Archive by Author

The Division Open Beta

This is going to be hard to believe, but sometimes I play other games other than Dota 2¹. Crazy, I know. But last weekend I played The Division, I title I’ve been looking forward to ever since it brought the hype at E3 2013, at PAX Aus 2013, and then again at PAX Aus 2014. I’m not even sure why I was looking forward to it — the snippets of information that had been given away by Ubisoft/Massive haven’t been much to go on, but the way that everyone else has been talking about the game has gotten me excited. Even after the beta has come and gone, I’m still not sure what the game is about or what the end-game is, so I guess you can say I’m well and truly riding on the hype-train.

At first I wasn’t sure about the concept of a third-person cover-based shooter on the PC. Then I realised one of my favourite games of all time was a third-person cover-based shooter: Mass Effect. And the more I thought about it, the more I saw similarities between the two games: both are cover-based shooters. Both are futuristic. Both have RPG-like elements in terms of gear and skills. While Mass Effect undoubtedly has the far stronger storyline, I’m hoping The Division’s Dark Zone, PvP multiplayer will make up for the complete lack of late-game content we’ve seen thus far and give it at least a little longevity after the main story is done and dusted.

I almost gave up on The Division. After finishing the initial intro and browsing same-ish city blocks, I wandered towards the first objective, cranked the difficulty to high, and dove in. After ten deaths in the same spot, I gave up and was ready to hang in the towel on the whole thing — and I would have, if it hadn’t been for a friend that wanted to co-op with me.

We actually ended up making it through that mission, even though we died a few times in the exact same spot, but having a friend turns out to make all the difference in the world (or at least in that particular instance of mission).

With both of the two storyline missions under our belt (for an estimated 10% story completion of the entire game) in one sitting, we did what two guys would do next and passed into the Dark Zone.

In the Dark Zone, not only are you fighting up much tougher AI for better loot, you’re also competing with other players for the same. Loot is instanced so you can never “steal” someone else’s loot by landing the killing blow on a big boss, but what you can steal is their loot when they go to extract the loot so it becomes available for use. Dark Zone loot isn’t usable until it’s “extracted”, which is dicey process of calling in a helicopter, waiting around for it to arrive, and then not getting killed while your character is going through the motions of attaching the loot to the zipline dropped by the helicopter. It’s all very Metal Gear Solid, only with the added threat of someone lobbing a few grenades on you as you’re going for the extract, and then raining bullets on you from the high ground.

Which is to say, the Dark Zone is pretty fun. If you’re playing solo, it’s the thill of being a lone wolf — not necessarily taking out groups of the strong AI by yourself, but contributing enough lead to share in the spoils, then either taking advantage of someone else’s extraction helicopter or calling in your own and hoping like hell someone doesn’t decide you’re a good target.

Ars Technica played through the closed beta on Xbox One a few weeks earlier, and while they say The Division is a repetitive shooter that has neither the cover-based shooting mechanics of Gears of War or the looting and gear-based aspects of Fallout or Borderlands, I disagree. The Division is different enough from all those to set it apart, and what people have to realise is that it isn’t a cover-based shooter with RPG elements, it’s an RPG with cover-based shooter elements.

Playing through the open beta taught me that the pursuit of better gear came above all else, and with the amount of weapon customisation and all the other RPG-type elements that were hinted at in the game but not actually present in the open beta (including food and managing hunger levels in a desolate, virus-ridden New York landscape, the various skills granted by unique weapons, the focus on cosmetic appearance, and more), my guess is there’s going to be playing of role-playing in The Division, whether that means going Rogue in the Dark Zone or just sticking to the streets of New York, trying to do… whatever the hell the main protagonist is trying to do. Seriously, what is this game about?

Seeing as I’ve pre-ordered the game, I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

Which reminds me, I should probably write something about that again. It’s been a while, and I’ve got stuff to say. ↩

Home

After moving to Brisbane in April last year, I spent a few days in Hobart this February. It’s the first time since I moved away that I’ve been back, and while you could definitely see the differences in little old Hobart compared to when I left. But while I enjoyed my time in Hobart, I’m now more confused than ever about where I consider home to be.

Last August, I was in the Seattle watching The International 2015. The games scheduled for the day hadn’t started yet, so I was doing the widely accepted thing of tracking down Dota 2 personalities in order to obtain their signature.

As you might imagine, players were insanely popular to the point where they had scheduled photo and signature times — I ended up starting in the line for Evil Geniuses player Universe, but by the time I got near to the front it was Aui_2000 doing signatures, which was fine. I collected Aui’s signature on my Dota 2 Steelseries mousepad, and that was it.

Anyway, the games for the day hadn’t started yet — or maybe we were between games — but the English casters were seated and warming up. TobiWan was a caster I was interesting in getting the signature, seeing as he’s one of the most famous Dota 2 casters (and Australian, too). When it was my time to get his signature, I asked how he was and inquired if I could get his signature on my Dota 2 event badge. He said yeah, of course, and then asked if my accent was Australian.

