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Blade: The Series – Jill Wagner Interview

To celebrate the DVD release February of Blade: The Series in the US we had the chance to talk to the lead actress in the show Jill Wagner.

Blade: The Series stars Kirk ‘Sticky Fingaz’ Jones as Blade the vampire hunter. Plus there is Jill Wagner as Krista Starr a newly turned vampire playing both sides and the head vampire Marcus Van Sciver played by Neil Jackson. Blade is supported by Shen (Nelson Lee) and Marcus has Chase (Jessica Gower).

How did you come to be in Blade: The Series?
My manager gave me the script on a Sunday. I auditioned for it on a Monday, callbacks were Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was the studio test and Friday was the network test. I found out Friday on my way home from the Network test that I got the part and that Sunday I moved to Vancouver to begin filming. It was quite fast process.

What did the audition entail?
Four scenes, a few with Blade (Sticky [Fingaz] read with me in the network test).

Tell us about your character Krista Starr.
She is a war vet. She is a bit of a tomboy and a lets just way she’s not afraid to run with the boys. She is hardened by the news of her brothers murder and seeks revenge. She could be seen as the victim in this series but I try to show her stronger side. She goes through an emotional roller coaster throughout the series. She was a great character to play.

Your character guides the audience through the world of Blade and the vampires. Did you find it hard to play someone torn between the two sides working for Blade and living with them?
Yes. I was always thinking as Krista and finding it hard to even smile at Marcus after what he had done. She leads two lives. Good and Evil.

Did you ever have second thoughts about being involved with a sci-fi show? Knowing sci-fi fans are more critical than other audiences?
No not at all, I have always loved sci-fi and the stunt work that comes with it really attracted me. I love to hear what the fans say…good and bad. Sometimes it helps me to think about certain things in a different light.

Do you have a favorite fight from the show?
Probably the last episode when I fight Chase.

Did you find it hard to do the action sequences the role required?
No.

It’s said that you have a gun collection, did this help you prepare for a high action role?
Of course, however you never get fully comfortable with pointing a gun at someone or vice versa.

What was your funniest experience when filming the series?
Neil [Jackson] was carrying me out of the ritual room from the 1st episode and he forgot to turn my body to fit through the door and about took my head off. The set was silent until everyone heard me laugh, them the jokes poured in. Neil was always the funny one on set.

What are your best memories from making Blade?
Hanging out with the cast and crew on set from day to day. We had such an amazing group all around.

Is there a part of Krista’s past you wish had been covered more?
Yes, her life and experiences in the military. My dad was a marine (war vet) so I always wanted to play a character who had been in the military.

Were you familiar with the Blade franchise before the show? If so in what format: Comics/Movies?
I had seen and was a fan of the movies.

Are you a fan of any other vampire shows/movies/books?
Bram Stoker was my favorite.

The season ended in a cliffhanger. Could you tell us what you know about what was to be the second season’s storyline and how the cliffhanger was to be resolved?
I wish I could tell you. I knew nothing.

Are there any current plans for a second season?
I think there were some talks about having another TV movie that wrapped up the cliffhanger… not sure if that is still in talks though.

Do you know if you will be making a third appearance in Stargate: Atlantis, if so when can we expect it?
I believe so, have no clue when though, but as soon as I know I will post it on my Myspace page at Myspace.com/jillwagner

Do you have any upcoming projects?
A Sci-fi thriller movie called Splinter coming out in Jan or early Feb.

Blade: The Series – The Complete Series arrives on Region 1 DVD on February 12th. The pilot House of Chthon is available now on both Region 1 and 2 DVD.

Crysis v1.1 patch online.

Crysis

After what feels like forever the very long awaited patch for Crysis has been sneaked out during CES week. While most of the games journalists of the world have been looking at this years big up and coming titles the 140mb patch found its way onto a few websites. What isnt listed is a fix for the sound stuttering and mute issues during online play and a fix for the AA vehicle destroying itself when it fires. We can only hope. Also nothing has been said to its compatibility with the recently released MP map pack.

Fixes:
– Damage dealt to vehicles when shot by LAW has been made consistent
– F12 (screenshot) now works in restricted mode as well
– When player melees during gun raise animation, their gun will not be in a permanently raised position anymore
– Memory leaks and potential crashes

Updates:
– Improved SLI / Crossfire support and performance
– Improved overall rendering performance (DX9 and DX10)
– Enabled VSync functionality in D3D10

Tweaks:
– Reduced grenade explosion radius in multiplayer
– Clamped water tessellation to avoid cheating in MP
– Reduced LAW splash damage vs. infantry in PowerStruggle mode
– Slowed Rocket projectile speed down in MP slightly

Credit goes to Shacknews for the bug fix list.

Download links:

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/11604/Crysis+Retail+Patch+1.1

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/crysis/download.html?sid=6184406&tag=top_downloads;title;0

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Rockstar Games now on Steam!

In a press release sent out late Friday Valve has announced that a ton of high profile games from Rockstar are now available on the Steam download system. As a promotion all the games are discounted 10% during launch week so this is the time to brush up on your GTA skills before GTA4 is released. There is no word however on what upcoming Rockstar titles will be added to the system but we can only hope that a PC version of GTA4 will be made and added. All we can say is we hope you are not on a download limit!

The list and comments below are from the press release.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto III
Grand Theft Auto II
Grand Theft Auto
Midnight Club II
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Max Payne
Manhunt
Wild Metal Country

“We were immediately excited by the opportunity to offer our PC catalog via Steam because it allows us to reach out to gamers around the world in exciting new ways,” said Rowan Hajaj, Head of Finance and Corporate Development of Rockstar Games. “We are continually looking for ways to give back to our fans and this collaboration will give people a chance to easily revisit some of our greatest titles.”

