The Little Games That Could

Lately I have been on a couple of buying spree for deals on games. And I blame it all on Steam for making such games too good to pass up. It all started out with World of Goo, a simple puzzle game that uses physics to help provide problems and solutions. The usual price is about US$20 but I picked it up for a small sum of US$5. The game is beautifully done and I see why people liked it so much. And as you progress, the puzzles themselves become harder and harder to solve. Yet this isn't some big-time game that is backed by a giant corporation. Nah. This is a small game that is developed by talented programmers who wanted to make a simple and fun game for people to enjoy. Independent developers is what we call them these days. And these kind of people are starting to pop up more.

The game called Trine is another "indie" game that also deserves some attention. Also based on physics, it is a simple 2D platformer where you control one of three characters in the game. It also features the ability to let other people play along, making it a unique co-operative game. Having tried the demo, the gameplay is interesting enough to make me want to get it. However, like anyone would want these days, you'd look for a way to get the game as cheap as possible (that is, without resorting to getting a bootleg copy).

Recently, Braid was put on sale for US$5. Its regular price is about US$15. Braid is a unique game, as it is a puzzle platformer, focusing mostly on how to manipulate time. Yet it is much more complex than that. Often the solution is so obvious that it never occurred to you.

And then there's Fez, a 2D platformer set in a 3D world. Everything visually displayed is to give the illusion that it is an old retro-styled 2D platforming game. The twist is that the world is actually 3D for which you can rotate its view to look at the world from a different perspective. Unfortunately, nobody has ever tried or tested the game, as it's not even out yet. It's still in development. But who knows when the game will finally be released. At least, however, the entertaining physics-based drawing game called Crayon Physics Deluxe is out after many months in development.

All of these games provide a unique form of entertainment unlike anything we've seen in today's big franchise games. Yet all of them provide a sense of good value when it comes to purchasing it, for they are cheap and is worth the money spent. It is too bad I cannot say the same for some other titles, where the cost is 50 to 60 dollars at retail.

State of Affairs on Mobile Devices

One thing I cannot stand is how some people can be so stupid. But I'm at a loss on who is to blame. I mean, using mobile devices has a certain level of self-awareness and responsibility to others and to yourself. You use it to keep tabs on a variety of things and you use it to get in touch with other people. And that's fine when you're communicating with others in a simpler and quicker way than just calling up a friend just to say a few words. The txt'ing industry sure has grown and exploded as of late. But at the same time, I also find that it's getting way out of hand. And upstart companies like Twitter makes it possible for some people to actually stalk others without ever having to leave the comfort of their own home. This is especially true if the person you're tracking just happens to be a moron who would be sending Twitter updates every 10 minutes. Still, using a mobile device for whatever reason you have comes with a certain level of responsibility to not just yourself but also to others.

Personally, I do not mind the fact that people are sending text messages. It is convenient and the wireless carriers and companies are reaping the rewards on this current market. It does not seem to be going away any time soon though. But there is a fine line of checking for text messages and actively sending one while you're walking down the street. So when I heard about the teenage girl who fell down a manhole while texting, I laughed my ass off about it. But what became of it afterwards turned out to be the worst thing you can ever expect. The family of that brainless bitch wanted to sue. And I cannot help but feel frustrated at the utter stupidity of such a family who thinks they can get away with such shit. You only need to know that the bitch is mainly at fault for being careless and for not paying attention. People listen to their audio players as well but it does not divert their attention while walking. Because if you're crossing the street, you obviously check both directions prior to crossing. It's only natural to do that, right? So I say, fuck that bitch's family and their lawsuit. They ought to be ridiculed for filing such a lawsuit. People are supposed to be responsible for themselves. If you're unable to care for yourself then you shouldn't be using such items that distracts you.

Just recently, a couple of girls in Australia, age 10 and 12, both found themselves lost in some drain in the suburbs. Both of these girls have mobile devices and are able to send calls to other people. But in all the wisdom in the world, these two girls decided to update their Facebook page instead of calling for help. The two were lucky that someone happen to noticed the update on the girls' page and called the appropriate people to send help. Otherwise, we would have seen those two girls post more stupid updates about their idiotic travels underneath the city. It amazes me that even though technology has advanced to the point where people can communicate with each other in unique and easy way yet people do not seem to grasp the notion of being responsible for your own self. Granted, those two girls probably didn't know any better but... I ask you this: who in their right dumbass mind would give those girls a mobile device?! It's bad enough that almost every high school teenager in America has a cell phone but why give these brats a mobile device at such a young age?

As with email that enables all of us to send letters and messages to others across the sea and around the globe, I worry that young people will eventually forget to ever know how to write a letter or message on paper. Is the human race headed to the point where we as a species do everything electronically? I guess for our time, we don't leave unique and engraved stones but instead we leave messages that ended up being lost because of a hard drive crash. Fuck!

