So, now we know what that secret Rearden company was doing all this time, besides stealing our CS majors for exorbitant amounts of money.
Posts
Lizard!
16 years ago
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label games. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Community Comparisons
Still on break. HMC returns on Jan 19th. So that means one more week to fix all that Clinic stuff I still have to do. Gr....
Anyways, on to the topic of the day: communities. While a loose term, I'm going to reference it in regards to the supportive (or lack thereof) nature of people doing similar things.
Let's start with the DotA community. If you're unfamiliar, DotA stand for 'Defense of the Ancients' and is a WarCraft 3 Frozen Throne custom map. It is also perhaps the single most played WarCraft 3 map, with a huge community, patches, it shows up in competitive leagues, and basically tends to be a big deal. It is based around teams of players each controlling a hero. The goal is to push into the enemy base and kill their super structure, a tree or a throne. As the game progresses, the heroes level up, gain cool powers, and you can buy items to further augment your heroes. The core gameplay though is very micro dependent (fine control of your hero and its actions) as well as team coordination (acting as a team when fighting, allocating who does what, etc.). Team coordination in some ways trumps the micro aspect since 4 heroes attacking 1 hero should win, unless that 1 hero is ridiculously overpowered due to levels or items.
So, here's the crux of the matter. The DotA community is not very supportive of new players. In fact, there are times when people have actually told other players to leave because they were so bad at the game. There's also what are known as griefers, or people who intentionally do things to annoy others. Some of these actions might be intentionally dying to the other team to give them an advantage, or leaving a game in progress (no one new can join and now the team is down a hero). Why? Because people want to win, and DotA is very team dependent, so if you have a bad team people get frustrated. However, in the long run, there seems to be a problem. If you chastise all the new players and get rid of them, what happens? There is no influx of new players, old better players might eventually leave, and now you're stuck with no players. Of course, there's a few really stubborn players who keep playing, and there's definitely some helpful players out there, but in general the community is pretty hostile. Most new players only get better because they are trained by experienced players, usually friends who introduce them to the game. I actually started playing because we have a DotA game night each week at Mudd. I'm still pretty bad.
Now, the HMC community. I tend to cite this as the reason I decided on Harvey Mudd College, and it didn't disappoint. The very concept that it's a high performance school, but everyone lives on campus and the professors are there to teach make an uber combo. Plus there's other perks like the hands-on work and such. At the core, though, I'm a big fan of how supportive the community is. It's a place where if you have questions, someone is bound to know the answer and is willing to explain it to you. I managed to debug and learn about boot failures when my computer went bonkers right before finals week. I've had people explain crazy algorithms to me. I was just interviewing at JPL and explaining what I knew about a CS class that I hadn't taken, and the interviewer thought I had taken the class. I eventually told him that this was just from learning from the CS majors complaining about chunky string and that I didn't know how to fix the problem itself in detail. I've also spent many hours walking others through problems of their own, sometimes in sacrifice of meeting my own deadlines.
Now, it's not all flowers and rainbows. I've mentioned in others posts about the downsides of such a tight community such as if you do something stupid everyone finds out, or that if you're the jerk people end up not liking you can't be anonymous. But, overall, I enjoy the community of Harvey Mudd College. Plus, we have professors who participate in some of the randomest stuff, like dressing up as Santa so we can take pictures with him. Go Prof. Yong!
And now, for no good reason, a video.
Anyways, on to the topic of the day: communities. While a loose term, I'm going to reference it in regards to the supportive (or lack thereof) nature of people doing similar things.
Let's start with the DotA community. If you're unfamiliar, DotA stand for 'Defense of the Ancients' and is a WarCraft 3 Frozen Throne custom map. It is also perhaps the single most played WarCraft 3 map, with a huge community, patches, it shows up in competitive leagues, and basically tends to be a big deal. It is based around teams of players each controlling a hero. The goal is to push into the enemy base and kill their super structure, a tree or a throne. As the game progresses, the heroes level up, gain cool powers, and you can buy items to further augment your heroes. The core gameplay though is very micro dependent (fine control of your hero and its actions) as well as team coordination (acting as a team when fighting, allocating who does what, etc.). Team coordination in some ways trumps the micro aspect since 4 heroes attacking 1 hero should win, unless that 1 hero is ridiculously overpowered due to levels or items.
