Games

Plan of Attack — tongiht through the weekend+monday

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In no specific order:

0/ Train Ez, Spawn, possibly Ghost/Medic as well — operation marshal

1/ Write new interface for the ‘custom’ library on sas <---- implemented, remaining code is 'features', need to test it and place under revision control, along with other changes to the lib. 2/ Build mock-ups for GCHQ of the new docs

3/ Implement the install code for ‘that project’ I’m doing with a few guys from forums.pcbsd.org

4/ Test pythonic bindings to libxml2 (I may need this __soon__) <---- lxml interface to libxml2 accepted 5/ Evaluate gtkmm and py-gtk (I don’t think I like the wxWidgets api after spending so much time with Qt3/Qt4) — run tests under Winsucks, because linking against gtkmm and friends will be the big pain.

6/ look up the api docs for interfacing C/C++ code with Python 🙂

7/ eventually get around to placing my .vimrc, .exrc, .Terry_shrc, and various .site_shrc files under CVS (or other scm) on Vectra. <---- vimrc and Terry_shrc imported, other files being less portable, some name convention needs to be worked out. 9/ try to complete social studies homework before [SAS] SOP Prototype Due Date.

10/ eventually catch up with posting more on my LJ then todo snippets

11/ download Wiz’s latest mix and let’er blast <--- it rocks 12/ Implement my admin scripts 13/ Update cougars settings

14/ Implement my ‘lister’ PHP script <--- done, just need to write the password locker. You know, life would really be sweet…. If I could get paid to use my brain, instead of saving it all for my off-work hours lol. No if I new any companies in this burg that hire and train self-educating-geeks :

Omni-tasker bound by honesty

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Oh why, did I have to promise one of my friends I’d put myself on equal priority?

I could just go straight thought and finish (most of) this tonight, skip sleeping for then a half hour, and go to work without trouble. Haha, just kidding, I’m not that crazy ^_^. I’ll need sleep to get up on time, but thankfully tomorrows just more time consuming then stressful. So my plan is to:

Make like a Spider now, get done what I can, then hack like a son of a bitch at it tomorrow… Until the project falls, and with luck! A project over 3 and a half years in the making, will be complete soon !!!!!!

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*SIGH* watching my wireless connection flubber-band between 6mb/s and 24mb/s at a distance of ~2.5m, I think it’s time to go to bed, and download a few api references in the morning….

Grrr…

EDIT:

Even worse stroke of luck, took a break and loaded up XGalaga (a nice Galaga based game), got a powerup of tripple-missle launcher in the first wave, only to lose it seconds later when I took my eyes half off the display lol –> just long enough to zig when I should’ve zagged ^_^

That’s it, I’m going to bed.

Training Afterdark

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A tad annoyed, been doing some of my private training in RvS. My times are almost a minute longer then my best, while that’s still quite quick (I set the time marker for 5min; and completed it in less then 3:45) it’s still very slow… I’ve always chose that map because of the extreme CQB. Did a couple good runs and even got time to bring out a variety of weapons: MP5/10A2, MP5A4, TMP, P90, Mac 9/11, and the MTAR-21. But I’m still very far from satisfied with my performance. I fear, that I am starting to get old :

Two things that really pissed me off, the P90 and my faithful P228 pistol. It’s like, you fire off a burst into an area the size of a mouth, the target is chest sized, so close that if it was real life, you could almost extend your arms and bayonet the S.O.B. But in RvS, it’s still possible to fire in bursts, watching the count of rounds fired increase: 2..4..7.. and guess what? Magically all of the bullets strike the wall behind the X-Ray, but none actually hit them… Leaving you with 44 rounds in a P90 and a dead body, that is not the enemy!!!

It’s total bullshit. Although, I must admit in RvS, the game has always given me a feeling that the rear sights are on target, while the front sights are aimed at your toes instead… Tonight was an unbelievably bad display on RvS’s part, I’ve never considered the games P90 to be deead on balls accurate but this was just a joke. I’ve picked off head-shots at range with the games Mac 9/11, and the P90 is dozens of times more accurate in that game.

The second thing to piss me off, is I shot an X-Ray square in the chest with a P228, 9x19mm Jacket Hollow Point round… Round penetrated and exploded the barrel behind him. While the JHP are still capable of penetrating tangos. I can’t help but wonder, why a 9x19mm JHP round from a P228 will do the trick, when a FMJ 9x19mm round from my MP5A4 wouldn’t.

