Porter

Archived Transcript with Limited Screen-Grabs: CNN Mars East Office November 19, 2092 8:12:35am MRT1 (Mars Region Time 1) 27 minutes Post-Cataclysm Commercial: ...With Solaris Galacom’s new subspace multiphase technology... never drop a call or lose your connection again. Solaris. Discover the Difference. Reporter 1: Marsha Penner reporting live from the Capitol Building in downtown Cydonia, Mars, where the Carpathian and Terran talks have deteriorated over terraforming rights over Venus. Talks took place this morning and quickly escalated over the claims that Carpathia and the Earth described city-state of Berengaria were stealing talent and highly educated individuals from multiple nations on the planet. It’s important to note that officials from the Carpathian government did not deny these.... Announcer: This is CNN Mars Breaking News. Producer: Camera two. Main Reporter: We’re going to get back to Marsha Penner in just a moment. We’ve been following some breaking news this morning, where widespread reports are coming in from across Mars today of widespread internet and massive communications disruptions with Earth. We have several unconfirmed reports that a major solar flare has caused widespread communications and power disruptions across Earth, starting at about 8am local time. We’ve yet to hear word from the Interplanetary Space Agency for clarity to the situation, and will let you know when we receive a statement. Federal officials has been sent to investigate, and have sent a crew out for more information. We’ll continue reporting once we get more details. We now go back to Marsha and her report on the Carpathian-Earth talks. Reporter 1: ... officials on both sides have called for a temporary moratorium. According to Terran officials, this is in order to give both sides time to cool down during the talks, as well as discuss the legal ramifications pertaining to the Terran accusations of the Carpathian government. However, an unidentified Carpathian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed that the Carpathian government agreed to the talks only as a formality and have no intention of giving up Venus under any circumstances. The same individual also noted that talks were likely not to continue due to the Terran officials not remaining on topic. Back to you in the news room John. Main Reporter: Thanks Marsha. In medical news today, medical researchers on Tol Sirion, New Carpathia have finished and widely published their results of a cure for the HIV virus this week, with many scientists showing reproducible results in what is now being hailed at the true cure to HIV. When questioned about why they shared the results, they were quoted as saying that it was “An important breakthrough for all humans, and needed to be shared in order to completely eliminate the virus from the universe.” Making top headlines in travel, the Interplanetary Transportation Commission has announced plans for a hypergate to be constructed between Mars and the Saturn moon of Titan. The Saturn Mining Company will be paying for 50% of the initial construction costs, with the rest coming from bonds issued by the IPTC. The new gate is being touted as a major step forward in hypergate technology, with the capability to accelerate ships to theoretical speeds of over 350 times the speed of light, versus the current 10 times the speed of light of current hypergates. Making foreign news, civil war continues on Serapha between the Rouc and Cruic. Now at the 5th month mark, both sides are refusing to attend peace treaty talks on Earth. Terran officials have suspended aid relief efforts to the planet for fear of safety to those involved, and have begun shipping workers back to Earth. The fighting appears to have started over a member of the Cruic royal family being found dead in the city of.... ...I’m sorry, I’m being told by my producer that we’re going to go to Scott Corgis in the news room with more information on the escalating communication blackout with Earth. Scott? Reporter 2: Thanks John. We’re now hearing scattered reports that the current communication blackout resulted from Berengarian hackers having launched a massive cyber attack on several major telecommunication hubs located across Earth. Berengaria officials currently have been unable to be reached during the blackout, and unnamed officials for the Carpathian government are fully denying the reports, stating that no evidence has been present to support the claims. Terran officials also are refusing to comment until they are able to reach their contacts on Earth. Terran government responders from Mars are expected to reach Earth within the next few moments, so we hope to hear.... Main Reporter: Scott, sorry to interrupt, but I’m getting word from our producer that we now have a live feed from our news crew. We’re going to switch over to Senior Correspondent Chris Muniz who is currently on route to Earth. Chris, what can you tell us? Reporter 3: John, I’m here aboard a transport vessel and were about 20 seconds from Earth. Government officials have not replied to our hails while in the gate at this time, and ships will have been planet side for about 5 minutes at this point. We’re going to stay on the line as we leave the gate. We’re now here.... and.... oh holy [bleep]..... Oh... oh god.... Main Reporter: Chris, what are you seeing? C-can we get a live video feed from the ship? Chris? Reporter 3: It... it.... its gone... its.... Oh god.... I don’t know how to describe it John. Earth... the moon.... they’ve been destroyed. {silence followed by crash in main news room and muffled cries of agony} Main Reporter: Uh... for those of you just joining us.... We.... we’re getting live feed from Earth where a major catastrophe appears to have occurred... END TRANSCRIPT

Hmmm... Good read. I love the title as well. Quite bully.   And, as always, great photos. :)

Um... not to sound like I'm always against the grain of all of you, but... hasn't Sony been hacked before? People obviously still buy games for their system... So was Xbox Live a while back... yet they had tons of games and a huge number of people playing on their servers... You can probably show ever game system, or even every online server dealing with credit cards, have been hacked in recent history. Obviously, people don't stop using online banking, or stop playing on all the gaming systems available. Obviously, yes, it sucks that Origin was hacked, but sometimes things need hacked to show serious flaws that need fixed. Am I happy that EA has added the required Origin log in? No, it does suck, but then again, we don't see a massive number of people being upset about similar software usage environments, such as Steam. (And before you ask, yes, Steam does sometimes check for authorization on games).

