DarqByte

So I’ve got another irritated video games post to write, in-part as a followup to my post about a certain missions in NFS being difficult. I should also mention Jenner Cauton’s F9 blog, where he rants and raves about video games on a semi-daily basis. There are some good ones in there.

So last night I played some Mario Kart Wii and some more Need For Speed: Undercover. All-in-all, tons of fun, especially MKW. That game is pretty fun and I’m looking forward to unlocking most of the stuff so when party-goers come over we can choose from anything in the game to play.

But today is a day for ranting about video game AI, especially these two racing games. Let’s start with MKW.

Mario Kart has, and probably always will be, a really fun game because it can help level the playing field. The game does a really good job in keeping all of the racers in the game provided that the racers aren’t falling off the track every two seconds. This is good for competitive reasons and to keep the players interested in the game, but it’s not good for people that are truly dominating the game, especially when said player is playing alone.

Whatever do I mean? Well, for example, last night I was dominating the computer AI racers. Just annihilating them. Consistently in first , finished most of the races in first place too. But not all of them.

The items in MKW can really level the playing field. Racers in the back of the pack, by percentage, have a high rate of getting items that can really tip the balance of the race. Turning into Bullet Bill, for example, can get you ahead of half of the pack. Getting the blue shell will annihilate the race leader for a decent amount of time, allowing others to catch up. Red shells are homing shells, etc.

Well, a few times last night I experienced stretches where the computer AI players were throwing the book at me. There was one time in particular that I was surprised I even ended up in first. I had red shells and blue shells galore connecting with me, yet I still ended up in first by about 4-5 seconds. Imagine if I hadn’t had an inordinately large amount of items hit me. Another race I had about a half-lap lead on the AI going into the last lap. I ended 4th and did not totally fuck up during the race.

Overcompensating AI is irritating at times, especially if it can have a drastic impact in the game, much like MKW. But it’s not too bad there because MKW levels the field. It’s easy to get crushed but make a comeback because the very devices that can bring you down from first can put you back there.

Now, NFS is another story… NFS does have some balancing features in the AI, and it’s usually features designed to keep the AI racers somewhat competitive. The game is really pretty easy, but there are times when it’s overboard on how obviously it’s trying to keep the race close or get you into second place.

One thing I’ve noticed about the game is its placement of traffic. Oftentimes, you can see traffic coming up ahead and adjust accordingly. Although the faster you go, the tougher this is, especially around curves and hills… And hills are bitches to get through.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been worried about what’s coming up over the hill. And I can’t tell you how many of those times there was a car waiting for me to smack it dead center because I just absolutely could not see it coming. Or around a bend, for that matter.

And the problem with this? The computer AI acts too well in these situations. Obviously, the AI knows the car is there.  But does the AI take into account that a real driver wouldn’t be able to see the obstacle on the other side? No. Aside from the random factor the game throws in to simulate mistakes, AI racers almost always miss obstacles around curves or over hills.

This wouldn’t be so much of a problem, much like MKW, if mistakes such as these weren’t so crippling. If you’re trying to achieve Domination status for a race, you can’t really make many mistakes. And mistakes like this can absolutely kill your chances for winning certain race types, such as the one where the winning racer is the one that puts 1000 feet between themselves and their singular opponent.

On a side note, I’ve also noticed in NFS that opponent AI is really good at not spinning out. Too good. Countless times have I had encounters with AI racers, hitting from all sides and angles and different formations, and the only car to spin out, should one of us spin out, is me. Irritating.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the blog post title. Firkin is indeed not a word. But I’m making it one. See, the word frickin’ is a “clean” version for the word fucking. I’m taking it one step further, transposing and making it sound more fun, by using firkin. It reads as “fur-kin.” Have fun with that one!

So I’ve decided to enlighten all of my countless readers with this tale of the escalating Nerf War here at my work. Yes, I’m well aware that other workplaces have their own Nerf wars, including some great YouTube videos.

In any case, I actually have the claim to fame here of having started our Nerf War. See, we’ve got different development groups here at work, and about a year ago, we used to be right next door to another development group. Really, it was a simple war back then. There were no Nerf guns involved. There were some foam objects that would inevitably get thrown back and forth to mess with the members of the opposing development team, but that was about it.

