Mogul

I've been putting this off for the longest time, but I think a blog would be nice to start working on because it'll possibly help me organize my thoughts better, and will also give me an outlet to share some ideas and talk about stuff on a more-personal level. You know, like, this is _my_ journal or whatever, but I get to let other people read it and talk about the stuff that I say in it. Cool.

Sooo first thing is this.

Competitive gaming. Like pretty much everybody else, my first fps game was DOOM, and it was back either in late 93 (obviously December at the earliest) or early 94 that I discovered it. Ever since then, I've been playing first person shooters and of course, I still do.

I've really started to get into the competitive scene over the past couple of years. I didn't used to care much at all about deathmatch, I just wanted to have fun. Of course, it was cool to compete and everything, but it never really grabbed a hold of me like it has now.

For the past year and a half or so, I've been playing QUAKE III Arena a pretty good amount. It started with vQ3, then OSP (after I discovered the super-huge wealth of match demos out there you could download), and now CPMa.

One big draw to ProMode, aside from the speed of it, is that it came from a group of people that really believe that they know how to make the best-possible comepetitive game. You know, they make statements like, "You shouldn't be able to just load up on armors and rampage like you can in QUAKE III," or "QUAKE III's spawn system is completely broken," as if there literally is nothing good about it. :)

It's almost kind of laughable how direct and narrowly-focussed they are, but I guess it works. CPMa is really, really good. It's exciting to play, exciting to watch, and honestly, it's just put together really well. There is no aspect of that game that isn't finely turned based on hours and hours of discussion, theory, and professional playtesting. It's just a really, really good game.

So today, I tried to go back to OSP, and it was pretty funny. I literally found my attention span was shorter in this game than it ever had been before, because CPMa is so fast-paced and geared towards a pretty different style of play.

But while I was playing, I came across some interesting differences in design decisions between the two games that Carmac (not John Carmack, and yes, I meant to spell it that way) and I had talked about just the day before on MSN.

Hitscan weapons. This would be the lg, mg, I guess rail.

Carmac was telling me that one major thing he didn't like about CPMa was the lg and rail, because "hitscan weapons require the least amount of skill" and they were just too powerful. That's why he preferred QUAKE III over CPMa. So I was playing QUAKE III earlier today against a skill 35 spiterbot (starting from the ground up again, my Q3 skill is missing :D) and noted that after so much CPMa play, take these guys down with the lg was waaaay easy. It required almost no lock-on or tracking skill at all. It was basically, put your crosshair on the guy and press fire for about 1.5 seconds, and he's finished. I was like, wtf, that required almost no skill, literally. In CPMa, if you want to frag your enemy with the lg, you've got to be extremely controlled, quick, and yeah, have a very good tracking capacity.

Then there's the issue of the rail. In CPMa, if go up against a guy that's completely stacked, he will literally take like, five rails to kill. To be honest, I was playing CPMa earlier today and realized how difficult it was to take this guy down, and wondered if that was really the way to go as far as the game design went, and that's what prompted me to try OSP again. So, I got into QUAKE III and played against the spiterbot, and lo and behold, the rail seems to be (though in the code, I don't think it is) like, twice as powerful as CPMa's. Weird. Carmac is totally off, I think. Play more ProMode.

Anyway, in a really round-about way, I guess that's one way of saying that I've come to really respect both games, and all other competitive games. Every design decision made in those games goes through a serious filter of care, experience, and straight-up fun factor. I do have my preferences, but both are good.

Heck, even Unreal Tournament 20xx is good.

And one of these days, Painkiller will be good, too. ;p

Speaking of that, in the realm of cpmetitive gaming, I've really taken some great strides forward over the past year. If you want to know how credible I am as a scene-guy, here's my resume. This will also let you know where my interests lie and where you can simply find out more about me, so you can understand the crazy stuff that I will write here better. :)

--I am a columnist for Cyberfight.org (the largest eSport scene site in Asia, possibly the world).

--I am a columnist for GGL (Global Gaming League, a seriously large [and growing] online gaming league).

--I am a columnist for PlanetQuake.com, which of course, is the largest Quake fan-site on the internet, though it's not specifically focussed on the competitive aspect of it, and is the site that eventually would birth the whole "universe" of the Planet sites (no pun intended).

--I post news at Challenge-TV.com (the largest archive of demos for QW, CPMa, ZDaemon, and others).

--I'm creating the new sounds, like hitsounds, killsounds, etc, for PK++, the competition mod for Painkiller that was adopted officially by the CPL for its World Tour series all thoroughout 2005.

--I am a writer for Fnatic.com, the homepage of team Fnatic, where the absolute best Painkiller player on Earth (Vo0, who is a ProMode vet) and the best UT2004 player on Earth (lauke) play.

In fact, Vo0 just got home from Turkey for the $20,000 CPL Spain Qualifier where he took first place (he always takes first, though).

Currently, I'm seeking a bachelor of arts in music at the University where I live, but to be honest, I really want a career in the pro gaming scene. Not as a player, but as one of those really cool guys behind the scenes that make it really work, like Carmac or dj`WHEAT.

That's all for now. Just putting some things down.