Piaw's Blog

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. One “tiny” issue…

Piaw — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:09:26 +0000

Well, it’s finally out! I won’t bother with the review crap here since there are tonnes of them out there. I’ll briefly discuss an annoyance with the game. Don’t get me wrong. The graphic is cooler, the story is more exciting and the singleplayer gameplay totally outperforms its predecessor! In fact, I found out that the more realistic graphic runs better than the first Modern Warfare on the same hardware. Kudos to IW for improving the game engine while castrating PC’s multiplayer! And not to forget, implementing Steam tighter into the game than Valve’s (Steam’s owner) own game.

IW claimed to be offering better multiplayer experience by going online while playing LAN game!? WTF is that?! Why go through all the trouble to set up an online server for the smallest community in game platform (that’s the PC)? Isn’t it easier to programme a dedicated server and let us PC gamers deal with the problem? With greater flexibility comes greater problems and even greater gameplay experience that made PC the ultimate gamer’s multiplayer platform. Keyboards exist so that gamers can play with their own rules. Got a servermaster who’s hacking for cheap frags? Just don’t join it. It’s that easy! We don’t need some scripts to determine whose game we’re joining and going online just to have a simple fun LAN game is suspiciously annoying to us. WTH are you thinking, IW?

BTW Modern Warfare 2 runs nicely with my new Powercolor Radeon 4770 PCS 512MB. Playing with all settings to the max is visually satisfying. One word to describe its singleplayer game: AWESOME. Another word to for multiplayer:… Oh wait there’s no word vulgar enough to describe it.

Until then, after my semester finals! Enjoy MW2!!

Tech updates, holidays and overclocking.

Piaw — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:53:22 +0000

Finally, it’s the mid semester break. After rushing through assignments and spending late nights studying (and watching TV), I’m euphoric today as it’s actually the start of my break (no class on Fridays). Everything seems much less depressing now. No joke.

This week was exciting for tech world as Intel is having their IDF gathering and AMD is launching the Radeon 5870/5850 graphic cards. New Nehalem processors in 32nm process tech (codenamed Westmere) will be launched late this year. Those will be dual-core, quad-thread CPU with integrated graphic processing unit, the old (and sucky) Intel G45 variant to be precise. Unfortunately, 32nm quad core is not planned but there will be a hexa core version in the middle of next year. Until then, we’ll have to wait till codenamed Sandy Bridge launches in Q1 2011 to have cheaper, cooler quad core. By then AMD will also have its new wonder weapon ready, codenamed Bulldozer. Expect quad core, IBM licensed SMT technology (4 threads per core) and lots of cache (Z-RAM or maybe even better, IBM’s just-announced 32nm eDRAM). Personally, I won’t buy anything with Intel GMA on it. The thought of having a power sipper that does nothing right in everything annoys me. However I might recommend Core i5/i3 to low end users if it’s cheap.

On to my favourite subject, graphic processing units! AMD’s Radeon HD 5800 GPU might not be a huge change from the 4800, it still is the first DirectX 11 GPU in the world (and beat NVIDIA to it). It’s nice to see NVIDIA being a sore loser by releasing statements insulting AMD. Don’t forget that NVIDIA were the first to release DX10 GPU. And DX11 will definitely be more popular than its predecessor. However, I’m still on Windows XP, taking advantage of lower game requirements. DX9c can still perform as good as DX10 at this point. I will not migrate to Windows 7 until my next major hardware upgrade which will be the next gen AMD Bulldozer and probably Radeon HD 6 series. Until then I’m considering a graphic card upgrade as the GeForce 8600GTS is showing its age. The Radeon 5600-series GPU is rumoured to have 640 stream processor and low power output that are suitable for my current setup. But it won’t be available until next year. The older Radeon 4770 has similar specs, but it is unclear how much supply there will be. I’ll buy whichever is cheaper in the end.

