Racing Game Improvements...

Hey, I was prepared to post about my thoughts concerning forza 2 and how it compares to pgr3, but it all got a bit waffly and unfocused so I've binned that, but some "final" thoughts on how the genre could be improved will be listed here.

 

First off, The idea of racing your "ghost", your previous best attempt/time is a genius one. I'm not too sure who came up with it, but it's a great idea, probably many years old, but I think it's time for a change perhaps.  When I am performing some kind of time trial, my ghost provides a visual representation of if I'm up or not, but when I am very close to my ghost time, i.e. just behind, the thing just becomes too big a distraction a lot of the time, and generally I either completely miss the breaking spot for the lack of being able to see it, or risk breaking later than my ghost and inevitably miss the turn-in.  Perhaps it's just me who suffers from these complaints and I should shut up, but no, here's how we're gonna fix it people...

The Forza series have a rather smart system in-race whereby the racing line and the required braking is displayed on the track in a variety of colours.  Now, my suggestion is to take this idea and transpose your ghost's performance into a visual much like this.  So, instead of racing what the game considers the optimum line and breaking, it would instead show the lines and breaking performed by your ghost.  They could even colour it the ghostly blues and greys if they so wished.  I think this would be a better system, as you could then explicitly see what lines were taken and how late you braked last time round.  You could then see clearly see where you weren't maximising the track when turning out of the corner, or which apexes you are simply not hooking up.  Also this way, if you are especially slow, say you fall off the track, with the ghost line implemented, you won't lose the valuable information which you would normally, cos the ghost car would be on the other side of the track.

One thing I particularly enjoy with Forza is the recording of all the times and also the in-race telemetry.  Despite how much valuable information could be extracted from someone's driving style, a lot of it is useless in that respect.  If I'm honest the friction levels exerted on each tyre does not help me unlock where I went wrong, or where one of the top players are supremely better than me.  A lot of the time if I push on the telemetry I stay in the default screen, and watch the inputs the best in the world make.  It is actually quite shocking at times watching a replay of the best time on a time trial (where the car used is fixed) and have myself thinking, yeah the guy's neat but nothing mind-blowing, and then watching my best replay and getting a bit embarassed on how much my car is sliding about.  That being said I use the friends leaderboard to rate my skills, and for the majority of the time trial times (where it is the most equal, same car, no upgrades, tunes etc) I am the quickest out of the couple of friends who also play the game.

So yeah, my suggestion on how improving the telemetry is really a step towards the kinda telemetry that professional racing series, not unlike F1, are exposed to.  That being, I want the lap times posted on the scoreboards split into each timing section, so I can a better understanding on where the best are making the time/I am losing the time.  Along with that and an extension to the inputs that players put in, instead of what the current inputs are as shown in the telemetry at the moment, they should be recorded over time, plotted in a graph if you will.  And why not stop there? I would also like to have the "best" inputs plotted against mine - I would like to see where they get on the throttle quicker than me, where they brake later.  I would want all the inputs, throttle, brake and steering input available in graph form to be compared against my inputs.

Although most probably won't have the time or patience to explore this, I for one, would especially enjoy the opportunity to analyse and learn from this information, as I can't help feel for all the effort, the current telemetry in forza is a bit lacking, in that respect.

 

 

 

Here's just trying to sow some seeds...

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Gym update 17th July

Hey peeps, thought I'd give a short update to the masses on my progress a la gym.  It's not been so bad so far, I was initially planning on going every weekday when I first started but as I've quickly learned my body needs time to recover, plus it causes a detrimental effect to the next session, so there.

So yeah, been able to go 3 times a week since starting.  Treadmill-wise I believe I have made great progress on the long term goal I set myself when I started, that being to be able to run/jog a mile and a half in 12mins or less.  The first time I went I ran just a mile in 15mins just to see where I was at.  The next session I moved the distance up to a mile and a half, I believe, I ran that the first time in about 18mins, and since then I've been slashing my PB since then.  As of the 17th, my PB stands at 12:21, which I'm pretty chuffed at considering the short time period in which I've been going.  I'm thinking at the next session, which is booked for Thursday, I should make an attempt at my first time under 12mins.  I actually find the treadmill easier to run faster than, say round a field.  The treadmill carries you to a certain extent, and being able to explicitly control your pace, is something I don't have the discipline to do outdoors.

As I may have mentioned I also jog to and from the gym.  This is usually the distance from one end of the school field, where I start, to the point where I reach the point on the playground which is close to the sports centre entrance.  I timed this the day before I went to the gym just to see what time I would have to leave the house in order to reach the start of the session in time.  Anyways, it's about a min and a half at a temperate jog.  The weird thing is, no doubt down to adrenalin, is the fact that I actually the return leg a lot faster than the initial one.  I even found myself singing along to Sparta, but more about that later.

