AA's Gaming-Blog

Nordci Game Jam 2012

2012-01-27T11:33:00.001+01:00

It’s almost time for Nordic Game Jam 2012(NGJ)

Uhh a few days a go I got the chance to work with the ppl behind NGJ in regards to streaming the event after thinking it over for a few seconds i agreed to do it,

To anyone who is not aware NGJ is a part og Global Game Jam, and the concept is pretty meet up, find a group and create a game within 48H, from concept to implementation.

So after I got the part I talked a bit with some of the ppl who are helping me out to set it all up and we agreed that we wanted to stream all 48 Hours so my last few days have been 7,5H Work 10H Streaming setup test etc.

There are a lot of issues with making a “big” setup especially when you need to work with new software, don’t have any available hardware and everything is spread across 4 floors.
Tis been a lot of work trying to figure out work arounds for more or less every little thing while trying to make sure you get a grasp of the software.

We are going live tonight with the minister of culture nad afterwards the Keynote speaker the stream should go live at ~18 CET.

In the mean time you should add GameSyncTV @twitter / facebook / twitch.tv since i am going to be broadcasting everythin via those channels and pherhaps @NGJ as well.
I am looking forward to doing this marathon stream and hope it will be fun watching even though it will absolutely not be perfect.

Games to play in 2012!

2012-01-16T15:03:00.003+01:00

As every new year starts I always kinda end up thinking about which games I want to play in the new year and 2012 really looks like a great year for us gamers!
I will make a run through on the games I am looking forward to in 2012 (in no particular order).

Final Fantasy xiii-2:
Even though it’s predecesur had its problems this game looks really promising and I am looking forward to stepping into Square Enix amazing universe.

Mass Effect 3:
Both Mass Effect 1 and 2 were absolutely great games and I have pretty high expectations of this one as well!

Diablo III:
Well… does anyone need a reason to want this one It’s Bizzard, It’s Diablo, I love it MUST HAVE! :-)

DOTA 2:
I Played a bit of DOTA back when I played WC3 but haven’t really played many MOBA games sinse (a tiny bit of LOL) but lol never really had the same impact as Dota had, and I am not convinced dota2 will have that either to be hornest, but I want to give it a shot!

Blizzard Dota:
While we are talking about moba’s Blizzards own version of Dota looks extremely promising from what I have seen from the trailer and heard from the Blizzcon panels

SC2: HOTS:
Even with all these other games, the game I am going to play the most in 2012 will most likely still be SC2 and I am looking forward to the expansion.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning:
This game is probably the game I am anticipating the most a deep rpg with really fun action combat that just looks great.

CS:GO:
Well if they intend to beat a dead horse I am up for it, I don’t think I'll be playing this as much as i played it when i were young but i will deffinently buy it and give it a GO I am looking forward to the Match making.

This is just a minor list of the games I am most intrigued by thus far but there is a lot of awesome games coming out this year and can’t wait to get my hands on them.

3 Things i am aweful at

2012-01-12T14:28:00.003+01:00

Without really looking at my games I have figured out a few things I am really aweful at in sc2. Some of these overlap between races but I am going to write about it in the form of the race i am "worst" at it with.

1: Late game Zerg transitions!
Oh how I can macro up with zerg, get a huge econ / defend most pushes but when I get to ~4 bases my tech don’t keep up at all! I get to Broodlords/ultras and high upgrades waaaaaaaaaaay to late and this is probably the biggest reason I am losing my Zerg games.

2: Terran Macro!
People tend to talk about Zerg macro being the hardest, this is absolutely not the case for me my Terran macro is terrible, I can’t keep SCV production up I can’t keep producing units in a steady flow either not producing or queuing like crazy I forget mules and supply depotes I forget to rally workers back after constructing a new strukture and I can never seem to get the correct number of Production buildings.

3: Need Additional Pylons!
Everytime I hear this message I die a little inside why can’t I remember to make freaking pylons and it’s not just late game it can be the 3’rd or 4’th pylon of the game where I am at 26/26 ohh yeah don’t I need a pylon that is just terrible.
Alright now how to actually fix all these basic flaws...

Playing again

2012-01-03T14:54:00.000+01:00

Well after a period where i didn’t play as much as i would like i started again (begining with dropping a league or two to ease me back into it without demotivating me completely while also being able to have some fun (the game becomes slightly less fun as the skill level rises since there is alot less stuff you can get away with doing at higher levels.

After ~30 ish fun games in Silver with everything from mothership rushes to the most lame cheese to planetary fortress rushes ive started playing a bit more “normal again” and I am now in top gold but still playing random this off course means I tend to win all my toss games (unless I get completely cheesed I still have a hard time countering some 1 base allins) and then I lose a lot of games as Terran, Zerg is still pretty high winrates but I think those winrates will drop as well as I get closer to my “correct” skill level although I have no idea where my actual skill level is as random I would guess somewhere in the middle of platinum with my terran pulling me down.

But for now I enjoy fooling around with random not playing to seriously just having some fun.

Diamond... what?

2011-10-28T12:43:00.002+02:00

Ok i have been quite inactive playing sc2 lately i have been playing some but not really doing that well, the ladder reset and i played a game, well rather i quit a game i wanted to see if me and Fafner could get in the same division as taht might spark some competetive athemosphere between us, who would reach the highest possision in the leauge?!, so we both join a game, do a count down and quit at the same time, only to find out that i got into diamond and left poor Fafner behind in Plat :-(

I dont quite know how i ended up in diamond sure i ended in top plat last season but it wasent like i was beating or meeting diamonds all the time mostly meet top plats

i guess i will have to fight for lower spots this season at least its only 2 month long :)

Also nice new ladder pool actually don't think i will veto any maps :)

What happend since my last update

2011-04-13T16:36:00.002+02:00

Well I just wanted to post a brief update about whats been going on since my last update, and I’ll try to do it whitout getting to specefik otherwise it would probally end up being a wall of text.

1: Got into platinum after my placement match as the kickoff of season 2

2: Changed race back to protoss after a really bad losing strea as zerg

3: Got my stream up and running pretty smoothly www.justin.tv/aiuradun

3½: Made some introes and other fun stuff for the tournament in #4

4: Hosted and casted a tournament with the guys from kingscup.eu a Danish site that have weekly tours

5: Made a twitter account around a million years after everyone else!, you should be able to find me wwith my nickname AiurAdun

6: Updated my blog a little with some more different stuff like recent comment newest tweets, and all that kind of good jazz as Day[9] would have put it.

7: Tried playing a little LoL(Leauge of legends) in short( I like it more then HoN, but still prefere DOTA mostly due to the fackt that I know DOTA and how stats etc work, but I might play a bid more LoL because it was quite enjoyable.

8: And of course played some Starcraft 2 Last I checked I was rank 5 in my league and rank 1 on fafner’s ladder list (www.teamladder.dk)

The little gold that could

2011-03-31T10:40:00.002+02:00

Well the season is over and i ended up in 7’th place in my Gold leauge which was enough for my goal of top 8. (still had loads of unspent bonus points.

After the reset I played my first few games and in the placement match got promoted to platinum league, which is not completely unexpected since I mostly played against platniums and a few diamonds at the end of Season 1.

It’s really hard to keep playing a race when you know you play so much better with another race, I really can’t imagine how Morrow must have felt and how many times he must have thought screw this I’m going back to Terran, at least I keep thinking screw Zerg lets go back to Protoss where I actually don’t suck that hard.

But I’m not ready to give up yet all though some losses really makes me crunch my toes(can you actually say that in English?)

