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Cartoon Network characters do battle in this massively multiplayer online game

by Chris Holt, Macworld.com
Sep 11, 2008 9:54 pm
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Cartoon Network is getting into the massively multiplayer online game business. And Mac users can join in on the fun.

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Resisting the lure many developers feel to make their games as risqué as possible, Cartoon Network’s Fusion Fall is instead a PG-rated MMOG that features the iconic characters of Dexter (from Dexter’s Laboratory; not this Dexter), Samurai Jack, and the Powerpuff Girls in their battle to save the cartoon planet from an evil alien force.

I sat down for a demo of Fusion Fall with executive producer Chris Waldron to get a first look at this new MMOG. Due to the success of the games on Cartoon Network’s Web site, the television network is working with Korean developers Grigon to produce a browser-based MMOG. The kid-focused game will be subscription-based, but a good chunk of it will also be free to the public. Equipped with numerous safety features to ensure a healthy environment for kids of all ages, the game is one of the first kid-centric MMOGs out there. Cartoon Network offers a refreshing alternative to the brutal violence of many MMOGs by creating a silly world where gumball cannons, imaginary friends, and annoying ballerina sisters can co-exist.

I played around with a couple of Chris Waldron’s avatars, as he explained that you can play as a boy or girl resistance fighter who must free the cartoon characters and seek their aid in the defense of the planet. The games developers built more than 60 areas to explore and 36 levels to achieve. The cartoon characters are presented as “nanos” you must find (usually by beating their evil clone) and that can then be summoned to aid you in combat. Some characters give you bonuses, others attack your enemies, and some give you quests to complete. In my first mission, I defeated evil “Numbuh 2,” a character from The Kids Next Door, and enlisted the freed character to aid in my future adventures.

That’s All Folks: In Fusion Fall, you find Cartoon Network characters and do battle with their evil clone to win bonuses and assistance.

At first, the casual fan of Cartoon Network may be confused by the art style of the characters. In order to make the world more cohesive, the art style has been altered by a Japanese manga artist. Instead of the abstract Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends disrupting the hyper-cute Powerpuff girls art style, they all received anime makeovers in this interactive world. This makes for a more uniform world, sure, but I initially scratched my head at the sight of a non-pint-sized Dexter.

The game is meant for an 8-to-14-year-old demographic, the so-called “tweens” and likely for fans of both the many original Cartoon Network shows and the Toonami lineup. But adults are not being ignored. Instead of creating a very simple game, Waldron explains that the designers sought to “create a game for kids that takes them seriously.” It’s not “watered down” and will challenge them with a combination of platforming, combat, races, and puzzles throughout the game.

Fusion Fall will also offer a number of ways to protect kids. Thanks to a partnership with Crisp Thinking, the game has chat filtering, moderated character names, forum filtering, and parental approval required for chat. But one of the more interesting features is the fatigue system. The game is designed to be played in 30-minute segments and actively prevents you from playing hours at a time. How? You’ll receive fewer and fewer rewards the longer you play until you don’t receive any awards for continued play. This may seem like a surefire way to turn off users, but you’ll also get a contrasting bonus for logging back in a few hours later. The game rewards players who pace themselves and is intended to ensure kids won’t be too distracted from homework or playing outside.

Mac users should be relieved to know that Fusion Fall is a browser-based game and we played the demo off a MacBook Pro. You can play it on pretty much any browser (with the exception of the newly-released Chrome, which isn’t Mac-compatible at this point anyway).

While official specs for Fusion Fall haven’t been released, the Cartoon Network people led me to believe that it will have low specs so to as include as many users as possible. If you want to check out the world early, signup for the beta at Fusionfall.com.

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cara membuat transformer kaya iron man tapi make bahasa inggris.. hehe

Step 1 the materials

I wanted to make something a bit more substantial for this project and I remembered I had some suitable plastic in my cupboard. This is the key compenent for the project. This stuff is called polymorph and can be bought from places such as Ebay. It's a thermal plastic that melts around 60 degrees C and it becomes something resembling plastacine. From there it is simple to mold it into the desired shapes.

The next thing we will need is a light source. I wanted the whole thing to be quite thin when it was finished and sat on my chest so I opted for some surface mount white LEDs. Surface mount LED's have a very wide viewing angle and being white they produce quite a lot of light so they are perfect for this application. I bought mine from Rapid Electronics, I would plug them with a link but they charged me more for P&P on the LED's than the LED's cost, so I'm not going to. These LED's are in a PLCC 2 package which means they are still large enough to be soldered by hand.