So, here's the crux of the matter. The DotA community is not very supportive of new players. In fact, there are times when people have actually told other players to leave because they were so bad at the game. There's also what are known as griefers, or people who intentionally do things to annoy others. Some of these actions might be intentionally dying to the other team to give them an advantage, or leaving a game in progress (no one new can join and now the team is down a hero). Why? Because people want to win, and DotA is very team dependent, so if you have a bad team people get frustrated. However, in the long run, there seems to be a problem. If you chastise all the new players and get rid of them, what happens? There is no influx of new players, old better players might eventually leave, and now you're stuck with no players. Of course, there's a few really stubborn players who keep playing, and there's definitely some helpful players out there, but in general the community is pretty hostile. Most new players only get better because they are trained by experienced players, usually friends who introduce them to the game. I actually started playing because we have a DotA game night each week at Mudd. I'm still pretty bad.
Now, the HMC community. I tend to cite this as the reason I decided on Harvey Mudd College, and it didn't disappoint. The very concept that it's a high performance school, but everyone lives on campus and the professors are there to teach make an uber combo. Plus there's other perks like the hands-on work and such. At the core, though, I'm a big fan of how supportive the community is. It's a place where if you have questions, someone is bound to know the answer and is willing to explain it to you. I managed to debug and learn about boot failures when my computer went bonkers right before finals week. I've had people explain crazy algorithms to me. I was just interviewing at JPL and explaining what I knew about a CS class that I hadn't taken, and the interviewer thought I had taken the class. I eventually told him that this was just from learning from the CS majors complaining about chunky string and that I didn't know how to fix the problem itself in detail. I've also spent many hours walking others through problems of their own, sometimes in sacrifice of meeting my own deadlines.
Now, it's not all flowers and rainbows. I've mentioned in others posts about the downsides of such a tight community such as if you do something stupid everyone finds out, or that if you're the jerk people end up not liking you can't be anonymous. But, overall, I enjoy the community of Harvey Mudd College. Plus, we have professors who participate in some of the randomest stuff, like dressing up as Santa so we can take pictures with him. Go Prof. Yong!
And now, for no good reason, a video.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The End is Nigh!
It's the home stretch. Last few weeks of school. For some, this would be heartwarming. Last few things to clean up, time to go out and start Christmas shopping (Amazon.com, you are one of my saviors), and all that.
Not true for me.
Let's recap.
In Clinic, Prof. David Harris commented last week we had about "6 weeks worth of work, and about 3 weeks to do it". This is also the same guy who casually looks at the problem I've been trying to fix for the last few days and solves it in a few minutes. So, yeah, we're in trouble. The key factor is to get what we call Rev1 done of the schematics. This first involves getting Rev0 done. Rev0 means your schematics simulate correctly (or at least as expected) in Verilog and SPICE. The SPICE simulations barely got up and running last week. And, as conventional wisdom says, these kinds of things are so simple that they'll work the first time. WRONG. Assume everything will fail, plan ahead, then double the time you expect that will take, and you're still probably missing something. Trust me. Something ALWAYS goes horribly wrong. Luckily, I have Schematics simulating in Verilog. Or, at least I did. Some weird bug has arisen and one of my schematics doesn't work anymore. See? Even when you think it's done, it isn't. Gr.... The scary part is I'm perhaps the closest to finished out of my team. As much as I'd like to pat myself on the back, it also scares me how behind we are as a team. I'm usually the person lagging behind. Then again, I crash if I don't get at least 6 hours of sleep, so I guess they get the chance to lap me by doing all-nighters. Not that I advocate all-nighters, just that it's not a viable option for me if you expect me to be cognizant the next day.
Next, MicroPs. I'm building with another student, Julien Dage, a MIDI synthesizer. It takes in MIDI signals from a keyboard and uses wave tables in the memory to synthesize music. Unfortunately, there's a few problems. First, it takes too long to process each individual note we want to play. I think, according to simulation, that I can get 3 notes. I want 8 notes. Options now include tweaking code at the assembly level, re-writing a part of the code to use a faster system, and slowing down how fast we output music. We also are having issues on the analog side of things. Curse that real world and all it's foolish inaccuracies. I demand more binary values!