Frozen Pigs Flying In Hell

For a very, very long time, the game Battlefield 2 has suffered dearly in many ways than one. Even worse so is the attack on ranked servers that try to maintain a place for people to connect on and have some fun. I have not played the game in many months, if not weeks, for I have long moved on to better games that are at least supported. Well, the term support should now be taken with a grain of salt, seeing there's hardly a company that gives a damn on what their customers want.

Having played BF2 and its follow-up, 2142, I have seen some dismal support that hardly came. And when it feels like BF2 was being abandoned in favor of 2142, I have given up on trying to play either of the games. Nobody I know plays 2142 actively and I'm stuck looking for a game to play. Added to this is the shitty support for a simple thing: widescreen. It isn't much to ask for. Yet I have touted time and time again, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, to get the idiots to at least hear out the argument in the most reasonable way. Yet it felt that nobody is even hearing or even bothering to pass the word along. It felt that all I was doing was screaming at a brick wall.

It was when 2142 received a patch that finally got some sort of support for widescreen. But there was still one piece of the puzzle missing. BF2 is still without that same kind of support treatment. And just when people would simply drop the game and move on, which I have done many months in advance, there comes the announcement that a major patch to BF2 will be made to address some of the lingering and current issues with the game. Most notably is the attack on servers that forces the software to crash. And time went on, and on, and on...

I cannot tell you just how frustrated I was at DICE/EA as a company. It's understandable if the company was working on one or two projects at a time. At least it's efficient that way to get things done, if you have enough people to really support handling two projects. But it doesn't seem that way.

When the announcement was made, DICE/EA was purportedly working on Bad Company, maintaining 2142, creating Battlefield Heroes, and now the 1.5 patch for BF2. Added to this is the rumored Battlefield 3 that everyone seems to be pinning their hopes on.

Later on, word got out that they were working on Mirror's Edge. And then Bad Company was released, and the sequel to that will be made. So one project is finished and then another one started. Still counting?

And then there's the graphical revival of Battlefield 1942 called 1943. So how many do we have now? Battlefield Heroes is now a running project open to all. BF'43 is out and a PC port is currently being worked on. And then there's any other maintenance that BF2 and 2142 requires. And Bad Company 2 is in the works. As it stands now, that's 4 different things, where 3 are majors tasks that require more attention. Yet DICE/EA continues to pile on projects after projects.

It was revealed on why it took so long to develop the 1.5 patch for BF2. Their answer was that they didn't have one or two guys working on it. Instead, they used time-limited resource allocation. In other words, the patch only got worked on in a limited time that was given by the higher-ups. That, to me, means they have serious management and resource allocation issues. It's one thing to split off the company into different teams for working on different things (like a PS3 codebase team w/ a unified visual/texture design team). But to give a maintenance patch a limited time for coders to work on, that's just downright stupid.

Assume for a bit that they shoved all of their projects aside. Assume for a bit that once Bad Company was done and Mirror's Edge never existed on paper. That would mean the one major project running at the time was Battlefield Heroes. What then? A bunch of people would then sit down, look at the BF2 to-do list, and start looking into what needs to be done. I theorize that had they never bothered with Mirror's Edge and/or BF'43, they could have finished the BF2 1.5 update in about 3-4 months time after the initial announcement.

Of course, all of this is just in theory, since it took them more than a fucking year to do this. The confirmation of such update was made on June 23, 2008, where a stupid update post was made September 18, 2008, with a winter release goal in mind. That, of course, never happened.

Yet in the time it took them to actually finish the damn patch, they have finished Mirror's Edge, got Battlefield Heroes stable enough to move to open beta status, and released Battlefield 1943. That's 3 fucking projects they have finished, some of which dated back farther than the notion of building a new patch for BF2. Still, it seems that DICE did nothing more than tack on projects after projects to the point where small things received little or no attention at all.

So... September 1, 2009. Over a year has passed since that announcement. The patch is finally out and with it, a lot of content. For starters, Euro Force and Armored Fury, two booster packs that used to sell for US$9.99 each, are now available to all for free. Not only is this a good move but it finally brings all the players together. Before, the maps that came with these booster packs did nothing more than clear out the server. Only a select handful of people would be able to play on these special maps but you'd be left with a fraction of people on the server. It was probably one of the most hated aspect of running a ranked server, as it does nothing more than empty it out quickly. It would go from being populated to empty in less than 5 minutes time, simply because they would all leave to go elsewhere. It doesn't help the server, since it basically bumps people off to other server. And that can potentially lose a faithful player from ever returning.

