The Age of Conan - A Different MMORPG Experience

Funcom, a Norwegian based game developer company, sure know how to be different. Their first MMO project, "Anarchy Online", while had a bumpy start, grew a large fan base for being very deep and complex game. Their newest creation, Age of Conan (slated for March 2008 release) promises to have incredible storyline and insane amount of content, without being too complicated. Now, you won't need a PhD to play this game, but that doesn't mean it's your usual cookie cutter, click-and-execute-skill MMORPG.

Age of Conan is described by it's developers as "savage and sexy". It goes beyond the usual amount of that good stuff in MMORPGs, hence the game is rated "mature". You won't find cute elves, glowing swords, or flashy fireball spells here. What you will find is a cruel, real, lush world, based on Conan novels by Robert E. Howard. It's simply dirtier, bloodier, and just cooler than anything you have seen in any MMORPGs so far.

Age of Conan is the first MMORPG to use DirectX10; it runs on DreamWorld engine which makes the graphics look incredible. Most of the animation is done using motion capture technology - even that of the animals! The 7.1 sound is done by the best producers; all that is sure to immerse you into the game at once.

Combat system is one of the things that separates Age of Conan from other MMORPGs. There's no "targetting" - instead of selecting an enemy and choosing skills which your character would execute automatically, you actually have to aim your weapon or magic yourself. This is called "Real Combat", something one of the developers, G.G. named "Dance of Death". There's no limit to enemies you can hit at once, as long as they are in your range. You can really become a machine of death and cleave skulls in the middle of an enemy formation.

While magic in Age of Conan is not so flashy, it's no less powerful. In the "low fantasy" world Robert E. Howard created, the only way to get inhuman powers is to deal with demons - at the cost of your soul! Each spell will corrupt you a little, and if you cross the line, the demons will literally drag you to hell. Magic users will have to constantly walk a thin line between power and danger.

The PvP combat in Age of Conan is really promising. There will be massive siege battles of the scale yet unseen in MMOs. The players will be able to build siege engines in their own towns and raid the enemy's, break down their walls, kill them to the last man, and pillage their treasures. Guildless players need not fear - they will be able to participate in these guild wars and actually make some extra gold by becoming mercenaries.

Overall, this does sound very interesting - but just how successful will Age of Conan be? From the example of World of Warcraft, people love simplified, pretty MMOs. It's likely that Age of Conan won't get a player base that huge, however, it's likely to consist of more mature, grown up players.


Source : http://ezinearticles.com/?Age-of-Conan---A-Different-MMORPG-Experience&id=807152

Stop Motion Animation - Mixing With Live Action

Animated film is a movie in like a small child around the world but not the little boy who likes animated films are also many adults who like animated movies because his movie was funny and meaningful. More than 100 years ago, a pioneer in stopmotion animation, (1892-1965), began making the first short film with stopmotion animation after experiments with documentaries on insects. One of the first film in 1912 the Company Khanzhonkov Moscow, produced "The Cameraman's Revenge" shows the beetle and the "infidels" of all things! Ladyslaw Starewicz

Originally Starewicz would use wire legs to attach to the insect's body. Then he would use quiet intricate ball & socket armatures (well before his time) combined with leather and covered with felt puppets in the gentle "dry" dead insects. He further extended characters to frogs and human like character in "A series of animated figures conducted by the Russian Art Society of Paris" in 1922. While these animations do not have a live-action mixed in which they set the stage for the movie Stop motion animation movies to come.

In 1925, Willis O'Brien (1886-1952) impressed the audience with the effects of work on the film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.

A forerunner of this is some of O Brien's earlier stop motion animation works; especially "The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy" in 1915. . O Brien used clay animation characters in this film.

Soon after he began working on a similar film about people stranded on a desert island full of dinosaurs. This feature originally called "CREATION". Unfortunately, the studio executives lost interest and dropped the project at the beginning of production. But they did not hire O 'Brien and special effects skills at the beginning of a movie titled "THE EIGHTH WONDER." The film was released in April 1933 under the title "KING KONG" a true classic for film history. This is no doubt one of the first mainstream film that managed to enter the live-action and stop motion animation. "Son of Kong" followed in December 1933 to the same recognition.

Edward Nassour (1911-1962) animation supervisor for the 1951 movie "Lost Continent" followed on the now well-established genre of mixing stopmotion live action and animation with the theme of dinosaurs and monsters. Although the film is not as well received as previous such movies genre and still life. "The Beast from 20,000 fathoms"

In 1953 he was famous animator animated the enduring monster from "The Beast from 20,000 fathoms". This film can be described as one of the original landmark .. Harryhausen films with the theme of the atomic age monster movies. This gave birth to all the way from "certain Japanese monsters" created by the atomic experiments in the early days of the atomic bomb.

Ray Harryhausen.

1970 saw the release of a film based on the book by JG Ballard called "When Dinosaurs rule the earth". Master animator Jim Danforth created some memorable images in this film and also later with Ray Harryhausen in "The Clash of the Titans" in 1981. The tradition of mixing stop motion animation with live action continued in the 80's with the sci-fi thriller "Dreamscape" (1984). Big snake man creature continue to pursue the main character in a nightmare using the dolls, but also stop motion animation. Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) employs stop motion in one important scene to great effect.

But as the millennium came and went a genre mixing live action and stop motion animation in major film releases gave way to CGI. But there are still many examples of live action and stop motion animation used in short films, documentaries and advertisements like Sony Bravia Commercial with animated rabbit running around New York. Or a Sony PSP commercial which shows objects in the animation and live action, rather than character or puppet animation. What is important is that the media seems like now moves toward the object animation rather than a more time consuming character animation of what is now the last century. Every year more and more animated develop a more advanced and faster.


By:Novie