Sorry for the delayed astonished reply! Been on a 72 hour shift followed by a day's worth of painting... Anyways, yes, umm... Thanks for the award! It's been a bit of a crazy month in the forums, but I'm glad to try and turn it into controlled madness versus total chaos. Congrats as well to Darn42, you seriously do some amazing work that I don't think I could ever do. Seriously, you giving out your knowledge is what makes this a great site to work with. -Porter

-cough cough- Ocram, curved suspension bridges do in fact exist.... -cough-

Given the fact that they've pushed the release date back, and Guillaume is actively looking at the forums (especially the transportation forum) its obvious that they are trying to give us what we want. However, I imagine this is a rather difficult game to develop with a ton of stuff needed to be programmed in from the ground up. Will I be upset if I can't build super highways or subways, or even EL-trains upon release of the game? Sure! However, I also realize that its not exactly an easy task top have ready by March. Do I have faith that Maxis is going to try? Yes, namely because they know we want it. But guess what, sometimes its simply impossible to please everyone. I'd rather have something done right, and wait for it to be done that way, versus playing with something they didn't get to test. Would you want to step on a plane or ride in a car that had been rushed to the market and not fully tested? No. Would you eat raw steak or eggs or raw cake batter just because you are hungry right that second? No, you wait until its fully cooked. I know we want some of the features, NOW, but this is a new game with a new engine running it. So how about we try and look at this perspective. Just my two cents worth...

MaxisGuillaume: Thank you for actually taking the time to look in here and getting feedback in the game. I know you must be busy and I know I for one really do appreciate you taking the time to actually talk to us and answer our questions. That and I know I for one look forward to seeing how the game evolves up to release time.

Would like to see agriculture in the game (especially since I live in the middle of the US) but I can understand if they make it part of an expansion pack (just better throw some other things in there as well to make it worth the money). One thing I would like to know... would it be possible to have servers located somewhere other than with EA if down the road they decided to close their servers? Hopefully someone from Maxis sees this and can give up some insight?

Erm... what? I don't think Maxis hired Dirk.... or Zel for that matter... I know the site has been having some server issues and Zel has been out sick this week. Looking forward to reading the write-ups when they get posted.

Just a pure speculation or even wishful thinking here, but I have a feeling that with the regional game play being an "asynchronous" system, that the city save system might store the game save locally and uploads a copy to the "cloud" much like how it works on a Mac or any other cloud-based system I've dealt with. So in terms of this, you can save your city even when dealing with an internet outage. I think this might be what they mean by needing an always on connection. Granted, I have no clue whether they are using this as a form of DRM, but if they are saying you can use it anywhere, as long as you have the client software to access the information, it may just mean that you need an always on connection to be able to update in real time to the server so that the it can update to a region. Just speculation on my part.

Agreed. NOT SC4. It is most likely from the SC13 game. Incorrect angle, textures are different, tilt shift focus is present, curved roads, and the buildings in SC4 do not break up like that (with underlying structural elements showing during break up). Color palette is similar to other SC13 screenshots, flora also similar to SC13. Not uncommon for Maxis to reuse general building ideas from previous versions of the SimCity franchise. So if this is "faked" SC13 shot, its a rather intricate and extremely well done one. Which makes me look to it being real. And leaves me to ask why Maxis would bother faking something on their own Facebook page.

Personally, I'm amazed at the amount of stuff we ARE getting. It almost looks like they're incorporating many of the ideas from the NWM and NAM mods into the base game play. So, maybe we should all keep in mind that Maxis is building this game from the ground up. That and so far, it looks as though they aren't really doing much yet with the underground layer yet. (No water lines or sewage lines or even power lines that we have to plop underground)... I have a feeling that they are still working on it. Taking a huge shot in the dark here, I'd say with them creating a brand-new layer into the game (assuming they have no underground layer built in yet) they're still trying to work out all the bugs with this new data layer, in getting it to work with the other layers. I agree that it most likely is going to be an expansion pack, but sometimes these can be a pleasant surprise. Keep in mind the amount of stuff we got as a community with the Rush Hour expansion. So, instead of whining about how we don't have subways (keep in mind many large cities can function without subway systems), let's look at the bright side... we're getting a lot of stuff with the game from the looks of it, and they seem to be actively trying to get it up and running if the Live Broadcast was anything to go by. We're still several months away from release, so now is not the time to completely dismiss the game. If it we're January, maybe... but it's still October. Just my two cents worth...

Wow... so.... Will Wright went off the deep end eh? Sounds like an awful gaming idea. Just awful.

