In my case, no key arrived in my email from Amazon. After calling their customer support, I was assured it would arrive within 24 hours. Bored and without anything to do, I surfed the web, to see if I might find a key elsewhere. Luckily, I was successful, and managed to get in game the same day. However, here were my experiences with the game:

From the moment I saw the peeks at the way the game is played, I was in love with the concept. Create your own FULLY [and I mean FULLY] customizable super-hero with his/her own powers and abilities, and play an MMORPG that is probably four times more action based than the average MMORPG. As I expected, I was in awe while facing the character creator. There were just so many combination for the character that it became hard for me to even decide on a character I would like. At this point [on the menus] I was running the game on my monitors native resolution, 1680×1050, with no problems, and looking at my soon to be character in full, beautiful comic shaded colors.

In the end I made a gun-toting munitons badass called Metal Angel, named for the halo that floats above his head. I was excited, and ready to jump into the actions with my xbox 360 wired control, which I had previously read was one of the best ways to enjoy the game. Right off the bat, right into the tutorial map, I felt 50% of this excitement disappear. Why? The graphics. It turns out that Champions Online is a bit more graphics intensive than you would imagine. I know this is my problem, but my computer [which is relatively new] has no problem running most games, such as World of Warcraft, at max settings.

The game was playable, there’s no doubt about that. But Cryptic, creators of CO, built the game so well to be action packed and free running and intense jump-right-into-it action, that it was a real downer when I had to crank down the settings. To enjoy a 95% lag-free game with the ability to run around and see everything moving as if it were a single player game [the ideal situation], I had to crank my resolution down all the way, put the game into windowed mode, crank almost every graphics setting down, and turn on half resolution, which renders the world in half resolution to increase performance.

I played for a while like this, and it was doable, but everything was so horrendous, I really didn’t want to play anymore by the end of it all. Now, I know that the graphics situation is totally my problem, I could upgrade my video card and enjoy the game, but, that wasn’t the only problem. The major problem I noticed about CO was the fact that the game is still filled with game-obstructing bugs and glitches. Granted,  the game is in beta, but it releases in some two weeks! Taking into account all of these factors, I swiftly canceled my Amazon order, and avoided paying about 50 dollars for a product I couldn’t enjoy yet.

Perhaps one day I’ll give CO a chance again. I only hope that by then the game, like most successful MMOs, is streamlined and patched to beautiful balance and satisfaction. If it does take off and cash out, than I have confidence that we’ll be seeing a lot more of an improved CO.

-Dean

Chorus gets me every time.

Here is some footage from it:

(Watch it in HD, totally worth it)

[No spoilers below]

So, about two nights ago, I went out to the nearest AMC, and bought my tickets for District 9. Much to my surprise, the trailer didn’t do this movie justice. After watching the trailer beforehand, one would assume the movie would be just another of the gun-toting, action-quenching, alien movies. What I found in that theater was much more.

Being a science-fiction fan, I was constantly admiring the different take on first contact that the movie provided. The usual take being a miraculous exploration into space that introduces us to an alien race that provides us with futuristic technology. The dark, and rather dirty view this film provides surely puts things into perspective.

However, science fiction played, in my opinion, the smallest role in this film. Underneath all of the basic alien setup was an underlying plot, one that progresses along with the progression of the main protagonist. I won’t reveal too much, since I would really like people to go out and see this for themselves.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give this an 8.7

-Dean

Looking back on my freshman year of high school, one of the more memorable classes I took last year was definitely Visual Computer Programming. Although it was a beginners course, I know for a fact that my knowledge of computers and the way they operate truly tripled. I had lots of fun, and the opportunity to take my creativity and apply it somewhere where my physical abilities didn’t even matter  was absolutely awesome.

Anyway, the best part of all of it was the projects. Although we didn’t have many, the one project I had the most fun with was the final project. Essentially, I just had to pick anything I wanted to do, and do it. I chose to do an RPG, not because I knew I could do one, but because I had always wanted to try, and get a feel for the difficulty. Not a safe choice for a school project, but never the less, I tried. And this is how it all played out…

So, the idea came from a project my teacher had shown us from previous years. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do an RPG, but I wasn’t positive about going through with it until I saw that project. Created by a former student, now in college, the program was named “The Dub Special”. The reason my teacher had decided to show us this particular project was quite simply because it was one of the most poorly done projects over the years. But the idea was simple, and it played out like this:

**Dub Special**
[The interface is simple, a large, windows-98 gray, window with images of medieval weapons on the right, and player statistics [HP, Level] on the bottom, and a textbox on the left. Good set up, but will it work?]

