Sea Snipers 2005 E3 Newsletter

Welcome to the [SS] 2005 E3 Newsletter!
The following information was acquired during our attendance at this years E3 expo in LA, CA. We will inform you of all the information that we were able to get from Zipper and some other fun stuff as well. Bear in mind that we asked only the most important stuff, and left out the minor things so as not to irritate the folks at Zipper. Please visit the Sony boards for more detailed info on all the little things. Attending members: [SS]Rator, [SS]Chief, [SS]Vapid

Day 1, Monday: Chief and I fly in to CA, drop our stuff off at the hotel and bounce out to the Convention Center. We grabbed our badges and holders and proceed to sneak in to the show floor. Got the first glimpse at the Socom booth and it's 12 station setup. Made notes of where everything was so that we could come back and head right for it when the show started. Vapid dropped by and picked us up and we headed out to the brew house where I treated my men to beers and burgers. Toasted the [SS] and chowed down. (The waitress brought me the wrong burger and bought us a round of drinks, sweet!)
Day 2, Tuesday: The show still hasn't started, but we wanted to try and sneak in again. Met up with [SS]Vapid and got him his badge and holder, then proceeded to try and sneak in once again...DENIED! Conference peeps only. Got hold of my cousin (in-law) who is the motion capture director on such films as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, all 3 Lord of the Rings (he did Gollum), and did the motion capture on Doctor Octopus in Spiderman 2. Met him for lunch and a tour of the Sony Pictures lot. Frickin awesome! Saw some guy from the West Wing at a Starbucks, called him a pansy, and Chief kicked him in the nuts repeatedly while Vapid held him down and I poured hot coffee over his head. J/k! Went to Denny's, chowed down on the Chief's tab. Thanks Chief!
Day 3, Wednesday: (THE BIG DAY!) Pay $20 to park, bust into E3 and make for Socom 3. We didn't take 2 steps into the booth before 2 Zipper guys (CJ the Senior Designer and another guy) stop us after looking at our [SS] shirts and say "Are you guys the Sea Snipers?" of course we say yes and introduce ourselves, then they say "Holy crap, we've been checking out your overhead maps since Socom 1, they're fucking awesome!, and your guys' site kicks ass!" Of course we're freaking out that they even recognized us and came right up to us. We traded business cards, then we start blasting them with questions which I will post the answers to later in the newsletter. We proceed to jump onto Socom 3 and start playing. It's great. More on that later. They held a tournament for a few hours which was 12 v 12, with 6 terrorists and 6 seals playing at the show, and 6 terrorists and 6 seals playing off-site. Whichever side wins, gets a Socom 3 camo boonie hat. We won 2 today. Waited over an hour for lunch. We tooled around checking out some other stuff and then came back to the S3 booth. We covertly inquire about Zipper letting the [SS] get some S3 Beta discs and CJ smiles and looks away like he can't talk about it in front of his other guys, so I poke him and say, "I'll email you about it" he says "Ok cool". Invited CJ and the rest of Zipper out to dinner, our treat. They had to pass cause Sony was keeping them there all night and on a tight leash.
Day 4, Thursday: Pay $20 to park and make for the S3 booth. Played in the tournament again, won again. Talked more with CJ and some other Zipper guys. CJ introduces the Sea Snipers to his co-workers and they're like "No shit? the Sea Snipers? Your maps rock and your site is friggin awesome!" They proceed to ask US questions about what WE think about the game! We're friggin stoked! We give them our input, more on that later, and mosey around E3 checkin out the dorks and honeys. Back to the S3 booth where we play some more with CJ and Zipper watching and walking us through some stuff. We tell CJ and the lead programmer that we've got 2 extra tickets to Star Wars tonite and invited them to join us. Again, they had to pass since Sony was throwing some huge after-party for all their guys. Dammit! They we're very appreciative nonetheless. We proceed to give CJ and the lead programmer a handful of Sea Sniper patches to which they reply "Holy shit, these are frickin beautiful! Where did you get these done?!" We told them (patchesrus.com btw, they do a great job!) and they thank us and pass them around to their guys. We mention that the [SS] is getting together in June for SniperCon (the Sea Snipers Convention) and that it'd be great to have some beta discs for our little gathering, wink wink, nudge nudge. They seemed more interested, but couldn't make any promises on the show floor. We head out, bid Zipper a fond farewell, and make for Star Wars! We meet up with AZNGirl of F&B who was a sweetheart, and Twinkie from WsW (also a sweetheart, 'cept he's a he... lol!) The movie was cool, definitely worth the watch, but some terrible acting and silly moments abound. Watch for Obi Wan riding a chicken dragon... "eeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeee!" The whole trip, [SS]Vapid took us around in his [SS]Audi anywhere we needed/wanted to go, thanks buddy! Much appreciated! His dog is cool as shit, and bit the Chief! Ok, on to the questions & anwsers...
