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Which platform do I play this on?

It’s been two and half years since I last played my Vita. Bonus points if you can name the games.

One of the best things about modern gaming is being able to choose what platform to play something on. Console exclusives have more or less died out apart from a few titles that I’m not really that interested in anyway, and I can probably count the number of games that I want to play that aren’t on a platform I own on one hand, so life is pretty good when it comes to choosing which platform I want to play something on.

Nine of out ten times, I’ll choose to play something on PC. I have a reasonably powerful gaming PC that’s purpose-built for the task, so putting all that graphics power to the task of pushing some pixels around is more productive than having it just sit around, looking pretty. Playing on PC means I get all the extra goodies that come with PC gaming: ShadowPlay to record in-game footage I want to watch later, and Steam integration for screenshots and for when I feel like being social and playing with friends (or to see what my friends are playing).

Note that I don’t have a current-gen console at the moment, either. I used to have an Xbox 360 and a PS3, but I left those behind in Hobart when I moved to Brisbane in 2015. Some times I miss those consoles — there’s still a few PS3 games I’d like to play through — but for the most part, I haven’t felt like I’m missing out on anything by not having a console. Besides, these days I’m playing way too much Dota to get stuck into anything else.

When Zero Time Dilemma came out at the start of July this year, I faced a dilemma: which platform should I be playing this on? I immediately purchased it on Steam due to the fact that it was the first title in the series that was available on PC. I didn’t have much of a choice with 999. Although you can play 999 on iOS these days, it lacks the puzzles of the 3DS version which I played through a few years ago. For Zero Time Escape, I went with the Vita version for something a little different.

I tried playing Zero Time Dilemma on the PC, I really did. But the advantages of the PC platform just weren’t there. It’s not a bad port, per se, but using a mouse and keyboard for what is generally a pretty hands-off game/visual novel interspersed with puzzle sections felt wrong somehow, like I was doing more work than just playing the game.

I could have gone with Zero Time Dilemma on the 3DS, too. I generally like the cutesy nature of the New 3DS, and Nintendo’s insistence on keeping games on their own platform forces my hand more often than I’d like. But here, the lack of an actual screenshot function would have let me down if I ever wanted to do a little write up — if I can’t go back and review the screenshots of the game I’ve played, did I ever really play it?

So it was settled. I asked my sister to ship me my PS Vita that I bought back in March 2012, and as soon as I arranged for some US PSN credit and downloaded Zero Time Dilemma, I knew I had made the right choice.

The Four Shifts

I’m trying to write about stuff not related to Dota 2, so here’s something short and sweet about work.

It’s not uncommon for help/service desks to have different shifts based on who they support. Since all of our customers are based in Australia, we’re lucky that only means supporting people on AEST and whatever timezone Perth uses. Due to the retail nature of the majority of our customers, that also means supporting late-night trade and weekends.

Normal — 8:30 AM to 5 PM

Everyone likes the normal shift. “Normals”, as they’re referred to, are you run-of-the-mill, standard working day. You start work when everyone else in the office does, and depending on what season it is, might even get to go home when it’s still light. Not particularly special, but I guess that’s why we call them normal.

Early — 7:30 AM to 4 PM (7 AM to 3:30 PM during daylight savings)

Everyone seems to like the early shift, but I’m not so sure. It means a super early start in the morning, and while going home earlier than everyone else is cool and all, by the time dinner rolls around it’s hard not to face-plant your bed and sleep until whenever you have to get up and do it all over again, let alone make dinner and attempt to be productive with your evening. Getting to work before everyone seems good, until you realise that you can’t fix the super-broken stuff because you’re the only one in the IT department. Similarly, being on “earlies” means first lunch break privileges, which is great until you realise this means you’re going to lunch before noon and consequently feel hungrier before whatever your usual dinner time is. Brisbane not having daylight savings means a half-hour earlier start, which just exacerbate the issues I just outlined.

