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This dragon was a limited edition promotional redemption that was only available by purchasing the Mage Knight: Apocalypse game for PC at Best Buy.
Mage Knight is WizKids' popular game of tabletop combat using collectible miniatures. Players take on the roles of powerful Warlords who pursue diverse goals that can range from the furtherance of altruistic causes to subjugation and personal glory. They do so by assembling and commanding suitably mighty armies made up of fantasy beings armed with magical weapons and items. As a result, the battles among them are epic affairs involving groups of Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls and colossal Draconum, the solitary, mysterious dragon warriors who relentlessly search for individual evolution.
The dual challenges of conquering the land and crushing those enemies who dare to stand before you require every magical, martial and technological resource you can muster. However, the rewards for victory and success are appropriately grand. Accordingly, many leaders strive to achieve dominance, and perhaps even to become legends.Announced in May of last year, is Namco Bandai's action RPG set within this richly detailed property. You play as one of five guardians, heroes who have sworn to uncover and eradicate the source of an ominous evil that is plaguing the land and threatening to bring about its ultimate devastation. Guided by the Solonavi, a mysterious race possessing tremendous magical abilities, you embark on your quest to find that the forces of Chaos are led by an adversary you cannot hope to defeat alone, the five-headed Apocalypse Dragon. Your only hope is to rally support among the factions, which are frequently at odds with each other, and to recruit their greatest champions to fight at your side. Thanks to the team, we have the opportunity to learn more about the title as it progresses toward completion.
Includes four exclusive screenshots. The Beginning of the End Howdy, I'm Dave Georgeson, one of the two Senior Producers heading up Games' PC Division. We're now moving into the final stretches on our first major PC game, which means we're about to hit those long hours of crunch before release - where all the magic happens in the project. All three skill trees have functional skills with special effects.
I know that doesn't sound like much, but you can't imagine the mountain of work that goes with designing, coding and tricking out the effects for each individual skill.Namco Bandai, along with, is working to rekindle the action RPG genre with a broad new fantasy world filled with a wide variety of cultures, magics and technologies. The Mage Knight universe's background has been being fleshed out for years by the original designers (in the tabletop miniatures industry), but it has never before been adapted to computer games.
So, we're the first that get to mine the rich background of that universe, and it's been quite fun breathing three-dimensional life into it.The bulk of the heavy lifting in the project is complete now. By that, I mean that all the levels are in - the monsters have all been created, textured and animated; the game is functional (mostly) and we're close to seeing the end of 'new features.' We've been pretty busy lately: - The programmers have been putting in improved feedback tools so the designers can watch the AI think in real time. This will help us better tune the combat so that the fun factor of melee and spell play is where we want it. The monsters think out loud in word balloons over their heads, telling us when they're fleeing, running for help or attacking a specific target. That, plus other tools, will help us really hone the gameplay over the next couple of months.- We've almost completed the GameSpy integration for the multiplayer.
Now, we'll be able to game together on the same servers, producers and designers in California along with the rest of the team in Taiwan! - We've completed the voice recording for all the parts in the first two (out of six) regions in the game. The actors were all fantastic, and the voices came out great. Some of the voice mixing experiments we did for the Solonavi (one of the races in the game) came out far exceeding my own personal expectations. (Thanks, DSonic!) Those voices should be in-game soon, and I'm looking forward to the reactions of the rest of the team when they hear them. We've got the cutscenes and quest flags into all six regions of Mage Knight: Apocalypse now, so you can play through all the missions in the game, from start to finish.
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Homeworld classic. That's a big milestone, but it really just opens up the can of polishing things that still remain to be done, so it's only the beginning of the end.- The sound team got the audio effects in for the environments of the first two regions. All the areas just came to life suddenly when that was done, and the areas became more real. Extremely cool! Once we get the NPCs moving around and talking more, it will be even better. We just started sketching out the details of the E3 demo. It's that time of the year again, and Mage Knight: Apocalypse will be back on the floor - Landshatter Dragon and all.
So come on by and check out the game while you're on the show floor. We're the booth with the dancing girls. You can't miss us. One of the five characters in the game (Kithana of Uhlrik) now has a complete set of skills.
All three skill trees have functional skills with special effects. I know that doesn't sound like much, but you can't imagine the mountain of work that goes with designing, coding and tricking out the effects for each individual skill.Seriously. It's amazing how much work goes into each little game box you see on a store shelf.
It's a wonder we ever get one of these things done! Overall, the creation of the game has been extremely smooth. Working with InterServ has been great, and we're looking forward to having enough success with Mage Knight: Apocalypse that we can make even more games in this really rich fantasy world.
We have many miles to go before we sleep. Back to work we go. See ya later, Dave Georgeson Senior Producer, Mage Knight: Apocalypse Namco Bandai Games.
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