Another added bonus is the addition of a new map for ranked play. Still, one of the most dumbest aspect to ranked server is the inability to run user-created maps that can be verified, endorsed, or approved for ranked play. Yet while this was seen to work to a certain extent in 2142, there was never a consistent or robust method for which user-created maps can be submitted for approval for ranked play. Because of this, people play the same map over and over and over. There was not enough ranked maps to go around and not enough different content to keep players playing. The booster packs was probably meant as a way to solve this but we all know how that went.

So what do everyone get? A small shot in being able to play something new for a change. But trying to get back to BF2 isn't easy, nor is it all that great. Having played both Call of Duty 4 and World at War, I have come to learn that the bullet system employed in these two Call of Duty games surpasses that to what BF2 is able to do. I have played the game long enough that if you wanted to be able to shoot straight, the most you need to do is simply aim. In BF2, using the weapon's iron sight doesn't necessarily equate to always being able to shoot straight. Quite often the second shot after the first will go astray, a side effect to the game's bullet deviation system. And nothing in the world will get you to shoot straight ever again, even when taking careful shots in aiming at your target. You'd think that if you're laying down prone or taking your sweet time firing off one shot at a time the bullets will always go straight. Not in BF2. In order for the bullet to fly straight to where you're aiming, you have to wait forever. I don't think anyone wants to wait that long.

I have tried to play again. And having been away from the game for so long, I have stumbled trying to relearn all the controls. Yet the one thing that screws me over is the fact that I cannot aim straight after the first shot. Shouldn't the idea of knowing how to aim straight is knowing how to control the recoil of your weapon? At least in World at War, I can control how I shoot by shooting in short bursts, so that I don't lose control of the recoil when trying to shoot at a target far away.

I have mixed feelings on this so-called 1.50 patch. Granted, I'd need time to adjust back to how the game plays and get a feel for the new map. But I just can't stand not being able to fire a weapon straight down the middle when doing careful aiming. One thing is certain, though. Hell has frozen over and the patch is actually out. Who'd knew?

My World at War

Since JD_2020, a CR guy at Treyarch, did not understood what I have meant in my reply on Twitter, and is too l33t to receive any direct messages, the only venue I have left is here.

The machine gun class in World at War is just like any machine gun class that you'd come to expect in a variety of first-person shooter games. They are big, powerful, and usually heavy. The idea that people have come to expect out of this class and category of weapon is that users will fulfill the role of support fire. These players will aid their fellow players and teammates in providing support to reaching a goal. In many of the FPS games out there, weapons that fall in this category seem to have a bipod attached to the barrel of the gun. Call of Duty 4 and World at War are no different when they are unlocked for use.

However, people are people and they do as they please. They run around carrying a big and heavy machine gun just so they can mow down anyone they come across with. I have seen it before and I have seen that idea backfire on them when they come face to face with a SMG, often the Thompson or the PPSh-41. But you will find players who, like myself, would experiment around and find ways to make these machine guns better tools than just something people use to mow people down while moving. These small number of people are the ones who lay on the ground, sitting still, providing suppression, cover, and support fire for their teammates. I am one of them, as I don't always go run around.

The bipod is a tool for which these players utilize fullest when they are able to use it. At first, being able to go prone and mount the bipod for superior accuracy, at the cost of mobility, is a benefit that players soon realize can greatly be of help for the team. And there are plenty of places to go prone and there are plenty of flat surfaces around many of the stock maps that World at War features today. Being able to use the bipod is an added incentive to work on the marksmanship for that weapon and for that weapon class. It wasn't about trying to find whatever places you can actually mount on. It was more about trying to find the best location to mount for providing the best support fire for your team. Finding that location means finding a place to hide and one that provides decent amount of cover from those who try to shoot you down.

When the decision to disable prone bipod was made, nothing was said. Nothing was mentioned in the changelog. Yet when people inquired about it...

Second, the Bipod cloning glitch could very well cause entity overflow errors on the PC, and provide the same level of Denial of Service attack as it could on a console game. Considering that this game is cross-platform, the solutions that the get worked into the console with regards to this are the same the PC got - and presently that solution is to disable the Bipods entirely.

Just because nobody posted a video of it occurring on the PC doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Granted the controls are different, and it would be difficult to get the proper directionality with the keyboard that you could with the controller to pull off the glitch, however, it could be done.

It's documented that, on the console versions specifically, it can happen. But you only assume based on the thinking that since it uses the same codebase that it's possible regardless. However, you (JD) said it yourself that the controls are different and it'd be difficult to pull off. Thus if it was difficult to pull off, tacked on with the fact that the majority of people play with a keyboard and mouse, shouldn't it occur to you that it may not be practical in the end?

Ask yourself this: what is the goal of a glitcher? Usually the answer to this is to ruin other people's fun. If this is the case, what good is a glitch that may take more time than necessary to pull off? Would it be practical to the glitching player to spend all that time just to do that one single thing?

