After the unofficial disbanding of the iD clan I turned onto the public servers watching other clans dwindling whilst others emerging. During such play I made friends with a couple of players: DarkLord, Mutu, Truder. These came from one of the dwindling clans, SWAT.
I got on well with Mutu and Truder - mature and of my same level of play (ok, whereabouts). This led me to ask them who was in charge of SWAT - and since they were the only members, they accepted me on request.
The clan is now re-attracting ex-members as well as new ones. Let's hope we have fun playing together.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Saturday, September 03, 2005
ECG- Electro Cardio Gram
"I am going to have an ECG test after this game. Because my heart is aching with laughter"
That is what I told my Ventrilo friends after laughing for about 5 minutes. The scene was this: Venice, Axis, I had just been killed outside the door leading to the river. As soon as I spawned, with Twanny right ahead of me, I prepared a grenade and started the timer. Unfortunately I had timed it wrong and by the time I was next to the open I was already at the 4th click. So I jumped, right on top of Twanny, and launched the nade. Luckily I hit the column, which sheltered both Twanny and me from the explosion. At that time I remembered Fantozzi's relay run with the dynamite in the hand and imagined me doing the same. I burst out laughing on Ventrilo - the others were amused, trying to find out who was laughing, calling out names, until they called mine - and with a high-pitched voice said "Yes!" I didn't stop laughing until 5 minutes has passed.
That is what I told my Ventrilo friends after laughing for about 5 minutes. The scene was this: Venice, Axis, I had just been killed outside the door leading to the river. As soon as I spawned, with Twanny right ahead of me, I prepared a grenade and started the timer. Unfortunately I had timed it wrong and by the time I was next to the open I was already at the 4th click. So I jumped, right on top of Twanny, and launched the nade. Luckily I hit the column, which sheltered both Twanny and me from the explosion. At that time I remembered Fantozzi's relay run with the dynamite in the hand and imagined me doing the same. I burst out laughing on Ventrilo - the others were amused, trying to find out who was laughing, calling out names, until they called mine - and with a high-pitched voice said "Yes!" I didn't stop laughing until 5 minutes has passed.
A Great Day
Indeed it was a great day. A day when I made two distinct feats I never had done before. Not something nobody else has done, most will probably laugh at me for flattering myself for having done them - but I am proud of myself for having achieved them.
The least feat was made in the evening when in GoldRush, right at the top of the Axis's second exit stairs' upper landing I shot right through three opposing soldiers and got a multi-kill plus much acclaim from those on Ventrilo.
The most honorable feat was achieved in Braundorf where not only I got the Highest Fragger award (I'd got that a couple of times before) but I also got the longest killing spree of 5 kills: 4 pistols and 1 grenade. Again the acclaim received in Ventrilo was tear-jerking.
Well, after having trained myself well as Engy on objectives, I'm lately focusing myself on being a killer-Medic. My headshot aiming has improved a lot - so beware!
The least feat was made in the evening when in GoldRush, right at the top of the Axis's second exit stairs' upper landing I shot right through three opposing soldiers and got a multi-kill plus much acclaim from those on Ventrilo.
The most honorable feat was achieved in Braundorf where not only I got the Highest Fragger award (I'd got that a couple of times before) but I also got the longest killing spree of 5 kills: 4 pistols and 1 grenade. Again the acclaim received in Ventrilo was tear-jerking.
Well, after having trained myself well as Engy on objectives, I'm lately focusing myself on being a killer-Medic. My headshot aiming has improved a lot - so beware!
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Call of Duty
Another game which is a soldier game is Call of Duty (COD). I had finished the single player game a long time ago but had never played it online.
Now I did.
Well.. of course the graphics are much nicer but I had a culture shock from Enemy Territory (ET). ET is arcadish, whilst COD is much more realistic - one headshot and you're dead. This is ok in Team Deathmatch (though the immediate spawning is not welcome) but in Search and Destroy, where you have to wait for all your teammates to die to play again, it was a bit daunting at first. Then when I got better, and sometimes outlived the others, it became bearable.
Team Mates
The fun came when 4 of my ex-degree students joined the fray. We set up our own Ventrilo server and started playing on our own servers - then we started joining the public servers and coordinating our efforts through Ventrilo. Great fun!
