Games

A little something else to focus on

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After searching through the ports tree for suitable software, I cam across a program called eboard, that can be easily mated both with chess engines and servers. Not as spectacular as some of the chess apps I’ve encountered, in fact, I think there’s a graphics heavy one on my cd rack somewhere… but who wants to see if it works under WINE! eboard is both simple and to the point, and despite the lack of photo-realistic graphics, it does present a very familiar interface.  I also installed gnuchess to serve as a sparing partner, since I haven’t  really played a game of chess since the early 2000s, when Cyborg, Lioness, and I used to drop into an occasional parlor game in between drops. Perhaps I’ll hit FICS someday, but an automaton will do just fine for the time being.

Having something to analyze intently, helps a bit….

Exorcising the Demons

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The last bomb finally dropped as I new it must, and my friends turned in their resignation. This is the worst day of my life so far, because the only thing I can think of that could be worse, is becoming an orphan. For me this has just been an utterly breaking and strength erasing event, and I’m sure it’s no triviality for my friend either (but this is still my journal lol). Getting through work felt like doing it with a corkscrew twisting though my stomach.

I drifted off to work with more tics, shakes, and rattles then you can point a stick at, I’ve nearly thrown up about four times, and I’ve had to remind myself, “You don’t fucking cry!”, just to hold it together. As is my custom in times like these, what ever pieces were left, I cast myself back into the forge and let them reshape.

There the Spidey01 we all know, nearly died of his pain and grief in this matter. Very close he came to being replaced by a very different creature, one cold and remorseless like a machine: I looked for the first time in my life, at taking a path, where I don’t know whether it threads along the side of light or darkness… willing to become an archangel or a knight of hell itself, a pure devil even, if it should need be,  ready to destroy anyone in the future who would dare rise to damage SAS, to become a monster if it should need be, something that would make Wiz at his best or worse, look like a limp noodle, for the sake of ensuring that never another war grace these shores. Whatever the cost might be in doing it, whether it would mean welding Souledge or Soulcalibur, that it would be done just the same. In short, take any and every action necessary to ensure that things like the past two weeks, would never be needed again.  I pondered over this course that lay ahead, describing it in my mind, in a sort of disturbing and epic form of poetry that can only exist in ones mind, just what I would be committing myself to. In thinking through that new beings description, what its name would become in place of Spidey01, and what my personal emblem would be in such… I found myself staring back at me through that emblem.

The death of Spidey01 and the rise of an avenging monster would have been the legacy, that Rouge, Valroe, Noer, Medic, Scout, and Ambu left behind, the price of their resolvability; it would also have been committing the first petty act of my life. Looking and questioning my reasons for such a choice of path, deeper at it’s heart, I found the thought that, “I never want to feel like this again”, more then SASs interests was to be found. That creature is so different then myself, that it would’ve warranted changing my name to reflect becoming a different person – an incident like something out of the old testament. Part of my soul cried out, “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive”, and that nothing will ever kill that tiny silver of goodness in me.

So who emerged from those soul searching fires?

Spidey01

 A sharper more refined image then before, but still Spidey01… not the demon that beckoned. Today’s the closest I’ve ever come, to losing who I am. My name on the net, is incredibly personal, and is an identity that reflects me to the core…. it nearly died, really. Yet as surely as I have rejected darkness and evil all my life, I reject that idea…. of being a devil, even for my own reasons. Spidey01 still lives for what ever I’m worth, and I’m here to stay. Light or dark, right or wrong, I’ll not abide by either, I’ll just raise a flaming Spatha in one hand and a great axe in the other, and leave the suit of armour behind. Perhaps such a beast is really what SAS needs to ensure that the next golden age remains one for us as a group, but I am nether machine nor monster, only a man, and I will not yield my humanity. Whether that’s for anything, anyone, or even myself, I’m a man not fucking machine.

 

One fortunate thing my life in the real world has taught me about times of bleeding out, eventually you will run out of something to bleed with. When having to watch today ceases to hurt, only time will show. In connection to something I once said of myself, being glad that I’m not made of tin, because I would rust: the words of the great Wizard of Oz come to mind…
As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.

