Gears of War 2 - Horde Top 100

If you read my previous review of Gears of War 2 or you've played the game, you've heard of Horde mode. Basically, you get wave after wave of enemies to fight off while trying to survive. The first few waves may seem easy enough, but that can be deceiving. After about wave 30 the challenge really kicks in. So long as your whole team doesn't die you can continue on, attempting to add to your high scores.

A few weeks ago a few of my friends and I attempted to go for a high score in Horde mode. We did pretty good I thought, breaking the top 200 then on the map Jacinto. The high scores are publicly available on the Official Gears of War 2 website, listed according to what map the game was played on.


Tonight some other friends and I attempted the same thing. The challenge tonight came in that we went into the game with only 4 of the possible 5 teammates you can bring in, so we started off with a self induced handicap. Four hours later we broke into the Top 100 scores, landing at #98. All in all, it was a fun filled night of gaming with friends, playing a game we all enjoy. Maybe in a few weeks we'll try for the overall high score on Jacinto, this time on hardcore difficulty (we did it tonight on just normal difficulty).

Tips for Horde on Jacinto:

• Hold a grenade spawn tower
• First priority is ALWAYS the shields--before ammo or weapon pickups, always pickup a shield, you'll need all 5 of them.
• Never kill a mauler on the stairs unless you have 5 shields already, as the shields glitch and fall through the map.
• Place 2 shields backwards on the stairs next to the sandbags. Place 2 other shields boxing in the area where you land after jumping over the sandbags going up the stairs. Place the last shield at the top of the stairs in the gap farthest from the grenade spawn.
• Always use weapons that have auto ammo refills each round (lancer/hammerburst/shotgun) and use a boltok pistol as it spawns right in front of the stairs, making ammo runs quick and easy at the end of a wave. Other weapons are pretty useless after the first few waves as enemy health is too high.
• Only shoot grinders when they're weapons are overheated. Sure, it may be slow, but in later waves grinders will one hit kill you without ever downing you.
• Kill wretches last. They make it easy for you and your teammates to grab ammo while the wretch chases you around.
• Wait for close range kills (bottom of stairs) instead of wasting ammo on long range kills.
  
• When grabbing ammo at the end of a round, have everyone plant their 2 grenades, preferably far from your defended stairs and spread out enough that one won't set off another.
  

The Old Republic

I've been a fan of Star Wars for a long time. Not until just a few years ago did I find Star Wars video games actually enjoyable. I think the first Star Wars game I actually liked was Star Wars Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast. Games that came out before that I think were too limited by the capabilities of computers at the time. Jedi Outcast was probably the first game that was able to make the graphics of the game actually contribute to the games success and not detract from it. After that game I played other Star Wars games such as Jedi Academy, Rebellion, Empire at War, Knights of the Old Republic I & II, Battlefront I & II, and The Force Unleashed. Each of these games had good and bad aspects to them, but for the most part were enjoyable for me.

The most successful game for the Star Wars franchise has probably been Knights of the Old Republic. This was a role playing game put out by BioWare, the company that has since made the highly successful role playing game Mass Effect. LucasArts is returning to BioWare to try to relaunch the Star Wars universe into the Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) genre. If you're not sure what that genre is, just think of World of Warcraft, easily the most successful MMO ever. It seems LucasArts is betting on the capabilities of BioWare to overcome their previous failures in the MMO genre. Here's a short preview video BioWare has put out about the new game, Star Wars - The Old Republic.

While this video does make the game look promising, there are a few glaring questions I have before I would jump on the bandwagon, ready to buy this game. Some of these questions are left unanswered in the game website's FAQ section.

1. What are the system requirements for Star Wars: The Old Republic?
-From the game website's FAQ:

We will detail specific system requirements closer to the release date.

2. How much will it cost to play Star Wars: The Old Republic?
-As price is the primary reason I never played World of Warcraft, how this game is priced could have a drastic affect on my decision to play it or not. Again, from the game website FAQ:

Pricing for Star Wars: The Old Republic will be determined and announced at a later date.

