Arnold Martial Arts competition
Arnold Martial Arts competition
Categories: Martial Arts, 1562 wordsSend feedback • PermalinkThis weekend I drove up to Ohio to attend the Arnold 2008 Classic, a sporting conference which includes a large martial arts competition. The drive was eight hours, and rather pleasant. I enjoy driving, and this drive included a trip through the West Virginia mountains. Stopping by a gas station in Ravensburg, WV, I pumped my gas at an old fashioned gas station (you know, the kind without such nice features as "pay at the pump" or "three choices of gas" or "more then two feet between pumps") and ate at an old fashioned Italian restaurant (where the employees all had matching shirts and two widescreen plasma TVs adorned the walls) before crossing the Ohio river and continuing on to Columbus on Highway 33.
The first day at the conference was an interesting one. The first thing I noticed was how important nutrition seemed to be to everybody. More than half of the booths seemed to focus on sports drinks and food, with things like workout equipment and training facilities taking a back seat. Personally I never take much interest in thing like energy drinks and pills and energy bars and whatever else people want you to buy. They make it out to be the best thing since sliced bread, but I don't think it's any better or cheaper than a steak and egg sandwich, if you're essentially just after protein and carbs. But it's what everybody was talking about, and you couldn't pass a booth without one of the booth babes shoving some in your face, so I got to thinking maybe I was missing out on something. Later on I brought it up with Master Rondy and she replied, "Well, there's a lot of money in it." Well duh. End result: I still don't pay any attention to that crap.
On the second day I woke up early to help with the Tae Kwon Do tournament. The people from my school, White Tiger TKD in Cary, went to officiate the competition at Arnold. They were short-handed so I went to assist them despite the fact that I haven't done any TKD in a while. It was very fun though, they recruited me to perform on the demo team, executing a demonstration for the public between the forms and sparring competitions. This was pretty fun, and it went over very well. They did the thing where they put an apple at the end of a stick, and one of the masters does a backflip and kicks it and makes applesauce for the crowd. My job was to break a board performing a jumping snap kick, and then hold some boards for the masters to perform some cool kicks. One of these boards broke in three pieces, the third striking my face. It didn't hurt though, it was actually kind of fun.
Day three. This is the big day. I am entered into a Hapkido competition, but I am not expecting much because Hapkido is not a very popular sport. Turns out, one other person registered. I met him a short time before the competition. He was a bit older than me, but about the same height and weight and seemed like a nice guy. He had a couple stripes on his black belt to match my Bodon, but I wasn't so worried about winning as much as having fun. He was the instructor of some of the students in the TKD competition. We chatted it up about the competition, about Hapkido and other things. Hapkido is essentially used for self-defense, but incorporates skills from many other disciplines including Judo and Jiujitsu, falling skills, and of course your standards kicks and punches. Since it was only the two of us, we spoke with the judges an decided to do a light exhibition-style fight, using light kicks and punches, with emphasis on takedowns and some ground fighting. After all, we wanted to attract some attention to the sport, and having loud, interesting ground fights is a great way to do that; and we didn't want any injuries.
Eventually the fight came under way. We bowed to the referee and the judges and each other and the fight began. He came straight out of the box with some of the most powerful kicks I've ever received. Yelling between every one, he barely left room for me to keep my balance. Trying to fend off his kicks, get some kicks of my own in, and try to get inside for a takedown proved to be more than I could handle. On one kick he came in on my right side, and I turned into it and blocked it with my left arm. It hurt a lot. The ref broke up the fight. My arm was feeling rather strange and I didn't want to fight that dude anymore so I called it off.
After the fight the medals were given (I got second place obviously) and I went immediately to the first aid station to ask for some ice to put on my arm. They started asking some questions like, "Does it tingle and feel numb?" (A bit.) "Can you move your fingers?" (Yes.) "Can you push on my hand like this?" (No.) In the middle of the questioning my arm began to get very sore and my head began to feel light. I asked for a seat, but after a bit they quickly moved me to the floor. They noted a large contusion on my arm and put ice on it. The pain in my arm became intense. I started having trouble speaking. The medic informed me that this was the body's reaction to a great deal of pain -- to black you out so that you stop doing whatever it is that's hurting you and focus the body's resources on damage control. I already knew that though.
They decided to take me to the hospital. Master Rondy was kind enough to grab my bag and ride in the ambulance with me. The pain on the ride was getting pretty intense. The EMT on the ambulance was named Mike, and I talked to him about his military background to take my mind off the pain. They couldn't give me morphine because my blood pressure is very low. (It's not always good to have low blood pressure, apparently.) I was about convinced that I had broken the bone at this point, due to all the pain. At the hospital they gave me an anti-inflammatory, which isn't technically a painkiller but still reduces pain, and it helped a lot. Here was the x-ray:
A fracture, but not a break. This is actually very fortunate, you can barely see it. As far as injuries go it could have been a dislocation or a break, but minor fractures such as this heal quickly and are actually stronger than before. It will be wrapped in a sling for the next couple of weeks, and I'll be back to practice in a month.