 For better or worse, I have one.

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Today has been marred both with bad and good news, I reckon the bad, will be the last shell I need watch dropped, but the good, effectively ensures the future. So, I guess ’tis time to cast the reel, and hope to enjoy the coming age.

Darn, youth is so wasted on the young :-P.

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Things have finally settled a bit, this is perhaps the closest to a proper day off yet: played Raven Shield for a few hours on the [SAS] Proving Grounds, took a break for chores and followed that up with some Quake Live, then went back to the [SAS] Proving Grounds for a couple hours. Then a few rounds of Clan Arena in QL before dinner.

I don’t play much Clan Arena in Quake Live, because it is rarely my `style` in the public servers; maybe more formal matches might be better. CA games basically amount to a round based last team standing form of competition, where everyone starts out with a Mega Health, and virtually all standarded weapons, plus plenty of ammunition; the catch of course being, there are NO power ups, no health kits, no extra ammo. You best have rocket launcher skills as well ^_^. Managed to get in a few good team games, before ending up in a mixture of 2vs2 / 1vs2 games, giving great chance to practice weapons selection and application. I also learned of a spot on one of my training maps, where you can rocket jump over (or camp on top of) a wall. One cool feature of Clan Arena mode, is you can rocket jump freely without taking any damage; it lends itself to a very fast, furious, and high octane form of combat. Although, it often becomes a crazy melee.

For lighting things up a bit, Charles Dickens Great Expectations, and Wanted. The former redefines the expression (from the more modern vernacular), of “Gee, what a small world! While the latter, is a gritty but enjoyable action flick, with some very nice fight scenes—that kid is to fighting ability, what a Terminator is to durability.

A day behind schedule, but I’ve also taken the time to burn a SMGL disk, that I’ll likely setup on my desktop, and experiment with porting code to x86_64, as well as playing Quake Live under Linux. Sourcemage is a GNU/Linux distro, that I actually found when Googling for some git operation lead me to their wiki; it also looks like a distro on par with my tastes. I was smiling the other night, when I read a section header in the install docs, about knowing thy `compiler`, until I realized it said `computer`, and my glasses really needed a cleaning lol.

Of friendships, promises, and commitments

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As if there wasn’t enough stuff to throw off my focus (on non-SAS matters), looming in the shadows is where a friend will drawn their own line in regard to whether they will stand with [SAS] or apart from it. For me, it’s very hard to take, because I knew, before helping bring this person into the group, that in all probability, they would have to face this cross roads in time (in fact, rather then sugar coat that outlook for my friend, I poured a lot of salt on it early on, and left the decision to rest on their own head).

It’s the second time in my own history here with [SAS], that I will have ever have considered throwing in the towel if person XYZ chooses to leave; the first and before this, the only time, was when I spent a period of time trying to keep another very dear and tired friend from losing his faith. Some people have had the same feelings about me, that’s one of the reasons I stand tall and walk hard through the storms. I’ve always enjoyed being with the people around me, because you never know how long GOD has put them there. The thing that hurts me, is knowing that the friend in this particular question, will have to go through that rough decision, and there is nothing that I can do to make it easier for this person. Because if I could remove the issue from ever having to come up in their membership, I would trade an arm to lift that weight. All I can do, is watch, wait, support, and accept, whatever my friend chooses.

As to where my own path lays in this, I know two things. When the storm started, I made a decision very early on: that if I ever lost my place in [SAS] trying to fight it for the sake of my team as a whole, that I would sooner eat dirt and shallow chicken vomit, then serve under (thenow) NTF_LTC_Rouges command, if he started a competing unit; I won’t serve under any man who would break his word the way he did, out of spite. Like wise, my thinking reminds me, at my core… there is just this stubborn, ornery, stiff necked, tough fscking son of a bitch, who just will not lay down and die.. if it feels like walking on glass, I’ll stand on my legs and fight on, because

and for how many times in my life, I’ve had to come to that conclusion in both [SAS] matters and with my own family—I will never go back on my own word, and I gave that the day I committed myself to this TEAMs future. I will not make a liar of myself, no matter what comes of that choice, because being loyal to the vision, was a promise I made to myself, and something I have never wished to break. I’ll not stoop down to someone else’s level, and that is ironed across my soul even more, after calling Rouge on his own integrity issues; and I’ve done that to his face plenty enough times for it to matter. It is a bygone and stone age concept, but my honour will never yield to a lesser path.

