Heavy Water Strikes Heavily
by BONZO, HSM Editor
Heavy Water, with the Heavy Peeps, brought us one of the most innovative active items Home has ever seen; these little guys were a very cool innovation because you had the opportunity to take over the Peeps and explore your personal spaces from their perspective. Heavy Water then expanded this innovation into their Avalon Keep estate with the dragonfly automaton. And it is only rational to evolve that innovation into a flying drone. Now their sub-brand, Heavy Strike, introduces the surveillance helicopter.
I am geeking out here. This is an absolute must-have for machinima makers because you can fly around; actually, up to three people can use the active item and fly around. But the coolest innovation is the camera setup. When you have a miniaturized avatar (like a helicopter) as your surrogate, it changes the game a bit.
The way it works now: your avatar is a large object, and there is a camera that is linked to your avatar’s rig. So that camera follows you everywhere, mounted just over your shoulder; you can manipulate that camera a little bit, but in a very limited way. That camera is subject to the collisions in place from walls and other items around the environment. When you press the L3 button you can zoom in a little bit, but you have very little control of the camera and your avatar is always in the frame. That is a huge problem for capturing video in ways that actually look cinematic.
The cool thing about the Surveillance Helicopter is that it is a small object. When the Heavy Peeps came out, despite the locomotion problems they initially had, it was cool to have a new perspective. In fact these were used to get into hidden areas of personal spaces where your avatar couldn’t fit into. Now you have that same ability and functionality with a flying object. Having access to high angles and new perspectives, you can expand your photography efforts for machinima. Particularly since one of the most interesting features is that the blog specifies you can take pictures with or without the helicopter in the frame.
The one thing which concerns me in regard to this object is that the current camera has a simulated focal point target, which just gets in the way of getting a clean shot without the crop marks and the circle target in the center. I am hoping this won’t be in the frame when you are angling for a shot with the helicopter. I am assuming there will be a heads-up display with legend for button functions for hiding and revealing the helicopter in the frame and for taking pictures, so I am hoping it also includes an option to hide the legend. We’ll know soon enough.
Flying around in any personal space it great, and we love it, but the functionality to remove yourself from the frame isn’t there. So having an item which may allow for a clean slate with new and interesting angles to experiment with for the aspiring filmmakers in Home is a perfect innovation. Fortunately, Heavy Water is also taking advantage of the reallocation of memory function provided by a prior Home core update, and no longer tying the active items to the formerly restrictive 22 furniture slots. The Surveillance Helicopter takes up only nine furniture slots.
The Heavy Peeps themselves saw a retroactive update when the memory requirements were downgraded, among other improvements. Another Heavy Strike item is seeing a retroactive update as well. The Heavy Strike Cannon is being trimmed in memory requirements by taking up only seven furniture slots as opposed to the previous 22. This is a bit of an older item, but still a very cool active item for your personal spaces. This device drops a cannon in your personal space and allows you to shoot cannonballs with skull and crossbones. This doesn’t destroy your environment, but the cannon balls do bounce around and eventually explode when they settle. Your furniture is safe; don’t worry, nothing gets destroyed. Although your avatar does get pushed back a little if it detects a collision. Sacrificing twenty-two furniture slots was a lot for such a simple device, but at the downgraded seven it is far more interesting an item to own.
(Editor’s note: multi-cannon dodgeball!)
I love retroactive updates — not just because they change older items, but because they give these items which may have outlived their shelf life a little more visibility, and also because it means that developers are listening. I know it may seem like developers toss a bunch of content out there and hope to make a spike of sales and then cut their losses, but the reality is that they care about their product. The fact that they return to the drawing board and think about an old product which has seen some life, and think, “How can we improve this?” is a testament to their commitment to the Home community.
Bear in mind: petulant complaints and cries are not the best way to voice your disappointment. Telling a developer their content sucks is not productive. You’re entitled to your opinion, but at least explain why an item failed for you. At least then, a developer has a frame of reference to work from on how to improve a product when and if they chose to do so. For the filmmakers out there, as long as we don’t have to endure a focal-point target or a heads-up display menu cluttering a clean screen, you have a powerful tool here for experimenting with more interesting angles. It doesn’t record video, but if you own a PVR device the power of this tool is in a clean slate and more angle control for a camera.
Personally, I hope that eventually we will see this type of innovation with public spaces in mind. How cool would it be to have the functionality of the helicopter in any space, public or private? When might we have the ability to actually change altitude, at will, in a public space (without being able to see of the edge of the map)? That’s when things will really get interesting.
October 24th, 2012 by BONZO | 4 comments
BONZO is an editor and artist for HomeStation Magazine.
Twitter
Thank you for the great write up! The Helicopter will have controls that you see when you start your flight each time, but then not again. There is also no other HUD elements to the copter. It is a free field of view! I would love to see some Machina made with the Surveillance Helicopter!!
-Stephen
Producer
@HeavyWater
That is fantastic and I’m totally getting this Chopper. Thanks for the response.
Thanks for the amazing write-up! The Heavy Strike line has been a passion of ours for quite some time and the copter is a game-changer for exploration and capturing your space in Home. And as long as we can innovate and improve shipped items, we will continue to do so at no charge to fans who have already made the investment (like Peeps and Cannon)… Have fun with the chopper!
Best,
Tammy McDonald
CEO
Heavy Water
I like the new helicopter. It doesn’t work well in all spaces such as Loco Island (what a shame) because it only can be placed in the living areas. Others it’s not enough room really. But in the military space with the helicopter already in it works fine and other larger areas. Ir works well in the FUBAR area. I love it.