Call of Duty: United Offensive
Greater fun came our way once we switched to the expansion pack. After a couple of patches (100+ Mb) we had jeeps, tanks, and new weaponry coming our way.
My first team run was with Sentix, admin of our playreaction servers - a great and respectable player.
I also got my buddy Brokklu into it (after a birthday LAN party in which we gave him an Altec Lansing headset and involved him into the game by playing all the party on it).
Now I did.
Well.. of course the graphics are much nicer but I had a culture shock from Enemy Territory (ET). ET is arcadish, whilst COD is much more realistic - one headshot and you're dead. This is ok in Team Deathmatch (though the immediate spawning is not welcome) but in Search and Destroy, where you have to wait for all your teammates to die to play again, it was a bit daunting at first. Then when I got better, and sometimes outlived the others, it became bearable.
Team Mates
The fun came when 4 of my ex-degree students joined the fray. We set up our own Ventrilo server and started playing on our own servers - then we started joining the public servers and coordinating our efforts through Ventrilo. Great fun!
Call of Duty: United Offensive
Greater fun came our way once we switched to the expansion pack. After a couple of patches (100+ Mb) we had jeeps, tanks, and new weaponry coming our way.
My first team run was with Sentix, admin of our playreaction servers - a great and respectable player.
I also got my buddy Brokklu into it (after a birthday LAN party in which we gave him an Altec Lansing headset and involved him into the game by playing all the party on it).
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Recruitment
If any clan is looking for an uber-l33t engineer with 99% headshots (1% toenail shot), 30-kill streak per game abilities... then please look further, you won't find him here. But, on the other hand, if you'd welcome a fresh recruit who is more
adept at obtaining objectives than fragging people, willing to follow clear orders and willing to bare his arse to defuse that dynamite, then please leave a message. Just remember this old dude already has a life with marriage commitments.
NOTE: LordMagic retains the right to refuse even the best
offer.
Such was my post on a local gaming forum for recruitment into a clan - a step I was hesitant to take due to my being married and committed (as highlighted in the post itself).
However I soon made up my mind due to the following reasons:
1) Playing on your own in a team-based game is not easy and very unsatisfying
2) To belong to a group is always a nice feeling
3) I felt I can learn more from other good players
At first I was approached by a veteran who wanted to create a clan for the newbies for them to learn tactics and clan-work. Then I was approached by a member of a stabilised clan who was undergoing refurbishment - basing itself on mature, team-oriented players as opposed to younger ones who retaliated if they were left out of an important game because of their not being up to standard.
I decided to accept the latter since I felt a team of players would teach me more than a team of newbies who were just beginning.
Lazy Start
Unfortunately I joined at that time of the year when everyone is doing exams. However I managed to attend a couple of training sessions and already I've seen improvements in my gameplay. I'm getting more and more headshots and my light weapon skill level is increasing faster than my engineering skills.
Gather Slowdown
The gathers have taken a blow due to the exams too, and I have stopped admining for now since there are hardly any takers for any gathers I used to make. Will re-enter when the lull is over.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
ET Gathers and Ventrilo
Gathers
Running around on public servers I could feel that the game of ET was dying... the regular players, the clan-members, were nowhere to be seen.
Then I happened to fall upon the Gather channel on quakeNet. And happened to find out where all the elites were going: private servers especially for balanced gathers with pre-booked places. There was also a ventrilo channel specifically for these teams and boy was I happy! At last there was coordination, communication, tactics being formed.
Blitzkrieg
At the same time I was reading a book on the German blitzkrieg tactics used to capture France (and Norway, Holland, Belgium along the way). In this book, Guderian's ideas were explained and depicted as well as discussed and honored. Guderian was the one in charge of the Panzer fleet in the Nazi regime. Compared to the Allied attempts at forming Tank supports for infantry, his approach was totally based around the Panzer itself - using radio to communicate between the general in the tank and the regiment commanders on foot.
Thus I was very appreciative of the use of Ventrilo (A Voice over IP software) to communicate with the other players.
Gather Admin
I was also made a gather admin and admined for a number of weeks until examinations caused a lull and I never found enough gathers to make a gather. Will wait for this period to pass by.
Running around on public servers I could feel that the game of ET was dying... the regular players, the clan-members, were nowhere to be seen.