Lates — 9:30 AM to 6 PM (10:30 AM to 7 PM on Thursdays/Fridays)

Now we’re talking. Being on lates means you get a minor sleep-in in the morning, and the later finishing time isn’t a big deal as you get to stay up late anyway. This shift mostly exists because of people in WA needing support after regular Brisbane office hours, as well as stores who have late-night trading. The constantly-changing times irks me a little — I’d prefer it if the shift was either always 9:30 AM to 6 PM, or always 10:30 AM to 7 PM, but that’s a discussion that’s probably a little above my pay grade.

There’s also a shift that isn’t really a shift, except when it is, which brings us to…

Weekends — Saturday and Sunday

Thanks to the wonders of retail, weekend support is a necessary evil. Once upon a time we had a third-party company doing our weekend support (or so I’m told), but now we just rotate the weekend shift between ourselves. It’s not all bad, as it means you get a day off during the week (usually the Monday before you work the weekend shift), and while you have to be in the office on Saturday, Sunday you can be on-call from the comfort of your own home, or whatever you may be doing at the time. Being on-call on the Sunday means on-call rates, which are about the only upside to sacrificing your weekend. I make it sound pretty awful, but the weekend shift is fine.

Hope you enjoyed this insight into the different shifts I work!

Toxic, Part II

Picture this: it’s the eve of the Dota 2 Manilla Major. Pro players from all the world will soon be converging in the Philippines to decide who the best team is of the current patch. I, a slightly-below-average skill player, queue for a game of Dota 2 on a Saturday night with four of my other friends, only to find that we’ve been matched up the most toxic team of Filipinos I’ve ever played against.

Completely unprovoked, they begin with slurs in their own language, then move on to abuse in English and then graduating to straight-out racism. Perhaps it’s the fact that as Australians we’re always going to give as good as we get it, but I’m still disappointed to admit some of us stooped to their level and trash-talked whenever we won teamfights or got a pick off, but I can safely say that I have never played against (or with) a more toxic team. I ended up muting them about 20 minutes into our 82-minute game, but you can read their full comments thanks to the wonders of Yasp and full-replay parsing.

And I get it. You’re doing well in a game, so you decide to throw out some trash-talking in order to tilt your opponents even more. You chuck in a few taunts here and there whenever a teamfight goes your way, hoping that your opposition will doubt themselves and lose confidence, leading to poorly-executed teamfights and their eventual loss. As Australians we’re no stranger to a few sledges thrown either way during competitive matches of any kind, but there are boundaries, and there’s such a thing as taking it too far. I’m all for calling other people “noobs” — I’ve seen it so many times the word has lost all meaning for me now anyway — but there’s no reason to be racist, sexist, or generally an awful human being to other people.

you can suck at dota it's not a sin but just at the very least be a decent human being.

— Meracle (@Meracleeeeee) February 28, 2016

I keep coming back to this tweet from SEA player Meracle. “you can suck at dota it’s not a sin but just at the very least be a decent human being.”

Everyone sucks at Dota, it’s true. I only sometimes remember to use Midnight Pulse before dropping Black Hole. My micro skills are almost non-existent, and my decision-making as a carry is questionable at best. But I’ve learned a lot about myself playing Dota, and it’s that if I can’t be good at Dota, then I might as well be an OK person.

So, why am I writing about this? It’s because that the internet these days, Twitter especially, has become a cacophony of negativity. So much vitriol, so much toxicity. There’s endless sarcasm, complaining, and outrage. It’s awful, and I hate it. I can hardly say I play video games for fun anymore, seeing as that’s about all I do outside of work these days, but when your games are filled with such awful people it makes me wonder whether it’s all worth it.

And then you win against the most toxic team of Filipinos in a game of Dota 2 that lasts 82 minutes that more closely resembles a 5v5 game of chess than any other game you’ve ever played, and you conclude that yes, it is all worth it.

Don’t pick a support

There are a few mechanics that work in the sub-3K or normal skill bracket of Dota 2 that don’t at 4K and above, and today we’re talking about how you shouldn’t be picking a support.

Dota 2 has well-defined roles. If you look at the players on any pro-level team, you’ll see that each one has their own position based on farm priority, which is most commonly denoted by a number from one to five, where one is the player with the most farm, and five is the player with the last farm. Most of the time, these farm priorities match up to the role within the team, whether they’re playing the carry or one position role, the mid or two position, the offlane or three position, or one of the two supports, four and five.

