QGL is the LAN to be if you're anywhere near Brisbane. We do all kinds of nifty things like provide webspace for people to dribble away like this...

My dribbling has shifted to vrbones.com

I used to be the ASRG webmaster and organiser of the RMAC and competed in the Nascar3 league.

Currently working with Auran JET to create the next UBER game! or at least a fancy collection of virtual bytes.

I Might also have time to read some Game AI news.

Currently I'm working at St Luke's Anglican School in Bundaberg as a systems administrator while doing post grad teaching at CQU. I'm back living at the beach house.

If I need to find old stuf I've written, I'd go to the Archive

Goodbye cruel world, I'm leaving you today ... - 06:01pm 28/09/07

Well, the search seems to be over (for now). I've pulled up stumps and moved over to Blogspot to give it a go. I like the ability to quickly embed labels, pictures, lnks etc. and tinkering with the innards is good to see how close Triumph was to a winning framework.

Map Concede vs Map Select - 02:20am 07/10/06

Format definitions: "Map Select" - In a best of 3 match, player A chooses the first map from the current pool of maps to play, then Player B chooses a map to play second. The third map if needed will be randomly drawn between the remaining maps. "Map Concede" - In a best of 3 match, player A choose a map to eliminate from the pool, reducing the pool size by 1. Player B then also eliminates a map from the pool. If there are more than 3 maps remaining in the pool, the players continue to drop another map each until there is 3 maps left (or 2 maps in the case of an even amount of maps). These 3 maps are then played in either random order, or in the odrer of Player A's selection, player B's selection, map remaining. In the case of an even map count upon starting there will only be 2 maps remaining. Player A chooses the first, then the remaining map. If a 3rd map is required, reinstate all maps and run another round of map concede down to 2 maps, then randomly choose between those by a coin toss. Eliminating potential bias: The main reason for using map concede over map select is that any bias in the maps is reduced rather than being exploited. This gives the player a more balanced playing field to play on. As the aim of any tournament is to find the winner by merit alone, any methods of eliminating bias helps a player's true skill to shine through. This is why most grand finals for sport are played at a neutral venue, to eliminate any perceived bias due to the venue. In terms of map choice, ideally we would want all games to be played on the most neutral map possible. If players could mutually agree on a map to play on, this would also be acceptable as both parties are then comfortable that the map selected is not going to adversely affect the outcome. "Map Concede" formalizes the mutual map selection method by putting each player in the position of revealing which maps they believe WOULD affect the outcome, finally leaving the last map as the one with the least amount of perceived bias. In contrast, "Map Select" allows players to exploit any maps in the pool that favour their particular play style, race or strategy. This creates the opposite effect where you are creating a "home & away" scenario, giving each player the ability to play in their back yard. Even though both players get the advantage of choosing where to play, the potential is there that the bias gained from playing on your preferred map overwhelms any other difference in skill. This leads to a greater chance that both players win their "home" games and you are no closer to finding a winner. Eg: If each player is 60% confident in beating a player of his own skill on the map he selects, the chance of a draw after 2 rounds is: draw chance = Player A wins first map AND Player B wins 2nd map OR PlayerB wins first map AND PlayerA wins 2nd map 50% home win = 0.5 * 0.5 + 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.50 => 50% 60% home win = 0.6 * 0.6 + 0.4 * 0.4 = 0.52 => 52% *** 70% home win = 0.7 * 0.7 + 0.3 * 0.3 = 0.58 => 58% 80% home win = 0.8 * 0.8 + 0.2 * 0.2 = 0.68 => 68% So a 2% greater chance that it will be a draw after 2 rounds, jumping to 8% with 70% confidence that they can win on their preferred map. My guess would be that the player's favourite map would give confidence between these 2 values, so an average of 5% more times the match will go to a 3rd map. When combined with a player's true skill, it means that there is also less chance for the proper winner to win outright. If Player A has a 60% chance of winning each map due to skill, combining with the home and away effect gives: win chance = PlayerA wins first map AND Player A wins 2nd map win chance = PlayerA skill + Home map bias AND PlayerA - home map bias. 50% home win (+0% map bias) = (0.6 + 0) * (0.6 - 0) = 0.36 => 36% 60% home win (+10% map bias) = (0.6 + 0.1) * (0.6 - 0.1) = 0.35 => 35% 70% home win (+20% map bias) = (0.6 + 0.2) * (0.6 - 0.2) = 0.32 => 32% 80% home win (+30% map bias) = (0.6 + 0.3) * (0.6 - 0.3) = 0.27 => 27% As the home ground advantage increases, it impacts on the chance of PlayerA to win the match in 2 maps. Considering that to win in 2 maps for a player in an even matchup is 25%, dropping from 36% to an average of 33.5% is substantial (~20% drop in effect of skill). Placing all these effects into a real world scenario, lets assume that PlayerA has a 60% advantage over PlayerB, and that there are 4 maps on offer with PlayerA home advantages of +15% ('Ma'), +5%('Mb'), -5%('Mc') and -15%('Md'). Using "Map Select" we will have a map rotation of 'Ma', 'Md' and randomly 'Mb' or 'Mc': win chance = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (PlayerA draws AND PlayerA wins 3rd map)            = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (((PlayerA wins 1st & loses 2nd) OR (PlayerA loses 1st& wins 2nd)) AND (PlayerA wins 3rd map)) with 'Mb'  = ((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15)) + ((((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.4 + 0.15)) + ((0.4 - 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15))) * (0.6 + 0.05))            = 0.3375 + ((0.4125 + 0.1125) * 0.65)            = 0.3375 + ((0.525) * 0.65)            = 0.67875 => ~68% with 'Mc'  = ((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15)) + ((((0.6 + 0.15) * (0.4 + 0.15)) + ((0.4 - 0.15) * (0.6 - 0.15))) * (0.6 - 0.05))            = 0.3375 + ((0.4125 + 0.1125) * 0.55)            = 0.62625 => ~62.5% Using "Map concede" we will have a map rotation of 'Mb', 'Mc' and randomly 'Mc' or 'Md': win chance = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (PlayerA draws AND PlayerA wins 3rd map)            = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (((PlayerA wins 1st & loses 2nd) OR (PlayerA loses 1st& wins 2nd)) AND (PlayerA wins 3rd map)) with 'Mb'  = ((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05)) + ((((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.4 + 0.05)) + ((0.4 - 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05))) * (0.6 + 0.05))            = 0.3575 + ((0.2925 + 0.1925) * 0.65)            = 0.3575 + ((0.485) * 0.65)            = 0.67275 => ~68% with 'Mb'  = ((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05)) + ((((0.6 + 0.05) * (0.4 + 0.05)) + ((0.4 - 0.05) * (0.6 - 0.05))) * (0.6 - 0.05))            = 0.3575 + ((0.2925 + 0.1925) * 0.55)            = 0.62425 => ~62.5% As a baseline, if all maps had no home advantage: win chance = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (PlayerA draws AND PlayerA wins 3rd map) = (PlayerA wins 1st & 2nd map) OR (((PlayerA wins 1st & loses 2nd) OR (PlayerA loses 1st& wins 2nd)) AND (PlayerA wins 3rd map)) with 'Mb'  = (0.6 * 0.6) + (((0.6 * 0.4) + (0.4 *0.6)) * 0.6)            = 0.36 + ((0.24 + 0.24) * 0.6)            = 0.648 => ~65% What this shows, rather suprisingly, is that even though there is a greater chance for a map to go to a decider for "Map Select", the player's skill on the third map should shine through enough to give essentially the same odds. With a greater than 5% swing in the overall outcome, the map selection for the decider seems to be the biggest 'random' contribution to this whole scenario; one that "map concede" tries to avoid by winning in 2. Faster tournament play: Due to the reduction of the 3rd map being played (by ~4% in the example scenario), this also helps tournaments become less prone to running over time by having extended best-of-3 matches. Although it is ancilliary to providing an unbiased result, it is still an issue that helps tournament organisation. Improvement of the meta-game: With "Map Select" the player is rewarded by having a specific map that they practice hard on so that they can maximize their chances of winning at least one game. The map selected is chosen more by the player's efforts on the map than by looking at the specific map advantages for an individual matchup. This is essentially inward looking and stagnates the metagame. With "Map Concede", it is detrimental to focus on one map as this opens the opportunity for your opponent to concede the map, either by luck or by knowing the player's preferences. This encourages players to not only spread their own practice across different maps and playing styles, but also enhances the meta-game by encouraging players to seek out opponent's strategies and weaknesses to use in the map concede process. As a player you can choose to use the "map concede" process to simply not practice the maps you know you are going to drop, however this gives an advantage to your opponent that knows your decision because they can drop maps from the remaining pool, knowing you are forced to drop your own bad ones. Against a person with good meta-game skills, you are likely to play on your worst map of the remaining maps that you did practice. Map Pool Selection: Using a "Map Select" method, the tournament organisers need to be very careful with the maps provided for the players in the map pool as any map with an inherent bias toward a specific play style will be exploited. Eg: If there is a map pool of 3 balanced maps and one biased map toward a certain race, the players of that race gain an advantage while others do not. Using "Map Concede", the map pool can be arbitrarily large as the players eventually shrink the map pool down to the most neutral maps on offer. This allows some leeway for experimental maps or new maps to be brought in without a major impact on the final outcome. As a tournament director you still need to consider balance, and all maps should be as balanced as possible, however there is the flexibility that some maps can be in the pool as the best balanced for specific matchups without being used for every match. A pool of 5 or 7 is common for map concede. Positive Play: One thing that can hinder "map concede" is that it has a negative connotation. "Concede", "drop", "eliminate" are all negative words and it seems unintuitive to a beginner (or a spectator) that players should start with a negative mentality. Even though the players are emulating the natural process of selecting an even battlefield, this is not obvious from the name. Added to this is that "Map Select" has a better feel toward players when someone does win 2-0 (even though it is less likely). If your opponent has beaten you on your own home map, it is more likely that you will concede they are the better player. During a tournament players can have heated exchanges if they think they are being treated unfairly, so having a method that causes less stress in a tournament is helpful. If the match does go to a decider though, this effect is negated. Conclusion: Personally I prefer the "Map Concede" method for its ability to find a neutral playing ground and it's ability to enhance the meta-game. I'm surprised that the statistics didn't back up what feels like an obvious advantage for playing on neutral soil, however this scenario of 4 maps with best-of-3 is possibly the worst for the format. If there is only one map required (due to time restraints) from a pool, this method is still available whereas map select is not. with 5 maps on offer, "map concede" offers 3 matches on the 3 most neutral maps while "map select" continues to widen the gap. I'm working on a tournament format evaluator at the moment, so I'll have some figures for the other map pool sizes shortly. Hopefully I can also use it to demonstrate the anticipated stablility of "map concede" when introducing new maps. I've also looked at moving it to Ruby on Rails to let anyone be able to construct different tournament formats and see the results of the different tournament biases.

MySpace > bases - 12:56am 13/09/06

Find me on MySpace and be my friend! ... lawl

St Luke's - 01:37pm 13/07/06

Well, I've finally go a full time job in Bundaberg rather than the contract programming out of Brisbane and around Bundy. I now call St Luke's Anglican School home for the next couple of months. The atmosphere here is great, and with ~100 staff there's usually something breaking down somewhere. Looks like I'll be hanging up my coding gloves for the time being, as I'll be doing more tech support and R&D rather than building things myself. I should have enough time to get back into Uni tho, or maybe finish up the plethora of game ideas I've been thinking about ... Yeah right ...

Random Births - 01:30pm 13/07/06

After a quick muckaround with randomizing character stats in Zangband and other roguelike variants, a thought hit me as to how character generation could be accomplished under temporal roam. Since the game would need to generate your 'persona' in the game up to the point where you take over control, why not let the player choose from 3 different outcomes for each timespace block leading up to the present? This would give ~20 choices to make, from major development paths down to personal location of where the character starts. The 3 choices should be diverse so that the player could mould each new character to a certain style by choosing events that are most like that character type. Since the characters are typically considered heroic, all events would be toward the exceptional end of the scale rather than mundane options. The event quality could also be used as a difficulty setting, where choosing less simpressive birth events would produce more natural people (A commoner's son rather than a noble's wonderkid).

Card Chess - 08:29am 14/07/06

I was reading through some game design websites a while back and hyperlinked my way through to a discussion on creating board games and card games. I'd thought those areas were pretty much dead, but it seems there is still games being dreamed up all the time; even Settlers of Catan was only developed in '95. It prompted me to thinking about writing up the game that I made up in my teenage years when looking for something to do with a pack of cards handy. I started out thinking about how you could play chess with cards, and it eventually grew from there. Even though the game may not play exactly like chess in its current incarnation, the working title 'Card Chess' is still appropriate as the chesslike moves are enough for people to feel comfotable with the basic concepts. You can certainly apply your chess mind to it, as thinking several moves ahead and setting up multiple attack points are still core strategies. So here goes, Card Chess v1.1 ... CARD CHESS GAME CONCEPT - A game for 2 players with a standard pack of cards inspired by chess. - One player is 'red', the other 'black' - Each player has an army of 2 Kings, 2 Queens, 2 Jacks and 2 tens of the colour they are playing. - Players take turns to move one of their units in any allowable direction, as in chess. - Instead of 'capturing' pieces, an attacking move is to simply 'cover' your card over an opponents. A covered card cannot move. If the card on top moves off to another position, the uncovered card is now back in play and can move freely once again. - Since there are 2 kings, the game ends when one side has covered both kings. THE PLAY SURFACE - The remaining 36 cards are aligned in a 6x6 grid to form the playing surface. It is broken up into 3 6x2 areas; Black's starting area, the terrain, and Red's starting area. BBBBBB BBBBBB TTTTTT TTTTTT RRRRRR RRRRRR B = Black starting area T = Terrain R = Red starting area - Cards making the startup areas of the playing surface are played face down. - To create the middle Terrain, shuffle all 2,3 & 5 cards (12 cards in total) and deal into place. This should give 6 red terrain segments and 6 black terrain segments. MOVING AND ATTACKING - A King's movement is similar to a King in chess (one space in any direction). A queen moves like a queen in chess (horizontally, vertically or diagonally). A Jack moves like a bishop (diagonally). A Ten moves like a castle (horizontally & vertically). - When moving in a direction (horizonally, vertically or diagonally), your unit may stop at any card on the playing surface in that dirction up to and including the first card of the opposing colour. EG: Playing Red would mean that Black terrain cards and black unit cards stop further movement. As a reverse of this, you can pass over or land on any turned over card on the playing surface, any terrain of your colour, or any card of your army. SETUP 2 modes of setup are currently used; one for beginners and quicker play, and one for a more competitive, balanced start. 1. Fixed starting positions - Each player sets out their army in the same format as below: TJKKJT <--- Black army ..QQ.. ...... ...... ..QQ.. TJKKJT <--- Red army T = Ten J = Jack Q = Queen K = King - You may wish to have cards of the same suit together (EG Diamons on left, Hearts on Right), but as there is no distinction between suits in the game, it is not important) - This method give the players a known starting position with a random terrain in the middle to give slight variablity (you can even play without the terrain in the middle for training purposes with people that may not be familiar with chess movement) - As with chess, the player starting first has a slight advantage. 2. Progressive starts - Each player starts with all unit cards in hand and the playing surface completed. - Decide who will play first, via coin toss or mutual consent - Players take turn placing any unit in hand anywhere in their starting area that has not already been occupied. Players should keep in mind the terrain in play and also currently placed cards to judge the most effective position for the placed card. - When all cards are placed, the starting player can now move units. - The starting player's advantage of moving first is balanced by their opponent who places the last card in the setup phase

Wassat? Update? - 07:52am 21/05/06

Been a while since I've had the need to update, but I feel a splurge coming on ... 3 things have occupied my spare thought cycles outside the obligatory game playing and dissection, a revival of a card game I made up back in my teenage years, a tournament analysis system, and Temporal ROAM (dunno why I capitalised 'T'emporal, it just looked out of place with ROAM crowding in on it). I'm even keen on getting in and reorganising the site a bit, so they might even get their own sections ala History of Briton. I'm coming out of a games blitz with lots of games making a comeback onto my HDD over the past month. A demo of GalCivII brought back memories of the MoO days, so GalCiv, MooII and MooIII all made an appearance. I recall badmouthing MooIII aftter it came out (being the most butchered sequel in history and nothing like the 5th 'X' as promised) and was hoping that any pathes or mods may have straightened out the mess. There had been a number of them, but it still left the game far short of where it should have been. A quick play of MooII confirmed that it's still the number one space strategy around in my mind. Heroes V demo also turned up this month. Played pretty well, but no real major improvements over previous editions. What's with having strategy games in full 3D though? Having had to pick up a faster graphics card for Oblivion, it seems that everything now makes it heat up the place. No wonders it needs a seperate power outlet on the video card, it's producing more heat than the processor! The Heroes demo got me back into Warlords IV mood though. Seems I'd left the campaign unfinished, so I created a new profile to hack my way through it. Can't recall it taking anywhere near as long for turns, sometimes an hour or so just moving units and fighting battles. TitanQuest looks interesting from the demo. The blurb on Ausgamers mentioned it being a "new standard for stunning, mythology-based, fast-paced RPG action, featuring a revolutionary battle system and map editor". That must be the new way of saying Dialbo II clone. It's another heat inducer too ... Other notables include a foray into Poker every now & then; Football Manager 06 keeping the dream alive for cellar dweller's Barrow (and Rochdale); Angband variants all over the place to keep the gameplay bug in perspective; and Magic the Gathering Online gracing the monitor in the background as I type. Games only seem to be having a playtime lifespan of around a day and a half, so I'm sure there's others I've dug up recently that I fail to recall. I realy do need either a great game to be released that can hold my interest (even Oblivion only lasted 3 days), or put more effort into the 3 projects I have in mind.

