Once upon a time, I was a General.

I had previously posted that I started playing Bad Company 2, a Battlefield game made by EA games. In that post I also mentioned that I was playing it with my clan, Team Rip. Shortly after the Bad Company 2 beta ended and the game went live, one of the clan members mentioned an organization called 21st Century Warfare (or 21CW for short). After playing with 21CW for only one week, I knew that I was in the midst of something much better than my years of clan gaming and I quit playing with Team Rip.

21CW is an organized and structured online tournament that involves two sides, the Coalition and the Opposition fighting over control of various parts of the world. Each side is represented by a Division that changes after each campaign. 21st Century Warfare has its own private battle server, its own private TeamSpeak server, and each side is provided their own private forums. Each tournament consists of a campaign. When you register to play you will be placed on 1 of the 2 sides and you remain as part of that force for the entire campaign. Campaigns usually last around 10 weeks and battles are held every Saturday from 12pm to 12am.

I joined up during Campaign 28 as a Recruit and by the end of the 6 week campaign I was promoted all the way up to the Sergeant Major of the Army (SMA). In real life, the SMA is the senior enlisted member of the Army, and is appointed to serve as a spokesman to address the issues of enlisted soldiers to the Army's highest positions. In 21CW, its the lowest rank of upper leadership called the HCO staff. I was then asked by the General that was picked for Campaign 29 if I would be his second in command, Major General. I agreed and off we went. However, he disappeared shortly thereafter and I was offered the position of General (the army's commanding officer). The tournament administrators said that I was the first General in tournament history to have such little tournament experience under their belt. That made the whole situation a bit daunting but none the less I embraced the opportunity.

Everything went great during the campaign and after I pushed to make changes to our communications paradigm amongst other things, everything flowed much smoother. In fact, it went so well that by the end of week 6 it was mathematically impossible for the other army to win let alone tie us. So we agreed to end the campaign early with a victory for my army and move on to the next campaign.

 

 

So now, it's back to being a private and we'll see where things lead me.

Memory: Anchors Aweigh

This morning while surfing on my Sirius radio, I came across the end of Anchors Aweigh played by the US Navy band. I know it's insane but I actually started getting choked up as memories came flooding back. In 1995, I attended boot camp at Recruit Training Great Lakes, IL and I remember this tunnel we would march through where we would sing one verse of the song while marching through and another different verse when we marched back through on our return. It was a competition between company drill instructors to see who could get their company to sing the song the strongest and we made our drill instructors proud by winning that competition. Let me tell you, the power with which a company of young men can bellow Anchors Aweigh flawlessly makes me a bit misty now at 33 years old. It's one of those things that I don't expect anyone else to understand unless you were in the same situation. It was a very impressionable time in my life and now that all the resentment I had for the bad things I encountered has melted away, I only remember the good times and that was one of them.


Here are the verses:

Verse 1

Stand, Navy, out to sea, Fight our battle cry;

We'll never change our course, So vicious foe steer shy-y-y-y.

Roll out the TNT , Anchors Aweigh. Sail on to victory

And sink their bones to Davy Jones, hooray!

Verse 2 (most widely sung)

Anchors Aweigh, my boys, Anchors Aweigh.

Farewell to foreign shores, We sail at break of day, of day.

Through our last night on shore, Drink to the foam,

Until we meet once more. Here's wishing you a happy voyage home!

My long awaited return to Battlefield.

It's been quite awhile since my clan (TeamRIP) has returned to EA Games Battlefield series. The Battlefield series are First-person shooter (FPS) games. FPSs are a video game genre which centers the gameplay around gun- and projectile weapon-based combat through the first person perspective. FPS games have even been used over the years as a recruiting ground for the US military.

I started playing the series with their first game called Battlefield 1942. Battlefield 1942 was one of the first mainstream games to represent a dramatic shift in FPS game play mentality not only favoring individualism, but simultaneously encouraging teamwork and coordination. The teamwork and coordination are what won me over and kept me playing the series over the years. However, for the past couple years my clan moved away from the BF series and tried other FPS games. Finally, returning with the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. This game is not for the weak of heart. It's intense but extremely satisfying. Teamwork and coordination are a must and it's very evident when a team lacks those two qualities.

We have our own server which allows us to have control over what maps and modes are run. It also gives us the power to remove people from the server that are breaking the rules and/or ruining gameplay for the other players. If you play, Bad Company 2 or are looking for a clan that centers on teamwork, coordination and having fun, come join us. Play with us for a while and see if our style of gameplay fits with yours. We'd love to have you. Below is a banner of our server, click on it and you'll be able to join the server right away. Alternatively check out TeamRIP and see what our clan has to offer.

