This installment is called:
Putting Your Buildings In Control Groups
That sounds like a terribly dry, boring title, so it may surprise you when I tell you that this is the most important installment that you could ever read, if you want to be a not-quite-as-terrible SC2 player. Stick with me.
If you’ve ever watched a replay of a professional (or even half-decent) SC2 match, you will notice two things:
1. Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong in your life, because you’re sitting there watching replays of other people playing video games.
2. Somehow they’re able to move their armies, attack with precision, AND build new units and buildings and upgrades at the same time!
I could never figure out how that was possible. I’d either be base-building, getting a bunch of guys together, while the guys I’d already built just sat around waiting, or I’d be taking my big group of units and attacking, while my base just sat there doing nothing. There are names for these things! You may have heard them, and if you watch a replay, you will definitely hear them:
TERM: "Micro"
DEFINITION: "Micro"-management of military units. Moving them around, having them scout or attack enemies.
USE IT IN A SENTENCE: "He’s micro-ing really well, see how he sent those marines around to the other side of the (whatever, etc, etc.)"
TERM: "Macro"
DEFINITION: Economy building, Base building, Unit building, etc.
USE IT IN A SENTENCE: "That one guy micros better, but he just got overwhelmed because the other guy out-macroed him lolz gg omfg"
To restate my problems above, I could micro or macro, but not both at the same time. And that amazing thing the pros do? Microing and macroing at the same time. That is the number one key to becoming a only-a-fraction-as-awful SC2 player. And the number one key to microing and macroing at the same time is:
To review, a "control group" is when you assign a clump of units to one of the number keys on the top row of the keyboard. If you got ten zerglings, and you want to attack, you’d put them in, say, the "1" control group. Then whenever you wanted to select all of them, you’d just hit "1". If you wanted to center the camera on them, you’d just double-tap "1".
That’s fine. But the key thing here is, you can put your buildings in control groups too!
Before I explain how to do this, I will give you an example of what it looks like:
1. Hurm, durm, here I am with my little army on control group 1, I’m gettin’ close to the enemy, this’ll be fun!
2. Oh, I should probably build some more guys back at the base, in case this doesn’t go well, cuz I suck at micro.
OLD WAY: Leave your army sittin’ there, scroll back to the base, select the production building, click on the little Marine picture (or whatever), then double-tap 1 and go back to moving your army around.
NEW WAY: Let’s say you’ve grouped all of your production buildings on the "5" key. You hit "5". You hit (hotkey for Marine). You hit 1 to go back to controlling the army.
Holy crap, right? You just started building a guy, and it took two keystrokes, and you never had to move the camera. You were looking at your army the whole time, confident that back at your base, a new guy was being built. If you had two production buildings, you’d go 5, q, q, 1, and it would automatically make one building start building one guy, and the other the other. You made TWO GUYS in less than a second, without having to take your eye of your army. Oh man.
This gives you the idea of why this is so important.
I will just tell you how I do it. You can play around with it and configure it more to your liking.
TERRAN/PROTOSS:
I put "town hall" buildings (Command Center, Nexus) on 4. All of them. Any time I need a new worker, "4, q". Boom. Need a few? "4, q, q, q". BAM. BUILDIN’ WORKERS. Also each of the town hall buildings has its own little special abilities which you’d also activate this way. As Terran, want to scan the opponent’s base? "4, x, (click on where you want to scan". KAPOW. (Note, all of these examples assumed the "Grid" hotkey system, see last installment.)
I put production buildings (any building that makes units) on 5. I already gave you an example of this. This also, though, makes rallying easy. Want to rally ALL your newly created units to one spot? "5, (right-click on rally point)". Holy Jesus, you just rallied like twelve production buildings to one spot with one key press and one mouse click! HOLY CHRISTING LORD!!
I put "upgrade" buildings (those that you don’t actively interact with except when you wish to do research to do upgrades) on 6. Want to research Warp Gates but are too busy to click around to find the Cybernetics Core? "6, z". KERSPOWW!! JOB’S DUN!
That’s it. I use 4, 5, and 6 because 1, 2, 3 I reserve for groups of military units. Note how awesome this is, though. Using the Grid hotkeys, with these control groupings, I literally never have to move my left hand to do ANYTHING IN THE GAME that you’d ever need to do.
