A night on burning sands

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Nothings up, so I setup GR and ran though a mission: first map of Desert Siege with the Sabre Teams mod active.

Equipped myself with a Diemaco SFW-SD, basically a Canadian M4 with SD, Scope, and M203. Crept through the darkness slow and steady, moving taking it as I would actually do it; instead of running headless chicken. All went well, basically made it into the enemy encampments before I was detected and they hardly knew what hit’em hehe. All the way pro, until I was creeping into a small room and saw an X-Ray unawares behind the door; tried shooting him through the seam of the hinge, but no go. So I backed out FAST, shut the door and moved around to his other flank…. open door, lean out, and plugged a M203 bomblet close to him -> lights out turkey!

Normally I wouldn’t do that, but GR utterly sucks and blows for tactical aids…. lol. Scouted out the last encampment, looked good, made ready to drop one of the sentries when my M203 fires… lol. A mistake that wouldn’t happen in real life, because you can feel the difference in triggers; but very easy in game when memory and HUD is all you’ve got to go on instead of memory and tactile senses.

Bugged out and out flanked the enemy counter attack, then moved up like a sniper in the night; nearly lost my head paying more attention to Willow barking like a nut, then moving in on for the kill.

Almost secured the entire map night creeping around, but there was this one bastardo around the building…. searched around before going up, only to realize we must’ve been playing cat and mouse for the last 8 minutes -> as the 2nd to last X-Ray shot me in the back of the head lol.

when stuck playing alone, night ops and an SD rifle help even the odds lol.

honorable mention

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All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray
I went for a walk on a winter`s day
I`d be so safe and warm if I was in L.A.
California dreamin` on such a winter`s day

I stopped into a church (yes I did) and I passed along the way
And I got down on my knees (down on my knees) and I pretend to pray
You know the preacher, he likes it cold
Cause he knows I`m gonna stay (cause he knows I`m gonna stay)
California dreamin` (California dreamin`) on such a winter`s day

All the of leaves are brown and the sky is so gray
I went for a walk on a cool winter`s day, yeah
I`d be so safe and warm if I was in L.A.
California dreamin` (California dreamin`) on such a winter`s day (California dreamin`)
On such a winter`s day (California dreamin`)
On such a winter`s day
California, California dreamin`
California dreamin`

Play that for me

You know it`s just a dream

Dream on

California dreamin`

There must be some kind of way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
Theres too much confusion
I cant get no relief
Businessman they drink my wine
Plow men dig my earth
None will level on the line
Nobody of it is worth
Hey hey

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke but uh
But you and I weve been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hours getting late
Hey

Hey

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Bare-foot servants to, but huh
Outside in the cold distance
A wild cat did growl
Two riders were approachin
And the wind began to howl
Hey
Oh
All along the watchtower
Hear you sing around the watch
Gotta beware gotta beware I will
Yeah
Ooh baby

All along the watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)

A few classics

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Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays “Hail to the chief”,
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, no,
Yeah!

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don’t they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, “How much should we give?”
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! yoh,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no military son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, one.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no no no,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son, no no no,

Fortunate Son, Credence Clearwater Revival

Gonna tell Aunt Mary ’bout Uncle John
He says he has the blues but he has a lotta fun
Oh baby
Ye-e-e-eh baby
Woo-o-o-oh baby
Havin’ me some fun tonight

Well, long tall Sally has a lot on the balland
Nobody cares if she’s long and tall
Oh baby
Ye-e-e-eh baby
Woo-o-o-oh baby
Havin’ me some fun tonight

Well, I saw Uncle John with long tall Sally
He saw Aunt mary cummin’
And he ducked back in the alley
Oh baby
Ye-e-e-eh baby
Woo-o-o-oh baby
Havin’ me some fun tonight

We’re gonna have some fun tonight
Gonna have some fun tonight
We’re gonna have some fun tonight
Everything will be alright
We’re gonna have some fun
Gonna have some fun tonight
We’re gonna have some fun tonight
Gonna have some fun tonight
We’re gonna have some fun tonight
Everything will be alright
We’re gonna have some fun
Gonna have some fun tonight

Long Tall Sally, Little Richard

Year of the Monkey

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Been playing a Vietnam themed Ghost Recon mod that was mentioned on our forums, Year of the Monkey; so far this is an awesome mod lol. Being stuck in the middle of a jungle, well is a terrain type that feels more natural then desert missions ^_^. Moment I got to the intro and heard the mods music taste, I was hooked. YOTM does music and sounds more “in period”, some of which are songs that are more my style then oft’ found today. GR already has awesome sound effects, and YOTM don’t do a bad job there either hehe.