What irks me even more so, for “training games” we used to round people up, go find explosive barrels, and take turns shooting them. Walk up to the barrel, fire a round (or two), and run off before the next Rct tries it. Often we use the 5.7mm AP Army (FN Five-Seven) because RvS gives it less stopping power then some SPITBALL from Romania! We’ve also tested with 5.56x45mm weapons and various 9x19mm pistols using full metal jacket rounds.

The concept that a P228 firing 9x19mm JHP can be more dentimental to a (thick skinned!) explosive barrels contents then the G36K’s 5.56x45mm round, just begs for a physicist to explain these ballistics >_>

Geeze, why can’t they ever make a *decent* tactical game that is realistic?

Before another round of Wesnoth…

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It’s been abit since I’ve updated my LJ, haven’t really had much time for it :

The past two weeks I’ve largely been workin’ my ass off either on various projects, at work (grrr!), or training the days away in the servers. At least the training ops are both fun and effective uses of time, the rest… Well let’s just say I hate my job lol. The number of projects I’ve been butter-flying across is getting a bit out of hand, mainly because of the amount of time I can afford to spend on them during the day.

I may end up changing “schools” so to speak, in the near future. I’m not really looking forward to it, because although it should speed this shit up quite a lot. I’ve still got the same problems as always — a family to butt in and working most of the week. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a vacation lol, I would probably end up catching up on homework +S.

In the mean time I’ve been playing a lot of Wesnoth. A few years ago, on one of my ‘few’ vacations… I was lucky enough to spend my time split between working, learning another programming language, and a new (to me) game called the Battle for Wesnoth. It’s a great game, a bit J. R. R. Tolkien inspired in my humble opinion, but a very fun Turn-Based Strategy game. I recently picked it up again, for lack of a better time passing… The games quite omni-platform but I’ve only got it installed on my FreeBSD powered laptop. I’ve been looking through the info and working on a custom campaign for it. Although a bit out of place for Wesnoth, it’s an original plot, well at least original in the sense that I’ve never followed that kind of High Fantasy in the first place >_>

I’m quite a bit more of a “Sci Fi Guy”, I prefer fiction and have the book-inhaling habits to prove it hehe. Most of the times I read, I usually go through 50~120 pages a day easily. Dune took a few days but I read enormous amount of it per sitting. That’s one thing I really miss, getting to sit down and READ a book. Most of the time I read these days, it’s either on the web or if lucky enough to have a real book in hand. It’s usually a book on something technical, e.g. TCP/IP. I love books, reading beats TV watching for me, because there can be much greater depth to it. Not to mention that 300~500 pages of novel, spanning 3 or more books (a trilogy) gives one a bit more leeway for time. As much as I love TV and Movies, I really dislike some of the hack-jobs that people have done… Just look at the movie ALIENS, the “classic” version that we’ve watched for years. And the *proper* version with so many deleted scenes and cut-out footage restored. The rat bastards practically destroyed the entire story!!! Although, I admit the classic cut they’ve released so often is still a good movie. But the special edition is a great movie!

Hmm, some days I wish I could win the lotto or something. It would be certainly nice, instant shopping spree for what books I’ve missed over the past decade lol. Dang dogs been chewing on my copy of Vision of the Future, luckily not to much damage… Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy is one of my favorite set of Star Wars novels, the Hand of Thrawn duology (that it is apart of) also being quite nice. If I recall correctly, Vision of the Future is the one where Luke Skywalker finally purposed to Mara Jade.

After who knows how long people were waiting to see if that would ever happen, it finally did lol.

Incredibly tired

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I’ve had a lot on my mind lately… At least for me it’s somewhat hard not to realize how far I am from my objectives. Working into the ground, on all flanks, with no sign of relief in view. No matter what I do, there never seems to be any headway made :

I think I’ll play a bit of Wesnoth for tonight. It’s not like I’m going to get to doing anything meaningful tonight, I’ll be lucky to get to sleep in peace……

Days log

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I think I ended up walking around the grocery store more then coding… As soon as I was found wide awake. That generally proved to be a wash out, at lest I got some of the menial work done on the current module. Why on earth I’m working through things in the same order as the flow chart, I dunno… Maybe because it saves the easy work for the end lol.

