Art Friday : Heavenly Sword Animated Series

A wonderfuly animated five part series about the origins of the titular sword in Ninja Theory’s PS3 game Heavenly Sword and how Nariko, that lovely heroine with her distinctive flowing red tresses came to wield the sword.

© Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

It all started with a story of a holy warrior purportedly dispatched from the heavens above with his mighty sword to put an end to the murderous rampage of the merciless Ravenlord and his bloodthirsty warriors many generations ago.


© Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

The sword that the mysterious warrior left behind after defeating the Ravenlord later fell in the hands of mortals thus ensuring that death and bloodshed followed each successive wielder of the sword as ambitious men schemed and murdered in order to possess this powerful sword.


© Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Watch the rest of the series to find out how the sword finally ended up in the hands of Nariko. Although the plot is rather cliched, it’s an engrossing piece of work, beautifully animated by the guys at Chase Animation Studio and well narrated enough to make it a must-watch for anyone who loves a good fantasy tale. A detailed list of credits can be found at FEED.


© Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Watch the entire animated series at the official Heavenly Sword : Animated Series site.

While I try not to provide direct links, I figured that these gems might not be online forever, so here’s the direct download links for the five episodes (in Flash video ~20 MB each):
Episode 1 : The Legend of The Sword
Episode 2 : Guardians of The Sword
Episode 3 : The Rise of Evil
Episode 4 : The Divine Birth
Episode 5 : The Day of The Warrior

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Girls of Video Games Fanart @ Ryu’s Form Site
Kal Online Wallpapers
Legion of Man Demo Impressions : You Vs Many
Soul of the Ultimate Nation Trailers
Tenchu Z Official Wallpapers
Shinobido Imashime Opening Movie

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Military Tuesday : Lessons from BBC History Channel Games

A couple of educational flash games from BBC History Channel presenting two important battles from English history - the Battle of Hastings between the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons under King Harold II and the Battle of Waterloo pitting the forces the Duke of Wellington against Napoleon Bonaparte. Both games allow you to exprience the battles from either side and the possible outcomes if either side had fought differently at critical points during each battle.

The Battle of Hastings : The Normans have infantry, archers and cavalry whereas the Anglo-Saxons is primarily a infantry based army.


© BBC


© BBC

A Norman victory (top) and an Anglo-Saxon victory (bottom)

The Battle of Waterloo : The heavily outnumbered French army has powerful artillery and better cavalry than the more numerous Seventh Coalition army comprising Belgian, Dutch, Hanoverian, Brunswick and British troops under the Duke of Wellington.


© BBC


© BBC

A Seventh Coalition victory (top) and a French victory (bottom)

Below, I present some of my findings after playing both games several times to discover all possible choices and outcomes.

While both battles took place in different eras, the same basic principle of preserving a mobile reserve to reinforce a successful breakthrough of enemy lines or to bolster a faltering defence or seal critical gaps in defensive lines is readily apparent.

Tactics of course vary according to the prevalent weapons of day. In the Battle of Hastings, the bristling spearpoints of the English shield wall provide an effective counter to Norman cavalry charges whereas infantry of the Napoleonic era form into equally immobile squares with their musket bayonets to deter enemy cavalry.


© Osprey Publishing

Above is Wayne Reynold’s illustration of the effectiveness of a solid shieldwall from the 11th December edition of Osprey Publishing’s “Advent Calendar”. Another shield wall is depicted by late Angus McBride on the 1st December edition.

These two battles still involve armies arrayed in formation against each other before the actual commencement of battle since massed infantry did not possess accurate ranged weapons to inflict substantial damage to their opponents during those times. This probably explains why the artillery were emplaced in front of the French infantry in the battle of Waterloo and the resulting disaster during the early days of WWI when armies attempted to use similar Napoleonic tactics in the face of vastly improved ranged weapons like rifles and machineguns.

The same lack of accurate long-ranged weapons could also make a heroic charge by leaders and their heavily-armored and armed bodyguards exemplified in the Battle of Hastings as a viable way of transforming a crisis into sure victory. A similiar valiant attempt would be pure suicide in today’s wars.

It’s apparent that tactical units have become smaller through the ages probably due to advancements in communication and signalling methods as well as the increased tempo of battle. The increased accuracy and destructiveness of artillery as it evolved over time was possibly a important factor too.

Play The Battle of Hastings and The Battle of Waterloo at BBC History Channel.

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Osprey Publishing’s Military Art “Advent Calendar”
War and Game - Military History Blog
Wayne Reynolds’ Paizo Pathfinder Wallpapers
Legion Arena Review
Legion of Man Demo Impressions

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Art Friday : Tony-B Machine - Flash Toy for Creating Early 90’s Techno/Electro

Another electronic music toy, Tony-B is the brainchild of a French flash developer with the same name.

You get synthesized melodies, bass and percussion (snares, hi-hats, kickdrums) with some early 90’s techno/electro soundbites (try pressing R for that classic C+C Music Factory’s Everybody Dance Now sample) as well as some nifty EFX which you can activate via Street Fighter like controls (Down,Right,Left,Up) for the Thunder Break snare roll or (Up,Down,Up,Down) for Extreme Danger sirens.


© www.tony-b.org

The Tony-B machine boasts a very well-designed and intuitive interface where everything can be accessed either via the keyboard or the mouse (or both for optimal effect). Switch the instruments on and off by pressing the number keys, play the keyboard via the ASDFGHJKL; keys for the standard QWERTY keyboard layout (it also supports the AZERTY keyboards used in France and Belgium) and trigger the sound samples with the QWERTYUIOP keys.


