Saturday 8 August 2009

Batman: Arkham Asylum- Making the Game

Since the Demo has FINALLY hit the PS Store, I thought I'd find some B:AA related news to post, as I had some spare time on my hands while waiting for it to download.

The latest news on the game seems to be a short behind the scenes look at the game, i.e- the making of!

So sit back, relax and enjoy...


(If this video doesn't work- click here)

....Why must my internet connection be so slow.....

Call of Duty World at War (5) only £19.99

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Found in Blockbuster, COD: WAW only £19.99 for xbox360 and the PS3, pre-owned... but this is the time i have seen this game under £20. Perfect timing seeing how the latest and maybe last map pack has been released.

(This replaces Blockbusters previous offer of Gears of War 2 for £9.99)

Considering Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare on the Playstation 3 still sells for between £22 the cheapest and £39.99 brand new and £29.99 pre owned from Game this is a really good offer.So go pick it up and get yourself some practise before Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 releases.

Fat Princess Patch Update And Details

The following was posted over on the US Playstation Blog

Greetings PS Blog Fans,
First off, we want to thank all of you for playing and supporting Fat Princess with all of your suggestions and responses on the boards. You have given us a ton of very valuable information which has helped us to track down the majority of the connection issues.
We’re happy to announce that we’re releasing a patch late tonight, Friday August 7, to help fix some of these connection issues. This will be released for N. America region, with patches for Europe and Asia to follow as soon as possible.
We’re also going to be tweaking some of the point balances and classes based on fan feedback. Several of you have also been asking about the player ranks. Here’s an explanation:

Rankings are awarded as you accrue the following points:
Squire – 500-599
Private – 600-699
Corporal – 700-799
Sergeant – 800-899
Ensign – 900-999
Lieutenant – 1000-1249
Captain – 1250-1499
General – 1500-1749
Warlord – 1750-1999
Sir (Dame) – 2000-2249
Baron (Baroness) – 2250-2499
Earl (Countess) -2500-2999
Duke (Duchess) – 3000-3499
Lord (Lady) – 3500-3999
Prince (Princess) – 4000-4499
King (Queen) – 4500+

Please keep pinging us and posting to the Fat Princess forum on PS.com with your suggestions and ideas. We mean it when we say that we’re really glad to have such a great fan base.
After the patch goes live, we’ll be jumping into some games with all of you to see how things are going and continue to address any major issues that crop up. For detailed information from the development team, check out Titan Studios.
This is just the beginning of Fat Princess and we hope to continue to support our fans.
Regards,
The Fat Princess team

The following was posted on the Titan Studios Dev Blog

The Sony America connection and lag patch is now live. For those of you in North America (as well the rest of the community served by Sony America), turn on you PS3’s, fire up Fat Princess and you should get the update. Europe is coming next week. As noted in the previous blog entry, Titan Studios had nothing to do with this timing. Before you skewer us, please read the previous post.

Patch Notes
Our primary focus with this patch was to improve connections and reduce lag. We also addressed the AoE scoring exploits, a few other scoring imbalances, and made minor tweaks that should reduce stalemates. Here are the details:
The server selection heuristic has been modified so that ping time has been more heavily weighted when selecting potential matches. This will result in players being connected to games in such a way that game population and ping are more evenly weighted.

Newly hosted servers will be more attractive to potential clients and thus fill up more quickly. The change will also better distribute connection attempts among servers and thus reduce failed attempts.
Potential servers will be given less time to respond to ping requests. This should speed up that portion of the connection process.
Selected servers will be given more time to establish a connection, resulting in fewer failed attempts.

The connection code is less sensitive to packets coming back out of order. This was a cause of failed connections.
Ice Mage and Dark Priest AoE scoring has been adjusted from 10 points to 2 points per enemy affected.

Non-worker resource return has been reduced from 20 points to 10 points.
Feeding the princess has been reduced from 20 points to 15 points.
Castle door hit points have been reduced slightly from 30 to 25.
The Princess’ calorie burn has been increased at weight stage 2, 3, and 4. Calorie burn was previously 2 per second at all stages. Stage 2 is now 4 per second, stage 3 is 8 per second, and stage 4 is 12 per second.

How To Play the Patch
Our experience using the patch is that successful connections occur more than 75% of the time on the first attempt. Selected servers are more fit, and so lag is reduced. A number of other problems attributed to lag are, as a result, also less prevalent. We expect server host migration to work more consistently.
The community will have to find a new balance in terms of host versus player distribution. Because of changes to the heuristic, there may be more servers with a moderate population of players, and fewer servers that are nearly full or nearly empty. The ideal ratio of servers to players is probably about 4 servers per 100 players. Unless you have a spectacular connection, try finding a game or jumping in first. If games are full and you’re having a hard time connecting, and you have a decent connections and a good ISP – by all means host. If your connection is moderate or poor, though, you won’t have many joiners. As with any peer to peer game – many empty games means too many hosts. Few, full games means not enough.

Future Patches & Updates
In future patches or updates, we will address other bugs and issues. Again, we wanted to get this out as fast as possible, and so changed only what we could safely and by last Monday afternoon. Down the road, we will address less common and less severe issues including: disappearing princesses, broken hat machines, migration issues, and the rank system. We may also address other features and balance issues.
Thanks for sticking with us through this crazy first week. There is more great stuff to come. Have a fantastic weekend and see you online!

- Titan Dev

Hands On Borderlands Single And Online Co-op

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Anyone who's interested in Borderlands might like to know that Joystiq have written a hands on of the single player and online co-op. I’ve had a good read thorough of both hands on articles, but i won’t spoil it here for you go check them out now.Borderlands is one of my top 5 upcoming games for the rest of 2009. Borderlands release’s October 20th in the US and October 23rd in Europe.