Next, Hums. Philosophy final paper, Music final exam. Um. Yeah. Not quite as scary, but I still have a few loose ends I have to tie up. These are the only two classes that I'm either on schedule or ahead of schedule. Go figure.
Next, GameSHMC. I'd like to petition for more money for our budget. However, that means I have to prepare a presentation on why we deserve more money for the year.
Next, Family. Right now I'm at home. Thanksgiving was full of good food. Unfortunately, I can't access all the stuff I need to do the above mentioned work. Well, I can access the Clinic stuff, except it takes five times as long to get anything done. On the other hand, I can't snub my family. We've compromised and I'm heading back later today to do more work. Still gotta schedule moving back after this semester is over.
Next, everything else. I have a giant list of games on my door that I haven't played. Heck, I haven't even played stuff that came out over the summer, let alone the stuff people are raving about that just came out like Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead. Oh, and that Red Alert thing. Sorry, I'm not quite as avid a RTS player, although I do love blowing up the computer with nuclear weaponry.
Anyhow, that's where I'm at. No time left and everyone wants me to cash in yesterday.
Back to work.
Not true for me.
Let's recap.
In Clinic, Prof. David Harris commented last week we had about "6 weeks worth of work, and about 3 weeks to do it". This is also the same guy who casually looks at the problem I've been trying to fix for the last few days and solves it in a few minutes. So, yeah, we're in trouble. The key factor is to get what we call Rev1 done of the schematics. This first involves getting Rev0 done. Rev0 means your schematics simulate correctly (or at least as expected) in Verilog and SPICE. The SPICE simulations barely got up and running last week. And, as conventional wisdom says, these kinds of things are so simple that they'll work the first time. WRONG. Assume everything will fail, plan ahead, then double the time you expect that will take, and you're still probably missing something. Trust me. Something ALWAYS goes horribly wrong. Luckily, I have Schematics simulating in Verilog. Or, at least I did. Some weird bug has arisen and one of my schematics doesn't work anymore. See? Even when you think it's done, it isn't. Gr.... The scary part is I'm perhaps the closest to finished out of my team. As much as I'd like to pat myself on the back, it also scares me how behind we are as a team. I'm usually the person lagging behind. Then again, I crash if I don't get at least 6 hours of sleep, so I guess they get the chance to lap me by doing all-nighters. Not that I advocate all-nighters, just that it's not a viable option for me if you expect me to be cognizant the next day.
Next, MicroPs. I'm building with another student, Julien Dage, a MIDI synthesizer. It takes in MIDI signals from a keyboard and uses wave tables in the memory to synthesize music. Unfortunately, there's a few problems. First, it takes too long to process each individual note we want to play. I think, according to simulation, that I can get 3 notes. I want 8 notes. Options now include tweaking code at the assembly level, re-writing a part of the code to use a faster system, and slowing down how fast we output music. We also are having issues on the analog side of things. Curse that real world and all it's foolish inaccuracies. I demand more binary values!
Next, Hums. Philosophy final paper, Music final exam. Um. Yeah. Not quite as scary, but I still have a few loose ends I have to tie up. These are the only two classes that I'm either on schedule or ahead of schedule. Go figure.
Next, GameSHMC. I'd like to petition for more money for our budget. However, that means I have to prepare a presentation on why we deserve more money for the year.
Next, Family. Right now I'm at home. Thanksgiving was full of good food. Unfortunately, I can't access all the stuff I need to do the above mentioned work. Well, I can access the Clinic stuff, except it takes five times as long to get anything done. On the other hand, I can't snub my family. We've compromised and I'm heading back later today to do more work. Still gotta schedule moving back after this semester is over.
Next, everything else. I have a giant list of games on my door that I haven't played. Heck, I haven't even played stuff that came out over the summer, let alone the stuff people are raving about that just came out like Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead. Oh, and that Red Alert thing. Sorry, I'm not quite as avid a RTS player, although I do love blowing up the computer with nuclear weaponry.
Anyhow, that's where I'm at. No time left and everyone wants me to cash in yesterday.
Back to work.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Fall Break
Yeah yea, I know this is late. Not that most people care about my punctuality on this blog anyways.
So, I'm still in the middle of Fall Break. Technically, Fall Break begins after your last class of last week, which for me was Thursday afternoon. It extends until your first class Wednesday.
