Games

Of friendships, promises, and commitments

by

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

by

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 :-/

by

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!

by

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

by

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

by

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.

Ahh, a good day…

by

Spent most of the work time, thinking about todays tasks. I really did not expect the new continuation training sessions to go over very well, just an inkling. Almost had a full server, but lost a few due to connectivity issues and ~20 minutes delay in trying to get as many bodies as possible. But hey, if we had started on time, there would only have been two participants to scare off  >_>.

Things went pretty well, tried to keep the live fire exercises fairly easy since it was the first session. Ezbassr and company proved to be more then up to it, much to my relief lol. The purpose of continuation training, is to give you a rough and tumble environment to practice your skills. It’s not a piece of cake, you’ve gotta be sharp, or you’ll fall flat on your face. Ah, the joys of [SAS] training :-D. We train harder so we can fight Eazy ;).

by

Spent mos of the day working on the [SAS] Dept. of Agriculture map… been in a terrible mood all day. That’s just the way things have been rolling here of late :-(.

Sorted out the details at the outside spawn point, adjusted the fire escapes accordingly, but had to remove both the window frames and glass in order to move through it. After shooting out the planes of glass, there’s to much stuff left, and it blocks you from climbing through lol.

Got a brain fart, and added extra rooms/doors connecting that spawn poin to the basement garage; just need to sort out the nodes properly before that is finished.

Began work on redoing the central office upstairs, only to find out that I can’t look up the same brick wall paper used all over the blasted map, so I’ve had to substitute a more fierce kind of brick. Gonna sort out that office space and rebuild the bombed out bathrooms below, then the structural changes will mostly be complete.

I have to do the AI related work and tidy up the marketing office area, but otherwise the map is basically done, it’ll be ready for a little testing soon, hehe.

Full throttle

by

So far so good, managed to burst through my weekend todo’s hehe. Completed my work for [SAS], got time to play a couple games, did the setup for ticket and documentation management needs on a personal project. Plus I’ve been aggressively moving ahead with the [SAS] Dept. of Agriculture map for SWAT 4.

All this while upgrading my laptop >_>.

Remaining to do with The DoA, is setting up the access from the outside spawn on level 1, to the window breaching point up on level 3. I’ve completed the relighting and half the general cleanup of the building, so the only big task: redoing the AI. I plan on setting up an interesting little “Scenario”, hehe. If I could, pushable barricades would be a nice touch but I’ve yet to figure that out in SwatEd.

Most of my time has been spent on the Encapsulated Package Installer (EPI) project. We now have a forum, issue tracker, and wiki system going. Things are not moving as quickly as I would like with EPI, but the past two weeks have advanced rapidly on infrastructural issues. When our new systems are more established, I’ll likely make references to it here.

Overall, the highlight of my weekend, has been (at long last) getting my invitation request to Google Wave accepted. So far it seems to be coming along well, but I have almost no one to wave with at the moment lol. The ability to invite 8 others came along with it; most of which I’ve mentally reserved for a few close friends and a couple for good uses. The main downside of Wave, is simply that e-mail and traditional IM systems have been around a really fraking long time; so it’s an uphill battle. One that I expect the world is not quite ready for yet, although it is very much a technology in the direction of our Internet future.

I’ve even found the time to migrate most of my gaming related pictures on to the WWW! The old home directory is getting thinner ^_^. Another thing I’ve gotten down, is transferring Live Journal entries from November 2008 to this Blog. I really need to pick up the pace on that. As much bother as it is, one thing I really do like about this migration procedure, is it gives me the ability to organise my old entries using lables; walks me down memory lane, and helps me to find ‘useful’ posts that were forgotten.

Life is busy, the serious issue is advancing forward quick enough for my tastes… rather then being bogged down and omni-tasked to death. My family is good at doing that.

DINNER OUT, best live op I’ve had in years

by

Today was the go date for [SAS]_Trp_Walkers Live Op, DINNER OUT. The first one he’s made actually, and doubtlessly, one of the best I’ve gotten to participate in, in quite a while lol. It really was a good LO.

