friending' every person you could find and their dog.


Also happy CnC Source Blog test #2.]]> Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:04:00 +0000 The Blog of BOB! - I Dub Thee, The Blog of BOB!
As for me, the Blog of BOB! will be your source for my ramblings and linkage to cool stuff from around the net without me cluttering up the Off Topic section with a zillion topics.

Case in point:
I like to browse around wired.com (online home of Wired Magazine) and I just came across two interesting stories about security bypass hacks.

In the first article, hackers have figured out a way to replace security camera feed footage with their own footage, such as from the same camera captured earlier, just like in the movies. Here's a snippet:

Wired.com said:

LAS VEGAS - Technology has caught up with Hollywood heist films in a new hack being demonstrated at DefCon Friday, which involves hijacking IP video streams and seamlessly replacing them with new content.

In its simplest form, the hack - conducted with two free tools developed by researchers at Sipera Systems' Viper Lab - allows someone to intercept and copy video from IP surveillance cameras to spy on the secured premises. But it would also allow the hacker to replace a legitimate video stream with a bogus stream, permitting a thief or corporate spy to enter an office while the security guard sees only a still-image of an empty room on his monitor.

"There are tools that can prevent this outright, but when you don't have security in place, you can run these types of attacks," said Jason Ostrom, director of Viper Lab. "Most of the enterprises we see don't have the security controls in place."

The intruder would have to gain physical access to a network over which the IP traffic is traveling, but Ostrom says this could conceivably occur through any Ethernet connection in a building, depending on the configuration.



The second article, like the first, has come to us straight from the movies. Another ingenious hacker discovered a way to remotely open electronically-locked doors without even needing to create a fake access card. Again, here is your snippet:

Wired.com said:

LAS VEGAS - Security researchers have spent a lot of time the last couple of years cracking building access systems from the level of the user device - RFID and smartcards, for example.

But a researcher in Texas found that he could crack one electronic access system at the network control level and simply open a door with a spoofed command sent over the network, eliminating the need for an access card. He could do it while bypassing the audit log, so the system wouldn't see that someone opened the door.

The hack is possible because the system uses predictable TCP sequence numbering.


Follow the links for the full articles. Both attacks are preventable if adequate security is in place, but you'd be surprised (and maybe a little horrified) to see the number of insecure institutions.
Both of these stories are brought to you by Defcon, the hacker convention that is currently taking place in Las Vegas.]]> Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:04:00 +0000