A Mech Prototype is now available on PTS (in the COCP wargame map) for player testing.
D13 is on PTS
Deployment 13 is now on PTS! Click here to read D13 patch notes.
Squad 288 members, a new and improved messaging system is now online. Many new features are available, to check it out click "Private Messages" in the top right corner of any page on the website.
D12 is Live!
Deployment 12 is now Live! Click here to read D12 patch notes.
Operation Immortality
With the launch of Operation Immortality, there is quite a buzz on the internet about Tabula Rasa creator, Richard Garriott's October space launch and 10 day mission on the International Space Station. Here are just a few of articles that were featured this week. Read Full article.
Mister Glass' describes his trip to Austin, TX to meet Critters, CuppaJo, the Dev Team and Richard Garriott.
Discuss this article on the forums. (5 posts) Who I am:
Been playing TR since June 2007 (closed beta).
Loved TR the whole time.
Thought of by some as overly optimistic. I am an optimistic person, but the TR staff has kept me optimistic with every patch.
I made the AFS Assassin music video, mostly to show people how fun it was to be a Spy.
My experiences with the 2008 AFS War College:
Airport was, well, an airport. Critters and CuppaJo met those of us arriving in the afternoon and shuttled us to our hotel. We spent the afternoon and evening with them while we waited for others to arrive. They were very awesome not only being our chauffers but hanging out with us until around midnight. We each got a box of swag and a poster of Tabula Rasa. Critters assured us that they meant to get us more expensive hotel rooms but some "biker convention" had filled them all. Sure Critters.
They took all of us that had arrived out to dinner at NXNW (North By Northwest), a popular brewery-restaurant in Austin. Firelotus joined us there! It was a big table so multiple conversations ensued. I spent a few minutes translating the logos triskelion. I took pride in doing it from memory, though the paper helped me translate the numerical system. We tried some of their beers (I prefered the dark).
Critters gave us a ride across the street (literally) to get some beers to pass the time until tomorrow. Being very excited, tomorrow was very far off you see. My room became the hub of social events, so the 10 of us (11 once tankhardrive got there) gathered around and talked for many hours. Eventually everyone left and I went right to sleep.
CuppaJo picked us up around, um, nine? I'll say nine. We went to a nice Italian coffee place for breakfast. Yes some of us found it fascinating to see CuppaJo drink a cup of joe. We got to NCSoft, cleverly hidden among trees. The lobby was full of posters for NCSoft games. Richard Garriott came out to meet us, we stuck a few cameras in his face but he was very tolerant. After talking for a bit, the tour began!! Many halls are filled with arcade games! All classic ones with 1 to a shocking 8 colors! Other halls have NCSoft or DG memorabilia. We found the Tabula Room, anyone around at the end of beta might know of. It is now filled with "Bling Gnomes" that someone else can tell you what they are for I found many Auto Assault pictures, posters, articles...made me very sad. I loved that game.
On to the sound department! We met mixers/composers like Pedro Seminario, Andy Brock and Tracy Bush. Pedro gave us a quick tour of the isolation booth they use to record sounds and especially voices. Next we got to what I call the DG Library. First up was an (maybe the) Apple II that Richard Garriott used to create Akalabeth, his first video game. A publisher caught up with him and sold it for, if I remember correctly, $29.95 back in the 70's. RG made about $150,000 while still in high school. He's more successful than all of us combined Also a huge wall of RG articles and memorabilia, old school teletype with games on them! A game on a roll of tape! In the library were many many books. Lots of books RG used to develop Logos. Books on languages and their development, cultures and philosophies, and other stuff he collected on his travels. Like Tabula Rasa pizza crust. See it's a "clean slate" to make your own pizza! We also saw his slips of paper with Logos on them, the papers he used to create the language! Some had been recorded digitally but the ones still waiting we were not allowed near. Fanboys and all... They had a few really big TR posters! Of the picture on the main website, but big posters. I had to stop myself a few times from begging to get one. Other times I didn't stop myself
Finally on to more offices. These hallways had lots of TR concept art in beautiful poster size. We met Rick Holtrop AKA "Silent P" and Shuai Liu, Critters trying to get some work done and of course Chris Spears. I kept shoving my camera in their faces so I might have left some people out of my pictures. I wanted to be invited back after all. This one hall had huge collections of people's and anime faces! Apparently for the design of faces in games, they took their research to the extreme!
