Your base is under attack... once.

Ya know what I hate in C&C? I hate it when you leave your base alone, and some jerk comes by and kills you and your units don't do anything. Also, your EVA doesn't tell you enough.

Like, when a Tomahawk and a bunch of tanks are taking out your buildings, and you have a few guys a few steps away, but they just sit there and do nothing because they're not being attacked. They don't see your own building being blown to bits, so they don't do anything and you just lose a warfactory just like that.

And then when they start combat, your EVA tells you that yout base is under attack, so you pause your offense, and you check your base and start making some random defensive stuff, and then you go back to your offense. Like in Starcraft, it doesn't feel like a problem for some reason...

but in C&C, so you continue your offense, and then the next thing you know, you look back at your base and you've lost 6 buildings. I don't know, it doesn't feel like that in Starcraft, but in this game it feels like a lot can happen while you're not looking, and the EVA doesn't tell you enough and... yeah. A lot can happen between 1 look and the next. So I've lost a bunch of games because of that.. It's because units are stupid and they don't attack or defend properly without your supervision. Meanwhile, the computer can micromanage both really well.

And then you die.

Rules.ini

Recently, we (Jason, Alan, Duy, Jia, and myself) have started playing C&C Generals again. Jia and I found a way to play with just one “C&C: First Decade” CD, so we installed it on 4 computers, and now we are playing it again. So it’s another game we can play when we have lots of people over, instead of the usual Smash and PGR2 and whatever.

Anyway, so we’re having fun, but I’m not talking about that today; I want to talk about the rules.ini. Rules.ini is a ‘rules’ initialization file, that C&C games use – and people make programs to extract and/or edit these files, to edit how the game works. So these .ini files have provided endless hours of customization to the game, and that’s a lot of fun!

So, C&C Generals: Zero Hour is no different – it does have ini files, but instead of just one, it uses over 100 of them, because there are so many different units, weapons, variables, etc. For now, I’m just learning to edit these files again; they’re so complicated, it’s going to take a while to learn how to edit them properly, to get the effect I desire.

So with editing the rules comes a lot of fun. For now, I’m just experimenting with what I can do – change graphics for different sprites, make airstrikes use 10 planes instead of 3, upp the damage of different weapons – that sort of thing. It’s fun, and it’s funny, but it makes the game very unbalanced.

Eventually, after all this practicing and having fun, I’d like to make an ini file we could actually use, that’s still balanced but hopefully makes the game more fun, or at least, for different inis, more different. So what should we do? We could have an ini-set where all units shoot missiles, or all units are 1-hit. Those are easy, but how’bout something more real? We could have an ini-set that has more explosions, so that everything will seem more ‘epic’… hmm, that sounds like it could be fun.

Any suggestions?

Guitar Hero and the Feeling of Accomplishment

Okay, so a while ago we got Guitar Hero, and us as a group played it casually for an afternoon. Later, I started the career mode on Guitar Hero 2 (to unlock songs and items), and eventually beat it on Medium difficulty. Then I started practicing songs I liked, because it was fun. Turns out, many of the songs that I like were on level 8, the last level of the game, which usually also meant the most difficult (there are 8 levels, each level has 5 songs). So I practiced those a lot, and I’ve listened to most of them a lot, and… it was fun.

So, eventually I start career modes in Hard and Expert. Expert’s reaallllly hard, so we’ll talk about hard mode. Wow, hard mode was hard (duh). But boy, it sure was fun. I beat it a few minutes ago, and what a ride it was. The first 2 levels were tough, but then levels 3-6 were pretty easy. Level 7 brought the pain back.

Boy, it feels like such an accomplishment when you finally finish a song that’s been kicking your ass for so long. Also, it’s really satisfying to beat a song when you were pretty much ‘in the red’ for a lot of the song. Lastly, star power is awesome. Seriously, obtaining star power and then unleashing it at the right time is like a 2nd life. Wasting star power feels like losing a life…

Anyway, so after beating level 7, almost all of level 8 was a breeze, since most of them were my favourite songs! It felt like I was back in home territory, on familiar ground, with my favourite songs. But also it was the grand finale of an epic Journey. I even bought a new ‘skin’ for my guitar, made my guitar feel special, haha. It felt like such a happy moment.

One song kicked my butt though, so I practiced that part and then I won. And the last song, the ‘special’ song… I beat it on the first try, but wow, that was an epic battle. So I finished hard mode. Now on to tackle the next beast… Expert.

No, level 8 on expert will NOT be nice to me…

(On another note, 2nd guitar should be here tomorrow)

Hansel Filler Post

"I wasn't like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut, I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree. Richard Gere's a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it, but the fact that he's making it, I respect that. I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I'm selling? No. Do I know what I'm doing today? No. But I'm here, and I'm gonna give it my best shot."
~Hansel

The FaceBook RPG

When I first joined facebook, I thought of it as an RPG, or a networking tool. Well, it is a networking tool, that I looked at as an RPG, and it was fun to play! Or I shouldn’t say RPG, more like, a quest/mission based system. As with most games, it feels like an accomplishment when you beat a level or finish a quest, so that’s what made it fun.