ZERG:
Zerg is slightly different because the "town hall" building is also the only unit production building. So they stay on 4, but 5 is instead used for grouping all the "queen" units, which have special abilities you need to be constantly using — particularly "spawn larvae". Need to spawn larvae at two of your hatcheries with your two queens? "5, x, (click on minimap hatchery), x, (click on other one)". BOWFF!!! Now that’s some fine larvae-spawnin’!
Alright. That’s about it for today’s installment, see you nex—
"HEY WAIT A MINUTE, PINNER! There’s ALL SORTS of production and upgrade buildings! If you have them all grouped together, how do you select a Barracks to build a Marine, vs. a Factory to build a Siege Tank, vs. a Starport to build a Banshee? And if all my upgrade buildings are on one key, how do I research Zergling speed at the Spawning Pool vs. Air attack +1 at the Spire? Etc., etc.?"
That’s the question, isn’t it. And there’s a very special key on the keyboard that has the answer. I will give you a hint as to which key it is:
Did you figure it out? It’s the "Tab" key. And the reason it’s the Tab key is because SC2 has something called "subgroups". You may group a bunch of different types of buildings together, or types of military units together, but SC2 will secretly distribute them into "subgroups", based on their type.
So when you select "5" to select your production buildings, can you guess which key will select the next "subgroup" in your main group? Can you?
I’ll give you that hint again:
Here’s the real life example, which will BLOW YOUR FRIGGIN’ MIND:
You have two barracks and two starports, all on group 5. You’re fightin’ a battle, but quickly want to get two marauders and two medivacs building back at your base. Check it:
"5, w, w, TAB, w, w".
Your mind? FRIGGIN’ BLOWN. First you selected the whole group (which defaulted to the barracks), built two marauders with the "w" hotkey, tabbed over to the starport sub-group, and built two medivacs, with the same hotkey. And since SC2 distributes your requests to all available buildings, each of your four buildings is building one of those units.
And it took you one second, and you never had to look at your base.
I guess, to sum up, I’d say that the most important thing to learn to do as you climb the ranks of the eternally mediocre, is:
A few months ago I decided to conduct an experiment, because I was coming off a string of failed relationships, and when it gets that bad, you’re supposed to drown your sorrows in milkshakes, GOOBERS-brand goobers™, and TV. (Note: I just upgraded WordPress and as far as I can tell, the major feature they added was the inability for me to inline pictures with the GUI. So I assume that this recent WordPress update will either turn the ™ into the aggravating diamond character that’s poxed-up my older articles, or that using a ™ will cause a worldwide server meltdown that makes Chernobyl look like a poorly-managed EZ-Bake.)
The experiment was just me leaving my Directv unit on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I tuned it to ESPN and left it there. However, I turned the television itself off. I wasn’t raised this way. I was raised to turn the TV and cable box, both, off. Maybe you weren’t, but there are multiple males in my family who won’t give their names to a computer and childhood habits are hard to break. The unit was on, but the television was off, as it had been that way since the end of the regular NFL season. (I watched both playoff games and the Super Bowl in HD venues, High Definition venues as in, NOTE TO THIEVES, not in my actual goddamn home.)
Well, it finally paid off. I got a notice from Nielsen that they want me to be one of them. I had my suspicions, my paranoid suspicions, that Directv was happily broadcasting my viewing habits to them, because they’re all whores. Doesn’t matter, Nielsen wants me, or more specifically, my family. My family that hasn’t once stopped viewing television since late December, as far as they know. My “family,” that, strictly speaking, kills buggies, eats mushy brown pud and slinks about everywhere. They also constantly put their little paws in the coin return slots of my arcade games, looking for quarters, because they don’t have any money and they reject their poverty.
I’m not sure what channel is going to be the one left on continually when I’m finally accepted as a real Nielsen family. I’m enjoying the power, as it’s the only power in my miserable life at the moment. It probably won’t be ESPN because Chris Berman seems like an enormous cocksucker, and he’s almost always on, from what I understand, just being a pattern of bald and ruining everything. I don’t know what channel Breaking Bad is on, because I’ve been stealing it from the Internet, but that might be a good choice. I also liked the one show where a bunch of guys go on a fishing boat and enslave forty-thousand tons of fresh crab. That was a good one.
