Saturday, August 26, 2006

There Are No Holidays in BF2

So I'm back from my holidays and the only thing I really missed while I was gone was the sound of the attack helos. Unfortunately there weren't any to be found in the Rockies, nor did my repeated requests for a supply drop succeed. I was taken by surprise at 2am by a freak thunderstorm while in my tent, it was so intense it could have been mistaken for an artillery barrage.

So last night was "The Bi-Monthly Teach MrGoofWrench How to Play" event, and although I expected up to a dozen of my fellow RA'ers, only AnotherEd, The_Huntress, GW and myself showed. We bounced around first in Warlord, but soon left for some ripe pickings at Karkand and Daqing. Huntress was doing well as commander, that's something I need to work on myself, as I find the controls a bit odd. If only the commander screen was as user-friendly as google maps.

As AnotherEd's rank is Captain and he has about 700 hours more playtime than me, I always think its a good idea to follow him around and learn from him. Unfortunately for me its like playing tag, he is always rushing off to defend different capture points. He'll say "over to the refinery!" on comms, and by the time I've checked my map to see where the refinery is he'll be 2 miles away defending some lonely gas station.

At one point we went to defend the middle oil storage tanks, and I hopped out and ran up the stairs looking for the flag. Immediately I saw it below me but by that time Ed was already in a jeep heading out. WTF Ed slow down pal! So another time I asked for a ride and stepped out of a door only to find myself under the treads of his tank. Earlier on Karkand I was 4 steps behind him as he hopped in a truck and took off, completely ignoring my wails of protest. I ran about a mile to where the action was only to be headshotted from a bunnyhopping Support troop from 500 yards away.

If I'm not spawning in the middle of a artillery barrage, I'm spawning as all the vehicles have left for the front. Sometimes I feel like the kid who always misses the schoolbus.

Lesson to learn: How to keep up with AnotherEd

Lesson confirmed: The hitbox of my player's head is 10x the size of everyone else's

Friday, August 11, 2006

Recent Screenshots

For posterity's sake, I thought I'd post a few recent screenshots. You can click on them to see a larger image. The first one is a prime example of my shitty luck while playing:
















The next two pics are me just practicing flying; I landed a helo on a crane:







Just to see if I could do it, land on the carrier:




Oh oh looks like somebody's hacking!!! (wasn't me, I just happened to be in the right place at the end of the round):


Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Mouse? Trackball? No, I Just Suck.

So last nite I dumped my trackball in favour of a new mouse. The jury is still out on the tracking problem though... it seemed reasonably okay but I swear that in a tank the turret still lags. Hasn't helped one bit though, although I learned rather quickly that I can't take my hand off the mouse while jetting around like I used to do with the trackball - the cord tends to quickly pull the mouse off to one side causing some rather swift crashes. :
On another note, for the last 2 days I've noticed that I can't seem to lead attack helo missiles anymore. WTF? No matter what I do, hold down the mouse button (I tried both), not hold down the mouse button, curse, kick puppies, the damn missile no longer responds and just flies straight. WTF??

Bad Luck Spawning

Sometimes I have no clue what class I should be playing, or where I should be spawning. Every round I desperately seek a squad but they lock them up so I can't join. I'm not interested in starting a squad, I prefer at this stage to just be part of a team, but I guess no one wants a willing body.

So today I managed a few rounds on Kubra Dam and Clean Sweep. Things went well on Kubra Dam, but when Operation Clean Sweep came up my luck changed drastically. Each time I spawned, it was a disaster. I think I managed 0 kills and 30 deaths for the entire round. I'd spawn just as 2 tanks and a jeep full of enemies roll in. Dead. I spawned just as a jet made a bombing run. Splat. I spawned just as an enemy helo launched a rocket volley. Dead. I picked a far away spawn just as an arty barrage hit. Dead. Switch back, swarming with enemy infantry, dead. Pick another spawn, tank shell. Dead. Pick it again, artillery barrage, dead. WTF?

I played Daqing Oilfields I think it was, and I thought I'd step up my repair points which are at zero. So on the advice of a BF2 FAQ and some friends, I got a jeep and tagged along with a tank, and sure enough throughout the round, I'd hear the click-click of the wrench as I repaired the tanks and AA vehicles. I've done this before, and my stats still show zero repairs... WTF? What on earth do I have to do for my repairs to actually count?

