I recording lighting (or more accurately, thunder) for the first time last night. I had been sound asleep when I awoke to the most incredibly loud ruckus and was disoriented for about 10 seconds before I figured out it was thunder outside, and that the Apocalypse hadn’t come early :p. I’ve never heard it that loud and clear in Arizona, and it was so brilliantly white that it lit up my bedroom. After listening to a few cracks, I realized, hey man, this is a good time to go grab some samples. So at 3:30 AM, I threw on some clothes and slippers, slung my recording equipment over my shoulder, and trudged outside and planted myself under a tree to get some good, clean thunder claps. Scared the hell out of me too. I love thunderstorms, but they frighten me. They always have, so it was quite a rush standing outside in the dark armed only with a microphone as blinding flashes of lightning streaked through the sky no more than a couple of miles in front of me.

After the lightning ended and I had recorded a few minutes of just the rain, I went back inside, cold, wet, and tired. I realized then that I’ve caught the bug. I’m a phonographer. Next time I won’t wait a few minutes before jumping out of bed to record who-knows-what. I record things, and I don’t wait. It’s what I do.

TenTonHammer has released a three-part video series detailing their experiences with SGW at Comic Con. They were given a very detailed guided tour of the game by Dan Elggren(Studio Lead), Chris Klug(Creative Director), and Demitrius Comes(Technical Director) and were of course given a chance to play and ask questions. There is a truly massive amount of information and gameplay footage to be found in here on virtually all aspects of the game. Definitely not to be missed!

Part 1: Tutorial & User Interface

Part 2: A Mid-Level Instance

Part 3: Playtest and Q&A Session

Their tester has given SGW a three thumbs up. Now we’re not sure how that’s possible but in any case the more thumbs up the better!

Thanks guys!

The folks over at Gaming Shogun have written up an excellent article giving us a glimpse into several of SGW’s mechanics gleaned from their brief play test and Q&A with the developers.

On the discussion table are:

- The cover system
- Enemy AI
- Minigames and the non-combat oriented classes

Their impressions:

“It was a pleasant mix of taking cover then running to new cover when needed and helped capture the gun-battles of the show, in which the small SG teams take on outnumbering foes by the use of tactics instead of raw force…. We were impressed by Stargate Worlds and can’t wait to get a chance to go through the gate again.”

Thanks for sharing your impressions guys! We’re glad you enjoyed it.

Ooryl2 (Tim) gave me his blog to post here! So I’ll be quiet now…

“Hello!  Ooryl2 here from the forums/sgwirc.  For those of you that don’t know already, I’m here at Comic Con hoping to be able to get some live webcam streams of the happenings at the convention, as well as some recorded interviews with the development team and hopefully any Stargate cast members that stop by!

Look for my thoughts on Continuum and the first day of the Con soon!  Don’t forget to check out the live stream at 3pm Pacific Time (10pm GMT) if we can get it up and running. “

Unfortunately, the webcam stream was cancelled due to lack of bandwidth but he could still make lots of videos and images with his camera!

Ooryl2’s ComicCon Photos and Videos:

http://torrents.sgwirc.com:8000/ - You’ll need a torrent client to download them.

(Feel free to post these photo’s and video’s on your fansite!)

My turn to make an entry! =)

Mine will be about MMORPG.com! As some of you may have already seen, they’ve gotten a private presentation of an alpha build and they were quite impressed!

They were one of the first gaming press to literally get their hands on a playable version of the game and got themselves a tour of an area on Lucia.

Here’s a snippet from their blog:

“The folks at Firesky have been pretty quiet up until now about their upcoming MMORPG Stargate Worlds. At Comcic Con San Diego though, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to try the combat system out for himself and he files this report.

At this year’s Comic Con San Diego, no MMORPG had more exposure to the convention center-filling crowd than the upcoming MMORPG from Firesky, Stargate Worlds.

Whether it was the well-situated and busy booth, the water bottles or the sides of busses, it was difficult to come away from the convention without knowing that the first video game based in the Stargate universe (and an MMO no less) would launch in 2009.”