Then I happened to fall upon the Gather channel on quakeNet. And happened to find out where all the elites were going: private servers especially for balanced gathers with pre-booked places. There was also a ventrilo channel specifically for these teams and boy was I happy! At last there was coordination, communication, tactics being formed.
Blitzkrieg
At the same time I was reading a book on the German blitzkrieg tactics used to capture France (and Norway, Holland, Belgium along the way). In this book, Guderian's ideas were explained and depicted as well as discussed and honored. Guderian was the one in charge of the Panzer fleet in the Nazi regime. Compared to the Allied attempts at forming Tank supports for infantry, his approach was totally based around the Panzer itself - using radio to communicate between the general in the tank and the regiment commanders on foot.
Thus I was very appreciative of the use of Ventrilo (A Voice over IP software) to communicate with the other players.
Gather Admin
I was also made a gather admin and admined for a number of weeks until examinations caused a lull and I never found enough gathers to make a gather. Will wait for this period to pass by.
Monday, April 11, 2005
First War Experience
I can imagine that many teenagers (if not children) experience war for the first time through their computer games.
- where they get no physical pain apart from discontent from getting killed on the battlefield and not finishing the game.
- where they get points for killing the enemy, for blasting the transports
- where they get no diplomatic attempts at avoiding the war
- where peace is nothing but the end of the game where all is past as nothing ever happened
I'm afraid this gives a very different picture of what war really is
- soldiers die from anything between a bad fall, a splinter, a bullet, an explosion
- there are no points - you either kill or get killed
- soldiers fight because diplomacies have failed - but at least have been attempted!
- where after the war there is no winner. Only heavy losses and maimings on both sides.
Players have to envisage that real soldiers do not engage warfare with such positive anxiety but rather a terrifying dread where they do not know what they are up to, where they don't know if they will be able to fire, to aim, will the firearm work? Remember it's not a mouse they have (an optical one at that) but a complex death-machine - which could be deadly to the wielder himself.
For soldiers who go on war AFTER having played a war game, the experience is different. They find out that it's not so easy to aim after all. But, does the juvenile idea of a war game being fun still linger in their subconscious? "Great Shot!", "HeadShot!", "I own!"
God forbid that games should be used against our children to brainwash them into fighting when the need arises!
Monday, February 28, 2005
Enemy Territory - The First Encounter
Soldier Films
To the contrary of the rest of the household (my wife that is) I have grown a passion for soldier wars. My first soldier film was Saving Private Ryan, a film which I saw alone and left me squirming in the seat for the first 15 minutes. I had been wanting to watch a soldier film ever since but, with my wife not sharing my same tastes, I could'nt get myself to watch any. I had made an exception with The Pianist, which I saw on my own but there were quit a number that I wanted to see.
Black Hawk Down
One of these was Black Hawk Down which also starred the not-so-notorious-then Orlando Bloom. I started playing the game and got myself well immersed into the story. Just before I reached the mission ' Irene' , I managed to rent the DVD and watched the video. Tremendous. Then I played the game and, whist loading, I was reading veterans' stories about their experience in that tragedy in Somalia.
Black Hawk Down was the first game I completed ever since DooM.
American Cousin Visiting.
A few weeks later I was visited by my American second cousins - the younger of which was an avid player of Enemy Territory. He told me about it and I downloaded it. But when I tried it, I must have loaded quite a drab level since I remember being in a really graphic-less environment in which I thought ET was just an outline environment (no textures) and I quickly uninstalled it.
Call of Duty
Then I went on to play Call of Duty. The change in graphics from Black Hawk Down was tremendous and I felt I had done the right thing of playing BHK before CoD or I would not have enjoyed it so much.
Call of Duty pitted me back in the Second World War and I really enjoyed the fact that you played it from different parts - Allies and Russians. Again, I finished the game - I actually shot at the guys coming up with the Russian Red Flag on top of Berlin at the end. Luckily I missed.
