Master of Orion Announcement Trailer

Masters of Orion Reboot Coming From World of Tanks Dev

Key members of original game's team are working on the reboot.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/masters-of-orion-reboot-coming-from-world-of-tanks/1100-6427911/?utm_source=daily_updates_registered&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Master+of+Orion

Total Annihilation and Master of Orion are strategy game classics

"Total Annihilation and Master of Orion are strategy game classics," said Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi. "Although it's too soon to disclose any details, we are more than willing to give a new lease of life to these games most of us grew up playing. It's exactly where our major focus will be."
(http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/2/4582218/wargaming-net-acquires-total-annihilation-master-of-orion)

Woot! Master of Orion IPs sold off at Atari auction

"Interesting to see Planetary Annihilation makers Uber go for Total Annihilation, and that Stardock bid on Master of Orion. Both are definitely in their respective areas of interest, but you’re in for a hard time if you’re bidding against Wargaming right now. Stardock didn’t go away empty handed, though – having taken hold of Star Control."

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/07/22/total-annihilation-franchise-bought-by-wargaming-the-owners-of-gas-powered-games/

...and the winner is:
Master of Orion Franchise
Successful Bidder: Wargaming World Limited

Back-Up Bidder: Stardock Systems, Inc (hehe, they did hate tactical combat...so this seems good news for MOO2 fans...)

Master of Onion

IE PC game designer Interview: Steve Barcia (Simtex, Circa 1994)

The youtube video description states:

Freshly after releasing Master of Magic, the now Defunct Interactive Entertainment CD Mag (magazine entirely on a CD) obtained an exclusive interview with the now legendary game designer and SimTex founder, Steve Barcia. They talk about what inspired him, how he works and a few questions specifically about SimTex and Master of Orion. Overall, a good interview process. Steve has since moved on to Retro Studios, heading Metroid Prime... then on to Electronic Arts. His profile picture on IGN shows that it looks like he's lost weight since 1994. [...]

He probably refers to this profile: http://games.ign.com/top-100-game-creators/88.html

Streaming Games On Ustream!

Hey, everyone, Gor here! You may know me from the IRC chat; and if not, I am often hanging around in there, so you'll probably see me some time. I am posting here to say that I am going to start streaming my games between myself and my friends, and possibly some members of the IRC if they are into it. I'll be posting an embedded player here, so that anyone stopping by can watch the games, and I'll try to keep everyone up to date on any scheduled streams. Hopefully this will give us all some fun content to enrich the community with. :) (Edit: Switching to Ustream)



Replay archive can be found here: http://www.ustream.tv/user/UniquelyDefined/videos

The Fastest Speedruns

Last week the German game magazine PC Games reported about the Speedruns Archive and listed the ten fastest speedruns. 3rd fastest speedrun of all games is the following MOO2 advanced game versus 1 AI. Just 39 seconds:

MOO2 Live Broadcasts

You may have observed that we had again several MOO2 live broadcasts on this website in the recent days. Earlier this year, justin.tv disabled the autoplay feature of their embedded videos – this made their embedded videos pretty much useless as there was no indicator of an ongoing broadcast at all – and therefore we stopped broadcasting. The autoplay feature is still disabled but they have implemented an indicator for live broadcasts again. You will now see - similar to the window on the right side - a red live button and a snapshot of the active broadcast:

Furthermore, the archive works now correctly and we have the option to extract highlights or even complete games. Let me give you a few examples:

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

Cab here at bottom in this 5way taking out an early hydra at turn 48. Evil Sky was in the center with his telepathic race but had not enough fleet to cause trouble later on.

Some fragments of an 1v1 Cab vs Deathlord. BTW, long segments will be splitted into several 15min fragments:

Cabman vs Deathlord Pre (Build Up) 1/2 and 2/2

Cabman vs Deathlord Contact and the final (test) battle (Deathlord already conceded beforehand):

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

Additionally, justin.tv seems to offer enough space for free to present full games. Here are two duels between Cab and Bork:

Duel 1, 20^th July:

Cab vs Bork - Before Contact 1/8, 2/8, 3/8, 4/8, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8 and 8/8

Cab vs Bork First Contact

Cabman vs Bork t101-t114 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5 and 5/5

Bork's side (Post game hotseat analysis of bork's side. Bork was frustrated by Cab's spies.)

Duel 2, 26^th July:

Cab vs Bork (t0-t109) 1/11, 2/11, 3/11, 4/11, 5/11, 6/11, 7/11, 8/11, 9/11, 10/11 and 11/11

Cab vs Bork (Contact-t123) 1/10, 2/10, 3/10, 4/10, 5/10, 6/10, 7/10, 8/10, 9/10 and 10/10

Cab vs Bork (Final Turns) 1/4, 2/4

The begin of the final battle:

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

and outcome:

Watch live video from MOO2 LIVE on Justin.tv

Just PM me in our Quakenet channel if you are also interested to broadcast your Multiplayer or Singleplayer Games on this blog. Depending on the feedback I will possibly write a detailed instruction for optimal broadcast settings and/or adding new channels for simultaneously broadcasting xways.