End of season - Last week

2011-03-24T15:02:00.002+01:00

Well the end of the season 1 is coming up sio I played a bid more just to get a league up before the lock, so now I am in gold,

I feel like I am getting more of a handle of playing zerg all though I still have quite a few issues especially with macro, and when to build units, but my grasp of when t drone and when to build units have gotten a lot better.
Currently I am playing against platinum players and meet a few diamonds; right now I would say my ZvsZ is my weakest MU.

After the promotion I am missing a few 100 points from reaching the top 8 to get the best possible end season rank :-) and I really won’t be able to accept not being in the top 8 so I’m attempting to reach that in this last week I need around 300 points for top 8 if they don’t play at all but they probably will so I will probably need quite a few points extra, but I am confident I will make it, and most likely get into plat or diamond with my first placement game in season 2 all though I don’t feel like my zerg is at diamond level at all yet.

Zerg is difficult

2011-03-14T08:48:00.003+01:00

Well this is not new, nor surprising to me, but still i just wanted to point the obvious out.

1: Keeping up spawn lava, its way harder than throwing down mules or chrono boosting, because it's so detrimental to your play, and it’s harder to remember and do especially under pressure.

2: The choice between drones and units is again extremely critical to your play, and the worst part of it is that its extremely hard to know what is the right choice, especially in the lower leagues where you can't really count on anything.

These 2 things alone are giving me loads of grief not even mentioning forgetting overlords. damn the games I’ve lost where 2 x lava spawns just burst into 5 lava at each hatch and seeing the Terran move out just to see you are food cappet. Omg worst feeling ever!!... :-)

Even with some absolutely lame losses i'm still improving and i am at the top of my silver division playing vs goldies so i'm expecting to get promoted to gold quite soon.

eSports – Whats worth watching?

2011-03-11T11:39:00.004+01:00

Well it’s been a while since IEM now and I’ve had the chance to watch quite a bid of the sc2 games but not really that much of the other games, which made me wonder a bid about which games are actually worth / fun to watch as an eSport.

Well the ones I’ve watched on a regular basis at some point or the other is:
Starcraft/BW
Warcraft 3/TFT
Starcraft 2,

Stuff I’ve seen a glimpse of:
Wow Arena
Counter-Strike
Street Fighter IV
FIFA

And well the stuff I’ve only seen a glimpse off I either found to be too confusing to watch while not playing or just boring to watch.

Wow Arena seems a bit to confusimg even though i've played my fair share of wow, also I don’t belive it would appeal to the masses you really need to be into it.

The same goes for SF IV and CS if you don’t know what it’s all about it really makes you lose intrest SF IV seems to be the same moves over and over again until you catch an opponent off frame and as a spectator you really cant see when / how that happens uness you are playing at a really high level yourselvf.

FIFA on the other hand is something people can easaily relate to but it really just seems dull to watch.

Of the games ive only seen a glimpse off CS seemed the most fun to watch for 2 reasons.
1 I do know the game and therefore I understand the lingo and even though I haven’t played for quite some years and i by no means where good at it, I feel like “I get it”.
2 They are really good at going beyond the game, it's not just the game it’s the team the players, you watch the players and the teams quite a bit and you follow them as competetors and see their ups and downs the team cheering etc, which really involves you as a spectator and makes it fun to watch.

And really that second part is really what have been missing a lot, you cant just cast games or show games, unless people really are at a competent level and knows the games really well the game alone is just not interesting enough for newer or none players to actually want to watch it.

Your need players like Ace pointing at the trophy and back to himself you need the cheering of fans you need to see their intense look and the rivalry between teams and players, this is what is going to make gaming appeal to the masses.

TL:DR?
Make games /eSports appeal to the masses by going more in depth on a personal level of the player and team and not just show the game.

Playing Zerg at a noob level

2011-03-08T10:23:00.000+01:00

Hi there, well aftri reached a stable plateau of meeting Gold players and while finding random fun I also found it a bid to unstable and unsuited for training purposes.

So I decided to try out a Race and to become better at it.
I ended up chosing Zerg and well I already suck less then avg. with Protoss, and Fafner is doing his Terran thing so I thought I might as well go with Zerg.
Also I thought it might be fun to share my hopefully progress with everyone else I made I fpvod, unfortunately I did it in Danish but I might go ahead and do the next ones in English all though my English somewhat sucks and I tend to forget words and that kind of good stuff :), but well then the speaking would accompany the game play very well.

Well here are the playlist:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A14ACDA61F99AA2D
I Started out playing the game, then watching the replay straight after commenting on how much I sucked

Raising back up in 1 on 1

2011-03-07T09:55:00.002+01:00

Now I’ve started meeting mostly golds at least meet golds in the last 3-4 matches so I am on my way even though I am still ranked as bronze.

While playing random my game Is swinging tremendously and I am losing some really silly games due to not getting all the MU’s an even if I get the MU the level of play is so unpredictable that you don’t really know what you can expect, also you see a lot of 1 base all-ins.

So I guess I need to Expect the unexpected and perhaps play a bit less aggressively with getting expands up / ignoring building defense
Also I am thinking about putting up a stream just for Fafner to watch my suckage 

Doing the FFA!

2011-03-03T13:42:00.001+01:00

Well while i have begun to win my 1 on 1’s again I thought I wanted a bid of a different game experience, so I started playing some FFA’s(Free for all’s)
Well 1 thing is for sure it’s different, and its random, and you might as well forget everything you know about timings because ppl do the most crazy things.
I must confess I do find it to be rather fun, ppl go all in something with absolutely no defense, or they go massive defense with an expansion and just mass a semi high tier unit.

The first thing is possible due to ppl not scouting a lot except for the initial who is where an who seems to be a decent player scout after this it’s both too expensive and impossible to keep an eye / scout everyone. Also if you are to “active” on the map ppl are going to see you as a threat and you will be more likely to be attacked.
I Had 1 game 1 going for a DT rush ( The timing where Waaaaay before you would normally see dt’s due to absolutely no defense another guy went fast banshees again with no defense and they both showed up at my base 1 with the dt’s in my main and the banshees at my expo Outch.

Another Game this time on the map Metro I spawned close pos with a Diamond level 1 on 1 terran with me spawning as terran as well.
W mined out both outr mains our naturals he mined out the gold, and we fought over the middle expansion between us pushing siege tanks Thors Vikings for vision and a few bio units for support it was a pretty epic battle and drained all our resources, in the meantime on the other half of the map a platinum 1 on 1 player shared sides with a bronze 1 on 1 player, this ended up in a complete dominant position of the platinum player who could pretty safely take the rest of the map without too much troubles due to our hectic battle at the other end of the map and he could there by secure his win.

Well those 2 games I lost but I did manage to win a few games, I will probably play this a bid more in the future to find out what the best way to handle these games are.

Starting from scratch

2011-03-01T19:09:00.002+01:00

Well I had a bid of a rough time starting out with 1 on 1 in sc again, and with the undying feeling that i where going to be demoted i kinda didn’t feel like playing.
After a while I decided what the hell if I am going to get demoted anyway it’s time for a “fresh” start I Chose to go down in ranks to start over to get the fun back and to not be to intimidated to play due to losses, So basically I started losing un purpose, either leaving or just do some completely awful stuff I ended up winning some of those and getting some of the achievements while doing it.

It took around ~60 losses but now I’ve hit rock bottom/Bronze) or close to it and after playing a few games in bronze for the last few achievements I’ve decided to start moving up, going to play random and see how far I can make it, when I don’t feel I will get higher as random I am probably going to switch to Protoss again and see if I can actually make it back into diamond however I doubt it the skill level really seem to have improved quite a lot since I left, but let’s see.