Luckily, we're not in High School where each teacher seems to think that any kind of break is a good time for the students to work on extra projects. Nope. Most professor have a tendency to go easier and let the students unwind a little during break. Winter break is extra awesome since our semesters actually line up and so there really are no classes that span the break. Unlike High School where Winter Break was the perfect time to work on that History Day Project.
Anyways, you might be asking what kind of stuff we do around here for Fall Break. Well, there's the official events endorsed by the official student organizations, such as today is a Disneyland trip. Since I'm currently writing this, and I don't own a laptop, I'm NOT at Disneyland. Hey, I grew up in Southern California and each year for Band we went to Disneyland. It's lost its appeal. I'll go visit again in a few years.
Then there's those other grassroots things. For example, the East Dorm Purity Test. It's a 500 question survey. For everything that you've done, you make a tally mark. At the end of the test, you count how many "yes" marks you have, divide by 5, and subtract that number from 100. Don't round to the nearest integer. So, higher score is better, or worse, depending on your viewpoint.
There's also my own person event, Extended Crack. If you recall, I organize Crack in the AC. Crack being an addictive item, in this case games, and AC referring to the ACademic computing labs. That's right, AC stands for ACademics. We just happen to localize in the computer labs so we can play games. Extended Crack is a special event every Fall Break where we start at noon and play until people leave. This is not to be confused with 24Hr Crack where players try to game for 24 Hours (noon to noon) with breaks for bathroom and food. Anyways, it was pretty awesome. Our lack of public TF2 accounts restricted TF2 a little, but we had some pretty fun times.
There are also smaller things, such as some people decided to have a slumber party in the dorm lounge. Or, a massive trip down to the Village for dinner. Fun stuff.
And of course, there's that bit of homework that you should do to get out of the way but you keep putting off so you can go mess around. Like Clinic.
So, I'm still in the middle of Fall Break. Technically, Fall Break begins after your last class of last week, which for me was Thursday afternoon. It extends until your first class Wednesday.
Luckily, we're not in High School where each teacher seems to think that any kind of break is a good time for the students to work on extra projects. Nope. Most professor have a tendency to go easier and let the students unwind a little during break. Winter break is extra awesome since our semesters actually line up and so there really are no classes that span the break. Unlike High School where Winter Break was the perfect time to work on that History Day Project.
Anyways, you might be asking what kind of stuff we do around here for Fall Break. Well, there's the official events endorsed by the official student organizations, such as today is a Disneyland trip. Since I'm currently writing this, and I don't own a laptop, I'm NOT at Disneyland. Hey, I grew up in Southern California and each year for Band we went to Disneyland. It's lost its appeal. I'll go visit again in a few years.
Then there's those other grassroots things. For example, the East Dorm Purity Test. It's a 500 question survey. For everything that you've done, you make a tally mark. At the end of the test, you count how many "yes" marks you have, divide by 5, and subtract that number from 100. Don't round to the nearest integer. So, higher score is better, or worse, depending on your viewpoint.
There's also my own person event, Extended Crack. If you recall, I organize Crack in the AC. Crack being an addictive item, in this case games, and AC referring to the ACademic computing labs. That's right, AC stands for ACademics. We just happen to localize in the computer labs so we can play games. Extended Crack is a special event every Fall Break where we start at noon and play until people leave. This is not to be confused with 24Hr Crack where players try to game for 24 Hours (noon to noon) with breaks for bathroom and food. Anyways, it was pretty awesome. Our lack of public TF2 accounts restricted TF2 a little, but we had some pretty fun times.
There are also smaller things, such as some people decided to have a slumber party in the dorm lounge. Or, a massive trip down to the Village for dinner. Fun stuff.
And of course, there's that bit of homework that you should do to get out of the way but you keep putting off so you can go mess around. Like Clinic.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
filler
I'm busy. Clinic + MicroPs + Research + 2 hums = lots of work.
The fact that I still go to Crack in the AC and WarCrack regularly isn't exactly helping. Well, I guess I have an excuse for Crack in the AC since I run the thing.
Quick update, though, I have my MicroPs lab done in record time. 6.5 Hours. Oh yeah. I even have the thing able to take two buttons being pressed at the same time. I'll try to remember to post pictures.
