Knowing nowt about audio... [Brit]

To my right, in the office (or 'den' as some Americanized EED colleagues call it) I have a small Sony midi Hi-Fi; still cranking out BBC Radio 2 in less than superb stereo some 6 years after purchase. It ain't big, it ain't clever, and it does MiniDisc which as you can imagine, I use all the time.

There is nothing wrong with it per se, but I would like to explore the area of replacement at some stage before Christmas - perhaps bizarrely we don't actually have a 'proper audio rig' anywhere in the flat, albeit there are screens and computers aplenty. Priorities, Priorities! I guess.

I do know that I want separates. I do know that I'm not convinced by the argument that spending an extra £200 per yard on oxygen free hand spun titantium & chocolate cabling isn't one that is going to swing with me unless Dawkins himself says its OK. I also want Digital DAB radio, and the ability to plug it into the network (if such a combo system exists) would be a bonus.

So there you go. Where to start? What brands are worth the looksee, and which aren't?

Sincerely, Confused of Tunbridge Wells.

Enemy Territory Quake Wars Random thoughts [Spiny]

ETQW popped through the letterbox today. I'd forgotten to cancel my preorder based on the horrible experience I had with the earlier beta & demo...

...but you know what? It's actually not half bad. They've got propper sound assets in now & it's a raucous battle experience. The classes have all got useful stuff, there's a wealth of ways you can contribute to the team. Combat is pretty satisfying and it runs very well indeed (1650x1050 here on normal settings with an X1900).

The objective system is good, even if the HUD is a little frightening at first. It's all useful info though & a read through the manual is well worth while, unusually enough. Playing as engineer is fun, as is sniper. solider has the typical iD hit-where-you-aim feel rather than CS randomness.

Nice open larger scale class based combat, vs TF2's tighter quarters.

PS, Don't get the special edition, the extra disc is crap.

TF2 Achievements [Spiro]

It's a nice part of the game and I thought we could come up with a few of our own achievements, for instance:

Protect the medic (more than once by accident) as the heavy

wait for the rest of your team to spawn before charging off alone

Play as part of a team for at least 1 round

Lets have some more?

God Bless The Beej! [Brit]

You know, I'm not really into the sentimental mush type scene; I'd much rather grab a cheap flight to Burma and film monks being beaten, but here's the thing... God Bless Beej.

For those of you joining us from places far flung, and wondering how on earth a website like www.electricdeath.com exists in the way it does, I point wholeheartedly at [EED]Beej, a man who is to this webby what Chuck Norris is to low-life criminal scum in B-movies various.

So, well done that man and don't think for an instant that your script0ring work and general 'net dalliances go unobserved or unappreciated... you've done sterling work here.

Hurrah!

TF2 mechanics [Lurks]

I've noticed some weird stuff in TF2 and started to formulate ideas about why that might be. A quick bit of in-game testing turned up some unexpected results.

My first hypothesis, based on observing soldier RPG fire on heavy weapon dudes, was that the game doesn't just apply a fixed value of damage per weapon to any class regardless. A quick bit of testing with some class v class melee turned out this surprising result.

TF2 randomises damage to a large degree, making it really quite hard to tell what an average hit of something is for. However I noticed no difference in damage taken in hitting another scout versus hitting a HW dude. We hit each one twice to check and really I can ascertain that the damage of the scout's bat does about 28-47 damage per hit. The really strange thing is that crits always hit for 105. On any class.

So we can rule out the hidden armour, for melee at least. However even a quick hit with a soldier's spade yielded a whack well outside of the scout bat's range with a 55 and 61 hit. The more obviously heavier melee weapons do indeed do more damage.

Also I looked at patterns of bullet impacts from the scout shotgun and the spread on other weapons like the pistol and observed something interesting. It looks like the spread happens quite early. If you fire at a wall some distance away, you see it's quite tight. Yet if you fire right up close, you don't see the tightness of rounds you'd expect. Annecdotally, also, the weighting of the spread does seem odd. You most often take SOME sort of damage with someone firing a shotgun at you from the other side of the map. If the spread was 'natural', then that just wouldn't happen very often at all. Similarly with pistols, you see a number of railgun like accurate shots and then some very wide ones. I don't think valve is using random spreading precisely.

I suspect what they're doing is rolling a number as to how many of the shots or pellets are 'wide' and then throwing those wide, while those that aren't tend to be very tight.

