Rip and Tear

I should probably make this post, mostly so I have a reference for it later when I upgrade my PC again 8 years from now.

Conveniently before the Caronavirus nuked the PC component economy (not to mention the rest of the economy), I decided to buy a new PC. This is different from the minor upgrades and part replacements over the last 9 years (i.e. the last time I did this), as this is, of course, a completely new build in a completely new case. I still have my old computer which actually works fine for the most part.

So why did I upgrade? Well, there is a host of reasons, one of them being I liked the old model of having a back-up PC and a reliable machine for folks to use at LANs. But more realistically, it was honestly just time to. There were parts in my old PC that were going on 9 years old (e.g. the power supply) that could give out at any moment. Plus, PC performance was becoming a slight issue.

So, the new PC. It's not bad, probably the most powerful machine I have constructed to date, even using the price:performance ratio I opt for (i.e. slightly above medium range). Coming in at just under $2000, I have built a machine that runs everything I currently play at ultra high settings - not a statement I have been able to say for awhile now. The build consists of the following parts (again, more for my own reference/keepsake):

GPU - Asus Geforce RTX 2060 6GB
Case - Cooler Master MasterBox MB520
PSU - Cooler Master MWE Gold 550w PSU
CPU - Intel Core i7 9700KF 3.6Ghz
CPU Cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED Turbo CPU Cooler
Thermal Grease - Artic Silver 5
Memory - G.Skill 32GB 2666Mhz RAM
Mobo - Asus ROG Strix B365-G LGA1151 ATX Motherboard
Storage - Western Digital Black 500GB m.2 NVMe SSD
OS - Windows 10 Professional OEM

Somewhat satisfyingly, the build was an incredibly smooth construction process, with no mistakes and everything working without unnecessary configuration. I did do extensive research in advance, so I was expecting this, however. I am quite happy with the build and case, being an anti-dust setup with lots of space and cable management, for once. The 'new' component, that being the use of an m.2 SSD was also a joy to figure out, and the speed of booting the system is definitely noticeable. I am very happy with the results.

Performance in Monster Hunter World: Iceborne is phenomenal, running at 120+ frames the majority of the time with maxed settings. I feel like I am playing a completely different game when I do. More importantly, Doom Eternal has been a visual treat and definitely a good stress test for the build overall. No complaints, basically.

Speaking of Doom Eternal - great game. While initially I was not sold on the adjusted game play mechanics (a departure from Doom 2016), requiring you to play a very specific way, you eventually get used to it and the flow of the experience comes to the fore. Having mastered the play style to some extent, playing on Ultra-Violence or Nightmare difficulty is really the only time the game can be challenging for me now, which is good. One addition to the standard campaign of particular mention is the introduction of Slayer Gates, which are considered some of the hardest content in the game presently. I will let you decide how difficult they are...



Overall though, its nice knowing that even this old, bitter man can still find some joy in upgrading his PC and playing the latest games at high performance settings, just like I did in the past. While I will say the excitement is certainly diminished, overall it is pleasantly nostalgic to feel like I am in my early 20s again. Something to look forward to, once in a blue moon.

Speaking of once in a blue moon, this dropped in Diablo III:

I can probably stop playing the game now, I think.

Weebmaster 9000

I haven't posted in a long, long time. Strangely I have been playing and making games, just haven't felt the need to discuss it. I feel I am becoming more humble and stoic with age, and happy to keep to myself. Times continue to change.

I guess something I could add is the fact that I have (had?) been playing the new Iceborne expansion for Monster Hunter World on PC. For the duration of the campaign and for some of endgame I took up the Longsword, a surprisingly difficult weapon to master that requires extreme precision and timing in order for it to be most effective. It also makes you feel like some kind of samurai, drawing and sheathing your sword over and over during combat, which is novel and fun.

The Longsword has 4 unique moves that offer the player a short window of invincibility frames, allowing someone with foresight to punch through dangerous monster abilities with confidence. However, these moves are all very different, and are used at varying times during combat. Learning to most effectively employ them against various monster moves has been both a frustrating but educational journey, teaching me to be patient but also supremely aware of what is occurring. You can't just roll your face and expect to win.



I would post information regarding my build but it's not really important for progression in the game. The way MHW works is that you can basically make anything work if you try hard enough, and the endgame doesn't lock you into farming specific things forever. It's nice to play a game that is more about execution and awareness than it is about balancing a spreadsheet (e.g. Diablo III). Although, to be fair, I enjoy doing that too 😏

Anyways, I look forward to both Doom Eternal and a much needed full PC upgrade on the horizon. I guess I can post something about that too. Soon(tm). Maybe.

