Work In Progress

Riverwalk @ Redmond

Freelance Work

3D Preview of Exterior Change of the Apartment

Current Progress : Rebuild the place in 3d, Autodesk Maya.

My Entry for "Immortalized By Sadie" contest at NA Allods Online website, Link.

This is an Ongoing Work. I will expand it and put in more details.

At first I was planning to write a good review about this game (and it totally deserves it! if only something very bad didn't happen). An Impression will have to do for now.

For some who do not know, Allods Online is a new MMORPG, developed by Russian company Astrum Nival, and for North America version (Europe as well) hosted by Gpotato (Gala-net). The game is Free to Play (F2P), meaning you don't have to buy the game to make an account, and you don't have to pay the monthly subscription fee. However, you can buy ‘extra’ stuff through Item Mall or Cash Shop (will be referred to as CS Item) with real cash to enhance your gameplay. The popular CS Items among F2P games as follow; are items which grant you Statistic Bonus for a period of time, items which grant you to gain more Experience Point for a period of time, items which remove Debuffs from your character, items which make your character move/travel faster (Mount), items which make your character’s appearance cooler, items which increase chance of success of action performed by your character, and so on. Comparing the prices, generally players don’t spend more than $15/month on F2P ($15 as the standard price for monthly subscription fee) though many hardcore players do exceed the number.

However, Allods has gone too much further than that.

First, the Character Inventory Bag. Players start with a normal bag that has 18 slots, able to contain 18 stacks of different items. There’s a CS Item, a bag, with 24 slots, selling for $20. Even though you can also obtain this bag from in-game by doing a long and hard, and boring, and frustrating quest (I already finished it) it still is outrageous. 20 dollars is more expansive than a month worth of Pay 2 Play MMORPG. The bag’s price (NA server) is also 10 times that of the bag’s price on Russian server.

Still, you don’t necessary need a bigger bag to play a game, do you? It just makes your gaming experience more enjoyable. (Well, that is very important though.) Anyway, let’s move on.

Second, is the Fear of Death debuff. For those who don’t know, starting at level 15, whenever your character dies, you will have this FoD debuff after your character respawn. The debuff makes your character much weaker for a period of time. Its duration increases greatly as your character’s level goes up, though. As of this moment, a level 40 character will suffer 40 minute of FoD debuff. During which time, it is impossible to participate in Raid, PvP, or Dungeon at all. However, the Russian developer has just released a new patch, that would increase the duration of the debuff, so that a level 40 would suffer it for 2 hours instead. And logout doesn’t help either. The only way to remove the debuff, is to pay (CS Item; Perfume), obviously. Also, the patch has changes so that a character resurrected by another player will also suffer from the same debuff, making players (Priest, Summoner, i.e.) don’t want to learn Resurrection skill. Can you imagine how many times your character usually get killed in other games, while doing Raid, PvP, or Dungeons? If nothing changes soon, you are going to go Away From Keyboard for 2 hours every time death occurs.

http://allods.gpotato.com/news/2010/02/19/reflecting-on-the-allods-open-...

Gpotato had addressed the community, regarding the overpriced Cash Shop items: "Over the next several weeks we will continue to evaluate the details of our item shop and we will begin to introduce new items to help assist you throughout your Allods experience. We wanted to make clear that beyond the introduction of the item shop nothing has changed in Allods that wouldn’t allow you to enjoy the game just as much as you did during closed beta. You can still enjoy the entire game without ever having to spend a single cent. Additionally, many of the items available in the item shop are tradable in-game, appear through a number of quests, and can be auctioned off by other players."

They have clearly said that they would evaluate, not would fix, the pricing of the Cash Shop. So that means they have planned to make the CS Items overpriced from the beginning, and now they just try to figure why it doesn't work as planned. Gpotato also has said that one can still enjoy the entire game without spending any cash at all. Makes you wonder if the PR Person, or the Lead Community Manager or whoever addressing the community knows the upcoming changes from Russian version or not, or if they consider being stuck with a FoD Debuff for 2 hours every death at end-game, among other things, is enjoyable.

http://allods.gpotato.com/news/2010/02/22/developer-rumors-and-item-shop...

Gpotato had again addressed the community; "We want to make clear that this is something we are not taking lightly. We are not sitting and waiting just to see how many dollars we’re going to make over the next four weeks. It is very clear to us that players are already disgruntled with the situation and we are actively working on new pricing options to accommodate the masses. However, we ask the Allods community to please be patient with the situation! Adjustments like this cannot happen overnight."