Then onto the Ultima Hallway. Starting at Akalabeth (AKA Ultima 0) and working to Ultima Online at the end. In that hallway was also Andy Arizpe AKA "Triple A" and Jason Yenawine, who I believe are responsible for our patches . There was at least one room we did not intrude upon as they were very busy! We also met Michael Moore, who we should have complimented more as he apparently had the power to give us more purples!
At the end of the hallway came Starr Long! Since it was the end of the Ultima hallway we talked briefly about Ultima Online, how it did much better than anyone predicted, and how the company felt its success was only a fluke. So RG and SL founded Destination Games to do their own thing. Eventually NCSoft called them and they are now a part of NCSoft. Destination Games is the name given to the dev team of TR.
We found Network Operations, also very busy, and were told to take no picture and heed no information given. Lots of wires tho.
Stumbled upon the offices of Victor Meinert, the Art Director for TR, and Andy Bruncke AKA Wile_E, one of the Associate Producers. Chris Strasz was busy finishing some work but with all the CP stuff lately he was almost mobbed by 8 crazy players. There was a ton more concept art on the walls here.
Moving forward, we were wooshed by a few offices (something called "short on time") until we stopped at Tom Potter's office! The recently appointed Lead Designer seemed happy enough to see us and we were wooshed on to QA! Also very busy, but Harleyquin and Kagasumi, popular forum trolls, made an appearance. As busy as they were, and the realization that lunch was only a few minutes away, CuppaJo threw us in a room and locked the door.
There we learned about the Development Process. Andy showed up at the end and helped with some Q&A but it was only for a minute.
County Line BBQ for Lunch! Ribs, chicken, coleslaw, potato salad...oh and some of the devs were there too. The QA peeps and GMs were there too. Eventually Janna from PR had to kick me out of my chair and the GMs let me sit near them. *shrug* We all talked to people, I was nearest to Chris Spears, Firelotus and Tom Potter at the beginning anyway. I think the 8 of us hardly ate!
After lunch was time for a Demo! This is the part you won't find much info on yet it's the part you want to hear the most. We got to see upcoming changes for D10 and beyond, with the lead of each Scrum showing what they got done in the last month. We heard from Mike Hutchinson the Lead World Designer, Michael Moore the Lead for Combat & Classes, Chris Strasz the lead on the new COCP stuff, Victor Meinert the Avatar and Art Director, Matt Walker the Lead Programmer and Lead of Framework and Tools, Rebekah Tran Lead of Interactions, and Wynne McLaughlin the Lead for Missions and Maps also the movie guy. While a Demo is usually short and sweet, the devs all took their time explaining to us and showing us what they had done. Other devs as well as ourselves could ask questions. It was awesome!
After the Demo, we got to sit down with Chris Strasz to talk all about the COCP. We got much more information than at least I expected. This was pretty informal so a lot of us talked and grilled him on what he is doing to our game. It was fun putting him under the heat lamp
For any CoH fans (not myself), we dragged in Sean Fish to talk for a bit. Finally it was time to head back to the hotel and prepare for dinner. CuppaJo took the wheel and drove us back through Austin rush hour while we talked even more!
After cleaning ourselves up, after all we were going to a fancy restaurant, CuppaJo threw us back in the van and we went to the restaurant also through Austin rush hour. Our route became a scenic one when a local Biker Rally took us a few miles out of our way, but we got to the restaurant just in time! For dinner, while at a fancy restaurant, we had a house all to ourselves. I wasn't sure who was invited, but for the most part it was all the Leads. We had a nice half hour or so of drinks before we sat down at our tables. I was very busy bugging people to sign my poster at this time. Once I sat down, I turned out to be at the best table there! I had Critters, Chris Strasz, Tom Potter, Chris Spears, Harleyquin and only Woebringer to share them with!
