Let us not underestimate that last sentence. This is an important step for the gaming community, not just for the Apple users but for all PC gamers. What Am I talking about? Competition. Having games created for and released only on one PC platform inevitably hurts the market as a whole. Think of how the console market would look like if the only one available was a Playstation. Now imagine if that one console maker released an update that gave you a bloated unusable interface and then forced all it’s game developers to create games for the platform because it was the only way to use new features.
The point I’m trying to make here is that we have choice and a competitive market with consoles. This isn’t even about games, it’s about people being able to use the system they feel most comfortable with.

The Apple platform is now as good as any PC for gaming, gone are the architecture differences of decades past. It’s about time game developers saw this market for the potential it has, but it’s up to us as gamers to help support Valve and any other companies that create games natively for the Mac. Supporting Valve now is an integral part of making this work. Why? Because you’ll not be finding any other large studios games on the Apple Steam platform for a while, at least I think. My guess is that the large publishers will be looking to Valves sales of it’s own Steam based games before making any decisions about bringing their ported or porting/creating games for the platform.

For the good of PC gaming itself, that is why we need to support Steam on Macs.

If you’ve not caught any of the hubbub on BoingBoing or seen any of the teaser images head over to the article Gallery: Valve tease Steam/Half-Life/Left 4 Dead for Macs, in style for a look see.

Update: There is an interesting article and discussion at rockspapershotgun.com where they also point out a list of already ported Mac games. Quite a few in that list so we may see more than just Valve games at launch, however I still think the big publishers will be looking at Steam sales to decide whether to make an Apple push themselves or not.

This time I’ve decided to post my progress on the blog to give you the option of tagging along for the visual ride. Perhaps you’re not a gamer, not into Sci-Fi or simply want to comment on my choices or special moments and compare them to yours.

To follow the full visual progress head over to my xFire page for Mass Effect 2, bookmark it and check back for progress updates.

If however you’d rather just jump into this page and see the highlights once in a while bookmark this page and check back.

I’ll also be adding some info to my Gamer DNA page, head over there and follow me if it’s your preferred platform.

*Spoiler Alert*

From here on in it gets a little spoiler filled as the images you see may not have happened in your game yet – or at all depending on your choices. I may also reference outside information I’ve found out about certain choices or scenarios you’ll face/I have faced. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Collector’s Edition Armor

Really nice shot of the Collector’s glowing eyes.

Poor old Normandy

Back to the Citadel

Nice to see some other areas of the Citadel, and their associated views.

The good stuff

Woooah that Whiskey made me drunk!

Tattooed Lady

First close up look at Jacks tattoos. That outfit looks a bit nippy for space though.

No Cable?

These colonists obviously lovers of Satellite TV.

Old friends

Hi Garus! It’s good to see the old faces from ME1. I love that Bioware has all these relationships planned out across all three games.  You can also see my shiny gold and red camo armor -this paragon deserves some bling!

The bad guys

I know your face now Mr bad guy! You kinda look like the dude from Independence Day though, shame about the type casting…

Yay Tali

Tali is by far my favorite character in Mass Effect, could well be all the mystery. Definitely have to play through twice now that she’s a romance option.

Amazing artwork

I loved the artwork in ME1, but they’ve really maxed out the detail in ME2. The following shot is just a random room you have to pass through to get from a to b in a mission. I was stopped in my tracks and had to take a screenshot, the small size doesn’t do it justice -head over to the xFire page and check out the natural view.

Similar rovers

I’m pulling this one out as it kind of fits in to the “looks-a-bit-like” category.  Seen Aliens the Special Edition? Then you might see a similarity here.

Ahh Illium

The Mass Effect series does a good job at feeling Epic, Illium doesn’t disappoint.

Old flames

Liara, my romance from the ME1 character I brought in, is very happy to see me. She is also another reason why the game is getting at least two plays; My main Shepard from ME1 would like to continue the relationship with Liara through to ME3 without any cheating consequences.
You can also see a shot of my shiny new -kind of scary looking, helmet in this image.

Charlies Angels

Drive core

Get lost in it’s swirls…

Tali’s trial

Where I verbally out maneuver the Admirals.

Hands in the air

Welcome

Wait a minute, that’s not soup!

Samara glows

Loving the new particle effect, they look great even on my older MacBookPro.

Model collection complete

I kept killing the fish…

Sofa fight

My gas giant

Reaper insides

You just know there’s some nasty stuff in here.

Crazy escape

I didn’t sign up for this shhhh….t

On the offensive

The collector base must be destroyed!

They what?

Not cool Mr Reapers not cool!

BOOM!

Must out run blast…

Oh crap

Now that’s just depressing. Bring it on though, I saved the Rachni in ME1, the Queen will come through!

You know what this means

And that’s it for the short image highlights of Reishika Shepard’s play through of Mess Effect 2. If you’d like to see the whole screenshot collection please head over to my ME2 xFire screenshots page.