Question & Answer with the [SS] & Zipper [SS]: Will there be an arrival screen where you can select which team you want to be on before you join the game? Zipper: Yes, that is how we have it setup now, however it is a bit tempermental and may not be in the final release. (We proceed to tell CJ that he needs to make sure that it DOES make it into the final release because too many times 1 or 2 guys from each side will get booted in a match, and the match has to be played short because the right people can't get back on the right side.) [SS]: What is being done about the lag? Is the game still peer to peer connection? Zipper: There's nothing we can do. Lag is seen when one person has a bad connection to the rest of the players. [SS]: Has the hit detection been improved? Is it body part sensitive? Zipper: Yes, the hit detection now falls somewhere inbewteen S1 and S2. Yes, damage is body part specific. If you get shot in the arm, it can take a certain amount of hits before it becomes "dead" at which point, if it gets hit any more, the damage will be redirected to the torso. In addition, players will get pushed back a bit when getting shot depending on the calibre of the bullet. [SS]: Will there be any changes to the in-game player stats screens and the final screens? Zipper: The screens are the same as they are now but with more stats. The in-game screen will show you everyones stats, and the final screen will show you your personal stats and team stats. (We tell CJ that it should be the other way around and that the in-game stats should be your personal stats, and the final screen should show everyones stats. He makes a note of this and says its a good idea, they are going to talk about it.) [SS]: What can you do about dead-speak? Lots of clans use nextels, or have 2 systems set up next to each other and relay information to the living while they are dead. Zipper: We can't really do anything about that. (We tell them that one way to minimize this is to have it set up where when you die and you can rotate to other players views, to set the camera to the first person view only. This way they can't look behind. CJ says, great idea! We're going to talk about this as well!) [SS]: Will we be able to have the same weapons on both sides? Zipper: No, for authenticitys sake, we have terrorist weapons and seal weapons available for their respective sides. (They are however making the weapons more close in damage and accuracy to each other.) [SS]: Will all the weapons be configreable online? Zipper: Yes. You can put several different scopes, silencers, grenade launchers, and bi-pods (like a tri-pod) on your rifles. (so you can have an M14 with a silencer and a scope, awesome!) [SS]: What about the web-stats? Zipper: We will have a website where you can view players online stats etc. (We ask if it would be possible to put a link on our site that says "View Sea Snipers Stats" and bring up a page with just our stats pulled from the online xml data. CJ says, "Wow, thats a great idea!" He pitches the idea to Sony and tells us the next day that they are talking about it and Sony will get back to them on it.) [SS]: Will the S2 maps be available in S3? Zipper: We can't really comment on this, but what we can tell you is that the game will ship with 12 new maps. [SS]: Will the maps have selectable weather and day and night? Zipper: You cannot select weather options, but you will be able to select day or night. [SS]: How many people can you invite to the clan? Zipper: 32 [SS]: Is the map size automatic or host selected? Zipper: The host can set how much of the map will be playable before the game starts. So, the game will remain peer to peer, but based on the time we put in, the hit detection is MUCH better. The game is smooth, the graphics are great, the vehicles are fun, the maps are huge, the configureable weapons are awesome, the game modes are great (we played a control point game which is kind of like Battlefield or Battlefront). Seeing as S2 was originally intended to be an expansion, we believe that Socom 3 will be much cleaner and less buggy than S2. They have a built in ladder system which allows people to challenge other clans up to 20 slots ahead of them with only 1 challenge acceptable by a clan at any given time to avoid huge backlogs of challenges. When you challenge a clan, you set the date and time, and once accepted, the room is automatically created privately, 30 mins prior to match time. Once you log on, you get a message saying that the room is up and it gives you an option to join. It will not show up in the server/rooms list. Very cool. An alternative to GB and other ladder sites. We asked when it would be released, and they could only tell us "Fall".
The rest of it... We spent some time hitting up places like Brady games, Prima Strategy Guides, and Piggyback, and talking to them about having us do the Socom 3 maps. They were ALL very interested and I got their cards. Also talked to Senior people at EA Games/Battlefield 2, Americas Army, and Black Hawk Down, who were all interested in crosspromotions with the Tactical Whiteboard (http://www.tacticalwhiteboard.com). Met up with Dez, Nasty and Big one from the NUTZ clan but weren't able to get time to meet them afterwards at the medieval dinner festival, Cable guy style, hope you guys had fun, it was great to meet you all. Played some Battlefield 2 and shit that game is friggin awesome! The PC version. There is a commander mode where you can view a top down map of the whole level and scan it for enemies. Once you do that you can drop an unmanned aerial vehicle which will give your team radar locks on all enemies in their immediate area. You can also call in artillery strikes. The game looks and plays beautifully. While I was playing, Chief tried to snag some free shit that they were throwing out to the crowd if you answered some questions correctly, which he did, and then the guy decided Chief wasn't worthy and threw the stuff to some sweaty kids at the back of the pack. You tried Chief! Went outside and talked to the Americas Army people, got the game for free, and talked to them about the TWB which they were very into. They had a chopper circling overhead which was cool as shit, and they were supposed to have guys repelling down from it, but we couldn't wait, we were hungry as hell! Walked past the Call of Duty 2 booth which had a cool setup and a guy dressed up as an Army MP who looked pissed off! I was almost scared to tak his picture... Saw the guy from "The Shield" Michael Chikless (Spelling?) and he's short as hell! He had on an orange t-shirt that said "Its clobberin' time" cause he plays the "Thing" in the Fantastic 4 movie. He had an entourage of people, i guess cause he's short, lol, we could've taken him! All-in-all it was a great trip. I can't thank my men enough, Chief for the passes, plane tickets, hotel room, shirt and food, Vapid for the limo service in the phat [SS]Audi and the selfless hospitality you showed to us both while we were out in your neck of the woods. Can't wait to see you guys again at SniperCon in June! -Rator, Chief, Vapid & The Sea Snipers.