Training

Well this entire week up until Friday I'll be in training at work...yeaaah. So I won't have time to post. I did however just install the Project Reality modification for BF2. I played it over a year ago and it is by far the single best modification I have played for any FPS genre game. Off to have some fun.

Unity goes free!

In an interesting development at the Unite conference, Unity Technologies, provider of Unity, announced that version 2.6 of the Unity platform is will now be available at no cost. You can find the download here. This is outstanding news for the hobbyist like me. For years I’ve pit Unity against Torque when it comes to the best development platform for me. To date, it has been Torque because you get the source code which Unity does not allow access to and that’s extremely important when decisions have to be made about which middleware to choose. Game Developer magazine recently published results from a survey they conducted that shows backs up that fact. For most, not having the source code is an instant turn-off to a product and I honestly feel the same.

However, a price tag of $0 will make many people overlook that fact. This will bring in a lot more potential buyers and I’m sure that Unity Tech is hoping that this free version will act as a springboard for purchase of Unity Pro.

To echo what someone posted on the GarageGames forum regarding this very topic, “I kinda believe GG and torque3d left the hobbyist market.” Even though I love Torque, I feel the same. As a hobbyist, I’ve started feeling left out when T3D went live. There is no way I’m going to pay $1000+ for software that will see less than 8 hours per day use. I think it’s time to check out Unity.

Regardless, Good luck to Unity, I say.

No commute and BF40K

/emote uncaps a black dry erase marker.
Yet another reason to write up on the whiteboard; no commute. I can't express my disdain for long commutes. I currently drive an hour to my job and an hour home. That's two hours a day that I could be with the family or doing something more productive. I want to be able to see my family during the day. I dream of them dropping by the shop or studio to say hello and even to have lunch perhaps. And if something came up where my wife would need to drop one or both of the kids off due to an emergency or even non-emergency situation, I relish the idea of her being able to count on me.
/sighs
/emote replaces the black dry erase marker's cap.

In other news, a total conversion for the Battlefield series known as Battlefield 40K (or BF40K for short) has always had a special place in my heart. Long ago, I was on the development team for BF40K when it was in its infancy. However, frustration and a general lack of time and patience caused me to leave the team for good. The original lead producer left and a wonderful chap by the name of Lionheart took the reins. Ever since he's done a marvelous job but being a lead of an online collaboration such as BF40K is not an easy role. I feel for him and have seen him endure the same frustration that I had long ago.

I had an IM conversation with him a few weeks back and it seems that he will be leaving the team soon. That will not be good for the team as a whole as Lionheart is a man of many talents and his skillsets will be sorely missed and not replaced anytime soon. But I don't blame him one bit. Here is the email I got today.

Battlefield 40k is short on staff and in need of a brand new development team. We need assistance in finishing the mod for either the bf2 or 2142 mod. We have enough completed art assets (sound effects included) to make an infantry only Tau vs Imperial Guard release. All that is needed is for them to be coded in game and finished. We also have vehicles that are 60% completed for both Tau and Imperial Guard. There is also a large number of Space Marine assets that are only in need of texture updates and coding to get them in.

If you are interested in helping please post a thread in the Developer Recruitment Forums outlining your proposal for releasing the mod.

All assets must remain within the BF40K team and mod development for BF2/2142 engines.

Thank you, Lionheart

So if there are any developers/producers/scripters/coders out there that think they can lend a helpful hand to these fellows, I highly encourage you to do so. I have considered jumping back in but I've been out of the loop for far too long and fear that my lack of patience would spell disaster for me once again.

Best of luck, BF40K!

Ahhh, kids.

It seems that my intention for at least one daily post fell through this week. My entire family has a cold. It isn't the nastiest cold we've ever had but enough to impact our routines as is evident by my lack of posting. In fact, I left work early on wednesday because I was feeling worse by the minute and realized that if I didn't drive home as soon as I could, I wasn't sure I would be able to drive home later seeing as I was getting lightheaded. Also, because my daughter didn't go to school, my wife needed someone to be at out house to watch the kids so she could drive her parents to the airport. It all worked out for the best I suppose.

If someone told me that I would get sick as often as I do before I had kids, I would have been skeptical. However, it's all too obvious to me now. My daughter goes to school and our son will be going to playgroups soon. All of which are little petri dishes full of germs. Inevitably, everything comes homes to infect us. Perhaps, we'll all live longer being exposed to so much at a relatively early age. At least that's that I would like to think.

For now, we're off to clean out the garage and move everything from our storage unit back into the garage which will act as storage for the foreseeable future.