After playing Call of Duty, I managed to watch Enemy at the Gates, another tremendous film which to me highlighted a yet unknown frontline of WWII - Russia. The role of the sniper also attracted me - something which left repercussions in my first online encounters on Enemy Territory... the subject of my next Weblog
To the contrary of the rest of the household (my wife that is) I have grown a passion for soldier wars. My first soldier film was Saving Private Ryan, a film which I saw alone and left me squirming in the seat for the first 15 minutes. I had been wanting to watch a soldier film ever since but, with my wife not sharing my same tastes, I could'nt get myself to watch any. I had made an exception with The Pianist, which I saw on my own but there were quit a number that I wanted to see.
Black Hawk Down
One of these was Black Hawk Down which also starred the not-so-notorious-then Orlando Bloom. I started playing the game and got myself well immersed into the story. Just before I reached the mission ' Irene' , I managed to rent the DVD and watched the video. Tremendous. Then I played the game and, whist loading, I was reading veterans' stories about their experience in that tragedy in Somalia.
Black Hawk Down was the first game I completed ever since DooM.
American Cousin Visiting.
A few weeks later I was visited by my American second cousins - the younger of which was an avid player of Enemy Territory. He told me about it and I downloaded it. But when I tried it, I must have loaded quite a drab level since I remember being in a really graphic-less environment in which I thought ET was just an outline environment (no textures) and I quickly uninstalled it.
Call of Duty
Then I went on to play Call of Duty. The change in graphics from Black Hawk Down was tremendous and I felt I had done the right thing of playing BHK before CoD or I would not have enjoyed it so much.
Call of Duty pitted me back in the Second World War and I really enjoyed the fact that you played it from different parts - Allies and Russians. Again, I finished the game - I actually shot at the guys coming up with the Russian Red Flag on top of Berlin at the end. Luckily I missed.
After playing Call of Duty, I managed to watch Enemy at the Gates, another tremendous film which to me highlighted a yet unknown frontline of WWII - Russia. The role of the sniper also attracted me - something which left repercussions in my first online encounters on Enemy Territory... the subject of my next Weblog
The Early Days
Connections
My first attempts as playing online were through the Quake II engine. Back then I was using a 33k dial-up connection. There weren't any local servers running the game so I had to find foreign ones. The ping was relatively horrible and I was dying sooner than spawning! I limited myself to hiding in corners and camping on others which did not make me very popular. So I gave up on the playing.
I tried something less spontaneous - Diablo. The low connection still meant I was lagged... either having monsters dying seconds after being killed or waiting at the edge of the virtual world waiting for the next segment to load.
It was not until I got a 512/128 ADSL connection, and later had it upgraded to 1024/256 connection was I really into playing.
My first attempts as playing online were through the Quake II engine. Back then I was using a 33k dial-up connection. There weren't any local servers running the game so I had to find foreign ones. The ping was relatively horrible and I was dying sooner than spawning! I limited myself to hiding in corners and camping on others which did not make me very popular. So I gave up on the playing.
I tried something less spontaneous - Diablo. The low connection still meant I was lagged... either having monsters dying seconds after being killed or waiting at the edge of the virtual world waiting for the next segment to load.
It was not until I got a 512/128 ADSL connection, and later had it upgraded to 1024/256 connection was I really into playing.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Before the Beginning: Multiplayer gaming
I remember my first multiplayer game: I was in 6th form (back in 1995) and I had just bought a 14400bps modem. My best mate came over to my house to help me set it up and we agreed with another colleague to wait for us at 6:01pm. The chosen game was iD's DooM. A game which I had lost myself in after buying a Lm12 book on how to create levels. at 5.59pm we still did not have the modem settings up and working and were actually helping my dad bringing up the new tiles for the bathroom from the ground to the first floor.
At 6.04pm we tried the settings for one more time and this time it was dialling! Unfortunately our colleague had got fed up of waiting and answered the phone himself. Since I had no phone in my room we yelled over to my parents to get the phone (just minutes after yelling at them not to touch the phone!) We told him the story and got him to wait for us again. We tried again, waited for the dialling, for his modem's reply, for the handshake. It was working!... then the game started to load.
It was exhilarating. Seeing pixels on my CRT screen being lighted at the command of another person - who I knew personally! I still remember him opening a door, and faced with a horde of monsters in an un-lit room, he fired his rocket launcher into the midst. Unfortunately there was a monster right at the door and with the blast he was thrown against the wall outside my field of view. Splendid - you never saw a monster do that!
