Planeshift
I discovered Planeshift in December. Planeshift is an open source MMORPG game that is fully free to play and run entirely by volunteers. That means all the coding, 3d models, art, animations, and textures are all made by people who care about the game. The project is constantly being worked on and improved, and as it is still under active development it is labelled a ‘tech demo’.
I signed up for the 2d department, and got my first assignment last week! You can see my progress here, including pencil sketches of Hydlaa houses and architectural details that could be included in the game.
Joomla 1.6 Released
In other Open Source news, the long-awaited version 1.6 the Joomla CMS was released on Monday. Download Joomla 1.6 here, or click here to learn more about the release on the Joomstew Podcast.
Photoshop CS5 Video Tutorials
Earlier in the week I was lucky enough to be finally able to upgrade to Photoshop CS5! If you are looking to get started with your new Adobe software, or are looking for online tutorials, I found http://tv.adobe.com/ was an excellent pace to get started. I am looking forward to playing with the new brush tools for my digital character painting!
Google to Drop Support for H.264 in Chrome Browser
On Tuesday Google announced through their Chromium blog that the Chrome browser will no longer support the H.264 video codec. Google stated that although ‘…H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.’
Although the change will not be immediate, many sites including the Google-run YouTube currently use the H.264 codec, so what will this mean for the future?
iPad 2?
Finally, there is a rumour that iPad2 will be released in the next couple of months, and a possible release date of February 1 has been suggested. Will it finally have the front and back-facing cameras that users have been asking for? This video of a possible dummy prototype of the iPad 2 was snuck out of CES 2011, and the device does indeed appear to have that front-facing camera.