You may also want some surface mount resistors to go with those LEDs. I used the amazing program at http://LEDCalc.com/ to work out exactly which values I need. As I am running these LED's from a 9V battery and wanted 20mA of current to flow throw them. They suggested how exactly they should be wired and what values I needed (incidently I have stolen the circuit diagram from them too). For my LED's I required 5x 180 Ohm resistors and 1x 330Ohm resistor.

I mounted the LED's on a peice of plywood, anything will do as you are glueing the surface mount components down for ease of soldering. A 9V battery and battery clip are providing the power for the system. These can be bought from any electrical store as required.

Finally you'll need some wire for the detailed decoration. Wire coathangers could be used but I used tin copper wire of 22 AWG gauge. There is nothin special about the wire, it's just hard finding something chunky enough for the job.

image not found 346x400 : F53MLZXFGTT1OK4 (0) i

step 2Wiring of the LED's

Some assembly is required for the LED's. I took my round piece of wood that I was using to mount the LEDS on and I started to glue the LED's in the desired places. The circuit from LEDCalc suggested I used 5x 2 LED's and 1 single LED in parallel. This ties in well with the arc reactor so I had the single LED in the middle and the pairs arranged around the edges.

As you can see from picture I made two rings of wire around the edges, the outer wire is 9V and the inner wire is 0V. This ring has the added advantage of providing an secondary route for the power should something go dramatically wrong in construction.

The power wires are passed through the back plate through a small hole, this will allow me to power the LED's when they are encased in the plastic.

image not found 560x420 : F8HCNRWFGTT1OH2 (5) SMD LED msraynsford R2 msraynsford R1 msraynsford +ve Wire msraynsford -ve Wire msraynsford i

step 3Making the plastic shape

This is the key stage of the make. The polymorph plastic behaves like plastacine when it is heated to temperature. This allows it to be pressed into a mold and form the desired shape. As always I wish I had more photos of the stages involved but I dont and it's too late to go back (let this be a lesson for budding instructable writers)

The mold is formed using balsa wood again on a more solid plywood base. The outer circle was cut out of balsa to be the required depth of the arc reactor. Thinner strips of balse were used as relief pieces and provide the detail in the plastic (These are roughly the same depth as the wire I used)

I heated the plastic using water from the kettle, once ready it becomes transparent and maleable. Care was taken to make sure it was pushed right into the mold to reach all the corners of the mold. Once fully pushed into the mold the LED disc was then pushed into the back of the plastic. The plastic pushes slightly around the disc which holds it in place. The disk must be alligned with the slots in the mold so that each LED is directly under a raised piece of plastic. (There are no photos of this because it was all done with some haste)

The final picture shows the plastic once it has been removed from the mold. You can clearly see the raised sections of plastic and the gaps that are due to be filled with wire. Under each bump there is an LED, the plastic adds to the diffusion of each LED and really adds to the overall effect.

image not found 560x420 : FI035E2FGTT1OGX (0) i

step 4Adding the details

The final step of the Arc reactor is to add the wire details. Holes were drilled in the plastic to hold the wire around the edge of the device. Each piece of wire was bent into a C shape, it was then hooked into a hole on the edge of the plastic and again into the holes in the centre (see photo). This was enough to secure them in place. Finally four wire rings were shaped to go around the centre of the reactor. These are held in with PVA wood glue, although any clear drying glue should do the job just as well.

As you can see from the third photo the device lights up very well and looks really good, now onto the final stage to bring it all together.

image not found 560x420 : FEQ7AGJFGTT1OGU (0) i

step 5Bringing it together

As the previous stage finished the arc reactor this final stage is about bringing it all together in a costume. I brought a sleeveless T-Shirt from the local store for a few pounds. I carefully sewed a pocket on the inside of the shirt to hold the reactor, this proved to be a very good idea due to the number of people that wanted me to take it out and show them during the evening. The wires from the reactor run down the T shirt and into my back trouser pocket.

After a weeks worth of effort I officially had nearly zero facial hair so I ended up padding it out with some black shoe polish. I'm particularly proud of the whole chubby Tony Stark thing I had going on but then this photo was taken at the wrong end of the evening after quite a lot of good food and drink, normally I'm only half as fat.

I hope you find this useful and encouraging for your own projects. I hope to add a plan with some dimensions to this instructable in the future which will help anyone trying to replicate my attempts.

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