Free will vs Determinism - 12:53pm 07/03/06

Last weekend was a doozy; A suprise party for Nate broke out into many little suprises as we arrived earlier for a friday BBQ ,as well as the delivery of a ping pong table, punching bag, and assorted other gotchas. On the train ride down and back I managed to get through some more of my book "Critical Mass" that I got for the plane ride over to Singapore late last year. It's now getting into some meaty stuff rather than the opening stanza of historical political science to set the scene. So far 2 questions have been brought to light, not necissarily straight from the book, but inspired by it. 1) Distributed networks are untrusted networks: Since working on a model of a freely distributable MMORPG that allows clients to do part of the procesing, there had always been the problem of cheaters or players with malicious intent. If they have access to the authorative version of the game they could easily tweak situations to benifit themselves. I had contemplated a number of solutions that revolved around security to make the processing seperate from the client, but the truth is that distributed networks are untrusted networks. Since I had worked on communication in untrusted networks down in Sydney I'm not sure why this hadn't hit home earlier. Each work unit is untrusted from each other, but can stil maintain communication and integrity by compartmentalisation of work. You never give one unit the whole picture of both the object and the event. 2) Determinism vs Free Will: Since Temporal ROAM is almost explicitly driven by determinism, it was good to see this book touch on the subject of free will and determinism. It seems that not only digging up core laws driving society from looking at statistics, but also the second law of thermodynamics all point to determinism and absence of free will. Even Maxwell's Demon got shot down in flames at a later date. While eplaining parts of the book to Sandy (God bless her!), I realised one way of looking at PolSci that allows rules for the masses and also free will. Relative goals. While 2nd Law of thermodynamics states that all particles must flow to lower state of potential energy, or minimize the global energy laws, when applied to a human in the political sense, the laws are filtered through the individual's perspective. So even though everyone is minimising their own life by doing the minimum effort to achieve goals and tasks set for them, the goals and constraints are largely set by themselves and can be totally different to another's. To me this can represent free will, the ability to set your own goals, while still maintaining the same internals for everyone as to how to achieve the set goals. Going to have to read more to see if Determinism pops up any more (I'm sure it will). Free will in a totally deterministic system will eventually turn the whole system back into a chaotic system, ala the butterfly effect. This is a problem for temporal ROAM because after it has described a world, a player needs to be instered into it to play the game. It's impossible to tell what a player is about to do for each step of the game, so the whole game will eventually be predicting events that rely on things the player has interrupted (like killing the King means that he can't marry, the next big event on the horizon in game terms). To combat this effect you can insert an object into the game that represents the player, but is an AI that abides by the deterministic model. The AI's responsibility is to attempt to mimic the player's actions and eventually predict them via simple hebbian learning. This shadow AI can then be used to minimize storing all the player's actions so that history remains deterministic. So far this model remains the most apt, even after the extra insight into free will, athough I will have to upgrade my implementation of perspective a couple of notches as this is the 3rd area that builds from it.

Goodbye, Goodnight - A christmas treat - 10:40pm 11/12/05

A flower for your vanity, a penny for your thoughts About the world’s insanity and how we’ve gotten lost Strike up the band to play a song as we go waltzing by And fake a smile as we all say goodbye ... Been in a bit of a Jars of Clay mood since listening to back-to-back albums on the drive to Brisbane this week. One song usually sticks out and gets me fired up, this time it was Goodbye, Goodnight. Must be the closeness of Christmas, new year and whatnot. I was thinking about doing christmas cards this year. Maybe some digital artwork and an email if I find the time. Mum keeps making her own christmas cards, but since they send about 1000 out it's now a week long production line to get them all done. Chrismas day looks to be sorted out already; brekky with Mark & Amanda, Church, lunch with the Shields and Sandy's rellies, afternoon tea with my rellies, and tea at home with Mum & dad, then a trip up to Mackay for the week to New Year's by way of the farm. Pretty much like last year actually ... The year as a whole has been an odd one. Contract programming for Ken's Brisbane based clients has kept me slightly busy, with the main focus of the year tied up in WCG. Continuing on from last year, Steve and I were employed by Network Events and Media as tournamnt directors for the 2005 season. We had departed from the tradition regional / state / national finals approach by having a tour with 16 tour stops all across the country. They were staggered so that people could attend more than one to accumulate points for entry into the national finals. In the end the lack of numbers due to game choice, player population and player apathy meant that the tour just scraped through the minimum criteria I'd set at the start of the year. So it was a success in terms of showing that it's possible and setting a platform to build the next couple of years on, but not a barnstormer. All that came to an abrupt end though as NE&M went bankrupt 2 weeks before the finals, leaving everyone in the lurch. Luckily ProGamer proffered up the money to make sure the finals went ahead and the winners got over to Singapore. Since I wasn't any official part of the Australian team for Singapore, I went over purely as a referee (Warcraft III Head referee). 6 days from 8am to 10pm wasn't too easy on the feet, but staying up 'til 5am most nights drinking with the other referees & players was probably more to blame for the weariness. Apart from losing my mobile on the plane flight over, the trip and the refereeing went really well. There seems to be a bit more stability in the referees this year as 75% were interenational and probably 30% were there last year. Monza is next year, but I'll wait and see what the year entails in the gaming environment before I commit to going. Cameron came along in the middle of the year to change things up a bit. Sandy's life has totally changed as now she's 23.5 hours a day looking after him. I'm a bit dissappointed at how slow things are going. We were out on the farm branding calves and there were calves born the night before in the yards that were walking about, while Cameron's still being wheeled about in a pram. Makes you wonder how this baby phase of a human life ever got us through evolution. Next year is still up in the air. The contract programming is pretty haphazard, and not as many local contracts are around as I'd thought. The Uni is still in a down swing, so I've applied for Tutoring / Teaching at a TAFE to get some teaching qualifications under my belt before getting tenure. A regular 9-5 job with a paycheck at the end of the day is sounding better and better. Well, I guess that's about a christmas card right there. Civ 4 is calling, and time's limited because Christmas will bring a new swathe of games to occupy my time. Have a Merry one!

A tarball to be proud of - 08:45pm 28/09/05

Over the past month or so my gaming tastes have been becoming more and more eclectic. WoW is still going strong thanks to a revitalised outfit of cows rummaging around Cenarion Circle, but apart from that there's been little to show from the current crop of games. I've been digging through abandonware to help relive the glory days and had bumped into a remake of Star Control 2. I hadn't really thought of it as a classic, possibly because I din't spend too much time playing the campaign. I'm pretty sure I finished it in a night and a half and didn't really think of replaying it to talk to all the wierd little creatures. Now with sounds added, the aliens are an absolute blast to talk to and the light hearted atmosphere of the game really shines through. Still didn't last long though, maybe 5 hours. Roll on ... I found a game today that gives rolling on a totally different meaning. Gish is a great little game from Chronic Logic (of Bridge Builder fame) where you play a sticky lump of tar that can roll/slide/bounce around a cavern system in traditional platformer style. The really cool bit is all the things you can achieve with such a simple interface. Sometime you look at a challenge and think how I'm gonna get up there, but in reality there is a multitude of ways of solving each puzzle. Go you good tarball, go ...

The state of Random terrain generation - 01:23am 31/08/05

While hunting through rec.games.roguelike I stumbled on a link to a paper covering the latest techniques for random terrain generation. Although the paper is really designed to create fakey flatland for more useful maps in RTS games, it was interesting to see that things haven't really progressed very far at all in modifying the procedural encoding of terrain, rather looking toward erosion to help solve the problem of "melted icecream" maps. As far as I can tell there is no other engine out there that bothers about procedural river basins to give the same effect. While flying to Sydney a few weeks ago I had a look at some mountainous terrain from above and got to thinking about the algorithm and where I left it. In some flash of insight I figured out the 2 pieces of information I needed to fix the river basin technique. 1) rivers follow a natural slope that steepens along the length of the river inversely proportional to the volume of the river. 2) When designating the midpoint to be attached to an open draining node, the heights of the other drain points (especially higher ones) need to be considered. The first point I had picked up on before, but had discarded as a 'todo' later on when the other parts of the system came into line, however looking into it, it's actually quite simple and provides the flatland that dominates landscapes. Hydrolic erosion has many complex parts, but can be approximated with the equation (water volume * water velocity) = erosion value. The water velocity largely depends on the slope, which we are after for accurate midpoint heights. The erosion value of a river system tends toward a constant. This can be demonstrated by considering a river system in segments that have exactly the same water volume (AB, BC, CD). If the first segment (AB) is flat, the water velocity will be 0 and therefore the erosion for that segment is 0. If the next segment (BC) is steep, the water velocity is high and so is the erosion. If the erosion is high, it eats down the point (B) and (C), point (B) leaving the first segment (AB) sloped toward (BC). If the next segment (CD) is not as steep as (BC), the erosion will eat down (C) and (D), however the additional erosion of point (C) from the steep middle section flattens out (CD) for the next phase. In the next iteration, (AB) now has slope, so it erodes (A) and (B) a small amount. (BC) is still steeper, so it erodes (B) more than the erosion of (A), giving (AB) a steeper slope. This trend will continue as long as (BC) is steeper than (AB). Since the extra erosion of (C) from (BC) flattens out (CD), the new erosion of (C) contributed from (CD) is lessened. Eventually the slope of (CD) is less than the slope of (AB), so the contribution to points (B) and (C) are now reversed. Segment (BC) now starts to get less steep, which in turn softens it's erosion impact. The system comes into balance when all slopes are equal, eroding everything at a constant rate. This system assumed that the volume remained the same, however it is easy to extrapolate that if the river bifucated into 2 tributaries with 1/2 volume each, then the slope will be doubled on each tributary. This will give the same rate of erosion, giving the same drop in heights for both the tributaries and the original river. This natural balance means that even random maps that start out with anomalous river systems will eventually obey the rule that the erosion values are constant, meaning the volume*slope for each segment remains the same. Considering that the volume is almost always going to increase at each step down the river as new tributaries (no matter how small) join up, the river will have less slope at the mouth, increasing to the most slope at the source. Looking at any segment should see that the midpoint should give a shallower slope in the direction of the river flow. This means that the midpoint cannot be more than the average height of 2 connected river points, and not less than the lowest river point plus the slope given by the volume of water at that point, or less than the reverse slope from the highest point down. This differs markedly to the standard random adjustment plus or minus around the average height (H1-H2)/2 + H2. The realm of possible slopes and midpoints can be seen by drawing a triangle bounded by these 3 criteria. The lines indicating the slope extending from each point form the lower boundaries. An eligible slope intersects these two minimum slopes, giving a gradient between the 2 extremes. If it crosses the midpoint line then the midpoint has a height of this intersection and a volume comensurate with the slope. Due to varying slopes and heights, it is also possible to create an eligible split that does not pass through the midpoint line. In that case the midpoint is simply on the minimum slope with a volume exactly the same as the point the slope comes from. This gives the minimum expressed earlier. The maximum possible height is the eligible slope that intersects the two minimum slope lines at H1 and H2, giving a straight line and a midpoint of exactly the average of the two. The height of the midpoint and the angle of the slope (hence the volume) dictates how much expected volume is going to be gained from the newly defined segments. A midpoint on a minimum slope means that all the extra volume comes from joining tributaries on the other segment, while a maximum midpoint means that both segments contribute equal amounts of volume, but can only be brought in at H1 and H2. Both of these scenarios are seen to be extreme, so an average that asymptotes to these minimum and maximum values is needed. An average slope would be one that passes through the middle of each minimum slope, giving a triangle with the same gradient as the larger triangle, or a slope that averages the two. Since this may not still cross the midpoint line, a compressed selection of slopes that do cross the midpoint is needed, but one that favours slopes closer to the missed out segments. In the shortened average slope, the average slope passes through the middle of (H1) to (M1) and named (S'1). The slope of M1 to H2 is also the new minimum possible slope due to the minimum slope from H1 giving a higher midpoint. Since this new minimum slope's midpoint (S'2) makes the triangle self-similar to M1->H1->H2, the average slope remains the same as H1->H2. The difference in midpoint heights given by the minimum slopes can also be used to help bias the actual midpoint placement. (M2-M1)/(M2-I2) gives a ratio of how far (M) will be off average. I guess it's a lot to show that all you need to do is work out the slope of each point (from the volume, or store the slope and deduce the volume) and what minimum midpoint height it demands. From there all the pieces are available to work out the new midpoint and its slope. All of this considers a perfect world with perfect erosion constants, however rock and other materials reduce the effects of erosion in some areas, giving rise to anomalies like waterfalls, lakes etc. These can be handled in a subsequent model that looks at developing terrain with vegetation by using both expected rainfall and soil content from a basin catchment. Point 2) is an extension of point 1 in that a new tributary attached to a river system should also look at its surrounding neighbour heights (and possibly water volumes)to see what share of the rainfall it deserves. A higher drain point than the one attached to would indicate that this new tributary is a minor one, and that the new height should approach the average of the drain point and the highest non-drain point. Adjusting the height would mean increasing the slope, so therefore reducing the volume this tributary contributes. The article and the new techniques got me fired up again, enough to pull out the code for the ROAM variant I'm working on. Spent 1/2 a day trying to get it to compile under Dev-C++ with no luck, just keeps running into linking problems with OpenGL. I'm sure it's a minor thing, like a wrong DLL or library somewhere that's causing the problem. In Dev-C++ there is an OpenGL sample to create a window andit looks totally different to the code embedded in ROAM, so it may be totally incompatible too. Enough unknowns to just frustrate the hell out of me.

It's a boy !!@! - 06:40pm 29/06/05

Cameron Joseph Bowes was born on the 23rd of June at 8:48am, weighing in at 3.6 kg (ie. almost 8 pounds) Mum is OK, but exhausted after 36 hours in labour. Dad is showing him how to play solitaire on the mobile. Ten little fingers and ten little toes, Two little arms and one little nose, One little mouth and two little ears, Two little eyes for smiles and tears, One little head and two little feet, One little chin, that's Cameron complete!

Poker - 03:49pm 01/06/05

There's a craze ripping through the upper echelons of pro gamers, and the name of the craze is Sudoku ... err .. Texas Hold'em. I think it started with some pro Korean Starcraft players and a high profile top 10 finish at the world championships by a european Starcraft player. Now it seems to be everywhere. Late Night Poker came to SBS. The World championships were broadcast vitualy all day when we were in San Fransisco. Now channel 10 have World series poker highlights too! Increasing this boom is the proliferation of online poker casinos where you can play for as little as 5 cents, or even free with play money. With no buildings, minimal staffing requirements, and a global audience ready to lose money from their own homes, it's no wonder they are competing fiercely for your custom. Me, I like the play money sections. I guess I've always treated my trips to the casinos as a game, and the intensity and pressure are still there in spades when playing the tournaments. It's basically all the fun elements about the game without any of the drawbacks of going broke; and you can't play when you're broke. I've tried a few of the main poker sites and have done relatively well (~15K from 1K start), but tournaments are where it's at. Poker Stars seems to have the biggest clientele, but an older, clunkier interface than Pacific Poker or PartyPoker. Pokerstars also has open play money tournaments starting at 10:30pm which usually have attendances in the 1000's, so that's the main drawcard for me. Usually I make it close to the prizemoney cutoff positions ~100-200, enough to get your money back, but never really cracked into a big win. Last night was an 1800 strong tournament with over 500,000 virtual clams up for offer. I went into it winning 2 nine-man tourneys so I was in a good frame of mind. I played fairly conservatively, just trying to stay close to the average hand size to help fade into obscurity. Eventually ended up on the last table, and then ended up 3rd, over 45,000 fakeys! This desktop pic is on the final table, with Nighhawk bullyng everyone out of the way with some god hands. Stonecoal, the guy next to me, was on my table from the start. He was playing with his wife helping. We only moved tables once (to the final table) which was an oddity. Still trying to figure out the selection criteria for a table to be dismantled, or a player shuffled to another table for balance. Another thing to note from the desktop is the time. I think I finally finished around 3:45am, so over 5 hours for the tournament!

Incidental Art - 12:24pm 01/06/05

Digging around in My Pictures on this work computer I stumbled on a pic I used to test the compression of PNG files with dreamweaver. It's crude, quick (<30secs to create), but had something disturbing about the combination of shapes that didn't sit right. It looks lopsided? I don't think so, I've done a few random things like this with no real balancing and it didn't drag this effect. No, that's not it. It's too bland ? I guess if Green Poles can pull in a reaction, I don't think the blandness is the problem. This puzzled me for a while, but I only found the answer after I found something else; a real image. Once I looked long enough for a real image to come through instead of the abstraction it all felt right. Is that the power of abstract art? The abliity for it to confound the mind so it cannot be 'pigeonholed' into images we feel comfortable with? I had read that the facial recognition aspect of the mind is constantly looking at everything we see for a face. It's like Where'sTheFace, Where'sTheFace, Where'sTheFace! That's why sometimes we see faces in odd places like clouds, bedlinen folds, fruit cuts, etc. Is there also other areas looking to classify images that it believes SHOULD be classified? Even finding this image 2 years after I did it I hit the same disturbing feeling lookng at it until I remembered why I named it the way I did ...