Once an [SAS] man, always an [SAS] man, and I am an [SAS] man, overly tried and true to be sure, and they can type it on my tomb stone in bold if they want, because here I stand, come and get me…. WHO DARES, WINS!

Thoughts on recent SAS resignations

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The more I look at the facts, the more I am convinced that this was a mutiny in spirit. Out of the first wave of people to resign: it appears to me that there are 3 core factions to it. One group, was overruled against by GCHQ, the other carries Rasa’s infection for placing their own ways above SASs, and then there’s Rouge.

When GCHQs ruling wasn’t to their liking, it seems that a few people decided that they know better then the ones in authority. That same “I’m right, GOD is wrong” attitude has built many a house on sand… I’m glad [SAS]’s was built on titanium reinforced concrete.

A few, are people who have stiff necks and know they will never have the subversion of [SAS] that they desire, a man who once refused to teach SOPs comes to mind. This is what I mean by “Rasa’s infection”.

Some time ago, even I lost all my faith in GCHQ, when it looked like a set of RvS-centric SOPs would be fast tracked through and every word I ever said to hold this clan together would become a lie. Every member of GCHQ proved themselves to me, except for Rouge. He lost that fight, and I’m starting to feel that his involvement is because he lost, and the ideal of [SAS] as one team, two games, won out.

So I suppose, having been given judgement, and deciding that the highest court in the land is not better then their own, a few people decided they can do better.  I really pitty Timbo and Scout, if they organise a clan under Rouges armchair generalship.

A “D’oh!” moment admid success :-/

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Today launched operation breadsticks, a little mission meant to explore the idea, “What if the Haitian earthquake was man made?”. First map was Made of Stone, a map I haven’t really played since before joining [SAS]. I setup the `Tactical Operations Command` centre near the spawn point, and adapted the callsign Valkyrie 62, much like in the LO to China.

Everything went fairly smooth, search team rescued the secret hostage and moved deeper into the building, took a few hard to avoid causalities, and we aced the op. Where things went hairy, was the second map. For some reason only Escrt could spawn correctly and all the terrorists were missing :-S. So after plan B to hot fix it went belly up, I called for plan C and let the members have fun on the first map.

I’m taking the week off from everything except ‘work’ (lol), but intend to sort things in my rest time. Ok, so hacking up a map in unreal ed is not restful… but it’ll be worth it. Because we need to be able to spawn, I have to fix the map to *properly* support multiplayer, it was necessary to postpone map #2. Since there were no tangos either, I’ll have to create a proper scenario; in the mean time, I can just release a tangoless version that people can train on. Then when things are ready, any given weekend, we’re back in action!

🙂

How he does it – Trees!

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Yesterday, I was explaining to a less experienced player how I so easily knew where the hostages he missed where located, after the young Element Leader exclaimed that he was always missing hostages rather then suspects 8=). For those that don’t play with me a lot, I am that annoying-guy in the element, who can usually tell the Element Leader what rooms were cleared, which were missed, and so on. In fact, during one live op, I ended up guiding a younger EL around the huge map.

The way I accomplish this feat of meticulous memory, is to keep track of it in my brains equivalent of a data tree. By remembering where I am in the mental tree (I have an excellent sense of direction), I know what the neighbouring nodes are in the tree—and if I forget what is after those, by the time I reach the spot-after, I can compare what I see with a ‘snap shot’ stored in my head, to trigger my brain into remembering where we’ve been before. If we’ve never been there, then obviously, I append it, or if it is an unexplored door, mark it as such mentally.

 I’ve been thinking of putting up a diagram of it for some time now, so here goes, lol.