MMORPG.com’s Jon Wood’s blog:

http://tinyurl.com/jwccblog

(28th of July 2008)

There is also a video of the events described in the blog above. In there I myself helped him defeat a couple of mobs using flanking tactics.

MMORPG.com’s Video of Jon Wood playing and asking questions:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/242/view/videos/play/1244

(28th of July 2008)

Best of Comic Con Blog #2

Up next:  IGN Network

The IGN Network is comprised of multiple websites, most notably IGN.com and Gamespy.com. The fact that they got not one but two writers to Comic Con to check out Stargate Worlds is most impressive. Both of the following articles give you a hands-on, step-by-step read of what the Comic Comic demo of Stargate Worlds was like.

IGN’s (UK) hands-on demo can be found here -> 
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/894/894044p1.html

GameSpy’s (UK) Stargate Worlds preview article can be found here ->
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/stargate-worlds/894484p1.html

I found both articles noteworthy because of the detail the two writers give when describing the game play and overall reaction they got from the game.

This “Best Of” series will be a compilation of all sites that featured awesome Stargate Worlds coverage at last week’s Comic Con:

Up first:  Ton Ten Hammer’s Blog series by Chris Klug.

Ten Ton Hammer got an exclusive blog entire series by Stargate Worlds Creative Director of Stargate Worlds Chris Klug; in this series Klug submitted 4 during the 5 of Comic Con. I know what you all are thinking - “how fitting, a blog about a blog!” Bear with me here though, as Mr. Klug writes so well, the fans are immersed into what’s happening whether it’s about Stargate Worlds, Comic Con (or, in this case, both!)

Here is the list of Chris’ blog entries at TenTonHammer.com:

Entry #1 “The Blog is a Lie!” - http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/38908

Submitted 07/22/2008

Entry #2 “Rockin’ to Comic-Con” - http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/38982

Submitted 07/23/2008

Entry #3 “When Talking Becomes an Adventure” - http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/39045

Submitted 07/24/2008

Entry #4 “Five Thousand Stargate Fans” - http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/39502

Submitted 07/28/2008

Tonight is the special screening of Continuum on the USS Midway, here in San Diego. TONS of fans stopped by the booth last night and today to win passes to the event; the team will be there as will be the stars from Continuum, Atlantis and Bridge Studios. I would post more but I have to go try to make myself look pretty!

I will post more soon, but today was awesome - I got to meet Lisentia, Smurf and Ironside!! Thanks for coming by the booth, guys!

It has been quite some time since I blogged but this week is Comic Con so I’m going to try to keep you guys up to date on what’s happening here in sunny San Diego!

One great thing is, of course, that I get to see a lot of the team for a few days. That’s always the best part of any business trip! The other great thing is getting to meet a lot of the fans who will be dropping by to visit us in the Stargate Booth 3535. The third thing is, I get to brush shoulders with famous people! That part is probably the least of my priorities but it is a cool thing to be able to do, so I’ll enjoy it when it happens.

So I flew here on Monday to rest up and get my mission control (read: hotel room) all set up to be able to share information, news, interviews and images as they happen. So far I have one picture for you guys - yesterday (Tuesday) the marketing team arrived and we went down to the convention center and watched the work team start mantling the booth (I am assuming that mantling is the opposite of dismantling…). When I figure out how to get the image from my camera, to the computer, and posted here I will do that! The thingie might be at home in which case, I will get Ooryl2 to take pictures for me to share with you guys.

I head down in a few minutes with Chris Klug, Creative Director (better known to you guys as “Ledaye”) for a run through on the demonstrations at the booth. After that I am working tonight during the Preview Night. Tomorrow the real show starts and thousands of people will pour in! I can’t wait.

Talk to you more soon - be sure to check out the http://sgwirc.com site in case we manage to get the Live Video Feed working tomorrow!!

For those of you fortunate enough to see it, I hope you enjoy it. It’s been a labor of love putting it together.