Games

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.

Ahh, a good day…

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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 ;).

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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

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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

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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!!!

Rambling the Metal Gears

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Been playing more of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, managed to get 2 of the C3’s planted before setting off the alarms in the hanger… So Dragunov SVD time from the top level catwalk vs goon squad below with shotguns 🙂

Although I missed the M60 machine gun again on the way to the sniper dual with The End, I did find a new toy. A russian knock off of the Czechoslovakian. Scorpian SMG, I remember using one in Raven Shield and Syphon Filter 3… But in MGS3 you get one fitted with a laser aimpoint, if that sucker had a suppressor it would be the ultimate stealth weapon xD

The Colt M1911A1 is just too weak, I got detected in the hanger because I decided rather then tranquilizing the maintenance tech and then shooting him with the .45 so he wouldn’t wake up before I was done (less sound then the knife, oddly). I put a shot in the back of his head and he ran off, emptied the rest of the mag trying to take him down… I’m used to a MK23+SD and double taps using a laser sight from MGS but I don’t mind using the pistols iron sights in MGS3, just that the M1911A1 is less then optimal for dispatching enemies.

The prototype M16 ain’t so good either, not a lot of attack power and the suppressor can’t hold up to a lot of gun fire. The Patriot is just as bad as the M16 IMHO but the unlimited ammo and small size make it more useful for firefights then the Soviet AK47 in the game.

Placed the last C3 charge, nice cut scene of Snake musing over the heart-shaped plastic explosive Eva gave him, molding it into a butterfly and catching it. Just like the one he failed to catch in the Cave after he lost his eye protecting Eva. Of course thing sin MGS are never so easy lol.

The melee with Col. Volgin was actually a lot easier then I remember, first time I played through the game it was hard. This time it was pretty easy though, I can see why I’ve heard rumors of people posting “speed runs” of the fight online hehe.

Creamed Volgin, survived the bullet riddled chase out of grozny grad on Eva’s motorbike — finally using the Scorpion :-). RPG’s, Scorpion, and Patriot fire to deal with the Op4 chasing in motorbikes with side cars. Sniped the C3 on the bridge with Eva as spotter… all the way through to the final show down with a pissed off Volgin driving the shagohod and another escape from the goon squad now on motorcycles and jet-platforms!

Saved after the final crash, I know the running firefight through the jungle is the hardest part. Especially with an injured Eva in tow; armed only with Snakes SAA “Peace Maker”. MGS3 does show quite well what happens when you don’t WATCH THE ROAD!!! After the crash Snake ends up breaking a few ribs on a tree while Eva is less fortunate and gets impaled.

Snake refuses to leave her behind but oy’vey what an exchange. While he’s telling Eva “I need you”, I’m thinking… If I know Snake, he’s thinking she’s the only one that can fly. And sure enough he had to point that out (^_^).

She’s only lucky to be alive after all!

The end game can wait for another night, I remember it well… With luck I can use a mixture of SVD and Grenade assistest ambushes, the patriot for suppressive fire and manage to complete it without to much damage. I don’t recall Eva being much help but between injuries and a SAA I guess that makes sense.

The final dual to the death with The Boss, eventually earning the protagonist the title “Big Boss” is not cake walk either from what I remember. Hmm, would be nice to survive a close encourter with The Boss without any broken bones or firearms hehe.

Hmm, looks like some one actually made a model of the shagohod out of LEGO bricks.

http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/11941

Not a bad job either if I do say so myself as a former LEGO addict. This persons got some talent at reproducing things for sure.

I remember back when The Phantom Menace came out I designed and built my own “super” version of the droid hover tanks in Star Wars. Even in my youth I’ve always liked designing and building things hehe. The droid hover tank I did out of LEGO bricks was armed to the teeth and weighed a freaking ton. I didn’t have the kind of parts that they used for the base when LEGO released a droid hover tank model kit of their own a few years later but I created my own hover tank with a distinctive shape with parts from an old Exploriens kit I had and used solid-blue canopies from one of my brothers old kits (~1980s) to make armoured loading bins. My setup was much detailed then the official kit,down to the torpedo and missile tubes, I think the official LEGO kit only painted there’s on, cheap bastards hehe. The one I cooked up also was scaled larger, I used the Battle Droid action figures painted with the right markings of course 😉 to crew the battle tank. I created my design in the “spirit” of the one from the films and tried to improve on the combat effectiveness of it, not reproduce it exactly as it was in the films: I wanted to make it better xD

It made a great display in my bed room for a few months until I needed the parts to build something else loool.

I’ve always enjoyed the Metal Gear games but I never thought about building one out of LEGOs when I was a kid… If I did, I probably would have done the Metal Gear REX from the first Metal Gear Solid game. Hmm, I think I must’ve been about 10 years old when MGS came out in the USA and maybe 11 around when Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace hit theaters.

It’s kind of strange, 10, 20, maybe even 30 years (if I live to see) that you can still remember to stuff you used to do lol.