Some time ago I created a number of maps which were built using just one shape. While these maps looked great in region view they weren’t exactly the best to play – One was very hard and expensive to build on, while the other was so open and easy it got a little boring in the end.

I had an interesting time making Island Nation a more natural map while balancing out some open areas for large cities. I decided I’d like to make another natural looking map but again limit myself to only using one shape to build all areas of the region. I also imposed a few more guidelines upon my design;

- Only circles can be used to make the map.
- – Further: only four sizes of circle at four different shades may be used (smaller > lighter [125px, 60px, 30px, 10px]).

- The map must contain;
- – Two rivers joining.
- – One island.
- – Geological activity (so I can have mountains on low land).

The region is made up of nine large size cities so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting some nice large populations growing. I hope there is just enough landscape variation that it makes things interesting and you get some good ideas for building different types of communities.

I should have some time over the holidays to update you with how my region is going after I’ve started a city in each area. I have still got that Deadly Furry Cute relaunch to finish too…

Download the New Eden Bay Area region now!

New Eden Bay Area terrain map

New Eden Bay Area region preview

Team Meerkat, the 4 of us, start the Extra Life event at 8am PST (that’s 4pm GMT in the afternoon for you euros) on Saturday, and will continue to play games online for a full 24 hours until 8am (4pm GMT) on Sunday.

There are a few ways you can keep in touch with what we are doing and make sure we’re actually playing games, not goofing off;

Firstly, we will be streaming as much of the gameplay from the event as possible via two streams. We’ll also record the start, finish and any ’special’ moments for repeat viewing.

You can view the live steam from my computer here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/team-meerkat-live-reishi

You can view the live stream from Alik’s computer here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/team-meerkat-extra-life-event

We will also be making an appearance on MAD-Radio twice. Our first appearance will be at the start of the 24 hours to get things underway. The second appearance will be on Sunday, so you can hear how much we are hurting with only a few hours to go.

You can listen to the shows live at;
iTunes/VLC/Winamp – http://mad-radio.sytes.net:88/listen.pls
Windows Media Player – http://mad-radio.sytes.net:88

You can also follow our progress on twitter @teammeerkat

It’s going to be fun!

Update: The team raised a total of $577 for Extra Life 09
Good going team, I hope to see everyone again next year to raise even more!

In designing Island Nation I’ve gone for an archipelago island chain, with a mixture of large, medium and small city tiles.  The overall map size is still fairly small, being a long strip, but because large tiles are included the regions population can get much higher. Each tiles land mass is surrounded by water, in all cases this is enough for marina to be an option, very helpful in the later game to bust those aforementioned caps.

You’ll also notice I’ve gone a lot more realistic with this map. There are still large areas of flat land in some of the city tiles enabling large-scale city building, but the overall feel is closer to what you’d expect from an actual volcanic island chain. You’ll also find reclaiming land from the sea is sometimes your only option to advance.

Download the Island Chain region now!

Island Nation terrain map

Island Nation region preview

Island Nation examples

More look-a-likes
Again I’ve gone for designing a close to full fleet of ships, from the small fighter class all the way up to planet killing dreadnoughts.  While I admit some of these designs look nothing like Star Wars – again probably a good idea to avoid lawyergeddon – some of the larger variants do have a familiar style I’m sure you’ll enjoy.  Again I’ve tired not to accurately recreate anything, but instead put my own twist on a style of ship design I love.

Download right away
This time around I’ve decided not to make anyone ask – and wait an age – for the ability to download the ship designs. I’ve only included the template files again for speedier download, it also allows you the fun of specing the ships out as you see fit. The ships were designed while playing Twilight of the Arnor, so you’ll need that expansion to be able to use them. I’ve also included a readme.txt in case you either don’t know how to, or are having trouble installing the files.

Download the Reileian Exchange ships now

Combat ships
RS Superfin (fighter)

KDS Firetail (fighter)

RS Prowler (frigate)

FI Hunter (assault frigate)

FI Griffin (troop transport cruiser)

KDS Spiker (battlecruiser)

FI Interdictor (battleship)

FI Commandship (dreadnought)

Non-combat ships
All these non-combat ships share the same base hull design. I decided to have the non-combat vessels share a hull to simulate variants coming of the same production line. Some of the hulls differ greatly from their siblings, others have only minor variations.

KDS Colony DSP

KDS Mining DSP

KDS Construct DSP

KDS Trade DSP

Other random screenshots
Heavy-weight group shot (battlecruiser, battleship and dreadnought)

Using the Krynn tech tree helps influence things some what…

Look-a-Like
This new set of ship designs is a veritable fleet of ships based on the much loved, but little supported, Games Workshop [GW] table top game Battle Fleet Gothic [BFG].  I’ve created the fleet using the Imperial ships as a source for inspiration. What I’ve not tried to do is accurately recreate the BFG ship designs, not just because GW likes to protect its IPR with lawyergeddon, but because straight copying something just isn’t fun.  I’ve tried to make my own designs, while using BFG as a base and I hope you’ll be able to recognize them at least somewhat.