This is a diagram of a fairly simple building, it contains a starting room (1), a large room (2) with a hostage and two terrorists: three doors connecting to two other rooms (3 and 4), containing terrorists and a hostage. Those rooms (3 and 4) connect to a final room (7) by way of hallways (5 and 6, respectively), and contains a hostage.

It is a very simple diagram, so I doubt anyone will have problems understanding that, because if you do, there is a problem with your map reading skills ^_^.

The way I navigate in side a building like that depicted in the above diagram, is storing each element as a “Leaf” or node in a tree, itself being a tree in my minds eye. Each node is a reference in my brain, telling me what door( node)s connect it to other rooms, and what was found in it (in this case, hostages and terrorists). Those in turn, point to other nodes or leaves of the tree, creating an organised pattern, shown below:

Here you can see the nodes are again labelled, matching to their “Room number” from above. I don’t mentally record room numbers, rather room names, but for sake of examples, I find numbers simpler to explain.

The first node (1) references a single child node (2), which as you can see, contains two terrorists and hostage, and references three door( node)s leading to the adjoining rooms—exactly as in the floor plan I drew earlier. To make it more obvious, I wrote X->Y on the nodes representing the doors, denoting where they lead to. The door( node) 2->4 takes you into room 4, from room 2. Just like in the floor plan, room four contains a terrorist and a door to a hallway (6), The two door nodes, 2->3, lead into room 3 from 2, where room 3 contains two terrorists and a hostage, again exactly in the floor plan diagrammed previously. The hallway( node)s (5 and 6) connect rooms 3 and 4 to room 7 (respectively), and room 7 contains a hostage.

This is actually a simplification of how my mind works, a since my mind notes doors, hostages, terrorists, downed team mates, objectives, important events, etc, as the children of a tree leaf, and the doors reference the next leaves. That however, is only of importance to another programmer :-o.

Since my head keeps a running track of where I am, and I know easily if I started in room 1, walked into the next room (2), and took the single door into another room, that I must be in room 4, and the door ahead leads to the hallway (6) connecting with room 7. The data tree (i.e. second diagram), is mental abstraction, showing (very roughly) how my mind views the relationships between elements of a map (e.g. the first diagram). So in essence, navigating inside a building, is a simple matter of scanning the tree in memory, and vola, I know exactly how to get to X from Y, lol.

This is how I navigate in doors, and it works damn well, certainly works better then asking a terrorist for directions! Because my working conditions place me inside buildings quite a lot, it has been necessary for my senses of navigation and deductive reasoning to adapt accordingly. I almost never get lost, just don’t ask where you left the swiffer duster. Even navigating outside, my roads-view isn’t street sign or land mark based, but closer to watching a overhead view on a HUD map from some video game…. I blame it on so many years behind a controller.

Lacking the knowledge of how the human mind operates, I’ve always found it easier to explain things in relation to a how a computer does its stuff…. because honestly, my mind functions eerily similar to a computer as it is… but hey, I am a computer geek!

Pour me a stiff drink

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Managed to get through work, a further reminder that freezing wind and plenty of rain don’t mix very nicely, my hands were almost numb by the time I got inside :-/.

Spent most of my day thinking over the changes for Stargellas input system, but for the most part was thinking about the client/server aspects of the engine, resource loading, and the issue of dealing with cheaters. After taking a very detailed line of thinking about methods to prevent cheating: I’ve decided that it is impossible to crate a PC game that forbids cheating, or it must take the next Albert Einstein to figure out.

Obviously the moment any thing leaves the trusted server, it becomes untrusted information: no data from the client can be trusted what so ever. Most of the more “Industrial” advice about cheat prevention is a totally load of bullshit; more often then not, worse then bullshit. The only way you can stop a cheater, is to close the system down: run your own hosting servers and the clients, in LAN fashion. Then put up the `eyes in the sky` like a casino to make sure no one jacks your hardware. Anything less then that, is basically a lost cause lol. You can raise the ante but you can’t mark all the cards. As soon as tools to disassemble the code or view/change the programs memory enter the picture, the battle is lost: so absolutely nothing on the clients computer can be trusted, even the operating system. Of course, one could easily state in the ELUA that any unauthorized software assisted means of interacting with the software is illegal, which rules out everything save butterflies, but there’s no enforceable method to deal with that. Even attempting to  abort program if cracker program X is running or installed, is a wasted endevour: you’d be on the wrong side of the arms race. Whether the game itself is open source or closed source makes no real difference, because obfuscation doesn’t work outside of movies.

