April 1st seems to bring with it two styles of 'pranks' on the internet. The first is where someone comes up with some sort of ludicrous or plausible lie and just throws it out there. I don't understand this at all. Some of it can be a little amusing I guess, but mostly it just feels pretty stupid. The other kind is where a website/game/whatever puts a ton of work into implementing something really absurd and cool for a day. Google has been pretty awesome with this sort of thing and this year they 'hid' 150+ Pokemon on Google Maps or something like that. This sort of thing seems fun for the users and like it was probably fun for the implementers too. I do understand this!
League of Legends has been coming out with new game modes to try on a short term basis and they timed their most recent one to coincide with April 1st. The 'back story' is that they're changing the big pro league to use just this mode starting next season which falls into the first camp which I don't like, but then they actually went out and implemented the game mode and put it live for a week which I do like. And getting two of the top pro teams to play a 'serious' game on the map as a way to introduce the mode was pretty amusing and they went far enough over the top that it's pretty clearly not true.
The mode involves knocking 80% off of the cooldown of every ability and making everything cost no mana. There are some other buffs as well like earning more money, moving faster, and getting more attack speed/crit from items. But the basic idea is everyone just stands around spamming buttons and making crazy things happen. I played a game and it was pretty fun. I think it would probably get old pretty fast but as a one week thing it's pretty great.
April Fool's Day is a pretty silly idea, but if people keep doing it like this I'm just fine with it. But you'll forgive me if I wait until April 2nd to listen to your baby announcements.
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
Upcoming Lounge Day
I kept getting complaints each year that people didn't realize when the annual Lounge Day was going to happen. It runs on Good Friday each year, but that does change wildly from year to year. This year it'll be on April 18th!
Lounge Day is a day of board gaming and reminiscing at University of Waterloo consisting mostly of Mathies a little older than I am, but anyone who can find their way to the Comfy Lounge is certainly welcome. I don't currently know how I'm getting there or how I'm getting back but I intend to be there for as much of the day as I can. I'm normally one of the first ones there (~noon, after eating at Mel's) and one of the last ones to leave (~1am, after eating at Sunshine's). I didn't get sick eating at either place last year so assuming Sunshine's is open I'll likely try to do the same thing this year. April 18th is pretty late though, so Sunshine's may well be off of the normal term hours? I don't know. I'm sure something will work out if it's closed!
Anyway... Almost three weeks notice had been given! Lounge Day! Woo!
Lounge Day is a day of board gaming and reminiscing at University of Waterloo consisting mostly of Mathies a little older than I am, but anyone who can find their way to the Comfy Lounge is certainly welcome. I don't currently know how I'm getting there or how I'm getting back but I intend to be there for as much of the day as I can. I'm normally one of the first ones there (~noon, after eating at Mel's) and one of the last ones to leave (~1am, after eating at Sunshine's). I didn't get sick eating at either place last year so assuming Sunshine's is open I'll likely try to do the same thing this year. April 18th is pretty late though, so Sunshine's may well be off of the normal term hours? I don't know. I'm sure something will work out if it's closed!
Anyway... Almost three weeks notice had been given! Lounge Day! Woo!
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Bridge Match 2 - Board 48
Board 48 - Dealer West - EW Vul
Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Fair
My hand: ♠ 9 4 ♥ A K J 8 4 ♦ T 8 7 ♣ J 7 6
West opens 1 spade, partner passes, and East responds 2 clubs. I'm a little worried I'm going to get myself in trouble by bidding here, but I have a pretty good heart suit and really want partner to lead it. And the vulnerability is favourable. So I bid 2 hearts. West makes a competitive double, partner passes again, and East bids 3 spades. I'm done, and so is everyone else.
Partner leads the 6 of hearts.
Well, I got partner to lead through QTx on dummy. That has to be useful! 6-T-J-7. A-2-9-3. K-7 of spades-5-Q. Declarer draws trump. K-2-6-4. A-T-8-9. Now he switches to clubs. A-2-5-6. 4-K-8-7. Partner is in, and plays a diamond. 2-9-T-Q. Dummy looks pretty high to me... Except partner has the Q of spades. So he's able to ruff in and get his K of diamonds at the end. Down 1!
Everyone played in some number of spades. One pair made 3S, one made 4S, and one made 4S+1. Then 4 tables went down 1 in 4S and we put them down 1 in 3S. I feel like declarer could have made 3 spades if he'd drawn trump and run clubs. These 'fair' opponents seem pretty bad! Anyway, we get 10 MPs.