Sorry, I don’t have a decent ending to this. Aardvark is counting down his favorite games in the forum, though.
The Interpreter by John Colapinto
“To Everett, the Pirahã’s unswerving dedication to empirical reality—he called it the ‘immediacy-of-experience principle’ —explained their resistance to Christianity, since the Pirahã had always reacted to stories about Christ by asking, ‘Have you met this man?’”
The Big Scam by Nightfreeze.
It doesn’t matter if this did happen – it could have happened, which makes Eve Online one of the few games that matter.
Another Essjay Essay by Jason Scott
If a picture of the future is really a boot stomping on a throat forever, this is the first post detailing how the way we’re controlling and dispensing information is going to allow it to happen.
Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther’s Original “Adventure” in Code and in Kentucky by Professor Dennis G. Jerz
The most important document in the history of Interactive Fiction.
Extra Cheese by Ben Parrish
I think this period piece pretty much sums up being a single guy in the late 90s, actually. Good Christ!
Poppy Game Insult to Our War Dead by Stuart Campbell and Jonathan Nash
At one point there was such a thing as video game journalism you could be proud of. The rest of the press did everything they could to fuck it all up, natch.
Half-Life Mod Preview Two: Jay Schilling Edition by Fussbett, Toutsuite, conflictNo, The Cable Brothers and Erik
Everyone made fun of in this article is probably writing video game reviews for Gamespot now, actually.
Welcome to SC2FWTB, the thread in which I will TEACH YOU, the horrible SC2 player, how to rise to the ranks of the merely bad! I feel qualified to dispense this advice, because I am a bad player. However, I used to be terrible, and have made tremendous strides by following the advice I will now begin to give you!
I will do this in installments!
Today’s installment is called:
HOTKEYS.
Make no mistake! Without using hotkeys, you will always be horrible. Your first and only job, as a horrible player, is to learn to use hotkeys.
Not only that, but you need to learn to use hotkeys exclusively. A good training exercise for this (which will eventually become the way you actually play) is to play games against the computer, without ever touching the little selection menu in the lower-right. NEVER!
This takes work, as in the beginning, it will be much quicker for you to use the mouse to click on an icon than to recall the hotkey. But this is necessary.
Now we will play CHOOSE YOUR OWN GUIDE TO BECOMING NOT SO GODDAMN AWFUL AT SC2:
If you already know the standard hotkeys backwards and forwards, skip to “CONCLUSION”.
If you still haven’t learned any kind of hotkeys well enough for them to be second nature:
I want you to immediately click on “Options” in the SC2 menu. Then I want you to click on “Hotkeys”. At the top of this screen is a dropdown, called “Profile”. I want you to click on the dropdown, and select “Grid”.
What does this mean?
This replaces all of the default hotkeys with the “Grid” hotkeys, which are so much easier to use that you would have to be an insane person not to learn them.
Essentially, it makes the fifteen leftmost (or rightmost, if you’re left-handed) alphabetic keys on the keyboard correspond to the fifteen little icon boxes in the lower right of the screen.
This has three tremendous benefits:
1. If you don’t remember a hotkey, you can just look at the icon, see where it is in the selection menu, and PRESS DAT KEY.
2. The hotkeys for all three races are now PRETTY MUCH THE SAME! No more “e” for probe, “s” for SCV, and… whatever the hell drones were. Now any time you need a worker for any race, “q” is where it’s at.
3. More importantly, you never have to move your hand. You always wondered how the pros could do fifty million things at once and it never looks like they’re flailing all over the keyboard hunting for hotkeys? This is why.
If you’ve ever dreamed of not being horrible at SC2, AND of being able to sit there calmly, your hand comfortably resting in the “home” position, being merely bad, then the Grid hotkeys are a must. There are two complaints you might have about Grid as a horrible player, which are are:
1. “The hotkeys don’t make any sense!” REBUTTAL: Like they made sense before? Now you have to press “q” for a marine, instead of… “a”. ?????