In the meantime, pictures of research! Research testing the chip we made last semester in VLSI. It doesn't work.... =[
The fact that I still go to Crack in the AC and WarCrack regularly isn't exactly helping. Well, I guess I have an excuse for Crack in the AC since I run the thing.
Quick update, though, I have my MicroPs lab done in record time. 6.5 Hours. Oh yeah. I even have the thing able to take two buttons being pressed at the same time. I'll try to remember to post pictures.
In the meantime, pictures of research! Research testing the chip we made last semester in VLSI. It doesn't work.... =[
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Thing I Wish Existed in Real Life
OK. I'm sorry. I claimed I would be giving updates regularly and epically failed yesterday. Will try to do better in the future.
To the topic of the day, stuff that is not in real life that I wish did exist. This is not a definitive list, and again probably has very little to do directly with Mudd.
Magic. In the most basic of definitions, this is pretty much anything that bends or breaks what we consider reality. For example, invisibility potions and being able to conjure up fireballs and all that kind of stuff. There's actually been some interesting pieces of work that consider what the world would be like if magic was the norm and you even went to college to learn about magic and elven history instead of thermodynamics and quantum physics. But yeah, that would be kinda cool. Of course, knowing me, I'll be the moron with little to no magical aptitude and have to make due buying wards and enchantments from the local shop.
A Soul/Spirit Analyzer. Maybe it's just me, but being able to analyze and detect qualities of the soul/spirit/spirit would be really cool. For example, you could do a scan and find out that your anger problem stems from a certain incident or preconceived notion, and then perhaps it would zap it or you could deal with it. Something similar to perhaps how in Psychonauts you go into people's brains and help sort out their issues. Maybe it's because I have too many issues myself or it's my self-improving nature.
Lightsabers. Seriously. Best weapon evar. Cuts anything except another lightsaber. Has this really cool hum. And it can deflect laser blasts. LAZERS! You just don't get any cooler than that.
Gundams. OK, I know they break physics since they're the biggest robot around and yet are the most agile, but the very concept of a giant battle machine with weapons and beam swords flying around and doing ninja-esque moves is pretty sweet. Space combat is also really fun since there's no natural "down" so in effect you have to watch in all 6 directions for enemies. Read Ender's Game for some interesting theories about Zero-G battles.
Zero-G generation. Zero-G chambers, directed zero point energy, lots and lots of magnets. It doesn't matter. Being able to float around and be weightless is pure awesome. Enough said.
Heads Up Display. Eventually the Cyber Warrior program will equip our soldiers with something like this. The idea is a HUD which provides useful information. Stuff like health status (heath bar?), quest log, overhead view of surrounding people, highlight useful objects, infrared overlays, and of course a reticle and ammo readout just in case those terrorist wanna bring us a traditional war in our home towns. Everyone suit up with your carbine rifles and shotguns, and the HUD will even help highlight enemies, allow team communication, and notify you friend from foe. Even just an automatic "quest log" to keep track of your to-do list would be sweet.
So, there you have it. Fun stuff that could be really cool to have around in real life.
Oh, and check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. You won't regret it.
To the topic of the day, stuff that is not in real life that I wish did exist. This is not a definitive list, and again probably has very little to do directly with Mudd.
Magic. In the most basic of definitions, this is pretty much anything that bends or breaks what we consider reality. For example, invisibility potions and being able to conjure up fireballs and all that kind of stuff. There's actually been some interesting pieces of work that consider what the world would be like if magic was the norm and you even went to college to learn about magic and elven history instead of thermodynamics and quantum physics. But yeah, that would be kinda cool. Of course, knowing me, I'll be the moron with little to no magical aptitude and have to make due buying wards and enchantments from the local shop.
A Soul/Spirit Analyzer. Maybe it's just me, but being able to analyze and detect qualities of the soul/spirit/spirit would be really cool. For example, you could do a scan and find out that your anger problem stems from a certain incident or preconceived notion, and then perhaps it would zap it or you could deal with it. Something similar to perhaps how in Psychonauts you go into people's brains and help sort out their issues. Maybe it's because I have too many issues myself or it's my self-improving nature.
Lightsabers. Seriously. Best weapon evar. Cuts anything except another lightsaber. Has this really cool hum. And it can deflect laser blasts. LAZERS! You just don't get any cooler than that.
