Games

Writer’s Block: Funniest Thing Ever.

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Out of all the funny things that have ever happened to you, which experience still cracks you up?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

Without a doubt?

Cored in a second flat!

I was in a casual game of MechWarrior 4: Mercs with a friend, her smoke signals host (AOL Dial up), and the Op4 was three of her killer ‘Mech configs piloted by level 9 bots (the hardest mode). I was piloting my Shadow Cat, a 45 Ton medium ‘Mech and iirc she had her Black Knight.

I was like, “Ok I’ll go destract them you go flank” and before she could warn me, I jump jetted over the wall and BAM

My ‘Mech exploded as they cored out my Shadow Cat about as fast as my legs cleared the wall hahahaha !!

Crap, we were laughing till it hurt after that one lol. Normally bots can’t fight worth a darn on any difficualty level let along the maximum but when shes the engineer — RUN FOR IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmm, it’s been awhile since I last thought about the ‘cored in a second flat’ thing hehe. That’s one thing I always liked about playing with Lioness, she was brilliant at putting together strike packages. Blending the perfect mixture of weapons payloads to balance both human and bot skills with the desired effect, and to top it off grouping them into strike groups of demi-lances or larger. Often 2 assault ‘Mechs and a heavy or a med, hvy, and aslt.

Some of those configurations were scary :

And I’m a guy who used to train versus like 12 level 9 bots lol.

My favorite part about Mech Warrior was the ability to design ‘Mech configurations. I was never really happy that in competitive play, I usually ended up in ‘Mechs designed for the more natural ‘stand up fight’ of a league drop — weapons were largely limited to the heaviest hitting ones grouped in mass, alpha striking was the goal. Like the common street-fight Highlander every body used for short to medium range work and urban ops.

About 90 tons of jump ‘Mech with low slung arms, big torso sections and tall legs. But that sucker could pack a heavy gauss rifle (the biggest gun back then) plus still cram in clan guass, light gauss rifle (basically super long range), and a capacitor packed particle projector cannon (PPC) — meaning one big alpha strike. It only had a 600 Metre rang eon the heavy gauss but the closer you got, the harder the gauss rifles hit. Heck if you got as close as 400m the heavy gauss would probably critical most heavy ‘Mechs in one center torso shot.

That’s how competitive MW4 play was, speed was a luxury for most, heat sinks dead weight, armour was cheap compared to guns. And if it couldn’t destroy any ‘Mech in the game with two direct hits, your ‘Mech was too weak for combat. Although of course in games where we got points by damage done rather then kills (never very popular) people would mix in some shredders using short or long range missiles.

The only big difference between long range and short range combat was for brawling we took shotguns (LBX Autocannon) and heavy lasers most times, for sniping we took Gauss rifles, PPC, and ER Large Lasers :. So what if I could work a 70 Ton Nova Cat with 7 ER Lasers, minimal reflective armour, 90+ KPH engine and no heat sinks what so ever, and go hill-humping as the Nova-style sniping was nick named, blasting away ‘Mechs ? I much rather have been in a little ol’ Shadow Cat or a Raven zigging and zagging through the battlefield.

In some ways, I envy my old partner in the engineering wing. She never played competitively (good for me because her personal ‘Mech was the Queen of Alpha Strikes) but she also always used the style of ‘Mechs that she preferred to bring into virtual combat (y).

She was always a great one at designing ‘Mechs for all range combat, a skill very few people ever developed well. My own line of bots got used for training but were never quite up to par with Lionesses monsters from a Doom speed run lol.

Although, I did work together a group of bots that cored my shadow cat in half a second once lol.

They were never quite up to that same nightmare configs that she cooked up :-(.

I remember she once gave me her personal ‘Mechs configuration, a 75-Ton Black Knight that had an alpha strike that put 100 ton ‘Mechs to shame!!! When I brought it to bare against’ my friends ‘Mechs they couldn’t believe it hit so hard haha. It was like bringing a midget to a sumo match and packing the death stars super laser !

With Lionesses very much respected permission, I eventually gave my buddies the config so they could stop (wrongly) trying to reverse engineer it on her >_>.

*shakes head*, that girl was a bloody genius of ‘Mech Engineering!

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Oy these trouble makers are starting to get insulting!!

I figured at first, fine let the babies have there candy… Now they are just asking for a spanking.

So far it seems they can try stealing copyrighted content, insulting us, disrespecting us, and personally disappointing the WO1, insulting the major, but one thing they can’t do?