2. “‘a’ was always the attack-move command! The most important command in the game! Now it’s ‘t’!! Arg!” REBUTTAL: Look. If you are right handed, and you’ve got your hands in the right position, “a” is located so you have to curl your ring-finger back to get at it. “t” is right where your index finger is. Now all you gotta do is MASH THAT T. “But ‘a’ stands for ‘attack!!’” REBUTTAL!! Trust me, after the first ten thousand times you hit ‘t’ for attack-move (2 games), you will thank me.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion… hotkeys!
Greta Lumpard is the bravest person I know. You think Lebron James is tough? Try dunking without legs! Think Steve Nash can shoot? Try beating Greta’s career shooting percentage of 100!
It all started when coach Norm Frumpfeltd of the St. Eor’s Baptist High noticed something at games. A shrill voice cheering the Lady Gophers on. He couldnt figure out where his number one fan was till he looked down to tie his shoe. Their stood his future greatest player, all 2’4″ of her!
You see Greta was born with Stumponge disease. A rare bone disorder that results in the arm and leg bones not developing. Greta was doomed to a life hardship till she saw the St Eor’s Lady Gophers on public access and asked her foster mother “What is that?” Her foster mother unlocked her cage and let Greta watch a couple quarters with the sound on and she was hooked!
The nuns at Eor’s managed to make a special seat out of balsa wood so Greta could go to games. You think you got it made with box seats at the Knicks? Try court side for at the Lady Gophers! Once coach Frumpfetd noticed Greta he immediatley asked her, “would you like to be our “manager”? Greta cried yes quicker than Phil Mickleson at a buffet line.
It was a rough season for the Lady Gophers they were being blown away by Crispus Attucks High in the season finale, when Shronda Jackson, the All-city Cathlic Power Forward for CA got an idea. Why not let Greta in the game!!?????!!!!!!
Coach Frumpfeltd grinned. He called for a time out. And asked Greta if she wanted to be a Lady Gopher! Greta cried “yes sir”
Shronda Jackson and Betsy Mcgilicudy, bitter enemies all game carried Greta to the basket. They lifted her up high balanced the ball on her head. Greta bowed her head the ball swished through and the box score in the paper the next day read “Lumpard 2″.
There was no mention of the accidental dropping of Greta and ensuing broken neck. It mattered not to Greta who earned her Varsity letter going out on top. You see, even though she has no arms or legs, She’s got more heart than Secretariat! Eat that Vince Carter!
That day would be September 14, 2006.
Here is some The Backstory for you:
The Backstory
I’ve been growing quite the hot sauce collection at my desk at work. It is currently up to 19 sauces. I get most of them from Bay Cities Deli which is right down the street and has a wide selection.
One day last week I went uber-extreme for the first time and bought a $10, 4oz bottle of “Da Bomb: Ground Zero”. Da Bomb makes three sauces, and Ground Zero is the middle of the three. The “mildest” (if you can call it that, which you definitely cannot) is “Beyond Insanity”, and the most brutal is “Final Answer” ($40 a bottle).
So anyway, I taste a half-drop of Ground Zero, and it is brutal. I spontaneous get up, leave the room, and start walking around the office, with no particular place to go. But I’m on fire, and am seeing stars.
Good stuff.
The Story
Anyhows, since then I’ve been systematically upping my tolerance, and decided to hit Bay Cities again for a couple new “extreme” sauces. (“Extreme” sauces are those for which the primary heat component is pepper extract, rather than actual chiles. In this way, the heat is concentrated to levels previously unheard of.) I got Dave’s Insanity, which I’d tried many years ago and which I’d feared ever since, and the aforementioned Da Bomb: Beyond Insanity. It actually didn’t occur to me until I reached the checkout aisle the humor of buying both Insanity and Beyond Insanity in the same purchase.
I went back to my desk, and made a cheese sandwich. I took half, and slathered one of the pieces of bread with the Dave’s Insanity, which in its day was far and away the hottest thing on Earth, but since then had been far surpassed by other “extremer” extreme sauces.
It was hot. Very hot.
But… edible! And I got through the whole half sandwich without having any particular sort of conniption, and life was good. I’d conquered Dave’s Insanity, after 15 years!