WCG 2005 begins - 12:27pm 01/06/05

Seems soo long since I've updated the site, oh well life goes on ... WCG is back on again this year, but with a whole tour laid out for Australian e-sportaholics. I'm Tournament Director / Head Referee again this year, which means travelling to most of the events on the calendar around this big brown land of ours. The baby's arrival may slow me down a little, but I hope it won't affect me too much. Work still goes on for the blind people. New section has been hampered by the massive startup hours needed for WCG, but it's getting there. For the record, XML ISN'T plug'n'play data :/ WoW still owns a little place in my heart and on my HDD. not playing nearly as much as what I used to, but I've had some great sessions with Andrew, et.al. over Skype. Changed ISP's to get onto a great 1.5meg unlimited plan to help with serving conference calls with more than 4 people over skype. Ventrilo is nowhere near as clean as Skype, but at least it chewed up bugger all bandwidth and resources.

Temporal ROAM - 12:37pm 01/06/05

A useful feature for ROAM is that it relies on importance of triangles in a scene to determine the amount of triangles to use. Further away objects can be represented by less triangles and still retain an element of accuracy to the viewer. A mountain in the distance may only be represented by 50 Triangles while a tree in front of you is also represented by 50 triangles, even though the mountain is covered with trees. My aim is to use this property of ROAM to represent deterministic events in a randomly generated world. Actions leading to events are almost entirely causal. This means that events are directly determined by previous events: A child hitting his head causes pain, then causes crying, then causes help from parents, etc. You can also look at events in reverse by using a causal tree. The king declares war because of his son being killed, because the son lost a jousting match, because the duke was more capable on horseback, because the duke grew up on the border regions, etc. All previous events leading to an action can be enclosed inside an event cone stretching back through time where the apex is the event itself. This means that something that took place 5 minutes ago in the same spot can affect the current action, but something occuring 5kms away at the same time cannot. Somewhere between these extremes there will be a border that defines the edge of the event cone. Theoretically this is along the speed of light since nothing can travel faster than this speed, so there is no way of knowing what took place before this time, so you cannot react to it. If the Sun blew up we would not be able to immediately react because we would have to wait the 6 minutes it takes light to get to us so that we could actually see the sun exploding. In practical terms it means anything in visual range or earshot is more or less instantly known, but other events outside our sensory range relies on some form of information dissemination. In today's age we can find out major events happening around the world in less than a day, whereas in colonial times it could be months. The event cone can be defined as: I = Information dissemination factor D = Distance T = Time ID = T <-- Event cone border ID < T <-- All events within the event cone Events also have a personal importance for us. Trivial events actioned by us and those around us can have as much impact on our next action as major events happening a long way from us. A good example is watching a news bulletin on TV. Regional news usually involve stories that would have been ignored if they occured in another state, and state news would have been ignored if it occured in another country. We would be interested in the size of Mrs Brown's tomatoes if she lived next door, but not if she was in Uganda. The importance of events also has time dependant properties. Whether we had a shower 5 years ago or 5 nights ago is not as important as whether we had a shower last night. Events occuring a long time ago can affect our actions as long as it is of high importance to us. A family fued reaching back generations may have more impact on the way we talk to a person from that family than the direct events leading up to us being at the same place. By utilising the same ROAM techniques as encapsulating determinism into random map generation, I hope to achieve the same result for events to bring life into the random world. The aim is to create a bubble of events from the main character's position that stretches away along the event cone. This would mean that there needs to be an algorithm to develop historical events that can be self replicating to sit on top of ROAM. Given a 'Diamond' of space/time and all parents of this diamond, the algorithm needs to split both 'event triangles' to create 4 event triangles. For convenience it can be assumed that an event triangle can give an accurate account of the most important event within its boundaries, and also holds the data required to develop all other events that occured. To create an algorithm to build deterministic events we need to know how events occur and how they fit together. First of all, events have participants and an action that took place. The participants could be people, monsters, cities, kingdoms, buildings, ground, weather systems, etc. Participants are directly involved in the creation of the action, so even though there may be onlookers they aren't participants. Onlookers will remember the event and carry it with them disseminating it to others as a reference. This dissemination also occurs if you tell another person of a previous event you either experienced or heard of yourself. Participants may view the actual event differently depending on internal biases and also communicate this perspective, not the actual event. Participants also rate the importance of the action to themselves and to other entities. An action could be important, but private, so that they definately do recall the event, but will not tell others freely. Each action that participants can take is determined by the type of event. A King and Queen may have a marriage event, a child born event, a dinner event, etc. A participant attempts to initiate the event by requesting an action from the other. If the response is positive, the action takes place. This request/response mechanism allows the internal biases for each action to be conveyed by all parties. An Event may also be constrained by when and/or where an event can take place between parties. This is an enforcement of the event itself, not the will of the participants. A King Participant must have had a birth event and coronation event before the time he is linked as king, and then potentially a death event afterward. This allows the event structure to describe itself and outline the way the events come together to form the living world. In a top-down approach, the events are used to generate the entities used as participants. In the beginning the world creation event brings into existance essential entities like the world, the continents, the weather systems, etc. Later on Nation events bring into existance Nations populating the world, which then in turn spawn Kings, which then in turn spawn battles, which then in turn spawn heroes etc. Each division of the event bubble gives the opportunity for more entities to be brought in purely by the existance of the event they are going to participate in. The events and participants available for selection are constrained by existing events, the event cone, and participant's internal biases. This will lead to a consistent and cohesive world that can be torn down and rebuilt from scratch if need be. Enter into this the player ..... And that's a dicussion for another time.

GPS::Tron - 12:21am 07/03/05

One thing that I really like is when people come up with novel ways of using existing technology. GPS::Tron does just that. So simple, so elegant.

A History of Briton - 12:40pm 01/06/05

Christmas came and went, along with the veritable plethora of computer games from my brothers. Sid Meier's Pirates! was awesome, but only seemed to last only a few days under the weight of the WoW juggernaut. Rome:Total war has also struggled, but managed to grab my attention more and more. After playing the initial few campaigns as the Julii faction of Rome and beating it quite convincingly, I thought it might be a nice change to play as Briton, one of the minor nations of the time. I also wanted to more record a "historic" story than beat the game, so I set up a few rules. Campaign and battle modes all on the highest level: Very Hard. All battles to be played out by the computer in campaign mode, not personally taking charge of any battles that made the other campaigns a little too easy. When I started the game I noticed that Belenus, the heir to the throne, started off with a poet as part of his retinue! This was an omen of great portent, so I started writing 'A History of Briton' from this poet's perspective. It's starting to become epic as Belenus is growing in stature to become a major figure of his time.

The Nose Knows - 07:41pm 18/01/05

We were cleaning out the upstairs cupboards make room for more junk when we came across a box of really old drawings and books from back in primary school. In amongst the all the nostalgia I found the original copy of "The Nose Knows"; a short story by Scott written in grade 10 for an English assignment. I'm quite not sure what Mrs Pohlmann thought of this HHGTTG inspired creation, but it gained him his highest English grade and some notoriety at Gin Gin High. The Nose Knows "The nose knows, but what is a nose without a smile?", said the Great Alkinsure just before his nose spontaneously combusted. This had come as a great suprise to many as the Great Alkinsure's nose had never done that before. But unknown to the Great alkinsure his nose did not simply explode, in fact it did a pan dimensional leap. You see, if you find out that your nose knows more than you do, that would be rather embarrasing. So Marvellous Merlin, the wizard, made an irreversible spell so if anyone finds out their nose knows more than they do, their nose will undergo a pan dimensional leap. Unfortunately for Merlin he already knew this fact, so his nose exploded. This had come as quite a shock to Merlin as he had really liked his nose, so he tried to make a spell to get it back. Unfortunately for Merlin, as he was saying the last verse he saw the beautiful Princess Lavidia and he said Mazeratie instead of Mozarella, thus causing little bits of him to scatter all over the universe. Pamella wasn't a very nice girl to look at, in fact you were lucky to get off with a Hemroid or two if you had the unfortunate experience of glimpsing her. There was a theory formed that the number of zits she had was in fact infinity. Another theory stated that eventually they would congeal into one big zit, therefore infinity equals one. Well anyway, Pamella was now frantically cleaning the mirror to see what effect squeezing the pimple had on her, when the Great Alkinsure's nose came out of the pan dimensional leap, just by chance landing in the crater left by Pamella's zit squeezing frenzy. "What is that!", exclaimed Pamella. "How Gross!", exclaimed the nose in an extremely terrified voice as it jumped off her face and landed nose first into a puddle of puss. Not dismayed by the recent experience, the nose ran out of the puss stained bathroom, out of the puss stained house, in fact he ran out of the whole puss stained neighbourhood before stopping fo a breather. The nose breathed heavily through its nose and sat down to think about the recent events that just happened. "Well", it thought, "I better call myself something. I think I'll call myself Noddy. Yeah, Noddy nose knows best." Noddy also thought of other things, like how a nose can run, and why the economic structure of Western Samoa has nothing to do with this story. Noddy also wondered where the Great Alkinsure was, and thus decided to go in search of his lost comrade. So you guessed it, he went to a bar. In the bar of the Egyptian Central Pub there were many vacant seats, as there were not many people there. Really sensible hey, if there were a lot of people there then there wouldn't be many seats. But tonight there was a lot of seats to sit on. In fact all you need is one seat to sit on, so it wouldn't matter if there was a lot of people there as long as there was one seat spare. But that doesn't matter because there were a lot of seats here this night. It didn't even matter that it was full last night, because there were a lot of seats this night when Noddy walked into the Pub. It didn't matter if another pub on another night was full because Noddy Nose didn't go to another Pub on another night. So Noddy nose went into a pub with some vacant seats. Noddy casually walked up to the counter and slipped onto the vinyl stool. Noddy thought he did quite a good job, but when he signalled for the barman he was slightly put back when he saw the barman rolling around on the floor laughing and pointing at Noddy. When Noddy looked at the others in the bar he noticed they were doing the same thing. After everyone had settled down noddy sat back on the school. "So mate, do you want a drink?", the barman said in a nasal voice, "something to snort!". At that he started laughing and rolling around on the floor again. Noddy did it as well, just to be nice. After about half an hour Noddy managed to get a drink, so now he was ready to ask his big question. "Hey bud", Noddy said in a casual tone, "have you seen a person walking around here without a nose?". At this question the barkeep started rolling around on the floor again, but Noddy didn't really want to roll around, so he just sat there until the barman emerged from behind the counter. "Actually, there is an old sphinx here", said the barman. "Sphinx? who is that?". At this the barman pulled out a postcard of the sphinx. "Well, it sort of looks like Alkinsure", said Noddy, a bit dissappointed at the postcard, "can you show me where he is ?" "Sure", came the reply, "let's go now". A short time later, well not really short as in short, but short as in little. Well not really little as in little, but little as in tiny. Well not really tiny as in tiny, but tiny as in half an hour. As soon as Noddy Nose saw the sphinx he knew it was the Great Alkinsure, becuase noddy nose knows best. Even though he must have grown a bit, and he never used to have a lion's body before, and his face looked a bit different, it was the Great Alkinsure because Noddy Nose knows best. So our hero Noddy climbed up where he was supposed to go, and sat on his face, a perfect fit. But Noddy got bored of just sitting there, so he left to go and seek adventure and romance. Written by - Scott Bowes

I have a buddy ... - 10:57pm 01/01/05

Sometimes poems and sayings, even names, just keep popping up in my head at odd times. Today I remembered an old poem we used to say a lot when we were kids: I have a buddy My buddy's a toad He's kind of muddy He's flat on the road But he's my buddy, My buddy to stay Until he's peeled up And saaaailed away. After some googling it seems that it originally came from a garfield comic. Quite likely as we read just about all the garfield ones available when we were young and impressionable. Definitely a classic ...

Freecell - 05:20pm 13/12/04

I've gotten back into the rhythm of playing a game or 2 of Freecell in the mornings to get the brain into gear. It great how such simple games keep returning again and again (Zangband saw a look in before the WoW juggernaut rolled over it) I used to get most of them out, but this one broke my streak. Managed to beat it the next go by trying off on a different tack.

World of Warcraft - 05:13pm 13/12/04

Seems an eternity ago since I was playing City of Heroes, but when I started writing up this new batch of posts, that was the last update I had on the site. How time flies in the gaming world. I managed to get into the closed beta of World of Warcraft for the last week or so to fill in some time. I had heard pretty good rumours about the game and needed a filler from the letdowns of Rollercoaster Tycoon3 and Locomotion (good games, just not the grabbing power they used to have). I got hooked immediately and just couldn't put the thing down. Powered into the stress test and open betas and pretty much did nothing else. It's been soooo long since I've been caught up in a game so much that you don't notice it's 3am already. The game oozes gameplay and that's all that really matters to me. They changed a few things just at the death of the beta phase that had me wondering if they were on a mission to take all the fun out of this delightful little game, but in the end it still didn't matter, I bought anyway. Managed to get the only Collector's Edition copy in Bundaberg, and they rang up on Tuesday saying that someone had broken the release date, meaning I could pick it up that afternoon! I'd planned to pretty much play it solid when I got it to get ahead of the masses choking up the beginning areas, so a night's head start was awesome. Played all that night, the next day, the next night, and finally crashed at about 1am. 31 hours playing on top of a busy Tuesday made 39 hours awake. Not my record, but a while since I've done those types of numbers. After a 5 hour sleep I was at it again. Another 30 odd hours staring at the PC, leveling my hunter as much as I could. During the big rush at the start I managed to catch up to the earlybirds on Silver Hand by level 18, and I'm pretty sure I was the highest level character through to 23 or so. After I hit 25 and started to get out of areas I had previously done in beta I slowed down a lot, and decided to turn of the afterburner and cruise through the game at a more enjoyable pace. Being the roleplaying server I met some really great people to playact along with, and went exploring with one just for the hell of it. Found an ominous castle that we attempted, and found some elite bats in the topmost part that I could actually tame! I was sooo stoked about this bat I had, the first I'd ever seen. Since we got wiped just after I got it, we headed back in to keep going and a suggestion was raised that I should drop the one I had and tame another to help clear out the area. Seemed reasonable, and even though another guy was totally against the idea, I dropped off poor 'bewdiful' and went to tame another. As luck would have it, that was the only bat in the entire place that could be tamed. I couldn't believe it. My luck had turned in a big way too, as we continually got wiped trying to just get back to where the proper bat was. We tried other instanced dungeons to finish them off, but in all it left me pretty hollow. No bat and over 12 hours to go up a level that should have really only taken about 4. Since then I've built up other characters with sandy and Scott, and now a PvP one with Saint. I still keep on with my main hunter 'Veeyar' on Silver hand mainly because of the roleplaying nature. I've found it hard to find areas and quests at the level I am now, even though my quest log it full to the gullets. Its all the elite dungeons that I really don't want to drop, yet don't have the real confidence to go in with others in a pickup group for a solid 3 hours dungeon. My troll shaman 'Zedokta' on Blackrock is getting more fun and is at least in a guild. Probably play more of him in the near future. The game's getting a hint of burnout, but hopefully it'll spark off again so I can get toward 60. I guess time will tell.

WCG 2004 - 04:36pm 13/12/04

After wondering exactly what is going on with the World Cyber Games in Australia this year, it finally came to pass that Steve and I were actually doing it again this year. Under the umbrella of Network Events and Media, Steve and I took on the tournament director roles for the whole Australian competition, and given only 2 months to pull the gig off. Started off really hectic, then just when things seemed in control we change the finals venue with 10 days to go. There seemed to be so many reason why this year should fall short over previous years, but somehow it all gelled and it went off pretty darn well. As tournament directors, Steve and I had to also look after the Australian team on the international stage, and this year San Fransisco was the final destination. As the first time being held outside Korea, I had been thinking for the whole year that this would be the litmus test for the WCG movement. If it could hold its own with the previous events without the heavy korean government influence, then it will keep getting bigger and stronger to become a true world event. There only needed to be a few faux pas over there and the media would have torn it to shreds. With a team of 13 this year, I went over as assistant team manager as Steve was going to be unavailable for the flight over and the flight back. My main role over there was to be a referee for Warcraft3, although I had very little communication as to exactly what was needed of me (if at all!). There was plenty of things to do backing up steve if I wasn't needed. We had arrived early, too early it seemed as the player's villiage wasn't ready for us. We had a day of lounging around the city and getting our bearings while the rest of the competitors slowly rolled in. I managed to sneak in to the venue to scope it all out. It's great to see a LAN being set up, especially on a grand scale like this. So many things looked familiar, with a few interesting ideas thrown in to attempt more spectator friendliness. I saw some people sitting through the drudgery of putting together player passes, so I helped out for a few hours. Got some interesting takes on what people's expectations for the event were in the social chatter that usually occurs around lanyarding. Once the refereeing got under way I pretty much did nothing else. Needed to get there early in the morning to help setup and test the Warcraft 3 area, and since I had more experience then most there, I also helped out other areas. The warcraft 3 head admin was going to be busy until the event itself, so I stepped in as head admin for most of the setup. We had a great team and although it felt a little understaffed, we managed to pull it all off really smoothly. There was a bit of inter-game competition between referees to see which area ran the smoothest and caused joe (tournament director) the least hassles. Probably being biased, but I reckon the War3 area won hands down ;). Henry, the eventual head admin for War3, turned out to be a lecturer from Stanford University. A great guy to talk to. Overall the Aussies did really well. Almost all qualified past the pool stages into the single elimination bracket. Didn't quite go on with it and clean up like snoop last year, but I'd say a better result for gaming in general. Next year looks interesting with talk of a professional league through Australia to build up to next year's event.

Big updates to come ... - 02:37pm 13/12/04

The day isn't panning out how I thought, so to fill in some time I thought I'd give the website a shakeup. So many things I've been meaning to post up, but never really got around to it. Mainly because I only really tink of things to put up when I'm away from the PC, like driving back and forth to Brissy, or overseas. There's also 2 big topics I'm about to post on that I might make into articles or something. One is on game design and another on driving, and really need a place of their own as I'll most likely keep adding to them as I go. See how te day goes anyway ...

