Breaking the new Training Grounds

Got to play ab it solo on the new TG#1, didn’t want to have a slot opened for m e on PG#1 just for a couple games.

Latency and Ubisoft proved to be both friend and foe as usual, finding a tango standing on top of a table didn’t throw my aim off any. Put a burst square in his mid section (~4rnd), saw him jerk from the hits but died with no rounds hitting him 8=), even got shot (even with my cam jerking) in another round without getting injured from it lol.

RvS is a pile of horse crap, how on earth could any one dare ship a game like that. The amount of buggy doors and corners, even in the professionally created maps is tremendous. If I worked on Raven Shields development team, I think I would’ve resigned from the project rather then let my name go on the credits…

And much to the games credit I appeared to shoot a tango through a wall ๐Ÿ™‚

RvS is the only game you can have a threat at 2 metres, put 5 rounds into a group smaller then a stomach, and have all 5 rounds hit the wall directly behind the tango ^_^

One thing I really like about RvS though is the admin functions, way better then SWAT4. Even with the Gez Mod RvS has a better admin system, but the code is even worse on stability.

It’s also nice that I can turn off my reticle and just use the weapon in the player characters arms as a reference instead. Engagement distances in RvS are usually short or long, often within 10 or 15 metres unless they are far away: far enough that an assault rifle is preferable that is.

At that range, aiming without iron sights or cross hairs is pretty easy.. With a little pratice even targets at ~20-25 metres are doable. The more you know your weapon the easiser it is, like me. I could use the MP5A4 blind folded in RvS, I don’t even need to look at the bean counter any more.. I can feel how many bullets have been fired.

I wish I could play SWAT4 online with the reticle off, the cross hairs are a nicer blue then RvS’s red and actually do reflect your aim and accuracy. In Raven Shield, I’ve always disregarded the rets as having any thing to do with point of impact, they mean almost nothing… So why bother using them? I train with both rets on and rets off, been a few months since I turned them on.. Now I’m starting to be able to chuck grenades with the same accuracy as with the rets off.

In SWAT, you rets show a lot about how your point of impact will be. I’d still like to go without them though because really you shouldn’t need them unless the enemy is far or you need a more precise shot. And in that case you should be using the weapons sights any way, not the shitty zoom-focus on the aiming reticle that RvS and SWAT4 use any way.

One thing I like about firing on Full Auto, is complete control of the trigger. Want one round? Easy, need 20? Ok no problem. Typically I fire 2 to 3 rounds per burst and will increase to 4-6 rounds as necessary to bring down the tango. It’s very easy to fire off a few sets of 2-3 rounds, much better then firing off like 5 rounds in a single burst.

SWAT4s MP5 lacks full auto and the UMP and AKM have their rates of fire set to pathetically unrealistic values. All weapons in SWAT4 were balenced on the grounds that a modifier of 1.0 Burst Rate Factor == ~600 Rounds Per Minute (RPM).

Following that line of reasoning, the M4A1 is given a burst rate factor (BRF) of 1.5, roughly equal to 900 RPM. The real M4A1 Carbine has a cyclic rate of fire between 700 and 950 RPM as far as I know, a good balance for a game. The AK47 will kill you in one round if fired from a suspect (1-2 if you are shooting them), while you need 2-4 rounds with the quick firing M4.

The UMP on the other hand has a BRF of 0.55 yielding approx 330 rounds per minute. The UMP is supposed to have a rate of fire on par with 600 RPM, making it horrible unbalanced, except by it’s powerful cartridge in SWAT4.

However the burst rate factor is handled I doubt it reflects well on real life. I remember for a Mod, I once recalibrated all weapons in SWAT4 to use real world bullet mass instead of the overweight rounds in SWAT4… Which was a left shift of two or three digits kind of off track, heck it would be like shooting grapefruit instead of bullets lol. luckily the weapons were already calibrated for the real world muzzle velocities.

Recalibrating the game settings to model real world factors, based on Unreal Engine units was totally destructive. Resulting in a long stream of dirty tricks to get the bullets ‘lethal’ again. I always knew the systems they used were horrid for modeling real world ballistics but when JHP rounds are going so fast the pass through a target without doing any damage and kept going until they hit some thing impossible to penitrate in the game engine, YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A PROBLEM !!!! The JHP ammo was more FMJ like then the FMJ ammo was after that test haha.