Captain Jack doesn't like my heart bid. He wants me to pass. By clicking on the bid apparently I should have 10 points and 5 hearts or 8 points and 6 hearts for the bid. I have 9 points and a really solid 5 hearts so I think I'm in the clear here, especially with the vulnerability.
Ranking after board 48/60: 1/16 with 59.67%
Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Fair
My hand: ♠ 9 4 ♥ A K J 8 4 ♦ T 8 7 ♣ J 7 6
West opens 1 spade, partner passes, and East responds 2 clubs. I'm a little worried I'm going to get myself in trouble by bidding here, but I have a pretty good heart suit and really want partner to lead it. And the vulnerability is favourable. So I bid 2 hearts. West makes a competitive double, partner passes again, and East bids 3 spades. I'm done, and so is everyone else.
Partner leads the 6 of hearts.
| NORTH ♥ 6 | ||
| EAST ♠ J 8 6 ♥ Q T 3 ♦ A 9 ♣ Q T 9 8 5 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ 9 4 ♥ A K J 8 4 ♦ T 8 7 ♣ J 7 6 |
| West | North | East | South |
| 1♠ | Pass | 2♣ | 2♥ |
| Double1 | Pass | 3♠ | Pass |
| Pass | Pass | ||
| 1Competitive | |||
Well, I got partner to lead through QTx on dummy. That has to be useful! 6-T-J-7. A-2-9-3. K-7 of spades-5-Q. Declarer draws trump. K-2-6-4. A-T-8-9. Now he switches to clubs. A-2-5-6. 4-K-8-7. Partner is in, and plays a diamond. 2-9-T-Q. Dummy looks pretty high to me... Except partner has the Q of spades. So he's able to ruff in and get his K of diamonds at the end. Down 1!
| NORTH ♠ Q T 2 ♥ 9 6 5 ♦ K 5 3 2 ♣ K 3 2 | ||
| WEST ♠ A K 7 5 3 ♥ 7 2 ♦ Q J 6 4 ♣ A 4 | EAST ♠ J 8 6 ♥ Q T 3 ♦ A 9 ♣ Q T 9 8 5 | |
| SOUTH ♠ 9 4 ♥ A K J 8 4 ♦ T 8 7 ♣ J 7 6 |
Captain Jack doesn't like my heart bid. He wants me to pass. By clicking on the bid apparently I should have 10 points and 5 hearts or 8 points and 6 hearts for the bid. I have 9 points and a really solid 5 hearts so I think I'm in the clear here, especially with the vulnerability.
Ranking after board 48/60: 1/16 with 59.67%
Friday, March 28, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Blitzball
Blitzball is the primary mini-game in the Final Fantasy X universe, replacing the card games from FFXIII and FFIX. It's essentially an underwater soccer game where you have a team management aspect, a leveling aspect, and a game playing aspect. You can wander the world recruiting players for your team. As players play games they can earn experience and level up to get better stats. They can also learn abilities by playing against opponents who use those abilities in a game. The games themselves are longer than a card game from the previous games but still reasonably short and it's not hard to start playing, lose track of time, and have played through a full tournament.
As an aside, I don't think they ever explain the physics of the game. You've got a bunch humanoids who walk on land and breath air who suddenly get completely submerged in a crazy magical sphere of water. Do humans in Spira have gills or something?
Anyway, I've been playing some blitzball. I lost the first story game, barely, 4-3 in overtime. I lose because I forgot how that first game worked and turned the ball over in the first half when I went up for to score and didn't realize you can't actually equip any abilities until the second half. If I'd played safer I would have won easily. So I reset and did it again and won 4-1. Woo!
I know the first time I played the game I didn't learn Tidus' best shot because I failed the quick time event on the boat and didn't know I needed to succeed. I still played a ton of blitzball in that playthrough and had a lot of fun. This time I beat the quick time event (first try!) and as such learned the Sublimely Magnificent Jecht Shot Mark III. It's stupidly powerful. Most people with good strategy can score against one defender, maybe two if they get lucky. With Jecht Shot you can trivially score against two defenders without any thinking at all. Scoring on three defenders is pretty easy, and four is entirely plausible. Considering you play 5 on 5 and the AI likes to actually cover the rest of the team too... Every time I get the ball I'm basically guaranteed to score.
When I first started out my team was so bad the AI was basically guaranteed to score whenever it wanted to as well. But sometimes the AI decided it didn't want to score. Instead of swimming the ball up right beside my net and scoring they'd shoot from mid field through a defender or something stupid and give me the ball. So I'd still win, because I score every time I get the ball, they score only some of the time they get the ball, and you alternate possession after someone scores.