Now, is it only just me who think that they are doing just that; sitting and waiting to see how many dollars they are going to make over the next four weeks? Remember, they said they would re-evaluate the pricing, and look for more options. They have not promised they will lower the price. In fact, the Cash Shop is still open and available. They are HOPING some people would buy their current overpriced items, otherwise they would have temporary closed it already.

There are more examples of this over pricing cash shop issue, and I will write more about it later.

Complete

Low-Poly, UV not wrapped, no texture F-18 look-alike 3d Model

Available for free download at TurboSquid [OBJ file]

Work In Progress

Modelled in Maya. To be sculpted in ZBrush later.

Current Update	References

First stage of my project intro mock-up of a game concept inspired by X-COM.

The scene shows squadrons of F-18 fighters dropping on several UFOs.

Debonair Debut, by Command Z Productions

Debonair Debut is a collection of thirteen 3-minute final video projects from the University of Utah Department of Communication's Video Production II class during Fall semester of 2009. The projects were completed in response to the class assignment to 'tell a story' in exactly three minutes using the resources of visual and auditory production. This program aired on KUEN Television in Salt Lake City on December 16, 2009 and December 22, 2009.

And so I decided to try Karos Online CB. Well, my first thought was... 'Oh god, no. Not another one of those gender locked'. At this moment, 3 classes are available, and 4 more to come. Elf-like Seroine female archer-type Bowmistress, human male two-handed sword user Blader, and dark elf-like male dual-wield daggers Rogue are the 3 classes to choose from. The other unavailable characters seem to be female spear user, male dwarf with big hand-cannon, female with sword and shield, and a female with a staff. So, umm... please forget what I said about gender-locked. This is gender & race locked.

It has been about 4 years since this game came out in Korea, now finally the game has come to us in the States. I'm sure you know what I think about this, another gender-locked classes MMO. Sigh. Anyway, let's get down to business. There are 4 classes in this game, at least in our version; the standard fighter in armors male Dragon Knight, the one with brute force male Berserker, the spell caster with offensive and defensive spells female Elementalist, and the long range weapons user female Valkyrie.

S4 League is a fast paced third person shooter game, with WSAD control and mouse for direction, in room-based environment, with stylized and good-looking graphic. Players login to the Lobby, where they will have access to equip their characters with weapons, costumes, skills, and then they can choose which room, and what type of game, they want to join in. Each room has max players at 12, 6vs6.

The first to mention is the game's Lore, or actually the Lore from J.R.R. Tolkien, the books. Yes, there's story in this game. But the Lore doesn't just apply to the quests or storylines, it's more than that. The Lore, and the movies influence the scenery, armors and costumes, towns and cities, even monsters, and so on. If you're a fan of tLotR and want more, this game is highly recommended for you. Even though you will run into some contents that make you wonder 'I've never seen or even heard of THIS in the movies or in any book'. Well, yes, this is, after all, a game, an MMO game, to be specific. Some are changed, and some are added. (Do I need to give examples of how the Dune series got modified when it was made into RTS game? Hope not.)

Chess Battle is a 3-minute video production for my Video Production II at the University of Utah. The video was a part of Debonair Debut on KUEN, Channel 9. Wednesday 16th at 9:00 p.m., and Tuesday 22nd at 1:00 am, December 09.

Chess Battle is about a bold move to measure one's capability with a game of Chess. 

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=Z2NUBX0G

Zeltana kingdom, and probably kingdoms nearby too (but we don't care since the story will focus only in this kingdom), had been under assaulted by the Black Dragon Riders for so many decades now. The Riders would destroy fortresses and barracks. Villages would be burnt, while people would be killed or captured and never be seen again.

Heroes don't change weapons or armors. That's right. Superman will always wear his underwear outside, and Spiderman will never wear a cloak either. These appearances make each Hero unique. And thus players of City of Heroes have oh-so-many options to create their Characters. There are many faces, hair styles, and Details (glasses, Rebreather, Gas Mask, ear pieces, and many more) to choose from, so that your character won't run into his or her clone. You also have the freedom to choose the clothing of your character. You want a jacket? A high school shirt? Skirt or Shorts? Very long or very tight pants? All these are possibilities of making your character appealing to you. You can even make a naked Hero, if you want to... Apart from all clothing options, you can also set the Scale of the body parts too: short or long legs; small or wide shoulders and hips; flat or huge chest/breasts; and the height of character (Be warned though, many times you fight enemies in small areas. Controlling a tall character in a small cave = bad camera angle/movement).