Co-op
My days with DooM grew more intensive as me and my best mate, nicknamed Green Trooper, connected every evening at 6:01pm (it was cheaper after 6pm) and played all of DooM and DooM ][ co-operatively. We grew into best buddies, knowing each others moves, inventing acronyms to speed up our communication (e..g "JL" short for "Jien Left" meaning I will take the left part - ergo, you take the right side).
Deathmatch
Later on I made friends with an ex-acquaintance from school, nickname DaemoN, who was more into deathmatch gaming then co-op. Now there is a large difference between computer AI and human intelligence - and I was just about to find out. I remember seeing his eyes in that Trooper helmet cartoonish character of his. I felt like a hunted bird running around whilst he shot out at me. But with time I got better. I remember being cornered in a room with no ammo left, just a chainsaw, and he was challenging me by shooting with the doublebarrel shotgun on the wall opposite the entrance - then I made my move - I timed the shots and on the reload, I emerged chainsaw in hand and scarred his face with it enough to clear a path towards the exit. I was proud of myself that day.
Saturday Matches
More friends joined in and we fell into a pattern: every saturday at 9am I would leave home with my PC straddled to my car with seatbelts, take it to my friend's house and spend till 6pm playing Starcraft or Diablo. Optrex was of the essence for those tired eyes.
Pentium Parties
Just like Bottle Parties - but you bring your Pentium instead of a bottle. These were annual events, usually after the exams, where 8 of us would converge at somebody's place and link up to the network (BNC's at that time - Black Vomit managed to nick a router for our last one) and play Starcraft or Quake for the whole day. Our last one was in 2000AD.
Today these are organised on a national scale and called LAN Parties.
Internet
The Internet was not feasable both in speed and cost to play games over it until 2002AD. I had a bad debut on the Net, but that is best left for the next post.
At 6.04pm we tried the settings for one more time and this time it was dialling! Unfortunately our colleague had got fed up of waiting and answered the phone himself. Since I had no phone in my room we yelled over to my parents to get the phone (just minutes after yelling at them not to touch the phone!) We told him the story and got him to wait for us again. We tried again, waited for the dialling, for his modem's reply, for the handshake. It was working!... then the game started to load.
It was exhilarating. Seeing pixels on my CRT screen being lighted at the command of another person - who I knew personally! I still remember him opening a door, and faced with a horde of monsters in an un-lit room, he fired his rocket launcher into the midst. Unfortunately there was a monster right at the door and with the blast he was thrown against the wall outside my field of view. Splendid - you never saw a monster do that!
Co-op
My days with DooM grew more intensive as me and my best mate, nicknamed Green Trooper, connected every evening at 6:01pm (it was cheaper after 6pm) and played all of DooM and DooM ][ co-operatively. We grew into best buddies, knowing each others moves, inventing acronyms to speed up our communication (e..g "JL" short for "Jien Left" meaning I will take the left part - ergo, you take the right side).
Deathmatch
Later on I made friends with an ex-acquaintance from school, nickname DaemoN, who was more into deathmatch gaming then co-op. Now there is a large difference between computer AI and human intelligence - and I was just about to find out. I remember seeing his eyes in that Trooper helmet cartoonish character of his. I felt like a hunted bird running around whilst he shot out at me. But with time I got better. I remember being cornered in a room with no ammo left, just a chainsaw, and he was challenging me by shooting with the doublebarrel shotgun on the wall opposite the entrance - then I made my move - I timed the shots and on the reload, I emerged chainsaw in hand and scarred his face with it enough to clear a path towards the exit. I was proud of myself that day.
Saturday Matches
More friends joined in and we fell into a pattern: every saturday at 9am I would leave home with my PC straddled to my car with seatbelts, take it to my friend's house and spend till 6pm playing Starcraft or Diablo. Optrex was of the essence for those tired eyes.
Pentium Parties
Just like Bottle Parties - but you bring your Pentium instead of a bottle. These were annual events, usually after the exams, where 8 of us would converge at somebody's place and link up to the network (BNC's at that time - Black Vomit managed to nick a router for our last one) and play Starcraft or Quake for the whole day. Our last one was in 2000AD.
Today these are organised on a national scale and called LAN Parties.
Internet
The Internet was not feasable both in speed and cost to play games over it until 2002AD. I had a bad debut on the Net, but that is best left for the next post.
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