Gaming – The Beergarden

The Gazelle goes hunting for Martians

I was having some fun in DCS World recently. I actually managed to clean up about 30gigs of garbage on my SATA SSD, and I was able to update the DCS World Open Alpha. I had heard the Viggen was updated to work on the NTTR map, and I believe it could be fun to do some low level canyon flying. Eh, the map just looks nicer then the Caucuses at low level. I was torn between the Viggen and Gazelle. The Gazelle won since I could enjoy the scenery more, and I wanted to find something rather tiny on the ground.

I went on an areal tour of Rachel, Nevada. I had been hoping to find the mysterious ‘Black Mailbox’ on the Extraterrestrial Highway. That is the actual highway’s name by the way. While the mailbox turned out to be a dud, there was a little surprise in town. A motel called the Little A’Le’Inn is fully modeled. It’s a motel that attracts many fans of UFO stories. Heh, I found the first real Flying Saucer in DCS World.

So if you like the Gazelle and the NTTR map, I believe you’ll enjoy this video. I’ve noticed the only thing that gets hits on this website is the DCS World Gazelle review. So, I’m putting more Gazelle stuff up as a thank you. I’m still ok with the fight model for the most part. It isn’t perfect, but I’m happy just to have another chopper in DCS.

** On a side note, I’m super happy with how well this render looks. I believe I finally have some decent render settings to use in Sony Vegas. The video is sharp, the colors aren’t wacky, and it isn’t too dark.

Learning from Games

For every hour of Doom, there is an hour of X-Plane. For every moment in Deus-Ex, there is a moment in Kerbal Space Program. For the time in Space Hulk: Deathwing, there is some DCS World aircraft. Then there is American Truck Simulator.. It’s learning aspect is it helps teach me how to drive backwards with a trailer. One day I might have a boat, and it’ll be good to know that.

I’m a bit worn down from certain people saying how games are evil, and how they are murder simulators. So, I’m going to chat about a few games that teach you the basics on real world situations.

Kerbal Space Program shouldn’t really require an explanation. I have learned so much about orbital mechanics in that game it isn’t funny. Getting to where you want to go in our solar system is quite an unintuitive journey. Delta V and burn time must be calculated. The moment to start the burn must be exact. You have a journey of millions of miles ahead of you. Fucking up the escape angle in the beginning will only cost more fuel and Delta-v as the journey progresses. It’s a very intelligent game. It will frustrate the hell of you at first. However, it’ll just ‘click’ after a week or two. You will never feel smarter then when you have a successfully rendezvous in space. For anyone having trouble in that game, I highly recommend Scott Manley’s Kerbal tutorials btw.

X-Plane shouldn’t really need an explanation either. It teaches you a bit about flying real aircraft. Now, none of these planes are quite on a DCS level of simulation, but it’s close. If anything, X-Plane is a much better tool to learn cross country or even global navigation. It’s not just learning how the GPS works, that’s pretty easy. Learning about how to use VOR beacons to navigate, ILS settings, and most importantly fuel conservation are the things real pilots have to learn. While most jet turbine aircraft don’t really require much engine tweaking, you can bet your Cessna that a piston engine does. Throttle, prop pitch, fuel mixture, and watching the dials all plays a part when flying long distance. A careful eye on the exhaust gas temperature can give you an extra 10 knots of speed, or you can maximize your fuel economy to get the max range for you plane. Oddly enough it isn’t the throttle determining that, it’s the fuel mixture. It’s pretty fascinating stuff. An extra 10 knots from lowering the fuel mixture seems like the opposite of how it should work, but it do.

Outside of air & space simulations, there are some pretty decent hacking simulations you can learn things from. The Hacker Evolution games will kinda give you the feeling of being a sneaky hacker, but the Hacknet game will actually teach you some useful things. If only because that game forces you to use actual linux command line functions to do anything. Although, I haven’t farted around in those games much.. I mean if you have a Kali install sitting around, it is a bit more fun then a simulation.

Alright, that’s about enough for now. I try to post at least once a month, and I was a bit behind. If I don’t crank out anything before the end of the year, I hope you all have a nice and peaceful holiday.

Battlefield 1 is Legit

Things have been interesting in the digital west. Someone was messing with my WW2 vet neighbor’s laptop, and I had my first encounter with ransomware. Did I mention I cracked that Window’s password? All the happenings have kinda stalled that whole programming thing at the moment. Stories on that can wait though, I knocked the issues out the park like this year’s Chicago Cubs! I’m currently riding the Battlefield 1 hype train. It’s a good distraction while I wait for the the new DCS Jets. Come on F-14/18/Viggen.