3. Will this be a solely PC based game or will this also be playable on console systems?
-I've since moved away from PC's for most of my gaming because of the costs of keeping a PC up to date on hardware. Buying a console is cheaper and all the games for it are designed for that specific set of hardware. In my opinion, console gaming delivers a much better experience for the end user.

Anyways, I guess I'll just have to wait and see on this game, but for now, the potential is there for a great game.

Why the BCS should go

Yeah, this is one of my rare non-geek related posts. Those that know me know that I'm an avid football fan, following college football and attending 2-3 games a year at different universities I live by. Year after year we as fans have to put up with this mockery of a system called the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). I'm really sick of it, as are most all college football fans, players, and coaches. The system needs to be changed. Now.

A bit of history... (disclaimer: probably not factually 100% correct, but close enough)
Bowl games started out a long time ago, back when college football didn't have any post season, let alone any collegiate sport. Committees of rich folks got together and thought they could make a bunch of money if they could get some big name schools to agree to play each other after their seasons were over. Over the years, some bowls started agreeing to affiliate themselves with certain conferences. One of the first bowls to be affiliated with certain conferences was the Rose Bowl, which did so to help desegregation more than anything else. The Southeastern conference at the time didn't allow black players to play on their teams, so the Rose Bowl affiliated itself with the Big 9 and PCC conferences (precursors to the Big Ten and Pac-10). As transportation got cheaper for teams and more and more rich folks organized their own bowl games, people started realizing that the whole system was a mess. Some of the really rich schools got together and decided that because they were rich, that they could engineer who would be the national champions. They really didn't like the idea of a small school winning enough media votes to take the national title from the big schools, like BYU did in 1984. They figured if they could come up with a system that guaranteed two of their schools always played for the national title, no smaller school could ever win it. That's how the BCS was formed.

Over the years, enough fan uproar has prompted small patch fixes to their system, but for the most part, it's still intact. No smaller school will ever win the title under the current system. The changes that have been made have been essentially bribes. If the bigger schools share some money with the smaller schools, maybe they'll be quiet and let the big schools keep winning the championships. When it first started out, the smaller schools could compete with the bigger schools (see BYU 1984). Over time though, the engineered system of the BCS has made the BCS conferences stronger to the point that more than likely, a smaller school couldn't win a title now. The advantage BCS schools have, when it comes to recruiting, boils down to one fact only - if you play for a BCS school, you have the opportunity to win a national title, otherwise you don't - that's it. As athletes in high school decide where they want to play college football, they ask themselves if they want to win a title or not. If the answer is yes, then they should go to a BCS school because anywhere else that's just a fantasy.

The root of the problem with college football's system is that the system isn't fair. A flawless system would guarantee that no matter what school a team is from, that if that team is the best team in the country, that that team will win the national title. If somehow North Texas can put together the best team in the nation next year, there's absolutely no way anyone in the country will know it. Because they're from a smaller conference (Sun Belt), their wins won't give them enough credibility with poll voters. Because college football schedules are made years in advance, there's no way a team has control over who they play. It's not like the coach can look at his team one year and think he's got the greatest team ever and then somehow readjust his schedule to increase his schedule strength. Conference membership in the smaller conferences guarantees a majority of their games will be played against inferior opponents. Thus, conference games can't be a reliable indicator of how a good a team is either. The only way a non-BCS school will ever break the system and win a national title is to somehow come up with a dynasty where they have the best team year after year after year. Only after winning so consistently will they ever be able to schedule stronger opponents. Even then though, it may not be enough. They'll have to be good enough for long enough that they get invited to join a BCS conference. But then you're back to square one - no non-BCS school will ever win a national title.

The only way a system can be truly fair is to throw out the bowl system entirely and replace it with a playoff. If bowl sponsors want to sponsor different playoff games, that's great, but get rid of the invitation-bowl system, after all, don't the sponsors only really care about advertising dollars? The politics of college football seem dirtier than any politics in Washington DC. Even though a vast majority of fans, players, coaches, and students all want a playoff system, back door deals done by rich folks are keeping us stuck with the flaw that is the BCS.