Weights wise, I have definitely improved upon the initial weights I was using a few weeks back.  The leg press I've improved substantially, no doubt from this extra running I've been doing :D.  Anyways, I think I started on about 10 (they measure only these weights in numbers), and now I'm on about 16-17, which works out at about 150-60kg when consulting their conversion chart thingy.  The max weight is about 220kg on the stack I believe.  As Mike asked, the real only judge of weight training is how much can I bench LOL.  When I started, I worked quickly up to 35kg, finding that challenging enough to form a good basis from.  After a couple of sessions I moved up probs more comfortably than  was expected to 40kg.  As of yesterday's session, I have moved up to 45kg, which only starts to get really really tough towards the end of the hour workout, when I've lifted/ran/rowed/pushed god knows how much.  But yeah I'm really chuffed with the progress I've been making.  There's this one hardcore guy who I've shared one session with who is all about the weight training - particularly the benching.  He is on 80kg so fair play to him - maybe I should feel embarassed when I moved his peg to 40kg, but everyone has to start somewhere.

 

After yesterday's session, I went, as per usual, to book myself in for the next session.  The guy behind the desk let me do it myself, and he noticed my Warwick Uni hoodie I was wearing.  He asked me how long I'd been there, to which I replied that I had finished, graduated last June.  He then asked me what did I study, offering media, and then sport before I could answer.  I'm not too sure what his thinking was behind those suggestions, perhaps that I was more likely to do the subjects cos I was going to the gym, or what my initial reckoning was that he thought I was a bit stupid and not very academically minded.  Well I finally replied "Computer Science" and that shut him up. By this time I had finished booking myself so I promptly left, feeling a slight sense of victory, and then preceded to do some singing while I ran home LOL.

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I need a hero...

So, thanks to a recommendation by my good friend Adam, I recently started watching the show Heroes the other day, and Wow! what a great show, I have got immediately hooked and watched like 6 episodes in less than three days.  I cba to explain the story here, just check it out, but basically it involves a number of individuals, subtly connected,  who slowly discover they have superhuman powers and the show follows their tales.

Anyways, it got me thinking, not unlike a child, how great it would be to have a superpower, perhaps 3.  The characters that I've met so far in the show involve someone who can fly, someone who can alter space/time, someone with incredible regeneration, someone who can paint the future, a mind reader, and possibly the coolest one, like Rogue from X-Men, someone who can seemly borrow other people's powers. Pretty sweet no?

 

So, let's discuss which are the coolest powers from the list above? Lol.  But seriously, I think my faves are the altering of space/time and the mind reader.  The guy who can alter space/time is effectively a Japanese nerd, and thankfully his story so far has provided some light relief from the other stories. 

So yeah, the altering space/time is pretty cool. You could effectively do anything, a lot of the fun options have already been explored by the show including teleporting into the ladies' room, and successfully cheating at gambling in casinos.

The mind reader one is also pretty darn cool.  I am also impressed with the show realising that it wouldn't actually be an ability that you can just turn on and off as required, but you would hear people's thoughts all the time.  I think first done in the original Star Trek series where Spock obviously had his mind-meld tricks, and I remember him saying how it takes years of training to be able to block out all the random thoughts of others.  Boy, wasn't the original series of Star Trek quite cool, in a very low budget, Kirk-also-makes-out-with-a-hot-alien, The crew in red always die kind of way yeah!

The mind reading is particularly cool as the guy uses the ability to "win" any conversation he has, not to mention freak people out with facts about them that they have not openly spoke about.  He has also won back favour with his wife, with whom he is currently having troubles with in their marriage, by setting up the perfect date - everything she has thought would be good.  For selfish reasons, mind-reading would make dating a much more efficient process as once they start thinking, "screw this guy, he's kinda lame", you could then just move on, rather than wait for them to tell you so, a couple of dates later.  The power is actually not unlike the film "What Women Want" which although kinda being a bit of a chick flick, is quite a smart film, only for the cool mind-reading abilities.

 

Here's looking for a local toxic dump from which to gain superpowers. Wish me luck!

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What the Frak?! You motherfrakker!!...