No mercy for the wicked...

More Diablo. Yep. Sif not.

So I randomly decided to play Season 17 of Diablo III for a few weeks. Gives me something to do while I watch podcasts and random Youtube nonsense. The culture war in America is amusing to witness in a horrific, can’t-look-away while it collapses kind of way. It is also interesting transitioning back to a ranged character after so many years focusing on melee. Not bad, just different. I actually died several times while leveling. That’s certainly different!

Anyways, the first thing I have noticed about playing a Demon Hunter in season is that their set multipliers are just better. Shadow Impale is an absolute monster and insanely strong for killing Rift Guardians. So high is their single target damage that you actually need to think about killing trash more effectively, which is just unnatural for me. After a bit of survival horror (i.e. lack of specific gear), I managed to find a level of tankiness and sustain that I am comfortable with. Currently I am as resilient as I ever was playing a Barb or Crusader, so performing optimally as Shadow Impale is quite easy. Translation: stand inside the monster’s asshole at point blank melee and let your numbers do the work. I was already good at that.

Secondly, the Demon Hunter community is surprisingly competitive. While the Barb and Crusader communities are certainly better at theory-crafting, more demon hunters push harder and faster on the leaderboards. I think the class attracts a slightly more bloodthirsty demographic, lone-wolves who really enjoy the hunt/push, but don’t have much to say. Their top 100 leaderboard competitors are all geared to the teeth with smart rolls and optimized builds. They seem like a veteran crew and I appreciated the challenge, especially when this thing dropped:

perfection...

Speaking of which, I still managed to push into their top 25 with my inexperienced Demon Hunter. I really shouldn’t say this as I have played Diablo for a long time now and understand the ins and outs of the game, even on a different class. There is an optimal way to play and an even more optimal way to build which seemingly translates to multiple classes in subtle ways.



A few things I did work out as Shadow Impale is that you really have to maximise your positioning, even more so than say HoTA. Impaling trash is useless if you cannot get to the elites behind, and needing to vault too much causes your Travellers Pledge damage buff to become useless. You also need to rotate between using Vault and Shadow Power, not just to stand your ground as often as possible, but to allow diminishing returns on knockback (for Strongarms) to wear off. It’s a bit more to keep track of and creates an interesting branch of options every few seconds for optimal play.

I probably won’t push any further than this as I have new and more interesting games on the horizon. 2019 is shaping up to be a fun year for casual gaming. Doom Eternal inbound….

Too easy!

I have not made a blog post in quite a while. Again, a combination of playing fewer games lately or playing games that do not really necessitate any kind of discussion. Additionally I find myself doing other things in my spare time, including a general desire to stay in better shape. Doing weights will do wonders for your mental and physical well-being. Highly recommended.

So, Diablo, again. After the incredibly disappointing announcement of Diablo Immortal at 2018’s Blizzcon, I must admit that my skepticism for Blizzard’s handling of the franchise has peaked. I certainly feel for the many Diablo fans who attended last year’s event, hyped up for the “major Diablo news” only to be hung drawn and quartered by the announcement of a mobile game. Why they did not have even a small amount of content for Diablo III, even a new patch announcement, is completely beyond me. It is sad to see a developer so out of touch with their own community.
Anyways, Season 16 of Diablo III has rolled around. Nothing really new, just buffed sets and native Ring of Royal Grandeur (translation: ~20% more damage). Having accrued a library of podcasts and material that can be listen-watched, I decided it was a good time to jump in and remind myself of how things are. I initially started as a Crusader, but another Clan member also had the same idea, including running Roland’s Sweep, so I jumped ship to a Barbarian as soon as it was sensible. Most folk who were non-committal had stopped at this point too.

Interestingly, for the first time in the longest time, I actually experienced playing Diablo with another individual who has a very similar build and play-style focus as me. As a HOTA Barb, grouping with a Sweep Crusader is just magic. Without the need to communicate, it is very obvious where we should go, where we should stand and when we should move on during difficult rifts. Indeed, pushing above GR100 has been a pleasant and smooth experience, with two builds that are functionally similar and derived from near identical play-style philosophies. It’s intense, but the casualties are incredibly low and group pushing is a joy. Additionally, the group buffs (Warcry & Laws of Valor) and clustering mechanics (Bloodshed, Provoke/Condemn & Sweep Dot) are absolutely game changing. If we somehow had a monk, any monk, I think the team would be completely devastating. Dream Team right there.