Lesson to learn: Get a better wrench.

Lesson confirmed: I can't pick a decent spawn point to save my life.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

It's All About Control

Friday I decided to hop on .id|Battlefield, our non-ranked practice server and tweak some of my controls. I slowed my vehicle and player sensitivity a bit to increase my control which seemed to work okay. Of course it didn't take long for my pals CrazyFirefighter and F0E_H4MMER to show up and goof around with me. I believe it started when I told CrazyFirefighter I could land a jet on the carrier and he wanted to see it for himself. Like me, he didn't even know if it was possible. Entirely useless in the game, but simply for curiosity's sake. Years ago I had mastered landing the Cessna on the carrier ... SIDEWAYS across the runway instead of down the runway ... in MS Flight Sim. No chance of that in BF2 though. I like a challenge.

Mulching with these guys let me toy with being a Commander, which I'm not used to. All I know is that the concepts are easy enough, but the odd controls within the commander map make it awkward. Must practice more of this.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Awakened

So yesterday, after a too long of an absence, I managed to play a bit. Funny how real life gets in the way. Couldn't find any of my favourites with any living beings on them so I randomly picked a server with some folks playing Wake.

Now many of you will understand when I say I hate Wake. Some people complain about balance issues, but I personally don't like the nakedness of it. Mind you if there's no place to hide and no place to run then you are forced to fight, which is probably a good thing for a newb like me.

I was on US side, and like most newbs, I love flying the attack helos. The game had already started when I connected but I thought I'd spawn on the carrier just to see if I could get it. It was out on a mission, so I hitched a ride on the flying bus and got into the action pretty quick.

I tried to join all the squads on my team but they were locked. I seem to always have a hard time joining squads. Why do people lock them so often? Why why why? I think most of my play is solo only because I can't seem to get into squads. Yes I've complained about this before but I can't seem to find a solution.

I used to have problems while flying and driving where I'd accidentally hit C instead of X, and my view would get messed up and I couldn't recover in time, almost always resulting in me watching a front or rear view of my own death. "Just use the function keys" is the helpful response from my mates, however I have one of those "corner" computer desks where both the desk and keyboard drawer are curved, and the drawer doesn't pull out far enough, so all my function keys are obscured by the desk surface. In fact some of my numeric keys are obscured as well, but the F keys are the worst. If I want to press a function key I have to stop what I'm doing, grab my keyboard and lift it out of the keyboard drawer, press the F key then replace it. This isn't a good setup for BF2 to say the least. I tried to remount the keyboard drawer more forward but its as far as it can go. I might look for mounting hardware that pulls out further but until that happens I'm S.O.L.

So anyhow, what I ended up doing was remapping my C key to somewhere on the numeric keypad, out of reach of an accidental tap. Of course yesterday I'd forgotten that I had done this, so for the entire round I was desperately tap-tap-tapping C trying to change my cockpit view whenever I got into a helo. Dumbass.

Playing solo, I was playing somewhat opportunistically. If an attack helo was available, I took it and managed a cap or two and took out some enemy vehicles as well as denied them their J10 jet as it sat on the runway. If nothing was available I'd hike it out to undefended flags and take them or wait for backup when things got hairy. I stole a few tanks along the way too, which brings up point about this weird bug I've been having since day 1.

I use a Logitech Trackman trackball for gaming, I prefer it over a mouse. That being said, I have a very weird control issue. Taking a tank turret as an example, if I turn the turret right with the trackball, and do it very very slow, it tracks right very very slow. If I turn it a bit faster, it turns a bit faster. Now if I turn it right very fast, the turret slows down and turns slow. It's like there's this maximum rotational speed and if I go over this speed with my trackball then whatever I'm controlling slows down inversely. Strange. It seems to be selective though, as I only notice it with vehicle turrets, machine guns etc but not controlling my player's view nor a helo. I'm using the stock Windows XP mouse driver. AnotherEd uses the exact same trackball and driver combination, but reports no problems. I might switch to a regular mouse for BF2 if I remember next time.

I would also like it if I could change the mouse sensitivity of the main turret gun separately from the machine gun, as the turret is fine but the machine gun moves around too quick.

Lesson to learn: Remember my keyboard remappings!

Lesson confirmed: There's still something I need to figure out how to join squads.