Launched the first map on elite, ordered the sniper to an overwatch position and the next thing I know, I’m laying flat with helmet to the grindstone as bullets are whizzing by our insertion! Ordered all teams to surpress and I put down a bit of frag cover in order to peel alpha & bravo out under sniper fire. Oh man, what a map. Tried circling around the flanks in groups (leaving our sniper as bait lol), only for Bravo to get pinned down; I’m moving, can’t see crap, bullet zips over my ear and I dived straight to the ground; Bravo opened fire on their positions. Looking over my shoulder confirmed my ears summery, the poor slept behind me had lost his head; crawling back to safer ground and moving across the stream, so I could regroup on Bravo for a tactical withdrawal (they had just moved out of cover when we took fire). Lo’ and behold, 3 bodies moving in the water about 35m to Bravos 4 o’clock.

“I don’t give a f*** what that is, let’s rock”

and Alpha went weapons free, next thing I know we’re picking shrapnel out of our asses from behind lol. Swithced to bravo team, to find 2 men down and one stuck in a tree, being shot at by an enemy 3 metres away….. little M60 fire and problem solved. Maybe the AI isn’t totally used to the terrain?

Eventually ended up with just the Sniper left, when I found a small area dug into the earth and covered over with camo — leading into a tunnel system going all over the map. Now that’s what I call attention to detail!!!!! managed to eventually find my way out, only to see the end of tunnel come up practically behind our insertion point! Stuck my head out, and lost it without even seeing a thing.

Loaded it on Multilayer again, sent re spawns to infinite, then kitted out for action. M60 General Purpose Machine Gun plus Frags. That was a crazy map. I went to search around the spawn point, next thing I know there are two X-Rays behind me: little bastards had a small encampment buried into the ground where I couldn’t see, came out and shot me lol. In attempts to attack the village position, met with heavy fire and got blown up by grenades several times; ended up using frags and M60 fire just to pepper then enough I could circle around between flanking positions.

A few lives later, managed to creep into the village undetected, passing up a kill – then lit up their world. Main problem was the tunnels and having to frag both sides of a T-Junction; killing the enemy or forcing them to take cover, then trying to engage before getting shot in the back lol. At least though, GR doesn’t seem to be capable of simulating booby traps… lol.

Played through several of the missions and it was just awesome; cook a few goons (I love setting ambushes), check your six, then move out, and next thing you know Charlie’s fried your ass.

One thing I love about Ghost Recon, is it has that feel to it, that feel that behind any rock or tree could be lurking a nasty surprise. That’s something that is sorely missing from war games set in urban environments, where you generally know where threats can come from, where they probably will be, and good cover is scarce.

tpsh, recent commit

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 commit 6eda7f33de6bb7505fc64986a5bd31211d68acc5
 Author: Terry ... ... <...@,,,>
 Date:   Fri Mar 13 05:36:45 2009 +0000
 
     initial implementation of the function and macro built-ins
     
     'function name() definition' creates an alias named 'name' with evaluation
     'definition'
     
     'macro name( definition )' creates an alias named 'name' with evaluation
     'definition'
     
     Eventually macro will probably define the alias wrapped in a (grouping),
     once (command groupings) are implemented. function will allow {
     groupings } when that is also implemented; but will not make the
     implicit.
     
     Currently variables and quotes are pre-expanded by the line processing
     code, before function/macro receive the text to store in a macro. While
     this is the desired behavour for the alias built in, it is not desired
     for other methods of defining a command macro! It is however possible to
     escape variables and things, e.g.$ macro e( echo hi '$USER' ); so that
     the expansion occurs when 'e' is executed, as opposed to when 'e' is
     recorded. This will hopefully be fixed in the future.
     