Hey all, Quite recently I've been exploring my interest in sci-fi and decided that I would check out the series Battlestar Galactica.  For those not in the know the show is a remake of the original series made back in the 70s - it is first billed as a remake, but is more of an evolution of the story set about 40 years after the war with the Cylons.  I won't go into any particular plotlines cos frankly that will take too long and I really cba, but I will say that the premise of the show is that after this ceasefire between mankind and cylon (according to them, the plural of cylon is indeed cylon), the cylons begin an onslaught on the human race, trying to wipe them out. The aging ship, the Galactica is the only ship to avoid the attack, and after meeting up with a civilian convoy formed by the new President  - who used to be Secretary of Education (a schoolteacher as they often joke), jump off to some far away part of the Universe away from the Cylons.  This would be ok if the Cylons themselves weren't bent on chasing them down and killing them all for good, and to make matters worse, Cylons can now look like ordinary people, which as even the creators admit, makes special effects a damn side easier, and they are agents within the fleet.  But there is hope, some scripture has already described their journey to a new home which just turns out to be Earth, horray!

 

Ok, hopefully that has wept your appetite, perhaps not, but it shows a lot of promise, but after watching the first two seasons I have my reservations about continuing to watch it.  For a show that boasts it is a sci-fi show, there isn't a terrible amount of sci-fi actually in the show.  The fleet being out in space is a big help, but it could so easily be set on the ocean and they're still encountering the same problems - food, fuel, permanent settlement etc, cylons/pirates chasing them.

Delving a little deeper than the general themes of the show mentioned just, a lot of the plot of the show seems to concern the conflict between the remaining military and a new fledging government.  Also one reservation is the reliance the show puts on Gyuss Baltar, the leading scientist in the fleet, who since falling in love with a Cylon agent back on Caprica(or whatever planet he was on), now sees visions of her talking to him, advising him on what would be best for the Cylons etc.  It was quite smart at first, but having him appear to talk to noone in particular, and them sometimes have his hallucination knock him about a bit, it has got tired. 

Although not a crucial flaw but something that doesn't make complete sense. Not to go into too much detail for those who've not seen the show, but as I said before Cylon agents that are indistinguishable from humans now exist.  Now these agents are notoriously hard to detect, as the show will no doubt explain, even their synthetic blood is identical to human blood.  If these agents have technically the same physiology as their human counterpoints, then the question arises, where do they get this superhuman strength from?  They're exactly the same as the human they replace except they have the ability to pick someone up by their neck and chuck them about a room... yeah right *rolls eyes*.   One particular cylon agent is of this middle aged, and kinda fat guy, and yet he also possesses this incredible strength and speed, but how? I mean, c'mon it can't be something in their muscles or blood or whatever cos it's the say as humans, and you don't see them throwing people about all the time do you?

Another thing which really annoys me, and this is a more general point, but it is now particularily bad on Battlestar Galactica, and that is shows that are obviously censored to not include swearing, but feel that some cursing is crucial to the script, and thus create their own swearwords to avoid censorship - Battlestar is one such show.  The word that they use in Battlestar is Frak, as an obvious alternative to Fuck (sorry kids :s).  The use of the word wasn't immediate in the series, but during the first season, it entered the vocabulary somewhere halfway through and has steadily got worse.  Most uses are along the lines of "What the frak is he/she doing?!" etc, but there have been the odd "For frak's sake!" and possibly the most criminal "Motherfrakker!" *sigh*. It just sounds really lame and quite embarassing for me to be watching it, I hold my head in shame on behalf of the writers...

 

Now, I am not objecting to swearing, nor am in the party that states that there never can be too much swearing, but I like characters to be depicted realistically, and well we all swear, so writers should be given the option/ability to write it in without fear of censorship.  Especially when a show's plots are so character-driven, which is actually one of Galactica's strengths, it just feels really fake, and you suddenly are no longer totally immersed in the story and become very aware that you are watching a TV show - or at least that's me :D

 

Here's leading the charge for free swearing, so come on you bitches and join the cause...

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From Brum to fatherhood (...is my ticket still valid?)

Hey all, got some more scary news to share with the intermaweb.  A week last Sunday (my how time flies :S) I met up with Wilson in Brum for some catching-upness and general merriment.  After going to a few of the regular haunts like the nicer of the two Spoons and getting some grub, possibly fueled by the harder drink, we thought it would be cool to try out a few new and random watering holes.

Well we didn't get that far in all fairness.  We went to O'Neill's which I believe is a part of a chain of bars, a franchise if you will, but it wasn't too bad.  Following that we went down the road about 50 metres to find a new bar called "Walkabout".  Encouraged by the promise of a cider festival which as it happened started that very same day, we popped in to check it out.  Confronted with two Australians behind the bar it prompted the question, "Do you have to be an Australian to work here?" to which the reply was, "No, but it helps...".  One random fruit of the forests cider and some Australian rugby later, it was time to move on again.  It was at this point, that the evening was starting to draw to a close, and I thought best to be off, it was a Sunday, and the trains get really bad late on in the evening. 