And then my guys started leveling up, because it turns out you earn more experience when your team is doing things. So even though my team started with a bunch of losers (and a ringer) it's become a ridiculous ringer and a bunch of pretty ok dudes. I can expect to pass the ball through one defender now so I don't need to abuse the AI in order to score with Tidus. And sometimes I even force a turnover on the opponent because my defenders have gained 9 levels and their scorers have only gained 3.
In short... The game has become pretty trivial. There isn't actually anything anyone can do. I don't need to play perfectly to win. Not terrible is good enough. I thought I was going to play a ton of blitzball this time playing the game but I'm starting to feel like I'll probably just look up what exactly I need to do to get Wakka's ultimate weapon and do just that.
For now I actually can't play anyway. My worst player had his contract expire and I gave him the boot so I could go get someone new. But now I don't have enough players on my team, so I can't play any games. I need to find someone, anyone, to sign to a contract before I can play again. Oh well.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
More SolForge Bitterness
SolForge has been making some changes recently, and they haven't been making me happy!
I'm not sure when the first change came in but they added the ability to quickly flip through games that are waiting for you to act. Instead of having to leave your current game, go back to the menu, and pick a different game where it's your turn you get a handy button in the corner to jump to the next game waiting for your attention. This sounds good except they still haven't added a proper mechanism to easily see what happened on a previous turn so if you want to pretend that the game is a real strategy game you need to play it in real time to see what gets played. But plenty of people have built decks full of legendaries that don't care what their opponent does, and they don't care if they lose any given game to a silly mistake if they can play three times as many games in the same period of time.
What does that all mean? It means some people with awesome decks just create a lot of games and have a worse winning percentage than they used to. Which means they get paired against me, and that they take a minute between turns because they're flipping through the rest of their games. I spent something like 5 hours trying to get my first online win of the day! Every game was slow and against people with better decks. It was not fun. I didn't want to do it, but if I won an online game I would have enough tickets to draft. I still like drafting, and I hadn't figured out the problem, so I kept pounding away at it. And getting more and more bitter.
The next day I had my tickets for a draft. I don't get to draft constantly and I need those first online win bonuses to keep going. The way I make sure that happens as often as I can is I partition out my three draft games. Play one game the day I draft, win it. Stop. Come back the next day, play until I win. This way I can get multiple 'first win of the day' bonuses out of a single draft. This is not the way I want to play, as I want to just draft and play a bunch, but it's better than having to play constructed ESPECIALLY after that first change.
Everything went according to play. I came back the next day to discover that there was a new draft queue in the lobby for 4 games instead of 3. Ok, sounds like it's a good thing, but I have my current draft to finish up. Play a game... My opponent played a card I'd never seen before. It turns out they'd also released a new set and they'd decided the best way to deal with existing drafts was to make me play against the new stuff. This is ridiculous for many reasons!
So I can play some more terrible constructed to get a chance to try out the new set and the 4 game drafts... Or I can get fed up and quit. I'm going with door number two for now, at least while I have puzzles to solve, FFX to play, and Path of Exile maps to run. This game is so very frustrating. It could be good and fun but they make so many stupid decisions. If they'd announced anywhere in the game that a new set was coming out I could have saved my tickets to draft then, not right before. Or I could have played out all my games. Maybe I could have read about the new cards instead of being thrust into a game against them without even knowing that they existed. And they really need to have a significantly shorter time limit option for constructed games so I'm not stuck waiting a minute between turns!
I'm not sure when the first change came in but they added the ability to quickly flip through games that are waiting for you to act. Instead of having to leave your current game, go back to the menu, and pick a different game where it's your turn you get a handy button in the corner to jump to the next game waiting for your attention. This sounds good except they still haven't added a proper mechanism to easily see what happened on a previous turn so if you want to pretend that the game is a real strategy game you need to play it in real time to see what gets played. But plenty of people have built decks full of legendaries that don't care what their opponent does, and they don't care if they lose any given game to a silly mistake if they can play three times as many games in the same period of time.
What does that all mean? It means some people with awesome decks just create a lot of games and have a worse winning percentage than they used to. Which means they get paired against me, and that they take a minute between turns because they're flipping through the rest of their games. I spent something like 5 hours trying to get my first online win of the day! Every game was slow and against people with better decks. It was not fun. I didn't want to do it, but if I won an online game I would have enough tickets to draft. I still like drafting, and I hadn't figured out the problem, so I kept pounding away at it. And getting more and more bitter.