Is this somehow lame / bad sportsmanship / bad mannered? yeah I guess it kind of is, but then again if that is what it takes to start having a little bit of fun and to get the will to play, then I will gladly be a lamer :-)

Why some people don’t improve.

2011-02-24T11:50:00.003+01:00

I’ve been thinking a bit about this lately, why some people don’t really seem to improve that much, last night I played with a few friends bronze leaguers, we usually just play some 3 vs 3 team games, I played ~500 ladder games most of them team games. The friends I played with last night however had ~1100 games played each, all of them team games.

Even though they have gotten better then they where the first few games I played with them before I went on my vacation they are still what I would call a low bronze level player in 1 on 1 comparison at least, it boggles my mind why they haven’t improved more than they has, I’m quite sure if you would just take a look at one of the 2 players mechanics and just taught him for like a day he would improve sooooo much.

I guess Quality > quantity especially with the very basics.

Sundance

2011-02-21T05:13:00.001+01:00

Even though he is one of the main people getting sc2 into a more professional venue in the vest, for anyone who don’t know who “Sundance“ is, he is running the company that is making the MLG events, and that’s cool and all, especially if you want to see pro gaming in the vest and I do, I would love to have gaming at the state we have seen it in Korea the last many years.

But after listening to some different State of the game episodes and having heard him talk, I’m really not found of that guy at all, first of all he doesn’t know anything about the game at all, and secondly he doesn’t really seem to care to much about the community, I’m not exactly sure why I don’t like him, I guess it’s more of the way he talk to people.

The only thing you can hope for is that he has some guys working for him that actually know what they are doing because he just sounds a bid to much like “money” to me.

So i guess we need new maps.

2011-02-18T10:44:00.001+01:00

It’s quite one of those hot topics right now and been for a while now, all the pro’s seem really keen on getting some new maps into the ladder, especially the GSL maps or just larger maps in general.

Blizzard however seem to be a bid reluctant (but not quite as reluctant as they were in sc1 / wc3) to implement and test out new maps, there are probably a lot of reasons for that, one being that they want to make sure the quality of the map is quite high, and it is still a map that is easy to get for newer players etc.

I do think a few of the maps we got now are pretty good, but i do deffinently agree that new and a bid larger maps would spice things up a bid.

Being 4 month behind

2011-02-15T11:30:00.002+01:00

Well the first comment i got from Fafner was that my play style was outdated by approximately 3-4 month. And well it’s not surprising since I’ve been away for that amount of time and quite a bid have changed.

I stopped playing around the time where the patch with the roach range was increased by 1, and from that point forward, so other than losing quite a bid of my basic skills I don’t really know what changed in the Matchs ups so I am just doing what I did 4 month ago just a bid worse. So I am just loosing quite a few games except when I play vs Fafner :-) (More on that in another post).

But it would be really helpful to know what the “standard” is in the different matchups.

Getting back into sc2.

2011-02-11T10:16:00.001+01:00

Well after 4 month break I’ve had my first few sc2 games,

And yes, I am terribad :-)

I’ve mostly been playing a bid 3vs3 and 4vs4 RT with Fafner, and 1, 1 on 1 - vs Fafners friend / colleague, he was only a bronze player so it wasn’t much of a challenge vs the player, but the real challenge was vs myself, remembering to macro, remembering to build pylons, remembering my scout remembering well basically everything you need to remember while playing sc2.
I played a very passive game to focus a bid more on my macro, this is not how I would normally play but I really felt like I had to focus on my macro just to get started again.
I ended up with an avg unspent of around 500-550, which wasn’t terrible bad considering I had an expo up, but not good either when the only thing I really had to focus on was to build crap.

Also ive watches day9’s episode 252 and 257, about basic mechanics etc, some interesting points there as well, ive tried to re pos my hands to use the hand pivot and to move my keyboard hand as well, it just feels terrible uncontrolled especially with my keyboard hand I can’t seem to do my grouping of units probably if I use my pinky finger as my Crtl key handler I mess up more then I usually do, but this might be one of those things you just have to learn and get used to but with more than 15 years of using my thumb for Crtl its tremendously hard to readjust.

What makes a good mmo?

2011-02-04T10:38:00.004+01:00

I have been following the mmo market for quite some times and as of late I have been following a few debates about why mmo’s keep “failing”, and the comparisons keep coming back to wow.

One of the most used arguments in these discutions is that “new mmos looks too much like wow” and that is a reason why a mmo wouldn’t succeed,
Also you keep hearing about 1 mmo after the other with people arguing whether the game is going to be the “wow killer”.

I really don’t buy into any of the two, first of it’s not that it looks like wow or some of the mechanics works like wow’s, hell wow got most of their game mechanics from other games as well, that didn’t make them “fail”, it’s all about polish, and having enough depth / features.

Features is simple if you restrict the players from doing what they are used to be able to do, ie. Make guilds, send mails trade goods and a lot of these seemingly ordinary/simple features that people are used to you will see customers disapearing.

Depth, for a game to be fairly interesting there got to be some depth in the mechanics that makes it interesting and fun to play.

Polish, where I guess really a lot of the companies who have been releasing mmo’s have been lacking, it’s the last 20% that takes 80% of the time, time companies don't want to spend. This is a major mistake especially when we are talking about games, polish is what make everything feel right as it should feel, games are really a lot about the feeling you get if something feels off or wrong or simple just doesn’t work it is really going to turn people away especially in a game where you are expected to use a fairly large amounth of hours.

Why did wow succeed, well there are several reasons one being just hitting with the game at the right time. But one of the things that I believe truly made I difference is the one thing Blizzard excels at In comparison to all other gaming companies, they always ship extremely polished games, even in beta they are already more polished then most other games are at launch.

About the “wow killer” that’s just not going to happen, the only way wow is going to die or get beaten number wise is by Blizzards own next mmo, that being said there are room for other mmo’s but talking about beating wow is just nonsense.

For me the next mmo I am going to play is SWTOR, mostly due to kotor1 and 2 just being awesome, wheatear I am going to play the game as an mmo or just enjoy it as a single player playing through with a few different classes well, that will depend on the quality of the game, but I have no doubt the story part is going to be just as good as what I have come to expect by Bioware!

Switch!

2011-01-24T10:27:00.005+01:00

Hi I'm back after my 2½ month vacation to New Zealand and 2 weeks in Australia which is why i haven't been writing on the blog.

The game Switch!

Yesterday I where at ITU for an anime marathon, and all through animes are cool that’s not what I wanted to write about, no I wanted to talk a bit about a game that were introduced to by one of the fellow anime watchers, a game called switch.

You got a 4-5 laneswith 4-5 players each in each and max 1 in 1 lane, the players can then move up and down swapping places with each other, on each lanes random generated pickups occur and like a side scrooller moves towards the players, for now the pickups are +star’s –(minus) stars, and switches and the rare all switch, ill come back to the switches latter.

The goal off the game is to be the first player to get 5 stars so you basically swap places to get the stars or to avoid getting minus stars or switches but you have a cool down on your switch so you can’t just switch all the time so it gets a bid tactical of when you want to use your switch.

This all sounds easy enough, but here is where the tricky part kicks in, the Switch concept, I deliberately explained player swapping as swapping and not switching to avoid confusion.