We checked in at New Street, realising we had some time to grab another, although good ol' Wilson reckoned we have time for two rounds, mmmm.  Anyways, as it turned out we went to the other Spoons, although it was for a pint of Old Rosie, which is slowly building up the rep it held when I was back at Uni - which is pretty awesome.

That single pint of Old Rosie was proving tougher than originally planned, so had to develop some speed drinking, and bless, I had to help Wilson finish his.  Realising that we had to really go, as in leave about 3 or 4 mins ago, we left at a brisk pace back towards New Street.  I got to my platform and did a little jogging to my train, which was not needed as the train sat there for about another 10mins, grrr, it's so undignified to run for public transport, but I thought I had no choice, alas.

 

So there I sat on the train on my way back home, beer slowly digesting, and feeling pretty good about the brief hours spent in Brum, when uh oh! thanks to breaking the seal in one of the earlier bars, I had to go on the train itself.  Now that is a challenge all on it's own, especially on the older carriages, where it is incredibly bumpy and rickety - would people understand if I had made a mess of myself?  Anyways, on the way down to the train loo, I spotted an old friend John Jones from school.  Once I got back I grabbed my bag and sat with him to catch up on what was happening at his end, which I have not done at all properly - I've seen John getting off the train I get on to get home from work, but that's about it.

 

Anyways, so I got chatting with John, and the reason why he's on the train comes up.  As he tells me, he's on his way back from Kent, which as he stresses is an 8 hour trip and not an enjoyable one.  He continues, and as it turns out, he met a girl when absolutely wasted down in London some time ago, and all he remembers is waking up in this girl's house in Kent.  But the first bombshell is that he has only gone and got this girl pregnant, so she is now with child. I'm not actually sure of the timings and John wasn't completely specific but it seems that the wasted adventure John had in London could well have led to the conception of this child.

I actually asked John, "so do you love this girl?" to which he was especially non-committing and kinda shrugged it off, "Yeah, I gotta" or words to that effect, it was late, and I was liquored up remember.

Scary stuff, so another old friend has joined the list of people who have, or about to start a family.  I was probably in shock for a lot of the rest of the journey.  I often get worried that I'm not growing up like I should, and hearing of people having children does nothing to dissuade that view on my life.  I'm 22 now and although I do believe I have changed considerably in the last year, I still do not feel anywhere near mature enough to raise a child - the question to throw out there is, will I ever feel mature enough?  That's probably how it would all end up, me winging it and potentially screwing up the child's life.  Ah well, it won't be the only one hey? :D  Adding to that, I don't feel the want or need for raising a child right now, so even if I did achieve the maturity, there's no way I'd be up for a child, the whole thing scares me :S

 

Here's waiting for them to invent maturity pills...

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King Kong? King my ass!

Hey peeps, To skip a long story short, I borrowed the King Kong game for the 360 as it boasts some easy achievements, and while playing it I thought it's probs best if I watch the film as well. Some torrenting later and I was in possession of the film and decided to watch it last night.

First things first, it is beautifully shot, featuring some amazing locations which Jackson has become quite famous for, but I have a few criticisms, some of them genuine, some slightly less serious but no less apparent.

One thing I became very aware of was how the film ultimately decided how the audience should be feeling towards characters in the film. When finally King Kong made his appearance and he ran off with the female lead back to "his den" or whatever it was, we had Ann doing tricks, and actually had Kong play games with her, and what is probably the closest thing to laughing. It was incredibly obvious that the direction was to make the audience relate with the ape and think that he may not be quite the monster that we all first thought. Rather than let the audience make their own conclusions on who the "bad guy" is, the audience were given one option, and that was to be sympathetic towards Kong. I can concede that the film is an obvious blockbuster for the masses, and thus can't really contain any controversial moments or leave things open to interpretation - A Movie for dumb film-goers. Maybe in this instance Jackson is a genius and has shot it perfectly, but I'd still prefer to not have my feelings chosen for me and actually be challenged during a film.

Anyways, back on track, and possibly from an anthropology point of view, I wasn't aware that Gorillas - the silverback Gorilla is the obvious grounding for Kong, he even possessed the silverback on screen - were known to play games in adulthood, and able to understand humour. It is well known that chimpanzees display these traits, but Kong is not a monkey - although I was quick to refer to Kong as "the monkey" during my viewing. Maybe I am being short-sighted, and it's probably obvious that the necessary research into gorilla sense of humours was done, and that I am making empty claims, or that this stretch of the truth was used as an obvious tool to sympathise with the monkey as mentioned earlier.