Additionally I undertook further investigation and experimentation regarding sustain. Life on Hit no longer uses proc coefficients, and as long as you hit something per ability, you will get the full life return back. This scales with attack speed, but not the number of targets hit. This ... is surprisingly good. Not great, but definitely worth considering, as the amount you can roll on Ancients is huge, and the attack speed you can obtain is utterly ridiculous! For the longest time I was undecided whether to go with Life on Hit this time, or run with the tried and true Life on Resource spent. Eventually I came to the following conclusion…

The results are absurd. Even in my non-optimized gear, I can restore around 200k HP per second. That is 25% of my health, on average. At over a billion toughness when rolling, that is a LOT of EHP. I won’t beat this dead horse any more than I have in the past, but if you are still building without any consideration for sustain in Diablo III as melee, you are doing it wrong, plain and simple. I will rarely dip below half health, and even if I did, I would become near invincible with Esoteric Alteration. There is a reason I completely ignore most damage in the game: math.

Anyways, I did not push as hard as I usually would this season, mostly because the Immortal King set was not buffed as much as others and it is unlikely I will get much higher. The build still works for what it is and its nice being the 2nd highest HOTA Barbarian on US seasonal servers. Observe:

Battle for Azeroth, apparently

I was pretty excited for the new World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth. Excited so much that I started playing a month in advance during the last month of Legion. I put my three mains at 110, farmed gold and generally just waited for its release. Hopefully the new content would bring back some of the spark of not just the PvP content in WoW, but from the Warcraft RTS series as well.

My review of the new expansion can be best summed up as the following: Where?

Where is this alleged battle for Azeroth? It does not exist, from what I can tell. Besides a couple of PvE quests in the vein of fighting the opposing faction, and the somewhat poorly implemented Warfronts (i.e. a PvE raid) there is nothing in the game suggesting a battle for the future of the world.

Additionally, what a horrifically missed chance and exploitative bait and switch by Blizzard. If the intro CG trailer and follow up gameplay videos were anything to go by, you would have mistaken the expansion for being focused on the concept of War, for once. Because ... you know ... it is Warcraft, after all, right? They have to actually bring back Warcraft at some point, surely?

More dungeons, more raids (released at a drip pace), more zones to level. That's basically it. Admittedly the new zones are really quite nice, a huge improvement over the abomination that was the stupid island horror in Legion. Warfronts are sort of fun for rather stupid/broken reasons, and island expeditions can be amusing at times. Otherwise, same old formula for a game that has really not followed up on its heritage. At least in my opinion.

Having said that though, I did manage to do what I always do. Do some PvP, record it, make an interesting video. I actually really enjoyed editing this one, with a lot of thought and deliberation into an editing style, with a track I have had on the back of my mind for a couple of years now. It has come together quite well, so there is that at least.



Not gonna lie, sometimes the things I edit worry me slightly. I might just be a bit darker and malevolent that I like to believe. I am surprisingly ok with this...

Anyways, I have been really disappointed with Blizzard games lately. Overwatch seems ok (despite being a bit too childish for me lately) but a severely neglected Diablo franchise and a very unconvincing WoW universe is ... really disappointing. What frustrates me, is that for folks like myself (and I a certainly not alone in this), addressing the war/battle/pvp element of WoW's universe would be so easy. The game already has a host of interesting battlegrounds, arenas and events. You could modify them ever so slightly (Warsong Gulch CTF with teams of 15, 10v10 arena, AV with no tower caps etc.), make them worth double honour/conquest, and make all BGs contribute to warfront and raid access. Done.

There's your Battle for Azeroth, and you didn't even need to add a thing.

Monster. Hunt. Whirl.

I am getting old. Thirty years of age is a strange age. When you start putting a 3 in front of your digits, you start thinking about where you are in life and where you would like to be. You find the metabolism and regenerative capabilities of your body are not so resilient, and you actually need to exercise and eat well to not expand rapidly. You also realise you start dedicating less time for things you enjoy as things in life (e.g. work) start to take the reins.

Having said that, I never would have guessed that I would randomly pick up and play Monster Hunter: World. Perhaps it was said realisation that I don’t play as many games as I used to, or perhaps I just longed to get lost in a magical world of monsters and slaying once again (i.e. Skyrim). Whatever the reason, Monster Hunter: World has been an interesting experience, one that I have several opinions about that are not all positive.

Certainly the game is addictive. ‘Hunt’ monsters. Equip their body parts. Get better at stuff. Repeat. Admittedly, I found this cycle to be a bit unusual at first, perhaps having never played a Monster Hunter game before. Having actively decided not to hunt real-life animals ever again, I was immediately put off the idea of killing innocent fauna in an environment I was clearly invading. Then, using their various organs and limbs as decorations was somewhat psychotic and just a little disturbing. For a clearly Japanese made game, it perhaps explains why they still have no problem with mass whaling.