Seeing as I am neither a pro or playing a position within a serious team, I can say with some confidence that supports are overrated in the sub-3K MMR skill bracket. Due to the nature of the skill bracket, no-one plays the support position effectively enough for any given support pick to be worth it.

In sub-3K, most of the time you’ll be more or less even on kills. Even if you’re more than ten kills up, a couple of teamfights later you could be even again. But as I’ve said before, kills don’t matter. Objectives do. Even if you’re crushing the early and mid game with as many kills as you team can accumulate, it means nothing if you can’t close the game out while you still have the advantage.

Check out this recent game, for example. I had a pretty awful time in the laning stage as Spectre — for some reason Bristleback wanted to share the lane with me, which worked out as well as you can probably imagine. But it was sweet, because the Timbersaw, Pudge, and Necrophos were doing a fantastic job of ganking, picking up a few kills here and there. And when the Bristleback left the lane and started to join them, they just ran at heroes and got kills that way.

Meanwhile, I was farming. Every now and again I’d press R to haunt in to join a teamfight, but as the game got later and later, the TA and Lifestealer started doing actual damage. The Phoenix and Lifestealer actually picked up Midas’ pretty early, which probably explains why three heroes had a higher networth than the most farmed hero on our team (me as Spectre). At about the 35 minute mark, we stopped getting kills, got picked off every time we tried, and it was mostly down hill from there. We lost the game not because we were ahead early, but because I couldn’t keep up with the enemy team, and no-one on my team had enough of an impact later on for it to matter.

Why am I so against picking supports? Because generally speaking, they have too little late-game impact. Once the enemy starts getting BKBs, your Crystal Maiden becomes good for an aura only, and even that may be negated by the items the carries on her team have already picked up. Your Venomancer ult now does less damage thanks to the pipe picked up by the Enigma that was free-farming in the jungle, and so on. You can do everything right early-game, you can get assists on enemy kills, you can put down wards and use scan to stop ganks, but come late game, you might as well be a ward.

So don’t pick a support. Notice I’m not saying that people shouldn’t play like a support, but pick a hero that has some utility outside of getting killed when planting wards. Instead, pick a hero that can have some kind of impact late game, because you’ll be getting to the late game a hell of a lot in sub-3K. Bane can use Fiend’s Grip on an enemy carry with BKB activated. Beastmaster can use Primal Roar an enemy and waste their BKB duration. Ancient Apparition might be a great counter to the current strength/sustain meta of 6.87, but that’s only if you’re hitting perfect Ice Blasts every time it matters.

Share the support workload. Everyone can buy wards, everyone can buy smoke or dust, and everyone can carry a TP scroll. Put out wards when it’s safe to do so, don’t get caught out, and help support your way to your team’s victory.

Just don’t actually pick a support.

Alcatraz

I haven’t written much about the time I spent in the United States, and I’m not really sure why. Waiting for the right time, perhaps, or just happy to let that time stay as a memory instead of being written down and recorded. But it’s been a few weeks since I last wrote something on this here blog, and in the absence of anything else interesting to write about, here goes.

It was an incredibly warm evening in Portland when I realised we still hadn’t figured out what we were going to do in San Francisco. With The International 5 behind us and our time in Oregon rapidly coming to an end, I began flicking through the pages of my Lonely Planet guide, looking for interesting things to do. I began reading up about Alcatraz, site of the notorious prison and also the location of one of my favourite films of all time, The Rock.

There was just one problem: the Lonely Planet guide recommended Alcatraz bookings weeks in advance, as the site was a tourist magnet. I quickly jumped on the laptop of my primary school friend Martin to check on booking dates, only to be disappointed at the rather sparse selection of dates available for tours. The only really suitable tour available was one a few hours after we were due to arrive in San Francisco, which would give us just enough time to get settled into our AirBnB and then make the trek over to the area of the bay where the tour began. With our options limited and us not wanting to miss out on one of the quintessential San Francisco tourist experiences, we booked tickets, and that was that.

We arrived in San Francisco on the 13th August 2015, and according to the sign posted at the Alcatraz tours information booth, the next available tour was on the 31st of August.