Sure, occasionally objects such as Starburst candy would get tossed, but nothing major. Combat was pretty limited and sporadic. Nothing big.

At some point, I get a Nerf gun for home use. Laura and I used to room with a couple people in a house in the way south of the Las Vegas valley, and one of our roommates and I would occasionally break out with a Nerf battle. Me with my six-shooter Maverick, he with his 8-shooter Firefly.

This went on for a short while, but it soon occurred to me that I could get another gun (another Maverick, actually) and bring it in to work. Thus, my team would have a tactical advantage over the other development team at work.

Well, obviously it worked. It didn’t get used very often, but when it did, it was the deciding factor in the battles. Unfortunately, the other development team was moved to another building as part of a restructuring of our company. We didn’t have any neighbors for awhile, and thus no battles ensued.

Soon, however, another development team moved in next to us. One of the members of this team in particular seemed to be edgy about the fact that we had a Nerf gun. Of course, it didn’t help that the lead developer of this team now next to us used to be a member of the one that left, so she was well aware of prior battles.

At some point, things started escalating. The edgy member of the now-opposing team eventually loaded up a Longshot, and soon modded it to shoot faster and longer than before. Thus, the Great Nerf War had begun.

Things held at status-quo for some time with my Maverick versus his Longshot. He would often win the accuracy battles, but I was no slouch either. The only problem was that he was well-shielded by natural work items such as computer monitors, whereas I had my entire left side available to shoot at.

Eventually, we degraded to stealth tactics. I would prep my gun well in advance for an onslaught of shots, waiting until the moment when he would not be expecting the barrage. He soon followed suit.

As our little skirmishes kept going, he was apparently plotting to expand his team’s arsenal of weaponry. A KB Toys store near my work was having a liquidation sale and he scooped up some guns to give to his cohorts. A Maverick for the team lead, as well as a couple of guns like the Secret Strike and a couple others I can’t find online.

Now my team was definitely outgunned. We had a slingshot that a member of my team occasionally used to fire off a dart, but it was slow and tough to pull off. I was vastly outgunned now.

At some point, one of the guns made its way over to our team and now resides with my lead. He and I would team up from time to time to barrage the other team, but we’d end up getting more shot at us as time went on. We came to get much better at dodging incoming darts.

A special event soon took place. Apparently, another development team that’s in the middle of our floor of the building had brought in a few of their own guns, and requested to commission all of the guns that my team and our neighbor team had in possession.

Now I must tangent off a bit. This other development team has been in a war of words, so-to-say, with one of our senior-level managers. A friendly war of words, I should clarify. See, they’ve been wanting their cubicle walls to come down, and the senior-level manager has been resisting, simply for the point of resisting.

Now that you have context… This other team assaulted the senior-level manager with all of the Nerf guns they could find. This came after a flurry of printouts between both sides saying things like “Tear these walls down,” haha.

A few days after that event, one of the members of the opposing development team acquired a Recon, which of course has made things tougher on my team to compete, as we have not been upping our arsenal.

Battles continued to happen sporadically, until the lead of the opposing team started enforcing a daily moratorium on shooting until 3pm, which is an hour before most of us are done for the day. We have mostly held to this cease-fire in my team as well, given that a full-scale war is more fun, rather than us just shooting at them and not being able to retrieve our darts or get any shot at us for us to shoot back.

That is basically where things stand right now. Almost every day both sides are prepared to pepper the other with darts when 3pm rolls around. I also just received word that the lead of a fourth development team has acquired a Nerf gun, although I’m not sure what.

I should also note that the senior-level manager that got shot at eventually acquiesced and let the walls come down. He did, however, arm himself with a battery-powered Nerf knockoff, but it’s mostly for show.

We’re somewhat considering getting a Vulcan, which would definitely help balance the war a little bit since we’re running with two of the six-shooter Nerf models compared to their current armament, which is two 1-shot guns, a Maverick, a Recon and a Longshot.

Ah, the joys of office warfare.

“I kissed a girl, and I liked it!”

Anybody hear this song this last summer? I did. I actually heard it on KNPR, aka Nevada Public Radio. They were talking about how it had taken the charts by storm and a lot of people were happy that a subject such as, oh I dunno, lesbian behaviors made it into such a popular and catchy song.