The 4-5 players all play on the same keyboard, each player have 1 up and 1 down button for swapping players, that might for example be Q & A for Player 1 (at this stage you have 4-5 x2 hands on the keyboard!,
And here is where the Switch pickups come into play, when your player hits a switch pickup one of your controls switches to an unbound key, f.eks. the A&Q player might switch to A & L and then after another switch it could be Y & L, this switch occurs quite rapidly throughout the game and with 8-10 hands on the keyboard it ends in quite a bit of fun and hectic chaos.

After we tried the game we gave some feedback, and I am looking forward to try the game again with the changes he decides to go with.
Sometimes simple games can be as fun as more advanced games and the sharing of keyboards really takes me back, it really adds a new or rather old dimension to games.

Also this is a good lead up to Nordic game Jam which is this coming weekend, unfortunately I’m not participating, but I have been quite impressed with the last few years participants the innovation and what they manage to create in such a short period of time, so can’t wait to see what comes out this year.

It’s like he is playing the Piano

2010-10-11T11:35:00.000+02:00

This is (unfortunately) not something I hear very often, or rather never, but last time I went to ITU for a game-night, we played some sc2 team games and while playing executing my extremely low apm, but for the people there, the apm where rather high, I overheard this girl saying “It’s like he is playing the piano”, I couldn’t help laugh at that comment, thinking was that a compliment or?
I decided to take it as such, gaming really is an art!

Pros switching

2010-09-23T10:51:00.003+02:00

We have seen alot of pro sc players switch to sc2 lately especially July and NaDa are some of the bigger names, also with both the Kespa "saga", and a lot of teams losing coaches/players rapidly it does seem like sc is dying faster than expected.

I’m not sure whether I am leaning towards this being good or bad. From a game pont its absolutely good, they succeeded where Counter-strike absolutely failed, I Think the Cs’eres (without being in the community at all) are still suffering from are you playing source or 1,5 or 1,6 problems. Having 1 game will make both the community and the game bigger in all regards.

But then again Starcraft broodwar will always have a special place in my heart and it saddens me to see it deteriorate like this, I Love(d) playing the game and I love Watching the pro matches, sc2 doesen’t quite give me the same kick.

Teaching Sc2

2010-09-16T11:00:00.003+02:00

I Was out visiting a friend last weekend, and between the normal drinking and that kind of good stuff, we had some time to play sc2, and to put it straight he have only played very few games under the beta and only played half through the campaign after the launch of the game, basically his multiplayer would be: "get 2 barracks and then 1 factory and have ~10-15 workers", so I would guess he would be a bronze leaguer, but I decided to try to help him out.

After teaching him some basic tools: Rotations and a basic strategy, and giving him some helpful tips, and piloting him though 2-3 of the first placement matches and off course him discovering the power of stimpack! He actually managed to end up in platinum with 4-1 stats only losing to a tower rush where 1 minor decision lost him the game.

To be honest I did not expect him to get into platinum watching his first games, but just getting a slight handle on the “basic macro” and the right mindset gives you sooooo, so much in the lower level of play.

And with my weakest site being my macro I think I learned something myself from what I was teaching and that’s just a nice extra bonus

1 month summaries part 3

2010-09-15T11:02:00.003+02:00

Well even through a little latter then promised here is the third part of my 1 month summaries, this time focusing on my experiences in 1 on 1.

When thinking about this post and how I wanted to write it I felt my mind going in a lot of different directions on what I wanted to talk about, there is the basics how much have I played how did I fare in my games etc, but also a lot of other subjects I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, timings, balance, me vs different races, what I am doing right / wrong in my 1 on 1, and what I’m trying to improve and how, but well it would basically end up as one huge probably pretty mixed wall of bla.bla bla. But I will most likely talk a bid about some of these subjects when I get around to it :-)

So here is the breakdown:

After around 20-30 matches I ended up in Diamond league
I have played 117 1 on 1 Ladder matches
Won 63 games
Lost: 54 games
A win rate at 54%
A rating of 801
And currently rank #115 on Fafner’s Danish ladder site just 1 rank and 1 rating point above Fafner

I’ve found 1 on 1 to be both fun and challenging and I can see multitudes of ways to improve my play especially my macro game seems to be lacking especially under pressure, I really am looking forward to playing a lot more 1 on 1 but with both my normal work, my work in the dansih starcraft community www.sc2replays.dk and my sport activities I don’t have a lot of spare time to actually play that much would love to have some more time on my hands to really get into the game and really practice.
Also there is 1 month and 4 days left before I leave for a 3 month vacation to new Zealand, I’m really looking forward to it but I am going to miss playing sc2 that’s for sure

1 month summaries part 2

2010-09-01T13:47:00.004+02:00

In This 2nd part of my 1 month recap I will be looking a bid at my team games.

I have pretty much been playing an equal amount of 1 on 1, 2 vs 2 and 3 vs 3 games, but only played a pinch of 4 vs 4

My 2 vs 2’s have mainly been played with Fafner, both of us playing random, and not having any straight up tactic to follow, so we pretty much played it by ear.

3 Vs 3’s have been played with a lot of different teams and some random team games as well

4 vs 4 I have mostly played with some irl friends who don’t really have any kind of refined play, to put it lightly ;-).

While playing at a lower level the team games becomes pretty fun because you can get away with almost anything, but as the level progresses it gets more and more into the “we rush we win” antics counting on mass lover tier units and early game harasses which can be tremendously hard to resist.
In 2 vs 2 you often see zergling / reapers, dual reapers / bunker antics and a lot of other semi cheesy stuff, and on some maps it’s just not manageable, which can be quite frustrating at times.

Team games seems to function a lot like it did in the original, all through the maps are designed a lot better and a lot more towards team games, and that does pull it quite a bit ahead of the original. Still i wouldn’t at all consider something that would be interesting as an Esport.
Warcraft3, although it had its faults, worked a lot, lot better in regards to team games then sc2 does.

My next and final 1 month write-up will be about my 1 on 1 games.

1 month summaries part 1

2010-08-31T11:31:00.003+02:00

A little more than 1 month have passed since the release of sc2 and I thought it would be nice with a little summary of what I have used the first month doing.

Single player:

Overall the single player experience is far better than I expected, the story is intriguing and the level design is by far the most versatile I’ve seen Blizzard create yet, and the humor had a large presence as always. Though was a great experience it was by no means perfect I found the voice acting quite clunky and there were just too many clichés, but then again that was kind of expected, since it is Blizzard we are talking about here.

I’ve played the campaign, 2½ times and I just started a new campaign playing on brutal this time around.

1 Play though where on hard, only really 2 missions that felt a little challenging and that where supernova and all in (the final mission), but then again if I had used any kind of saves while playing those two levels would have been pretty easy as well.

2 Play though where the “hurry up it’s raid night” achievement, and I completed it on ~6:10 without hurrying to much (and yes I am a complete tool and achievement whore sometimes I know!).

2½ Play through I just wanted the upgrade achievements for all building all ship, all infantry etc, etc. upgrades again the achievement whore in me.
And of course on the play though I just started I am going for the last achievements getting the 1590:1600 all through I’m not in a hurry to get it, I just do a mission now and again, especially when the ladder is to rough on me :-).

I will be doing a Multiplayer summary tomorrow or sometime in the near future.

Beta phase 2 is down.

2010-07-20T11:21:00.003+02:00

I haven’t played much of the 2 phase of beta, due to training, irl / summer stuff getting in the way, but I did manage to get some games played in the last weekend.
I’m not sure whether it where the amount of players that where increased or the AMM search engine numbers that where changed but the level of players I met seemed a bit more stable than usual, earlier in the beta I would jump from playing a platinum back when platinum where the highest tier of ladders, then jump down to playing a silver then a gold etc.

