Diablo 3 Beta Tentative Date

Okay, I've posted a lot today already but I feel like I need to add one more thing because of how important Diablo 3 is to me. According to the Blizzard post tracker on d3db.com, the Diablo 3 Beta is planned to begin somewhere between July 1st and September 30th, 2011. I am very excited.

LoL Tenacity

So I just heard that they're adding a new stat to League of Legends called "Tenacity" so that they could add a few more items that have the stat. For a list of the items and a discussion on the topic, see this post on the LoL forums. Tenacity is basically the stat that Mercury Treads had before, that reduces the duration of crowd control effects. I believe the way it works, is that each point of tenacity gives you 1% duration reduction of CC. The big catch is that tenacity doesn't stack and you only get the bonus from the single item you have with the highest value. At this point, only two values exist, 35 from merc treads, or 25 from everything else you can get, meaning you get 35% CC reduction from merc treads and 25% from any of the other items you can get. I think this change will give many more options to many of the champions in the game that were particularly vulnerable to CC since you no longer have to get merc treads to resist it.

Just for more complete information, here are the new and changed items related to tenacity:

Mercury's Treads (Rework)
Cost: 1200
+35 Tenacity, +25 Magic resist.
Enhanced movement speed 2

Cloak and Dagger :
Cost: 1450
+25 Tenacity
+20% attack speed
+20% critical chance

Moonflair Spellblade :
Cost: 1290
+50 Ability power
+ 25 Tenacity

Eleisa's Miracle :
+25 Health Regen per 5 sec
+20 Mana Regen per 5 sec
+25 Tenacity

It looks like there's a tenacity item here for almost everyone that could want one. Here's the patch notes video if you want to hear about the changes straight from Riot:

GameDev Story

So last night I was originally planning on doing some streaming of Recettear or something, but before that I decided to play a little GameDev Story (links in the next paragraph). After a couple hours I decided I was just going to play all the way to the end of year 20 where the scores stop being reported to Game Center. I ended up taking quite a few hours and getting about 4 games of the year before the end of year 20, but the entire thing took quite a few hours. My iPod Touch's battery ran out during the time, so I had to plug it in to charge so that I could keep playing. This game is ridiculously addicting, and I'm afraid I need to keep myself from ever playing it again so that I don't get sucked into not following through with my plans.

For those that aren't familiar with what GameDev Story is, it's a game for iOS (and Android too I think) where you run a game development studio. You hire employees, keep them motivated, give them different jobs within the studio, and develop a bunch of games with an array of genres and game types. One of my best games from last night was an Action Ninja game. I also had an Online Sim History game that did quite well too for some reason. As the game progresses, different consoles come out, and developing for a console always results in better returns than developing for the PC, but they have higher licensing and development costs. Once you move in to a large office and develop a game that makes it into the "hall of fame" you can develop sequels. I would never have imagined that I would develop upwards of 10 sequels to my Checkers Board game, but they always sold well and would score very high in graphics if you can believe it. The game is pretty fun, especially for people who have a desire to some day work in the video game industry. You can develop all sorts of strange combinations, like Robot Trivia games.

If you do decide to pick up the game, please try to keep track of your life so that you don't lose it. This game is way more addicting than World of Warcraft.

Gaming Poll

I decided I wanted to remove the poll from my blog footer so I figured it would be good to keep a record of what it looked like when it close. This post just holds a screenshot of the final state of the poll. Thanks to everyone who voted.

Indie Game: Dwarfs!?

So today I decided to try out a new game that I haven't heard of before, so I got a game called Dwarfs!? on steam. The first thing I noticed from the video is that the dwarfs seem kinda like ants digging around underground, and honestly it feels a little that way. I consider this to be a good thing. But imagine if your ant could also fight using axes to keep back the mystical shaman they find hidden in caves. In reality, the standard game mode (called arcade) is quite simple, and gives you a time limit in which to explore as much area and as many caves as possible, while defeating any baddies you find along the way. Oh, and as dwarfs, you're also trying to collect treasure. As you gather treasure, you can use it to train more troops, close of dangerous areas of the map, and build new outposts to train troops to defend your miners. At $10 it's a pretty good buy that I would recommend to pretty much anyone that wants some single player strategy gaming.

Oh, and coincidentally, my high score at the time of writing is 5th on the 5 minute arcade mode on Normal difficulty. Here is the video:

I beat Portal 2!

So last night I beat Portal 2 on my stream and I must say, the game was a great experience. The first thing you notice when the game starts is that it has a great sense of humor. The script is very well written and the voice actors execute it extraordinarily well. Even when I wasn't laughing, I felt like I was enjoying myself with my virtual friend in the game. Another game that similarly has good writing and makes you feel like you're rarely left alone is Uncharted 2. I think the technique that both of these games use to keep the flow natural and enjoyable is to play the voices at times where you are platforming, allowing the player to do a little bit of multitasking by advancing story and gameplay simultaneously.

In terms of the levels, I believe the design team did an excellent job of keeping the objectives clear while still providing challenge and opportunities to think about how to solve the puzzles. Nothing is more obnoxious than a level where there is no clear goal, but Valve avoids those problems for the most part. The various features available in the game build on each other as you progress, so you are never presented with a huge jump in difficulty, but there is always a new challenge to deal with, so it never feels boring. Beyond the level design, the environments are varied and interesting, and span a large amount of Aperture Science history, giving you a look into the past for the lab you are being tested in. Portal 2 is a game that I highly recommend to everyone that has any inclination to play video games. If you'd rather just watch someone else play it, you can check out my playthrough on my Portal 2 youtube playlist.

Moving to justin.tv

Even though I originally started streaming on ustream, I had recently been having problems with it. The main problem was that videos I recorded there would not upload to youtube automatically and required me downloading them, and then compressing them again in another program. This conversion resulted in a huge loss in quality, and the audio and video being out of sync. Clearly this is not a good way to make youtube videos, so I decided to switch to streaming on justin.tv.

There are a couple benefits to justin.tv from my point of view, and the main one is that uploading videos to youtube is way easier. Whenever I stream to justin.tv, the video is automatically saved (for 7 days). While the video is saved, I can easily go back and watch it to make highlights. These highlights can then be uploaded to youtube, and the best part is that justin.tv will split the video automatically for you, so that you can upload something that is longer than 15 minutes in multiple parts. I used to have to watch the clock to try to stop the video every 10-15 minutes to be sure the video would upload. The other benefit to streaming on justin.tv is that they seem to have way more gaming streams, meaning people that are interested in watching games will be more likely to be on justin.tv already, giving me a greater chance of higher exposure.