Managed to *eventually* make it into Training Grounds #1 to work with Jonsi. Pardoning 3 r 4 people and a website to deal with, training chatter with the NCOs, making like an omni-present on 3 forums, and the like. Once we finally got ready op for the training, we got delayed by more people joining, and NCOs out to do some synchronization, to the point that Jonsi was only there for about 10 minute lol. Several hours later of drillin’ with NCO/Rct/CO I’m like, “I stopped N hours ago but no one noticed” haha. We did have some good training though.

I also managed to feed my interest in computers, inhaling some information about the old ENIAC or Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, the German Z3, and the British code breaking Colossus computers. As well as wishing that I could visit the Deutsches Museum, because a replica of the Z3 is supposed to be there in München :-).

What can I say, I love computers lol.

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Just caught the end of Iron Eagle on TV, it’s about as much of a cheesy unrealistic ’80s action flick as ya can get. But it is the only decent cheesy action flick with lots of air action that I now of >_>.

The whole jist of the movie is a kid skipping town with a pair of USAF F-16s to rescue his father, and ending up single handly saving the day while dancing beteen AAA and MiGs, although how any one could call those things MiGs without being drunk, is totally beyond me. Those airframes just screen Dassault Mirage! The movies never the less enjoyable, as long as one can forget a few bits of reality, kick back and relax that is.

It reminds me that I’ve never really found a flight simulation that I like. Everyone that I’ve ever played, either boils down to being to arcade like, not my bag, or proves that a keyboard and joystick are a poor substitute for a real aircrafts cockpit lol. I like flight sims but they don’t like me I guess :. I’ve never really had much taste for modern missile based combat either, just a gun-fighter at heart I guess… And I have *never* found a flight sim game that had an AI that could really dog fight, get past the missles and they are just toast. Although it’s a very arcade-like game, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere was actually quite fun, just wish I had a Japanese copy of it… Most particularly the mission where one has to fly in hot pursuit of the X-49 Night Raven through a tunnel system, leading the player into a later level where one duals the ultra-nimble aircraft inside the caverns below.

The fun part of course is getting through the level at high speed without crashing, then moving on to shoot it out with the Night Raven for an A ;-). The occasional duals with the UI-4054 Aurora, looks like one of our spyplanes but flies like a jetfighter from hell lol. Some of the few times that the computers proven to be a challenge I guess :. I eventually gave up on flight sims in general, do to lack of anything fun that didn’t go to either extreme (the arcade Vs where is my simpod problem). Hmm, before I quit though I remember when one of the console based flight sims came out, more realistic then most consolers but still to arcadey for my tastes. When my brother watched me fly one of the attack fighter missions, he described me as a lethal S.O.B. while I was making waves, crazy wall crawling spider at work xD. But it’s been *years* since I’ve actually played any flight-based games seriously.

If I ever found a game that I could enjoy and not dislike, maybe I’d get back into flight simulations someday. But none just seem to strike a good balance :. And I flibbin’ hate air-to-air missiles! In a lot of ways, I think the truest forms of air combat began dying out after World War II, disappearing into the post Vietnam era… Where a pilots skill is as important then his technology, if not even more so. Who knows, maybe technology will one day return fighter pilots to more dog fighting, less ground attack jobs.

Either way, I’m not likely to ever fly let along get a pilots license, and my Dream Girl is already retired anyway.

Finally a good swat game

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After a stream of very crappy games, fillding with more then a few players that could pass themselves off as tactically incompetent… We finally had one really solid round on PG#3. I took EL on the half way house map, in a formation of Chris, [SAS]_Big12, [SAS]_Spidey01, and Snorr. We moved us swiftly into the buildings front entry point, Snorr watching the side door, Chris and Big forking off to secure the halves. A little application of cover later, we’ve secured the area. Left Snorr behind to cover the twin double doors into the chapel, while the rest of us headed for the pool room. A quick bang & clear, wedge the doors and secure the contacts while having guns on every point of threat! –> The proper way. We moved back, setup Red Fire Team and Blue Fire Team each on one double door with bangs, blow and go –> chapel secured, door to hallway wedged, all angels covered… We headed upstairs and settled in for entry to the big room up top.