In the 2 phase I just after the placement matches met players in the platinum league for around 2 games then 1 diamond where I lost, then plat for 4-5 more games, then diamond league players for the rest of my games, all through I only played a few games it seemed a lot more stable which is nice, and I am really looking forward to seeing how it will be looking after a few month have passed after launch.

The last few games where some 2 vs 2 with Fafner where I pretty much sucked all of the games, but I at least had Fafner by my side pulling me through :-).
only 7 days left until launch, can’t wait!

Stats how to break through the glass wall?

2010-05-03T13:37:00.002+02:00

After playing ~60+ Hours of FFXIII I finally got back into the sc2 beta at around the time where there where a lot of turbulence with random resets.

Which I actually kind of enjoyed since I did not feel the restraint I normally feel when I know my stats are going to last, it is such a release to play without the burden of stats dragging your morale to play down.
I have always struggled a lot with it both in the original Starcraft and in warcraft3 and well basically anything that would record and remember how I performed.
In Starcraft I would never play more then like 5-7 ladder games because when I got up to like 1150 I knew I would most likely lose and ruin my stats and in the original ladder get extremely punished for losing point wise.
In warcraft3 I where extremely hesitant to play ladder games as well due to the facts that at some point my win rate would start falling dramatically.
I realize it is completely silly and an absolutely useless attitude toward gaming especially if you want to improve your game, but it is there poking me at every turn and it is doing the complete opposite of 2 key factors for me.
1: encouraging me to play more games and therefore
2: improve my skill level.

I Wish I could just put this nonsense behind me and just play!, right now its only a beta I cant even begin to comprehend how I am going to feel when it goes live!

If anyone knows how to get past this I would really love to hear it!

The last chance to play something else!

2010-04-07T09:27:00.002+02:00

Due to sc2 releasing this summer and beta already being out I find myself feeling that this is the last chance to get some other games cleared up so I can dedicate all my time for sc2 when it releases without any regrets game wise at least :-).

I completed dragon age not to long ago and spend the Easter holidays playing FXIII I’m not quite done yet (it’s an extremely long game for today’s standards) but I’m enjoying it quite a bid, and after I’ve completed it ill need to complete Mass effect 2 as well.

At that point I think my urge for completing other games will have settled. And I will be able to focus on what really matters SC2!

Playing Terran

2010-03-30T13:57:00.001+02:00

I am testing out Terran after the reset and I am really terrible at em, just as I where in the original they just don’t seem to fit me, I do fine against lesser skilled players but as soon as they “kinda” know what they are doing I get in serious trouble.

But I’m gonna stick to the 50 wins as Terran before changing again, then im going back to 50 more wins as Zerg and then toss again.

After this round I should have a pretty decent feel for all races, and ill start focusing purely on Protoss.

All though I might do another round at the end of the beta, to get all the changes in at that point.

But I really am looking forward to getting back to Toss.

Initial 5 matches

2010-03-27T14:04:00.005+01:00

Hey, i Just played the first 5 initial games after the reset, with the goal of ending up in copper league (for testing how well and of which speed it would promote me and if i would eventually end up in the same place as i did before)

So i decided to have some fun with the first 5 games and here is basicly what i ended up doing.

Here are the replays for anyone wanting a bid of a laugh.

1: Drone attack, make as many drones as posible then attack (I would probally have won this one if i didn't quit)
2: Build 4 command centers and planetary fortress drop! (would also have won this if i didn't quit
3: build on my opponents creep hehe i messed up a bid here becaouse I where making the rules as I got into the match due to playing random and i where a bid slow at deciding what i wanted to do, but I did eventually get my spawning pool up in his main hehe :)
4: Cannons / Mothership only
5: mass infestors (this one was really really fun :-) and I would have won too had i not left in the end :)

Aftermath

2010-03-25T12:19:00.002+01:00

Well after a really late night it’s time to reflect a bid 

The brackets for the tournaments can be found: Here

I will be uploading a replay package soon including but not limited to the 3 games I played in this tournament.

Overall I am both surprised and very pleased with the amount of players both signing up and showing up to the tournament and I really hope we can keep this up, but it does pose some ogistical problems both with concerns to administration and time the tournament started at ~20:00 and ended 01:00 So that’s a 5 Hour long tournament and this is not going to work in the long run, im sure there could be cut down on some of the time if people where a bid more efficient with playing their games but that won’t cut the tournament down by 1 Hour and in my opinion it should be cut to around 2 Hours so ending at around 23:00 at least on a normal workday.

I Would suggest starting the tournament at around 19:30 and make a max number of partisipants of 32 this along with some improvements in the players attitude towards getting the games played would go along way.

Another way to go would be to split the tournament in 2 workdays but that would pose issues with some people not being able to participate on both those exact days this by my experience doesent work.

A final solution could be to make 2 separate tournaments one for gold  plat players and one for cooper  silver either on the same night or 2 different nights. (the split is of cause up for discussion especially as the leagues doesn’t seem to reflect skill correctly at the moment but this will change in the retail version of the game when they are a bid more strict with the AMM searches)

The thing I like about the last idea is that the lower league players can compete a bid more with someone on their own level and get some good games in without being completely slaughtered and discouraged from participating in a later event.

All in all a great tournament and big probs for Fafner for the hard work and for taking the time to host it :-) /cheers

Teamladder.dk 1 on 1 Tour – tonight

2010-03-24T10:09:00.002+01:00

Fafner is hosting the first Dansih SC2-Beta tournament and this will be my first sc2 tournament as well and I’m looking very much forward to it.

The sign ups started 2 days ago and there are already 30 signups, this just goes to show both how many beta participants have been invited and the mere amount of interest in the game.

I Don’t have any high hopes for my own performance especially since I signed up as >erg and I am absolutely horrible at playing Zerg, but I’m just looking to have a good time and hopefully obs a lot of good games, and hopefully win at least one match but with the amount of good players its doubtful I will get very far :-)

When looking down on the signups it amazes me how many of the people I know, from earlier sc/wc3 communities and it kind of makes me a bid nostalgic, ahhh good times…!

When to build Drones

2010-03-23T13:59:00.001+01:00

I’ve recently changed to playing Zerg. To get a better feeling for all the races I’m taking them one at a time, and well I suck at playing Zerg. Sure I can win with a basic roach rush but anything apart from that it gets quite messy have no idea when I’m supposed to push, when to expand when to do mostly anything, but yet the hardest part of all of them is when to produce drones, its basically the same as sc1 either produce units to defend / attack or produce workers to improve your macro and productions capabilities latter on in the game. But in sc2 you won’t have high ground advantage to save you, so it becomes even more important to know exactly what your enemy is doing at all times, because you don’t want to produce roaches for defense if the enemy is going for a more eco oriented build unless you build enough so you can actually do an attack and you don’t want to be making drones if a push is pending.

I find this balance between eco / units to be extremely difficult in sc2 and I more often then none end up building to few because im preparing for an attack that never comes until a bid latter. when I’m out eco’ed or I eco to hard and a M&M army completely punishes me for it.

Well in short I need improve my Intel-gathering, and adjust my play according to what I see or what I expect, but the error margin seems a lot smaller then in sc at least at my level of play

My first, long game

2010-03-23T10:06:00.003+01:00

Well Games in SC2 are usually very short ending in an somewhat early/timed push or rush ending the game quite quick.

I’ve only seen a few games I would consider as long games and I finally after more then 110 solo games, had my very first long game last night, unfortunately even though it where long it where not a very high tech'ed game, it basically ended up with both of us taking each others mains out both struggling to survive my opponent taking an island expansion with his floating buildings while I where trying to get expansions around the map him flying with his medivacs with m&ms while my hydras where chasing them and the extra expansions he where trying to get up.