This week was also a strange one for me as I’m suddenly interested in overclocking. Probably because there will be some great games coming soon. I have a terrific processor (Athlon64 X2 3800+ 2GHz) that can go 2.6GHz without extra voltage. Probably if I stabilize the vCore of my motherboard I can squeeze more juice out of that CPU. Now that’s a bargain! GPU overclocking is more of a grey area for me, but it’s easier if not the same as CPU overclocking. Now this particular GPU of mine has a horrific history of mass suicide in notebooks. Overclocking it probably won’t do any good. But what the hell, no pain no gain, right?

Fans of Left 4 Dead bewarned, the Crash Course DLC is confirmed on the 29th next week. New maps and new story that bridges the link between the hospital campaign ending and beginning of boathouse campaign (am I right?), the usual stuff. It’s FREE for Windows and XBox users need to pay for it. Life’s unfair, I know. But better be you than me, right?

I’m into modern combat games right now. And Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising looks to be an interesting one. Might be a nice time waster while waiting for November 10th. Nice graphics, lots of real life guns and plenty of modern warfare tactiques. What is there to complain?

Today’s special: Pointless research: top 10 Ig Nobel award winners for silly science. Of all the things we can do while sending an astronaut to space, I’m sure playing gasing is already experimented by NASA long ago. Enjoy my holiday, cheers!

Back to school.

Piaw — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:04:37 +0000

It’s the end of the third week for the semester and I’m still having trouble getting used to “busy” again. There were some unfortunate events but nothing serious, thankfully. I have to get up to speed with my studies as I’m still juggling time between activities for it. After all, this half of 2009 is going to be a very exciting time for tech and entertainment fields!

Almost all of my high school friends will be going overseas next month to study. It’ll be some time (or years) before all of us can get together like old times. However, despite having the chance to get paid by the government to study overseas, I do pity some of them for being sent to remote places in India. At least I can save more money for my next computer build.

Looking at everybody’s blog lately, it seems that there’s a lot of angst when going back to school. Here’s something to make you laugh.

Sick again. And it’s not H1N1.

Piaw — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:33:15 +0000

I had these symptoms (cough and fever) that might indicate H1N1 infection. Luckily there’s no sore throat, headache, difficulty in breathing… common symptoms of lung disease (of which H1N1 is one of, if you’ve been cramming too much).

I might have had food poisoning again, although much less serious than last time. No doctor this time, just lots of sleep and liquid food. Recovery is still just as awful. You’ll be very fatigued but insomnia always sets in. No sleeping position feels comfortable. I can go on and on. In short it’s the worst sickness you can get.

Good thing I’m OK today. No problem going to school tomorrow.

Another safe semester. Onwards to Year 2!

Piaw — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:06:06 +0000

Got my semester result today. Boy, am I glad to have passed all the subjects for the semester! Honestly, I didn’t study a lot throughout the semester. Even in the impending days of the finals, I had no idea what the lecturers taught the whole three months! Well, not to say I’d been a lazy slack all the time, at least I improvised my skill in programming. So having the only High Distinction grade in the only programming subject for the semester is expected. Overall, the result is not bad. Much better than last semester’s (below 3.0 CGPA and still passed).

Next semester would be the start of my second year. And it started well too with two programming subjects. From what I can read of the subject titles that are to come, they can’t be easy. The stakes just got higher. Guess it’s more crunch time and less game time.

Miracles in life.

Piaw — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:16:04 +0000

Just when you thought you’re in the worst possible moments, think of the different ways it would have unfolded and you’ll discover that miracles might have just happened unexpectedly. Think of them as God’s way to fix your flaws. Be thankful that God blesses those have done nothing to deserve the worst retributions.

Today is such a day. I’m not describing it out to keep some nosy mouths shut. What I can say is that it was the second time I’ve look Death in the eyes this year. By God’s will, we had avoided another worse disaster from happening through our own misfortune.

Another day to remember in my life.

Idiots in the internet.

Piaw — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:29:52 +0000

Let’s face it, the internet has allowed people to connect globally regardless of distance and time. You can meet people of different colours, culture and language. Of all the people that you can meet behind the veils of the computer monitors, there are the dreaded idiot, the ones I call the “fire starters” for their tendency to start flame war no matter what.