Gundams. OK, I know they break physics since they're the biggest robot around and yet are the most agile, but the very concept of a giant battle machine with weapons and beam swords flying around and doing ninja-esque moves is pretty sweet. Space combat is also really fun since there's no natural "down" so in effect you have to watch in all 6 directions for enemies. Read Ender's Game for some interesting theories about Zero-G battles.
Zero-G generation. Zero-G chambers, directed zero point energy, lots and lots of magnets. It doesn't matter. Being able to float around and be weightless is pure awesome. Enough said.
Heads Up Display. Eventually the Cyber Warrior program will equip our soldiers with something like this. The idea is a HUD which provides useful information. Stuff like health status (heath bar?), quest log, overhead view of surrounding people, highlight useful objects, infrared overlays, and of course a reticle and ammo readout just in case those terrorist wanna bring us a traditional war in our home towns. Everyone suit up with your carbine rifles and shotguns, and the HUD will even help highlight enemies, allow team communication, and notify you friend from foe. Even just an automatic "quest log" to keep track of your to-do list would be sweet.
So, there you have it. Fun stuff that could be really cool to have around in real life.
Oh, and check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. You won't regret it.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
24 Hour Crack
Greetings. I am not insane. Just prefacing this particular post, because the moment most people see 24 Hour they freak out and think you're mental for doing something for 24 Hours.
Anyways, there's been a high density of game related posts, and I'll be blogging on other things, but this just happened so I'm obligated to post about it.
We recently (or are currently) concluding our annual 24 Hour Crack session.
If you recall from a previous post, Crack refers to anything addictive, and in this case refers to Video Games. Mostly computer games to be specific. So, logically, this would be a 24 Hour gaming marathon.
Now, if you're a gamer, a 24 Hour LAN party sounds ridiculously awesome and insane at the same time. For non-gamers, this sounds stupid.
Here's a bit of history. I started this last year during Spring Break because I had an idea of mashing several Cracks such as ITR Games, Crack in the AC, and Warcrack into one giant session. Then I talked to some people, and we decided instead there should just be a 24 Hour session. So, I organized it, got a fridge, had people bring drinks, reserved the computer lab, and we had a blast. Some alums even popped in during the night to have fun with us. And of course even if you didn't try for 24 Hours, what I called Hardcore, you could drift in and out as you please, a Casual player.
So, this year, I decided there needs to be a little more organization. Buy drinks so people didn't have to bring their own. This ended up as 24 2-Liter bottle of soda. Of which 6 currently remain. Mental note, less Pepsi. Still got a fridge. Ordered dinner from Chipotle who were really awesome at getting our order together for us. Also, easier for me to handle who owes me what. Got Dominos for the midnight and morning meals. After all, nothing keeps quite like pizza for the morning, and nothing is open at 6am to order food. I had a special time where we took a break and tried out more alternative games. Didn't work out so well since no one brought alternative games, so we watched a replay of the stupidest StarCraft game ever. I opened it up to the Claremont Colleges. And lastly I setup a more constrained game list and made sure the games were all loaded onto the computer ahead of time.
Whew.
It was a huge success. We had at least 20 players at all times with the exception of very early morning. We had non-regulars show up and experiment with the games. People were fragging. We had some serious and some ridiculous games, such as UT2K4 with all Shield Guns on Double Domination mode. Super Smash Brother Brawl was on continuously for the duration of the session on a projector. Several epic games, including a StarCraft free for all where I went BattleCruisers without anyone realizing it until I squashed the Medic Marine player. Then I lost all 24 of them to a bunch of cloaked Wraiths since I had not enough Scanner Sweeps and no Science Vessels. Basically, ridiculous amounts of awesome.
Being someone who takes pride in what they do, I of course have already taken down notes on how to improve this for next year. It still will have to be during Spring Break so people can sleep and recuperate. I might shift it to the 5pm to 5pm slot instead of noon since some people don't want to wake up pre-noon on Break and then people could sleep and come back if they wanted to. More incentive for people to play through the morning. Then you can get dinner afterwards and sleep to the next day. I should bring my own alternative games in case no one else brings any. Less Pepsi, especially since Root Beer is king when pizza is around, and more Mountain Dew. Oh, and I should eventually get a USB mouse so I don't have to use the ones in the computer lab. They've served me well, but the Mac mouses tend to have a finicky right-click, which is bad for FPS games.
