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'!

  

In the wake of Star Trek's 40th anniversary celebrations, Star Trek Online Executive Producer Daron Stinnett dropped by the startrek-online.net forums to give fans a heads-up on the progress of STO. And the big news is that they've moved from pre-production and are slowly beginning to turn paper plans and blue-sky ideas into gaming reality.

The STO team moved almost right next door to the team doing Perpetual's other offering, Gods & Heroes, and they're looking forwards "to being just a flight of stairs away from the wealth of MMO expertise contained that is the G&H team." With access to Perpetual's server, they've begun initial tests such as logging in, and creating and manipulating characters in a game environment.

Daron claims that the space combat engine for STO is in a "surprisingly polished form... this early in development." Over the next few weeks the team will work on basic skills, effects, damage modeling, AI, and more weapons and other innovations to flesh out the engine. Once this is accomplished, the team will move on to creating the first "game sector" - the playing field itself - and work on one of those issues that Star Trek fans will immediately recognize and nitpick: travel time and ship speeds in both exploring the game environment and combat against player and NPC opponents.

Yes, player opponents. Daron says PvP is a "wonderful" way to resolve disagreements within the dev team. The prospect of  commanding a Starfleet starship (or even just crewing it) has never been more fun.

Perpetual Studios, developer of Star Trek Online, is still keeping mum about the MMORPG but FiringSquad was able to squeeze out a few info from the game's design director Glen Dahlgren. In the interview, Dahlgren talks about their plans for the game including historical references and dealing with veteran players.

According to Dahlgren, they will be taking certain elements from the celebrated series but at the same time creating new ones, just like how every Star Trek era has something unique to set it apart from previous ones.

Although the MMO will be based on the Voyager timeline, the game's timeline will be set twenty years after what we have seen on screen. Everything has evolved: technology, ships, and yes, the uniforms too. However, they will be keeping some of the themes and construction techniques but with a more updated look. The show's characters that you love and/or hate will still be there, as well as time travelling and the familiar planets and systems.

On concerns whether the MMO will be based on licensed properties, Dahlgren says that they have set precautions and goals to make sure that this doesn't happen with Star Trek Online: first, make sure that the underlying game is solid and approachable, second, fulfill popular fantasies. For the first goal, Dahlgren says it's important that the game attracts not only fans of the license but also fans of the genre itself to keep coming back and playing the game.

As for fulfilling popular fantasies, while they would want to incorporate changes and give the game an evolved look, it's important to keep in mind also the important elements that the show's fans will be looking for. This is why they are designing the game in such a way that it starts with a noob-friendly solo experience. Then the game will progress as the player finds his way aboard a ship with other players and contributes his skills and powers, as well as engage in combat with enemies. Dahlgren let it slip that they're working on providing other channels for high-end content and not just pure combat, but refused to further comment on it.

Dahlgren insists that it's still too early to reveal the game's specifics and in-depth details, but tells that players will be able to choose whether to group in space or join a crewed ship. Gamers will also be able to fly more powerful ships and vessels and the captain will have some incredible abilities that players will surely look forward to.

He also reveals that they are currently working on ensuring that new players will get the help he needs when faced with unfamiliar terrain. There won't be auto-leveling of characters but they will provide tools to make off-line time valuable to the online experience. Other than that, Dahlgren won't reveal anything else. Looks like we have no choice but to wait and see, and keep checking with us for further updates.

Kahplah'!

Just recently, hundreds of Star Trek fans trooped over to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle to celebrate the 40th year of one of the most-beloved science fiction television programs of the century, Star Trek.

Boasting six television series, 10 full-length feature films and numerous novels, comic books, video games (including titles for the next-gen consoles and handhelds!) and various merchandise, the official birthday of the Star Trek franchise is on the 8th of September, when it aired its first episode and enthralled audiences everywhere in 1966. Forty years later, the mark of the Enterprise and all the people and races who have ever boarded it remains strong.

The Star Trek 40th Anniversary Gala Celebration & Conference was a three-day event where fans, actors, scientists and entrepreneurs gathered to pay homage to Gene Roddenberry's creation as well as marvel at how Star Trek may have changed the world. For one thing, one of the attendees was the man who watched a Star Trek episode who was so inspired by the show that he later on came to invent the thing that we now know as the cellular phone.

Having ingrained itself so deeply into society, the influence of Roddenberry's fictional universe in real life is undeniable, as everyday, inventors and creators work to try to achieve or emulate something that they may have seen in the series: badge communication devices, a gadget that one can scan over a person to do a complete medical analysis, maybe even an actual, functioning tricorder. In a way, they are the people who seem to have taken the mission to "go boldly where no man has gone before" to heart.

With games such as Star Trek: Legacy for the Xbox 360, as well as the MMORPG Star Trek:Online on its way, truly, there's no stopping this title just yet as fans still clamor for more and more each time, and each time, developers (who are most likely fans themselves) are more than happy to oblige.

So, take that bat'leth off the wall, stand tall, stand proud, and don't let any p'tahk convince you otherwise.

Warning: this article is somewhat technical, and will be enjoyed mostly by those of you who build your own gaming content. If you don't know much about 3D modelling and rendering - or you flunked geometry - you might want to skip this one...

Part of what makes PC and online gaming enjoyable are realistic graphics. Any first-year art student will tell you that - aside from perspective - light and shadows are the difference between eye-popping, life-like images and crude cartoons.

In the 3-D environment of gaming, realistic light and shadow effects are usually achieved at the expense of huge amounts of processing power and RAM. This is especially true of dynamic surfaces like skin and clothing illuminated by a single source light (spotlights or lamps). It is, however, less problematic for static, rigid objects illuminated by an "infinite light" (like daylight or stars) .

Happily for the developers of Star Trek Online, the main characters - starships - fall into the latter category. The initial experiments were with a technique called "pre-computed radiance," or PRT. This is the most realistic way to reproduce complex shadows and surface scattering. It is, however, computationally very "expensive" in terms of RAM and processing resources. In practical terms, PRT works only at the vertex level - meaning more vertices produce better results. Unfortunately, more vertices also add up to a bigger model in terms of bytes, which means more processing power is required - the end result being a slower-moving game.

Further experiments were conducted with shadow mapping and stencil shadowing. The former requires no special processing on the geometry (the model itself) and has several advantages over the latter, including the ability the produce soft-edged shadows and the production of "screen-door" type transparency.

Ultimately, the decision was made to use a combination of single-point lighting and an environmental cube map. The first represents a main source of light - it this case, the nearest star. The second consists of more diffuse lighting sources, such as the ghostly glow of a nearby nebula. Shadows were created with a stenciling technique, which produced more realistic effects at close-up perspectives.

Have they been successful? Take a look at the results in the picture above and judge for yourself.