As soon as I could I took a taxi back to the convention center an tried to find the guy to ask him WTF but he was gone. I tried to ask the judges but the only one who wasn't busy told me this kind of thing was standard practice. (I didn't buy that.) I think part of what went wrong was that the guy I was fighting was a teacher and his students were looking on, so he didn't have the luxury of going easy on me. I'm definitely going to think twice before fighting such a person again. But either way you look at it, there is no definition of a "light exhibition" fight that can lead to the fracture of someone's ulna. The guy's behavior and attitude was completely inappropriate for a fight of that nature, but I hope he managed to impress his students enough because I'm the one typing with one hand, and I don't think he wants to pay my medical bills.
I couldn't drive home. It's an eight hour drive from Ohio to North Carolina and the drug they gave me was no go for driving. The White Tiger people assigned two of the masters to drive me home, and so I found myself in a car with two Korean with only a working knowledge of English, driving across farmland and mountains. They jury-rigged a small LCD TV on the dash of my car, on which they had every episode of the seventh season of Friends. So basically Chandler and Monica get engaged, and Rachael and Ross have their thing, and Joey and Phoebe do what they do. You remember how it went. On the other hand, apparently in Korean English classes they don't teach any of the oblique sexual euphemisms used by the characters, which left me to embarrassingly explain the meaning of words like "loins" and "porn" and such. As fun as that sounds, I actually had a great time talking about the differences between Korea and the US, and commenting on the sights along the road, and generally making friends with two guys whose previous relationship with me was limited to a student/master one.
So that's the end of the story. Apart from the fracture, I had a lot of fun. One thing is for sure, I won't be taking part in any more Hapkido competitions any time soon.
Pomegranites?
Categories: General, 49 wordsSend feedback • PermalinkI'm pretty sure xkcd is under a CC license so here goes:
It's been a while since I've written here but I haven't forgotten about it. I'm going to a Hapkido tournament next weekend and I'll write about it when I get back.
Update: Now with more Milkshake meme.
Still Alive tabs
Categories: Video Games, 192 wordsSend feedback • PermalinkFor any of those of you who beat Portal and would like to learn this song on the guitar:
This was a triumph... e|----------------| B|--7---7---7---7-| G|-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7| x4 D|7---9---7---9---| A|----------------| E|----------------| It's hard to overstate my satisfaction... e|----------------| B|--8---8---5---5-| G|-9-9-9-9-6-6-6-6| D|9---9---7---7---| A|----------------| E|----------------| ... except the ones who are dead! e|----------------|---5---| B|--8---8---5---5-|--6----| G|-9-9-9-9-6-6-6-6|-7-----| D|9---9---7---7---|8------| A|----------------|-------| E|----------------|-------| (From here on out it's just chords.) F C A# F But there's no sense crying over every mistake F C A# F You just keep on trying 'till you run out of cake Gm C F A# And the science gets done and you make a neat gun Dm A D For the people who are still aliveAnd then it goes back to the first part. Enjoy.
Nostalgia
Categories: General, wordsSend feedback • Permalink
Why the TF2 respawn timers are bad -- a novel.
Categories: Video Games, 1447 wordsSend feedback • PermalinkTeam Fortress 2 was released last night after eight years in the making, and it is awesome. It is very well balanced, very fun and interesting, and an all around good game. All of the things I'm about to say dwarf in comparison to how fun TF2 really is, but I have to say them because it is the only thing I simply hate about the game.
Respawn timers are bad because nobody wants to wait to have to play a game. I've heard many reasons that respawn timers should be included, and now I will debunk them all.
Respawn timers are there for balance.
There are many, many ways to balance a game. Choosing a way that forces or penalizes players is a poor design decision. Many games are balanced without respawn timers and there are many ways to balance games without respawn timers. The original TF as well as TFC were both very well balanced games without the need for respawn timers.
Respawn timers help prevent stalemates by penalizing the losing team.
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a game where winners keep winning. Stepping on the underdog is a great way to design a bad game. Nobody likes having to die over and over again, and then wait 20 seconds between each spawn, because all of your teammates are bad and therefore you must suffer as well. A player should never be penalized by poor teammates to the degree where the game is not fun to play, or where he is forced to sit it out. There are many other ways to break stalemates, such as the medic's invulnerability, and other room-clearing methods.
Respawn timers force players to spawn in waves and thus stay together and work as a team.