Browsing through the university forum as usual today, I came upon a thread on dissatisfaction in life. So I posted some statements that are rational and constructive. No harm done, life’s peaceful until that point. The thread starter replied quickly, much to my surprise. What I read next is something you would hear from an idiot. Even people with learning disability aren’t ought to be called idiots, because they never disrespect others! But this person, claiming to be an accounting student started finding faults, twisting words and flamed me for posting some intelligent sentences?! Guess this guy has really lots of dissatisfaction in life. I just rolled my eyes because I’ve met some these idiots once in a while.

Then I posted a reply with lots of “please” and other polite words. No, I don’t want to be like the person who disrespects. An eye for eye and the world goes blind. It would fun though to see how these idiots fare in parliamentary style debate. How nice is it to see them speaking unintelligible in front of the crowd. Back to topic, not surprisingly the idiot replied back almost immediately after my latest message. This time he sounded like a sore loser, reverting to more personal attacks against me. I feel really satisfied at this point. No use counter attacking as anyone can see that the idiot has lost.

When you’re in a public forum long enough, you’ll learn how to handle these idiots. Usually they’ll start a flame war then retreat to obscurity, never to be heard from again. I guess these people learn that the digital space doesn’t appreciate them as much as in real life. There are still certain rules to obey in the internet.

I do admit that I acted like an idiot sometimes, but only when someone went overboard with unintelligent and false statements to begin with. All of these conflicts ended nicely. I apologized and everyone’s happy. As a moderator had told me, emotional is what makes us human. But it is the ability to control emotion and admission to mistakes that makes us civilised!

Thus I end this post with the Vulcan motto, “Live long and prosper.”

[2D]RubikSolve v1.1 and turbo auto-solver.

Piaw — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 06:40:35 +0000

Here’s something fun from my latest programming assignment, a Rubik’s Cube (sort of) with auto-solver. It was my first attempt at C++ language, a more powerful version of the C language. Personally, I prefer it over C because of the powerful built-in data structures and their equally-efficient member functions. Also, it’s much easier to do object oriented programming on it. Praise the guy who invented it!

Today, I’m giving away the source code for [2D]RubikSolve because it’s not easy to plagiarised and experienced coder probably won’t use my messy code.

As you can see from the screenshot above, it’s not the conventional Rubik’s Cube that we see everyday. It’s more of a number puzzle where you have to arrange the numbers into ascending order using a set of predefined moves. Nonetheless it’s still challenging to do, particularly the GUI and AI subsystems.

There are some command line arguments that you can use. Just type “rubik.exe -help” in the command line console to see them. Note that the programme requires a text file with the numbers in it to run the puzzle. There are no specific format for typing the numbers. Just remember to leave a space between each number.

The AI algorithm for the automated mode isn’t optimized in this version. As such it’ll need to run up to an hour on a modern computer to complete a 10-step puzzle, which is the hardest difficulty. 6 steps will probably need less than one minute though. Keep in mind that the AI searches for the shortest solutions which in academic study is more important. I can do a brute force hit-and-run method that saves a lot of time but also produces redundant moves. So is this only what I can do? Of course not. Guess what, I produced another algorithm that can solve even the hardest puzzles under one second!

From one hour to one second.

The problem with my AI algorithm is efficiency. There are a lot of redundant instructions and dependent data to go through. Not satisfied with that, I redo the code in my spare time for two weeks, going through several versions. Each faster than before. The speedbreaker that did it in 0.5 second? Did it in half hour. It was a brain fart cum eureka moment.

You must run the programme in command line console. You have to include the file’s name as command line argument, ie. “rubikdevcpp2 filename.txt“. No source code is include because it’s easy to be plagiarised.

Download turbo auto-solver (no name for it) here.
Download [2D]RubikSolve here.

Time to chill.

Piaw — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:11:44 +0000

Exam’s over. Everybody’s back. It’s that time of the year again. Time to chill.

There are games, movies, hobbies and friends to catch up with. I’m thinking of weekly movie outings since there are some big ones coming out soon. I’ve watched Terminator: Salvation and Angels & Demons already. Very nice movies I would say, though Angels did leave me rather unsatisfied in terms of the “spiritual enlightenment of Robert Langdon”. How cool is it to have a divine intervention that the cryptography extraordinaire cannot crack? That’s enough spoiler for now. I highly recommend watching previous Terminator episodes to connect the dots in Salvation. The Sarah Connor Chronicles isn’t canon though so don’t waste time researching it.