The combat mechanics of MHW I also initially found frustrating. Depending on weapon type, you get locked into ludicrously long animation swing times that you cannot cancel, usually resulting in a whiff followed up by getting hit by the monster in question. Against certain larger foes, this process can prove fatal, resulting in gameplay that is very hit and run and timing based that I found far too slow and static for my liking. It is perhaps no wonder that I locked onto and stuck with Dual Blades, the most free flowing and fastest weapon type in the game. It has its downsides, but lack of boredom and keeping of sanity are easily its best perks.



Anyways, long story short, I managed to punch through the game’s story and eventually hit endgame which I can honestly say is also a little disappointing. Unlike games such as Diablo 3, Path of Exile and even Skyrim, there is very little to do besides farming the game’s ‘bosses’ - Tempered Elder Dragons. For me, running a rather predictable tanky and sustain build, this was not overly challenging, despite people on the internet claiming it to be. This leads to another thing …

The online console community is crap. There is little to no consensus on what is good or what works and how best to play the game. Some may think this is a good thing, but when people don’t know or care about basic game mechanics or zealously believe that whatever dumb, stupid thing they are doing is the only way to play, it becomes a serious problem. There is an elitist perspective of “just dodge everything” which is just terrible advice for newcomers. My tempered elder dragon kill times are almost as fast as people stacking full damage, the difference being I clear them 100% of the time without dying. Often forum posts asking legitimate game mechanics questions will be answered by idiots telling them about irrelevant information with no definite answer. Compared to the almost scientific approach that players use in games like D3 and PoE, testing, evaluating and comparing models with room for debate, MHW discussions are a cesspool of ignorance and elitism which makes no sense considering the kind of game that it is.

Perhaps I am just getting old and bitter, but such things I have little time and patience for. I will probably fire up MHW again if considerable endgame content comes out and maybe even again if it comes out on PC. The latter will make the game incredibly faceroll – aiming with a controller is non-existent – but we shall see. Until then.

We are Legion!

Hello. It's been awhile. Let's begin.

I randomly decided to play WoW again for a month. I don't really remember why. Boredom most likely. I mean, in the same month I also started reading The Horus Heresy 40k novels, some of which are actually pretty damn good, and found that I enjoyed reading them more than playing WoW. Funny old world aint it?

I guess the reason for this was twofold. Firstly, the lack of community really did not keep me interested for long. I seemingly am the only person I know who was playing it at the time (at least on Horde/Frostmourne), so having no real reason to stick around was very much a thing. The second reason was really the issues with World PvP on Frostmourne, now that it is almost a 5:1 Alliance population dominated server.

Pretty much every world quest you will do will require you to contest with an Alliance player (or two ... or three) in some way. Due to the new leveling and daily mechanics, this most often than not puts you in the cross-hairs of a max-level/geared raiding no-lifer who literally kills you in 1 hit and can fly. I am not exaggerating here. So, this somewhat staggered leveling experience of "disconnecting randomly" becomes quite a chore for someone late to the game.

World PvP is also incredibly broken with scaling mechanisms heavily favouring the more geared player, especially with legendary perks active. Not having any legendaries puts you at a huge disadvantage, so even in a 1v1 encounter, you are going to struggle. But its never just a 1v1 encounter on Frostmourne as Horde.

Well, screw world activities you might say. I certainly always have, always favouring the much more controlled and interesting battleground encounters. Here at least things were vaguely resembling something balanced, particularly regarding the gearing process, even if I thought the PvP talents system was stupid. Although I never obtained a single Legendary during my journey, I still managed to have a bit of fun with the game, even making a short PvP compilation of some of my more laughable encounters against classes that really should have beat me (e.g. Frost Death Knight).



While I wouldn't say my playtime in Legion was a waste of time, I can confidently say it was the least interesting and gutted WoW experience I have played thus far. Some of that charm from earlier iterations of the game is definitely gone with the rather watered down talent trees and class choices to make. Hopefully Battle for Azeroth brings back some of that old Warcraft energy.

QUT - Evolving one's Pedagogy

Since coming back to work at QUT, I have worked hard to evolve my teaching pedagogy further to make the learning processes I employ as efficient and worthwhile for my students as possible. Perhaps inspired by events at my previous employment, a place that emphasized the concept somewhat ridiculously (to it's own detriment), I have noticed gaps in the current curriculum offered at QUT that I feel I am capable of addressing in my own way.