So I turned to Beyond Insanity, which I was no longer particularly afraid of, since 1) I had just eaten Dave’s with no particularly harsh effects, and 2) it was supposedly half the heat level of Ground Zero, which I’d already tasted and survived the previous week.
So I shmeared that shit on the other half of the sandwich, and went to town.
GAAAK!!!
That was a spicy meatball. About halfway through I was gagging acid and running around the office sweating and hoping to avoid being seen. Then I went back and finished the sandwich. I actually dipped it into one of my other sauces, just hoping to cool it down. Specious logic, but I was willing to try anything. Holy crap, was that hot. You know why? Because half the heat level of INFINITE HEAT is still INFINITE HEAT. Yowza.
It was truly: beyond insanity.
But the burn cooled eventually, and I sat triumphant. Good times. Love the hot sauces.
Flash forward to seven hours later, when I leave the office and head up to visit savvyraven, and go with her to the Big Brother wrap party (where I met lots of famous people I’ve never heard of!) Wow. Just, wow.
As I begin my trek down the 10, it starts. A low, dull ache somewhere deep within my gastrointestinal system. Felt something like between a need to puke and a need to grow a tail. With just a little bit of plain old pain. But it’s low, and it’s dull, and it grows a little to medium-low and medium-dull, and maybe at its zenith it’s graduated to significant discomfort, but that fades eventually, and within ten minutes, I’m back to normal.
Ha! That lunch was catching up with me! Thank goodness that’s over, though. Not too bad, and well worth the good times I’d had.
I turn onto the 405.
This is when it occurs to me, I’d had the Dave’s half of the sandwich… then waited a while… and then had Da Bomb half.
And that’s when it hit.
The low, dull aching was nowhere to be seen. A dagger, bathed in hot sauce, stabbed me with great malice and vigor right in my gut. It twisted and turned. It’s steely sharp edge turning my insides to tartare.
It hurt. A lot. And as I descended the grade that separates the Valley from the Santa Monica bay area, I realized I was breathing very heavy, trying to withstand the agony. Breathing too heavily. Hyperventilating.
And the sounds of the highway were replaced by a high ringing sound. And my hands gripped ever tighter the steering wheel, for they too were going numb. Getting dizzy. Getting faint…
This is too perfect, I thought. I was going to pass out on the freeway. Killed by hot sauce. Poetic.
Unable to think of anything but stopping the car, I urgently made my way over to the very next exit, pulled off, found a side street, parked, put the seat back, and just died. My hands were completely numb. I fumbled unsuccessfully for the phone to call savvyraven to let her know I’d be a few minutes late. Lights and sounds swirled around in an acid dream jumble. This was the end of my life.
But, as is always the case with hot sauces, no matter how powerful, 15 minutes later, it’s all over. My circulation came back, my breathing slowed. I could feel the steering wheel in my hand, and the sweat dripping off the top of my head.
It smelled funny.
I fired the car back up, and headed on to my evening engagement. But the rest of the night, milling with CBS executives and dodging supermodels to get to the buffet, I could not escape the thought… The thought that:
THIS WAS THE DAY I WAS NEARLY KILLED BY HOT SAUCE!
Here is a forum: http://www.voy.com/47897/
It doesn’t look like much. Threaded conversation – the kids hate that today! No logins – the kids are deathly afraid of that! When it was in its heyday, there wasn’t even a CAPTCHA. It also probably had less than ten regular readers when it was being updated. It is (was) Pinback’s Web Central 3 BBS.
I am completely fascinated with forums, and I run a couple of them myself. I also ran a dial-up BBS for 9 years in the 90s. (I still have the hard drive with all the contents, and a CD with the contents of that hard drive. It’ll make a comeback, some day.) I’m fascinated in the dynamics, the ways the software dictates the style and content of conversation, and how desperate people are to cling to the great division in format: threaded vs. flat. What was accomplished on PWC3 fascinates me to this day.
