How to See the Playlist

Use your mouse to rollover the bottom of the Flash object. Click on that white box to see the remaining videos.

How to Get Started

I still haven’t started so you can take this with a grain of salt, but from my observations it looks like you don’t really need much. The guys on the podcast seem to be using dice (4, 6, 12, 20-sided stuff), player’s manual, monster’s manual, a sheet of paper to mark the character’s location, and little figurines from their own collection… like old toys. I think the KEY is whomever you choose to be the dungeon master (DM). The DM seems to really keep the game going from one adventure to the next and keeps everyone in line with his/her knowledge of the monsters, races, classes, environments, weapons, spells, etc.

So; really it looks like KNOWLEDGE is the only real tool a player needs to participate in D&D. Get the players manual and create a character. Find a local hobby shop or join a meetup group in your area.

My scenario might be a little different because of my existing responsibilities (wife, kids, work, etc), but I’ll keep you posted. I’m really excited about finally getting to understand this game. The PODCAST is the biggest help to me right now. I put some useful links below.

Resources

• Critical Hit [rss] [web] – Podcast from Major Spoilers.
• Wizards of the Coast – Official D&D web site.
• The Atlanta Dungeons & Dragons Meetup Group – local meetup group in Atlanta.

I haven’t kept up with E3, but I do listen to the EUCast at SoloSound.net.  I heard their interview with Matt Higby of Sony Online Entertainment for a FREE MMO coming out this fall.  It looks like something I can really get into with my kids. Now I just need to find them a computer besides my personal desktop. It’s not The Old Republic, but I guess it will have to do. Keep feedin’ the fanatics!

Head shot… Boo-yah; 50 pts for using a pun in the title. For those of you that may not know what I’m talking about… in the latest release from DICE; Battlefield Bad Company 2 (known in forums, social media, and irc channels  as BFBC2) continues the enhanced feature of completely leveling a building during game play. Don’t let the blog title fool you though, this post isn’t really going to focus on that aspect. My intention is to show you how to level your character in the multi-player section of this game. I don’t have a nextgen gaming console so this is specifically related to the PC version of BFBC2.

Familiarizing Yourself with the System

The F2000 is a modular weapon system; its principal component is a compact 5.56x45mm NATO-caliber assault rifle configured in a bullpup layout.

Seriously; take your time and look at the multi-player interface. Understand your limited control system, take a look at the game modes, maps, etc. The game interface allows you to view who’s playing on any given server, but I really question the point of it. It doesn’t give you a synopsis of what the player ranks are or kits being used.

This was the biggest hurdle for me as a player coming from the good ol’ days of the earlier Battlefield series. I didn’t understand how the multi-player layer worked. I spent a good amount of my time in single-player mode and got a bit cocky as to how easy it was for me to get head shots off the AI. When I stepped onto my first multi-player server, it loaded “conquest” mode for Arica Harbor. OMG; that was a bad experience. It was NOTHING like the single-player game (except for crouching, my pinky finger still hurt). I had a horrible weapon and no 4x scope. I was basically shooting in the dark.

So; after dusting myself off and trying other game modes and maps, I came to the conclusion that this game is TOO HARD for me to play. It was very discouraging to log on and get my arse handed to me on a regular basis. I tried searching for tips, but they only lead me to ginormous and unreadable forum posts. This post will probably be no different, but at least it’ll be legible.

I might try and do a series of post, but we’ll see how that really turns out. For the time being just try and grab the concept of what I’m trying to say and not really the letter. For the most part, I chose to level up the Assault kit. My main goal was to get back that 4x scope I was so used to having in the single-player game.

Get Used to Being Pwn’d

An opposing player sneaking up behind another player. Looks like someone might get "knifed".

Don’t believe the hype! People will tell you that you can join “noob” servers to get familiar with the game. I believe the level cap is at 50 and I’ve seen plenty of level 30-40′s pwn’in noobs left and right. There’s no way of enforcing a level cap on a server. The server title will say “Noobs Only (No one lower than 20)”, but enter at your own risk.

At first I was concerned about my playing history – my game stats. Later; I realized that I will never make it to the top 10 list, so why bother. Just get in there and have fun, learn the game. My death-to-kill ratio is laughable. I will tell you, though, what ends up happening is after a while you’ll figure out how to stay alive longer.

The Silver Lining: Awards System

So; keeping in mind that I’m aiming for my 4x scope, I focused on playing with the Assault kit, just about all the time. You have a couple different game modes:

• Rush
• Conquest – not a big enough platform for points (explained below)
• Squad Deathmatch – very close combat. Too many good players… playing against your squad.
• Squad Rush

Recently; I’ve figured out that a small group playing in “squad rush” mode is the best way to level your player.  There is a player-cap of 32. You’d think having 16 targets would make it easier for you to get more experience points.  From my experience that only means that there are probably 10 players on the opposing team that have better equipment to pwn you with. It became really frustrating. Since I consider myself a decent first-person shooter (FPS) player. I’ve seen that playing a server with 6-10 players (on a 32 player max) is a great way of racking up some points.  With fewer players:

1. You have a better sense of who’s on the field and their possible skill set. Once you figure that out, you can then see who you can dominate.
2. You have a better chance of making more kills. More kills means more time on the server actually playing instead of respawning.
3. You have a better chance of earning more awards and experience points.

This is where familiarizing yourself with the award system works out to your advantage.