It where quite intense whit a lot of stuff happening all over the map, but I draw the long straw in the end it probably would have ended in my opponents favour if I didn’t have a corrupter against his planetary fortress he got up at an expansion, or if he had simply just m&m pushed me early on.

It wasn’t a pretty game a lot of mistakes on my part and most likely also on my opponents part, but at least it finally happened a long game! :-)

High-Ground

2010-03-18T09:04:00.002+01:00

Well I touched this subject earlier in my wall of text post about the reasons why we weren’t seeing many late game battles and one of my 4 points where about high-ground, and high-ground seems to be one of the major concerns of the sc community right now.

I fell over a great article on teamliquid.net (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=116142)

And it is pretty much spot on.

In other news my top 3 in unit concerns right now is:

Stalkers (Feels absolutely useless. weak dmg. output and dies incredibly fast)
Roaches (Let alone the threat of this unit forces you to take extreme counter measures also the HP/armour doesn’t feel right for Zerg.)
Marauders (Theire high hp and slow projectile is a pain)

The stalker is more of a balance issue I would love to see that unit get a higher standard dmg and a bid less extra t armoured or just completely remove the armoured bonus for that unit and just go for a fixed dmg rate.

The 2 other units I’m not sure it’s as much of a balance issue for me as it is an issue of me not feeling these units fit very well into the game

Sc2 Theme bar updated

2010-03-17T10:50:00.002+01:00

Just an Update on the Sc2 Themed bar

Well we had a fun night with a lot of sc2 watching and foosball and of course drinking :-)
Here is a list of the different drinks my mate ended up concocting.

Mothership
Immortal
Stim-pack (shot)
Creep
Zerg rush (6 shots)
Kerrigan
Overmind (shot)
Queen of blades (Kerrigan+Overmind)
Spirit of Tassadar

So at least I got 2 names right.
Most of the drinks where pretty good, for the names I especially liked the Stim-pack shot an excellent excuse to shout “that’s the stuff”

SC2 theme bar tonight

2010-03-12T11:57:00.002+01:00

My friend at ITU, who is also playing in the beta, have sent me an invite for a sc2 theme bar and well who could refuse such an offer he have likely conducted some new sc2 related drinks and can’t wait to find out what he have come up with,
If I where suppose to come up with some drink names it would be stuff like this:

Baneling,- small explosive shot
The swarm - big mix longdrink
Brood lord -
The Immortal - longdrink
Medivac - hehe imagining people at the bar yelling MEDIC! (TF2 style)
Hellion – Fiery shot
Proxy rush - shot
Pylon
Mothershp! – big mix longdrink

Well there are endless possibilities, those where just some that came to mind, it’s going be interesting to see if he came up with some of the same stuff or if he had a completely different approach to it :-)

Solo update

2010-03-08T11:06:00.004+01:00

Well I am going to keep this short for once :-)

Gold League: Rank 13
42-39
Rating: 1379

I tend to win with:
An early game push just after the 2 immortal is out with zealots / stalker / sentries the mix depending on what I am up against, but the push seems to work well against all races
An early game zealot “rush” (3-4 gates)

I Lose to:
Muta's
Marine-Marauders
3-4 Gate Zealot "rushes"
Banshee rushes

Late Game.., not happening?

2010-03-05T17:06:00.004+01:00

When thinking back on the original starcraft, some of the absolute best games I’ve had have been some of the longer games, where a game lasted from 30 min up to even an hour absolutely hectic games throughout the whole game.

In sc2 The Avg. game time is quite low I rarely get beyond the 12 min mark.
I don’t think I’ve had a game go into anything I would call a late game and the amount of games ive had where I actually got an expansion up and running without the coming push completely annihilating me can be counted on one hand, so basically Late game rarely occurs.

From my perspective there are 4 major reasons for this.

1: The Meta game hasn’t been developed yet:
Meaning if you want to get a Late game going you need I be aware of all possible timing attacks, knowing what counters it and when to scout for it, and the fact that a lot of players have no idea when they should do the timing attack it even makes countering it harder because you cant really anticipate what is going to happen at this point, There for going on an all in timing attack yourselvf hoping not to hit a hard counter seems to be the way most people approach the game because you have a larger chance for success then going in defensively and try to counter “everything”.
This will of course change as the players develops build orders and strategies for the game. So everything will become a lot more predictable.

2: Static defence is a lot weaker in SC2 then the original
I am actually biting my own tong for even writing this because I really HATED some of the static defences in the original, it where tremendously hard breaking a Terran fortification, but now it just feels like you can basically ignore it, and that isn’t fun either this needs to be balanced so its still a threat but not a complete game stopper like the original, right now it feels to weak.

3: High ground advantage:
High ground advantage is all but gone, you get some sight bonus but after the games ive had both 1 on 1 and 2 vs 2’s it really isn’t much of an advantage, the opponent gets sight almost straight away and gives 100% dmg rather then the original getting sight whenever something shoots and then having a large chance to miss.
In the old game having high ground meant something and it could turn a game around in sc2 you end up totally ignoring the high / low ground.
What i would like here is to see the old system back, this really is a way to get comebacks into a game and for watching games where comebacks are possible is a lot more fun and interesting then knowing who is going win after the first battle due to not being able to get any kind of upper hand as in high ground defence.

4: Micro not mattering enough
Its still only 3 weeks old and I’m not really writing the game of as of lacking micro or not being micro intense as I have seen other people do because there is a lot of possibilities for micro, but the problem from my point of view is that it doesn’t feel like you are getting rewarded enough for doing it.

An Example of the above problematic is I’ve had some Protoss games where I went for a 2 gate semi teching build getting around 5 zealots and 4 stalkers, when the enemy Protoss player engaged my ramp where my 5 zealots are holding position and my 4 stalkers hitting them from the high ground, but the 10 zealots still managed to get through the 2 lines of hold pos defence and after killing my zealots he could go straight to my 4 stalkers and even while attempting to micro them and get them killed off the zealots can get reinforced quite quick and even if i get the zealots killed of and 2 new zealots in pos at the ramp it feels impossible to hold back the next incoming waves / reinforcements of the other player, a 3 gate zeal stormp vs 2 gate tech zeal/stalker with high ground advantage the 2 gater should in my opinion win the battle without to much of a hassel.

And yeah i might not be the best player so my micro probably isn’t perfect but if you need absolutely perfect micro to be able to 2 gate and survive, then you are going to have short games because almost everyone will do the rush due to the difficulty required to defend.

Sorry about the wall of text I promise I will make the next posts a lot shorter :-)

Marauders and what they bring to messing up my table...!

2010-03-01T18:07:00.011+01:00

After a few more 1 on 1's it feels like Marauders are the way to go for Terran against Protoss early game, along with marines (The new m&m's and if u got some medivacs latter in the game u got m&m&m's and that I tell you is a deadly combination!), but for this post I am going to manly focus on Marauders since they are really the ones making early game challenging as Protoss.

First let’s take a look at the units stats (for this patch at least)
Cost: 100/25
HP: 125
Type: Armored / Biological
Dmg: 10
+ 10 Dmg to Armored units
Range 6

With the extra passive ability
Concussive shell: Target hit by the Marauder is temporarily slowed

I'm not going in depth with the numbers or any of the math or nothing like that on my blog, I am sure you can find better blogs for the math-crafting, and besides the numbers are more then likely going to change in the coming beta months.