     The manual page is in continual development, and will reflect the
     desired "end state" for macro behavour.

Basically tpsh has no real concept of an alias or function per say; only a simple macro recording facility.

  # bourne style alias
  alias x=y
  # csh style alias
  alias x y

  # bourne again style named function
  function x() y

  # tpsh specific syntax
  macro x( y )

  # each make x expand to y (with appropriate context grouping to be added later)

Generally where things differ enough between sh and csh, to warrant a check of the fine manual, like alias and the export/setenv thing; tpsh endeavors to be more permissive about muscle memory.

Internally there is no real difference between an alias and a function, it’s just a macro with a name. sh doesn’t use the function keyword, but bash does (which zsh also permits, hehe). It’s much less bugger to implement functions with the keyword then not at the moment, and it’s really the macro keyword I’m interested in. The macro built in is meant for simple commands, where as the bash function syntax is meant for compatibility and to make using a complex command as the definition readable. The sub shell and same shell command grouping syntax used in sh, of ( commands ) and { commands } I am expecting will be treated like an anonymous macro.

Eventually I’ll probably alter sh_eval() to “relax” its evaluations of a function definition so that environment variables and quotes (etc) are expanded when used, instead of stored. Atm the only “don’t screw with this” case in sh_eval, is not performing alias expansion when one executes the unalias built-in, since you can’t specify the macro to delete if it gets expanded first ^_^.

Personally, I like ‘macro foo( bar )’ more then ‘alias foo=bar’ or ‘alias foo bar’, feels more natural. tpsh after all is meant to reflect MY preferences rather then being purely sh compatible, lol. Even though there is little difference in tpsh (yet) between ‘alias la=ls -a’ and “alias la=”ls -a”‘, the implicit grouping inside the () is just more to taste:

$ macro la( ls -a )
$ macro ll( la -l )
$ alias
'la' => 'ls -a'
'll' => 'ls -a -l'
$

most Bourne inspired shells that support alias display them as `la=’ls -a'”, but the alias command is fairly new in sh, and I prefer ‘la’ => ‘ls -a’, thus that is what tpsh uses.

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Hmm, what pipe was I smoking when I thought it would be possible to get a measure of consistency between 3 different readline implementations?

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Was playing a bit of Ghost Recons PlayStation 2 editiion, after so many years of CQ in [SAS], I really hate the AI more then I used to lol. One nice thing though, despite that it seems micro-management (barf!) or leaving by the wayside the Squad AI isn’t much use tactically beyond (very) simple fire and maneuver. One nice thing though, was scouting 20~40m ahead of the assault group when I spotted a sentry in a ditch; amazingly he didn’t notice me laying some 25 meters to his side, even with a tweedle dee and tweedle dumb giving away my snipers position 8=)

swapped fire teams and moved Alpha up, plugged a M203 into the ditch and then switched back to the sniper on Bravo to pick off anything fleeing from Alphas SAW.

Now if only the dipsticks didn’t cross my line of fire so often, lol. In terms of friendly AI, for what they are capable of GR has good squad AI, but sadly still needs baby sitting for anything beyond rules of engagement. I have no exposure to the AI community, but most video games have the “Artificial” part right, they just lack “Intelligence” to go with it.

A little DooM II: HR

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Spawned in the middle of a field like area, heard of imps at the 12, and a wolf pack of Mancubus to the 9. Crazy critters flying about with big guns and arachno-things snipin’, pure madness. Took a couple of lives just to get into the “grove” of evading the shots lol. I forget what difficulty I have the game set to, but just looking at the things section in the wiki, goes to show the mixture of nasties on the map. So many baddies crawling around it was a dance between hit-and-run super shotgun, paint the plasma gun blue, and rocket frenzy lol, The hard part was the rocket launching critter around the one key.

By the time I got to MAP15: Gates to Hell (Hell Revealed), and managed to fight it down to just the imps on the wall… it got almost a chore to clear out survivors lol. DooM makes a great way to relax some brain cells though -> don’t care what the fuck that huge mother ****ing thing is called, but it’s getting a quartet of rockets shoved up it’s ass kind of moments lol.