I was a little confused, as even though I’ve lived in Australia for my entire life, I don’t think I have much of an accent. Perhaps it’s one of those cant-smell-your-own-body-odour things, but I replied yeah. While Tobi was signing my badge, he asked me where I was from, and seeing as I had only moved to Brisbane a few months prior, I answered Brisbane. He told me he hailed from a similar part of South East Queensland, the Gold Coast, and in that moment, we shared a special bond. Or I’d like to think so, anyway.

Fast forward about nine months, and it’s once again Tobi in his AMA on Reddit, answering a question about living/working in Germany: “I really just work here, I don’t really live here.”

It’s kind of how I feel about living in Brisbane. I moved here to take up full time-employment, and while that’s great and all, it hasn’t really given me the chance to explore a different state in a different part of the country. I used to do this thing where I’d go and find the biggest shopping centre I could and walk around for a bit, but eventually you run out of Westfields. Plus, not driving kind of makes it hard to venture any further than the train lines can take you, although I’m do going down to Robina every now and then.

To make matters even worse, when I returned to work on the Monday after a weekend wedding in Tassie, one of my colleagues welcomed me home. “Home”. I’m not sure I know where that is anymore, not out of some misplaced sense of belonging, but because I mostly just work in Brisbane, and don’t really live here.

That could change.

Twenty Five

Sometimes, when people ask me how old I am, I get a little confused. Especially when they combine it with questions like “so is that 23 turning 24, or 24 turning 25?” I don’t tend to think about how old I am all the time, so either I answer too quickly and get it wrong, or I think about it for longer than one might consider “normal”, get laughed at, and still get it wrong anyway.

It didn’t used to be this way, but over the past couple of years I’ve noticed it happening more and more. I’ve filled out enough online forms to know what my birth date is, so I should at least be able to calculate how old I am, but for some reason, deriving an answer to “how old are you” doesn’t come easily. Maybe I’m just over-thinking things, and I should add “I am 25 years old” to the list of things that I just know, like my (rough) height and weight. Maybe this is just what getting old is like.

Truth be told, I wasn’t planning on writing a birthday post this year. Or last year, for that matter. I had plenty of age and maturity-related thoughts when I was writing a birthday post from a few years ago, but when the time came to write about something last year, or something this year, none of the topics I had swirling around in my head wanted to coalesce into something of substance. No matter how long the bus or train ride was, nothing seemed pertinent enough to write about as the main topic of yet another birthday post.

Which is weird, because last year, more than any other, has been a pretty big year. Almost too big to write about, really, given that I accepted my first full-time job, which meant moving out of home and deciding what personal possessions I’d be bringing to another city in another state (computers, electronics, then everything else, in that order).

I made a trip to the US to watch The International, the biggest Dota 2 tournament in the world, as well as check out some west coast cities.

And so far, it’s been the first Christmas I’ve spent without any immediate family, the first New Year, and probably my first birthday. I can’t say for sure, obviously, but it certainly feels that way. Not that I mind about any of that. It was all going to happen eventually, and I’m glad it happened in at least somewhat positive circumstances.

If you’ve read any of my tweets from this year, you’ll know that growing up is, for the most part, pretty awful. No one’s talking about the freedom you get when you live alone, away from your immediately family, but when you work full time, people kind of know what you’re doing most of the time.

What they’re not telling you about is how awful it is having to do all of the washing up. Or needing to eat, but not wanting to do the washing up, and lacking the disposable incoming to eat out or get takeaway more than a few nights a week. Or how house inspections only happen four times per year, but even that feels too often. Or how having getting paid every fortnight feels great, at least until the bills and rent come in, at which point all your hard-earned leaves your bank account. The days turn into weeks, the weeks turn into months, and a lot of the time, it feels as though I’m living to work, instead of working to live.

People ask me if I’d go back to uni to study, and I usually answer that while the actual study part was pretty awful, the lifestyle was pretty great. Not having to wake up early to go to work, not having to spend the entire day at uni, and occasionally being able to have entire days to myself. Now that I work full time, the only time that I really get is from evenings and weekends.

What it comes down to is a lack of time. If I’m playing video games every evening, then I’m not cooking, or doing the washing up. If I’m on call on the weekend, then I have to squeeze in buying groceries into my “lunch break”, or go shopping after work during the week. Every time I decide to clean my tiny unit, do some ironing for the week, or whatever else needs doing that I didn’t get around to doing last week is another time I’m not playing games on the internet with friends, and as the old adage goes, all work and no play makes Benny a dull boy.

Of course, the solution here might seem pretty simple: give up video games. But games have been such a huge part of my life that giving up video games would be like giving up a part of myself, like trading in my childhood for a shot at adulthood.

