Uppcon '05

Today we are leaving for Uppcon '05 that starts tomorrow. I didn't get the time to book a ticket for the boat yet, with all the commotion about Nogg-aholic, so let's hope they got one left more, or else I may need to work on the boat as a cook, yes?

Uppcon

Warcraftmovies

Probably my last World of Warcraft movie was just released on Warcraftmovies.com, and it already got comments on it. I'm curious to see now if Blizzard wants to ban this one to, seeing that the expansion was already revealed by them and that I don't think they got the effort to constantly ban my movies. Last time, it only took them 2 days to ban the preview for Nogg-aholic.

Nogg-aholic the Moive @ Warcraftmovies.com

Nogg-aholic the Movie

It's finally finished, after 19 hours of rendering it became a 693mb baby, that will last 45mins. Although it's not better than Exploration the Movie (nothing can be) I think it's a worthy sequal to it and they actually work good together.

We had a Dopefish WoW film fiesta tonight (last night) where we saw through Exploration the Movie, Imperium in Darnassus, Blizzard WoW Expansion preview and Nogg-aholic the Movie, and when I came home again, William had already uploaded the movie to both Piratebay and Filefront, so I didn't have to do any work at all.

Jet, professional killer, rates this video very good.

The mirc channel was really popular today to with a new maximum of around hundred people, all spamming in caps lock when I enter the channel, I think they liked the movie.

Nogg-aholic the Movie - Torrent
Nogg-aholic the Movie - Filefront

Combat '05 - Day 2

Wow, I'm really tired from all the intense gaming today, but what a great day it've been. I made it all the way to the Soul Calibur 2 tournament final, where I met the current swedish champion. To most peoples surpise, I didn't get totally pwned, our matches was some real crowd pleasers, but there is no point in denying that he's clearly absolute in comparison to me.

Emil, wearing my pimp glasses that I scaveged from Saint.
So I ended up on the second place, which I'm very proud of and I'll probably from now on go around and brag about it to everybody I meet. The sad part is that noone from GAME won in any of the other games neither, but we got all the second places and they were only people from my class that did. Also, I got the chance to fight Jet two times more today, and twice he got to taste the wraith of my mighty bastard sword.

Combat '05 Roster

Combat '05

Combat '05 - Day 1

Day 1 of Combat '05 has ended, and later tomorrow (today...) the tournament will continoue. I'm only participating the Soul Calibur 2 tournament for now, and the current Swedish champion on Soul Calibur 2 is here. The first day went really good for me with no losses, hope tomorrow will go as good as today...

Jet versus Dopefish

Der Brennende Kreuzzug

Also, Blizzard have released a trailer featuring scenes from the expansion, it got some very distinct resemblances to another movie I know.

Exploration the Movie - Blizzard version

The Burning Crusade

Follow up on virtual economy

This article was published yesterday on BBC News site:
Picturing online gaming's value

Blizzcon video streams

I've come across a couple of pages from a german magazine and a english magazine, featuring details about the World of Warcraft expansion. Trying to upload them right now to my blog seems futile because bloggers image servers seems down, but I'll post them asap when they're up again.

Also, don't forget about the Combat'05 today here at the University of Gotland.

Blizzcon video streams
Combat '05

Update: The Burning Crusade

Nogg-aholic-aholics

So I've been to the school all day today, trying to render the movie on their 2048DDR ram computers, but the program still just spits error messages on my eyes. I feel really saddend by this, something that I've been working on for so long now and just when it was finished, it turns around and goes shanghai on my ass. But I haven't given up hope just yet, I'll try to fix it again tomorrow.

Also, I've created a support group in the channel #Nogg-aholic @ quakenet, drop by and talk to the other alcholics there.

Nogg-aholic small preview 2

Nogg-aholic finished... or is it?

So, I've finished my movie and had a preview of the finished movie for a couple of friends when suddenly the program goes all "No way dude, I'm not putting up with your shit anymore..." and then pops a load of error messages at me. Since then I haven't been able to use the program anymore... so my plan is to delete all my simpsons episodes (NOOOOOO!!!) and put all the project files on one of my external drives (approximatly 50gb of raw material) and later today I'll try to render the movie at school. Who knows, maybe my crazy plans for global domination will finally succeed?