Heroes of the world unite! - 12:12pm 18/06/04

After having some spurious DSL problems which left me 2 weeks without internet, I come back to City of Heroes and find out that most of the QGL guys aren't playing it anymore :(. So much changes in just 2 weeks now it's amazing. I made up a character I had been contemplating for a while: Mikey Trousers. Inspired by a soundtrack from 'The Lads', I envisaged Mikey being a fairly geeky dude that had been given a set of amazing super powered trousers ala Wallace & Gromit's The Wrong Trousers. The super powers all revolved around kicking and jumping, so a technology scrapper focusing on martial arts looked the go. There is some other kicking powers in the alternate sets that I'm going to grab, and of course super jump. BOING !!!. There wasn't that much on offer as a secondary but regeneration looked OK; at least I might be able to keep kicking nasties more often. In practice he feels more solid than my VRKnight scrapper for solo play, and the regen really helps for street cleaning. I accidentally chose a punch attack from the martial art strand, so I'm contemplating rerolling. There also didn't seem to be a way of having huge bulky trousers with a spindly upper body, so I had to make him wear a baggy shirt to cover up all those muscles he shouldn't have. Fun to play, but just those niggly keep getting to me. I'd been playing a controller for some time and enjoyed the manipulation of the battle that it allows. You can solo quite effectively as you can really take on anything conning orange or red by just pulling one off, then blinding & pummeling them. I'd heard deceive was crap because you didn't get the experience that your new best friends got for you. I thought I'd try it anyway as I was contemplating rerolling anyway, and it turned out pretty good. Sure, you can just deceive someone then sit back and watch them beat the crap out of each other (and watch your potential XP disappear), but on an individual by themselves it works like a hold. Since they have no one else to attack, they stand around and let you pummel them. It lasts almost twice as long as blind too, and the recharge rate means you can have 2 deceived at the same time while blinding a third. If you are worried about the XP drain, simply attack the deceived one without worrying about retribution. You ca nusually drop them while under only one deceive, so it's pretty efficient. Think of it as trading potential XP from this group for faster recovery (you don't get hit as much) and faster moving on to the next group (the group dies quicker). I had been concerned with the damage output while soloing though, so I had a go at a blaster to see if they have any more success in rate of turnover. Enter Icehold, a mutation blaster focusing on .. err .. cold and freezing attacks. Looks ok as you have a bit of control over the battle by using hold attacks, but if you get hit you're in for a long wait to recover. I'd expected blasters to be fairly good for soloing, but it looks like they would enjoy groups more. The next experiment was a gravity controller. Gravity looks like the most damage output of the controllers (especially early on) and I'd been contemplating radiation instead of energy transfer for a while as energy transfer requires enemy presence and a successful hit. Rising to the challenge is Counterweight, a big boned lad who botched a science experiment at school and turned himself into a block of platinum. As well as having the presence of mind to run from people trying to cash him in, he found his density allowed him to alter gravity. The radiation effects aren't nearly as strong as the transfusion healing (which I should have guessed) but the gravity stuff rocks at the moment. He's able to consistently take on 2-3 orange hellions by holding 2 back while jumping on the 3rd. if done right you hardly get hit, but really chew up the endurance. He's fun though.

Happy snaps - 12:18pm 18/06/04

Although I really detested cameras on phones, since picking up my t610 it has been more useful than I thought. Since it's always with you, there have been quite a few moments where I've seen something funny and snapped away. Quality is still shite and I'd never use one as a replacement for a proper camera, but they do have their uses ... Please rewind a DVD ??!@. GG civic video. Bonus cupie doll for guessing the DVD... How's business? Straight after the Korea we catch a taxi, and the asian's rego sticker is GG 11. GG!! Count how many significant women there are on the Central Coast ...

Happy Birfday - 10:39am 11/05/04

Well, yesterday I turned a little older and a little wiser (so they tell me). Was a bit strange without Sandy around, but being back in Bundy meant that Mum could look after me instead. I got some new car seat covers, floormats and steering wheel cover along with the obligatory computer games, so I ripped off the old Daffy seat covers ones as they were getting pretty tatty. The foam underneath had perished a bit too, which left a mess on the seats. I thought "Well, if I'm going to get the vacuum cleaner to clean that up I may as well vacuum the car out too. And if I'm vacuuiming the car I may as well wash it". I'd planned on cleaning the car for a few weeks anyway since it got totally dusted up on a 4WD excursion through the goodnight scrub, then clogged with mud from driving on the newly graded driveway up the farm. I just never really got around to it. After about an hour and 2 sore arms from scrubbing I'd finished one side, so it didn't really feel like a fun thing to do on my birfday. Really needed it though, so I might make it a habit to clean the car each year, whether it needs it or not ... Clean and Shienhey ... The unshaven one Car Prezzies

Zangband 2.7.4 - 08:17am 25/11/03

A new version of Zangband came out over the weekend, just in time to cure some boredom at werk. Looks like it has changed the starting dungeon to only being 15 levels and also have removed the random monster quests. After a whole weekend of playing it, I think I actually prefer 2.7.3. The random quests used to piss me off some times, but it made it fun right from the start as I used to crank it to 40 quests right off the bat. It almost guarantees that the 2nd level is extremely difficult, but if you get past it you've got an exceptional item (usually a weapon) that will stand you in good stead for the rest of the quests. Without the intesity up front I found it to be a bit bland. The max depth of 15 for the start dungeon is a bit wierd too. After I discovered it I thought it would be good as it would get you out to explore the countryside more, as before I just got out if I needed to go for a shopping spree. After taking 1 or 2 chars through to the 15th level it seems a bit short to *BOOT* them out into the countryside. One wasn't prepared enough and died to a roaming tengu. It definately has a feeling more like Larn now, with its 4 level trainer dungeon, but the outside section just seems too random to risk a character to. They have also sealed off the level 20 dungeons with a LOT more monsters, so I don't know exactly where you're supposed to go. I did read the replacement of the random quests was small and large castles where you could receive kill quests from, but after visiting about 10 extra cities I haven't come across one yet :/. Actually I was expecting one in the main city, but the setup of the L15 dungeon would go against that I guess. They also mentioned that they increased the borg code a fair bit, so I had a dig around for borg players to soak up some spare CPU. I found Andrew White's borg and although it didn't play on linux as I liked, it did have a windows screensaver for vanilla angband. After letting it go last night I must admit I'm impressed! The first character got up to Level 50 and was eventually defeated by a greater balrog on level 97. It's really interesteing to watch too. Although a tad fast to actually track step by step, you can watch the overall goals and what it is picking up and wearing. Watching it carve through a room of dragons was quite staggering...

Next stop ... Korea. - 12:35pm 06/09/03

Well the Aussie finals for WCG has come and gone. I don't think I've done as much prep for a LAN before, but it all turned out pretty sweet at the end. There were endless debates on the Tournament format within the tourney admins, but eventually the sheer weight (or lack thereof) of Tourney PCs shaped the final tourney structure. All autoberth players received full double elim, with some lucky enough to be paired up with an autoberth that did not turn up (automatic bye). The byes were filled by last chance entrants in the second round losers bracket, effectively making all last chance spots single elim the whole way through. This meant a number of shortcuts could be taken without affecting the intergrity of the tourney format. 1) There is less first round matchups as the byes do not need to be played. Usually this would be meaningless as you still need to play SOME mathes within a round, therefore you can't drop an entire round. But since we were severely limited by PCs (in the order of only having 2 matches for each game playing at once), the saving of even 2 matches would save overall time. 2) After playing out the first round matches, the winners bracket now contains all autoberths. This means that there is all the winners bracket games to play without the need for the last chance competition to be run. This allowed the autoberthed teams to start way earlier (10am) while the BYO-PC LAN section was still being set up. In fact I think most last chance comps only started at around 1pm and finished by 3pm, so we would have lost a whole 5 hours worth of time to use the tourney PCs. In the end, no tourney needed to go past midnight on Saturday, and we were able to stagger most of the finals to be displayed up on the big screen on Sunday. That's a success in my books. In the aftermath of the LAN, Trix asked whether I'd go as the team manager to Korea! It didn't seem too hopeful as I'm pretty flat out at work and needed to make up for lost time organising the aussie finals. Sandy had been all alone for the 4 days I had dedicated to WCG.Au, so I thought she wouldn't appreciate another week away. It would be great to take her on the trip as a semi-holiday, but she thought it sounded more like punishment having to look after the gamers all the time. She'd rather just be sitting at home playing games herself. I guess I feel this as an opportunity to vindicate my contributions to the LANnig and Pro-gaming scene in the last 5 years. Since being a QGL admin I've tried hard to present gaming in a more professional manner and elevate it into a recognised 'sport'. This has meant more and more administration and more and more organisation, but I truly believe that the health of Queensland gaming, and the expectation of how a LAN should be run, has been influenced by QGL and AusGamers. We've blazed a path through unknown areas of event organisation, power and network logistics, player conduct, and venue co-ordination, etc. We've hit all the potholes ourselves so that others following us have got an easier, smoother path to follow. Anyway, off to Korea I go !!@!

WCG aussie finals - 08:35pm 19/08/03

The World Cyber Games events in Oz are being run by AusGamers this year, and the Australian finals are almost upon us! Only 1 & 1/2 weeks to go until 30 odd admins fly in from all over the country to run the event. Since I've been down in Sydney I've missed the QGL finals, so it feels a bit strange organising things on a more national level without really doing the groundwork on the state level. I have been helping out at MPU more and more tho, so it's not all that bad. Actually I've prolly done more work than the QGL boys since there's been 3 MPU's I've been to compared to the 1 QGL since January. That's a whole 'nother story tho...

QuantumX21 - 08:21pm 19/08/03

Well, 2-3 months has turned into a year or two, as well as spawning a whole new company around the stuff I'm working on. QuantumX21 is going great guns and is employing people left right and centre. Need a job ? We've moved down to a neat little apartment right along the waterfront at Terrigal. While waiting for the rest of the company to be set up in Gosford, I had a few weeks working at home. It's awesome getting out on the balcony for a cuppa in the sun for smoko. I've also finally got some consistent internet happening thanks to Integrity. We're working in pretty close with these guys (in fact they are directly above us at our new offices), so they got me hooked up with an account. Hopefully ADSL is just around the corner ... Moved into the new offices this week. Still reeks of paint and varnish as it's just been redone, but it's good getting all the gear and people together again. Looks like a few good solid weeks of work ahead ...

Sidaneee - 02:48pm 07/02/03

Shock horror, 2 news posts on one day. When it rains it pours all right. I'm moving to Sidaneeee! After sitting around scratching my ass for the past 6 months, I've finally snagged some work in Sydney doing some Clarion contracting for 3 months. I've actually een trying to get back into the Uni circuit as a lecturer, but hey, I guess I can put up with money being thrown at me again... I'm predicting a lean period for the 'ole website, but I guess it's seen a few of them before ... die already ...

Cyclone Beni - 02:38pm 07/02/03

At Last! A cyclone that actually made it rain on this brown old land. Although we only got a measly 3 or so inches down here in Brissie, Dad up at the farm reported 13 inches so far, with another bucketload last night. Been checking the Bureau of Meteorology website on the floodwaters going down the Kolan. It had been hovering around 5-7 meters at Springfield (virtually right on our property), but this morning I saw this: Station Name Time/Day Height Tendency Crossing Flood Class Kolan Kolan R at Springfield * 11.31am Fri 9.02 falling   moderate Gin Gin Ck at Gin Gin Ck * 11.31am Fri 6.71 rising   minor I don't recall too many floods up at the farm, but in my books there's nothing moderate about 9 meters of water going past the flying fox. Matt and Scott up in Mackay were right in the firing line of Beni before it fizzled out. You can make out their place as the bottom of the inlet 1/2 way between Sarina and Mackay. Sadly it didn't even really dump any rain in their direction until last night. Looks like its falling pretty hard now ... The hedge is looking the goods now. All bright and chirpy after the rain and overcast conditions. We've actually moved deeper into water restrictions today and we can't even fill up a watering can from the hose anymore. So good luck to it, hope it survives until the next rainfall.

Bookworm - 04:57pm 18/11/02

Been addicted to a little java game called Bookworm recently. I've heard it described as a combo between bejewelled and bobble, which I'd say is pretty accurate. The only thing wrong with the game is that it taseks SOOO LOOOOONG to play. In my first go took around 10 hours to play over 2 days and netted me a Lexographer 1st class with around 850,000 points and a 9 letter word!. Through the boredom I also worked out the scoring mechanism: Wordlength * (Level + WordScore) * (totalBonus) * 10 Where TotalBonus is the cumulative total of all the special tiles with green being 2 and gold being 3 After another combined effort by myself and Sandy, we got a bigger score (1,285,370) but at the cost of ~20 hours play and the application being open for over 4 days! When it finally ended the CPU time for that window was over 80 hours as it continualy sucked extra cycles to keep the flashy things flashing. Hopefully that will be the last time I'll play it, unless I find a bigger score out there of course ;). The closest one I could find was a little over a million in this thread. The QGL post that started it all off seemed to peter out at 500K, so I'm happy for now .. One good thing to come out of this game was that the PII/300 doesn't seem to crash anymore. I only really noticed that after it had been up for 5 days and most of the time without the aircon or fan going. I'm thinking that it was just an improperly seated memory stick as that was the last thing I wiggled before its long uptime.

Beware the red Swatsikas of Dooom - 05:02pm 04/11/02

During one of my tordoning excursions I reminisced about an Alife simulator that used a combination of lines in a 2D environment to represent organisms. Green lines for absobing energy (akin to sunlight / photosynthesis), Red lines for attacking other lines, Blue lines for defense, etc. With genetic algorithms tweaking the system, it evolves into optimised organisms that quite aptly reflect real life. You typically have a corner cluttered up with pure green organisms (plants), while agressive red organisms pork their way through (animals). That day I spent around 1 hour trying to google my way back to finding the program without any success. I'd also checked out GameAI as I thought I may have got the original link from that site ages ago, but still drew a blank. Finally, after some coersion from Ferretman (who also could remember it, but couldn't find it) and a little more searching, I finally stumbled across a link to it off some backwater AI site. Primordial Life. Now I'll have a simple place to go when I forget about it in another 5 year's time. (If I remember I put it here too I guess) In my reminiscing I had attempted to devise an ultimate organism, with a green centre to always have energy on hand, and a red attacking screen around it to protect as much as attack. It was quite amusing to see upon firing it up some little red swastikas of doom pinwheeling their way across the screen ..

Europa Universalis II - 01:13pm 02/09/02

After spending around 3 months searching everywhere I finally got my hands on a copy of Europa Universalis II. It's an awesome semi-turn based strategy game highlighting the medieval conflict in europe from 1400's through to the 1800's, as well as the european colonization across the world. I had heard nothing but praise for it from some die-hard military buffs, but was really hard to come by outside of Europe since it was made by a german mob. Although for this title they teamed up with publisher's Strategy First, they still haven't had the coverage to make it publicly known. It's a great game though, and since QGL I've played nothing else. At the moment I'm playing the grand campaign as Scotland, and although i'm only 30 years in on the 400 year campaign, I've been able to relieve most of the UK from England and Ireland. My allies across the channel have taken a pasting from England though, and England now control about 1/2 of France with Burgundy chipping away at them too. France still has a pretty decent economy though, and has annexed most of its vassals into a unified France to face the advancing threat. The 3 major wars we've fought have typically gone along the lines of England laying siege to most of france and getting 200 gold, me laying siege to the modern day section of England and demanding 4 provinces at a time. I also picked up Calais in the latest round of negotiations too, so I can start moving in on Burgundy now to get me a centre of trade. Over the weekend we had a LAN over at Scott's place to semi-celebrate Lee's B'day, and after showing them the ins and outs of EU2 quickly we decided to give it a multiplayer bash as allies. Although they hadn't seen it before, they both knew quite a lot about the military era, so they picked it up really quickly (way quicker than I did). I was to play Denmark, the powerhouse of the scandinavian alliance at the time, where Scott and Lee took Sweden and Norway respectively. Both Sweden and Norway started off as vassals of Denmark, but we'd agreed that I'd drop those shackles as soon as I could so we'd just have a simple alliance. I started off with a stocked up treasury at the start, so went straight into full-on production of knights for the conquest of Novgorod and Muscowy (modern day russia). After the first few years we had them on the ropes and had stripped Novgorod bare. Unfortunately there were some pretty bad winters and attrition had taken more than double the casualties than battles had :(. Winter quite frankly sux, and the provinces we got were only small colonies and couldn't even sustain small armies. Lee as Norway picked up the Novgorod centre of trade, even though Scott's Sweden had completed the siege. I'm still trying to get a handle on how / why annexes are avaiable as even though you can get the 100% bonus for wiping them out you still can't annex or even vassalise in some cases. After losing it back to rebels and declaring independance as Novgorod again we gave Scott another go at trying to annex it, but to no avail. Denmark had it's eye on the CoT in Mecklemberg, but the focus on the eastern flank didn't give me much chance of taking it off the baltic alliance. I declared war on them anyway when poland have given htem a pasting and snuck in to nab the provinces down to Meclemberg for myself. I really needed it too as the economy was shithouse after dropping the vassalisation of Sweden and Norway. Every now and then we'd look over at the vastness of the golden horde (mongols?) of that era, and they had munched their way up through to us along the far eastern border of known existance. Scott's warnings finally came true when they decalred war on me over a piddly fur colony up in snowy russia. I wasn't that concerned as we had been at peace for a while and needed another target to go after. What did concern me however was the polish and Lithuanian declaration a month later along with the 70,000 troops that poured out into the newly acquired provinces. I guess the computer can make some mistakes too though, as the 70,000 got whittled down to 17,000 over just one year due to attrition and a particularly long winter. They still seemed to churn out the troops though and wouldn't accept a white peace, so that's where we left the game that night. The 7pm -> 4am went amazingly fast though and I was suprised to see that it was only 30 odd years for the session. It felt like I went through about 100 winters and was forever waiting for spring to actually do something. We continued on Sunday to see how we would go and actually turned the tide on the invasion. Norway went bankrupt for a while and shot itself in the foot, Sweden kept the eastern flank together while Denmark had to worry about the whole of Europe deciding it was a good time to invade. Got to work on that bad reputation ;) One word was continually used throughout the session. Awesome.

