Kablooza

It’s 4:26 AM right now and I haven’t slept. I’ve always had sleeping troubles but recently I noticed something different. Sometimes I’d be extremely tired and fall straight to sleep. I then wake up 4 hours later. Why? I don’t even know.

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Since I decided to have a crack at running a TF2 server, I’ve noticed a lot of custom maps crashing. It’s been a few months now and just yesterday I found the solution.

THE PROBLEM: When a player dies they are sent to the respawn screen. Given the proper configuration, the player will be viewing another player while waiting to respawn. But what happens when all players are waiting to respawn? The game forces the respawning players to view specific parts of a map called an observe point, which is essentially a static viewpoint. However, if a map is not designed with one, it will cause the server to crash.

THE SOLUTION: The obvious solution is to yell at the map creator to fix it but that’s not very practical as you’d have to have to do that for every map you have this problem with. You could even yell at Valve but this problem has been in the game since forever from what I know. Another solution is the one I decided to take. I discovered a SourceMod plugin that solves the problem nicely. Add Observer Point by strontiumdog adds a random observe point to the map if the said map is missing it.

It feels good to have that finally out of the way. I’ve been taking down custom maps, some of which I enjoyed, because of this bug so I’m pleased I no longer have to do this.

The only other major problem I have with TF2 is the NVIDIA crashing.

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I wasn’t confident that I would get in but I got accepted into my university of choice with my first preference for the course. I’m now fully enrolled. I absolutely hate my timetable however.

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I’ve been in China for the past 1.5 months and it appeared that my blog was blocked by the Chinese censorship filter.

During my stay I progressively built up a lot of anger Part of it was simply from being homesick. Others included differing cultural values but perhaps the main trigger for my anger was the pain from a recent incident that rendered me immobile for a long period of time.

Just a few days ago, I came back to Australia and just today, my doctor said I no longer have to wear my supporting brace. A great burden had been vanquished.

Home is where the heart is.

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My school had our year 12 formal last night and it went fantastically. The food was great and so were the drinks and the music. I couldn’t do much due to my spinal injury but it was fun nonetheless.

Special shoutout to the girl who came along with me.  (Name won’t be mentioned here for privacy reasons.)

Short blog entry is short. What are you gonna do about it?

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I’m a fan of games where players can customise certain attributes of to evoke an entirely new playstyle that remains as effective or even more so than the previous. Three specific examples come into mind.

Pokemon – Choice Band Scizor

• Scizor @ Choice Band
  Technician
  Adamant
  248 HP/252 Atk/8 Spe
  • U-turn
  • Bullet Punch
  • Superpower
  • Pursuit

Although Scizor had always been a viable Pokemon to use in a competitive team, the release of Platinum that introduced the Egg Move Bullet Punch changed the way a player could utilise the previously overlooked monster. To quote Smogon:

With the addition of a STAB Bullet Punch, boosted by Technician, Scizor went from #33 usage in August of 2008 to #8 in September, and never stopped. It reached #2 usage in October, and finally landed at #1 in November, and has not been shaken since. It is very easy to see why Bullet Punch Scizor is so widely used, as a 90 base power priority attack can make or break a game. The most recent statistics show that Bullet Punch was used on an incredible 96.5% of Scizor, with Choice Band and Life Orb making up 53% and 31% of uses respectively.

Team Fortress 2 – Combat Engineer

• Frontier Justice
• Lugermorph
• Gunslinger

The Engineer class was originally released to be one of the core defences in a team. During the Engineer Update, VALVe released an item called the Gunslinger. This change allows the class to be one that shifts its defensive capabilities to one that has increased mobility and offense. Alongside the Gunslinger came the Frontier Justice.

The World Ends with You – Cosmic SOS

• Neku: Black Book Bag, Goth Bondage Coat, Vampire Dress, Your Cap
• Shiki: Citrus Shorts, Potted Plant, Purple Sneaks, The Dead Slammurai
• Joshua: Citrust Shorts, D+B Ring, Purple Sneaks, The Dead Slammurai
• Beat: Biker Gloves, Pi-Face’s Coat, Purple Sneaks, The Dead Slammurai
• Deck: Darklit Planets

Initially upon release, players of the original Square-Enix title The World Ends with You would seek rare and “powerful” items such as Angel’s Feather and My Phones. After heavy playtesting of the endgame’s Final Time Attack mode, players gradually discovered hidden game mechanics that would eventually be argued to be the most powerful setup.

The Cosmic SOS setup combines the power of the Darklit Planet deck, which was already known to be “powerful” at release, with a combination of threads that would invoke a player with a condition known as SOS or mortal peril and amplify his or her strength to astronomical levels. The testing allowed the discovery of items such as Black Book Bag to be one of the best in the game. It had previously been overlooked as a mediocre item.

Ending Statemment

It really is customisation in games like these that attract me back to the game from time to time again. After not have played WEWY for almost a year, I remembered the deep customisation that lay within the game and picked it up once again.

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No entries in almost 3 months..

I uninstalled Team Fortress 2 a little over a week ago. Need to be serious now.

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I’ve been so damn busy lately. I know I’ve been neglecting my blog too much but I kind of don’t feel like updating it much.

I preordered The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time today. It should be good.

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TF2 recently released an update with a “stable” version of the replay system that’s been in the beta for a while now. Here’s a quick replay I made.

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I sent my 3DS away to Nintendo for repair for a reason I’m rather embarrassed about. I decided to ask Dick Smith if they had news on the status of my repair and they said that they may have received back that day. And in fact, they did!

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