But the process of character creation doesn't just involve appearance, it also determines what kind of Powers your character are going to have. There are a few Archetypes to choose from, and each has access to different kind of Powersets. Tanker and Scrapper focus on Defense and Melee powers, while Blaster, Defender and Controller focus on Range, Support, Buff powers and such. Each powerset also offer many possibilities. For example, Melee powerset lets you choose what kind of weapon your character is going to use: Dual Wield swords, Great Sword, Katana, Dark or Fiery Melee (fists and punches). Defense powerset allows you to pick what kind of defense power you want, such as Fiery Aura, Stone Armor, Ice Armor, Dark Armor and such. Later on, as you advance in levels, you will be able to learn new power from your powersets you choose. (From Fiery Aura powerset; Fire Shield increases resistance, Fire Blaze deals small damage to all enemies nearby, while Healing Flame recovers your Health Points. i.e.)

At level 6 and higher, your character also has access to new powerpool. These are universal to all Archetypes. These new powerpools also give the path to Travel Powers, available at level 14: Superspeed, Superjump, Teleport, Fly and so on. Some of these powerpools give additional attack powers, or increase Regeneration or Recovery rate. To simply put, a player can try out lots of Archetypes and builds just for fun, or to learn how other classes play. Replayability has never been better.

Most quests (called Missions, or mish) are carried out in Instances, which are scaled by your level when you pick them up, by number of players in the team, and by Difficulty Rate which you can change in-game. Usually the team leader picks a mission from Contacts (mission givers) or from radio (main stream of missions) and everyone will share the same mission. Many missions involve killing all enemies in the instance, in many cases you have to retrieve objects, escort an NPC, or defeat a boss.

Now that I mention Mission, it's only fair for me to talk about the Architect Entertainment. To simply put, AE is the User-Generated Content (missions) from players to players for players. You can now design your own missions and story that comes with it. The bad? It seems many AE missions are a spoil to players. Fewer and fewer players do the real missions these days. Everyone just hang around in the Architect Entertainment building, and do those AE missions instead. Imagine you play a game that you don't have to run around and explore the world and get to learn each town name. You instead just stay in an instance created for your team, and just keep killing monsters that keep coming. You level fast in this game if you have good team and team members. But you can't get good team if everyone else isn't interested in doing normal missions with you.

There are many servers for this game. But unfortunately most are left with about 1/3 players of the server capability, with only a few that have about 2/3 players before the server is full. Merging low population servers together might be a good idea. That way players can easier find players to team up with, for both AE and normal missions.

Apart from all else, City of Heroes has auction system, crafting system (for power upgrades, costumes, and such), homebase for Supergroup (guild) and more.

Reviewed Jun 09

RATING

This room-based Free2Play MMORPG started its first Close Beta like .... quite a long time ago. It wasn't so enjoyable then. Now, it's back with improvements. They just had another close beta, then jumped to release, with Cashshop for players to spend money on and to decorate their Champions with pieces of armors for appearance, or Upgrades to their Warriors Hall.

Either way, its launch was overclouded by so many errors and bugs and malfunctions of systems; old accounts could not be used, and players were forced to make new ones; players get dropped out from missions; lag; not working as intended skills, exp curve that would take forever to reach high level; blue screen of death; and so on.

Free2Play with Cashshop system // It has been almost 2 years and a half now since Rappelz launched its service in North America. This game was a blast, one which could get me hooked for 15+ hrs a day playing. It has good graphic, characters look good and many are adorable with high level armors. Character animations also are smooth and appealing to the eyes. I also do consider its graphic to be on a par with Silkroad Online.

Many people call this 'another World of Warcraft clone', that might be half true, but not entirely. Even though the stats system, classes systems, user interface and a few more resemble that of WoW, Runes of Magic still isn't a duplicate. RoM has some cool features which make it good.

Free2Play MMORPG with CashShop system // This game's graphic is really good, and character animation is great too. Character design and armor design also help making the characters adorable. Players can also form guilds and engage in major Town Battles for each town's ownerships. The guild that takes control of the town can set tax that other players have to pay when they use NPC services in the said town.