When I saw the floor plans he attached today, I remembered a note I had scribbled down last year from [SAS]_SSM_Medic. He used it for some SNCO duties, and I got to thinkin’, what if it supported loading external images into it? Well sure enough, it did :-D. Spent a while playing with our `new’ish` toy, Walker and DUKE helping with the testing. It also fell on my head to lead the live operation, since Walker delegated it to the highest head on the totem poll.

After the call for the LO came up, I got everyone into the briefing software, and conducted a mission briefing. The plan was quite simple, Alpha and Bravo would link up on the top floor, Alpha providing support fire for the entry, and Bravo silently securing the flank—then taking position for a hard entry. After the “CHEESE GO” signal was to be given, we would’ve launched our raid: Bravo doing a breach bang entry while Alpha supported with tear gas and marksmen fire. That was the plan anyway, and we would’ve setup a similar assault in the next choke point on “PIZZA GO”.

What really happened, in manoeuvring Bravo into position, we came to a rather sticky set of situations. The areas we had to clear were surrounded with grated catwalks overhead; we took care of the first entry like clock work, but it was the second area… our rally point for after cheese. There was two doors leading into the RP, the right one with an X-Ray having his buttocks planted firmly to the doorway, and a buddy standing on the stairs next to him. The right door, had spotty obstacles and another X-Ray within arms reach of the door. I made the call to maintain the stealth, and informed [SAS]_Sgt_Duke comming Alpha, that we may be compromised within the next 15 secs; he was ready. We stacked on the left door, aiming to drop the sentry without much alarm; we did that and took care of the guys on the other side, before moving into the freezer behind our way point: a double door to be wedged before the take down on cheese. When we got there, the door was open and we took a lot of flak, [SAS]_Trp_COT going down almost on the spot… a hostage was shot in the distance before we could get the situation locked down—Alpha went GREEN and took out the shooters. Once I got bravo to our final assaulting position, commu with Duke showed we should have little resistance, so I signalled our entry with just a quick bang clear. While working around a bullet proof cage to kill a remaining shooter, I got quick draw mcgrawed out of the action without a chance to fire lol. In a couple minutes, Bravo was down to [SAS]_Trp_ESCRT while [SAS]_Sgt_Duke and [SAS]_LCpl_DeCapi took charge of the clearing effort. Soon after that, ESCRT went down leaving just Duke & DeCapi, when DC crashed, it left Duke to save the day on his own lol.

In retrospect, I should have changed the plan on the spot, split my Bravo team into RED and BLUE on each door: breach bang entries and push on, having Alpha engage cheese while that was happening. Instead, I aimed to keep things on the hush & hush, rather then take the gamble on hostages getting off’ed.

I chose Duke to lead Alpha team, because I wanted my best man ready in case things blew up in my face… and I knew his level head could cope with the pressure up there in the OP lol. While it would be easier for me to manage the assault team (Bravo) if I was up front where the action was. It was watching Duke and DeCapi clearing the map together, that really impressed me, for the first time in quite a while. Watching them in action was like looking at the epitome of [SAS] teamwork and tactics in action. Two [SAS] members knee deep in trouble with no real shortage of OPFOR to shoot at, and Duke brought order to chaos in the end.

A little bit ago, I sent an exaltational e-mail up the CoC, recommending them both for medals in the new awards matrix. There display of how we work together, and Dukes actions during the LO was that good – I generally don’t send recommendations for such things lol. But I think, after all the Live Opeartions I’ve been in, Duke deserves a citation for his effort, and DeCapi is also worthy of commendation. There virtual battlefield action really was awesome. Since our refined awards matrix is more focused towards live ops and trainers, Duke just made my first two cents for our equivalents of battle field commendations.

In [SAS], the only people I’ve ever felt worthy of serious recognition for their contribution to the team, are [SAS]_Maj_WIZ and [SAS]_CO_Random, because I know they’ve given more to [SAS] then most of us combined. WIZ in particular, I’ve been around to see better then most, how much he’s put into this group. Those that know me, I don’t do so highly very lightly lol.

Without a doubt, best live op I’ve had in ages!!!