Along the same lines, when Kong makes it to New York and tracks down Ann (although she finds Kong, which is another thing I'm annoyed at) he goes Ice-skating - WTF!? Fair enough that a gorilla would/could be surprised by their lack of balance on ice, but to spin round on their ass, and do that kind of mon key-laugh-noise is ridiculous - again reminding us that maybe Kong isn't a bad guy.

Moving slightly into the realm of biology and animal behaviour, I have reservations on one of the main storytelling dynamics that they decided to deploy. That being, Ann seemingly "falling in love" or being the only one to understand Kong. During the fight scene between Kong and the Dinos (WTF?!? rant about that later lol), which was drawn out too much imho, Kong was the obvious protector of Ann, and it's fair enough to align yourself with Kong top stay alive on an undiscovered island full of savage natives and oversized creatures - I think every girl can agree with that. My disagreement comes from her getting incredibly emotional when they were attempting to subdue Kong, read: not kill, but simply knock out - despite the monkey being on a rampage to get to her, killing several men in the process. Do/will animal acitivists get incredibly emotional at a hunter giving something like a lion a tranquiliser to stop it eating them, when it's running straight at them - I'm not sure, but I'd like to think not.

Something that happened twice in the film is Ann seeing an amazing sunset/dawn/whatever and going "beautiful", and then almost trying to teach Kong to understand the beauty of the view. It seemed just silly, and looking back, cringeworthy. I was half hoping Kong to fully understand and reply, perhaps in a Bob Hoskins voice, "Boo-ti-full". That would have been the icing on the cake.

Other things that just straight up pissed me off were some storytelling elements that were just used for effort mostly without a lot of thorough thought. The first is the natives, fair enough, they have to be in the film to have the immortal scene of Kong grabbing the tied up woman of virtue true from a pole etc. These natives, obvious athletics fans, were able to effectively pole vault off the island to their marooned vessel to steal Ann, but once their purpose of offering her up as a sacrifice, they politely exited the film, and were never seen again - how convenient.

Next is the inclusion of Dinosaurs WTF?!? I thought this film was supposed to be about a giant monkey /sigh. Primitives and a big fuck-off ape were obviously not enough as backdrops to Skull Island that they decided "fuck it! It's an undiscovered world, that warrants dinosaurs to still be knocking around there" A few weeks back, there was an announcement that Jackson and Spielberg were teaming up to make a Tintin film. I couldn't help feel that perhaps the inclusion of dinosaurs was a tip of his hat, an homage to Spielberg's adaptations of Michael Crichton's Dino-themed books.
Anyways back to the dinosaurs in THIS film, and the sauropod stampede seemed a pointless excitement builder, and the big pile-up at the end was actually comic, rather than thrilling. It's a shame that despite the advancement in special effects, the group running in the herd (how did they not get crushed?!?!) still looked slightly out, the lighting obviously not recreated in either the blue screen stuff or CGI stuff, it just looked a little dodgy, although not a criticism of the film, just the limitation of the technology.
Anyways moving back to the dinosaurs, and the emergence of a T-Rex, called a V-Rex in the game, comes after it grabs the iguana-type lizard that was chasing Ann. Now, like today's predators, it is wise to predict that they would only eat once every 3 days, so it seemed weird, that after eating this lizard, which was about as big as the dino's head, that it would decide to go after size 4 Ann, which is effectively a drop in the ocean for satisfying the T-Rex's hunger, but boy did he try. I know it doesn't make for a thrilling film if it recognises that she is there, but continues eating the lizard (which would take a long time actually), but it just goes against the simplest of animal behaviour.
Continue that contradiction, and we have not one, not two, but three T-Rexs after Ann, who is now in the possession of Kong. Now instead of just trying to kill Kong, which would provide a much more filling meal, all 3 seem bent on chasing the morsel that is Ann - stupid I know. Also, going back to animal behaviour, top predators today like lions are not pack hunters, but in fact solitiary predators - so why are three T-Rexes working together for a reward that doesn't even split well one way, let alone three ways. I know if it was taken out it wouldn't make it a very good film, but maybe just one T-Rex would have been ok, three is just OTT.

I will close by saying simply this: I am pleased that I can say that I've seen the film but am not richer from the experience. If asked if I would recommend the film, I would say that it's got to be seen to be believed, and there are times when it's so bad it's good, but the mentality towards films is overrated and frankly done to death, one of the biggest cliches. I give King Kong the Brown Ribbon (a la consolevania).

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