So Marauders are one of the units in the game right now I find dealing with especially.

A match against a “decent” Terran player would usually go like this:
I go for 2 gates getting some zealots and in time some stalkers to provide some defence against a possible reaper harassment and if there is a ramp for high ground defences
Then the Terran decides to attack and I get pummelled like there where no yesterday.

But why am I getting pummelled?
Well if we take a quick look at the Protoss early game units we got.
Zealots:
This unit is very much kite able especially with the slow attack of Marauders
So an all zealot army won’t stand a chance
Stalkers:
are Armored units and therefore take a huge amount of dmg from Marauders and goes down really fast, all though they also deal extra dmg to armored themselves but Marauders seems to have the upper hand especially with marines backing them up.
With a mixed army og zeals and stalkers they will just keep kiteing until my zealots are down and then finish off my stalkers.

I’ve yet to find an easy counter for this that doesn’t leave me vulnerable early game
But I have managed to eat it down a few times, but those games where just a straw away from toing the Terran’s direction when the push came.

The 3 plausible solutions to the Marauder marine rush:

1: The Choke!
Trying to keep a really tight choke (only doable at a ramp where u can use the advantage of higher ground (on low ground it gets quite a bid more messy.)
From there you can go in some different directions the immortal being the "secure choice", but you have a few other options here as well, but I would suggest getting the robotics no matter what direction you take.

2: Fast teching to Immortals
If you expect a marine & marauder rush (and well I can’t remember a Terran game where he dident go for the m&m rush)
You do have some free time at the beginning focusing really hard on your economy and teching straight for immortals only getting 2-3 zeals for the choke and 2 stalkers for an anti reaper safety and as soon as your robotic gets warped in use you’re chrono boost to get the immortals out fast because at this point your opponent will most likely be knocking at your front door.

3: Zealot Charge!
Another way to go is to get the speed upgrade for your zealots, this includes getting quite a bid more zealots then you usually would, but you shouldn’t forget your stalkers because if the timing push comes before the charge upgrade is done you want them to hold them back just a little until the charge upgrades finishes especially if u have a ramp stalkers will make the difference
This tactic requires quite a bid of gass upfront compared to going for immortals but if u get the charge before he can push in you are in a really good position to get in and win the game right there.

Well at least I have had some luck with these 3 tactics, but bare in mind that it’s only my own experiences and I am by no means a good player so I might be completely off here.

I however, even with the 3 strategies, do tend to lose quite a lot Vs Terran opponents, but then again I tend to lose quite alot to all my opponents, no matter the race :-)

Day 2

2010-02-25T10:10:00.003+01:00

Well my 2 day of sc2 Beta went more or less like this.

I Started off with some Vs AI games, which basically means you are on a map more or less on your own since blizzard turned the AI down in such a degree that they aren’t really playing sure making 5-7 units doing a mini attack now and again but otherwise they are completely harmless, this does however give you the possibility to try and make every single unit and building of the game and get a look at and try their abilities.

I went through most of the Terran army and quite a bid of the Zerg and Protoss armies as well, but after some time I felt my hands itching for some online action

So I decided to get my 10 placement matches done for both solo and RT 2vs2 done

In solo I ended up in the Gold League while playing as Protoss where I went 7-3, and in 2 vs 2 I ended up in the silver league with 4-6 while playing as Random.

The League structure looks like this pro > platinum > gold > silver > bronze > copper > practice, although I don’t think Pro is included in the beta yet, but seeing as how many really skilled players there are in the beta I wouldn’t be surprised to see them introduced latter in the beta.

I ended the evening with some 2 vs 2 games with 2 mates, going 2-0 and 3-0

All in all I’m having a great time with the game.

Sc2 Beta

2010-02-24T12:58:00.003+01:00

Fianlly! I got it a beta key for SC2! The most anticipated game in the last decade, for me at least.

The feeling of downloading, installing and creating my account for a game I have been waiting for, for so many years, is quite unreal!, Goosebumps and small chills while the installation bar went to 100% and the countdown for the very first game went to 0... Fantastic!, even though it's "just a beta" it just felt like this is it.

The next months I am going to dedicate this blog as a dedicated SC2 Blog, sharing my experience with the beta.

I played my first few games 1x: 1 vs 1, 3x: 2 vs 2's and 1x: 1 vs 1 vs 1 ffa with 2 friends who are also participating in the beta and it felt really cool getting into the action.

When I get home from work tonight the plan is to take it easy and make 3 games vs the AI and get a good look at all the races what they got and how to get it.

Then I’m most likely going to go a bid more into the Protoss race, they seem to match my play style and well my nickname pretty much says it all!

In 2 Vs 2's I am going to stick to random to get some experience with the other races as well

If you are interested in adding me on battle.net 2.0 my nickname is AiurAdun.fighting

Regards!

Back

2009-04-02T22:37:00.002+02:00

Well it’s been a while since I last updated this blog, actually almost 10 month. I’m not sure why I haven’t written, I guess the normal excuses for not doing stuff apply, to busy at work, not enough spare time, yeah I guess they do apply but still… and well as time passed I more or less forgot about it.

Yesterday I where talking to a colleague of mine and while discussing the pros and cons of Twitter, blogs, Facebook and other online communication tools, I where reminded of this blog, and I’ve decided to start posting some stuff again, I’m not sure what triggered this yet, but im not exactly sure what triggered it in the first place.

Also if you haven’t noticed I’ve decided to post in English, since I don’t get to write a lot of English at work I figured it would be a good way to recover some lost English writing skills.

So I guess I’m back hope it will last a little longer this time around.

Spore creature creator

2008-06-19T21:36:00.002+02:00

For nogle få dage siden åbnede EA Games op for muligheden for at hente Spore creature creator. Creature creator er en meget lille pre-release af spillet Spore denne pre-release indeholder omkring 25 procent af creature creator delen af spillet.
Spore går ud på at følge en organisme fra at være en encellet organisme til at udvikle sig som et havdyr til at ende som et landvæsen hvor den udvikler sig og sin kultur og til sidst ende som en rumrejser civilivisationer som kan flyve rundt til forskellige planeter.
Imens denne udvikling finder sted kan an vælge at blive venner med forskellige andre civilivisationer eller bekrige dem.

Dog er det ikke det der efter min overbevisning er kernen i spillet. Kernen i spillet er opbygningen af væsner, huse, transportmidler og den måde man deler de ting man laver.

Creature creator giver i sig selv et rigtig godt indblik i hvad det går ud på, selv om man kun har 25% af det færdige materiale tilgængeligt til at lave sine ”dyr/monstre” har man stadig et UTAL af muligheder for at kombinere de ting og man kan virkelig lave ekstremt mange forskellige væsner.
Og det er netop det der er kernen i det, det er en stor opbygnings ”playground” hvor man kan bygge næsten alt hvad man kan forstille sig, fra små nuttede dyr til relativt uhyggelig udsende væsner

Efter du har lavet nogle væsner kan du dele dem med resten af Spore spillerne, og man kan således også befolke sit univers med matriale som andre brugere har oprettet hvilket giver en st stort socialt aspekt i spillet.

Jeg tror mange piger/kvinder, børn og andre folk som har haft træng til f.eks. Lego vil kunne lide dette spil det giver virkelig en muligheden for at slippe ens kreativitet løs.
Jeg har desvære ikke haft så meget tid til at lege med det men har da fået lavet 2 væsner og de kan da findes her!