So, if you happen to be around for Spring Break, keep an eye out for me spamming the e-mail lists again next year. I promise it will be even more awesome.
Anyways, there's been a high density of game related posts, and I'll be blogging on other things, but this just happened so I'm obligated to post about it.
We recently (or are currently) concluding our annual 24 Hour Crack session.
If you recall from a previous post, Crack refers to anything addictive, and in this case refers to Video Games. Mostly computer games to be specific. So, logically, this would be a 24 Hour gaming marathon.
Now, if you're a gamer, a 24 Hour LAN party sounds ridiculously awesome and insane at the same time. For non-gamers, this sounds stupid.
Here's a bit of history. I started this last year during Spring Break because I had an idea of mashing several Cracks such as ITR Games, Crack in the AC, and Warcrack into one giant session. Then I talked to some people, and we decided instead there should just be a 24 Hour session. So, I organized it, got a fridge, had people bring drinks, reserved the computer lab, and we had a blast. Some alums even popped in during the night to have fun with us. And of course even if you didn't try for 24 Hours, what I called Hardcore, you could drift in and out as you please, a Casual player.
So, this year, I decided there needs to be a little more organization. Buy drinks so people didn't have to bring their own. This ended up as 24 2-Liter bottle of soda. Of which 6 currently remain. Mental note, less Pepsi. Still got a fridge. Ordered dinner from Chipotle who were really awesome at getting our order together for us. Also, easier for me to handle who owes me what. Got Dominos for the midnight and morning meals. After all, nothing keeps quite like pizza for the morning, and nothing is open at 6am to order food. I had a special time where we took a break and tried out more alternative games. Didn't work out so well since no one brought alternative games, so we watched a replay of the stupidest StarCraft game ever. I opened it up to the Claremont Colleges. And lastly I setup a more constrained game list and made sure the games were all loaded onto the computer ahead of time.
Whew.
It was a huge success. We had at least 20 players at all times with the exception of very early morning. We had non-regulars show up and experiment with the games. People were fragging. We had some serious and some ridiculous games, such as UT2K4 with all Shield Guns on Double Domination mode. Super Smash Brother Brawl was on continuously for the duration of the session on a projector. Several epic games, including a StarCraft free for all where I went BattleCruisers without anyone realizing it until I squashed the Medic Marine player. Then I lost all 24 of them to a bunch of cloaked Wraiths since I had not enough Scanner Sweeps and no Science Vessels. Basically, ridiculous amounts of awesome.
Being someone who takes pride in what they do, I of course have already taken down notes on how to improve this for next year. It still will have to be during Spring Break so people can sleep and recuperate. I might shift it to the 5pm to 5pm slot instead of noon since some people don't want to wake up pre-noon on Break and then people could sleep and come back if they wanted to. More incentive for people to play through the morning. Then you can get dinner afterwards and sleep to the next day. I should bring my own alternative games in case no one else brings any. Less Pepsi, especially since Root Beer is king when pizza is around, and more Mountain Dew. Oh, and I should eventually get a USB mouse so I don't have to use the ones in the computer lab. They've served me well, but the Mac mouses tend to have a finicky right-click, which is bad for FPS games.
So, if you happen to be around for Spring Break, keep an eye out for me spamming the e-mail lists again next year. I promise it will be even more awesome.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Being lazy
I'm being lazy and still figuring out where to put my pictures so I can start embedding them into my posts.
So, instead, here's a fun review of the games of 2007 by Yahtzee, one of the best game reviewers out there today. Although he's a little insane sometimes and curses, he's one of the few that I agree with 100% and this particular vid has all the cursing bleeped out.
Video Link
Enjoy!
So, instead, here's a fun review of the games of 2007 by Yahtzee, one of the best game reviewers out there today. Although he's a little insane sometimes and curses, he's one of the few that I agree with 100% and this particular vid has all the cursing bleeped out.
Video Link
Enjoy!
Monday, February 18, 2008
spellman23 scores a headshot
So, I said I'd explain a bit about the title, and here it is.
spellman23 is my gaming alias.
zomg, lolz @ gamerz poluting my interwebs!