I wonder if the crit figures I obtained end up being maximum damage x 2. It STILL seems high since I did not observe any hit that was over 50. And the crit rates are also quite high really. Normal crit in an RPG is 2X damage normally. Not 2X of the maximum damage your weapon roll could do and THEN some.

This goes some way to explaining the difference in opinion on the scout bat. One guy said it was even, that he'd seen someone taken down in two hits. I said, no it's quite pussy really, you need to whack people a lot with it. Of course with a crit being more than HALF the health of a heavier class like a soldier, it's not hard to see how the range comes about.

Removing Friendly Fire from TF2 [Lurks]

We really didn't see this one coming. This morning I go to update our server's MOTD with a clever bit of text from another UK FF server which had a handy guide to spotting spies with FF on, only there's an update. I read the news and Valve have removed Friendly Fire from TF2!

Removed mp_friendlyfire cvar for servers. Team Fortress 2 breaks in a number of ways if this is on


This is quite a remarkable thing to do. They did so by saying that basically the mp_friendlyfire cvar breaks the game in a number of ways. Without actually stating what ways those are. Certainly after 375 hours of TF2 being racked up by the clan in the last week, I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that Valve's statement is abject nonsense. The game is not broken in any single way at all with mp_friendlyfire 1.

I started off being pretty agnostic about friendly fire. Natural inclination to have it on based on our predilections with previous FPS games over the clan's ten year history. I remember when we were quite insistant in the distant past regarding weapon stay on Unreal Tournament leagues. They wanted it on, we wanted it off. We felt very strongly at the time, feeling that the game became a needless spam 'a thon and hence pulled out of the leagues. Six months later were vindicated when the leagues reversed that decision.

It must, however, be pointed out that there's a key contrast between that scenario and the one which hovers over the clan like an ominous cloud with a hint ofthe faint artificial tang of spam in the air. The difference is back then Epic agreed with us. Weapon stay was silly, they said.Now Valve are telling us that friendly fire has no place in TF2. There's a heated debate spilling over on the forums right now.

The thing is, in the intervening timehaving played a great deal ondefault FF off servers and our own FF on server,it's clear to me what the major gameplay differences are and by trial of battle, a preference has solidified in my mind. I prefer friendly fire to be on. It'd be nice if it could be 50% damage or so but it's better that it's there than it is. This is pretty much the view of the whole clan with the exception of one legendarily mecenary Irishman that would probably prefer to play with bots anyway, given the chance.

Let's quickly set out the pros and cons of friendly fire on and off. Let's start off with what's good about friendly fire being on:

No griefing. Spys are debuffed because everyone can simply shoot at everyone all of the time in order to find out if they're a spy or not. Players don't need to be aware of any of their team mates, they can straffe around to their hearts content, they can lurk as a spy around a corner being pill spammed, they can mow left and right with the heavy weapons dude with gay abandon.

How about what's good about friendly fire being off:

Players are forced to know where there team mates are and consider arcs of fire. Pill spam in enclosed spaces is seriously cut down as it makes it very difficult for players to get through with a constant stream of grenades. Large collections of turrets are nerfed because they tend to mow down defenders standing in front of them.

The case for Friendly Fire.

Too often with multiplayer games do you find that the game essentially consists of 24 random people, half of which just happen to be wearing the same colour and are pointing in the same direction, just like when you were paired up with that ugly chick in the biology practical. Friendly fire forces people to consider, who's job is it to cover that doorway. It cuts back on the genuinely silly levels of mass grenade spam seen in the game and demands a higher level of skill where players need to be pretty clear about where they're firing and not just fire in the general direction of bad guys speculatively.

Friendly Fire does demand better team play and players which are on the ball. This tends to work well when you've got mates playing versus mates. On our server it's common to see much of EED versus another clan.

Additionally, despite the game apparently - according to someone at Valve, having mp_friendlyfire level in by accident - we find that the Pyro actually doesn't damage team mates. This buffs a sadly maligned class considerably because it makes them great for flushing out spies running through the front line stealthed and one hanging back in your base becomes a major asset.

The case against Friendly Fire

There's a couple of key issues here: Firstly spys are simply too powerful in the game as it stands. Somewhat counter balancing that right now is the fact that you fire at your entire team periodically to see if anyone is a spy. I think this whole game mechanic needs a bit of an overhaul but the fact remains that right here and now, particularly with non-expert players who have learned how to work out if someone is spy from actual observation and smarts, Friendly Fire being off actually nerfs spys in a way that they kind of need to be.