FUBAR

The mystery box and the egg

At the GAME LAN last weekend, I brought a "mystery box" with a egg on top of it, and I was trying to sell it for 10SEK. No one knew what was in the box nor if the egg was raw or cooked. One brave person had the courage to buy it and this is the face he made when he opened it:
So what was in the mystery box? I've been asked that now by a couple of people and if the egg was cooked or raw. The egg was raw and was supposed to be used with the mystery box. The inside of the box could have been empty, scary or something absolutly marvelous.

It was freshly made food, tagliatelle (pasta) with bacon, paprika and chili creame fraich, spring onion and spiced with pepper and curry. A real tasty meal for only 10SEK.

Soul Calibur III in stores now

Just a small notice, Soul Calibur III is out now in stores across the US, but we here in Europe have to wait another month for its arrival here.

Soul Calibur III retail

Artificial economy to exceed authentic money

Jon 'NEVERDIE' Jacobs bougth himself a space resort in the game Project Entropia for the nifty sum of $100,000, a investment that can earn him the money back in the long run. Jon gets the right to rent out shops or appartments at the space resort and also hunting and mining taxes. Project Entropia, a MMORPG that let you buy/sell virtual money for real life™ money. His space resort will be completed around christmas and then other players can come and visit it.

Not too long ago a gamer by the nick Deathifier bougth a island in the same game for $26,500. With this much money involved in computer games, it's about to take effect on the real world economics, something that atleast I find intriguing. Edward Castronova, a associate professor of economics at the California state university, made a study two years ago, where he concluded that the MMORPG EverQuest had the same BNP as the worlds 77th richest country, richer than India, Bulgaria and China.

The lines between virtual money and real life™ money is beginning to blur, and in the future we may see games where you earn your living by working in-game, instead of working IRL™. Like someone I know of, sold his World of Warcraft account for 1400SEK...

Space Resort sold for $100,000
Gamer buys his own island for $26,500
EverQuest, 77th richest country in the world
Edward Castranova on virtual economies

The salmon of doubt

I've had another lovely evening at the Crawford brothers, dining swedish salmon with chili and lime.
Of course small accidents happens while preparing the food...
And this is how the lime sauce is made, you put this stuff on the fish once it's finished.
All in all a great evening with some strange revelations of Calles past...
And not to forget, I've worked some on Nogg-aholic, it's kind of finished now, it's only the end credits left and the encoding part... so let's say it's released next week?

Hostage

Bruce Willis as you've never seen him before, a man who isn't divorced yet, but still the hero. I just came back from watching Hostage with a couple of friends, and I must say I'm mighty suprised. There isn't often these days that you see a american movie that's actually good. Bruce Willis, plays the role of a failed negotiator who starts working as a small town cop haunted by his past.

When a family is taking hostage, Bruce drives unknowingly to the scene to find his colleagues under fire. He's then drawn into something bigger than even the thieves could've expected. Altough the movie in general was good, I didn't really like the ending, but I'll recommend anyone to see it. The movie it most resemblances is probably Panic Room, so if you liked that one, the chances are that you'll like this one to.
Hostage
Panic Room

Library of the motivated - Part Deux

So now I'm back from the GAME LAN, it was fun, but people seemed to have disappeared after the first day, some strange Houdini mystery trick I guess. Waiting for my arrival at home was a package containing all my new books, happy = 1.

Here's a IRL™ screenshot of most of my other books in my shelf.
As you might have guessed, I'm studying game programming, although I'm not good at it, it's much fun and valuable knowledge. I hope to one day be able to tell others what to do for me, instead of having to do it myself.

GAME-LAN 21-23th october

Today, tomorrow and until sunday evening, there's going to be a GAME (Gotlands art and media education) LAN (Local area network) in a big yellow house. You don't want to miss it, it's yellow!

Ideas from the deep sinks deeper

Id Software may be the creators of the PC-gaming industry, but they are slowly falling apart. Since they fired John Romero after Quake was finished, I think in my humble opinion that none of their games have been fun to play anymore, it was just the engine left. Now they fired Adrian Carmack earlier this year, who were one of the four founders of Id Software, along with John Carmack, John Romero and Tom Hall. He currently owns 41% of the company, and they was offering him $20 million to buy him out, he refused and now he probably have to sell the 41% of his share back to Id for $11 million instead. This is due of an old contract that he is now seeking to have declared void, and if you consider Activisions takeover bid of the company was on $105 million, Adrians $11 million 41% share is supposedly worth much more.