Guitar hero

2008-06-15T22:14:00.003+02:00

Efter end hård uge hvor jeg har fokuseret lidt på at få spillet noget guitar hero fik det endelig lykkedes mig at få gennemført TTFAF (Though the fire and flames) på hard.

TTFAF er den sværeste sang i guitar hero III og jeg må da også tilstå det tog mig en hel del forsøg at komme igennem, specielt de første 8 % og sidste 6 % af sangen havde jeg store vanskeligheder med at komme igennem.

Men det lykkedes til sidst, og det var en meget tilfredsstillende fornemmelse!

Dog er det stadig "kun" på hard og der er meget langt til at kunne klare den på expert.

For folk som ikke kender sangen / spillet er her et link til en gut som har klaret den med 100 % på expert hvilket er utrolig imponerende du kan se det her!

Derudover kan man se min Guitar Hero profil her

Hvorfor LAN?

2008-06-12T21:15:00.001+02:00

Det er altid noget helt specielt når "nørder" samles til LAN der er en helt speciel stemning som man ikke finder andre steder, det er noget størstedelen af alle de gamere jeg kender elsker at deltage i.
Grundlæggende er vi jo en subkultur ligesom så mange andre subkulture vi holder af at dyrke vores interesse med ligesindede, at vores interesse så går ud på at udspille, skyde og besejre hinanden i den virtuelle verden, gør absolut ikke det sociale aspekt mindre.

Når man er samlet omkring et spil og der igennem interagere med hinanden i spillet, kommer man helt automatisk i kontakt med folk man ikke kendte i forvejen, om det er snak i imens man spiller eller man lige går over til hinanden efter spillet og diskutere spillets forløb, strategi eller bare for snakket lidt om løst og fast, og man kommer oftest hjem med en række nye bekendtskaber.

For mig er det specielt det sociale ved LAN's, som gør dem tiltalende, der er en enormt hyggelig, dog oftest også meget indforstået, omgangs tone, og alle virker imødekommende og oplagte på at dyrke den fælles interesse.

Man oplever dog slet ikke det samme på net-caféer, jeg vil sammenligne det lidt med det at dyrke sport i en forening/klub kontra det at gå i trænings center, i et trænings center virker det uhøfligt at tale til hinanden med mindre man kender hinanden i forvejen og det handler meget om den enkelte og den enkeltes bekendte, hvorimod i en idræts forening/klub går snakken ofte på kryds og tværs både om sporten og alverdens andre ting, det er lidt den samme forskel man oplever, om det så er til LAN med vennerne, et mindre lokalt LAN eller et støre LAN arrangement.

Game NIght på ITU

2008-06-10T23:27:00.006+02:00

Efter jeg var ude til ITU's Final Fantasy Night blev vi enige om at jeg skulle op og deltage i deres game night.

Det forgik på ITU i deres GameLab, hvor deres MTG'ere(Media Technology and Games) holder til, som heldigvis lå lige over for deres fredags bar hvilket jo betød det var nemt at få noget at drikke, hvilket jo i og for sig også er en vigtig del af gaming :-)

Det var ikke overvældende med deltagere vi var omkring 15-20 stykker, men det gjorde det til gengæld ekstra hyggeligt og man fik snakket langt mere med de få folk der nu engang var der.

Der blev holdt nogle mindre hygge turneringer i 3 spil

Bomberman FFA
Starcraft: Broodwar FFA
Team Fortress 2 (med finale for det vindende hold i unreal tournement 2004 FFA).

Der var selvfølgelig også nogle små præmier til turneringerne disse præmier bestod af: sodavand, slik, chokolade og andre godter, som, som sådan ikke havde den store værdi men var perfekt til denne slags aften.

Med de spil skulle man tro de lå godt til mig, jeg er jo både en habil Bomberman spiller og en nogenlunde habil Starcraft spiller(i hvert fald når man kun samlinger sig med danskere :-)).

Dog blev der spillet FFA hvilket betyder at spillene skal spilles væsentlig anderledes end man normalt vil gøre i en 1 on 1 derudover har held også langt mere indflydelse i FFA.

I Bomberman lykkedes det mig at komme til finalen, hvor vi så vidt jeg husker var 5 og der fik jeg en 3 plads, dog havde jeg uden tvivl fået 2 pladsen og måske også 1 pladsen havde det været 1 on 1's hvilket jeg er ok tilfreds med i forhold til at det er lang tid siden jeg sidst har rørt ved bomberman.

SC:BW 2x 4 mands FFA.
Jeg kom i den hårde gruppe de 3 bedste i vores gruppe kunne uden nogle støre problemer havde taget vinderen fra den anden gruppe.

Min gruppe bestod af:
InvalidCola:(Tidligere wc3 clan mate) Fandt først ud af han var på ITU da han joinede starcraft spillet og der var jeg endda stadig i tvivl om hvem det var, men vidste jeg havde set navnet før.
Apocalypse_koa: Kammeraten der havde inviteret mig.
Morten: (Kan ikke huske hans nick men det var ham som hadve arrangeret eventet).

InvalidCola tog en absolut fortjent sejer, hvilket han også beviste sennere på aften da han tog mig i en 1 on 1 (dog en meget tæt 1 on 1 hvor det kunne være gået til begge sider)

I den anden gruppe vandt Apocalypse_koa's bror en sikker sejer med mass carriers.

I Team Fortress 2 lykkedes det mit hold at vinde og jeg kom derfor med i finalen der blev spillet i Unreal tournement 2004.

Lad det være sagt med det samme jeg er ikke nogen ørn til FPS, om end jeg finder dem underholdende, så jeg var lykkelig over at opdage jeg ikke indtog sidste pladsen da tiden var løbet ud, men blot næstsidste pladsen.

Derudover fik vi spillet række andre spil i løbet af aftenen:
Guitar hero/Rockband via projektor,
Wc3:TFT
og lidt andre løse spil

Alt i alt en super hyggelig aften, nat, morgen på ITU, og håber da på det skal gentages inden for den nærmeste fremtid.

Final Fantasy Night

2008-06-09T00:22:00.002+02:00

D. 9. Maj var jeg blevet inviteret ud på ITU (IT Universitetet), anledningen var at de havde arrangeret en Final Fantasy Night tema, og da kammeraten nævnte det for mig skulle jeg selvfølgelig med.

Lad det være sagt med det samme Final Fantasy er et af de spil jeg har absolut mindst kendskab til, og ja det er nok en lille fejl i min "gaming" opdragelse, men idéen bag var jeg helt vild med.

Alt i alt var det et meget fedt arrangement, bartenderne var dresset op til at ligne figurerne fra spillet, der vær hængt posters op og der var sat en projekter op som viste final fantasy filmene og nogle sekvenser fra spillet, derudover var der til aftenens anledning lavet et helt drink hæfte med "specielle" drinks som var opkaldt efter diverse ting og personer fra spillet jeg kan specielt anbefale Summoner Yuna, selv om den er lidt pigefarvet ;-), tror dog det er min svaghed for Passoa som gør at den tiltaler mig specielt. her er et billede af drinksene:

I kan læse mere om arrangementet Her

Derudover har de tidligere haft en Mario Tema bar, som jeg desværre ikke var med til, den kan i læse om Her

Idéen bag sitet

2008-06-07T15:43:00.001+02:00

Jeg fik idéen til sitet efter at havde set lidt på Fafners So I Suck At Starcraft side hvor han beskriver sine oplevelser med at komme tilbage som "old school" starcraft spiller.

Jeg vil dog gå lidt bredere og beskrive flere aspekter både hvad jeg selv syntes og oplevelser med forskellige spil men også branchen som helhed og andre ting jeg finder interessante.