Geex StarCraft II Beta Tournament

So we had a small StarCraft II beta tournament at the Geex LAN party last weekend. If you want to skip to the results, feel free to do so. The replays are below.



The format was a best of three for each matchup. Most didn't make it to three rounds, but some of the games were pretty epic anyways. Some of the games will have more games than were scored, because our connection to Battle.net got dropped a few times. This is the biggest disadvantage to LAN play with Battle.net 2.0. Hopefully they make some more tweaks before it goes live.



I'm making available all of the replays from the tournament that I have. Some I think have been lost. We had the tournament hosting being done on 6 computers, so it took some work to get it all together, and I fear that some of them have been lost.

All available Geex StarCraft II replays. (2.36 MB)


If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. If you'd like to comment on any of the matches. Feel free!

Flexitris 1.5

A lot has changed since I last wrote a post on Flexitris. I could point you to the Revision History, or post some screenshots,

but instead, I'll tell you some of my favorite new features since my last post.

• Preview piece
• Store Piece
• Improved block graphics
• Keyboard support
• Slide next piece
• Flip piece (okay, that was in 1.1, but I really like flip piece)

Currently, there are over 30 options available for players to change. Some of which I don't personally like, but I have included because they are popular, and people keep asking for them:

• Easy spin
• Softer landings
• Wall kick (okay, so I'm kinda on the fence on this one, it's annoying sometimes, but helpful at others)

As is always in Flexitris tradition, any option can be turned on or off (or one of several different choices in some cases). Do you feel like a feature or an option should be implemented? Let me know. I want to hear what you have to say. Help me make Flexitris a game that would draw you in to play more!

So, what's next on the list for Flexitris; what changes can I expect soon? I'm glad you asked that, McKay. The next release is tentatively titled "Menu Options". There should be some large changes with how menu options are handled:

• Saving option settings
• Named option settings
• Option categories

But I'm also hoping to have more features in the next release too. It's due in a couple of months. Let me know what you think!

Flexitris

Flexitris version 1.1 is completed!

Flexitris is a flexible piece dropping game. Maybe you've played a few,

the long-term goal of Flexitris is to be able to change the rules and play several different variations of games.

It's a project I've been working on in my spare time over the past couple months. I started development on it longer ago, probably about a year, but it has received a lot more of my time over the past couple of months.

I'd like to distribute it more widely, but for now, I'm keeping it mostly with friends and family. If you want to play, drop me a line, and let me know.

The biggest problem I'm having now is that the game requires an XBox 360 controller. I'm building it on XNA, so that's required, and I'm hoping to be able to port it to the 360 eventually.

So, if you've got an XBox controller that you can hook up to a computer, let me know and I'll see what I can do for you. If you don't, and you want to get one, I can recommend one of these three products:

• Wired Windows


• Wireless Windows


• Wired Xbox

StarCraft 2 and Battle.net

So, I've been in the StarCraft II beta for a couple of weeks (has it been that long? Maybe not. Well, I got invited in on the evening of the first day IIRC). First off, I'd like to say that it's great. Several people have asked me my first impressions of StarCraft II, and I've already written them down here (3 years ago). I've played SC2 on a few occasions before, at previous BlizzCons. I was expecting the game to change a bit now that I've got more than 20 minutes to play a game, but I don't think many (if any?) have actually lasted that long. The game is fast paced, and intense. They've increased the number of starting drones (or SCVs or Probes), so the game gets started faster. There's less idle time at the beginning of the game. That makes for a more intense game. They've change a lot of the units, so that changes the game, but not the essence of the game. Sure, I don't know all of the units, so I'm a little lost, but rest assured, the game is still StarCraft. They haven't tried doing anything weird, like adding heroes. Sure there'll probably be "heroes" in the single player game (which we haven't had the chance to play on the beta), but there were heroes in the single player game of the first StarCraft game too. All in all, I'm impressed.