I’ve never been on an audio tour before, and while Port Arthur is a pretty cool prison experience, Alcatraz is an entirely different experience. While the audio tour was good enough, I kind of felt as though I was there simply to find places I recognised by their scene in The Rock. As I walked through the cell blocks and outside I kept having these flashbacks to different scenes from the film: the cell blocks that the soldiers walk through at the very start, the older cell blocks that Connery and Cage escape from later in the movie, and the outside courtyard scene where Connery confronts Harris. Granted, the last one is at night, but the shape of the building in the background and the steps in the foreground are unmistakable.

Right down to the grates on the windows that Cage and Connery hang off to observe a missile launch, there were so many recognisable details that all I could think about were scenes from The Rock. My only disappointment is that, as tourists, we weren’t given completely free reign of the facility. Understandable, but finding the shower room where things go to hell in a handcart would have been the holy grail. Or even the operations room where the bad guys setup their command post would have been cool. Or the morgue, if it actually looks like how it did in the film.

So yeah, Alcatraz was pretty cool. Remembering scenes from one of my all-time favourite movies and being where the scenes played out was even cooler, though.

The Mac Pro Performance Question

Through some fortutious mechanism I’m not entirely sure I’m allowed to disclose, one of my worldly possessions just happens to be a pristine Mac Pro case, to suit the 2007/2008 model Mac Pro

Note: this all makes a little more sense if you read this post first.

Hypothetically, if I were looking at switching to a single or dual-CPU Mac Pro as my daily driver and gaming rig two-in-one, I’d want to make sure it performs up to the standard of my current PC. At the very least, it would have to be close enough to make me feel somewhat OK about buying into a 6-year old platform.

Before we get into this: for the purposes of all discussion below, none of this is very scientific, but in an attempt to at least have a level playing field I’m using Geekbench as the benchmarking tool of choice. I would’ve like to have seen the CPU comparison from Anandtech, alas their Xeon benchmarks don’t go very far back. While they have the Xeons available in the current model of Mac Pro, we’re not really looking for a comparison between a quad-core CPU and one that has four times as many cores.

This is the Geekbench of my current PC. Comparing it using Geekbench’s Benchmark Charts tells an interesting story. The i7 6700K scores higher than any available Mac on the 32-bit single and equivalent (i.e. quad-core) multi-core benchmarks, even beating out some early-2009 Mac Pros which have double the number of cores. Predictably, the quad-core 6700K loses to the 8 and 12-core variants of the Mac Pro in the 32-bit multi-core benchmark.

So then the question becomes, what kind of Mac Pro configuration would I have to have in order to equal or beat my current Geekbench score? The bad news is, there’s no Xeon chip currently on the market that beats the 6700K in terms of raw, single-core performance. And if we’re looking at multi-core, we really have to jump up to a dual-Xeon configuration before we get to the same ballpark figures, and if we’re looking at eight or twelve cores, we’re also looking at the kind of power consumption that brings.

Good thing we’re well past the point where CPU performance matters for day-to-day tasks, right? A single-CPU Xeon X5690, a six-core, 3.47GHz unit, scores a paltry 2423 on Geekbench’s 32-bit single-core test. That’s not a whole lot higher than the i7-930 that I upgraded from, which scores somewhere in the mid 1900s. The X5690’s 32-bit multi-core test is a little more respectable, bringing home a Geekbench score of 16627, which is at least within striking distance of the four-core 6700K, but still short.

The fact of the matter is, no matter which way you try and slice it, no CPU configuration you can put into a 2009 or 2010-era Mac Pro will measure up to Intel’s latest and greatest, at least not without incurring an extra power or heat cost. I’d expect those 130W Xeons to get mighty toasty on occasion.

But what about current-generation Xeons? Hypothetically, what if I built my own Hackintosh, put the fastest Xeons I could in it, installed OS X on that thing and called it a day? Then I’d be poor, because top-of-the-line Xeons are not cheap, and the whole reason we’re doing this is so I can technically have a Mac as my daily driver and all-in-one gaming rig on the cheap.

Benny Ling's Bling

Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.