The Star Trek Online first ever gameplay video has finally been unveiled, as promised, by Cryptic Studios at the Star Trek Convention held recently in Las Vegas. For more details on what went down, head on over to full article.

A Star Trek MMORPG has been long overdue, in my opinion, but will the developers of Star Trek Online be able to give justice to the series? Well, we have a handful of new details that may help you answer that question. Details after the link.

Whether you're a trekkie, a trekker, or just a fan of Star Trek, you must be very excited that Cryptic Studios has taken up the development of Star Trek Online. Well, the new developers seem to be on the ball with this one and will be showing off the first gameplay footage of the game this August. To find out more, head on over to the full article.

After Perpetual Entertainment halted development early this year, Cryptic Studios is now taking up the mantle and has announced that it's working on a Star Trek MMO, called Star Trek Online, which is supposed to head to the PC and consoles. Find out more about this upcoming game, as well as see some screenshots, after the jump!

If you were dismayed to find out that P2 Entertainment scrapped its Star Trek Online project and laid off the majority of its employees, there's more bad news for you. A report has recently been circulating, detailing the demise of the online gaming outfit. Is there any weight in that news bit? Read the full article and find out.

Bad news for the Trekkies, in case they were hoping to hear more about the progress on Star Trek Online. Perpetual Entertainment's has recently announced that they've ceased development of the said MMORPG. You can find out the details over in the full article.

 

How does one go about translating concept art into the environments we see in MMORPGs? This is the topic of the latest Star Trek Online DevLog written by Perpetual Entertainment's Mike Stemmle. He walks us through the process of developing the different in-game structures that we often take for granted.

The process begins with the design team choosing a building they will be converting from the available concept art. Once the decision has been made, the concept artist needs to create more concept sketches showing the object from various perspectives. It is at this point that adjustments to scale are also made since most MMORPG's structures generally have bigger doors and pathways than those found in real life.

Once that is done, the building is then dissected into different pieces so that the modelers and texture artists will have an idea of how to group the different items into modular components. This process has to be done so that all the created sprites can also be used in other buildings.

After all of that, the same process is then repeated for the interior of the structure. When the interior has been finalized, the concept team begins to create the different props that will serve as items inside and around the structure. Once these get approved they are converted into in-game objects.

Unfortunately, Stemmle ends the DevLog at this point saying that the rest of the process will be discussed in a future article. Well, that's something we can all look forward to. Star Trek Online has yet to have a definite release date but it is slated for some time this year. While waiting for more news on this, take some time to go over some of the concept art that will be converted into in-game sprites.

  

The full article awaits after the jump!

Although Perpetual Entertainment is keeping a tad bit too mum for our liking, we've now got some reason to rejoice. The Star Trek Online website is already active! There, you can register your email to get some updates and news about the upcoming MMO based on the 40-year running space opera.

The news section of the site doesn't have anything relatively new though. Their last entry dates back to November. Be rest assured though, the devs will surely release more info as the come along. Now that the site's up, we can expect a star mass' worth of content for the game. That's definitely something to look forward to.

And because we think this is damn well worth doing a happy dance over, we might as well let Captain Kirk himself do it instead! Check out this YouTube classic below:

We're beaming you up to their site. "Read" link, engage.

Daron Stinnett, executive producer of Perpetual Entertainment's Star Trek Online, was recently interviewed on MMORPG.com's weekly podcast regarding the game's progress so far. A lot was said regarding space and ground-based combat, setting, and various characters from the TV series making cameos.

Development-wise, he says that so far they've already managed to get the game to show worlds to fly around in and walk around in, and characters up and running around. He says that they're spending a lot of time now working on their combat system and fine-tuning it.

Get to read more about gameplay, setting, and some geek-out rumors after the Jump!

Because September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, we bring you this Star Trek Online article (hey, there are ships there, too). The game's Lead Designer Glen Dahlgren, Executive Producer Daron Stinnet, and Lead Systems Designer John Yoo shared some news.

• The team is now up to 35 full-time developers. That's a big crowd for a game in its early stages.
• There is an already-somewhat-playable version of the game. They can play it, add features, and test it.
• The team is now fleshing out combat. That's both avatar and space. They started with an auto-attack that fires phasers and torpedoes, and then they'll go from there.

The next big step is creating the first space zone. What is Star Trek without space, the final frontier?
And through it all is the challenge of finding a balance between avatar and space actions: "The first is the interaction between characters and ships. How do you go from one to the other? How do you combine them in missions? How does this affect exploration and discovery?" It's great that Perpetual Entertainment is really trying to get the feel of Star Trek while trying to make a good game with engaging game play.

As for the screenshots that you see, the Star Trek Online team says those are from a real client based on a live demo showed at an IGDA conference! majQa'!