… Regrettably (well, not really), I ended up buying that album. It was pretty good, actually… And I’m listening to it right now. Haha.

In any case, today has been a good, good day for music. I always have my iPod and headphones here at work with me, but I’m not always listening to music. I get interrupted so often that I often leave them off. Or I don’t know what I want to listen to. Or I’m afraid of getting tired of all of my music. But I have a few musical configurations that I use:

1. All songs on my iPod on random
2. Pandora radio via my iPhone
3. Listen to specific albums on my iPod

Today, #3 is my choice. I’ve already listened to 2 Breaking Benjamin albums and have, as i just said, moved on to Katy Perry’s One of the Boys. Am I weird for liking her music? Probably. Haha.

I kissed Laura, and I liked it!

So any way, music tends to put me in a really good mood, especially if I can listen to it for extended periods of time and rock out with my clock out. It happened to me last night while I was driving from home to Applebee’s for some much-needed dinner. And it’s happening today.

I may load up Van Halen’s F.U.C.K. album after One of the Boys, actually.

I love music. It’s awesome. I’m also very happy I’m among those that actually pay for their music. It’s worth it to me, especially to not be arrested and fined thousands of dollars for something I really didn’t need, haha.

Although I think some of the tactics of the RIAA are getting way, way out there, but that’s a discussion for another day. I’m in too good of a mood to spoil my awesome musicness with badness.

“If I knew back then what I know right now, you know I’d be the King of the Ladies!”

Retro video games almost always had enormously difficult levels in them. Take the original Donkey Kong, for example. Even the early levels in that game were tough. You had to be insanely awesome to reach even, say, the 10th level.

When video games started becoming mainstream, they started getting a little easier. If you’re trying to appeal to a wide audience, then that wide audience needs to eventually be able to beat the game. That isn’t to say the game should be a cakewalk, but it certainly shouldn’t put up a brick wall so tough that only Jonathan Wendel can defeat it.

So since I’ve defeated Fallout 3′s main quest, I’ve been sprinkling in other games. I’ve been mostly playing Dead Space, which is awesome by the way. But I’ve also been playing some Need For Speed: Undercover and Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Tonight I was playing NFS. It’s a fun game, even if it’s not totally deep and whatnot. In the game, you’ll occasionally get “jobs” from another local racer. Basically, the job is to steal a specific car and drop it off at a chop shop. A bit like GTA, actually.

The police force in the game is pretty effective. You can’t lose them easily and at the higher levels, they’re a downright, well, force to be dealt with. If you end up getting the helicopter following you, good luck, because you’ll never lose it. You have to outlast it.

So all this step for, I know you’re expecting it — a car theft while being followed by the top-tier police force with a helicopter. And let’s not stop there, ohh no — you can’t total the car either. If it sustains too much damage, theft over.

I’ve done a couple other thefts in the game so far and they’re really not that bad. One of them had the same mechanics, save for swapping out the helicopter for a timer that you had to beat in getting to the chop shop without police presence.

But this one is, so far, ludicrous. I’m always up for a challenge in the games I play, but this is just too far. The story won’t progress unless you complete the jobs. You can’t unlock better cars and parts without completing the jobs. And here I am, relatively early on in the game, presented with such a big challenge that after about 45-60 minutes of trying, I have to stop and write an irked blog post about it.

Some people lately have been lamenting that games have indeed gotten easier as time has gone on. In some of them, all you really have to do is play long enough to beat it. But basically blocking, let’s say 60%+ of a game’s story because of a ridiculously difficult “job?” Come on. This is stupid. The last thing EA needs is for me to feel ripped off because here’s this $60 game that I can’t play anywhere near all of because of some stupidly difficult challenge early on.

See… Think about it this way. If the difficult challenge is for you to solve some puzzle or something of that nature, that’s ok. At the very least, you could look up the solution online. If the difficult challenge is to perform a set of actions in particular order with good timing or whatnot, that’s alright too. But when the challenge is, say, losing a really good police force AI with a helicopter while not totalling a car… Stupid hard.