“Rockstar Games brings some of most viscerally engaging games the industry has ever witnessed to Steam’s expansive library of titles,” says Jason Holtman, director of Steam business development. “We’re delighted to provide a place where gamers across the globe can discover all the fine work Rockstar Games has produced.”

For more information about Rockstar Games on Steam, please visit www.steamgames.com/v/index.php?publisher=rockstar

Pirates MMO has new content in Feb.

Disney has announced that they are going to release more content for their Pirates of the Caribbean MMORPG game in Feb. These additions will just be to give player character new clothing, tattoo’s and jewellery. There will be additions to the actual quests and ship options later in 2008 but for now character modifications are the only soon to be released items.

Pirates MMORPG is a small game downloadable from piratesonline.com, two of the main issues of the game are the seriously dated graphics and to make the game appeal to more people you download a small game and then gameplay areas download while you are playing them. For people on slower connections this does mean an area pops up out of nowhere. The good news though is that the game is free to play but to get all the options you have to pay a fee as usual.

Crysis Patch Status Update

[Update] Crysis patch version 1.1 is now available

Crysis

For those of you who don’t know it was announced to the press that there would be a patch released for EA’s Crysis title between 7-14 days after its release back in November. After a really quiet period with no news at all details have arrived via EA about what has been the delay and when we should expect the two, yes two patches. From what we have read though unless it has been left out they have not fixed the stuttering nuke or machine gun sound effects left after you die. Or the problem with hovering guns that don’t exist, or the other multiplayer problem where if you buy an AA vehicle and then fire the gun it blows itself up instantly without taking a hit. We can hope though but when more than one patch is announced it doesn’t give you much faith. Expect 600MB Battlefield 2 size patches soon.

Below is the full release from EA.com

Dec. 21 2007

Community Update: Patch Release

Greetings Community!

Lots of questions from the community regarding Crysis Patches, the SDK and the Linux Dedicated Server have been asked, and we wanted to get all of them answered right before Christmas and right before we have our holiday break.

So let’s get started…

Patch #1 Delayed – The Reason

In an interview around the street date of Crysis we have mentioned to release the first patch within the next two weeks. Till then we already made quite a good progress on the patch itself and it was close to being shipped. Unfortunately due to heavy technical issues that appeared right before the patch was declared final we could not release it in time.

Patch #1 – Current Status

Thus we fully concentrated on the issues to get them addressed and resolved. So far the progress on the patch is quite satisfying since everything seems to be working as intended. Currently the patch is being reviewed by Crytek’s and EA’s QA departments and we expect to get the final feedback submitted in the first week of January.

Patch #1 – Scheduled Release

Based on this feedback we will be able to set a release date for the long awaited Patch #1 for Crysis. If no major problems occur we expect to have it available for public download within January 2008. This is of course related to the reports from the QA departments, but we are confident to match the schedule.

Patch #1 – Content

The last time we have provided you with a rough list of fixes the patch will include. Today we would like to go a bit more into detail and mention the major changes/bug fixes. Patch #1 is still meant to be a performance patch and does not include major gameplay changes or new features. These are being addressed in Patch #2, but more about that further below.

So here is the major change log for Patch #1: (the complete change log will be announced once the patch ships)

Fixes

Damage dealt to vehicles when shot by LAW has been made consistent
F12 (screenshot) now works in restricted mode as well
When player melees during gun raise animation, their gun will not be in a permanently raised position anymore
Memory leaks and potential crashes

Updates

Improved SLI / Crossfire support and performance
Improved overall rendering performance (DX9 and DX10)
Enabled VSync functionality in D3D10

Tweaks

Reduced grenade explosion radius in multiplayer
Clamped water tessellation to avoid cheating in MP
Reduced LAW splash damage vs. infantry in PowerStruggle mode
Slowed Rocket projectile speed down in MP slightly

Crysis SDK – Status

Due to the great feedback we have received from the pre-SDK teams till now, we have adjusted and improved both the set up and the content of the final Mod SDK (Software Development Kit) for Crysis. Due to technical limitation the retail version of Crysis is only partially supporting Modifications.

Patch #2 for Crysis will address this topic and provides full Mod support for both Singleplayer and Multiplayer. Not only that the current problems with loading up a mod in Crysis are fixed, additionally the game menu includes a mod loading system. Thus we decided to delay the SDK release until the second Patch has been finished in order to provide you with a correctly working Mod set up for the game.

Of course we will continue and extend our support within the upcoming weeks and months. For example it is planned to constantly update the official Sandbox2 Editor documentation and you can probably expect the next update on this to happen around Christmas.

Crysis Linux Dedicated Server – Status

The Linux version of the Crysis Dedicated Server is still in development and we don’t have an estimated released date for it yet. We want to make sure it is working fine and running without any problems before we release it. After some problems that have been resolved already the progress is good and we expect to have a beta version ready soon.

Patch #2 ? Information

As you might know already we are working on Patch #2 for Crysis simultaneously. The content is based on the feedback we have gathered during the Crysis Beta and the first weeks of release. In addition we are tracking several threads in the Fan Site forums where the community has given constructive feedback and suggestions.

Currently we are evaluating the collected data from the community and taking multiple suggestions into consideration for adding them to the patch. Quite a few community requests have been implemented already and others are work in progress. The patch will be a full content patch and is addressing stability, gameplay tweaks, balancing issues and new features for both Singleplayer and Multiplayer. Next to that we will fix several security holes in our system and also improve both the Punkbuster implementation and our internal Anti-Cheat solution.

We will keep you informed on the progress and announce more details on the change log within the next weeks. Once we have reached a nearly finished status of the patch we will let you know about the release date.

Regards,

-Crysis Dev Team

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