Is actually prove they have more maturity then that stupid character always following SpongeBob SquarePants around, man I’m glad I’m not working at that one clients anymore… The bosses grandkids were nuts about that show (and I’m not) :

After what Wiz did to ol’Snipe, that should at least keep the whipper snappers busy for a little while, but I still wish they would GROW UP.

It makes me sick to think about how some of these peoples actually used to be a decent example of conduct lol.

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Oy these trouble makers are starting to get insulting!!

I figured at first, fine let the babies have there candy… Now they are just asking for a spanking.

So far it seems they can try stealing copyrighted content, insulting us, disrespecting us, and personally disappointing the WO1, insulting the major, but one thing they can’t do?

Is actually prove they have more maturity then that stupid character always following SpongeBob SquarePants around, man I’m glad I’m not working at that one clients anymore… The bosses grandkids were nuts about that show (and I’m not) :

After what Wiz did to ol’Snipe, that should at least keep the whipper snappers busy for a little while, but I still wish they would GROW UP.

It makes me sick to think about how some of these peoples actually used to be a decent example of conduct lol.

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Managed to get done with work in half the time today, I don’t mind getting home early !

Haven’t managed tog et much coding done today though… Hopefully tonight, tomorrow, and the weekend :

Took sometime to relax, fired up Halo: CE and finished off the game on Heoric. Came in at what was left of Captain Keys as the shoot out was about to start. Not very hard, just move down the ramp to trip the area-triggers on the flood goons and back pedal off the dais and use the pillar at either corner for cover while doing some hit’n’fade and sharp shooting work.

Blew away the flood 2 or 3 at a time with my Assault Rifle and Shotgun then reloaded on my (very low) supply of grenades and ammunition from the corpses. Since several previous attempts told me there would be a covenant attack squad full of elites and grunts including fual rod guns. I stock pillied weapons near the corner, (ab)using the weapon swap to prep my fall back point. I setup a plasma rifle and pistol in the strong corner and left my assault rifle and a plasma pistol on the opposite side from the covenant door. Then loaded off my shotty and picked up a needler for some long-range work.

I figured, if I couldn’t take out the attack squad when I went for the door — lobbing grenades into there midst while letting rip at survivors with a needle gun. I’d do a fall-back by suppressive shotgun fire to the pillar, fall back point (FB) one. If I got boxed out of there, I’d fling the empty needler, frag out and rush to the assault rifle over by FB two, a last stand and run for ye life moment.

Brains over brawn 😉

So I went over to the door, tripped the auto-open and chucked in a few grenades as the grunts threw back, blew most of them up. Then applied needler fire to deal with the living critters and put some more grenades in. Took it easy and fetched full supplies hehe

Halo I think is very much a game where you need to learn when to stand and fight from a distance and when to kick down the door and storm the enemy position, if you want to survive. After 15+ years of gaming and thousands of hours in the shoot house with my teammates training room clearing in RvS & SWAT, it comes a bit easier tome then it used to.

After that, made it off the ship (while dodging endless streams of plasma grenades) and down to the pillar of autumn. Fighting through armies of Covenant and Flood, even going toe to toe with Hunters (up close and shotty). Blew the ships reactor and high tailed it out… Halo’s ending really is a bit anti-climactic compared to the pump up to get through the end game lol.

Game felt much shorter and much easier this time around 0.o

One thing I like about Halo is the Elites are almost the Master Chiefs equal, on legendary if your not paying attention a single blue elite can kill you. Heroic, well is not that challenging imho but it gets the job done for R&R. I find the best way of dealing with Elites is to use the range advantage — and hit there shields with accuracy. The 12.7mm pistol and covenant plasma rifle work best, but the needler also works great in open ground. And you can always use your own movements and grenade tosses to control the AI’s movement patterns, Halos AI ain’t that bad for the Elites (although the rest suck) but they don’t do long range work well and like any half realistically intelligent creature of an AI, they know RUN FOR COVER. Which makes grenades great for flushing out elites and forcing them to move towards ground more favorable for you to pick them off.

I also like going “up close and personal” in situations where I can use mobility to close and avoid more hits while finishing them off. During the control room missions I did that a lot, blast’em with the pistol then close in with the plasma rifle and rifle butt any slugs that got to close.

Halo is far from one of my ‘preferred’ styles of game but the single player makes good relaxing. Multilayer, I avoid though. Whenever I play Halo online I usually get owned for actually trying to capture the flag. Or I spend the round shooting the heck out of the other team like a crazed one-man-army and screaming at my stupid teammates for having the tactical ability of a slug, for camping our base instead of taking advantage of the perfect time to launch an attack !!!

Modern siege warfare favors the attacker in the long run.

Hmm, code time soon !

Knee deep in flood, shells, and bullets.