A Foreword from the Author and Table of Contents Hello all. It's been a rather long time since Ive written anything. Or done any photoshopping. Or posted anything.... Yeah, you get the picture. Been very busy with real life things, and now I'm finally able to sit down and write again. I've decided to make a very short story here for the site for Halloween. As you might have gotten from the description on the story, its going to be a midwestern set story, with an actual setting (albeit with fake city names and such). As such, since I will be using possibly real names and or locations, its time for that fun little disclaimer... Any relationship to or mentioning of any actual person, living, dead, undead, possessed, or otherwise under the power of the supernatural, biological attack, or any other conceivable situation is completely unintentional by the author. In the unforeseen event that any monetary value were to ever be derived by said author due strictly to the use of the name of the aforementioned person, dead, undead, or living.... tough cookies, because I'll have already spent the money. Any correlation to the events in this story to real life are completely coincidental, although I would like the rights to saying I told you so if such events were to ever occur. Lastly, in the event that such places created strictly for the use in the story become true locations in the future, or if such places gain popularity in the off chance they do exist, the author demands full right to be king of such place, and all shall worship him. Okies.... since that has been gotten out of the way, off to the good part. I hope to try and post something every week until Halloween for this story, most likely on Thursday or Friday, as long as my schedule permits it. If I don't, feel free to annoy me (within reason) until I get the next update posted. Also, feedback is appreciated, as well as constructive criticism. Lastly, if you read this far, kudos and a cookie for you. -Porter PS: And a picture of ninja kittens. Since it's probably the last cute, cuddly thing you'll see in this area for a looooooong time. Table of Contents -coming soon-

DOD Executive Order NABWDA_BRC_IND-1/00143-P4 The following are screen captures from a secure DOD server in Washington, DC END FILE UPLOAD

I agree with E3 unfortunately. I don't really see anything on his website's portfolio that would tell me Stupid Fun Club is even remotely related to gaming..... Otherwise, like Dirk said, time to get back to work and make SC6.

For future reference, please do not post your updates in the comments bar. Post them in the update section of your CJ. If you are unsure how to do this, please refer to either myself or another ST moderator. -Porter (ST Moderator)

From what I hear and have read, the suspect had some very severe mental issues. Coming from the medical field, I can only sadly say that this kind of thing is only going to happen more until we start working on the mental health side of medicine and provide a bit more help to people like him. If he would have had the proper medical and psychological help he needed, who knows, maybe this sad and needless thing wouldn't have had to happen. As for the Westboro Baptist Crazies..... we, here in Kansas City, have learned to either a) ignore them -or- b) make more noise than they can and drown them out so that the families they attack can have some sort of piece. -Porter

So, if you haven't read the description, this is going to be a new CJ by me, your favorite resident photoshopper/writer/eccentric crazy person with a scary knowledge of human anatomy. These stories are all ideas that have been floating around in the back of my head for a long time that I figured would like to get out and have a breath of fresh air. I'll try and update as often as possible, but hey.... nobody is perfect. This page is going to be the general news page, what I've been working on, when to expect an update, and I'll even occasionally post a sneak peek at updates from time to time. So make sure to check this page out often! Anyways, here's a quick look at what's coming up soon. Bonus points and cookies to whomever finds the all the easter eggs and translates out what the theme of the first story will be! Jacob

DECEMBER UPDATE! Well, part 1 is finalized of the first volume. Not at all I think what people will be expecting from me. (Let's see you all translate that one out ) In the middle of a huge round of transporting all my files over to several new pieces of equipment (read: new computers) and that's been taking a huge chunk of my time. All I have left is to finish up the city for its shots, then off to the photoshopping phase and then I'll be posting the new stuff. YAY!!! All in all, been pretty busy with the plot of Volume 1 (heck, left it open for further plot.... again, try translating that one out), and I'm slowly working on volume 2. All I'm going to say is that it involes strong magnets, the human brain, and an awesome explosion scene. No working title to it yet, but it should be a lot of fun. Sadly, no pictures to leave you all with this time, but I'll tell you all one thing.... Volume 1 is going to be set in a new city, and I'm bringing back out the snowy effects. Have a great holiday everyone! -Jacob

Personal Replies: Achean: Thanks! And congrats on the Trixie! astronelson: So far, you are THE closest to the plot behind the story. You get..... (rummages around kitchen and Christmas leftovers) a gingerbread man for your answer! gio10469: Keep looking.... and think HEX.... oh and if you have a smartphone maybe look for a barcode you can scan nathanthemayor: Thanks! BlondeTwiggy: Not OFFICALLY, but it is on a major hiatus (1 update in a year is not good....). This story should be one you like, and I definately plan on updating a lot more. And yes..... you are very very VERY close to the meaning there.

Yeah....moving this to off-topic.... not the CBC forum -Porter

This thread should have been lock ages ago.... Its superceded by the Show Us Your Maps! pArt 2 thread. Locking it now. -Porter [sT Moderator]

Reserved for table of contents