F-29 Retaliator (1991)

Retaliator is a cool game that I used to play a lot of.  Actually it’s the only flight sim I’ve ever enjoyed.  Its gameplay involves cruising around on a small map (settings included ‘Pacific’ and ‘Middle East’) and destroying labelled targets and enemy aircraft in the area (splash one lizard, yo).  Its 3D engine is simple but remarkably smooth for its time.

What really makes the game fun is its head-to-head modem play.  The slower modem we typically used ran at 2400 baud, which meant choppy updates but otherwise a very playable experience.  The only problems came up when trying to fly in formation: a slight change in trajectory could cause your opponent to slam right into you.

Typical of the genre, Retaliator supports multiple views: the standard cockpit view, various views taken from outside the plane, and one looking “behind,” shown on the right.  Hm.  Is that you, or the copilot?  I’ve only ever seen one parachute come out of an airplane…

When you are shot, different parts of your plane stop working: radar, fuel lines, weapons. This is kind of cool—your sensors can get damaged and you can keep flying around.  But if you’re damaged badly enough, your engines will intermittently fail and your plane will start to nosedive. You can pull up, prolonging the inevitable, but eventually you must eject. Oh, and while your engines aren’t working, Retaliator plays the most horrible alarm out of the PC speaker.  Possibly one of the worst noises I’ve ever heard in my life.  Cool MIDI soundtrack, though.

Brute

Last night I played some nethack and finally killed Medusa—first time for me.  I have yet to embark on the Rogue quest (scared of the polymorph traps) but my character has become a serious brute.  One day I’ll write a blog post about nethack.

I slept in this morning, and it felt great.  I tried to have some oatmeal for breakfast with cardamom and cinnamon and sugar in it, but I think I overdid it with the spices and it tasted horrible.  Then I went to the gym, even though yesterday’s workout was horrible (I’ve been sick).  Today’s wasn’t great but I had a little more pep:

• Chin-ups, 10 wide-grip then 10 wide-grip/behind-head.
• Bench, 30, 10, 15, 10, 10 reps with 95lbs.
• Some cycling to break things up (13 mins and 83 calories—pathetic!)
• Squats, 3×10 with 95lbs (testing the ankle).
• Triceps extensions, 5×10 variable weight.
• Concentration curls, 3×10 on each arm, 20 lbs.
• 200 crunches (various).

My ankle is mostly recovered.  I can’t fully extend my foot (e.g., sit in saiza) but I think I’m ready for some judo/jiu-jitsu next week!

Hack’ & ‘Hack

I woke up and scrambled two eggs for breakfast.  I travelled to campus to meet with my friend Lonn, and we played hacky sack for a bit.  By then I was hungry, so we looked for food but all the lineups were too long.  Instead, I bought a granola bar out of a vending machine and we played nethack for *hours*.  I managed to polymorph my dog (via polymorph trap) into a master lich; meanwhile, Lonn found rings of poly-control and polymorph and decided that a master lich was the best thing for him to polymorph into.  I died when an air elemental engulfed and tore my meager 59-hp character to shreds, but Lonn’s is alive and well.  Afterwards, I was so… hungry…

Today my ankle is doing fairly well (hence the hacky sack) but still not completely recovered.  I really want to go back to judo & teh jitz, but not just yet.

Tomorrow I start my Ph.D. studies.  I *still* need to decide on a class to take, but I’m uncertain enough about each of the classes to have to visit each one in turn to make my decision.  I also need to decide on a research topic—my supe is taking several very interesting directions in his research, and experience tells me I’ll benefit by complementing his interests and experience.

Nerd Stories I

In junior high I had a (deserved) reputation as one of those brats who messed around with the school computers.  So when someone stole all of the mouse balls from the computer lab, I was a prime suspect.  The school principal came into the class to scold us…

Slicks ‘N’ Slide (1993)

Gunfire peppers the side of your car, shattering your windows. As you spin out of control, a green motorcycle buzzes past and takes the lead. Enraged, you slam your fist onto a red button, launching a heat-seeking missile after your attacker. The missile follows the motorcycle into a tunnel … then bits of green plastic spit out the other side.

It’s Slicks ‘N’ Slide by Timo Kauppinen!

Excelsior (1994)

You may not know this, but there exists a council — the Council of World Watchers — that plans history, then monitors all of the inhabited planets for incongruity. When things go wrong, demi-deities known as Fixers are sent to correct the timeline. But there’s a catch: in order to affect change on a world, a Fixer must assume the form of one of its inhabitants, however feeble…

In Excelsior, (1994, 11th Dimension Entertainment) you play a Fixer who’s been tasked with correcting history in the medieval world of Lysandia. If you’re curious, you can find Lysandia on plane 52, universe 13, subclass A; coordinates 152.21 by 546.4 by 1,321.43 by 72.2…

Game Notation II

Chess has algebraic notation. Backgammon has the 24-point numbering system. Even Hex openings can be reliably conveyed using opening diagrams. In Counter-Strike Source, the status quo is to describe openings using natural language, e.g. “two players drop down and rush the catwalk.”

I’ve previously argued that this way of describing play makes it impossible to automate the necessary tasks of testing, clarifying, and maintaining CS openings. And yet openings can be argued to be just as important in CS as in Chess. So what are the alternatives?

For auld time’s sake

Friday, Lonn came over to play some Gladiator, a game I’ve mentioned before. Way back when, we’d play side-by-side on the same keyboard, noses to the monitor. But for this re-enactment of our childhood, we plugged a wireless keyboard into the laptop, which we then plugged into the TV: this let us sit on the couch and play on separate keyboards (Lonn on the wireless, me with the laptop cooking in my lap). We played for hours!

Castle of the Winds (1989)

Castle of the Winds by SaadaSoft (i.e., Rick Saada) was my very first Roguelike. You control a legless farmer who just can’t seem to catch a break: First, your farm gets torched, and then your godparents are slain. To even the score, you venture into the nearby abandoned mine and systematically kill every creature in sight. But when you emerge, someone has gone and burned your village to the ground!

Game Notation I

Openings are the sequences of actions taken at the start of a game. Chess openings, for example, have been studied for hundreds of years, and are an important part of effective play. When Chess openings become recognizable, they are given fancy names like The Giuoco Piano or The Ruy Lopez. Kind of like outlaws in the Wild West…

Openings are popular in a variety of classic games like Chess, Checkers, Go, etc. But it is less conventional to think of applying opening theory to a game like Counter-Strike Source…