Dinner was a 5-course meal, fancier than anything I had ever eaten. Others seemed to share my confusion over what to do with that many forks so we talked a lot. Richard did a short speech, as well as Youngblood right afterwards. Richard put some canvas paper on the wall just for us players to write What We Would Change and What We Would Add. It was conveniently next to Tom Potter who got a chance to talk with every one of us as we went up there to write stuff down.
As dinner progressed, Richard Garriot moved all around to make sure he got a chance to talk to all of us. Others picked up on this eventually and only 4 or 5 people ended up in the same chairs they started in. Eventually our very inappropriate but hysterical topics caught the attention of Victor Meinert and his freaky socks, but we all started switching around fast. After a few beers and trips to the restroom, I found myself sitting next to Starr Long! He asked some questions and I think I answered them. Now that it's been 2 weeks I'm a little hazy.
The canvas papers filled up and we pulled out a 3rd. Tom Potter was relishing his job of talking with all of us as we filled up the papers on the wall.
The night hit it's sad note when Richard Garriot had to leave early. He had to fly back to Moscow the next morning and I'm sure he had things to do and people to see. I missed my chance to talk to him but I was very happy with everyone else I talked to. Still, maybe fate intervened? You'll see later. I finally made my way to the last table where I got to talk to some others like Triple A and Rebekah Tran. I got hit with a big question right off the bat and I think I didn't answer very well. It was Friday night with free drinks, I wasn't prepared for a TR question! Still, it was near this time that we had to call it a night. We were carefully shuffled out, I grabbed my poster before anything! I had stopped taking pics or notes for dinner and I didn't feel like doing more. I now had the process of processing all the stuff I had done that day.
Critters drove us back to the hotel, where we all made the tough decision of getting sleep or going to my room for beers.
Critters, Youngblood, Tank...and Rothnang I believe chose to stay up as well as myself. We talked and talked. Eventually Critters decided to leave around midnight, and it ended up being Tank, Youngblood and I for the rest of the night. We were all so wired that we stayed up until about 3 or 3:30 when I finally crashed.
I went out to breakfast with some friends that lived in the area, and then back to the airport to go home. You'd think my trip would have ended by now, but it didn't! Who did I see while I was waiting for my flight but Richard Garriot! He had his flight to Moscow that morning and just happened to walk by. He got some breakfast while I sat with him. We talked briefly but I don't think either of us had planned to be talking about TR so early in the morning. Still it was great to sit and talk with him without any distractions.
That ends it! I'm still tired! Sorry it took so long to get this out, but you know uh, I'm sure there are many sayings about the person taking longer does it better than the person doing it quick.
ARCADE GAMES
Zaxxon
Galaga
Tempest
Joust
Dig Dug
Space Invaders
Tron
Frogger
Ms. Pac Man
Lunar Lander
Robotron
Stargate (think that was it)
Donkey Kong
Battlezone
Gravitar (?)
Moon Patrol
Asteroids
DEMO
At the end of each Sprint, each team does a demo of what they accomplished. Sometimes it is big, like completing an instance, or lots of small things.
See Development Process.
SWAG:
Silver Tabula Rasa Challenge Coin
Tabula Rasa Dog Tags (not from US CE, think from EU CE?)
NCSoft Sports Bottle, white normally but turns very pink when cold
Tabula Rasa T-shirt
Tabula Rasa Beanie
Ultima Snake ornament
Tabla Rasa Press Event Logos Thing (for the press to decipher at the launch party methinks)
Gummi Bears
Granola Bar
Bag of microwaveable popcorn
Poseable Sarah Morrison Action Figure
(just kidding on that last one)
PAU Prototype now on PTS
Squad 288 members, a new and improved messaging system is now online. Many new features are available, to check it out click "Private Messages" in the top right corner of any page on the website. 
Operation Immortality 
D13 is on PTS
I found many Auto Assault pictures, posters, articles...made me very sad. I loved that game. 