Seriously though, I'm a gamer. Granted, I'm not a pro gamer as much as sometimes I'd like to be. And it's not like I'm sucked into the vortex of one game. I play all games. Card, board, PC, sometimes a bit of console (don't own one, so I have to use the ones in the dorm gaming cabinet). I also enjoy multiple genres from First-Person Shooter to Role-Playing and God Games like Civ4.
How does this all fit? Well, it's a great stress reliever. One of the awesome things is we get 24Hr access to computer labs, which of course we've figured out how to load games onto (of course we cleared it with the admins of the college first) and thus have cool LAN parties over the weekend. It started out with only Natural Selection, a Half-Life mod, and a bit of WarCraft3 custom maps my freshman year, but we've had some other die hards re-introduce things like StarCraft and Quake into the mix.
Oh, and did I mention I have setup a session for a 24Hr gaming marathon? Yup. 8 players last Spring Break gamed from noon to noon. Crazy, I know.
But, as with all things, I've made sure to take it in moderation. I selectively play games during the weekend when the workload is less intense. Well, correction, I can put off work for a few hours and still feel good about myself. But anyways, being able to mess around and frag friends is awesome. If you've ever had a LAN Party, you know how great it is to hear people random cheer as other groan by a wild play you just pulled off, or the electricity as you all work together by yelling across the room. It's pure awesome.
The problem of games comes up when you let it take control. There are people where things like World of Warcraft (WoW) have essentially sucked them dry. Now all they play is WoW and whenever they have conversations inevitably it steers into talking about WoW, or homework. Not my particular brand of fun, but apparently they seem to be enjoying it. So, just don't let games dictate your life. Heck, in general, don't let one thing dictate your entire life unless it's really worth it, like say your religion, but that's another topic for another post.
Anyways, if you see me on the webs pwning the noobs, feel free to drop a line and say hi.
And for your viewing pleasure, some cool game trailers of my favorite free mods:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yJbR7wUoNBg
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2039778892352057276
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLcHtKcB0nI&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-fTCO7ZE-uE (has some gory scenes, designed as a realistic game)
spellman23 is my gaming alias.
zomg, lolz @ gamerz poluting my interwebs!
Seriously though, I'm a gamer. Granted, I'm not a pro gamer as much as sometimes I'd like to be. And it's not like I'm sucked into the vortex of one game. I play all games. Card, board, PC, sometimes a bit of console (don't own one, so I have to use the ones in the dorm gaming cabinet). I also enjoy multiple genres from First-Person Shooter to Role-Playing and God Games like Civ4.
How does this all fit? Well, it's a great stress reliever. One of the awesome things is we get 24Hr access to computer labs, which of course we've figured out how to load games onto (of course we cleared it with the admins of the college first) and thus have cool LAN parties over the weekend. It started out with only Natural Selection, a Half-Life mod, and a bit of WarCraft3 custom maps my freshman year, but we've had some other die hards re-introduce things like StarCraft and Quake into the mix.
Oh, and did I mention I have setup a session for a 24Hr gaming marathon? Yup. 8 players last Spring Break gamed from noon to noon. Crazy, I know.
But, as with all things, I've made sure to take it in moderation. I selectively play games during the weekend when the workload is less intense. Well, correction, I can put off work for a few hours and still feel good about myself. But anyways, being able to mess around and frag friends is awesome. If you've ever had a LAN Party, you know how great it is to hear people random cheer as other groan by a wild play you just pulled off, or the electricity as you all work together by yelling across the room. It's pure awesome.
The problem of games comes up when you let it take control. There are people where things like World of Warcraft (WoW) have essentially sucked them dry. Now all they play is WoW and whenever they have conversations inevitably it steers into talking about WoW, or homework. Not my particular brand of fun, but apparently they seem to be enjoying it. So, just don't let games dictate your life. Heck, in general, don't let one thing dictate your entire life unless it's really worth it, like say your religion, but that's another topic for another post.
Anyways, if you see me on the webs pwning the noobs, feel free to drop a line and say hi.
And for your viewing pleasure, some cool game trailers of my favorite free mods:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yJbR7wUoNBg
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2039778892352057276
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLcHtKcB0nI&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-fTCO7ZE-uE (has some gory scenes, designed as a realistic game)
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