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Managed to fight through the flood running gun battle levels all the way to Cortana popping up to save the universe >_>

Perhaps it’s just me but I think it was actually harder playing it the first time way back when, rather then playing through on Heroic of late :

Or maybe it’s because I concentrated more on wiping out the flood then just keeping in Master Chief in one piece lol.

If my ISP could keep the (snip) connection working things would be much easier… Made it to 455MB on the last ISO Kriss Moore posted for PC-BSD 7Alpha before it the aDSL finally died.

Why pay for service that works like crap?

I want to get it setup for some testing, the PC-BSD install on my test machine uses a partition that I’ve reserved largely for testing Linux/BSD alpha/beta/release candidates any way so it’s no loss. Later on I also would like to ‘play’ with an idea that needs a fresh FreeBSD-7 install… 😉

Killin’ headaches, uhhh aliens…

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A little Halo to curve the days annoyances…

Continued off from “If I had a super weapon” on Heroic mode but still found the mission a bit sticky. Almost beat it, using my pistol with a mag & a half to clear the front way and plasma pistol shots to take down the Banshees. Making it to the end of the bridge only to meet a pair of Hunters that gave me a Fuel-Rod kiss off lol.

So… enough of that crud, I dogged it back past the checkpoint into the area I had cleared last time — lots of dead Covenant and a pair of hunters guarding supplies. Ran in there between the hunters, grabbing more grenades, a full stash of pistol magazines, and a health pack ;-).

Ran back out of there dodging between Hunters trying to pancake me but got out without a scratch. That was fun, to bad I didn’t get to slap one on the way out >_>

With the piutol fully loaded, sniped out the Elites on the bridge and kept them from getting into the Banshees. Triggering the hunters to emerge, I dashed back and climbed in, oh man… Dive bombing Hunters and Grunts with a Banshees plasma guns xD

Finished them off and made it to the objective, unlocked the door and gave the Golden sword wielding Elite a plasma missile on the way through 😉

Fighting towards the flood, I actually found a nice trick. The looks quid like floods are dangerous in groups, perfect time for the assault rifle but… The pistol and the shotgun is a bit more useful against the larger floods then shotgun and assault rifle. So what I started to do to conserve pistol ammo, was dancing between flood and when the little critters jump to try infecting the Master Chief, pistol whip’em in mid air. It has to be timed right or they will hit the shields or miss, but it’s fun to time it right and whack’em with the pistol instead of shooting them all.

Left off on The Library, the best part of the game but the start off is a bit rough. Swarms of flood all over and my shotgun traded out for a pistol grr… But I generally find once you manage to get decent weapons. The levels like the most stress-reliving one in the game.

Running, jumping, shooting, and fending off swarm after swarm of zombie like and well armed enemies during one of the most prolonged running gun battles in video-gaming lol.

Just slide into it and relax, good way to clear the brains thoughts for a little while hehe.

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How brilliant is Raven Shield ?

aDSL connection fails, first I notice it is when my messages stop showing.

XFire splits a message that I’ve been disconnected from the system

30 seconds go by before the ‘connection failed’ message in Raven Shield.

And the entire time, the network stats in game are showing all outbound traffic and no more inbound traffick.

BUT — through the entire bloody thing, the ‘packet loss’ is 0, that is so darn funny it is sickening ^_^

R&R, Day Two…

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Been playing still more halo to kill time, I still think it feels to much like a console game in the controls and the vehicle steering system really portrays it imho… But gets the job done, at least it’s some thing to do :

Almost managed to get a round of SWAT4 in but supper was ready to soon :-(.

At least, if nothing else for the day… I’ve gotten a few pages more done of the book and a a slight issue resolves on the website . So the days not a total wash out, I guess.

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Getting closer to the flood, I remember when I first got Halo one of my friends was asking me if I had gotten that far yet, and I was like “The Flood, what the hecks that?”. He didn’t want to spoil ot for me so when I finally got to it, I was shouting “MORE AMMO!”. Best part of the game hehe.

Despite best efforts, my family has still mustered enough to give me a good sized headache… So switching from *actually* trying to learn some thing, to killing time, now I’m hopping to make some progress for the day…. It’s like when ever I dare some try and get any thing done. They either find a way to circumvent it, or cause actions to bring others into deraiing it.

!@#$%^ %!(%*Y^!(%^!’s must have radar.

I start, they start; I stop they stop — intentionally or coincidentally this is getting on my frigging nerves.