At first, I thought you had to successfully add a friend in order to view their friends list, but it is not so. But back then, it felt like a great mission system, where when you finish 1 mission (add a friend), you can view their friends list and that’s like looking at a whole new list of missions, and it was fun to attempt the right missions. Heehee.

Anyway, enough about that for now… So I was talking to Wen the other day about Facebook, and eventually I asked him if he was going to join and he said “nah”. Then I proceeded to say “that’s okay – your joining of facebook will probably not ‘benefit’ me, so it’s okay.” What that meant was, that… I didn’t know any of Wen’s friends. See, the primary reason for joining facebook is to expand your social network, and also, to seek out old friends whom you have lost contact with from before.

For example, in elementary/middle school, I knew a girl named LISA and a guy named AMISH. When I went to highschool, I went to Graydon and LISA and AMISH went to Fraser, but I still kept in touch with AMISH, and he kept in touch with LISA, but I did not personally keep in touch with LISA. So, when Amish joins facebook, it’s advantageous to me because he is friends with LISA, and thus I can reunite with LISA quite easily through AMISH and FACEBOOK.

So in Wen’s case, he’ll add jimmy and Johnson and imhotep from middle school, but I didn’t know those people so his joining facebook will not really benefit me. More recently, Lachlan joined facebook after I did, and then he seeked out (from his addressbook) some guys that visited us from Germany (and stayed at my house), whom I never would’ve been able to get in contact with, so that was awesome.

Anyway, that’s why facebook is cool. So first of all, facebook is about networking. If you don’t care about expanding your network, or catching up with some old friends, then don’t bother joining facebook.

Nowadays, after the initial rush of adding friends to your network, Facebook is more of an information tool. It’s like an RSS feed into everybody’s life, so you can keep in touch with them and see what they’re up to. Every now and then (like LISA) you can still expand on your network as more network connections are made, and you win more at the Facebook RPG.

Also, it’s weird… I just added an old friend named Stephen Seguin. I couldn’t see his info, so I checked his friend’s list – sure enough, Amish was there, so I was pretty sure this was the right guy… but… Alan was his friend too! So I totally don’t remember the connection, but I find it oddly weird! Small world, maybe?

So anyway, that’s the facebook thing. So I converted from VHS to DVD, TV to HDTV, I got g-mail which is truly awesome, I got started with regular blogging, and now I got converted to Facebook (but I skipped the MySpace era). What should I try out next? Any suggestions?

*poke*

Lord of the Guitar

Wow. I love Guitar Hero. For the past two weeks, after finishing Zelda, 95% of my console playing time is spent on Guitar Hero. I would come home from work, and then maybe I’ll eat dinner, or I check my e-mails and facebook and all that, or I would watch Heroes or 24 (and Lost comes back tonight, yay!)… sometimes I would do something with Magic, since I laid out a bunch of cards on my desk…

But every now and then, I feel like going downstairs, and playing a game. Sure, I could get more items in Zelda, or play more Wario or Rayman or Monkeyball… I could try out Okami, or TotA, or check out the PS3 demos… I could open Lost Planet or Enchanted Arms and play those… but nope.

I play Guitar Hero. Specifically, Guitar Hero II, because of its practice mode. Just like with Pump It Up, I’ve created an excel spreadsheet which keeps track of how well I’m doing in GH2. Right now I’m playing practice mode, where you can play songs or sections of songs, in any difficulty, in 4 different speed settings, from regular, down to slowest, which I think is about 1/4 the speed. After you finish your song or section, it gives you a percentage, based on how many notes you’ve hit.

So right now I’m practicing for accuracy, rather than trying to score points using combos and star power. I’ll get to those later, but for me to become really good, I have to learn the songs and be very accurate. I’m focusing on about a dozen songs that I like, most of them being the difficult ones. Ideally, I’d be awesome at playing all the songs at full speed, but slowing them down lets me learn how the songs are structured. Being able to see the notes come at you in slow motion lets you learn how the song works.

So it’s fun. You guys should come over and get really good at this game =)

Now to buy a second guitar…

Scratch & Win - 50% to 100% off

Okay, so we get a flyer from Premiere Fitness, and we scratch it and it says "you get 90% off the 1-year registration fee of $249", and I'm like, WOW! That's pretty good. Maybe we should join. That's awesome. What are the chances of that?

So I read the back of the card:

2,000,000 Scratch&Win cards will be circulated. Odds of winning: 1,960,000/2,000,000 - 90% off 1 year membership. 20,000/2,000,000 - 100% off 1 year membership. 20,000/2,000,000 - 50% off 1 year membership. .....

So like... what the? 98% chance of getting 90% off, so basically... it's almost for sure, you're getting 90% off, so the scratch and win is nearly obsolete - or is it?

So there's a 1% chance you get 100% off. Now, the thing that puzzles me though, is why is there a 1% chance that you get 50% off? (it's not really chance - 1% of the population WILL get 50% off, not that the 1% is independent each time)

So why does 1% get 50% off? Is it to make 1% of the population feel bad? Like, what's the point of it? Those 50%off people will read the back and they will feel outcasted from the rest of the population, and they will feel like they're worth less than the others!! what's with that?

(on another note, the offer's expired..)