The next day I had my tickets for a draft. I don't get to draft constantly and I need those first online win bonuses to keep going. The way I make sure that happens as often as I can is I partition out my three draft games. Play one game the day I draft, win it. Stop. Come back the next day, play until I win. This way I can get multiple 'first win of the day' bonuses out of a single draft. This is not the way I want to play, as I want to just draft and play a bunch, but it's better than having to play constructed ESPECIALLY after that first change.
Everything went according to play. I came back the next day to discover that there was a new draft queue in the lobby for 4 games instead of 3. Ok, sounds like it's a good thing, but I have my current draft to finish up. Play a game... My opponent played a card I'd never seen before. It turns out they'd also released a new set and they'd decided the best way to deal with existing drafts was to make me play against the new stuff. This is ridiculous for many reasons!
- Pretty much by default in a CCG the new cards are better than the old ones. They can't be worse or they wouldn't sell any packs!
- In SolForge in particular the way drafting is set up the better cards show up less frequently because people learn to take them highly and the algorithm adapts to that. This means that my deck has a bunch of legitimate 5th picks in it because I was forced to pick between two terrible cards in all six of my packs. A new set has no such data and therefore the commons in that set will show up more or less randomly. This means a deck drafted right after a new set is released rates to be significantly better than a deck drafted at the end of a set's lifecycle.
- I had no idea what cards my opponent could be showing up with and therefore couldn't possibly play around any of his tricks.
So I can play some more terrible constructed to get a chance to try out the new set and the 4 game drafts... Or I can get fed up and quit. I'm going with door number two for now, at least while I have puzzles to solve, FFX to play, and Path of Exile maps to run. This game is so very frustrating. It could be good and fun but they make so many stupid decisions. If they'd announced anywhere in the game that a new set was coming out I could have saved my tickets to draft then, not right before. Or I could have played out all my games. Maybe I could have read about the new cards instead of being thrust into a game against them without even knowing that they existed. And they really need to have a significantly shorter time limit option for constructed games so I'm not stuck waiting a minute between turns!
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Another Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy Concert
Almost two years ago to the day I went to a Distant Worlds concert here in Toronto. I posted about it afterwards, but the basic idea is they get an orchestra to play music from the Final Fantasy games. Yesterday I got an email telling me that because I'd attended that concert I was able to order tickets now for the freshly announced concert in Toronto on December 6th. Last time around they also had a concert in KW (they used the KW orchestra after all) but either that isn't true this time or they haven't announced it yet.
I know there were some people last time who said they wanted to go if it ever came back... Well, here it is! I don't even know where I'll be living come December but I imagine I'd find a way to travel back to Toronto for it regardless. There are still tickets in the ~$36 price range, which seems pretty darn cheap. Sitting way up in the back wasn't a bad thing last time (there's a big screen showing the videos anyway and besides it's a MUSIC event) but I can see how people who would gain something from seeing the musicians up close might want to go down to the ~$130 range seats? Me, I'm pretty happy with the top.
So... Anyone else want in? It's unclear if this is a legit offer to returning visitors or if it's just how they worded an ad. Either way we should coordinate getting seats together if other people want to go. I intend on going alone again if that's what it comes down to, but I really think it's worth doing for other people too.
I know there were some people last time who said they wanted to go if it ever came back... Well, here it is! I don't even know where I'll be living come December but I imagine I'd find a way to travel back to Toronto for it regardless. There are still tickets in the ~$36 price range, which seems pretty darn cheap. Sitting way up in the back wasn't a bad thing last time (there's a big screen showing the videos anyway and besides it's a MUSIC event) but I can see how people who would gain something from seeing the musicians up close might want to go down to the ~$130 range seats? Me, I'm pretty happy with the top.
So... Anyone else want in? It's unclear if this is a legit offer to returning visitors or if it's just how they worded an ad. Either way we should coordinate getting seats together if other people want to go. I intend on going alone again if that's what it comes down to, but I really think it's worth doing for other people too.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Final Fantasy X: Plan
Byung is awesome and his PS3 hooked up to my tv just fine so I was able to plug in my shiny new Final Fantasy X HD disc last night. It brought up a menu with 4 options, 2 of which I'd never heard of, so I was forced to head off to the internet before I'd even started to figure out what I was supposed to pick. It turns out they made some extra cutscene videos for after each of the games and that's what the extra stuff was. No problem! Into the game I went, and after the intro video I was presented with a choice of sphere grids. What? Ok, internet, help me out again... Turns out the 'expert' grid was added in the international version and is just a different layout with the same stuff on it or something. I didn't dig too deep, but I figured different sphere grid was a good way to shake things up so I went with it. I am an expert, after all!