I’m no expert in physics but it doesn’t take much understanding to tell the Unreal Engine as configured in SWAT4 is worthless, retarded at best for any dream of realistic shooting.

I’d love to study physics some day, that kidn of stuff interests me. But I know as long as I’m living here, with my family around trying to learn any thing ‘interesting’ in that regard would be a headache and learning as good as in one ear out the other.

Just like in games, give me a sniper rifle, a mark to shoot at, and a secure firing position, and I’ll hit the mark. Give me some thing I’m interested in, a proper working environment, and I’ll inhale the fucking thing!

Give me a sniping position with every SOB and his dog trying to blow it sky high and I probably will be to busy to hit the mark, same case living here….

Been learning a lot about TeX and LaTeX lately, my brain is like a sponge…

Some how I don’t think I’ll ever use a word processor again, TeX/LaTeX beats XHTML/CSS for working on content without getting in the way, and imho it automates more of the menial tasks better. I couldn’t stand getting proper printout with all the cross-word processor + cross-pc issues involved… So I eventually took to using XHTML instead, I’m fluent after all. I have a large rรฉpertoire of computer languages to choose from, I just hate PHP…

I need to take some time to generate a PBI of TeX Live 2007, not much left to do before then and most of that can probably be sped up by scripting. For deployment though I’d rather like to split it into two packages, if the compression ratio is similar, should result including a ~250MB and ~300MB tar.lzma file (1 in each pbi) rather then a huge ~500mb one. As far as the documentation goes, there is not to much net savings to strip out languages, unless it really strips down to just English and made an English and ‘multinational’ docs module. For me, it would make sense to keep the ‘big ones’, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese, in a standard install and doing that would be no real saving so far as I can tell.

Got a start for trying to get organized with the SSMs, they are basically a week behind me as far as being able to get things in sync but that’s unavoidable.. In the mean time I guess I should concentrate on the Sgts. I’m glad we have Blade and Noer a foot again they’re both dedicated workers, Blade well better late then never hehe.

The recent unpleasantness with ]SD[ on our SWAT servers is annoying me. I honestly don’t care if we ban every last one of them or shake their hand, there’s more important business I need to look after. I just follow orders, no more, no less. From where I sit, it is a Majors department to deal with it not an RSMs so I’d rather like to stay out of the hub bub. I’d also not have to cram any more forum posts into RAM between working hours.

The SOP Rewrites, I don’t think are going to progress any this week with both SSMs largely out of the loop until next week. Another large section is ready for SNCO Review, in the mean time I can try and look over the other stuff… Just a matter of free time.

I’ve now transitioned almost 3GB in all from my home directory over to the OpenBSD system working as a file server here: effectively fulfilling it’s purpose of integrating my home directory across my desktop and laptop. With some time to test out the permission settings, I may soon move my code directory there as well. With luck maybe I’ll have some time to *finally* get the bloody printer setup rather then sitting there gathering dust, good thing I rarely print.

I still need to organise my music files and rebuild all of my playlists but hey, at least my music folder is neat again. Life really would be a bit easier if I didn’t have to have most of my files available on both systems, to avoid having to boot my laptop to get to stuff. I’m tired of having to choose between booting my laptop, taring the files, scp’ing them over, and having to switch from desktop to laptop. I get 90% of my work done from my PC-BSD laptop yeah, but I like to work on the system I’m in the mood to use, not play chair-jockey.

And to top it all off my brain has been wandering off drastically lately, I suppose it beats being miserable though. I don’t really want to think that much about it right now, I’d never get any sleep other wise…

Found a music video of one of the songs that was on the last CD I bought. Which shows where my minds been drifting off to lool. Is it a wonder some friends wonder if I ever loop up from a compiler?

Works got to get done… How that effects the rest of my life, well..

Writer’s Block: Gotcha.

What is the best April Fools’ Day joke you’ve ever fallen victim to?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

Haha, hands down it has got to be the FreeBSD and NetBSD’s pkgsrc: A strategic synergy for awesomeness posting on the FreeBSD Ports mailing list. I remember seeing it posted in the lounge on forums.pcbsd.org.