Normally I would plan such a thing out before hand, but with the noob patrol on the other team I didn’t bother. We did a smooth assault synced to my GO GO GO command: Bang going in, Chris entering and blitzing RIGHT and clearing to the bathroom, Big storming forward and then moving RIGHT to cover the exit door. Me blasting through and heading RIGHT, joining Chris at the bathroom door with a flash bang ready, and Snorr heading forward, striaght to the wall and securing a point to cover contacts in the room. Chris and I kicked into the bathroom with a flashbang as Snorr and Big setup cover. On my “CLEAR” we started zip-cuffing contacts, under protective cover all the way, then set it up for an entry on the next room.

“ROOM CLEAR, that’s the way it’s done baby”

Kicked into the next room with a flashbang, forking the element off again on the fly, Big taking the far door, Me taking point for the next room, Chris flipping in a bang as I popped the door, while Snorr covering Bigs back, we secured the next room, while trying to minize risk of getting flanked. Secure contacts, mopped up, moved out to the hallway… And BINGO, a plan hits me.

I ordered Chris and Big to move down the stairs to the corner and stand by for an entry on the cafeteria. While Me and Snorr circled around back to the other side to the rear of the kitchen. A quick “GO GO GO” and both teams rolled in their flash bangs, quickly storming through to each teams sector for a mop up.

And then a friendly game afterwards >_>

[click to enlarge]
Operators playing cards around the table

Da noobs go in, them noobs hit the hard deck, pros go in, dead noobs disconnect while the pros go on the complete the mission, smooth as a babies behind hehe.

Rockin’ and Rollin’

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Spent most of my day working on a couple of flow charts for tomorrows project meeting. I really wish I had the time to setup a proper presentation but the most important stuff is ready. If all the concerned parties are on time, we should even get done fairly quickly I think. I’ve had concept work and test cases stuffed in my brain for the past 2 or 3 days but no real time to sit down and work it out. I think, if I see another flow chart, I am gonna kick something. I’ve found Dia quite nice for doing simple diagrams and charts, it’s enough like GIMP that the learning curve is almost null. It could do with a little more refinement in spots but hey, if it lets me get stuff done in a fraction of the time… I can put up with the stuff I don’t like (mainly to do with text operations).

I’m working on it in my spare time, after work, after [SAS] operations, and along side my own projects, so effective use of my time is a plus hehe.

Some good news in [SAS] finally hit, I’ve been waiting for awhile now… But it was well worth it, seems several great NCOs are leading the charge in the indicated direction. I’ve left the details to others, since the emphasis was on getting it “done” rather then doing it well, and I’m just the schmuck who will probably have to deal with any later maintenance lol. But at least it’s done….

Managed to get a little bit of RvS time in, I think my recent expedition into the SWAT4 server has thrown my movements off. In RvS, things tend to act very fast and chunky but in SWAT4 they tend to feel much smoother, if slow by comparison. I was rather surprised to have around accuracy rankings in the 60s of hit percentages. While I rarely miss in SWAT4, RvS requires more, should I say. “Shoot the fucker, shoot him again, and shoot’em some more” in order to combat latency and super tangos. RvS is nice in that 2 rounds will drop almost any enemy, if you can get the blasted hits to register cleanly over the network.

In the course of my days web surfing I found an interesting language, called erlang. It looks like it would be worth poking around, I just wish I had the time :-(. But I’m just to busy with other stuff and can’t offerd to “cram one more” language between my ears… Rubber banding between C, C++, PHP, Perl, and Bourne for a couple days is, uhh.. a bit odd :

I really do like to learn different languages, the only problem is time spent inhaling documentation and memorizing syntax / interfaces. Much of my thinking i fairly language independent, so I really don’t have trouble picking up other languages. Python for example took a couple of hours at the most and ~2 days of “play testing” it on light problems before I was comfortable using it on a more serious project. Although I do admit, when it comes to expressing ideas I do really draw upon what I know.

For expedience of expression and to actually be able to read it at a glance. I’ll often mangle English and common constructs together, forming a document local style of writing whatever pops up often. Basically writing it in a way that just lets me say what I need to remind myself of later, and read it quickly when I do have to look stuff up. I can usually read things at a fairly quick rate, my eyes scan it and break things down, parsing it into the elements I comprehend and working on the rest as I go along. So the strange code-lish style writing usually speeds things up, since my eyes can parse the flow of it more readily then a few extra paragraphs of contemporaneity English, which means I can also “home in” on the parts of interest and quickly discern what I need to read and what I can ignore when grepping my text.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m just mad as a hatter lol.