Over the course of 2017, this evolution has come in several forms. First and foremost, I have returned to developing Unity game/genre specific tutorials for preliminary Unity units (e.g. IGB100 - Game Studio 1) taught at QUT. These units line up with other units running alongside the curriculum that I do not directly teach into, with the idea being that students can comfortably walk into these video tutorials with some prior knowledge of the software. The videos are similar to work I undertook several years ago (2013), from which I won a Vice Chancellor's Performance Award for significant contribution to University teaching. Developing them requires careful pre-planning and actual game production, often following a script and scheduling of tasks. One cannot simply wing it and hope that what is recorded is a timely and efficient production.



In addition to this, I have also put considerable effort into the assignment bases I use for more advanced scripting units. In particular, IGB383 - AI for Games is a unit I spent a great deal of time reworking the workshops and assignments for. The assignments themselves originate from semi-complete mini-games that I developed from scratch, complete with working mechanics, artificial intelligence and dynamic environments. I believe putting the effort into these works gives students the opportunity to focus on what is important (in this case, implementation of game AI) but also a platform for emulating game play elements in other subjects. Sometimes learning via example is the only way you can approach a topic, and giving students a smorgasbord of mechanics to harvest and evaluate is often beneficial.



Finally, I have undertaken an additional development task, producing globally applicable, degree wide videos regarding game design and implementation. These videos tackle not just technical Unity/C# topics, but project management and development life-cycle skills as well. It also affords me the opportunity to discuss certain topics which I consider to be very important game design skills and knowledge that are either taught degree wide or not necessarily covered at all during study at QUT. Some of these videos have been an absolute pleasure to make, especially ones where I can communicate some of the more nuanced aspects of game design. I hope to expand on this library, discussing source control, advanced game mechanics and scripting as well as more exploratory topics regarding modern day games.



Overall I have been rather enjoying my teaching run at QUT and hope I am kept on board to continue my work. I still have so much to do and many improvements to make regarding the evolution of my pedagogy.

None Shall Pass!

Season 11 in Diablo 3 has been an interesting one, bringing back many friends far and wide to witness the debut season for the 'new' Necromancer class. Having briefly tried the Necromancer pre-season and getting to GR80, I realised that, while the class is certainly enjoyable, the lack of gearing options severely dampens my interest in the class at endgame. Hopefully it is something that is addressed in the future.

Besides this, I have been rocking a Crusader this season, jumping back on the horse to figure out a comfortable playstyle, something I never did in the past. While I originally intended to gear towards running a thorns (i.e. damage reflect) build, I found that gearing for Roland's was quite akin to the old Hammer of the Ancients playstyle I became fond of playing as a Barbarian. As Barbarians have truly been left by the wayside for the last 4-5 seasons in favour of classes that, quite literally, are 10x more effective, jumping ship to a slightly better class employing a similar play philosophy has been advantageous. A lot of the 'tech' and realizations I made playing a Barbarian still work relatively well for a Crusader.

While a Crusader is certainly more cooldown/active defense dependant, similar passives and skills exist that give you strong defensive and, more importantly, sustain options, much like the Barbarian. I have started dubbing this playstyle "fish-tanking", simply because it attempts to maintain an adequate balance between the dimensions of your damage x mitigation x sustain fish-tank. If the dimensions of said fish-tank are inversely proportioned to the scaling of the other dimensions, then the sensible route is to maintain a balance between them to optimize your fish tank's volume. This concept certainly exists in a game like Diablo 3: stacking one type of stat reduces the capacity to stack another.

If your fish-tank's dimensions are 10 x 1 x 1, you will do some extraordinary damage, but you will die as soon as a mob touches you and won't even have the chance to sustain yourself. Your volume (or effectiveness) for handling content is 10. However, if you dial that damage back somewhat, take some time to consider your options in contrast to mindlessly stacking "MOAR DOMAGE!!", you might end up with a more balanced fish-tank of dimensions 5 x 5 x 5. Your volume (effectiveness) jumps all the way to 125. As you can see, that is a huge difference from 10.

Of course, the game's mechanics are not as simple as maximizing a fish-tank's volume. There are things that still kill me in 2-3 hits and bosses that are an absolute nightmare to fight. Additionally, the classes have varying degrees of sustain options, some more than others. The recent Necromancer addition probably having the strongest and most interesting. This philosophy does not work for everyone. However, it has allowed me to climb up to the relative power level of my much better geared Barbarian on live, clearing a GR85 in about as much time as my Barb would. I imagine that by the end of the season I will have eclipsed my Barbarian's power level and may have a new class/build to enjoy as much as HotA, LeapQuake and Whirlwind.

Fun times.