Adrian Carmack has now filed a lawsuit against Id Software claiming that they deliberatly rejected Activision offers just so they could firstly fire Adrian and recieve his share for a considerably lower amount. Is it only I who feel sadness inside when one era is about the meet its end?


On a happier note, John Romero is still alive and happy. He's now seeking lead programmer, lead game designer and a lead artist for his new company that is about to develop a "super secret mystery project".

Id Software turned down Activisions takeover bid

Unreal Engine 3, now with FaceFX

Epic continoues their crusade to make the perfect middleware, a holy graal for the industry, and millions of dollars for them. Their recent update was by implementing OC3 Entertainments FaceFX into the Unreal Engine 3. FaceFX is a tool for advanced facial animations and lip synchronization, including lip-sync on the fly through voice input based on voice recognition software.

Earlier this year Epic also purchased Reality Engine from Artifical Studios, and hiring their chief architect Tim Johnson. The reason wasn't to implement Reality Engine into the Unreal Engine 3, but to take it apart and look for features that may come in handy for them. Also, they sort of took care of their biggest competitor...

Unreal Engine 3 to Include FaceFX
Unreal Technology, Unreal Engine 3
Epic Games purchase Reality Engine

Oh no! More Blood Elves

I got no clue about where these pictures are from, but it's supposedly screenshots of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, featuring Blood Elves. As I stated earlier, it's highly unlikely that one of the new playable races will be Blood Elves, but it's a huge possibility for them to be in the expansion as NPCs.

Two lovely pictures of Karazhan:

Pictures of Blood Elves:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13

Stefan Lampinen seminar tomorrow

Tomorrow between 10:30-11:30, Stefan Lampinen will have a seminar about "Digital livstil" (Digital lifestyle) here at the university of Gotland, E22 in the library. Earlier this year he was working as the head for N-Gage's strategy and buisness development, but left them in March to instead join Microsoft as EMEA Sales Director, and are currently working with the release of Xbox 360. Before working with both Nokia and Microsoft, he was in charge for the release of Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) back in 1990 and have been working as a VD for Electronics Arts Nordic division.

Stefan Lampinen joins Microsoft

Prison time for web comic?

This guy is hilarious. Where's our world heading today when media and political figures can take a guy as this seriously? Jack isn't just a living exclamation mark, he's like "THE JUDGEMENT DAY IS NEAR, BAN DOOM BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!".

He was even featured on CNN for a couple of days ago, to talk about Midway's new football game. One of his quotes was "The NFL wouldn't allow it's name to be used, so that tells you something.". As probably almost every gamer knows, EA has licensed the rights to use NFL names in games and Midway's games uses this license through EA, so that tells you something. How come a man that got no clue about the games get to talk about them as such a broadly known channel as CNN?

Also, here's the donation check the Penny-arcade guys sent, the check that Jack refused to send because it was just "satire".
Jack Thompson Calls Cops on Penny-arcade
Jack Thompson Calls on police to shutdown Penny-arcade
Some wisdom from Penny-arcade themself

World of Warcraft - Fake expansion?

BlizzCon (28-29th october) is getting closer for everyday that pass by and the revelation of the expansion for World of Warcraft is going to be at that event. Apprently with it so close at the door, someone felt to post a couple of fake pictures for the upcoming expansion. You can see those below:

These two pictures were posted before those you see above, and they are among the reasons why I believe they're all fake:
Notice in this picture that it says "Four races comprise the horde" and the icon of the Blood Elf is completly red. Also for some reason this picture was censored by someone.

Now in this picture you'll see the icon of Pandaren and Blood Elf is booth differently from any of the previously pictures, also if you zoom in and look at them, they look more 3D than painted, supposedly screenshots from Warcraft III. And the position of male/female icons are all different in these three pictures. In the first picture it says "the brtutal orc", a spelling mistake that isn't in the game. Also, consider the Blood Elf start armor in the first picture, I thougth they should have start weapons and a unique background for each character?

Though the architecture among the first three pictures looks really like they're in fact in-game and that would be pretty hard to fake. We can conclude that all character creation pictures are all fakes, and the new race will most probably not be blood elf and pandaren, but the three pictures supposedly from in-game may be real, we'll know for sure in ten days from now.