EA didn’t play the balancing act well on this one. If I get held up on this one spot too long, I’ll feel really ripped off and may not play the game again, or any other future NFS game…

I just have to post these two hilarious road signs. Well done!

• Raptors Ahead
• Zombies! Run!

Alright, so this last November I finally got an HDTV. The only thing that was in high definition on it was the XBox 360 because all I had to do was switch the output on the console. Everything else wasn’t in HD.

Until today.

After a week of gathering the requesite pieces together, we’re now running HD satellite via DirecTV. We’re not all the way there as we’ve got some issues with some of the local channels (and we’re not sure why), but other than that, we’re all golden on HD satellite. And it’s awesome. A really good indicator of how HD satellite looks is a basketball game… The reflections on the floor, the crowd, the players… All good stuff.

Not only are we running HD satellite now, we’re also now using a Logitech Harmony remote control for the entertainment center. Why, you ask? Because 6 remotes sucks. We didn’t have anything resembling a universal remote in the bunch, it sucked.

I got the remote with the money I made by spending awhile fixing a friend’s laptop and removing all of the malware that was on it: viruses, adware, spyware, etc. With that money I got a Harmony remote while I was off getting the HD satellite receiver from Best Buy. The verdict?

Just absolutely awesome. It controls everything we have, and I mean everything. Well, not the Nintendo Wii, but that’s expected:

1. Samsung HDTV — I thought it may not work on this because the TV model is relatively new, but nope, it’s good.
2. HD satellite receiver — I figured this would work, but thought maybe some of the functionality of the original remote would be lost; nope, it’s good.
3. Sony A/V receiver — I didn’t know what to expect here, but it is solid.
4. Toshiba DVD/VCR — DVD/VCR combo players often have very specialized remotes because they are multifunction devices, but lo-and-behold, it controls it 100%!
5. Microsoft XBox 360 — I figured this would work without fail since custom remotes came out for it when the console released, and I was proven correct.
6. Nintendo Wii — Nope! But that doesn’t matter anyway.
7. DLO HomeDock — This is the A/V dock for our iPods and I could have sworn the remote would not control it… Holy shit. It does.

We’ve got the remote setup for particular activities, like swapping to watching TV, movie on the XBox, music on the HomeDock… It’s great.

One issue I ran into was that it was having trouble controlling the input to the TV for the activities. While on TV, switching to the XBox 360 wouldn’t go correctly on the TV. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get it working, but my God, was the software great. It stepped me through questions that enabled it to know the exact sequence of signals to send to the TV to select the proper input for the 360. Just awesome.

I got temporarily more excited about the remote than I did the HD satellite! But man, loving life. Now the only 2 things I have left to upgrade in the entertainment center are the DVD/VCR combo (with a Blu-Ray player) and to get an HD A/V receiver with multiple digital audio ports. Joy! But those two upgrades are a ways out.

I think I’m getting excited about Chickenfoot. It’s a band built from 1/2 of Van Hagar (Van Halen led by Sammy Hagar, duh!). Just check out their website, which only has a splash page and some music, and this article about them on Blabbermouth.

Ever feel like you’ve had a lost weekend? That’s what this weekend felt like… And if you’re wondering what I mean by a lost weekend, it’s a weekend where you felt like you were going to get quite a lot done in some form or other, but it just didn’t happen for some other reason.

For example, this weekend Laura was sick, so we didn’t get as much done around the house as I’d anticipated… Well, I shouldn’t say that. We did get a little bit done around the house. Did some small cleaning here and there. I also ran by my Dad’s place to get some things squared away that he and I have been needing to work on.

Also, progressed further towards HD satellite, hurrah! Hopefully we’ll be running HD satellite in time for the Super Bowl, which will be totally awesome. Unfortunately, the Titans won’t be playing in it, but I’ll survive.

So yeah, had a lost weekend… Now I get to do other crap during the week, like continue to f**k around with Findlay Toyota… The longer this goes on, the longer my letter to them becomes.

Man… I really didn’t think I’d walk away from this Christmas as loaded as I am. I’ve seen and heard lately that a lot of retail analysts think the discounts and sales that retailers had this year to combat the weak economy are some of the biggest in over a decade and probably won’t be repeated again for quite some time. Good thing this appears to be the year of my big HD jump.