And that’s kind of what this is all about. My friends have been moving out, getting married, and settling down for years now. Some times I wish I experienced those things earlier, but I’m happy enough with how things have turned out so far.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the work that I’m doing. But there are times I wish it took up less of my time than it currently does. Some of the time, I wonder what it’d be like to be mostly-unemployed and have heaps of time, or what it would be like to have no time and be earning an amount to make it not matter. Perhaps there’s not much difference between the two, after all, but I guess that’s why they call it life.

Here’s to another year, whatever craziness it may bring.

NAS thoughts

When I moved to Brisbane, I decided against bringing my NAS with me. I can’t remember my reasoning at the time, but it was probably something along the lines of “my external storage requirements won’t be as extravagant if I’m living alone, without an NBN connection”. Besides, I had my directly-connected external USB hard drive if I needed to store anything, the same external hard drive that I’m using for Time Machine. With that mindset, I loaded up a couple of my favourite TV shows and things I thought I’d be able to watch, and figured I could either re-acquire the rest or collect it the next time I was in Hobart.

It’s been long enough that I’m starting to miss my media collection. I’ve re-acquired a bunch of stuff in the meantime, but it’s just not the same, you know? My ad-hoc acquisitions aren’t of the same calibre as my carefully-curated collection back home, and what’s more, I’m starting to worry about the ever-shrinking space on my external hard drive. Plus, there’s the stuff that just isn’t available anymore, or is enough of a pain to re-acquire that I haven’t bothered.

Which is why I’m thinking about another NAS. A NAS solves all my problems: it lets me access all my media from a device other than my Mac, it helps alleviate the storage situation on my external hard drive, and if I bring a NAS back home and make another copy of all my media, then I’ll be able to access all my old media, like nothing ever changed.

But it’s 2016 now, and NAS devices are a touch more complicated than buying a $200 HP MicroServer, stuffing as many drives as I can in it, and calling it a day. I can still buy a MicroServer, of course, but they’re a touch more expensive now, so what else is out there?

Continue Reading →

New PC: Firebolt

I was actually in San Francisco when Intel was hosting their annual developer forum last year. At that stage, I hadn’t really thought about putting together an almost entirely new PC, but you could say it planted the seed. After all, my current PC was over five years old, and despite a steady string of graphics cards upgrades, it was probably about time for something new and shiny, seeing as my computer didn’t even have USB 3 yet.

When I got back to Australia, I spent a few good months thinking about whether I wanted to get a new PC or not. There was nothing particularly wrong about my current rig, besides being a little long in the tooth. Depending on the games I was playing, the CPU could be a little bit of a bottleneck, but the GTX 980 meant things still hummed along just fine on screen.

By the time December came around, I had all but made up my mind. I was going to build a new Skylake-based PC, recycling only the graphics card, hard drives, and a fan controller from my current computer. Now all I had to do was decide on some parts, but here’s how it all breaks down.

Continue Reading →

Long time, no blog…

I’m not really sure why I stopped writing here.

Actually, I take that back: I know perfectly why I stopped writing. It was, as it always is, a (perceived or actual) lack of time, which can either be blamed on me not thinking I have enough time to write for myself, or not taking the time to do a little dance on the keyboard, tapping out a few words here and there to publish up on ye olde blog.

And it’s not like I stopped writing completely in 2015, either. For a little while, I was into daily journaling with Day One, a little iOS and Mac app that made it easy to create little snapshots of my day. At first, it was pretty great; I’d get to take a photo and record a little snippet of what happened during the day. But eventually, the lustre of doing something new and different wore off, around the time I figured my day-to-day wasn’t as interesting as it once was, back when I was unemployed. So I stopped doing that too, even though I still get daily reminders at 5pm to write in my journal.

As an amateur photographer, I’ve heard the axiom of living in the moment rather than looking at the world through a lens, but I’ve never really subscribed to that theory. How else are you supposed to look back on the good times without some reminder like a photo or a video of that time you flew halfway around the world only to find yourself in a Westfield shopping centre? Sure, some memories will just stick with you, but it’s still nice to see that you have some kind of proof of that time you rode across the Golden Gate bridge on a bike.

But as fun as living in the moment is, I’ve missed writing. As great as it is not having to set aside the time to write about my experiences and what’s been happening recently, Twitter’s micro-blogging just doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to getting the point across. I mean, I don’t mind brevity at all, but sometimes you need a little further explanation to get your point across, regardless of how well you think you’ve condensed your thoughts into 140 characters.

My day-to-day might not be interesting enough for daily journaling, but maybe I can manage writing something weekly. If that’s not a New Year’s resolution, I’m not sure what is.

So much happened in 2015 I’m not really sure where to start. But I’ve got a couple ideas — watch this space!

Benny Ling's Bling

Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.