Astro Empires
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- Profile views: 107
- Group created: March 2009
- www.bebo.com/AEBebo
- Official website:
- http://www.astroempires.com
- Tagline
- The official MMOG Bebo Community
- Me, Myself, and I
- AEBebo is an the official Bebo community dedicated to all things Astro Empires! Discuss, change or just meet other AE players on Bebo.
Astro Empires is a highly addictive Space Strategy Game in real-time. Play in a Huge Universe with Thousands of Players.
Build bases, spaceships, research new technologies, form alliances, fight epic Battles, and much more!
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Interactive Tutorial hits AE!
Hi guys!
This week has seen some changes to the game that most of you won't be making use of but hopes to expand the community and keep fresh blood flowing into the game. A new interactive tutorial has been added to the game allowing new users a fresh and easy way to learn how to play without having to read through walls of text or get overwhelmed with formulas before they are ready. Of course the original tutorials and guides will still be available but it is hoped that more and more players will opt to use this new interactive option when starting the game.
In other news Wizard is celebrating a few new additions to his family as he discovered with a shock that his new pet hamster was pregnant and a healthy litter of babies were the result. Would any of you be looking for a new pet hamster? ;-)
On the AEverywhere front we have been having more excellent and obscure entries. Lets take a look at a couple more shall we?
FIND IMAGES IN OUR AEVERYWHERE ALBUM
Our first group entry is by LightSpeed, mindlessdrone and arrogantb**tard. An epic setup indeed, its just a pity you couldn't run your full guild ops from it isn't it? That would be cool...
FIND IMAGES IN OUR AEVERYWHERE ALBUM
On the theme of education I took this one. AE101, its only a matter of time really!
That's it for this week guys, till next time, adeus.0 Comments less than a minute
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Brinca Interview - Part II
Hi guys,
As promised guys here is the second part of our interview with Brinca!
You were recently at the core of the development of Astro Empires new layout. Did you find it challenging reworking a layout to be used by thousands of players?
Actually, the challenging bit was making the new layout engine so versatile that it wouldn't need another rewrite any time soon..
Of course that when designing a layout for a broad audience there are many factors that must be taken into account, such as keeping it compatible with several different browsers, tweaking the balance between what is pretty and what is practical, limiting bandwidth consumption and server load, etc, all the while taking care not to hurt anyone's feelings too much (especially the older, hardcore, fans).
In the past few months we have seen some small 3D images appearing on the games homepages, are these a sign of things to come?
Oh yeah, 3D artwork is definitely going to play a major role in the game's design, not only for ships, but also for many other things, most of which I'm not at the liberty to discuss.. I can say that we have ideas involving CGI that go well beyond anything that anyone has ever done in the browser-based game arena so far.
Development is important in a dynamic browser based game. What sort of cool new projects are you working on now?
I could tell you, but then I would have to shoot you, and who would then write our amazing blog articles..!? ;-) Seriously though, we have planned or already started work on 50+ new features, which will be released throughout this and the next year.
Some of these are mostly eye candy, but there are many actually useful tools, aimed to improve user creativity, sharing and communication.
As we know English is not your first language, how do you coup with working day in and day out in another language?
Well, I'm pretty at ease with English, since it's been a part of my life for a really long time (I attended an English school in Lisbon, have a Scottish nephew, read lots of books in English, regularly surf the Internet which is mostly in English, etc).
Also, in Portugal all movies and series are subtitled, so you get to hear the original language over the subtitle text, which is a great way to learn another language.
How did you get involved in Astro Empires?
I've known Wizard for a while back, but there was only talk of actually becoming involved with AstroEmpires when Xaman suggested it, while the three of us were hanging out at a local coffee shop.
We started off with a simple request to redesign the old layout, but things quickly evolved into dozens of ideas for improvements, features and campaigns, which eventually led to the new Layout Engine and DeepSpace skins (oddly enough, we never did get the redesign of the old layout done). With the rate of creativity pouring in every day, we have enough to keep our team busy for the next few decades..
Is there anything else you would like to pass onto our readers?
There are many exciting things to come, so stay tuned and check the site/blog regularly. We hope you'll have as much fun with these features as we're having developing them. Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on the forum, since feedback is always welcomed (and yes, developers do actually read it).
Thats everything guys, catch you Friday!0 Comments 3 days
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Brinca Interview - Part I
Hi guys!
As some of you might have noticed Wizard this week announced the launch of Graphics Pack development kit. Any of you who have taken a hand at making your own graphics pack for AE you will know just how fidgety they can be and how difficult it can be to get your head around it. Well this new kit aims to make the process simple enough for anyone in the hope of allowing everyone to get involved and show they're own vision for Astro Empires! Details are on the forums.