Also, people play on dedicated servers. These dedicated servers are run by the people. These same people are the ones who manage and govern the servers for others to play on. They set the rules and they set the guidelines. They are the ones to weed out unruly players and the morons who try to exploit a glitch. When Downfall and Castle had map glitches that enable some players to get under the map, all it takes is one single admin to kick and/or ban those players from the server. Why can't the people do the same for any idiot who may very well try to exploit this? This isn't the console platform where we need to be babied on whether or not we should have tanks. The server operators and admins are the ones who set the parameters of how the server should run.

That argument of intentionally disabling the prone bipod is getting old. I cannot accept your so-called solution just to prevent a bug that may or may not even exist in the first place. The PC platform should not be given the same treatment that consoles get. And there are better ways to resolve an issue that may grow into a problem. The PC players would not have wanted a feature like this to be removed. Yet you removed it anyway.

Treyarch should take a long and hard look at the MG class as a whole. The weapons may be fine but the attachment unlocks are pretty much junk now. What good is getting 25 kills if the unlock you receive is nothing more than a useless piece of metal hanging off the barrel of the gun? What good is a MG if you cannot utilize the bipod the way it was meant to be used? Disabling prone bipod effectively makes the entire MG class of weapons the only category which have absolutely nothing to work for. The rifles, SMG, shotguns, and bolt-action rifles all have something worthwhile to get. There's Aperture Sights, extra ammo, telescopic sights, flash hider/suppressor, rifle grenades, sniper scope, and bayonet. All of them can be used freely wherever the player can use it. Yet why is the MG class the only one that have virtually nothing to use? Oh sure, the Type-99 machine gun also has a bayonet and the FG-42 has the telescopic sight. But what about the rest? And who actively uses a bayonet on a MG anyway?!

I have never seen a weapon class so much in shambles. It sickens me to see that the machine guns are crippled beyond belief when they cannot be mounted up in using the only unlock attachment that makes the weapon class worthwhile to use.

Can you feel my frustration in this, JD? It's one thing when you tweak a weapon. But when you effectively remove a feature altogether, you better come up with something to replace it. I have been waiting for several months for a viable solution that would revitalize the MG class so that it is worthwhile to use again.

Sword Impulse Gundam

Perhaps the most intricate and delicate hobbies out there are those who assemble and build model kits. Model kits come in mostly plastics, requires assembly, and is unpainted. Most model kits are designed so that you need additional tools and materials in order to finish it. Bandai, owner of the Gundam franchise, manufactures all sorts of model kits for the Gundam franchise. And you'll find that there are a lot of them to go around. Some of those model kits were released locally in America. But a lot of the big and fancier ones never made it out here.

I always liked that Gundam model kits are unique in its own way, in that they don't require painting and they don't require cementing in order to complete. Granted, there are several parts here and there that probably would hold better with cement. But the kit itself are designed so that they can hold their own for the time being. At least, that's the original idea.

One of the model kits have been continuously sold out and backordered. The design is very attractive and looks to be interesting to assemble and handle. But there's a slight problem. The kit is often out of stock and backordered. Also is the fact that I have not touched model kits in years. The last Gundam model kit that I have didn't exactly turn out well, due to the design being before what they are today. Since then, I have not touched any model kits. I do find that model kits back then were not for those who does not have much experience or have any patience. In order to fully bring out the beauty of the model kits, one has to care for them greatly and have all the right tools and materials needed to finish it, one piece at a time.

After waiting for 2 weeks longer than the usual delivery time for the model kit to arrive, I looked over the parts attached to the sprue tree and the assembly booklet. At first, it looks overwhelming as there are many parts and pieces to deal with. But I cannot assemble the kit just yet. I needed the tools to cleanly cut the pieces off. Each assembly session lasted 3 to 5 hours, with a bit of break in between. But after 5 days, and many minutes spent grinding away the excess plastics, the kit is 95% completed. The rest are accessories, effect parts, and other equipment parts. And so far, the model looks amazing. Granted, some areas do need some cover up in order to hide the plastic discoloring due to grinding and cutting. But overall, the model looks good and satisfactory.

Perhaps the only thing that I will regret in the future is that I did not have the paint and tools needed to make the model more detailed. But perhaps this is one aspect of my abilities that is not suited for assembling models. At the very least, this is something I can at least do and finish. And unlike the previous attempt, the result is much better than before, as I have placed much more effort and put in more dedication to this.

I do not know if there will be more Gundam kits to assemble. That really depends on whether or not I find another one as fancy, nice looking, and superbly designed as this one. I do know, however, that if there is a next time, I may have more tools and materials on hand to be ready for the next level and stage.