UPDATE: Now for download
I’ve now put these ship designs up for your free downloading pleasure. I decided to keep the file size down by only including the template files, it’s more fun to fit them out yourself anyway. The ships were designed while playing Twilight of the Arnor, so you’ll need that expansion to be able to use them. I’ve also included a readme.txt in case you either don’t know how to, or are having trouble installing the files.

Download the Battle Fleet Gothic style ships now.

Combat Ships
Imperial Frigate

Imperial Cruiser

Imperial Battleship

Imperial Dreadnought

Non-Combat
Imperial Transport

Imperial Tanker

Ok so one final Battle Fleet Gothic ship design here – one I’d forgotten I’d done – which is based on one of the larger Space Marine ships.  I’ve been using this 4000 troop capacity monster to one-ship-invade planets in the later game.

Imperial Heavy

Everyone Loves Posters
What’s a nice easy thing to make, print and give away? Posters!  With that decided, all that was left to do was decided on a theme, a theme my friends and I could relate to.  Everyone I know, in one form or another, plays games. So it was an obvious choice really. Posters based on different games for different people was out of the question. After all one of my variables was that this project be ‘quick to create’. Something I could do in a few lunch times, rather than a full blown project.

Along comes a theme
It hit me like a well landed swipe from a +10 to parry shield – sorry. RPGs. Now, while not everyone I knew had played an RPG, many had and those that hadn’t could be at least put into a core RPG bracket.  I’d decided four posters was a good number for a mini series, and that’s how I decided to split up the RPG genre. Lets face it there are really only four types of RPG player. The ‘run up and beat it to death’ type. The ‘let it hit me until it dies of exhaustion’ type. The ’stand at the back and throw things at it’ type. And those ‘wear robes, a pointy hat and kill it with lightning from my finger tips’ types.

The fellowship
So here they are. Four A2 posters, simply illustrated, RPG game themed. Designed for my friends, offered to you to brighten up your office, home, cave, bastion of doom…

They are saved in PDF format so you shouldn’t have trouble printing them on smaller paper if you need to. Free for Personal Use Only.

Download the ‘Melee’ Poster

Download the ‘Ranged’ Poster

Download the ‘Tank’ Poster

Download the ‘Magic’ Poster

Preview

Lets get the ‘really happy’ comment out of the way first shall we. Galactic Civilizations II is one of my favorite strategy games, only a few get close to beating it – Master of Orion 2 anyone – but for the past couple of years I’ve been unable to play it. Why? Simple, I switched to Mac. Which meant using Bootcamp to run XP for all my gaming. That in itself isn’t a problem as all other games run fine under Bootcamp. However GCII refused to run for more than 5 minutes without crashing the computer to restart.  I’d almost lost all hope of playing my beloved game again. Then came GCII 2.0 and I dared to hope.  I’m glad to report that yes 2.0 fixes most of my problems – I still get the odd crash mind – so thank you Stardock. It only took a complete rewrite…

Anyway on to the standalone ship designer. Which some would say should have been there from the start. But I’m not one to moan I loved it without and I love it the same with.  One thing I will note though: if you have a game started and then create ships in the standalone creator you’ll be unable to use them in that game. So either create the ships first or build them in your game as you go.

RP mode on!

Kaizhing Drive Systems (KDS) are a relatively new ship builder but that hasn’t stopped them from being one of the most profitable construction yards within the allied systems. Their strengths are in robust hull design and advanced technology development.

KDS Mining Barge

KDS Firetail Class Homeworld Defense Interceptor

KDS Stalker Class Patrol Cruiser

Fhidai Shipyards (FI) is an aging shipyard based on the edge of allied space. For a long time they were thought bankrupt but on the eve of the insectoid wars their CEO came to allied commanders with impressive ship designs.  Where they obtained the new technology is still unknown.

FI Griffin Class Troop Transport

FI Interdictor Class Battleship

RP over!

As you can see I had great fun with the ship builder and I’m sure they’ll perform excellent on the field when I play a game. I’ll leave the Huge size ships until later. Got to have something to look forward to.

Why? Well that’s simple – and I’m sure every SC4 fan will agree – sometimes you want to play SimCity 4 but don’t want to spend time adding to a current large region which will – and it will – zap all your time away.  What we need is something quick and small that will only take a few hours total to play.

This map came to life while researching art deco stained glass for a project.  In short it’s a stained glass window style design consisting of two medium and eight small city zones.  You’ll notice in my haste I set the sea level too low and as such most of the map is water.  At this point my usual course of action would be to jump back in to Photoshop and fix the issue.  As I’d not yet designed an archipelago I thought it would make an interesting challenge to leave as-is. Also note the shallowness of the surrounding water. It should make reclaiming land relatively cheap.

Download the Stain region now!

Stain terrain map

Stain region preview