For every kill you make you earn 50 points. You also get points if you did heavy damage to a player, but didn’t kill him. When your squadmate does kill him you get assisted points. In “rush” mode the objective is either to attack a set of bases and set a charge (which you get points for setting) or defending a set of bases and disarming charges. The advantage over “conquest” mode is in conquest mode you only get points for capturing a base, instead of a possible two or three sets of points for attacking or defending a base. Along with those points you also get points for actually having a decent game via insignias and pins.

For example: If you kill 7 enemies with an assault rifle, you get the “Assault Rifle Efficiency Pin”. It’s worth 100 pts. If you’re apart of the best squad for that round you get “Gold Squad Pin”. It’s worth 200 pts. The real gems are the insignias. If you spawn off a squad member instead of a base 200 times you get 5,000 pts. These points aren’t related to your kit though, it’s for your overall ranking. What this does is get your “specification” skills up-to-par. Allowing you to gain access to using a red-dot scope instead of the generic rifle scope, gain a “grenade vest” thus giving you twice the capacity of 40mm and hand grenade ammunition. Most of the skill set in the single-player game is taken for granted. You have NONE of that when you enter multi-player.

Checking Your Stats

The biggest part of leveling is having the ability to view your progress at any time. The in-game system is pretty decent, but I really like the web site: www.bfbcs.com. This site is able to queue your account for an update, MUCH quicker than the official www.battlefieldbadcompany2.com site. I’m really baffled as to why that is. They also have a really neat signature system (for forums, etc). It’s totally customizable and they have plenty of templates available.

I hope this post is helpful to you. If you like what I did, let me know and I’ll really consider posting more Battlefield-related posts. Enjoy the game and most of all, don’t give up! It gets easier as you level.

So; I’m on Windows 7 doing a search for themes and I came across two Star Wars sets that have some real nice backgrounds and icons. I found them on the SWTOR forum. I thought I’d share. Thanks Paulius for creating them.

• http://www.mediafire.com/file/gymhnwnknmd/tor001.themepack
• http://www.mediafire.com/?mmg2ittdzmg

Chapter 2 talks about conditional statements, such as IF, WHILE, SWITCH functions. I’ve used those alot with Javascript and PHP pages. So; for the most part, I plan on skimming this section. I did see a simple SWITCH program I wanted to run. It looked like fun. I had a weird thing happen though. My C/C++ Development Environment (CDT) went missing. I saw that the C++ plugins were showing, but I couldn’t get that perspective up and running. In the end, I simply uninstalled/reinstlled “eclipse-cdt” and it was back to normal. Something must have conflicted during the last system update.

I marked my spot on page 46. It’s been a long day and I have no energy left to work on programming. I took the kids to the pool twice. Today’s high was about 90 degrees and I walked them to the pool, on their bikes, so that took a while. It was a pretty chill time though. No rush. We swam around and Leeanne needed to use the potty. So; I took them to the door and the door wouldn’t open. I swiped our card a couple times, but nothing budged.  So; this meant we had to cut it short and take the troops back home… on their bikes! Oh boy was the trip home, no fun.

I fed them and we all took a nap. After we got up, I took them again to the pool and they had a great time. As for me, I’m tired beyond relief.

Back to My IDE-woahs!

I continued to have problems with my Integrated Development Environment (IDE). After I build the program and try to run it I get an error message. I forget what it was, but I’m guessing since I had to reinstall my CDT, I might need to resintall or reconnect the GCC compiler. Good night folks, this looks like a job for tomorrow.

I’m back on page 20 – variables. This part of the chapter is dealing with calculations, enumerators, etc. I finished chapter one and realized it might take me two weeks to complete a chapter, instead of one.

Chapter Two

Chapter two has my interest because it looks like he’ll talk about the “game loop”. When I took programming, back in college, I recall thinking about how these functions worked together. You can only have one main function and I thought about how what happens after the game finishes or after you “save and quit”. I came up with the term “game loop” – not knowing it was already a term. It’s pretty obvious that’s what it’d be called, but I’m happy I was able to figure it out – before someone told me.

Now that I have the basics, of this CDT, I’m back to reading the book. I believe I ended off declaring variables. I created a variable.cpp file and began working with the editor. Very nice how it helps.  Oh boy, I left it at page 20. I’m too tired to continue.

OMG!!!! OMG!!! OMG!!! How did I not know about this video project!? This movie was posted in October of 2007 at GameTrailers.com, by Monty Oum and I’m just now seeing it. There are two other entries, in this series, but it’s amazing. The first comment, was awesome, and so very true.

Zandu
"OMG... would you marry me?? *-*"

My sentiments, exactly!

I made a decision last week as I was juggling the “Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds” vs “Beginning C++ Game Programming“. I realized that building a game world will certaintly become a necessary skill for me, but I need more hands on, at this time. The game design book is more theory, as I don’t know how to actually create a game yet.  So; I dropped… more put the book on hold… until I have some more game developing under my belt.  So; I’m back to focusing on one book. Whew! That was certainly an ambicious move, on my part. No worries though, I love this C++ book and I should have no problems finishing it.

Right now I’m on page 14, learning the basics of C++. It’s bringing back a lot of memories when I was at Broward Community College (central campus) taking my first C++ class. It was intoxicating. I really don’t need to go over the first chapter, but it never hurts doing a refeshers’ course.

Today, I stopped at page 16 with “Declaring Variable”. I have to hit the sack. I have to be in Atlanta by 8:00 AM tomorrow.