Not only am I offering an official Stargate Worlds beta key as the prize for the competition but I have also got the buy-in of a celebrity judge to decide the winner!

The official bio from the Wizard’s of the Coast author/artist bio page says:

Denise Graham is the author of two books in the Knights of the Silver Dragon series and a number of shorter works. She lurks in her supervillain secret lair deep in the heart of darkest mid-America with her co-supervillain, the inimitable Ron Morris, and their henchmen, er . . . henchdemons, Kafka and Morrigan.

The rules of the fiction contest:

1. Write a Stargate Themed story WITHOUT using any well-known cast members, except in a peripheral sense (pass them in a corridor, see them in the cafeteria, etc)
2. Only one entry per person
3. 500-1000 words in length, using proper grammar and spelling
4. Closing date for submissions: July 17th
5. Email entries to: gatebuzz@gmail.com
6. Entries will be judged by Denise Graham - a published fantasy author
7. The winner will be submitted to CME to receive a spot in the beta and further contact regarding the beta will be handled by them
8. The top 3 stories (maybe 5 if I am feeling generous) will be read on-air on upcoming episodes of GateBuzz

I look forward to hearing from you!

We’re sitting at 9,933 downloads of the podcast. Only a few more and we break the 10,000 download mark. Way to go folks! This is a huge moment and something I find quite humbling. Thanks for listening!

[edit, 8:00am, May 7th]

9,990 and counting…

[edit, 8:17am]

9,994 …

[edit, 9:55am]

10,000 downloads, and it was a Linux user no less!

I created my account on Facebook ages ago and have done my best to neglect it. Honestly I blame atrizu - he was the one who convinced me that I really needed to bother with it again. So, if you’re on Facebook, feel free to friend me.

I’ve updated my Progress of the Beta page - Desy stumbled upon something that looks a lot like a login page for beta testers…

The observant visitors will have noticed that my phone number has changed. I’ve moved over to a far more versatile voice-over-IP provider - the venerable Skype. Voicemail there has proven to have higher sound quality, and be orders of magnitude better for sound editing afterward … just judge from the audio in episode 17 of the podcast!

I’ll be re-recording the intro to the podcast for the next episode … something I have been meaning to do ever since I got the new mic and mixing desk! I’ve been thinking about the intro music too, but I’m not musician enough to go writing and performing something of my own there! I’ll settle for just talking and creating websites.

There’s a really cool website if you’re a Doctor Who fan. The theme for the TV show has evolved over the 30+ years that the TV show has been on the air while keeping the essential elements the same. This has spawned an entire website of people creating their own remixed and re-imaginings of the Doctor Who theme. The podcast (”Whomix Radio“) is really worth subscribing to. The thing it makes me wonder is this: where are all the remixes of the Stargate theme?

Anyhow, feel free to add me to your Skype contacts, and if you see me, drop me a message (or chat to me, I don’t bite!)

What’s so cool about this pie chart anyhow?

Over ¹/₂ of people (51%) who listen to the podcast do so right here on the website.

4% of the listeners are using a Zune player to listen to the podcast. I am glad that I listened to the feedback from people and added the Subscribe in Zune button on the site. It’s nice to see a new feature actually being used.

Apple might have 70% of the overall market-share for portable MP3 players, but according to the stats, around 90% of the people who grab the podcast to listen on their own machine, do so with iTunes.

The other 1% of listeners use either WinAmp, iPodder and Apple TV to download and listen to the podcast, proving that it’s not just the well-known pod-catcher applications that are being used.

Pulled these numbers from the podcast stats:

5000 total downloads of the podcast, and counting, awesome news! That’s a cool milestone to pass!

Yes indeed, you heard it here first. On episode 14 of the Gatebuzz podcast I pointed out:

Im sitting here still breathless, still drooling over the graphics. 1UP.COM was understating thing when they said “the footage I saw of Stargate Worlds, while brief, was certainly nice to look at” … the footage was gorgeous. There was a little over 3 and a half minutes of total video footage, probably 1/2 of which is the actual interviews. So, that means under 2 minutes of actual in-game footage and I am hooked.

I would suggest taking a look at the recent “anatomy of a sound” video podcast from CME, where Nick LaMartina discusses creating the ambient sound for a location in the game. We see a very basic test-setup with a grey-uniformed, shaven headed soldier with P90 on his back, and Nick moving him around to demonstrate how the ambient sound system for the game will work.

The demo that folks saw at GDC, I assume is the same one that is cut into the GAME TRAILERS interviews with Dan Elggren and Demetrius Comes. It shows that same test soldier running around in the environment of several worlds. What it also included was a few gorgeous panoramic camera angles, and sweeping cinematic camera shots to establish the environment. An atlantis style puddle-jumper was clearly visible in the foreground early on. The Creative director at CME - Chris Klug - has a background in the visual arts … and it shows in-game with shots like these. There was an epic feel to them, a saturated colour palette that was rich without being garish, and beautifully modelled and rendered scenes to explore. The decision to use the Unreal Engine 3 was clearly a good one, given what we can see on the GAME TRAILERS website.

Well, today there were 2 pasts from Khatie:

Feb. 28th, 2008 at 7:29am, Khatie wrote:

So after speaking with the powers that be, we can’t show the trailer in its current state but there were LARGE portions of the trailer shown here:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31116.html?type=

and here:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/31116.html?type=

I am sorry for not being able to release more yet but… we’ll get it to you eventually.

I feel like I let you guys down.

Then in a later post, after being asked why the full trailer couldnt be shown:

Feb. 28th, 2008 at 7:48am, Khatie wrote:

It’s finished for what it was used for (to show press at GDC) but, there are portions that aren’t yet finished (the player character you see running around in the trailer is a place-holder, not final) and so they want to wait until all elements are final before revealing it to the broader public.

The podcast community heard it first, by a full day, 200 downloads of that particular episode and counting! So, be sure to subscribe (either to the email notification, with your Zune, with iTunes or another podcatcher) as Alison, Fenrir, Uplink and I work to bring the latest in timely news & buzz … and here’s hoping that we score a few exclusives in the coming weeks too!

There are two kinds of notification available:

• Basic
• Enhanced

Any user who enters an email address is signing up for the Basic notification - you will be notified in plain-text that a new podcast episode has been published, with a snippet of the show notes in the email that is sent out.

Enhanced notifications go to users who have registered on the Gatebuzz site. Registered users will receive an email containing the whole show notes for new podcast entries. In addition, registered users may manage their subscription through their profile here on the site, allowing the selection of either plain-text or HTML emails, and the ability to sign up for notifications about other categories of post (News, Podcast Episodes, Site Updates, etc) as well.

So, if you want to receive an email when something happens here on the site, either sign up as a user or, click the “Sign up for email notifications” link and enter your email address.

The site has had a major overhaul to improve both the load-time (it should load a lot faster than before) and make better use of screen real-estate. It’s been tested on Windows (in Firefox and IE 7) and on my Mac (in Firefox and Safari) and all seems to look good. Let me know if you notice any glitches.

I’ve added the ability to rate posts and podcast episodes. They all have a small “5-star” rating on them, simply mouse over and click your rating and your vote will be logged. I will be particularly interested in seeing your ratings on the podcast episodes!