I’m an old Battlefield 1942 vet. I think I received my first demo of it in a PC Gamer magazine. The demo CDs they gave out were a lifesaver back in the dial up days. I had so much fun shooting the bots, I bought the game knowing full well I couldn’t use the multiplayer for a long time. I think it was close to two years before I actually got online.

Anyway, I had tried out the Battlefield 1 open beta, and I really liked what I saw. It run well, looked good, and I had fun for the most part. I figured a pre-order would be a safe bet. I just went with the standard edition though. I didn’t see a really good reason to pay $20 more in order to play a few days early. I do realize the early start time edition came with some skin packs, but I never really spend that much time admiring the paint on my enemy’s weapons.

Battlefield 1 takes us to one of the bloodiest wars every fought, World War I, or The Great War as it was called before a German painter decided to attempt global domination. The first real world conflict that unleashed many of the devastating technological advances we’ve become rather familiar with today. Airplanes made their debut among other early flying machines. Fully automatic water cooled machine guns appeared, and sent millions of soldier to an early grave. Then you also have large caliber artillery weapons capable of launching shells for miles. They also had some of the first terror weapons including armed Zeppelins and The Paris Gun. We also see the first use of tracked armored vehicles which were code named Tanks at the time so they’d be confused with water tanks. The name stuck. All this technology created quite the body count. To be more specific, it adds up to 17 million dead and 20 million wounded. I must say that EA does treat the conflict with respect. It reminds you that all of the millions killed and wounded were real people. They had dreams, ambitions, and names. None of them knew what they were in for.

Not many games have ventured into this setting. While there have been several air combat games set in WWI, there have been very few FPS games in this setting. I can understand the hesitation for FPS game developers. When you think of WWI, you usually think of trench warfare, and sitting in a trench taking pot shots at people doesn’t seem like the makings of a fun FPS. However, the whole war was not spent in the trenches of France. It was a World War.

The majority of weapons in Battlefield 1 are kind of new to me. There are a lot of single shot rifles in the mix, but you can still find some automatic weapons. Fans of WW2 games will be happy to see the Browing Automatic Rifle is included in the mix. It might seem odd to have a WW2 gun in WW1, but remember that the BAR was created in 1918. You’ll also see its little brother, the Tommy Gun, is included as it was also created in 1918. Yeah, they were released near the end of the war, but they were still used during the war to some extent. In addition to the rifles, you have plenty of sub machine guns for the Assault class to use. The Assault class in BF1 seems to be mostly equipped for short range combat since they also can equip shotguns if they’d rather not use a sub machine gun. I must admit though, it’s a bit weird playing an assault class without an assault rifle. However, they really weren’t invented until WW2. See Sturmgewehr.

The single player campaign is a nice addition this time around. It isn’t one huge campaign. It is a series of mini campaigns set in different theaters of WW1. You start off in tanks smashing the German lines, and then move on to stealing a British Lord’s airplane after a card game. You get a chance to try out some fancy Italian armor while storming a mountain fortress. Another focuses on an Aussie during the landings at Gallipoli. The final one give you a taste of Lawrence of Arabia.

The missions all give you a glimpse into a soldiers world as they went through WW1. The new guy dealing with the vets. The Vet dealing with the new recruits. The outnumbered facing many with a wonder weapon behind them. All of them hammer the message home that there are losses in war and wounds are not always visible.

The stories themselves start out really well. The first one in the tank is a real treat. It has an incredible amount of depth considering it’s a Battlefield game. However, it really seems like the quality drops off as they progress. The first 3 were pretty good, but I was really disappointed at the final mission in the Middle East. I was really expecting something that would knock my socks off considering the wartime exploits of T.E. Lawrence. However, it seemed pretty shallow compared to the tank mission. Eh, perhaps I should not have power gamed my way through the single player (4-5 hours). I suppose I may have just been tired and frustrated with the final fight of the campaign. However, I experienced some magical stuff in that first mission. I was hoping they’d all be like that.

The multiplayer has proven to be a good time. It hits all the right buttons when you’re working with a proper team, and teamwork is key as in all Battlefield games. The balance is reasonably good between the teams and classes. Everyone can use the same weapons so the teams remain balanced. I still have flashbacks to the overpowered M-60 machine gun in Battlefield Vietnam. Everyone had to be on the US team because only they had the M-60 dead laser. I guess BF2 had a little bit of that with the Blackhawk helicopter. Anyway, I haven’t noticed any major game imbalances. Snipers still suck as always though.

Some neat features to keep the fight possible for the losing team is the addition of the behemoths. If your team is down while playing a conquest map, you can be given an extra boost in the form of an armored train or war zeppelin. These machines can be destroyed at great cost, but the alternative is the machine completely reversing the tide of battle.