One thing about StarCraft 2 that's frequently mentioned is the fact that it doesn't support LAN play. To that I will have to disagree. It does support LAN play. What it actually doesn't support is LAN parties without the Internet. We had a LAN party today, and it worked fine. More than fine actually. It worked quite well. We had Internet connectivity the whole time, but when was the last time you went to a LAN party without Internet connectivity? I mean really, what decade are we living in? There wasn't any latency that we were aware of, because it used our LAN to send all of the packets? We had four beta invites among all of my friends that came, so we were able to get 4 people playing at a time. We had a couple of 2v2 matches, but mostly we did 1v1 matches with observers on the big screen TV. Fun was had by all. People complain that StarCraft supports doesn't support LAN play? I have to say that StarCraft 2 supports LAN play better than the original StarCraft. We created a "party" on Battle.Net with all four accounts, and games got started faster. Because all of the computers were connected to Battle.net, there weren't any patching difficulties. One of the computers didn't have the latest patch (from yesterday?) but it quickly got it before even logging on and all was well. And because we were all in the same Party, we created our own games, no one else ever got in them, and we could set up the teams however we wanted them. The interface for creating games and such in Battle.net is pretty slick.

What I want to see with Battle.net is "party" matchmaking. That's one of the most difficult things about playing in a LAN party, is coming up with even match ups. StarCraft 2 does have handicaps, just like WarCraft 3 (that I've never really used), but it would be sweet to say, "Okay, we have these 6 people playing, what's the best matchup." That would be a great place to actually use the Internet connectivity to the player's advantage. It knows the ratings between all of the people who are playing, and it shouldn't be too hard for it to come up with a good match. That would make Battle.net LAN play (and virtual LAN play for when you can't meet up with your friends in real life) substantially superior to original StarCraft play.


The last thing I'd like to add is a prediction. World of WarCraft patch 3.3.3 is on the public test realms. One thing they've changed in Patch 3.3.3 is how the login screen works. And I've noticed that it works just like the StarCraft 2 beta does (username, password, and authenticator key). I predict that World of WarCraft will finally enable cross game (and therefore limited cross-faction) communication in patch 3.3.3.


I know I've made predictions like this in the past, and I've been wrong, but I seem to have more data on my side now :D We'll have to see.

Play! vs Video Games Live

This week I attended Play! with my wife and a few friends. I really enjoyed it. It was lots of fun. If they come to your town, I'd recommend you attend (if you like that sort of thing). I'm a fan of video game music, and it's a nice excuse to go to the symphony. It was a nice night out.

You might have also heard of Video Games Live. They're both basically the same idea: "We play video game music at the symphony!" I've been to both now, and I like both of them.

But maybe you've seen one and not seen the other, and the other is coming to town. What should you do? Well, you should go, because they're both great.

So, while both are good, there are some differences, and I'd like to talk about them. Some I think are clear advantages or disadvantages, but others are more dependent upon personal preference.

I liked the music better at Video Games Live. The arrangements seem a little more polished, and closer to the originals, and they seem to flow better. The Video Games Live performance at BlizzCon 2007 had some really great music, and they did what they could to pull some of the original performers in. The Video Games Live show I attended at my local symphony hall last year also pulled in some original performers (like the Video Game Pianist).

Play! has a much more traditional symphony feel, where Video Games Live tries to turn the Symphony into a Rock Concert. While Play keeps the lighting basically the same as a traditional symphony, Live turns the lights down, and has a lights show going on in the background. During Play, the Conductor announced a few of the pieces in a row, and then the orchestra played them. During Live, Tommy Tallarico (not the conductor) becomes your personal MC. He introduces each piece, talks about the culture, plays some games with the audience, and adds his own "witty" banter. I know a lot of people are annoyed by his banter, saying things like he wants to be treated like a rock star.

Both shows have projectors displaying images during the songs. Both of them typically have noobs playing the games during gameplay footage, though the usage of the in-game cut scenes is popular too. During Play, I was annoyed with the hardware they used. There was lots of screen tearing in the images they were playing, particularly when there was lots of moving video. The 10-year old PS2 rendered the same videos more smoothly. Live seemed to be more conscientious about synchronization. They tried to get the video and the effects in line with what the orchestra was playing. Also, Live seemed to have a lot more video. At Play some songs only had video 1/2 the time, and some songs didn't have any video at all. It also seemed like the people at Live were more familiar with their video equipment. On a few occasions, I saw the computer screen, with a mouse selecting the next video to play, and the video controls (play, pause, rewind, fast forward...). Play did get the advertising (buy our CDs!) up during intermission, so that was apparently a priority.

