Tattered Page

Work’s been rather nuts.  Jenn & I are still playing City of Heroes.  Issue 10 still seems fresh to us (and only a few of our characters have been able to go through most of the content) but the Halloween event is soon upon us and Issue 11 has entered into closed beta.

Issue 11: A Stitch in Time adds time travel to the game. The community team did an awesome job leading up to the announcement: news stories in the Paragon times that tell of different outcomes to events very familiar to the players as well as cryptic clues in the player-run City Scoop! newspaper.

It also inspired my own Teaser Comic leading up to the event.  Time travel & Superheroes.  What did you expect?

I mean, really… WHY?

From the Cryptic Studios Blog:

What if life were a video game? I know I’d want some cheat codes. Here’s what other people at Cryptic said they would want:

It comes complete with an image of a whiteboard scrawled with ideas. Some of my favorites:

• Ctrl Alt Del
• Mario coin blocks (that’s gonna cause some nasty head injuries)
• Hookers restore health
• Double XP weekends
• Hot Coffee Mod
• Doughy 40-something guys can look like supermodels.

Me?  I can’t find a single thing to add…. as long as they make sure jiggle physics are still included.

If anyone’s more out-of-touch than I am, you might not have seen this yet.

1-18-08

Trailer launched with the Transformers premiere.  That’s not the movie title.  It’s codenamed “cloverfield.”  There’s a great deal of speculation.

Seems like a monster flick taken by an alternate perspective, but others aren’t certain. Is that roar’ a monster or just a skyscraper’s structural groaning resonating through the city after a quake.  Other… events… seem to make it clear that it IS a monster flick, though one with a different enough perspective that it warrants further attention (for me, at least).

(Sigh) I hear all about game developers’ insane schedules.  I believe them.  I just can’t figure out how all these guys maintian their blogs so well.  Things go a bit nuts here at work and I’m out of commission for over a month.

How the heck do they do it?

Ok, it’s not just work.

So… what’s been going on here?

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Well, the City of Heroes Comic Book Creator contest prizes are announced this week.  I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring some comics there, and while none of us would probably be “professional grade” there are some real noteworthy achievements out there.

When I started my entry, I had some aspirations to winning it- now, I don’t really care- there are so many entries over there that deserve some attention… so many with just a dozen or so views.  I just want all the participants to feel their entry is worthwhile.

I first tried this over in hypercomics’ blog, but I’m re-posting here.  Sometimes a story just drives me to give it a little more attention. It may be the humor, or the style, or the message it delivers. It just might resonate with my mood of the day. When it does, I’ll write about it here and share why.

“Not a Hero” is such a comic. Go read it now. There may be some spoilers ahead.

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