I think I’m about 20 hours into my Battlefield 1 experience, and I’d give it a big thumbs up. The game looks fantastic, and it sounds as fancy as it looks. Airplane engines screaming, artillery explosions shuttering, and bullets whizzing past your skull have never sounded so wonderful. Watching a zeppelin explode overhead and crash down onto the map is quite the spectacle to behold. Just don’t stare at it too long, those debris will kill you if they land on you. It really looks great, and it runs alright on my aging Nvidia 770.

So does it live up to the Battlefield legend? It’s nice to have the mix of air, land, sea vehicles in Battlefield again. Hell, with the dreadnought, it’s almost like the old capital ships from 1942 are back again. If only there were two of them out there slugging it out. Honestly, it feels like one of the most ‘Battlefieldish’ games in the series. I would highly recommend it if you’re into team based FPS games.

Now I did record a little bit of gameplay, but I’ve been having trouble getting it to render correctly. My first render looks OK, but Youtube will re-render uploaded videos. The youtube re-render always makes this video look a bit crappy afterward. I know it’s my bad, I haven’t been following Youtube’s guidelines for renders. Perhaps having it be only 30fps would help? Eh, if I wasn’t worried about my ISP’s new data cap, I could keep trying. However, I’ve sat on this post long enough while trying to get the video perfect. So this is as good as it gets for now.

https://youtu.be/slO8lEVKwbY

Deus Ex Mankind Divided

I recently finished a play through of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I’ve been a fan of the Deus Ex games since the first release way back in 2000, and I was pretty excited for the new release. Eidos Montreal promised they wouldn’t mess up the boss fights this time, and outside of that unpleasantness, I loved Human Revolution. I’ll do my best to avoid massive spoilers but there might be a few at the end of this.

The game puts you back in ~~JC Denton’s~~ Adam Jensen’s shoes in the wonderful city of Prague. In the story’s universe, the city of Prague is not the nicest to its augmented citizens. The city even has it own ghetto to corral all the augmented citizens in one area. If you might recall, our stories protagonist has about as many human bits left as Robocop does. This leads to some interesting interactions with the local security forces. I highly recommend walking in the non-aug areas as much as possible to trigger the events btw.

The city’s paranoia is not entirely without good reason. The world is still scared from a horrific event years before when the world’s augmented population went berserk causing the worst loss of human life in history. I might be a bit scared of the guy with arms strong enough to tear through sheet metal knowing a loss of control had happened.

It is all good for the hero though. He’s in town working for ~~Sector 7~~ er Task Force 29. He is hunting terrorists who enjoy blowing things up or something. Too be honest, the side quests are better then the main plot line. They bring up some really thought provoking topics, but they never delve deep enough into them. So that’s two things so far. Piss off the local cops, and do the side quests.

Game play is good. You can sneak around and punch people, or sneak around and gut them. You’ll also have lots of guns and explosives to help you on your quest. Your character is more then capable to demolishing AI characters in a 1v1 fight. However, they will set off the alarms quickly. You’ll be outnumbered in no time, and probably die. If you’re character is using a stealth build, you’ll probably die anyway. I know I did, a lot. 🙁 At least it reloads fairly quickly. Anyway, I’m sure an assault build would make quick work of the bad guys if one wanted to play that way.

I attempted to go non-lethal in my play through, but the first NPC I spoke with said I hadn’t been. I must have held down ‘Q’ for too long and executed an AI. Perhaps I dropped some unconscious guy from too high up? I dunno what I did, but I guess I was labeled a murder at this point. I reacted about like this..

As for the game’s performance. Well, it did alright on my Nvidia 770. I was running it at 1080 resolution with graphics set to high. For 95% of the game, it ran flawlessly. I did have a couple of massive FPS drops in two areas. I’m not sure if my GPU disliked the rain as both drops happened during active rainstorms. However, my GPU could have been overheating. I think it’s becoming ill, and I had been playing for awhile before it went weird.

‘Hey I heard there were micro-transactions, and if you defend them you’re a fanboy.’ Controversy time! Yes, it has micro-transactions in a single player game. No, you do not need them to enjoy the game. You can buy in game upgrade points. However, the game is fairly generous about giving out those upgrades just by finishing missions. I didn’t have an issue with in game credits either. I was a bit short on the microcell batteries that recharge your augments through some of the game, but it never was that much of an issue. I should note that I barely even noticed the micro-transactions. I don’t recall any in game moments that said, ‘Hey go pay real $ for in game upgrades’. I barely noticed the ‘Store’ tab in the options menu. Yeah, it is a bit odd for micro-transactions to be in a full priced release. However, I don’t feel they’re an issue. If you have impulse control problems, you probably disagree with me and that’s cool. Rock on!