To fix the system, a set of qualifications for postseason play needs to be in place that applies to all teams, no matter their conference affiliation. To require a team to go undefeated to play for a title is a little out of the question. The logical next step is to use polls, but the amount of bias and flaws inherent in that type of system negate any advantage it could bring. The next logical qualification to use conference championships. Each conference can set it's own criteria for determining who is their conference champion, but at the end of the season, each conference has a guaranteed representative in the postseason. As there are 11 conferences and because 11 teams does not an even playoff make, add in 5 at-large bids. My suggestion would be for these bids to be decided by committee, without using any type of poll or ranking. This committee could/should be made up of people previously involved in college football but now have no conflict of interest in making these bid decisions. I would suggest former coaches or players who are no longer playing or coaching football in any respect, nor involved in the media.

Since many people want to make this whole system change about money more than anything else (even though we're talking about an amateur sport), I have a few suggestions on how to run this playoff. With sixteen teams, it will take four rounds to play this through. I would play the first round of playoffs at the higher seeded team's home school. This gives them a significant home field advantage. After the first round, I would re-seed the playoffs and then let those rich folks who ran the previous bowl system bid to host these playoff games. The more money they bid to give to the participating schools, the better chance they have of hosting it. The highest bid gets the championship game, the next two highest bids get the semi-finals, and so on. In time I think this type of system will result in more revenue for the actual universities, which is the whole point, right?

One of the big arguments for the current BCS system is that it makes every regular season game a playoff game and any postseason playoff system would cheapen the regular season. Another is that a postseason playoff would mean these athletes would miss too much school and make their season too long.
On the first argument, each regular season game is not a playoff game. If it were, when you lost you would be done with no chance at playing for a title. While it may hold true in some years, this football season is a perfect example of where it doesn't. We have two one-loss teams playing for a national title when below them in the rankings is two undefeated teams. While a postseason playoff would make it so that a team could still win its conference championship with a few losses, it will enable those big schools to hoard the revenue from non-conference games amongst themselves. Since they apparently only really care about preserving their cash flow, wouldn't not having to schedule teams like Utah State, North Texas, Citadel and Appalachian State and instead playing other teams from the other BCS conferences generate more money? Sure, they may lose a few of those, but their postseason hopes aren't thrown out the window either.
The second argument is easily debunked by comparing lost school time of football players to that of other NCAA sports. Football players miss less class time than almost any other sport. Basketball players have games twice a week or more and their seasons last from November through March, spanning two school semesters.

The general consensus though is that the BCS system is systematically flawed and needs replaced. The sad truth of the matter is that what we're likely to get is more backroom politics applying patchwork bribes to the system in order to preserve their stranglehold on college football for as long as possible. The only way any changes will ever come to fruition is if fans learn to speak to them in a language they can understand--with money. If fans stopped buying things with team logos on them, if fans stopped going to games and just watched it at home or not at all, or if fans stopped donating money to these schools, they might someday get the message that the current system needs to be thrown out the window entirely.

Round and round we go

So, for the better part of this week at work I took on the job of removing a major annoyance in our project. Previous programmers thought it a good idea to break up the project into as many smaller projects as possible. Sure, this has a benefit of allowing programmers to work on almost any part of the project without running the risk of working on the same piece of code. I never really understood that when I started here. I mean, it's not like we had a ton of developers. We had three. Another benefit of the modular design is it allows the project to grow easier.

Anyways, that's kind of not the point of this post. Over the course of development, different developers would just reference other projects dll's instead of taking the time to do it correctly. Each project was built independently so there weren't any red flags popping up warning of potential problems. As it turns out, the project became filled with circular references where one project referenced code in another, and that other project in turn referenced the first project. So long as there was an existing dll present, the projects would build just fine. The problem is that this type of setup prevents us from ever reconstructing the entire product from scratch.

To cut a long story short, now that I'm the lead developer I've decided to fix this problem. I've spent the better part of a week going through all the projects and removing these circular references by adding in delegates where necessary and moving code where appropriate. Needless to say, this has been a very tedious work week getting a lot of work done, but not much really accomplished. Now that it's complete though I feel a lot better about the stability of the code we have (not great, just better) since I can now rebuild the product again from source code if necessary without having to deal with the mind numbing problems previous developers caused by not taking the time to do things right in the first place.