Because it’s impossible to prevent cheating outside of your own private arcade (at best), the only viable solution to preventing cheating in an online game, is to give the community the tools to deal with them.

Requiring an authenticated account and having the servers verify this with your own systems before allowing the player to join—and implementing the means for admins to properly ban that account from their servers. Like wise, a global blacklist for any account banned from more then X servers is a good idea, hehe. That being said, of course there is no reliable way to keep the person from coming back: even if they needed another account name, e-mail address, IP address, and computer hardware. It does however, “Level the playing field” by giving the community the means to regulate itself.

The downside of course being, unless your companies game supports a generic peer to peer (unauthenticated) multiplayer mode, the game becomes a paper weight as soon as you shut down the servers. If those login servers and such are not going to remain in steady operation for at least 10-15 years or so, you’re cheating the customers. (Especially those that coughed up $50 on day one and a pre order.) Even worse are games like Battlefield 2, where you can’t do squat unless you login, because once the server is shutdown, it’s unplayable without hacks. At best, you could hope the company puts all the important server addresses in config files instead of the game exe/dll files, as it makes switching to a community provided replacement a bit less complicated for granny.

In the case of my games, well there’s none of that. The only anti cheat measures to be taken, are those that raise the `barrier to cheating` to knowing how to cheat. Unless I become the next Mark Shuttleworth or something. But then again, my games are being developed for my own enjoyment: allowing others to play them, will just be a side effect of (some day) finishing the projects.

Quake + Sleep != good mix

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Been playing QL again, won two matches and placed in a third before taking one extra for the effort.It was kind of hilarious in it’s own sick sadistic way… I won because of applied tactics. The matches were free for alls, and on maps where shotgun, plasma, lighting, and rocket weapons are the most common upgrades to your starter kit: machinegun and gauntlet (buzz saw).

After so many years in [SAS], it’s a triviality for me to be able to calculate the most ‘ideal’ target to engage first with whatever weapons stock I’ve got available…. heard of baddies, shove explosives or paint’em blue with plasma. Even use of the virtually useless machine gun can be useful in a pinch: to pepper the loosing half of a brawl or as a hair cutting follow up to a couple crippling rockets or a plasma flourish, which can sometimes be more expedient then scoring another good splash with the rocket launcher before the enemy manages to kill you lol.

Having always prided myself on piloting skills Mech Warrior, coupled with a heavy knowledge of tactical movement from life in [SAS], it’s also possible to calculate more ideal movement patterns for giving myself a small edge. Once you get used to the games controls, you either master movement quickly or die a noobs eternal death.

Combine all that with effective area / equipment denial techniques (king of the kill!) at the choke points, makes for scoring huge numbers of frags quickly unless the swarms of enemies manage to frag you fast… the key is not dying.

Good clean manoeuvring – always being aware of enemy positions, power ups, and obstacles, while taking care to evade enemy fire as you set up a lethal volly. On the first match I won, it was surprising no one accused me of using an aim bot or some kind of crystal ball for the efficiency with which I nailed enemies while snatch power ups, like a maniac on steroids >_>.

Simple bits of psychology, instinctive/near mathematically determined engagement patterns,  mental timers, and ever increasing ease of manoeuvring through the game environments multi tasking nature…. and volia, you rack up frags until someone out does you.

In a way, Quake is probably the most addictive action game since the original DooM was released! I’ve never really cared much for Q3A or UT style gladiatorial games, but a few games of Quake are much better at cleansing stress then playing Raven Shield. Experience as shown me, never play RvS when pissed, or you will have a vein popping out of your head lol.