Forum flame checksheet - 01:32pm 12/07/02

Browsing through the NWN forums I found an awesome flame checksheet. It's so realistic it's scary ;) Dear: [ ] Clueless Newbie [X] Loser [ ] 12 year old [ ] Troll [ ] Pervert [ ] Geek [ ] Spammer [ ] Wannabe [ ] Asskisser [ ] Lamer [ ] AOL user / Freeserver [ ] kEwL wArEz d00d [ ] Web TV user [ ] Fanboy [ ] Me too er [ ] B!LLYNOSE [ ] Silly~Sod, Willy~Wod, or Zilly~Zod [ ] Fool [ ] l33t h4x0r [ ] Guy from Mental Institution [ ] All of the above [ ] Warlock the (un)Wise [ ] Other: You Are Being Flamed Because [ ] You posted your opinons in the third person [ ] You posted "Wow I read the whole thread!" or equivelant in your post [ ] You posted a .999_ = 1 thread [ ] You posted a Release Date thread [ ] You posted a Patch thread [ ] You posted an PC vs X-Box thread [ ] You posted a System Specifications thread [ ] You posted a (InsertRandomRPG) vs DiabloII thread [ ] You committed crimes against pork biproducts [ ] You posted a "YOU ALL SUCK" message [ ] You haven't read the FAQ [ ] You don't know which forum to post in [X] You just plain suck [ ] You posted false information [ ] You posted something totally uninteresting [ ] You doubleposted [ ] You posted a message all written in CAPS [X] You posted racist crap [X] I don't like your tone of voice [ ] You posted a binary in a non-binary group. [ ] You asked for a f*ckin CD Key [ ] You posted a HTML-message in a non-HTML environment. [ ] You insulted a respected regular of this group [ ] Do I need a reason? Your a freakin' loser [ ] You posted a test message in a newsgroup other than alt.test. [ ] You posted the stupidest question I have ever heard [ ] You quoted an ENTIRE thread in your reply [ ] You continued a long, stupid thread [ ] You are in violation of basic netiquette. [ ] You asked a question that is covered in the FAQ. [ ] You posted a "get rich quick" message. and/or pyramid scheme [ ] Your are using pirated software. [ ] You brag about things that never happened [ ] You asked for cheats [X] Just because [ ] All of the above In Punishment, You Must: [ ] STOP IT!!! [ ] ALWAYS read ALL of the thread and NEVER tell ANYBODY! [ ] *** & *** [ ] Read the f****** FAQ [X] Be Pat Buchanan's love slave [ ] Go to your room with no supper [ ] Apologize to everybody on this forum [ ] Go stand in the middle of a Highway [ ] Learn about the Internet (http://www.learnthenet.com/). [ ] Lurk for at least 2 weeks before you post again. [ ] Go to (http://www.primenet.com /~vez/neti.html) and brush up on your netiquette. [ ] Take a soothing bath with an electrical appliance. [X] Limit yourself to 2 hours of My Little Pony per day. [ ] Kick a pitbull in the balls. [ ] Ask Microsoft Support for advice on how to use a pirated MS product. [X] Refrain from posting until you have a vague idea what you're doing [ ] Stop masturbating for a: [ ] week [ ] month [ ] year [ ] Get yourslef sprayed/neutered [ ] Turn yourself in to the cops. [ ] Ask the nurse to increase your medication. [ ] Give up your AOL / Freeserve account [ ] Bust up your modem with a hammer and eat it [ ] Actually post something relevant [ ] Wipe your arse on the way out, you've left a terrible smell around here. [ ] Change your alias from "Player" to something which accurately describes how completely godawful your MaD sKiLLz at gaming are. "I blow" is deemed to be appropriate. [ ] Ensure you're further forward in the queue when God next hands out brains. [ ] All of the above In Closing, I'd Like to Say: [ ] Warlock the (un)Wise is a tool... [X] Blow me [ ] Get a life [ ] Never post again [ ] I pity your dog [ ] Go to hell [ ] I think your IQ must be 7 [X] Take your s*** somewhere else [ ] *** & *** [ ] Learn to post or f*** off [ ] Go jump into some industrial equipment [ ] *PLONK* [X] Screw yourself with a 2x4 [ ] Seek professional help. [ ] Lick a wall socket. [ ] All of the above

Party at the Pillar! - 02:20pm 11/07/02

Hmm been a while since last post ... After Big Wednesday I've done virtually nothing but play WarIII and NWN all day and night. At the moment I'm 1/2 way through chapter 2 with all quests done & chests searched etc. Looks like it's going to be a bit quicker getting through the rest of it. In the forest down south of Post Llast there's a side quest where you need to find the realm of these shades, and to get there you need to key in the right combo onto this pillar. If you get it wrong however it summons up 2 skeletal knights that have a go at you. Athough I knew the sequence, I wondered if it would keep summoning more if I kept getting it wrong. Whaddya know, 3 levels later and it's still summoning :D. Now I've got a big dilemma: Do I keep going to L20, and then be able to rush through the rest of the campaign (possibly spoiling it by doing so)? Leave it as it is so I can come back to it if I need to? Destroy the pillar by solving the code and complete the quest? Dunno .. I've been going through a phase recently where I've just taken whatever comes in a game instead of relying on save / loads to get rid of bad outcomes, but by doing so has slowed down my play as I've got to make sure everything is optimised ahead of time. Sometimes it does increase my enjoyment of the game, but sometimes I catch myself spending hours in town buying / selling stuff and wonder WTF I'm doing. Hopefully the pillar has given the char one less thing to worry about (legitimately too ;) and I should be able to just concentrate on the plot ...

Dingo to DOT - 10:44am 09/05/02

Finally the dingo has died. I was planning a big day on the net today and suddenly remembered that DingoBlue is about to be shut down. I had already made up my mind to swap to DOT and had set up an account at work for to check out. As usual I hadn't written down the access numbers though, so I crossed my fingers and started up DingoBlue one last time. Thankfully it worked ... DOT has a pretty nice unlimited plan (no AUP!) for $24.95 a month, the only catch being the 5 hour cutoff limit. It seems strange that they are offering another type of unlimited account with a 10 hour cutoff for $5 more. Why would they do that? Seems to lead into the kickback conspiracy theory for telcos giving ISPs a better deal if they shorten their timeouts to make people redial more often :/. DOT also comes with ~2000 local access points, and just so happens they have one in Jimboomba! And finally the killer feature, DOT is connected directly into COMindico so there should be pretty decent pings to the AusGamers game servers and websites. To test this out I did some preliminary pings to the QGL server from my DingoBlue account before switching over: C:\>ping www.qgl.org Pinging qgl.org [203.220.0.12] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=161ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=140ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=247 Ping statistics for 203.220.0.12: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 120ms, Maximum = 161ms, Average = 138ms C:\>ping www.qgl.org Pinging qgl.org [203.220.0.12] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=110ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=121ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=110ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=247 Ping statistics for 203.220.0.12: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 110ms, Maximum = 121ms, Average = 115ms C:\>ping www.qgl.org Pinging qgl.org [203.220.0.12] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=170ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=247 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=247 Ping statistics for 203.220.0.12: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 120ms, Maximum = 170ms, Average = 135ms C:\>tracert www.qgl.org Tracing route to qgl.org [203.220.0.12] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 160 ms 110 ms 120 ms wdcax24.optusnet.com.au [210.49.0.254] 2 100 ms 110 ms 110 ms wdc1-fe0.gw.optusnet.com.au [198.142.245.1] 3 120 ms 130 ms 130 ms NDMC-1-200.gw.optusnet.com.au [198.142.160.213] 4 120 ms 120 ms 130 ms ndmc1-ge1-2.gw.optusnet.com.au [211.28.96.33] 5 130 ms 130 ms 130 ms pos5-1-0.sn2.optus.net.au [61.88.128.197] 6 130 ms 130 ms 130 ms GigEth12-0-0.sn1.optus.net.au [202.139.191.15] 7 511 ms 130 ms 140 ms Comindico.sn1.optus.net.au [203.202.186.174] 8 130 ms 130 ms 130 ms ge1-0.wsr01-kent-syd.comindico.net.au [203.194.29.249] 9 120 ms 130 ms 130 ms content-delivery-syd.comindico.net.au [203.194.26.6] 10 130 ms 130 ms 120 ms syd1.ausgamers.com [203.220.0.12] Trace complete. So pings aren't too bad, one or two spikes with a generally average 130ms ping. 10 hops was smaller than I expected, but bad pings right from the starting hop ? Now fire up DOT and try again ... C:\>tracert www.qgl.org Tracing route to qgl.org [203.220.0.12] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 90 ms 101 ms 90 ms acc07-wick-bne.comindico.com.au [203.220.79.135] 2 90 ms 90 ms 91 ms 203.194.59.30 3 130 ms 110 ms 120 ms ge5-0-0.cor01-wick-bne.comindico.com.au [203.194.59.193] 4 110 ms 100 ms 100 ms 203.194.1.5 5 100 ms 100 ms 100 ms ge1-0.wsr01-kent-syd.comindico.net.au [203.194.29.249] 6 100 ms 110 ms 100 ms content-delivery-syd.comindico.net.au [203.194.26.6] 7 100 ms 110 ms 110 ms syd1.ausgamers.com [203.220.0.12] Trace complete. C:\>ping www.qgl.org Pinging qgl.org [203.220.0.12] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=120ms TTL=249 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=110ms TTL=249 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=249 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=249 Ping statistics for 203.220.0.12: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 100ms, Maximum = 120ms, Average = 107ms C:\>ping www.qgl.org Pinging qgl.org [203.220.0.12] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=110ms TTL=249 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=249 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=249 Reply from 203.220.0.12: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=249 Ping statistics for 203.220.0.12: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 100ms, Maximum = 110ms, Average = 102ms Mmmmmmm, Niiiiiice. Don't think I've seen an average under 110 since I left the powerup servers. All looking good, real good. Might even blow the dust off some multiplayer games and see how they fare. Speaking of games, went out and picked up HoMM4 on the Tuesday to neatly fill up the semi-holiday I'm taking now. Finished the first map of the first campaign last night after about 15 hours, so it looks like it's going to take a while to get through. It's definately different to HoMM3, with a lot of new features that change the strategy remarkably (like heroes now participating in combat, multiple heroes (or none!) in army stacks, daily turnover for city production). I still don't know if I like it better than HoMM3, probably because I spent so much time playing HoMM3 I'm used to the strategies and micromanagement tricks. Giving that up for essentially the same game doesn't really help, but there's enough deeper level strategies and gameplay that is just starting to poke through now that will probably keep me going. If it gets played 1/2 as much as HoMM3 it's a winner ...

SD100000 - 10:56am 07/05/02

It's GONE !!! Finally, after 4 years & 2 months, Surgical Director is finally released. At the moment 2000 copies are being produced down in Melbourne for the conference next weekend. The last few weeks I haven't had the chance to do anything but eat, sleep, and code SD. Spent from Friday morning until the Sunday morning train ride up to bundy testing the install and making last minute adjustments. It will be good to get back into the things I've put on hold, like playing games (HoMM4 is out!), inlining, even reading mail :/ Now I guess I just need to work on my salesman's pitch ... Roll Up! Roll Up! Get you're free copies here! Everyone needs Surgical Director, even you young lad with the mangled foot. Come up here and watch SD cure you ...

AusForums, AusGamersMail, Oh My! - 05:19pm 29/04/02

Big day today for the AusGamers fans with the release of 2 really cool sites to add even more functionality to your AusGamers account. First off I tried out the shiny new AusForums section. Although it's been up for a while serving the QGL forums, you can now apply to get your very own personal forum. Seems to me more like an ego detector at the moment, but it's looking really promising. One to keep an eye on is Digital Pants, which I'm sure is going to go off (relatively speaking of course). The other is AusGamersMail, which is a pretty sweet Webmail facility so that you have another to give people. I think my list of email addresses is big enough at the moment, especially with another few set up for work, but you never know when you need webmail ;). On the home stretch now for werk. Only 5 days to go until it goes gold. I guess that means I better get back to it ...

MADMAN: Up and coming. - 01:24pm 17/05/02

Was just on Madman Entertainment's website and I saw this: a list of hopefully to be released items. SWEET go the NGE movies. Madman's MD and director of Animation Licensing is just back from meetings in the USA with some fantastic new title announcements for 2002 release.. Look out for more details and more exciting title announcements coming soon! Neon Genesis Evangelion Movies Spriggan Orphen Rurouni Kenshin Burn Up Excess Full Metal Panic Excel Saga Armitage Dual Matrix Armitage Polymatrix Robotech Vampire Princess Miyu Tv Transformers The Movie - Spec.ed. - The Madman Team

Robotech console game. - 01:13pm 17/05/02

There's been a fair bit more info released about this game, including new screenshots and movies! What other elements of Robotech were you convinced had to go into this game? Adam: The missiles are a huge part of the game. They're very different from anything else. Eric: We concentrated on the missiles and the volleys and shooting them down. Adam: We're working on making that easier for the player, but it's awesome. And you can do it in the head-to-head battles. As for the general look, we really tried hard to capture how action-packed the series is. Eric: Speed. It's all about speed. Robotech at gamers.com Robotech at Ruliweb (sourced from IGN)

It's a Glory! - 04:12pm 18/04/02

About a year ago I was flying from Brisbane to Sydney and I happened to look down at the plane shadow on some clouds we were above at the time. Surrounding the outline of the plane were definite rings of colour, similar to a rainbow. Since I haven't flown since when it was cloudy I haven't been able to study it more to see if it was a once off occurance, but since it stayed around for the whole length of the cloud we flew over (~5 mins) I would think this would most likely happen again. I've tried to come up with a number of theories, but each doesn't hold too much water under close scrutiny. A) There is another refraction point close to 1 degree that makes another rainbow. Although the most common one is out at ~22 degrees, there certainly are others that sometimes let you see double rainbows. If there was one down near that angle it would be pretty hard to test apart from the plane example. If it were though you would expect it to be circular and not conforming to the shape of the plane. B) Edge diffusion may cause a splitting of the colours. Although you can see edge diffusion on shadows of buildings etc, I don't recall seeing colour, just a gradual shade. Maybe since it was projected onto a very white surface it highlighted the colour change too ? C) Droplets on the border of the shadow gaining only 1/2 light, then refracting this back to the viewer. Since the cloud is not a solid surface, there is the potential that the overall solid shadow of the plane is reflected back from a point much lower than the surface of the cloud. This could mean quite a large discrepancy between the angle of the first droplets hit in the border of the shadow (at the top of the cloud) and the last droplets to refract a border in the middle of the cloud. I don't really see how each layer would refract different colour though, unless tied in with A) somehow. I just put this question to Dr Karl's self service science centre and within minutes I received a reply. It's a GLORY! Here's some explanation bits I dug up: Other Phenomena Due to Water Droplets The Corona If you look up at the sun or moon and are lucky enough to see a cloud passing under it (personally it is easier to see this effect with the moon) you may see the moon or sun surrounded by a series of coloured circles that extend a few angular degrees away from the body. The disk of light surrounding the body appears bluish at the centre, becomes white in the middle and ends with a reddish brown outer edge. This optical effect is called a Corona. These are not to be confused with the common broad circular halo that surrounds the sun or moon-the corona is far smaller and arises by a completely different mechanism. (Ice crystal halos will be described in detail later). The corona is produced by the diffraction of sun or moonlight by small water droplets in the clouds. As I explained earlier, diffracted light can 'bend' around obstacles and diffracted light can interfere with itself constructively or destructively. The interference of light waves due to diffraction can produce 'diffraction patterns' around the object, and this is the case in the clouds, where the water droplets (or ice crystals) produce a diffraction pattern of the sun or moon. This results in a bright ring surrounding the sun or moon. The bright ring, which is bluish near the centre, white towards the middle and red-brown towards the outer edge. This part is known as the aureole. The aureole in turn may be surrounded by coloured rings with blue inner edges and red-brown outer edges. The rings may also overlap, producing different mixes of colours. The smaller the water droplets in the cloud are, the larger the diffraction rings will be. If the water droplets in the cloud have a great variation in size, the colour and intensity variations will 'blur' together producing a fairly whitish and bland colouring. The Glory If you look out of an aeroplane down upon a cloud deck at the plane's shadow, you may be lucky enough to see the shadow surrounded by a series of coloured rings. This phenemon is known as the Glory or 'anti-corona'. This phenomena is harder to explain physically than the corona, but involves both diffraction of light combined with reflection of light by water droplets or ice crystals of various sizes. Using exact mathematical theory the intensity and distribution of the coloured rings of the glory can be calculated quantitatively, which gives results reasonably compatible with the observations, with the central region being bright and surrounded by a series of bright rings, with the brightness of the rings falling off as they get further away from the centre. The one I observed wasn't as spherical and had bumps near the wingtips and the tail, but it looks as though it has something to do with diffusion around the object too. Oh, well, that's that sorted. Now back to werk ....