It took me a week to realize the original message had been posted April 1st ๐Ÿ™‚

Can you say, fooled “big time”?

Had to leave the eeting early for chow, wasn’t that hungry…

Passed out on the couch and slept like a baby until the phone rang lol. Went back to sleep until a knock on the door, and then got thrown off the couch >_>

Only for Willow to keep me from going to sleep lol.

I’m some where between invigorated and about to collapse…. We’ll see which happens first. Hopefully I didn’t miss any thing important that I won’t hear about later, I think I stayed for most of it. Being AFK about 10-15 times between the web-meeting and the snco-meeting aside that is lol.

*sighs* Ya gotta love family…

Writer’s Block: Sick Day

What is your favorite thing about being sick?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

NONE

0/ People fusing about it

1/ Ma worried about work

2/ Ice Cream and a Soar Throat suck

3/ Drinking input equals pissing output

4/ I tend to sleep more in the “zombie” style.

5/ I was raised that work don’t stop unless your ass falls off.

What is there to like about being sick? >_>

Work, Chores, Web affairs meeting, SNCO/Clan Meeting, 5 XFire Windows, over 7 Voices at once between TS (1), Family, and XFire, started off after noon and still going by 2030…

Can you say HEADACHE THE SIZE OF TEXAS !!!

As soon as this meeting is done, I’m l aying down and let my head rest.

Oh how sweet it would be to have no AFKage.

A funky nightmare… Well, nightmare in the sense that it’s that kind of dream, but not very scary to me.

Unarmed and bare foot, moving through the muddy grounds around a large building with a teammate.

Made some comment about being careful not to step on any ones graves.

Linked up at the front of the building with two others and got equipped.

One handed me a large pistol, a Sig Sauer P226 with a very high capacity magazine. I know the military model can load 15 rounds in a magazine for the 9x19mm version, in RvS the more compact P228 still crams 27 rounds with a high capacity mag over the standard issue 13+1 rounds.

Gained entry and locked ourselves in the building, started poking around.. Seemed it was expected of me to take charge so I organsed us into an Element. One operator, the one that passed me the Sig Sauer took up overwatch on a large open stairwell area going to a lower level. While I took #2 EL in a formation of three, with a large Rear Guard and a female Point.

We started clearing the nearby rooms, stealth to first contact but going full dynamic speed on room entries. We didn’t use Flashbangs for fear of setting off alarms.

In one room we took down there was a crying child, I’m thinking ok.. live one, rescue op: tag’em, pump for intel, and move on.

Only it wasn’t alive what ever it was. It was very sad, offered no real usable information or coherency. Point took her sidearm and shot it in the face, no blood no nothing.. Just a ghostly fade… Funky !

So with a spooked Point I formed us back up in the hallway to check out the next rooms, cleared most with only a few more ghostly contacts. All of which would moan and fade out a bit after being shot.

Moved us into another area, I could see two avenues of attack if we moved through it. So I ordered Point and Rear Guard into the ‘mouth’ of the path while I flanked along the other side to scout for enemies. No contacts but a good chance of crossing their line of fire and getting myself shot, so I reported in and had Rear Guard (#3) move up so I could pull back a bit and rejoin #1.

#3 moved out into the open and we took fire, at least I think it was gun fire. Like a bright white light, maybe some kind of energy weapon or some thing super natural but enough to penetrate walls and warrant taking cover!

Point and I were pinned down in the barrel I hoped to avoid getting us shot up in while Rear Guard was out on the balcony dancing and suppressing. I flanked around and went to help, I could see shooters on the roof tops nearby and put rounds out but I knew we had to get back to cover.

Ordered the retreat: I made it, Rear Guard didn’t… Lost my own M16 in the process but I managed to scrounge about for a FN P90, off a corpse maybe. Regrouping with Point we found out that #4 was gone with out a trace…

Got ambushed by a half-ghost, half-zombie like humanoid and a mummified cat of some sort. Point nearly got strangled, managed to take the zombies head off and we unraveled the cat with plenty of P90 fire between us and I took it down with the P226. That was just freaky man.