A message box pops up: Go into the forest? [yes or no]
User-Yes
-A collection of variable errors pops out, but the program pushes on
Messagebox: “You go into the forest”
Messagebox: “Check under the rock? [yes or no]“
User-Yes
Messagebox:’”A snake pops out and kills you, you die”
Messagebox:”Try again?” [yes or no]
User-Yes

The program breaks.
**Dub Special**

From the moment I saw it, I knew I had to redo it, make it bigger, better, graphically nicer.
And I’d do it in widescreen.

So I signed up for a Dub Special 2.0, and decided I would code it all at home, since the computers in school don’t run Framework 2.0. So essentially, for the last month of school, every 7th period of the day, I would sit back and essentially do nothing. My teacher, who knew already that I was rather good at programming [for a beginner], didn’t worry much, but eventually questioned me, asking if I was actually working on it. I promised him he’d be impressed with my final product.

As I cranked at the program, the slow realization that I was in over my head began to set in. I realized no RPG engine could possibly be hard-coded, because you want to be able to add entities quickly and efficiently.  So to recharge my spirits, I figured the first thing I would do is build myself an interface that was hot as hell. So I hopped on photoshop, and started cranking out pictures, using WoW model viewer for human models.  And from about two hours of work emerged the main menu:

Main Menu of The Dub Special 2.0

Here’s the music that plays during that menu, a cut up and loopable version of a song that I downloaded off of Newgrounds. I am afraid I’ve forgotten the creator, I believe it was maestrorage.

What will seem odd is the child to the right…well, originally I had planned to have the player begin as a child and work his way up through adulthood…a Fable 1 kind of thing. As I soon found,  because of my time constraints, my goal became not to have a completed game, but to have a completed engine. And that, I did accomplish.

So, working my way through all of the aesthetic factors, I soon began coding the “New Game” button. I designed it to open up a window “Cinematic” [Which was programmed to play a video when it was called, and close only when the video is over, sending a message back to the function that called it.] and play a little intro movie I had designed. With a few hours in Model Viewer and Movie Maker, a video emerged, one that I knew would shake a lot of kids up when I presented it.

Now that I had all of the bells and whistles out of the way, I got to work. There was so much to do, but I persisted and cranked my way through it. It took hours on top of hours, and I sometimes felt like I was swimming in the code I had laid down. But I kept it organized, for every class I made, a separate class file came with it. I am almost positive now that there was code in there that was completely amateur, and there were areas where I had completely hardcoded it, but it was flexible enough for me to quickly add in entities like NPCs or Maps or Areas or Enemies with no problem.

All of the code files used

Here’s a peek at some of the code used. [What I could fit on the screen]

Some of the custom code used to run the engine

Anyway, time rolled on, and just after my final exams, closing in on the last day of school. I was finished. The code was flexible, the interface was just as I had wanted it to be, and I had found time to incorporate an entire plot, and feature an NPC with changing dialogue, a battle system, an inventory system, a journal system, and two locations to visit. I had definitely succeeded in my mission. I had learned a lot more about the general idea of game programming, and how hard it must be to do, how many things that must be done. If you want to download it, here’s a link:

Dub Special V2.0 [89.66 MB]

Now, to run it, just run C:\…\DUB Special 2.0\bin\Debug\Dub Special 2.0 Framework.exe
It’ll launch the splash screen, followed by the debug menu. Just select “Dub Special v2.0″ on the dropdown, and click “Run”
You’ll find that many of the buttons on the main menu don’t work, but all you need is the New Game button.

Anyway, unless you’re into programming, you wont find much content here…I mean, there are only two location, and many things are simply set up so I could get through all the features within 10 minutes. I wouldn’t be expecting professional looking programming, after all I am seriously just a beginner. But, in all, measured by what I learned throughout the entire experience, it was a success.

Some screenshots:

So bear with me, and welcome to the adventure.
-DEAN