ADOMoholic - 02:58pm 11/02/02

Ahh yes, nothing like the old classics. Found out last weekend that ADOM has finally reached version 1.0.0 after spending ~9 years in beta. Good news is that it means it's as complete as its ever gonna really get, bad news is that Thomas Biskup is now focusing on a Deluxe (read: paid for) version. Sandy is playing it too, and had the good fortune to pick up a Quaterstaff of Destruction (+2, 5d10+5) in her first few levels and is proceeding to thwack her way through with apparent ease. My most recent one is a wizard that picked up Magic missile, Teleport other and Strength of Atlas in the initial creation. Can't believe how thoroughly useful Strength of Atlas is, not only does it let you carry basically everything you run into, but also keeps the food intake at bay too. Here's a pic to reminisce by:

Note to self ... - 11:48pm 06/01/02

Fix the broken links. And find out where the hell all my old posts went :(

Heppie knew ear - 11:50pm 06/01/02

Another year, another holiday, another great time all-round. Went up to my brother's new place in Mackay for the Christmas / new year break (with a stint in Bundy of course). I guess it was hot everywhere around Queensland, but it was a stinker for Christmas day up in the tropical north. It was a wierd Cristmas too, since it was the first time we'd spent Christmas with just the immediate bowes clan, instead of the whole Bundy mob of cousins, uncles and ankle-biters. In the past year we'd been doing double the rellie parties too as Sandy's side is in Bundy too. I think it was the first Christmas Sandy had away from her side too. After picking up a new computer, the shuffle that ensued left one box free with nowhere to go. I've been thinking of getting Dad onto the internet for a while now so that he can do stock trading himself, so this was a perfect christmas present. Or so I thought. At first the new internal modem I picked up decided that it needed an MMX chipset to run (P200+ in it unfortunately), so I went back and exchanged it for an external modem. Installed it only to find out that even though it has 2 COM ports, only COM1 seemed to register in Win98 no matter what I did, so it was either the internet or the mouse, but not both :(. After that setback there really weren't any good solutions left, so in the end we decided to trade in the external modem for a new computer. Lucky we just made ~$1000 that day trading Gympie Gold to make the choice simpler. For all the hoohah about XP and gimmicky buttons on compaq keyboards to go 'straight to the internet', for a novice like Dad it all seemed to work remarkably well. In fact after seeing how easy a lot of things were on that computer, I've got a newfound appreciation for 'user friendliness' and the lengths some companies go to to actually make complex tasks look easy. At the moment dad is happily surfing the net, researching stocks, reading mail, etc. and still has not needed to look at the start menu, or explorer, or knowing how the CDROM works. Amazing stuff. As usual at Christmas, it's a time to play someone else's computer (especially if you can set some high scores ;). I managed to spend a lot of my time playing DiabloII - LoD hardcore characters with Scott, and although I kept dying in the second act, it was really fun. The expansion pack certainly added a lot more flavour to the game and made the mix just about right. It seems as though they really stood up and listened to what people were saying they'd like to see changed from the first, and what new things should be added (copious amounts of everything basically). I would almost say that Moria is now dead, but I've got to get myself a copy of LoD before I'll admit to that statement. Christmas presents included a hedge (complete with hedge trimmers) and a lawnmower, so apparently I now have a green thumb. New Year's resolution involves strapping on the inlines and testing out the new skate bowl they have just put up at the end of the street.

The Cat in the Hat! - 12:46pm 18/09/01

Had a browse over GreyMatr's website today and laughed myself silly. Good to see sites adding some spice to the whole mix of hosted sites on the AusGamers Network (ala Erther, GGF, Trog's Haus etc). Make sure you appreciate the subtle work done on the AusLamers banner at the top. There's also a shot of the Transformers video I got Saint for his 21st ;) [GreyMatr last LAN]

Dead site ? - 04:46pm 11/09/01

Well, almost. After the move to Sydney the network has been a tad flakey for hosteds as they still reside in Brisbane. Opens up the Triumph engine to some internet traffic problems that it never used to need to deal with. The counter died quietly too :( Not much happening in this neck of the woods. After having a brief stint of Anarchy Online it just crashed too many times to maintain a good positive feel. It's a shame though as it's been the first MMORPG in a while to really get my attention. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might have been my computer speed (or lack thereof) and system setup that may have contributed to a few of them, but any program that bluescreens Win2k isn't really worth running. Been playing a fair bit of Heroes3 recently as Sandy started back up with the campaigns. The background music remided me of sleepless nights playing some of the maps, so I loadeed up some of the old save games. Now I've finished to whole campaign of the original and started playing some epic maps downloaded from the net. Angelic pride has kept Sandy and I playing into the wee hours for the past week :/. I knew I had today off so I pulled an all nighter trying to get into the 4th chapter of the map. Gotta hand it to the creator, it IS an epic map and now the competition is almost getting into insane levels. 1800 cyclops kings ? sheesh. Got the AusGamers LAN index cleaned up a little today, hopefully it'll make it a little easier for admis to use. Certainly makes my job of adding new organisers easier ;) QGL finals for AGL is less than a month away now, and were furiously planning what we can do. Sound like there'll be a northern invasion from Rocky, Mackay, etc. as Darren's been hinting at ~100 out-of-towners making the pilgramage down to this one. Should be bIg. Hopefully we'll have another Round Table meeting to discuss ways in which QLD LANs can run better.

Share Trading with VRWorld Inc. - 05:11pm 20/07/01

I've had a week off my normal work and have used the time to catch up on some promised work for AusGamers and also do some share trading for Dad. He'd come into some money a while back and after debating it for a long time, decided to invest in the sharemarket (which I've been planning to do for ages). After sitting in a solid investment company for ~2 months, I finally had the time to explain a few things about the share market to Dad and showed him a few stocks that looked interesting. I was able to spend most of this week constantly on the phone to Dad and hunting my way through the ASX looking for more 'interesting' shares. Its paid off though, as he's made ~$5000 in this week alone, with one share increasing by ~100%. It's SHAREMARKET FEVER !! ;)

404 error with a twist - 03:55pm 20/07/01

Seems like someone has had enough time on their hands to mock up a dummy 404 page. H2G2 fans will find the similarities amusing ...

SprayNwipes missing JET post - 12:25pm 16/07/01

SprayNwipe had some important things to say on the RC1 - dissappionted by lack of examples thread on the Auran JET boards on Friday. Here's the missing text to more fully understand Falagard's response. Why was it yanked ? dunno. This is the most sane I've seen SprayNwipe answer regarding anything to do with Auran after he left over 2 years ago. Was it to do with the coments on what he thought JET needed ? doubt it. All these points have been brought up on the boards before. My bet is that the brief mention of previous knowledge gained while under the employ of Auran was the thing that pushed it over the edge.... /me slaps SprayNwipe around a bit with an NDA smelling of trout. :D

Virtual Realms - 01:01pm 11/07/01

Found an interesting startup company on my internet trekking recently. Virtual Realms is situated in the new iLab centre in Toowong. May have to check them out at some point (or at least keep tabs on their website)

Freefall v1.0 - 12:43pm 10/07/01

Are you tired of games that suck? Want something MORE out of your gaming experience? Well up to now you've been out of luck. But the moment you've been waiting for has arrived! LamerGamerz Inc. brings you FREE FALL in fully rendered 2D splendor! Oh yes! this one is worth checking out ;]

More realistic pathfinding - 05:19pm 20/06/01

Gamasutra have delivered a great in-depth article about extensions to A* to make more realistic pathfinding possible.

Startopia, Ranarama & emulators - 12:09pm 08/06/01

Startopia, a game of space trading with a theme hospital feel, has gone gold and will be gracing store shelves soon. The similarities could possibly be attributed to the developers Mucky Foot being an offshoot of Bullfrog 4-5 years ago (the same time Peter left, in fact I thought for a long time that this was the company Peter set up before seeing Lionhead Studios). Tom Forsyth is one of the main guys behind Startopia and also a frequent poster to the Game Dev Algorithms mailing list. I've always liked the name "mucky foot", and at one point had a collage of Mucky Foot and Bullfrog logos splattered over my desktop background. After reading through some of the extra info about Startopia, one of the alien names (Karmarama) reminded me of a really old Amstrad CPC game called "Ranarama" that I used to play over and over and over and .. well, you get the idea. I'm continually impressed at the internet as I quickly did a google search for Ranarama and was flooded with a wealth of information about this classic game. Things like the actual game itself as well as an Amstrad CPC emulator to play it on! Gloooorius internet ! I LUB J00 !!!

Towel day - 03:22pm 24/05/01

Ok, all you hoopy froods out there better bring your towels tomorrow (May 25th) to wave that last hurrah with. If you don't know why you should be carrying your towel all tomorrow, then you need to be enlightened.

Mad cows'n'stuff - 09:01pm 06/04/01

Finally finished up on the application today and it's burned on a disk in front of me. Hopefully Russ will do some cleaning up to the general appearance of it over the next 3 weeks, but this is the last I'll see of it before it hits 1500 surgeons by the time I get back from England. Ahh yes, England. Home of Lionhead studios and mad cows. A coincidence that wasn't lost on some Black and White fans. I'm not too sure how I'll survive over there without a regular infusion of red meat, but hopefully the 1/2 price Mars Bars will help ;) Should be a pretty good trip I reckon. It's Sandy's first foray outside of Australia (even though she's been virtually everywhere around Australia) and she's planned a 7 day jaunt up through Scotland checking out the castles'n'stuff. I'm just looking forward to seeing the rellies over there and just generally being on holiday in a foreign country thing. If we get enough time I might see if we can drop into the Trocadero while we're in London and check out the huge VR area they have there. Well, that's it, I'm off for 3 weeks with little or no net connection. (Hrmmm, that's prolly gonna be harder to swallow than the meat ;) l8r

Bridge Builder - 12:10pm 04/04/01

It may look crap, but it's taking the LAN scene by storm! BRIDGE BUILDER !! Yep, that's right, engineering bridges that can support a train going across it is taking over from FPS's (well for a little while at least). Stayed up late Thursday night after setting up CPL-Pacific playing Bridge Builder with Cold. We managed to complete level 15 in a truly bizarre LANning moment where whacky bridge building techniques were put to the test. Here's a pic of us playing it on the big screen (level 13 I think.) What I like most about this game is not that you get to build cool looking bridges, or fighting over the controls when another person's attempt sinks to the bottom of the river, but that simple game mechanics and simple visual representation can still be super addictive. I don't know if it was actually designed for engineering students, or that everyone has a secret desire to build functioning bridges, but there is a quintessential essence in this game that just makes you want to try it again. That "Just one more level before bed" syndrome. It's been a looong time since a game has grabbed me and not let me go as much as this. Hopefully B&W will be another ...

ALL YOUR CISCO ARE BELONG TO US - 10:53am 28/03/01

Switches for CPL-P. Schweeeeet ....

Tick, Tock ... - 07:13pm 27/03/01

There was a rumour floating around that Black and White could possibly be in Aussie stores by the 26th (yesterday), but it seems that the 30th will be a more accurate estimate. All I know is that if it comes out before the CPL-Pacific I'll know exactly what I'll be doing when I'm not setting up / running around fixing things. B2 came around to the QGL LAN on the weekend to show off the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo and some Japanime. Since he was working at EA on the Gold Coast I'd jokingly asked where my copy of B&W was. He mentioned that he didn't pop by the warehouse before he left. We all laughed, but it struck home that yes, it is potentially in the country. Not just being this ephemeral release over in England or the US, but here. Sat around and watched some of Saint's downloaded movies of B&W in action. It's just gonna be awesome ...

6 days to go ... - 07:02pm 27/03/01

The countdown is getting shorter and shorter until Surgical Director makes its way onto the world stage. 6 days left for me to fine tune the innards and build a suitable install program. It's coming together fairly well, with virtually all the areas that were known to cause GPF's fixed, even the resizing issue that was windows and clarion's fault. Carmel has been toiling away at the website, so hopefully it will be live before I head off. There's also icons and backgrounds for her to work on so that should keep her busy for a while. Oh, and thank god for CitySearch. Nearly had to make something like that ...

AusGameJobs - 12:09pm 23/03/01

AusGameJobs has had an unfortunate demise due to conficts of interest between SprayNwipe and the purpose of the site. Bit sad really as I thought it was a marvellous idea. Was even considering ways to increase it to allow more use of the Triumph engine it was slowly being converted to. Hopefully there'll be a way to resurrect it ... Any takers ? ;)

Cabbies ... - 02:10pm 21/03/01

Followed some cabs in today. As usual I suppose, but cabs are virtually everywhere they just fade into insignificance. But this time I noticed that on the bumper of the cab in front was "Black & White". TeeHee ... On the topic of "Fading into insignificance", Russ had picked up a Camry as a rental while his beamer is getting fixed. He was amazed at the feeling of being oblivious to everyone when driving it compared to the stares / glances / looks / comments / drag races he usually gets. In fact he was so taken aback that we discussed at length the merits of selling a car on the fact that "it will make you NOT stand out from the crowd"

12 working days to go ... - 01:59pm 21/03/01

That's right, 12 working days left on the project before I go on holidays. Once I return it will be packaged and ready for distribution to 1,500 surgeons that won't know what hit 'em ;). Of course that's taking into consideration that there's a 2 day QGL is on this weekend and 5 days lost next weekend due to CPL-Pacific. People are running around like madmen trying to get both events in order, while I'm struggling with completing a product as well. THis isn't going to be a fun few weeks methinks. At least there's the trip after that. Phoned Helen and Tony today to see what they are doing over that period. Looks like the kids will be home early on in the holidays, so we'll most likely go straight there at the start. Sandy has been planning a castle hunt up through Scotland, so it looks like we'll be hiring a car for part of it. I'm hoping there's at least some computers along the way to play B&W somewhere. Otherwize I'm gonna go mental ...

Black & White & Gold all over - 11:41am 20/03/01

Received an email a few days ago (damn I'm busy at work) : From: webmaster@lionhead.com Subject: Black & White & Gold all over. Date: 16 Mar 2001 15:06:29 -0000 Dear VRBones, Lionhead Studios is very excited to share the news that Black & White for the PC HAS GONE GOLD!!!!!!! Oh my, oh my .. let the salivation begin :P~~~ 6th of April is the destined store release date, just b4 my holidays dammit! Might have to look at hiring a lappy for the trip :9

Pogo Sticks Awaaaaaay!! - 02:24am 16/03/01

What happens when an inocent bystander asks a seemingly innoccuous question on the Auran JET boards ...

Europa Universalis - 03:14pm 15/03/01

New strategy game called Europa Universalis is making its mark on the diehard strategy fans. It's been released in Europe fora while, but is finally getting out to other countries, altho not Oz yet :(. Set between 1492 and 1792 it a VERY complex semi-realtime game focusing mainly on diplomacy and trade, with a few wars thrown in for good measure. Look boardgamish from the screenshots (where its roots lie), but the sounds of the complexity might put it more in the league of Civ than Risk. Apparently some of the Auran crew are also giving it the big thumbs up.

Hello - 03:09pm 14/03/01

Blah

#auran_Jet finally - 12:45pm 20/03/01

'Bout time they made an #Auran_Jet channel. Popped in today and even beat Rachael into it: 17:15:53 *** Guest60475 is now known as Rachael 17:15:56 [VRBworkin] Hi ;) 17:16:00 [Rachael] HI 17:16:07 [Rachael] You got on here pretty quick! 17:16:11 [VRBworkin] :P 17:16:23 [VRBworkin] I saw you updating the Auran Corporate site ;) 17:16:38 [Rachael] wow - I feel watched :) 17:16:55 [VRBones] I thought you were going to update about the seminar ? 17:17:10 [VRBones] heheh ... 17:17:13 [Rachael] Just finishing that up right now ! 17:17:21 [Rachael] I'm the naughty one! 17:17:28 [Rachael] gotta go 17:17:30 * VRBones hides his copy of stalkers anonymous ... TeeHee .. ;) I think she now has a legitimate reason for that paranoia to set in ;)

Seminar at Auran - 02:29am 16/03/01

AIMIA are conducting a seminar titled "The Making of a Game" at the Auran offices on March 15th. The evening will include Greg Lane talking on 'The making of a Game', a tour of the facilities and the sound recording studios at Auran. Also the possibility of a demo ? Contact Jillian if this sounds like your cup of tea ...

Seminar at Auran - 07:10pm 09/03/01

INVITATION TO ATTEND AIMIA EVENING - THE MAKING OF A GAME Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association, Queensland invites you to attend: THE MAKING OF A GAME The evening will include Greg Lane talking on 'The making of a Game', a tour of the facilities and the sound recording studios at Auran AND the chance to view a demo of a new Auran title in development. The evening will end with a light supper. Numbers are limited so book now! SEMINAR: The Making of a Game TIME: 5.45pm (Doors close at 6pm) - 7.00pm DATE: MARCH 15th 2001 VENUE: AURAN Offices Level 3, Australian Estates Co Building 24 Macquarie Street Teneriffe Brisbane Parking out the front of building PRESENTER: CEO of Auran, Greg Lane COST: To cover refreshments only and payable on the night $5.00 for AIMIA members and students (on proof of ID) $10.00 to non-members RSVP: Jillian on 3405 6611 or jillian.hellaby@dcilgps.qld.gov.au

CivIII update - 01:46pm 08/03/01

There's been some life on the CivilizationIII site recently (the Sid Meier one, not the Call to Power one), with some pretty interesting information regarding how diplomacy will be treated. The Abe Lincoln morphing face reminded me of black & white for a second. There is also an update to their Q&A section with answers regarding terrain, replays and retreating from combat. If you need something to tie you over until the expected 2003/4 release date, check out FreeCiv ...