So just about everybody is aware that I shelled out the money for a nice new HDTV on Black Friday. And what a nice TV it is, let me tell you. Totally satisfied with it. Well, the TV isn’t the only thing that makes the HD experience. Right now, the only thing I’ve got in HD is my Xbox 360, and honestly, it’s totally awesome in 1080p. Just great.

Two things in the entertainment center that need to be upgraded to reach HD status are the DVD player and the satellite system. Well, after some Best Buy gift cards and some Christmas money, I’ll likely be getting a Blu-Ray player in the near future to upgrade the DVD system.

All that’s left there is the satellite system, which shouldn’t be too bad to upgrade to HD, and I want to have it done by the SuperBowl, since Laura wants to have a SuperBowl party and I think the game should just be in HD. That won’t be an expensive upgrade. Probably cheaper than the Blu-Ray upgrade, actually.

That would leave our Nintendo Wii as the lowest-quality video output in our entire entertainment center. Joy! Well, there’s also the issue that I want to upgrade our sound system after all this is done. Our current audio receiver, in the move to the new entertainment center, suffered a broken digital audio port that the 360 plugged into. So now all of the audio is on RCA jacks, and once all of the HD upgrades is complete, I want to try to find a nice audio receiver that supports enough digital audio ports so the 360, satellite and Blu-Ray players can all use digital output. I don’t think the Wii supports digital output.

Anyway, why did I title this post “Christmas Gaming Indeed?” Well, that’s because I never anticipated my video game haul this Christmas. When I put together my Christmas list, it included a lot of big-ticket items, but particularly noteworthy were the video games on the list:

1. Gears of War 2
2. Dead Space
3. Fallout 3
4. Guitar Hero: World Tour
5. Need For Speed Undercover
6. Spore
7. Sonic Unleashed

That was the list when it all began. Spore and Sonic Unleashed eventually fell off of my radar thanks to different issues. So what happened to the other 5?

I got them all.

Holy crap! I just finished GTA IV and that game was a blast, it actually had a cathartic ending, something I’ve never encountered before in a video game. And now I’ve got five new games to play? Holy crap! That’s a nice predicament, not knowing which game to play and wanting to play them all. I’m going to be gaming for quite some time.

I’ve already begun on Fallout 3, because it came in the day before I wrapped up GTA IV. I won that one in a contest. And I’ve already played some NFS Undercover and Guitar Hero, from my Mom (and family) and my sister-in-law Julia, respectively. I got GoW2 from Laura and Dead Space from Mom & family as well. Just haven’t gotten to those yet. And I probably won’t hit those two for awhile longer anyway, because Fallout 3 will likely suck up most of the time that I’d give to those other 2 because it’s a lengthy single-player campaign. Dead Space is as well, and GoW2 has a good single-player campaign coupled with great online play.

Man oh man. I’ll be entertained for quite some time, yes. Merry Christmas!

The title of this post is a reference to “America, F**k Yeah!” from Team America: World Police. It’s become a somewhat theme song in DataX with my programming team at work.

Yes, you read that right. It said: HDTV.

I spent 3 hours, 15 minutes in line starting at 4:45am on Black Friday at RC Willey. They had a 40″ Samsung 1080P LCD HDTV for sale, monstrously below retail price. I’d done quite a bit of side work over the summer and had basically earned this TV. Thus, I bought it. Along with a nice TV stand and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. What can I say, Laura wanted it and I forgot to get it when it came out.

Man, this thing is totally awesome! It sucks that I had to wait 2 years to get one from when I first wanted one, but this one’s big, has great quality and was monster cheap for what it truly is. The Xbox 360 looks absolutely beautiful on it. Geometry Wars 2 looks really, really great on it. Truly amazing.

So we’re planning on when we’re going to upgrade our satellite TV to HD. We need to get a new dish as well as upgrade the receiver to HD, which’ll cost a little bit of money. And it’s more per month. But we’re going to get this in place by the Super Bowl, because Laura wants to have a party and I want to make sure the viewing is good. Even though she wants it for the food and socialization, haha.

So yes. My quest is over. I no longer have any big-ticket items I’m pining for… For now.