© www.tony-b.org

Check out my 3 minutes track (2.90 MB) recorded with Audacity. It doesn’t exactly show off the full power of the Tony-B machine since my reflexes suck when attempting to control all the instruments, samples and the EFX simultaneously but it should give you an good idea of the style of audio generated by this marvellous little Flash toy.

Start creating your own track with the Tony-B Machine. You might want to read what each of the sound samples correspond to over at the official site before playing around with it.

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Orange Mixer - Create your own Electronic Tracks Online
Rebirh RB-338 - Free Drum Machine
Saiko - Cool Electronic Music Generator
Be Your Own One Man Band
Takuya Kashiwada @ Under Water Bar Praha

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Military Tuesday : H&K MP5 Vexel Art by John Norris (donbenni)

A stunning vexel illustration of a Heckler & Koch MP5 and definitely one of the best firearm illustrations that I’ve ever seen out there on the Net. According to Scottsdale Gun Club, it should be a MP5A3 with the “Navy” trigger group with full-auto and semi-auto firing modes only (the MP5A5 has an additional 3 round burst mode).


© John Norris

This beautiful illustration is also conveniently sized for use as a wallpaper on a 1280×960 screen :)

Illustrated by John Norris aka donbenni who also does a mean vexel Mitsubishi Eclipse (below) among the various car illustrations in his deviantART gallery.


© John Norris

Check out John Norris’ MP5, Mitsubishi Eclipse and his other artworks at deviantART.

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Tracking Your Favourite Deviants via RSS
Masada ACWS Technical Drawing
Heckler & Koch Catalogue 2007
Russ Schwenkler (dangeruss) - Vexel & 3D Cars and Motorcycle Art
Wallpapers from JDM Option : Japanese Car Tuning and Modification Magazine

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Games Thursday : Titans of Steel - Warring Suns (Freeware Mecha Wargame)

Titans of Steel : Warring Suns, the commercial sequel to the previously freeware Titans of Steel by the same developer Vicious Bytes has been released as freeware by its publisher Matrix Games since February 2008.

Being a fan of the original game, I must say Titans of Steel : Warring Suns’ definitely a much improved game although the notoriously unintuitive management interface has been carried over from its precedessor - newcomers will surely be confused by the usage of the next and back arrows to navigate through the management portion of the game :)

Beneath that interface lies a relatively deep and complex turn-based mecha (“Titans”) wargame where you can nurture a team of rookie pilots (“Jocks”) as they are sent into missions or campaigns against AI opponents.

Skill points can be distributed between the piloting, combat and miscellaneous skills (333 points each) and attributes can be improved by using the same number of skill points from all three categories per point. While improving attributes help increase base skill levels and maximum skill levels, a jock with high attributes but low skill levels is not likely to be of any assistance to his comrades on the battlefield.

Your jocks can only improve with combat experience by participating in any of the included campaigns and missions via Solitary Game > Start New Game > Load Team from File > Select Map > Load Mission / Load Campaign. I recommend the first campaign as a good introduction and target practice for your inexperienced jocks. Press F10 for mission objectives and optionally E for exit zone.

After a few missions, you can assign them to battle AI opponents in random maps to further boost their experience, attributes and skills. Credits earned after completion of each missions can be used for purchasing, repairing or customizing your titans with a selection of weapon, armour and equipment upgrades as well as for recruiting additional jocks to your team to a maximum of 8.

The in-game tutorial is very much recommended to grasp the finer points of titan piloting and combat before you even start creating your own team of jocks. Reading the included PDF manual is also a must if you intend to fully understand the significance of each stat and skill for your jocks as well the critical differences between the myriad of weapon and armour choices when buying or upgrading your titans. It’s only 48 pages long so it won’t take too long to read or at least glance through the contents.

A word of advice though, the rookie jocks and recon titans that you can recruit while assembling your team are at most one third as skilled as Tiger I and his Cobra light titan that you control the tutorial so be prepared to adjust your expectations or you might be severely discouraged when you see the dismal hit percentages when the actual slugfest begins :)

Thankfully the combat module of Titans of Steel : Warring Suns is a blast to play with the difficulty much toned down from the previous game - I still remember my team of jocks who would consistently fail at least one third of the movement skill checks and bruising their titans before even entering firing range of the enemy. The helpful auto-move feature also alleviates the tedious micro-management of the previous game while you’re advancing under relative safety (Alt + Right Click).

The event-based turns get a bit confusing at first as turns are assigned to jocks when certain events occur, e.g when any weapon on his titan are recharged and ready to fire (press x) or when his movement order is complete or even when encountering a new enemy titan (press (w,u,e), etc. After playing a while, it really becomes a very efficient and powerful way to manage the titans in your team. Pressing F3 can interrupt the jock’s current order for reassignment of new orders but may require a skill check while aborting the current order.

The clean functional graphics and sounds are nothing much to crow about since the main draw of this game is the RPG aspects of progressively upgrading your team of jocks and titans. The ungainly interface and relatively long battles (at the beginning when you have a team of rookies with equally crappy titans) mean that it’s not for everyone but for those with more than a passing interest in turn-based mecha combat, Titans of Steel : Warring Suns is a definite must-try.

Download Titans of Steel : Warring Suns 1.2.1 from Matrix Games.

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MechCommander 2 Encyclopedia

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