Nam Shub of Enki - 06:14pm 06/03/01

On the Lionhead chat there was an EA rep that logged in from the Lionhead office with the name of Enki. It took me a while to work out where I had heard that name before, but then it hit: Nam Shub of Enki! I still couldn't remember exactly where I'd heard it, but I had first thought it was a Quake related thing (possibly a clan). After asking Enki he had no recollection for Nam Shub, so I was left wondering where I heard it ... Looked it up today and it was actually an Aussie band's name that I stumbled on while listening to some Erther. It also happened to be the term used to define the single consciousness or language used around the Tower of Babel in Babylonian times. Neal Stephenson also used it to define the programming of the mind in SnowCrash (as proclaimed by the owner of namshub.com). Eeerie stuff ...

Gore Preview - 12:52pm 06/03/01

I had a great time testing out the Gore demo last Saturday. BigKid were there and compiled a preview of the coming demo. Some pretty slick coding going on there and the Eyecon/Slam team were really down to earth about the whole thing. Good luck guys!

Polar Bears - 08:33pm 02/03/01

Interesting fact: "Polar Bears are left handed" Now imagine the scientists trying to work that out ...

HHGTTG - Infocom - 03:25pm 02/03/01

Man, what a find! The original infocom text adventure of Hitch Hinker's Guide to the Galaxy parsed into a java applet, and provided free to the web! Go .. go play ... now! (And don't look out the window)

Word of the Day - 05:16pm 28/02/01

discombobulated adj having self-possession upset; thrown into confusion; "the hecklers pelted the discombobulated speaker with anything that came to hand"; "looked at each other dumbly, quite disconcerted"- G.B.Shaw [syn: disconcerted] Russ spurted this one out on the phone to someone today when describing how he felt. The query must have come back "what's that", as Russ replied "Oh, you know, Look it up!". I think the stress of SQL scripting is taking Russ from fabulous highs to infuriating lows. Right now it's one of the latter ...

Quote of the day - 11:24am 27/02/01

Well actually last night on The Fat... Peter Wilkins to Tony Squires: "What's this? Mr Splinter Man coming off the fence for once ??"

The Don - 11:03am 27/02/01

99.94

AI - the moofie - 05:14pm 26/02/01

The AI site has been drastically updated with all sorts of flash and trailer goodies ... Oh, and another board to 0wnz0riz0r ;)

B&W done !!@!! - 04:42pm 25/02/01

Say it all really ...

Mind Rover - 12:55pm 23/02/01

Been spending some time playing Mind Rover recently, and was especially fun last weekend after I downloaded it as Greig was trying it out too. It's really cool seeing people trying to analyse AI. Probably one of the best AI programming games out there at the moment, with full 3D graphics and some spiffy OpenGL effects. The AI componentry is pretty simplistic, but still gives the essentials (plus rockets! can't complain about a game featuring rockets!). Kind of a cross between bugs and Crobots. Seriously considering buyingthis sucker, specifically for the comps and tournaments that are held using it.

Midtown Madness AI - 12:36pm 23/02/01

Gamasutra have another article up on AI. This time focusing on building a believable working city for you to drive around and scare the bejeeesus out of people.

Webcams - 12:27pm 23/02/01

Y'know I've never really seen the point of webcams, until jamie pulled this stunt: Other stunts .. or possibly some live stuff ...

Word of the Day - 03:52pm 21/02/01

acumen \uh-KYOO-muhn\, noun: Quickness of perception or discernment; penetration of mind; the faculty of nice discrimination; shrewdness shown by keen insight ``In the trial, Microsoft is expected to argue its advance in the browser market was the result of its own business acumen and Netscape's missteps.'' --How a Giant Software Maker Played the Game of Hardball, New York Times, October 8, 1998 Also happens to be a nice little company name ;)

Quote of the day - 03:47pm 20/02/01

Demon on IRC: "j0rn't c4w, j0r sl4w"

EyE YaM l33t h4cker !!@! - 07:15pm 19/02/01

ROFLMAO !!!!

Lionhead programming FAQtoid - 12:25am 19/02/01

FAQ for getting into programming ...

Word of the Day - 11:11am 16/02/01

Manifesto \Man`i*fes"to\, n.; A public declaration, usually of a prince, sovereign, or other person claiming large powers, showing his intentions, or proclaiming his opinions and motives in reference to some act done or contemplated by him. Ok, thought that's what it meant. Then why was the one nation party releasing a manifesto ??

How many lines of code in B&W? - 03:33pm 15/02/01

14:26:57 [RedMercur] I think the last figure was 1,200,000-1,400,000 lines w0w ...

CPL - Pacific goes live - 02:39pm 15/02/01

CPLpacific is all go with the launch of the new site and rules etc.. Should be mega huge!! It'll be good to get down there too and see the rest of the lads that have been working hard to get it up and running.

It's Beta babey YEAH! - 02:30pm 15/02/01

FINALLY finished releasing Surgical Director as a beta yesterday! Although the installation wasn't the smoothest thing going, at least it looks as though it had all the parts there for the obligatory manual install. Been spending the day so far ironing out the kinksin the install procedure as there is not going to be much desire to do them any other time until the next beta release. For now the beta will be limited to just some local sites to make sure it's on par with everything, and to see if there is any real problems left that we've been subconsciously avoiding. At least the final stretch has started and the finishing gates are just over the hill ...

More B&W AI - 05:17pm 09/02/01

Richard gets interviewed. Man I wish this guy would STOP STEALING MY IDEAS !! ;)

The Tides and all things Lunar - 02:29pm 09/02/01

I've been following up on some research Dad had been doing about mapping the lunar orbit and tracking tides. As Dadis working out on a charter fishing boat, the brightness of the moon and tides are fairly important things that determine when fish are going to be hungry (Thus more catchable). There is simple things like the incoming tide from low tide is god as thereis scraps of food etc that has been left on the tidal banks during low tide that the fish would like to get at. Also larger fish would like to get at the fish that follow in the tide, and so on. Brightness of the moon also dictates fish hunger (especially pelagics) as no moon at night makes it harder to see, thus harder to feed. Mornings after new moon are another great opportunity for hungry fish. As Dad was listening to different people talking about the moon, there were a few things that didn't seem to match up, so he had a look himself into what makes the tides tick, and how to track the moon orbit. Of course this was an epic quest into all sorts of areas and upon his latest visit, most things were worked out (he'd even built his own lunar chart for fishing). There were, however a few points that we had tried to nut out while he was here. - Does the moon spend the same amount of time in the sky each day? This was related to whether the moon's orbit was about the equator or skewed. As most moons and rings of planets are equatorial, you would expect that to be the case here. but the moon's orbit is actually more in line with the plane of the sun than the plane of the equator. In fact the word of the day is based on this. - Most texts say that new the highest tide is directly under the moon, however new moon tides would be expected at midday (when both the moon and the sun are on the same side puling in the same direction) when it's acutally at 9am, 3 hours BEFORE the maximum gravitational force is applied. Still trying to work that one out :/ Some light Tidal reading ...

Word of the Day - 01:52pm 09/02/01

syzygy \Syz"y*gy\ (s[i^]z"[i^]*j[y^]), n.; pl. Syzygies (-j[i^]z). [L. syzygia a joining together, conjunction, Gr. syzygi`a; sy`n with + zeygny`nai to join, zygo`n yoke: cf. F. syzygie. See Yoke, n.] 1. (Astron.) The point of an orbit, as of the moon or a planet, at which it is in conjunction or opposition; -- commonly used in the plural. 2. (Gr. & L. Pros.) The coupling together of different feet; as, in Greek verse, an iambic syzygy. 3. (Zo["o]l.) (a) Any one of the segments of an arm of a crinoid composed of two joints so closely united that the line of union is obliterated on the outer, though visible on the inner, side. (b) The immovable union of two joints of a crinoidal arm. Line of syzygies (Astron.), the straight line connecting the earth, the sun, and the moon or a planet, when the latter is in conjunction or opposition; -- used chiefly of the moon.

NNs and MMORPGs ? - 04:23pm 07/02/01

In a huge mish-mash of acronyms, a Lionhead forum discussion about using a huge neural network to drive a MMORPG over a distributed network. Sounds like someone nearly got a mental hernia thinking up that one ..

JET Beta 2 - 02:06pm 06/02/01

I guess the big news of last week was the release of JET beta 2 on Wednesday. Andrew and I were on the phone discussing when it would be released (refreshing like m0f0s) when I saw it appear on the main JET page. After some frantic scrabbling I managed to get it down in under 2 minutes thanx to the phat pipe here at work. Andrew had the agonising wait of a 56K modem, so I burned a CD of it and headed over there after work. Some interesting stuff in the AI parts that were included in this release. Apart from some naming conventions to get used to, the actor approach that they had used was VERY close to an approach I had just been discussing with Clock. It all looks pretty solid, although there's certainly areas to expand the framework for my needs. That's the way it all has been anyway so I was expecting as much. Now I need to get off my sunburned ass and get this Bloodbowl AI going.

Word of the Day - 01:44pm 06/02/01

protagonist \Pro*tag"o*nist\, n. [Gr. ?; prw^tos first + ? an actor, combatant, fr. ? a contest.] One who takes the leading part in a drama; hence, one who takes lead in some great scene, enterprise, conflict, or the like. Interesting Fact: The protagonist of a Greek drama was its leading actor, of whom there could be but one in any play. This is an etymological nicety that many modern writers continue to observe when using the word to refer to the main character of a drama or other fiction. Thus when the members of the Usage Panel were asked “How many protagonists are there in Othello?” the great majority answered “One” and offered substitutes such as antagonist, villain, principal, and deuteragonist to describe Desdemona and Iago. But there is reputable precedent from the 17th century on for using protagonist to mean simply “important actor” or “principal party,” with no implication of uniqueness, as in There are three protagonists in this sluggish novel. Smith and Jones were the protagonists in the struggle over the future of the computer company. Thus, while some writers may prefer to confine the word to a singular sense in their own usage, it is pedantic to insist that the looser use is incorrect. · The use of protagonist to refer to a proponent has become common only in the 20th century and may have been influenced by a misconception that the first syllable of the word represents the prefix pro-, “favoring.” In sentences such as He was an early protagonist of nuclear power, this use is likely to strike many readers as an error and can usually be replaced by advocate or proponent with no loss of sense.

Super-Toys last al summer long - 01:38pm 06/02/01

A short story by David Aldiss titled Super-Toys Last All Summer Long is the inspiration for the new speilberg movie, AI. A fascinating read ...

Word of the Day - 04:35pm 05/02/01

Thought I might start expanding my vocab as well as attempting to keep semi-regular posts going. Both probably good habits I should be doing more of. Engender: en·gen·der (n-jndr) v. en·gen·dered, en·gen·der·ing, en·gen·ders. v. tr. - To bring into existence; give rise to: “Every cloud engenders not a storm” (Shakespeare). - To procreate; propagate. Occurrance: I was mulling over some words on the thinking chair (toilet) and was trying to work out whether engender was a word I'd heard or had made up from a previous thought process involving the soundings of endangered and gender. Turns out it was an actual word, although not quite the meaning I was thinking of (something more like endeared)

QGL LAN - 04:20pm 05/02/01

Another quality QGL event came and went on the weekend with ~300 players filling the ANZ stadium again. The power problems from last LAN were totally fixed this time. I don't recall any powerouts at all! Had 6 new 3 phase distribution boards this time, with each capable of ~180 amps. Suprising seeing one distro board providing more power than we had back at Yeronga. It was the network's time to fuck up this LAN, with rogue DHCP servers everywhere, promised switches / cables not turning up, etc. We were madly making cables in the morning when we worked out one bag of cables wasn't goingto make it. Cabled up 300m in ~5m lengths in ~3 hours ... Didn't get to even set up my computer this LAN, just sat down at the DC if I had a break. We ran a Virtua Tennis comp on the day and you really tell the people that had one of those suckers at home. Khel got a headache and headed off before the tourney, so I teamed up with Sven for some fun games. Morphyne/Stryker were the in form team in the practice sessions and pretty easily took out the comp. It seemed wierd packing up and heading off after only one day after the 3 day slaw of the finals, but it was good to get home with a bit of energy left.

B&W AI - 01:17pm 22/01/01

An article shows some insight into the AI behind Black and White.

Thanx for the CDs !!! - 03:39pm 15/01/01

Had to rescue some of Andrew's CD's from not being played ;). Now it's singalong time with They Might be Giants in the office: Particle Man, Particle Man... :D

Time ... - 03:56am 14/01/01

I reckon they should make a watch which measures time as it is perceived, so that when you're waiting for a bus and you say "Gee, it feels like I've been waiting for an hour", you'd look at your watch and it would really be an hour.

Arrrr me hearties!!! - 01:30pm 11/01/01

The QGL forums keep churning out classic moments

If chairs were sold by microsoft - 10:50am 11/01/01

Microsoft are teaming up with Lay-Z-Boy to create the ultimate sofa, have a read of the discussion it sparks up ;) My take on it: If Chairs were built by Microsoft - You would expect the chair to fall apart at least once a day - Chair legs would be included with floor v1.3, or sold seperately - Cushions made for chair v1.0 are not compatible with chair v2.0 or will work at greatly reduced comfort - The chair would secretly talk to all the other chairs to see if you've been sitting on them too. - The chairs are so bloated and large that you dissappear into the layZboy, never to be seen again - The De'cor is totally ruined by bringing in another chair from a rival chair company. Chairs will secretly fight it out behind the scenes to see who's the favourite chair - The chair would ask you before you sat on it whether it should be your preferred chair for all sitting purposes. If so it hides a leg from the other chairs. - Chairs would leave reminders that you really need to buy cushions v1.734 to improve your sitting enjoyment - Chairs would try to convince you that they could also work as a toaster.

Why star trek could never occur - 01:45pm 09/01/01

Dilbert creator Scott Adams wrote this gem (under the "Life Will Not Be Like Star Trek " section) They would sneak up behind you and seal your ass shut as a practical joke.

Russ gone Surfing! - 02:30pm 20/12/00

Russ walked in yesterday with a big grin on his face and stated "I've just bought a 9'1" mini-mal and I'm off tonight!". Well, from that point on I knew my holidays were going to start earlier than expected. I had planned on working furiously for the last 2 weeks before christmas to get some work done while I'm still thinking of it as well as justifying a 2 week break. I've enjoyed working here so much sometimes it feels like I'm on holidays anyway! But without Russ around there's going to be less and less I can do, and added to that the whole feeling in SEA has been slowly moving toward party mode in the last 3 weeks. I think I'll take the work box home actually. The aircon in here has been on the fritz (not unpleasantly hot, but just a dreary tepid intead of a cold blast that keeps you awake) and it eliminates another 1&1/2 hrs of travel. Greig and Scott are back from Sydney too, so I'm sure an Athlon800 would go down well with the other boxes there ;).

Quote of the Day - 05:52pm 07/12/00

Jim on IRC: The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lie down on some seaweed and roll around until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go, "Hey, I'm Vine Man."

TrogWare! - 04:34pm 07/12/00

Bahahahahahah .... no really ... Bahahahahahahhahahahahahha .... Dunno who set it up, but that's one neato chrissy present right there! BAM!