Anyway... Do I have a plan? Do I even need a plan? Doing a solo character Kimahri challenge does hold some appeal, as does going fast, but I feel like a new sphere grid, way better graphics, and the extra hard bosses are probably enough of a shakeup. I still want to play blitzball and catch all the monsters and twink out my party. I believe I've played this game three times before with each playthrough clocking in over 100 hours so there's plenty of stuff to do without going with some crazy plan.
So I'm just going to play the game, likely collecting all the things because that's just who I am. I will be using Kimahri, but not just Kimahri. Who knows, maybe the expert grid actually makes him better than the old grid where he was stuck in the middle with no actual place to go. Everyone seems to start in the middle now... So maybe everyone is 'bad'? Who knows!
One thing I wouldn't mind doing is hanging out and watching other people play as well. I miss that about living with other people and FFX may be the game I most miss watching people play. So if anyone wants to just come over and give it a play and I'm awake that's just fine by me!
Anyway... Do I have a plan? Do I even need a plan? Doing a solo character Kimahri challenge does hold some appeal, as does going fast, but I feel like a new sphere grid, way better graphics, and the extra hard bosses are probably enough of a shakeup. I still want to play blitzball and catch all the monsters and twink out my party. I believe I've played this game three times before with each playthrough clocking in over 100 hours so there's plenty of stuff to do without going with some crazy plan.
So I'm just going to play the game, likely collecting all the things because that's just who I am. I will be using Kimahri, but not just Kimahri. Who knows, maybe the expert grid actually makes him better than the old grid where he was stuck in the middle with no actual place to go. Everyone seems to start in the middle now... So maybe everyone is 'bad'? Who knows!
One thing I wouldn't mind doing is hanging out and watching other people play as well. I miss that about living with other people and FFX may be the game I most miss watching people play. So if anyone wants to just come over and give it a play and I'm awake that's just fine by me!
Monday, March 24, 2014
Toot Toot! Puzzle Boat!
A Puzzle Boat is essentially a large bundle of puzzles that you solve by yourself or in a team of whatever size you want. You start off with a couple of presumably easy puzzles and each time you complete a puzzle you get a password to enter into the website which unlocks more puzzles! There are some 'meta' puzzles that use the answers to the base puzzles and then one big main puzzle that puts everything together. The ultimate goal is to solve that big puzzle first. There are over 100 individual puzzles and our team of 7 people solved 13 in 10 hours so it's not exactly a quick endeavour!
We have 13 more puzzles currently unlocked that are in various states of completion and like 80 or 90 more still to unlock after that. We have another day to puzzle away (next Saturday I think) but finishing it then seems pretty out there too. So we've decided we're allowed to work on the 13 we have now but not unlock any new ones until we meet up again which seems like a pretty fair way to do things when we're not trying to win. That way we won't meet back with all the really fun stuff done and a bunch of cryptic crosswords still to do. Not that there's anything wrong with cryptic crosswords... But the one that we unlocked so far had the cryptic crossword part completely ignored.
Winning seems like the sort of thing that could have been plausible in an alternate universe but it would have involved a larger team, with people who have done this before, and who didn't mostly have to work Monday morning. As far as I can tell no one is even close to being done yet so a team that could work continuously for a couple days in a row is a really important piece it seems. That isn't our team, and that's fine, because you don't have to play for first place every time. You can play for fun, and yesterday was tons of fun. Lots of little 'a-ha' moments that really make the person who saw the trick feel good without the people who were stuck feeling bad because we're all on the same team and there are SO MANY of those moments to go around. And while a bigger team would have a better chance of winning it also means each person gets to touch fewer puzzles and that's not necessarily more fun. One of the 13 we solved just sat there having people rotate in to look at it forever until Lino finally made the right leap of logic to get the ball rolling again so you do want a fair number of people, but not too many. One room of people seemed like a pretty good number, though I probably should have brought my laptop since I kept needing to borrow others.
What's also cool about this sort of thing is when you have 100+ puzzles there gets to be a little bit of everything. Some sudokus, a cryptic crossword, a diagramless crossword, anagrams, ciphers, some image lookups, maybe there'll be a book code at some point. Browser games! Song recognition! All kinds of logic puzzles! Woo!
It was a bit of an adventure getting back to Toronto this morning and I never sleep well away from home but it was all worthwhile. All aboard the puzzle boat! TOOT TOOT!
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