Ninja Class, 2008-04-25T2000Z

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Conducted my basics level ‘Ninja’ Class today in our Raven Shield server. Originally planned for Thursday, 2000 Zulu but moved to Friday 2000 Zulu due to business reasons 8=), then moved from [SAS] Training Grounds #1 to [SAS] Proving Grounds #1 for technical reasons :-(.

I think things went fairly well, first time I’ve done a training session in a good while now… first time in a long time I’ve done one without a lesson plan either, you could say I winged it lol. Split things into three phases, because working with Recruit Shadows stealth training was the primary reason behind the session. I tried to keep things basic enough for recruits, less Capt’n Rouge have my head but still keeping the session interesting hehe.

Started off easy trying to get peoples minds into the right mind set. Mindful of ones surroundings, the possible cause and effect of ones actions, and thinking about how we can be more stealthy in what we do so often. And how to adopt from our usual “see tango, shoot tango” functioning, while that works under Green Light conditions it don’t the rest of times. And when you doing recon ops, leaving 10 or 20 dead bodies behind doesn’t help things. Belive it or not, there is a lot more to stealth then slapping on a suppressor and trying not to blow any thing sky high on the way in.

For the second part of training, I moved us onto the warehouse level so I could give them some practical practice time. Cleared the immediate area of threats and had everyone form an element while I set up a patrol route in between the two main buildings. They had to sneak past me — I made the patrol route simple, so it was not very hard but still took some effort to complete.

My favorite part was when I turned around on my patrol and saw Ambu standing in the open and shouted ‘tango spotted’ and fired a warning shot, only to turn left and go ‘tango spotted’ as I saw Ghost — good to see that if I had been a real tango, Ghost was ready to put’em down before Ambu could be harmed. Another fun time was when they snuck all ~5 or so of them right under my noise and then I turn around and their all standing behind me hahaha. I also got Ghost to try the patrol route I set up, and I gave it a go myself and snuck past to the designated objective on my first go.

A lot of times when I do training, I’ll try to challenge people to do better. Like back with Rct Boone and Rct Mando two years ago, they thought it was impossible to do this one room without blowing the heck out of it with tactical aids. So I doubled dared them into taking the room without any tactical aids, full dynamic assault, and without using suppressed weapons to approach the target room. I tagged along with a light machine gun shooting at them trying to distract them and they pulled off the entry, cleared the room without a hitch, and were like “Wow, we actually did it”. While I’m standing here with a smile on my face, thinking “I knew you lads could do it”.

I don’t like to ask any one to do some thing I’m not prepared to do myself, that’s why in my training sessions I’ll often try and arrange for me to have a turn at tricky things. I can’t do worse then fall flat on my face in front of the recruits, and at best I can show it’s actually possible (y).

I remember I once set up a ‘room clearing challenge’ that was modeled after my personal training sessions but I made it even harder and posted it. No body was able to complete the challenge, not even me for a long time… so i started doing more dynamic training myself and I eventually scored a respectable spot on the score board, only name there but that one really nagged at me. How could I ask the recruits do complete a task I couldn’t? So I set out to train until I could, and I did it..

For the last part of training, I wanted to give the guys a chance to relax yet still keep on learning. So I set up a mini live fire scenario where we had to do a double-hostage rescue, rules of engagement red (aka fire on command), and minimise loss of stealth and enemies neutralized to the max possible.

It took maybe 4 or 5 tries but we eventually did the mission, 4 man element, about 3 tangos killed, two hostages rescued, but one causality in the process 🙁

What I really liked about the live fire scenario is I got to see my teammates at work. Setting up angles of fire on the risky threats while we snuck past, so if any one got seen, the tango would have a nice double tap to the head before they could fire. And communicating the positions of the enemy patrols among each other and adopting our plan and formation to the situation.

We also found a few bugs in the map that really made sneaking in some spots harder and once we got ‘stepped on’ so to speak which resulted in the entire element being either gunned down or blown up lol. Eventually though we did it with flying colours (y) but we got plenty of good practice in the middle hehe.

It’s nice to do training again, I really love to have a chance to teach people. Of all the tasks that have eventually found there way to me in [SAS], the one I’ve always carried out the happiest is trying to pass on my experience and what was passed onto me, to a new generation.

In a lot of ways, I think I’m really starting to get to be an ‘old man’ of sorts among my teammates… Although most of them are older then me by a good margin or just a few years younger. I’ve been apart of this team for almost 2 and a half years now. I think in a way, I’m kind of like how people such as En4cer or Shield were to my generation of recruits. I’m not the best teacher but I do sincerely try to help us move into the right direction.

You’re only at your best, when you accept the limit of your current abilities as such rather then seeking a way to better yourself.

And in the [SAS], we always seek to improve ourselves for the future.