QGL Finalz over!! - 05:03pm 05/12/00

... and thank god for that. I don't think I could have stayed up much longer, even with the blood -> Jolt transfusion that I attempted. Started off on Friday when I had all the gear packed in the car and Greig too by 10:30 (well, not all the gear, but I'll get to that). Got into work and get connected to find that we were getting to the stadium by 1pm instead of 3pm as I thought. Oh well, I knew I wasn't getting much work done that day anyway ... start the backup and work on preparing the other things going on. people were reeling off jobs in IRC faster than I could read for a while, so I had to even start making a list of the things to do. It pretty long pretty quick. First up were the trophies. I'd already picked up the bulk of them the day before, but there were 2 more left over that were stuffups that we thought we may as well use. We were still figuring out what we wanted to do with them and what to engrave on the plaques with 1/2 hr to go! (:) ... They came out pretty good though, and I got some good feedback from a lot of ppl saying the trophies were looking j0r. Here's a pic. Next I had to head over and get the headphones. Trinity from Rocky had organised some free headphones to be shipped down for the shitkunts that only brought speakers. Great idea, but not quite enough as the headphones went in the first 1/2 hr :).Still, I think it's really little things like that that help out the whole feeling of the LAN to the players. Turn up at the hall and there's tables and chairs being set up everywhere. Starting to get the anticipation going for another huge event. You can just see the whole thing coming together finally. Helped set up for a while and had also arranged to go with Saint to get the Jolt. I'd left a bunch of stuff back home and was planning a mad dash back to get it all and swap over to the Subaru while I was there. Seemed like we could do withut a lot of the stuff i'd forgotten for a while, so me & Greig went to lunch while saint made his way in. We met up at the hall with some confusion going on as ppl thought I'd already gone for the jolt while I was away. It was sorted out and it all arrived for drinking availability. Took Greig off to Andrew's and continued on to get Darren for the Round Table. Somewhere between Milton and Aspley I got caught out trying to go the back way and get lost in the doldrums of Ashmore. Soo many twisty little crappy streets that bend back onto themselves. Took me f@#$ing 15 minutes to get back to where I started! Got back in time for some more setting up and the Great PlayerTag Stringing Session of 2000. quite an awesome effort. Was preparing to go home to get the car when Sandy mentioned she'll drive it in for me! I totally didn't expect that, but was great as I could spend more time setting up and preparing forthe round table. The round table started pretty much on time, with a lot of things discussed. Good to see the Mackay and Rocky ppl there. I think it made everyone take it a bit more seriously, well almost everyone. Zorro just took it as a fresh opportunity to tell the world of his wonderous moneymaking scheme via the canteen. Well, at least everyone got to experience him first hand. Went for a bit longer than expected and it ground to a halt after 3 hours, but definately some constructive work in getting everyone co-operating again. A few of us were planning on staying over on the friday night, and ran into problems with the security not wanting people to sleep on site. So I stayed up and played the DC all night while the others crashed. 7am in the morning and there was still 70% ofthe hall not networked and 40% without power. By the time the doors opened at 8 there were 5 of us going flat out cabling and powering the place up. By 9:30 the place was done and packed to the hilt with gamers. It was mad the first hour. I had little involvement in running the comps apart from the AoE2 and Racing, so I had a fair bit of time to help out solving network & power problems, as well as having a chat to the visitors from afar and the guests strolling through the door. AoE2 was due that day at 9:30pm. Vile was asking for it to be put forward, so we got it underway by 5pm. Didn't really interfere with nything else that was planned. Vile B failed to show, as well as Shambler's team, so it was up to me & toad to face Vile. I was predicting 10 minutes max, but we lasted for ~20. I guess that was OK ;) Played a fair bit of Virtua Tennis on the DC during the day. I think the practice in singles thenight b4 helped a bit as I hardly lost a game. Doubles were really fun too. almost the same feel as real tennis, but still playable for beginners. Looking at having a DC Virtua Tennis comp next LAN. Had some hassels the next night too with security, even though it was all cleared up from the night before. Trog weaved some magic to clear up the whole situation. Anyway, it all came down to another sleepless night :(. Got 1/2 hr sleep but woke back up worried something bad was going to happen. Either that or the Jolt was not letting go that easy. sunday cameand went pretty quick, with hardly any power or network problems to fix and only thre nascar to work on, it was good to sit back and review the whole LAN. Still felt bad that some of the things we wanted to do we didn't get time for, and really felt sorry for Jim that the amount of time gettign the ISDN in and setup was almost wasted. If only people knew all the stuff going on behind the scenes that makes the LAN what it is ... Nascar3 was pretty fun, Herpy and Buhweet wereneck and neck going into the final race, with whoever beat the other coming second overall. Metal decided not to play for some fucked up reason, but on the good side he lent his wheel to Ducker so he could compete better. Ducker couldn't get everything going, but at least he made the effort. Boba made the effort too and when he got the wheel from Ducker he was pretty competitive too. I was really pleased he did join in as I knew he was getting the Virtual Athlete trophy and it was designed for people to try all the comps. Boba seems to enjoy most games, or at least try them, even though public opinion seems to dictate that you stick to what you're good at and denounce the rest as 'ghey'. That's the narrowmindedness that really fucks up the whole advancement toward professional gaming. The race itself was pretty eventful, with me trying to do some manipulating of theAIs and drivers to get a real close contest between Herpy and Buhweet. It almost paid off until I hit the wall while concentrating on the gap between them. Oh well, I knew I'd clinch it anyway without finishing first, but I tried like mad to make up the 6 seconds I lost from stupid driving. presentations were done and the huge packup began. Had to run arounda bit dropping poeple off, but I was glad of doing something like that as I was so nuked by then that I couldn't really work too much on the packup. The drive home was a doozy too. was hallucinating a bit from sleep deprivation and slowed twice for a car thatturned out to be only a buch of reflector poles on the side of the road :(. Tried pulling up and getting some shuteye, but the jolt didn't make that too easy so I kept going. Finished up driving ~60 down the highway absolutely crapping myself. Arrived home in one piece and crashed ... Oh the joys of QGL admin.

AusGameJobs running on Triumph - 03:07pm 28/11/00

After a bit of arm twisting (well, not too much,he gave in pretty quick), I convinced SprayNwipe to move the AusGameJobs site over onto the Triumph news engine. It also gave him the opportunity to use the forum that is also linked to the engine. It's now pretty much in place, with only cosmetic changes needed to put some polish on it. I'm continually impressed at the flexibility of the engine to fit into all sorts of web styles. I've been copying sites to show the owners what it would look like under the triumph engine and it is almost unnoticable from the main site within 1/2 Hr. You also get a lot of other stuff to play with like forums as well. There's still more to come too, as the main goal for the Triumph engine of being able to share news is still to be fully implemented. It should be awesome when it's fully done.

Slowing down - 04:46am 19/11/00

The news items are starting to slow now! site death is imminent!

Quote of the Day - 04:00pm 16/11/00

<Jim> Higher beings from outer space may not want to tell us the secrets of life, because we're not ready. But maybe they'll change their tune after a little torture.

Workoholic - 01:13am 15/11/00

Been busy as a beee the past few days, and I'm enjoying it. I've got Outlook running along great with just simple tasks being assigned lots of categories for later dissection and division of work. Finally some order in my life ... It's amazing how finicky Outlook can be though. One of the main things you can now do with tasks is to assign them to other people (from your contacts list) and have it automatically keep up to date about the status of the task. You would think that being this wonderful new feature that is even supposed to work with other scheduling systems apart from just Outlook, that it would just work. Nope, not in your life. First Russ's outlook decides that a task sent by my outlook has an incompatible attatchment with it. Of course that was cleared up by setting all messages back to text only (even though it WAS on text already). Next was that russ's outlook received tasks fine and sent acknowledgements, but mine received tasks from Russ's saying it was sent to multiple recipients so it cannot be assigned and tracked (coz, you know, that would be productive or something). That of course was because my listing in Russ's contact list had multiple email addresses, even though it only sent to one. So an hour and a half to get a simple thing up and running. Microsoft at it's finest. Mail server is purring along nicely. If the domain resolution goes through tonight it will be totally live. Should increase the work efficiency by another 2% but having unlimited email accounts will also come in handy down the track when the product goes live.

QGL finals - 12:57am 15/11/00

QGL finals are open for pre-registration to competitors in the finals. I snagged #1 position in the registration system! not much, but it doesn't take much to get me excited these days ... ahhh cheap thrills.

No Turntablism :( - 02:03pm 12/11/00

Went in to work on Saturday for a while, had an interesting meeting with russ regarding how I can work better. Dunno what brought that on ... ;) Had planned on going to a dance party at Viva's with a few turntablists facing off. Would have been awesome, apart from the fact that it was on Wednesday :(. I blame Pulse FM for that misleading information. At least they've been taken off the air from yesterday. I don't seem to pick up anything on 97.3 though... where's Wild FM ?? Downloaded some awesome mpeg movies from Dethon on friday featuring some of the better turntablists around, so at least I got to see bit of what it would have been like.

Quote of the Day - 07:04pm 10/11/00

Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticise them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. --sig from MissCara ... awesome ...

RMAC finally a goer!! - 05:27am 10/11/00

I've had the proposals for the RMAC league in with Wireplay for over a month now, and they FINALLY get it approved (after a bit of chasing up). Although it's great that they are putting up prizes, it would have been run & won by now and we could have started on the league based system I'm hoping on running next.

Neverwinter - 05:39pm 09/11/00

an awesome chat on Neverwinter nights took place, and I wrote up a news post onto QGL about it.

Miscrosoft shiznitz - 05:12pm 08/11/00

Things are going swimmingly here at the moment. New box has all the Micro$oft stuff on and is purring along nicely. The only thing that seems out of place is that publisher is supposed to do web sites too, but it's a struggle to get it to accept that that is what you want to use it for. FrontPage seems a dream compared to this. I had hoped it was an encapsulation of FrontPage, but sadly not. The worst thing was importing, you can import almost any format back to the stone ages, but you can't import HTML ... WTF ? I guess it's going down that typical Micro$haft path of only suplying 90% of a product, where the other 10% is tied into another product. This drags you in to get the other product, where you find that 10% of it is missing too ...

Flatchat - 03:21am 08/11/00

registered my first DNF in the Flatchat league this week. Got thrown out of my schedule of running the race on the Sunday night due to the plan of staying awake for 40 hrs over the weekend. So, Monday came (the day it's due) and I just couldn't get to complete a race. Did a fair bit of qualifying practice and thought if I could snaffle a good spot I might be right. But alas, the voodoo's gave out almost each time. Plus the fact that the AI's were running me off the track on some corners. Couple that with some strange car behaviour exiting corners over hills, and the fastest line involving grass hugging, it made for a VERY frustrating track. Thought I might just be able to submit a good qual and a accelerated time one, but it even hung heading forthe accelerate time button .. aaAAAAARGGGHHH >:( Not too far back, a few wins and i'll be back up the pointy end.

JET forum - 12:26am 08/11/00

Spammed some looooong dribble to the Auran board in my inebriated state after the Melbourne cup of plenty. Quite pleased at the amount of spelling mistakes I made. Have a count ... winner gets a cupie doll ...

Melbourne cup - 12:54am 08/11/00

Ahh yes, the race that stops a nation ... Personally I think it's the alcohol that stops the nation, but any excuse is fine ... Had a great day for the melbourne cup. Lunch started at 1 up in the SEA training rooms with a neato spread of finger food. I think they have tried a new food company for this time, as the prawns and little black thingies were absent and replaced by other culinary oddities. I think the object is to eat things that resemble something you found out the paddock or on the road, as it's the things that look like they are supposed to be eaten are the things you wish you hadn't. At least there was some skewered chook that you couldn't go wrong with. Free food and free beer, sure, I'll stop for that ...

Internet Server - 07:20pm 06/11/00

After getting the new box in, one of the benifits was that I had a win2k box free to act as a dedicated gateway for the internal office network. 3 boxes for 1 person, just the right number :) First up was to get the second network card into the internet box. I had picked up some simple ISA NICs about 3 months ago for use in the LINUX box (yeah, that was another story). I have had them in this box before but couldn't get them to work. win2k picked them up fine and were saying everything from its end was fine, but there was no traffic generated by the NIC. Thought it was something to do with an IRQ setting, and that win2k wouldn't know a working NIC from a dead NIC unless it actually conflicted with something. This time it had nothing to do with win2k and just a jumper switch on the NIC that swapped between BNC and UTP. Nasty NIC. With that sorted, everything fell into place pretty easily. 2 NICs allow you to share the network connection down the other NIC (like connection sharing the modem) while enabling DHCP for the local network. SMTP server went in and worked pretty well. Tried restricting access by login, but in the end it was easier to do by IP range. Lots of other services followed pretty easily. Now it's just about right to sit in the corner and permenantly run. Getting Small business pack swapped over tomorrow (Concorde guys let me walk out with upgrade version instead of OEM) so I'll have some webpage stuff to quickly do up the company website.

Quote of the Day - 07:56am 05/11/00

Procrastinator's credo: 14: I think, therefore I might be .. tomorrow ...

Pulse FM - 07:49am 05/11/00

Turned up the radio pretty loud on the way home to keep the eyes open a little better. Pulse FM had some dated beats going, bit surprised that Saturday night didn't rate a higher proportion of newer stuff. Guess everyone should be passed out by now. Still, it seemed to affect the traffic light co-ordination as they promptly forgot that Mains Rd is actually a main road that the majority of traffic drives down. There are very few things that piss me off, and waiting a minute at traffic lights with no-one going the other direction is one of them... What's with Wild FM? It seems like each of the other beat stations have had a double crack at the 97.3 bandwidth since their last appearance. I hope that the broadcasting commission puts some of the shonkier attempts out of their misery, but the distinct absence of Wild FM is very unnerving. I noticed on one of the flyers for Judge Jules that there was a Wild FM logo with 11.11 on it. Hope that's a sign that it's not too much longer 'til they get the frequency back.

New box (eventually) - 07:52am 05/11/00

Plan for the day: - leisurely wake up around 11 - pick up the new box by midday - set up and test personally by 1pm - install Clarion and test compile times by 2 - continue on to Andrew's for some game design and HDD cleansing. Actual events: - woken by phonecall from Russ at 9am saying the box was paid for - woken again by Russ at 10 saying ring him when the box has reached the office - woken at 11 by Andrew wondering when I'd be over. Decided that the day must have already started by now and thought I may as well participate in it. - Got brekky and tracked down the box, still being assembled, prolly 1.30pm ETA - Watched some old footage of a boxer on ABC TV - ring again at 2pm and get told 4pm for the box's assembly time. Now I start getting worried. - Could't stand the quality of Saturday arvo TV and headed off early to drop off my box over at Andrew's to get the burner going early. - Arrive at 4 to hear some bad news, ATA/100 isn't working under win2K. Got all the dramas resolved by 4:30 and Buba was looking the worse for wear and just wanted out. So too were the understaffed assemblers that had been though a pretty hectic day. - got the box to work by 5, mirrored the old box across the network and set up Clarion by 6, with lots of interesting stories by Russ and Steve to liven up the day. - Back to Andrew's by 6:30pm for Pizza and more frustrating network problems that got in the way of a few good games being played >:( - Finally some game design and the usual 'into the wee hours' chat covering stuff like cryptology, WWW inception, Uni lecturers, Neural Nets ... Pretty close really ...

Saturday of lateness - 07:06am 05/11/00

Well, looks like the late night last night has ushered in a repeat performance. Almost back to Uni days of 2 for 3's. More spam 'til the morning ....

News ?? - 06:25am 04/11/00

Ahahaha, spending an all-nighter writing news. News that no-one will read. Boy my life needs a reality check real soon.... Well, it'd be interesting to see how long I keep this up ... my estimate is around a week, then a 2 week pause, then site death ..

Athlon tomorrow - 06:21am 04/11/00

hopefully picking up my new work box tomor .. Today. Russ must have come into some money. He got pissed off at the 333's compile time earlier on this week and stated 'Right, that's it, time for a new computer. Why not get a new one for yourself and I'll have yours.' That's the kinda logic you just don't want to argue with. After finding that Buba hadn't been in all week, and that 'Matt' (the guy who eventually took my order) had taken one too many happy pills before getting in to work, I was a bit reluctant to get the order through. Concorde had sponsored the QGL back in the beginning days, and after I joined I had taken virtually all my business to them because of that (plus the prices weren't too shabby for a legit company). Since Buba's departure from the QGL scene, there's been less incentive to continue there, but it still was simpler to keep going with what you know than trying to find the flaws in the next shop that comes along spouting rock bottom prices. Finally I'd placed the order for a box that seemed the best deal at the time: - Athlon 800 - Asus M/b - 256 Mb RAM - 15g ATA/100 7200 HDD - GeForce2MX (definately needed for a work box ;) - Golden orb (Uhh, well, you know how hot those Tbirds get when, uhhh, you need those faster compile times ;) Neatly around the 2 grand mark before deciding that it might actually need a decent OS and some Micro$oft must have's in the form of Word and Outlook. $2800. Geesh, Bill really makes buying another box a tad more expensive than what you planned for. Should be in for some fun over the weekend with the old 333 now becoming a dedicated firewall. And the Linux-box-that-didn't-want-to-be-a-linux-box can now go onto the shitheap. Might bring it home actually, it still plays those DOS games real good and I seem to be playing them more than current releases at the moment.

Up, up and awaaaay ... - 05:46am 04/11/00

Been working pretty extensively with Auran's JET in my spare time with an old friend from Uni, Andrew. Even though JET is still in beta1 stage, we've gone a fair way into writing a complete game. Had some good successes recently, with me being able to finally figure out why setting the Z axis for the player was stuffing up, and Andrew fixing up the camera settings. Apparently the camera defaults to looking down the -ve Z axis instead of the +ve X axis as one would think since that is the way the particles orient themselves. Merged the changes in earlier on tonight and all of a sudden we are REALLY close to a working game. Admittedly it's a simple concept, but it still has all the elements of an addictive game. Consider how simple tetris is to code ... Gotta say it's been a joy to get back to C++ coding again, and the fun of writing stuff again with Andrew. We used to write demos and game concept tests way back in Uni together when Wolf3D was all the rage. Sometimes I wonder what could have been if we did take a year off and aggressively persue writing a full game. But still, I'm happy with the way life has treated me so far and enjoy what I do a lot. The other day we dragged out some of the demos we wrote back then, and I was really surprised at the variety of concepts we had done. 3D animation, FPS's, sprite based stuff, text adventures, mandelbrot viewers, map generators, erosion models, puzzle solvers, massively multiplayer RPGs .. quite nostalgic ..

AGN news format - 05:12am 04/11/00

Probably one of the reasons for implementing the news system so quickly is that I developed it with Nats (that always helps) and have also layed out a few pages with it before, like the ASRG main page, or the RMAC page, or the ASRG Forum that is driven by the comments by the other pages mentioned. Even though comments and forums weren't a major part of the design, the flexibility has allowed us to do these in a VERY integrated fashion. I should put up comments onto this site actually, it's a doddle to do and is an effective use of the design driving this data. Not that I'm actually expecting anyone to read this, let alone comment on it. This is really the tip of the iceberg in what this news system is capable of. In fact the main reason for developing the system as it is today hasn't even been implemented yet!

First Blog - 06:28am 04/11/00

After looking at Blogger I thought it might be a neat way for me to just spurt shit out (especially at work) ala Hitman, Trog, and the recent newshound Term. After frigging around with it for a while, it looked like all it was doing is pretty much what the AGN news system did, but without comments, control of HTML and all sorts of goodies you get when you create your own news system. So, after frigging around a bit longer, I quickly made up this site. I might add that getting the layout done (even though it's crap) took miles longer than getting the news system implemented.