i40, a little bit late

This post was supposed to make an appearance one week ago, after returning from i40.
However, we still have no internet at home (it’s coming up on four weeks now), and some personal stuff too which meant I wanted to spend the week curled in a small ball, not interacting with anything.

Enough of that, though – i40!

We arrived just before the rain.. a fantastic start to a weekend where the sleeping is mostly done outside 😉

That wasn’t the end of the ‘fantastic start’, however, as we were then excluded from taking our machines in till way after 6pm because the temporary structure wasn’t ready.. and then when we were finally able to get in, there was no internet.  With no internet, there was also no Steam..

The first game played, then, was Warcraft III, as it was one of the few games available which didn’t need an internet connection or updates.

In amongst those games was a go at the “Run, Kitty, Run” map: you have to run along a spiral path to the centre, avoiding the ‘dogs’ which kill you on touch.  It gets harder as you progress, as the paths are narrower, until there’s barely room to get past.. for the first time in many, many attempts, we actually managed to get to the end, where it seems the reward for success is.. to start again with even more dogs on the paths!

I was also introduced to Beat Hazard, thanks to another friend.  This takes any music track you own and turns it into a simple space shooter, very like Geometry Wars.. and it makes very bright, pretty colours.. *gazes*

You start off with space-trash to shoot, but as the track progresses you face stronger enemies which shoot back.  Fortunately, you collect power-ups as you go, which makes your weapons a little more useful.. as well as more colourful.. and there are also power-ups which increase the volume of the track too.

It’s another ‘unblinking’ game which probably shouldn’t be played in a dark room at LAN 😉

After playing this, Audiosurf made another appearance, and with it, a little competition going on in terms of the scoreboard.

Minecraft became a slight obsession for one friend..  this is a 3D sandbox crafting game, with a variety of types of block: wood, coal, etc, and strange blocky life-forms, the most interesting being zombies!  I had a brief go at the game a while back, but after spending two day cycles building, and two night cycles hiding in my buildings from the zombies, I then found my trial of the game didn’t have zombies.. durrrp!
It was admittedly quite fun watching huge piles of TNT go up, though, especially when it resulted in framerates of 1 or 2, or crashed the PC :3

In the run-up to i40, we picked up Borderlands, thanks to another Steam offer.  Oh, Steam.. what would I do with all my money if not for you?

Borderlands has 4 player co-op, which is great as I do like playing with friends.. but I have to say that I found myself confused by the weapons, as per usual in this type of game.   Having to pick up ammo for the weapon I was using, while leaving other ammo for my team just added another layer of trouble.. if I don’t know the guns, I’m really not going to know what ammo they use.

Despite this, I love the game, though I want to complete the game in single-player so I know what I’m doing, and don’t feel like I’m holding my friends back next time.

We also got a couple of games of Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising in.. trying out the Free-For-All mode which I really enjoyed, especially with high resources allowing me to just pump out units.  I think I’m improving on my tactics now, using the Techmarine to fit with my defensive playstyle.  FFA made a nice change, but I think co-op is still going to remain my favourite.

The last night of i40 turned into an all-nighter, with a foxy puppet, fits of giggles, a brief foray onto the rather disappointing Omegle, and later fits of shivers.. the temporary structure really wasn’t draught-proof and by 4am I was glad of fleecy blankets and two friends to hide between for warmth.  Next time I think I’ll be voting for a warmer and quieter hall, maybe in with the WoW players.. lalala 😉

LAN wouldn’t be LAN without a massive TF2 battle between CantFitMyN and Crazy/Inv, and so on the last morning we duly had our game, though there was no victory for CFMN this time.  Next time, maybe! 🙂

Spying and Engineering

We went for a bit of a change and played some TF2 this weekend!
Usually I play soldier as I find it the easiest class, but it’s good to try something else from time to time..

First up was the spy..

Disguises were easy enough to use, as was the cloak, but I had to learn to choose my battles.. my normal style of play involves firing at the first enemy I see!

After I’d had a bit of a mess around, we started sneaking into the other team’s base.. this meant lots of waiting to get past enemies in the doorways, or hiding under stairs hoping for engineers to leave their sentries for us to sap 😉

The cloak frustrated me a few times as I’d find myself in a great position to attack someone, but by the time the cloak was off and I could attack, my target had turned around.

The Engineer Update was released recently, and I joined some friends when they went to play with his new toys: Frontier Justice, a new shotgun; the Wrangler, a pistol/remote control for the sentry, and the Gunslinger which looks like a robotic hand, and even better, drops awesome mini-sentries!
Gamecrit have a great video with these new items in action on their YouTube channel here.

Again I had a friend give me some tips, such as building and upgrading sentries just outside the base, and then once finished, moving them closer to the frontline.   Moving buildings is a new ability, and it really allows the engineer to do more than simply defend.. for me this makes him a much more fun class to play.

i-39!

Sleeping outdoors at the beginning of April isn’t normally something I’d recommend.  However, sleeping outdoors because you’re attending a Multiplay i-series LAN party is fine – and exactly what we were doing this last weekend.

We arrived around 1pm on Thursday, to find ourselves amongst the first there.  Happily this meant we were able to register in just 10 minutes, including the time it took for the database to be rebooted.. a huge improvement on i-37, where we waited for over two hours in the queue!
We then set up our tents in a nice spot by the old grandstand, finishing just in time for it to start throwing it down!

After that it was a matter of waiting for our friends to arrive, set up their tents, and find our way to the pub for a bit before the event was properly opened up.

There were also some nice new hoodies for members of CantFitMyN, with names on the back and smaller logos with initials on the front.  This resulted in a game of “spell rude words with our initials for the camera”, pictures of which I won’t be adding here 😉

Along with the rest of the clan, we took over one end of the first floor of the Grandstand, and it was clean, undisturbed and fairly quiet, until Sunday night’s chatroulette antics from the row behind us, at which point we couldn’t hear ourselves speak for the screams coming from this group..  Otherwise, a damn good spot, worth trying to bag again for i-40!

So, normally there are a few new games which grab my interest at lan.  This time it was Heroes of Newerth (beta), which I’m told is virtually a clone of Warcraft III’s DoTA mod.  I’ve not tried that mod so I’m not going to make any comparisons, but I have to say I loved playing this game despite the kickings I’ve had this far. 🙂

The weekend was wrapped up with a massive battle on TF2, with CantFitMyN managing to win their first game against Crazy / inv .. though possibly due to having a few more players on the team!