I have officially taken programming as a new hobby. Been planning to do something big, if my laziness doesn’t overwhelm me. I’ll upload the my current semester’s assignment, a Rubik’s Cube game if you remember it. Not much but I don’t plan to make money out of it.

Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the gang to come back. Life is boring without those bunch. Chill dude…

Another good year for PC gaming.

Piaw — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:13:50 +0000

I’m a PC gamer. The reason for that is I play a lot of First Person Shooter (FPS) and Real Time Strategy (RTS) games. These genres benefit greatly from mouse-keyboard input, allowing gamers to execute pin point precision actions, more so than console controllers which only allow for limited set of buttons and the occasional motion sensor which is largely useless in these games. Also, I’m a PC enthusiast so it’s natural for me to build my own gaming system. Contrary to what big game companies have said in the past, PC gaming is still relevant and it’s still growing. Evident to this is this year’s big PC game lineup.

E3 has been resurrected this year as the over indulging, flamboyant gaming expo it once was. On the first day itself there were already some big announcements and trailers to accompany them.

First stop is the sequel Valve’s popular zombie shooter Left 4 Dead which will come out on November 17. This time the story is set in New Orleans. The characters will be different, so are the weapons which I suspect. There’ll be melee weapons like chainsaw, baseball bat and even frying pan! Well, it’s logical to be “hands on” when dealing with those mindless hordes.

We can’t forget the game that brought the most powerful gaming systems to their knees, EA’s Crysis. Last we left our hero in the monkey suit, he’s on a VTOL aircraft heading back to the alien infested island, reminiscent of a certain game’s “finishing the fight” motto. Details of Crysis 2 are sketchy, but expect more advanced rendering techniques that’ll test the generation hardwares’ abilities. (There’s a certain movie coming out soon that features similar monkey suits too. It’s called G.I. Joe.)

Fans of Splinter Cell series (including me) will be pleased to know that Conviction will be release this year, finally. Strangely enough, the release date is the same as the zombie killer mentioned earlier. I haven’t played Double Agent yet. Hopefully I’ll get down to it this coming holiday (whole month of July if you’re my friend and wish to hang out).

While Fallout 3 isn’t new to every gamer out there, the upcoming new DLC’s are. They are Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Yeap, more quirky yet epic stories. Just the way Fallout series are. I’ve played all of the DLC’s so far, and I ain’t going to miss these.

Halo is considered an Xbox franchise though the first two of the series were ported to the PC. I’m going to mentioned it here because Master Chief (an even cooler name, John-117) is one of my favourite heroes and all badass heroes are called John. John Rambo, John Connor, John McClane, John Wayne, etc. You might know that Halo: ODST is coming this year. Well, there’s another surprise for this year. Halo: Reach is announced. I think it might involve the units in UNSC though there’s a call sign for a Spartan unit in the trailer. Sure hope there’s a movie to be made about this franchise. It’ll be very very cool.

Another game worth mentioning is Modern Warfare 2. You might have seen the trailer. I’m reiterating here just to emphasize the Best Game of The Year potential. Here’s a gameplay trailer for you to salivate.

You know what Koreans like besides kimchi and Rain? That’s it. It’s Starcraft! If you think local DoTA addicts are too “addicted”, there’s no better word to describe the Koreans. Thus, it’ll be a monumental job to come out with a sequel to the game that’s already been worshipped like a god. Blizzard is doing just that, releasing bits and pieces of a game that’s beautiful to look at and fun to play with. It’s coming this year, if the programmers are satisfied.

I think that’s all for the lineup of the games that I think you should play for this year. Sure there are some others like Star Wars: The Old Republic. However, what I’ve stated here are the ones that will definitely worth playing. Other series like Star Wars are more of hit-and-miss so I’m not making decision of it for now. We’ll leave unexpected hits for the time to come. Until then, start saving money for the games and decide what upgrades you’ll need for your PC!