Phyre's Blog

So the game expo at the college I go to has some game dev contests and game tournaments. Naturally, I'm going there for the Starcraft. So I can get my ass handed to me by Sigrun, again, for the second time in a row.

Anyway, long story short the SC tournament went pretty much as expected as it ended up being Sigrun vs me in the finals, so TL prevails. Lost, but put up a much better fight than last time so I'm happy. Apparently TvZ is my best MU.

However, the big news for me was the game dev contests. I won two of the categories and got $400 in gift certificates for Gamestop for my efforts! Nice!

So after get thoroughly trounced a good dozen times on Iccup I decided perhaps I was doing something wrong and I should go see how better players handle it. I heard good things about ygosu's rep library and I figured it would be a good place to start for current high quality TvP or TvZ reps on Python.

To my dismay, the first 6 or so reps I've watched in a row the T loses. I fully intend to keep looking but does anyone have any TvP/TvZ reps on Python where the T actually wins? If at all possible, I'd prefer games where the T plays fairly standard straight up stuff as I obviously tend to emulate their play. Doesn't really help my game if the T is pulling a Boxer and is doing some completely off the wall fake bbs into proxy facs type strat that I couldn't hope to make use of.

I believe my Iccup rec is 1-11 so far. Not discouraged though, still having fun.

There is going to be a game development contest this Saturday at my college and one of the categories is for game mods. Now I've been working on a single player campaign for CoH for awhile now and I intend to submit that for the level design category but I'm looking to create a new map for the mod category. I'm trying to brainstorm ideas but without too much luck.

If any of you have played Company of Heroes, I'm looking to create a mod that can be demo'ed for judges in about 5 minutes so it has to be quick and exciting. So big long battle campaigns aren't well suited for this. Shorter arcadey type of mods would be best I think.

I originally though of a cool idea using snipers and stuff but in the end decided that sneaking around with snipers would take too long and end up boring for the judges. Then I thought maybe I could so something like a Frogger style game with tanks going back and forth across a big field and you have to run some infantry to the other end. Still sort of boring unless someone has some ideas to spice that up.

Anyway, thanks for any ideas in advance!

So Sigrun and myself have a small little BW tourney coming up on the 19th at our college so I decided I should probably practice a little lest I be owned as hard as last time. Some of you may remember my thread about that about 6 months ago. I thought it was going to be an ocean of Protoss players and turned out everyone played T then in the finals I tried a cheese strat I had never tried/practiced before and failed miserably. -_- Of course, Sigrun wins a nice gift certificate and the one damn time I won this tournament I got a t-shirt that was big enough for me to use as a sleeping bag.

Anyway, moving along...

Signed up for TSL, hopped on ICCup and went to the TSL Ladder channel. Empty, lol. Well, except an afk Shallowbay. I hang around in the channel a little longer, checking TL, adding everyone in the D- section of the Practice Partners thread, and checking the TSL team listing to see who is on. Thankfully, tsl-ahrara was on and I got my first game. TvT, got owned. But it was fun.

Anyway, I look forward to getting owned many times more this TSL. Add TSL.Phyre if you want a horrifically rusty D- Terran practice partner or PM me for AIM info.

P.S: Quick update for those that followed my self-help blog, I've gotten myself to follow a pretty good schedule and I'm feeling pretty good about myself. Started exercising, run a mile a day, sit ups, push ups, etc. I spend a good 4-5 hours coding a project that will hopefully be a nice resume piece. And I even scheduled in 1 hour a day for SC. Only regret is that I'm still out of a job, but that will come. Hopefully. Still, feeling overall pretty good and productive.

I know I've done this once before in the past but some of this stuff I find quite entertaining. On and off I peruse the relicnews forums since I played DoW and CoH a bit awhile back and I'm generally interested in keeping tabs on where the games are going and such. Every so often I stumble upon threads like this:

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=186907

While the OP may not be terribly interesting, scrolling through a few of the replies are pretty funny. Funny to see what some people value in an RTS. One guy literally said he could just watch 2-3 CoH reps a day and be thoroughly entertained indefinitely.

Also of note is that there community isn't entirely without reason. There are quite a few people there putting in a good word for Starcraft.

Got a phone interview that turned out to be a technical screen that I was unprepared for and got owned. In hindsight I should have expected that it was a tech screen. Stupid mistake.

Worst thing is that I would have known the answers to every question they asked (minus one about XML) if I had that interview 2 months ago while I was still in school when I was using the concepts/languages in question. They were the most basic of basic questions. I felt like someone was asking me my name and I forgot it. You know you should know and you know that you look stupid as hell not being able to answer.

I guess I can take this experience as a wake up call. I need to brush up on my programming skills.