Play had a synthesizer for a few of the songs they were using. I think they even used it for a piano effect, though they did use it for organs. Video Games Live wasn't afraid to pull up weird instruments, like a real Ocarina, and a banjo. On the other hand, that seemed to make the stage somewhat cluttered, and it was hard to see the individual performers perform (The Video Game Pianist was somewhat hidden, so we couldn't see what he was doing very well, though it was displayed on the overhead screens.

Some of my very favorite music pieces feature a choir singing stuff. I don't know if I can call them words, because it's sometimes just random chanting. I believe Blizzard's Call to Arms calls their language "Quasi pseudo Latin". I like how both Play and Live use a choir to get the same effect. In Live this week though, it appeared as if they've got the lyrics wrong, and that was less than optimal to me.

All in all, I like the feel, the ambiance of Play! just a little bit better, but it seemed as if Video Games Live had the polish down a lot better.

So again, remember that I really enjoyed both performances and I would go to either again if they came back. Here's hoping they do soon.

New Calculator in Windows 7 and floating-point support

I use the windows calculator all the time. +R, "calc", , and I'm off doing my calculations. It was probably about 10 years ago that I started using the scientific mode all the time. This was when I realized that the standard mode didn't support correct order of operations. So whenever I see a windows calculator that isn't in scientific mode, I quickly change it, and then go about my calculations. So when the need for a calculator came up and I was using Windows 7, I went about my normal flow, but when I was going to change it to the scientific mode, I found a new mode "Programmer" mode. (yeah, it's also got a cool unit-conversion mode, but that's not what I'm talking about today) I'm a programmer, so, I thought it would be the perfect mode for me. I swapped over, tried performing my calculation (something like 15 / 16), and was annoyed that the result was wrong (it gave a zero result). Thinking I had typed it in incorrectly, I retyped, and the same wrong result was given. I did note that programmer mode does have other potentially useful features like hex and bit conversions built in, but because I was in a small hurry, I swapped back to scientific mode, performed my calculations, and went on my way. Later, I got curious as to what happened, and I discovered how programmer mode works: It performs integer-only calculations. 15/16 is zero when using integer arithmetic. I wonder why it doesn't support floating point operations. The calculator would be really handy if it showed the bits for a floating point according to the IEEE 754 standard. But otherwise it is nice that it supports 64 bit integer operations. I'll probably mostly stick with scientific mode.

This reminds me of a joke I invented back when I was learning about the IEEE 754 floating-point standard:

There are 0011111111111111 kinds of people in this world, those who really understand the IEEE 754 floating-point standard, and those who don't.

Yeah, I realize it's not really a joke I can tell at parties, but I haven't told it on my blog yet, so it might as well be on here somewhere.

What Is the Study of Technology?

So, I was just wandering around the Internet ("surfing" as it is often called), when I came across this question at wikianswers:

"What is the study of technology?"

I thought that it was a very good question, so I thought about it for a bit, and wrote a little response. I just kept on rambling, so maybe it's not very concise, and it may not even be accurate. Feel free to update the page. I've decided to re-post my response here for my own records:

There isn't really a good answer to this, partially because there isn't really anyone who does this. I would guess that this is in part due to the fact that there is a lot of different kinds of technology. Someone who studies computer technology might be a computer scientist, or a computer engineer or something like that, but someone who studies telescopes might be an astronomer. But actually, the only people who are studying telescopes are people who are studying to become an astronomer. The people who study current computer technology, are merely studying to become computer engineers. Because it's the making of the technology that people care about. The computer engineers are the ones making the pieces of computers that are so highly prized. The physicists are the ones making telescopes. So someone who is studying technology is merely a student. In that sense, it could be said that "academics" is the study of technology.

From a different perspective, if we jumped forward 1000 years, and a group of people from the future were trying to study our technology, they would probably be called archaeologists. If we found some alien technology and we were studying it (or vice versa), might be called Xenology or Exology (unless it was historical, then we might call it Xenoarchaeology or Exoarchaeology), but it depends on why you're studying the technology, if you're trying to learn about how the technology works, you might be a physicist, but if you're trying to learn about the culture, you might be a (xeno)sociologist.

Which brings us back to the original formulation. It all depends on how the technology is studied. What is trying to be learned? Something about the people? (sociology?) Something about how the technology is able to function at all? (physics?) Something about how the technology looks? (architecture? aesthetics?) How comfortable or easy to use the technology is? (ergonomics?)

So, it all comes down to how it's being studied.