Currently the FF ratio is basically 100%. It's somewhat normal to have this damage scaled back a bit just to cut down on a single shotgun blast being a fatal event. The game is quite manic, it's not a tactical shooter. There's lots of stuff flying around and people are going to die by accident with FF on.

Conclusion

I think there's not a lot in it. I enjoy both game types but I enjoy FF more. Ideally I would have liked to have scaled the damage a bit and perhaps reduced the respawn time on a team-killed player a bit. However when the chips are down,I find itmore fun playing on our server and another FF server I have in my favorites list, than otherwise. Spys can be a huge problem, particularly since the Pyro situation is not widely known, but I do pretty well versus spys normally, as an engineer.

Surely any rational view is that you let people decide unless there really is some game breaking reason why friendly fire wouldn't be in. We've voted, collectively, and we're running the server. By what right does Valve come along and just decide sorry, the gameplay you find more enjoyable is simply not how we think you ought to be playing it. I'm seeing parallels, right away, with the many dubious multiplayer choices Valve has made in the past, all of which were aimed squarely at their own style of inexpert game play. Such as the ridiculous spray 'o matic headshot lottery which Counter-Strike ended up being when they took ownership of it.

I have a massive amount of respect for Valve. I respect the way they've re-done TF from the ground up to appeal to a wider audience. I appreciate that we are probably not part of the mass new audience they've been going after. However I think I can voice some collective dismay that Valve would basically hold us in sufficient contempt that they wont even let us decide this issue for ourselves.

What are you playing at Valve? I'd dearly like to know.

Teamfortress 2 (TF2) - things that need fixing [Brit]

We've had access to the TF2 beta for a while now and the clan has racked up an astonishing 374 hours of play at the time of blogging. For those interesting in statistics, this means that in terms of clan internet usage, TF2 is second only to pr0n; which to be fair is what you'd expect.

However, TF2 is raising a number of questions in my mind and in turn a number of items that desperately need fixing - otherwise, (and at this point I've got my crystal ball out) I suspect it may turn out to be nothing more than a flash in the pan. So, in no particular order - and bearing in mind these are all 'imo':

1. There are serious issues with class balance. The spy and scout both have abilities which far exceed 'fair' if you look at their performance in game. For example, the spy is just impossible to find and there exists no detection mechanism to enable a decent counter. The scout is not only extremely fast as you'd expect, but has the ability to take out even a heavy with his shotgun/baseball bat at a rate that suggests the heavies are made of spongecake. At the very least the spy should have the invisibility mode removed, or give it a much longer recharge time, and the scout should have a shotgun with fewer rounds before reload and the baseball bat shouldn't be the equivalent of a lightsabre. Alternatively, allow the engineers to build a spy detector type device... In fact, shotguns are almost like the DE in CS:S. Regardless of distance you can still inflict damage at quite a startling rate from a gun that is not designed for range. This needs fixing across all clases.
2. It is very pretty to look at, but could someone explain what took the Valve guys so long to build exactly? The mechanic hasn't changed much since the original TF2 and whilst there are some nice extras and its very polished (even at this Beta stage) things seem to feel a little stale quite quickly. This could be because there are so few maps. Six is a joke especially when you consider that six is all there are going to be at the official launch too. Whilst a direct comparison to Unreal Tournament isn't necessarily fair, that game came loaded with maps and game types which extended it's shelf life well beyond expectations. TF2 needs a lot more professionally designed maps, at least double the number it has now. The CTF equivalent is a great game type but seriously underwhelming at the moment. Otherwise the mapping scene will be dominated by user generated maps which whilst not a bad thing, leads to a definite drop in game play quality as they are usually not up to scratch.
3. The dedicated server needs work; options which should be there and are not must bethought aboutin my view... for example: a) Reserved slots need to go in. b) Class limitations would be great. c) Skipping the "intro" movie bit so it goes Connect > MOTD > Team Select would be a handy option d) In game player management for admins (rather than RCON via console) would also be good. e) Ability to skip/reduce the pre-game waiting/setup times as per your own preference.

Thats it really. For the purposes of sharing our awesome knowledge with the wider world, many of whom we know from the webstats sit at home waiting for EED to speak unto them, fellow clannies should proffer their own thoughts from hereonin...