Overall, I’d give Deus Ex: Mankind Divided a thumbs up. It’s fun, the visuals are well done, and it’s a neat story while it lasts. It should be on sale soon enough. I’d recommend picking it up then.

Breaking Battlefield 2 Cheaters

I’m feeling rather nostalgic this week, and I was thinking about my time spent as an admin for one of the top 10% of BF2 servers.

BF2 had ups and downs during its lifespan. It has some terrible bugs that made the Blackhawk helicopter an absolute terror for a few months, and it had that one that left almost all aircraft untouchable to missiles. Good times.

One of the big changes in BF2 from most other games was the stat tracking. You could review all of your previous rounds, Check your Kill to Death ratio anytime you felt like it. However, when you start putting everyone’s names into a competition, some people will always want to have more digital prestige then their skills will afford them. So the cheaters arose to prove only that they are cheaters.

Aimbots.. Aimbots EVERYWHERE! Ugh.. How could you tell the difference between an actual cheater and one of the various ‘x-men’, mutants, or the other partial metahumans that play games online?

At first, we’d have to monitor them.. Ugh did this suck. Going into a game to kick ass and having to sit down and keep an eye on one player because of multiple ‘He’s hacking’ reports. Sometimes I’d see something REALLY obvious like a headshot from the other side of the map. Other times it was obvious because you see them with an 80-0 KDR, or one might see them slaughter 10 people in a suspiciously short amount of time. A lot of the time, it was not very obvious what was going on, and I’d spend 15-20 minutes watching a player with nothing to show for it.

This was not a very efficient way to do things. However, I noticed something after a month or so. I don’t think the earlier cheats would let people change their in game name (maybe they did and I didn’t notice for awhile). At some point while looking into a cheater, I did a search on one of the BF2 stat tracking websites. I’d usually do a search based on a unique player ID. One time doing the search, I noticed the names were different. The player ID matched, but the in game name was different from the person I saw in the server. Huzzah!

This is what I needed. A smoking gun to detect cheaters quickly, and effectively. Now BF2 would let you create new characters, but you can’t change the in game name once chosen. Apparently, you COULD change it if you used the cheating software. The cheaters in their attempts to mask their actual in game name were actually revealing to admins that they were cheaters.

It makes a lot of sense why they would change their names. I mean if you went 100-0 for several rounds, you’d probably be reported to whomever ran the stat tracking stuff at EA. It would be hard to follow up on a report if you were looking for a name that didn’t exist.

Finding a flaw with the cheaters made things a lot more relaxing for me while admining the servers. If there was a question about someone in game, I’d quickly do a search on the stat tracking to see if they were legit. If the name and player ID did not match then they got a ban, and I got to go back to playing asap.

I never had one person come onto the forums and call one of those bans unwarranted. Not one. Although to be honest, I kinda hoped one person would have tried. I wanted to call them out on the name thing so badly even though it would have given up my magic bullet. *sigh* I suppose it’s safe to mention it now since I doubt BF2 cheaters are much of an issue these days.

Stay awesome internet people. Keep learning, and looking for those minute factual details that matter. And don’t cheat at multiplayer games. Go play single player and hack the fuck out of that shit.

*No, I don’t consider a person using an aimbot to be a hacker. The hacker made the aimbot. The cheaters buy and use them.

DCS World: Polychop Simulations Gazelle

Polychop Simulations released their DCS World Gazelle module a few weeks back, and I’ve been in flight sim heaven. I’m still learning the finer points of target identification in the Gazelle, but I’ve gotten rather good at it operating the Gazelle’s systems in combat.

The new aircraft is the fully licensed Sa-342M Gazelle. It’s a day and night light attack helicopter that stared in the movie Blue Thunder and had a cameo in Die Hard with a Vengeance. (Jeremy Irons crashes one in the films climax) It did have some cosmetic work done for its Blue Thunder role like many movie stars do for their parts. So it’s hard to recognize it. However, just look at the tail and you’ll see it is pure Gazelle. Anyway, the chopper is 39ft long, and has a max speed of 193mph. The cruising speed of the helicopter is around 164mph. However, the Gazelle used in DCS is weighed down a bit with hardware. So, it’s a bit difficult to get it up to those speeds. Keep in mind that a fully fueled Gazelle with two crew members is just under the max takeoff weight. If you want a full combat load, you’ll have to dump some fuel for a safe flight.