With more ghostly like zombie things closing in and with a shell shocked Point from the lack of air, emptied the P90 and some of the Sig Sauer into them for some cover then I grabbed Point by by the scruff of her flak vest and took off running for the lower level. With the intention of breaking contact with the enemy and going to guerrilla tactics if necessary to survive.

Strange dream :

While things like being trapped in Hill House or even a Resident Evil like situations occasionally come up in nightmares… But it’s very rare that I’m ever armed and able to defend myself, let along having an Element for back up.

And it is even more rare that I ever dream of doing room clearing lool.

Maybe I just need more sleep…. Went to bed around 0400 last night and I don’t think I fell asleep until like close to 0600 or some thing.d

Snakes and Tree Frogs

Metal Gear Solid 3: Trailer



It’s a shame that The Boss had to die at the end in order to complete her mission for the USA. It’s no wonder that “Big Boss” would betray his country in later years, after all MGS3 basically amounts to the lot of them being screwed over for ~20 Billion. I’m axious to some day see Metal Gear Solid 4, and I wonder if the aging Solid Snake will himself be,

“Loyal to the end”

Hmm, found a copy of the intro music from Metal Gear Solid 3 posted on YouTube:



It’s a bit of a funky track but it kind of grows on you after enough hours of working Snake through the jungle hehe.

Writer’s Block: No Laughing Matter

What do you think is too serious to joke about?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

That is a good question… Will figure out an answer when one hits <_<

Hmm, laughing matters, I’d describe myself as some one that has to be free to crack jokes as I see them. I’m not really happy unless I’m free to laugh; even if I have some what of an off beat sense of humour at times. I keep most of it to myself, because I doubt any one else would find half of what I do funny… If they did, GOD help us all haha!

I’d say I’m the type that will either cry with, or try to crack a smile instead but will probably have to run like hell before she punches me in the face for trying to make her laugh >_>.

That’s just who I am….

There are only a few things that I’d really consider a matter to skip all pretense or sense of humour about. Probably all of which would fit into the kinda category that if I wasn’t a Christian, some one would be praying the police arrive on scene before I do.

I’m not a violent person no venom glands either I guess but there is a limit to how much I will stand for. I think I could forgive almost any thing done to me… Perhaps more then a lot of others that I know could forgive but — you don’t hurt those close to me.

You fuck with them, you’re fucking with me and I’m not one to fuck with.

If some one laid a finger on my friends or family, the gloves would probably be coming off. Despite my normal philosophy against hurting people, I’d sooner knock a few lights out then sit by letting some one I care for get seriously miss treated. I guess things in that light are the no laughing matters for me.

For some reason a scene from Good Fellas comes to mind: the one where he pistol whips the prick next door ๐Ÿ™‚

The character of henry might have been a crook but he did the right thing. He was called, he went as soon as he could, he was there when needed… Although he didn’t have to beat the crap out of the guy, I can’t blame him for it either. Two things that I can’t stand for in this world are mistreating women and abusing children and I have no respect for anyone that does either.

It is indeed a good thing that Vengeance is the LORDs to exact and not ours…

If I was Ray Liotta’s character [Henry] in Good Fellas I would have been very tempted to go kneecaping instead of pistol whipping. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six has a nice description of what the PIRA guys [which later ambushed team Rainbow & family] used to do to drug dealers hehe. It was a quite painful although non-lethal use of ones sidearm but it was enough to make dealers think twice about selling dope again in that neck of the woods; especially if they couldn’t limp away fast enough.

Tried laying down, no help.

Noshing on rice crispy treats and mini-hershey’s bars on the other hand works ๐Ÿ™‚

At least it gets my brain cells back in shape any way.

Independence Day is on, so there is at least *one* good thing on TV. Beigining a systematic transfer of files from my laptop to the file server,to be completed with archiving the local copies before going with a more permanent mounting solution.

I’ve got the laptop setup to mount them via sshfs and the desktop via smb.

I’ve got plenty of shit to do, but I don’t feel like doing any thing… I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing either though :

I guess it’s a fair reason to look into some method of organizing my music files in a manor I can live with :

Hmm, official to do list…

SOP Rewrites
TeXLive 2007 PBI/Port?
Codebooks
Vi User Howto
The book
NPM
And… the rest in due time.