We have decided to take this opportunity to interview the chief designer of the new game layout and visual guru of Astro Empires, Brinca!
Tell us a little about yourself. Who is Brinca?
I'm a portuguese designer/programmer with over 20 years of experience in the field, 10 of which working as a professional. I started programming at age 9, when I got my first ZX Spectrum 48K computer, and found that I liked making games more than actually playing them..
I consider myself to be a sorta-geeky-but-not-quite, easy going workaholic.
Could you give us an idea of what you do as part of the Astro Empires team.
Although my primary skill is programming, I'm currently in charge of developing the design and other visual features of the site. I still do some programming (the new layout engine, flash/js scripts, etc), but nothing to do directly with game play or game mechanics. I also work as a general and creative consultant, since I do have a substantial amount of knowledge/experience in the Internet and Gaming industries.
Graphics packs are a core element of user content for the game, what do you feel we should do to encourage users to use and develop them?
A big part of our current strategy is to grow a wider and tighter community, getting more people involved with the game, but in more aspects than just playing. To this end we're currently building several tools to allow people not only to create their own customized content, but also to easily share it with their friends and online community.
A new Graphic Pack kit has just been released, loaded with many useful tools, documentation and examples, that will make Pack customization a breeze. An online repository of user-submitted Graphic Packs is being setup on our new community portal, which will allow users to download, comment and rank other user's packs. Contests and other competitions are about to be launched, and we're preparing a serious marketing campaign targeted towards design-related sites, hopefully to spark some interest from the design community.
We also think that as word of the new layout spreads, we'll attract the attention of more designers, who perhaps didn't like the limited text-only looks of the previous layout, but are now able to use the new layout engine to develop cool artwork for the game (which is a nice opportunity to expose their skills to thousands of users).
As for your part in this, you can give the new kit a spin and share your creations online through the repository, and/or spread the word with your friends, on your site, blog, facebook, etc
Do you have any phobia's? Perhaps the fear that nobody would like your new layout? ;-)
Well, I'm no stranger to failure, so I'm quite at ease with people's criticism, as long as it's constructive.. I'd say my biggest fear is overlooking some small detail in the production phase, that would later prove to be a pain to fix once deployed.. yes, having one of your blunders negatively affect the gaming experience of thousands of players probably qualifies as a programmer's worst nightmare.
We know that Xaman and Wizard have both played the game in the past, however have you ever given it a shot as a newer member of the team?
I definitely play the game, although mainly as an observer as I try not to influence things too much. If you have an active role in the game's development, I think it'0 Comments 7 days
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AE Everywhere
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Artwork bonanza!
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Where did you hear about Astro Empires?
- A friend / Work colleage
- Web search
- Game listing site / news article
- Other
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Gendo Ikari3 weeks agoWelcome to AEBebo
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Lord Tilley3 weeks agothought i might aswell jooin as iv been a AE member for a long time
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Michael Allison7 weeks agoevery one post you in game names so i can far.....err i mean hit you up a mesage :-paranoid-:
OHSHI- this isnt AE forumz
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Mick Burr8 weeks agoNot the string question
Im just exited & need to know 
Regardless the early draft was ace, So im just wanting to see more 
All in due time i guess.
Moving on... Where is everyone ?!?! Ikari cant be the whole AE team & us other 4 are nothing more but multis
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Gendo Ikari8 weeks ago
How long is a piece of string? ^^ We hope to have them in early next year however you know how these things work. Delays will happen.
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Mick Burr8 weeks ago
Lies...
So anyword on a time frame for these new images in-game ? Even tho from looking at the early image of the battleship, youve hired a good hand for the job
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Gendo Ikari8 weeks ago
<_> I admit nothing.
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Mick Burr8 weeks ago
What we got going on here then..... AE please dont say your needing new players this badly you need to be on Bebo !!!
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Michael Allison8 weeks ago
mainly becauseif they were doing well people would say that they were cheating
also the fact that they got farmed -
Gendo Ikari9 weeks ago
Not anymore. Xaman and Wizard did once upon a time but stopped pretty early on.
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Michael Allison9 weeks ago
im on the almighty alpha, doomed delta and epic epsilon
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Jimmyawsom9 weeks ago
Im alpha ive played every serverbut usually quit after awile cuz i suck at doing 2 accounts at once
What about you? -
9 weeks ago
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Jimmyawsom10 weeks ago Astro on bebo= Awsome
on alpha
yup
Jimmyawsom 0 Replys