Each aircraft seems to have it own unique quirks. The Huey has mast bumping, the Mig-21 has that limited alcohol supply for the radar (or pilot), and Mi-8 is just heavy. The Gazelle’s quirk is that the helicopter is nimble as hell. Well, that and keep an eye on the engine torque. My very first flight consisted of me pulling the collective too hard, and I’m fairly certain I over-torqued the turbine (Keep an eye on that dial). So, I broke the engine before getting 5 feet off the ground. The Gazelle fell back on the pad, and I stood there stumped. The turbine was going, but the collective did nothing. Looking back, I don’t recall where the needle was on the RPM dial, but it was running. While I had failed in my first takeoff, it showed me just how much detail went into this aircraft.

The graphics model, flight model, and systems modeling have as much detail as I’ve come to appreciate from recent DCS World releases. I was a bit unhappy with some of the early Beta releases from some 3rd party studios, but Polychop released a module rich in features. It’s an early access release with training missions and a campaign that I’ve been enjoying. They modeled many of the Gazelle’s real world features, and the only thing I know it really doesn’t model is the IFF system, and I can understand why. (Super secret stuff there)

As far as I can tell being a non-pilot in the real world, the flight model is good. The Gazelle enters a vortex ring state real easily though. (You’ll see it in action at the end of my video) One nice thing about the Gazelle being so nimble, it actually is possible to get out of a VRS at rather low altitudes if you catch it in time. It’s nimble enough it should be pretty easy to doge anti aircraft missiles as well, but I’ve not yet put myself in a situation where a Tunguska is locking me up.

Some welcome new toys with the module include a radar warning receiver, a wonderful inertial navigation system, autopilot trim, and HOT3 missiles. It’s really nice to have some kind of radar warning in a smaller helicopter. I’ve been flying the Mi-8 and Huey so often, I forgot how nice they are. I’m not really sure if the Black Shark has one or not. I know it has the laser warning thing, but no radar warning equipment. Anyway, the trim works a bit differently from the other choppers, but I like it. I can zero out the trim perfectly using my joysticks high hat, and I’d recommend you do it this way to avoid scary situations.

It is an early access release with a lot of neat toys, but Polychop still has plenty more toys on the way. The developers are planning on releasing many more weapons for the Gazelle. A cannon, rockets, and a sniper team are all on the drawing board. The HOT3 is a nice weapon, but if there is a chance I’ll get to hurl some laser guided rockets, I’m all for it. The sniper team is kind of an unusual choice for a weapons system, but it could open up some REALLY cool scripted missions down the line.

Something I should point out about those missiles though. The HOT3 missile is great in many aspects. It’s fast, and it’s dual charge warhead penetrates an awful lot of armor (even reactive armor). However, it can be easily out-ranged by newer light and heavy armor. So you can plink T-55s all day, but be very wary around T-72s & up. They can shoot guided missiles out of their cannon, and they really hurt when they hit. While the tanks may out range you, the HOT3’s speed gives you a rather nice edge. If you can get your shot off before the tank does, your missile will impact before the tank’s missile hits you. This wouldn’t matter with a radar or heat seeking missile, but a wire guided missile can’t hit you if the person looking down the sights had been blown up.

So how is it? It’s freaking great. The Gazelle is a difficult chopper to fly the first time since it needs much gentler control input to do what you want. Although, it flies really well once you get used to it. The Gazelle also fills a unique niche. If you like the idea of shooting wire guided missiles at things, it’s really the only aircraft in town at the moment. Although, Polychop are planning on releasing the BO-105 which will carry even more missiles. I’m most likely going to have to skip that one though. There are too many good modules coming out this year, (Hopefully) and the gaming budget will not allow me to get them all. The 80’s child in me REALLY wants that F-14. Although, maybe Polychop will notice me sucking up to them and give me a review copy. (Hahaha!)

On a serious note, if you’re a rotary wing junkie, I would honestly recommend picking up the Gazelle. However, I would not recommend it for your 1st DCS World helicopter though. The choppers take some getting used to flying, and the Gazelle is very unforgiving. I’d hate to see a new pilot get frustrated with what is an excellent module.

Check it out for yourself

**Edit on Aug 19th 2016

They have patched the flight model quite a bit since I first flew the Gazelle. It’s a bit easier to fly as of now. It is not as easy to fall out of the sky while making sharp turns for one. Also, my tip for flying using the high hat trim no longer applies. It’s better to use the altitude autopilot switch. This will lock your current altitude, and you use the collective to adjust your speed. It works fantastically. As of now, I’m sure it would be possible for a new helo pilot to handle the Gazelle. Oh yeah, the gun and rocket combo are now available as well.