By the way, does anyone know the escape character/sequence for XML? I was asked that and I was trying to remember what it was but after the interview I tried looking it up and there doesn't appear to be one. There are substitute characters for certain common ones like "<" but no escape character like "\" in sh. I have a feeling it was a joke question.

Went to the doctor today and he believes the pain is nothing and to just keep an eye on it for the next week or so. Which is good, since WebMD told me it was a hernia. Got a Hepatitis A shot while I was there.

Nothing too eventful today, organized a bunch of stuff on my comp, worked a bit on the mod, looked around for a suit. Getting suits for someone of average height but a skinny build seems to be awfully difficult.

Following up on my thoughts yesterday, I think I'm abnormally sentimental and seem to get attached way too easily to things that really shouldn't matter. Missing college life? Okay, normal. Being sentimentally attached to a binder I've used all throughout highschool? Sure, why not. Being attached to a pen I've had for maybe a few weeks? Weird... Feeling sorta sad when I rearrange items (stuff on my desk, furniture, files on my comp) that have been that way for a long time? wtf?

I get used to then attached to the way things are really easily. Be it the way a room is laid out or the arrangement of my desktop icons. It's weird and I know it. Makes dealing with change of almost any kind difficult for me. What I've found reduces this aversion to change is when I know I can revert back easily. For example, when I went to college I didn't feel bad about a change of surroundings since I knew my room would be waiting for me back at home just the way I left it for years.

>Edit: I've finally backed up everything I needed from the tiny 40 gig hd I plan to retire and here I am for some stupid reason feeling like I'm actually going to "miss" this HD. Going through all the files on it was like taking a trip down memory lane starting at the beginning of college when I got it. Seriously, I don't think anyone else ever gets emotionally attached to hard drives.
>End edit.

Anyway, I'm just sort of rambling at this point. I was debating making a post discussing the methodology used in creating new units for SC2 but felt it would probably be shot down in the SC2 forum. Perhaps I'll discuss it in tomorrow's blog entry.

In closing, I found this interesting essay while I was browsing the IGDA (some game dev forums) concerning the ridiculous work conditions at EA. Granted it's a bit old, it's from 2004, but I still found it interesting. I knew EA was evil, but this adds another level to it.
http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

Start of a new week, so back to work. Did some more work on the mod, read some more stuff about Unix, burned some dvds for my parents, and gave my currently scattered portfolio some thought.

For those that don't know, I'm hoping to work in the game's industry one day and looking through job postings and such I see lots of them ask for demo reels. As such, I've been giving the idea of putting together a website portfolio and a demo reel. I probably need to put together a bit more content before I proceed too far with either but laying some framework for the website couldn't hurt.

As for the sleep schedule, I was going to sleep as late as 7 am last week. I've worked it down to around 2 am yesterday so I think I'm on track to be back on a normal sleep schedule. I think it will do a lot for my motivation to see the sun more often and have breakfast as opposed to waking up to lunch.

Also going to see the doctor tomorrow since I've been feeling some sporadic pain in the inguinal area of my left leg. No idea what is causing it and it's lasted for about 4 days now so I figured it was time to ask the doctor.

Lastly, I never posted much of a follow up to my wisdom teeth being pulled out but I just want to comment that it feels so damn good to eat solid foods again. Chewing has been back in full capacity for about 2 weeks I think and I'm trying to make up the 5-10 pounds or so I lost during the week I couldn't eat solid foods.

Edit: Topic I thought of but saving for tomorrow - Sentimentality concerning arrangements.

Spent some time writing up a tutorial to reproduce the work I did on the mod yesterday. I woke up pretty late so I regrettably didn't get as much done as I would have liked.

I would be watching a bit of the MSL finals if GomTV or YY would cooperate but neither is. YY sort of works but eventually the video freezes even though the sound continues. Gom player just plain isn't working. I hope Gom can smooth things out so watching their regular league stuff is as hassle free as their GSI broadcast (which was perfect by the way).

I've been working on a mod as a side project and I made a pretty major breakthrough I believe. Can't say much more than that until we do a release but I'm pretty proud of it.

As for my dreams, I get weird ones all the time but I figured I would share these two with you since they are Starcraft related and happened one day after the other.

1) 2 days ago I dreamt I was going into an interview with IBM and when I got to the interviewer's office it was fricking Boxer!?! As with most dreams feature foreign speaking characters/people, he spoke English. It was very weird. It even said Slayer's_Boxer on his desk.

2) Just last night I dreamt that I was scaling a wall in order to climb down 5 floors in a mall. So I'm climbing down this huge 5 story tall wall and there is a burger on a little platform sticking out of the wall. For some reason I know I need to get it for someone. Sure enough I get to the bottom and the burger is for Tasteless.

Weird dreams... Very weird. Boxer and Tastless, get out of my head!