First let's deal with the forcing. Valve has spent millions of dollars developing video games only to realize (as revealed in developer commentary on games such as HL2: Episode 1) something that I could have told them years ago which is that players don't like being forced, coerced, or told to do anything. Forcing a gamer is always a great way to have the gamer either not play your game or dislike you and your company.
Next let's deal with the issue of these so-called "waves". Proponents of the idea claim that forcing players to wait to spawn helps players create waves. The reality is actually otherwise, because of several factors. First, different character classes (specifically, the ones designed to work together,) move at different speeds, and during the time it takes to get to the fight the players have already been split up. Furthermore, just because players spawn near each other does not mean that they will actually stick close; there are many paths to take and the players will probably split up and take different paths. Additionally, teleporters split players up even further, as the time it takes to use one means that players coming out the other side are not in a coherent group.
Now let's consider classes that don't require this teamwork. If I am an engineer I don't want to have to wait until the next wave, I have a sentry that is dying and requires urgent care. If I am an hwguy I need to get back to my post. If I am a spy then waves don't matter to me because I am an independent agent. If I am a sniper I just want to get back to the battlements to continue the lone-wolfing that I've been doing. Really the only group that this refers to are the medics and their soldier/heavy/demo/pyro counterparts that require teaming up in order to assault enemy positions.
The proper way to encourage teamwork is not through coercion, but by introducing game elements that allow the players to be synergistic through teamwork in ways otherwise not possible. If players are shown that working together helps them to kick more ass, then they will leap at the chance despite having not spawned together.
Respawn timers are there so that killed players don't leap back into your face.
If this is a tradeoff between being able to respawn quickly and get back into the game against having players come back quickly after I kill them, I would rather have someone leap back into my face and have to put them down again then lack the ability to get back into the game when there is something that urgently needs doing. There are also other mechanisms of doing this; mainly multiple spawn points and proper spawnroom positioning, which most TF maps already have.
Respawn timers are an incentive not to die.
How is not dying a positive influence on the game? Naturally nobody wants to die. People who phrase this argument act as if nobody really minds dying in video games, as if some people jump on grenades for fun. Nobody dies unless there is a good reason for it, like a team self-sacrifice. Why penalize people for dying? The way to encourage people not to die is to penalize their score, which already exists in every FPS ever.
OK, so in addition to not dying, let me add to my to-do list: "Don't get headshotted by distant unseen snipers." "Don't find yourself in the path of an invul'd hwguy." "Don't spend more than 0.5 seconds in front of a level 3 sentry that wasn't there two minutes ago." "Don't ever try to capture the enemy flag, because that's impossible to do without dying." "Don't walk past any det traps, even if you don't notice they are there." and "Don't get stabbed in the back by a spy that was cloaked until two seconds ago."
Penalizing people for dying is really a penalty for newbies instead. This is stepping on the neck of those who die a lot because they haven't played the game much before. Not a very good way to retain players.
Additionally, encouraging players not to die in such a fashion is a good way to get them to go to extremes to stay alive. Suddenly it becomes more worth it to let the enemy have your flag if it means staying alive and not having to wait 20 seconds. After all, they would get the flag either way. Telling the player not to take one for the team is another way of telling the player to look after his own skin instead of working for the good of the team.
Have some patience.
Patience is not a virtue when your teammates are being killed and your team is losing and the enemy is getting away with your flag.
The spawn timer gives players time to think about *insert topic here*.
To those of you who can not think and press buttons at the same time: Why are you playing video games?
You are still thinking in the "deathmatch" mindset.
TF is just glorified deathmatch with teams and goals. Having rockets, sniper rifles, autos and lots of other cool deathmatch-y weapons, TF is just a deathmatch game. If you don't want to deathmatch, your game is CS or DoD.
If you don't like it, don't play. or Well, you just suck.
Patronizing and elitism does not solve any problems. If you can't come up with a good reason that respawn timers should be in the game, say "Maybe you're right." Saying, "Then don't play" and "Stop dying" is a cop-out, unproductive, and dodges the real issues. Weak statements like this hide the speaker's inability to find solid ground for argument and only serve to highlight that the speaker has run out of arguments and is using a last resort to show he is not wrong.
Also, think about this issue from a design perspective, not from an elitist perspective. Not what is easiest for you, but rather what is best for the game and most fun for the players? A self-respecting and self-preserving game company would be wise not to take this approach, because they don't want people to stop playing their games and giving them money, and because they are out to design a good game, not redirect the issues.
And lastly, I paid good money for this game and I'll play whatever the fuck I want, who are you to tell me not to play just because of one minor thing? How pretentious!
The Solution
Keep the respawn timer exactly the way it is, except cut all times in half so that players must wait no longer than 10 seconds. This will alleviate the frustration of not being able to get back in while appeasing those lost souls who still after reading this believe that respawn timers are somehow a good thing.