There were three main posters on PWC3 – Pinback, Gerrit and myself. We had contributions from a handful of others, but I think it’s safe to say that 95% of the posts were from three people. And yet, when you go to the site, you might see posts from people like the Boysauce Commando, the Sundae Goblin, or digital depression. Now obviously, the intent wasn’t to ever make people think, “wow, there is a guy who actually works in the military who gets propositioned by his commanding officer constantly” as it was to simple try to be amusing on a bulletin board. The three of us seemed to almost constantly want to top each other and honestly, I wouldn’t post this web log if I didn’t think it still held up today.
But yeah, what absolutely doesn’t work on the Internet is when I tell you, “This is funny: go read it.” People almost immediately get defensive. “It’s funny, REALLY? EAT MY ASS” seems to be the normal reaction. Of course, I say this, keeping in mind that I have been introduced to the FX TV show “Archer” and air-traffic control sims lately, and enjoyed them both. So really, this is just my impression of the rest of mankind and maybe you’ll prove me wrong here – I waited like ten years to write this blog entry, but maybe you’re bored at work and looking for some content. Here’s some friggin’ content.
I think Pinback will agree that the funniest of all of us was Gerrit. I linked to the Sundae Goblin before, but very, very few things crack me up like when the Goblin freaks out because SUNLIGHT turns them to STONE. Ha ha ha! Additionally, the musings of the PWC2 Reader / Tragic Burn Victim is just… genius.
Pinback’s Web Central 3 BBS was a tiny corner of the Internet that brought joy to a few close friends, and getting back to the theme of fascination – it exists on the net, almost accidentally. Someday, Voy.com will fail, and all these posts will be gone. Someday, some prick will do to their hosted forums what Yahoo! did to Geocities. And I will be sad. But how many of these little forums are out there, where a group of friends just busted each other’s chops and engaged in a kind of performance art for each other? One of the things I think I want to do is again run a dial-up BBS, as there’s just something tantalizing about passing information in 2010 that is completely away from the Internet. And I don’t mean that it would just be a useful way to libel people – just being on the peripheral of the great communication network intrigues me.
I’ll leave you with this. For seven years I’ve posted as the fastest man in the world here. It remains the lengthiest sub-project I have ever continuously been involved with. And I must now go, because I think Spinner! is finally going to start answering questions.
March 1, 2010 11:51 PM Ice Cream Jonsey: It’s March 2nd most places. Pinback Is Not Playing Silent Hunter 5. This Isn’t Over Ubisoft. This Isn’t Over.
March 2, 2010 12:11 AM Horrible Gelatinous Blob: If there was ever a time to pirate as a form of protest, it’s now. I can’t believe that there’s no organized, concerted effort to call Ubisoft out on their bullshit.
March 2, 2010 10:17 AM Ice Cream Jonsey: I guess my main objection is that these retards put in their laughably terrible form of DRM on a goddamn SUB GAME, which is played by forty grognards in their sixties and my pal Pinback. They felt the need to ensure that a 12-year old warezer wasn’t pretending to run a German sub in a simulation of a war that was so long ago, it might as well be cavemen throwing rocks at each other, using the most restrictive form of copy protection ever. When we had zero games for our PCjr, we still weren’t pirating GATO or Silent Service. So, with this on-line based DRM, Ubisoft can control exactly when… EXACTLY when the PC version of Silent Hunter 5 works.
Yet they didn’t deign to preload the fucking thing anywhere.
It’s been established that digital downloads ended up giving the consumer exactly nothing. Now, this isn’t so bad, because video games – much like comic books and playing an arcade game – are always going to have a price expectation that resists inflation. A $50 video game in 1980 should cost about $120 today. People are never, ever going to pay that, so it’s understandable that consumers got no break on price when games shifted to software-only. However, digital downloaders are paying the same price, but also playing the game well after the customers who get it through retail. How the fuck does that make any sense? I can go to GameStop in a couple hours and pick up Silent Hunter 5 and play it over lunch. Pinback gave Ubisoft more profit than anyone at a brick and mortar store two weeks ago and will be allowed to begin downloading it sometime today. Sometime today, in theory. Nobody’s fucking said when it will be activated.
And again, I can’t make this point strongly enough: the common reply given to the lack of a pre-load option is that pirates would get a head start on it. This can not apply to Ubisoft’s next few releases, if their DRM is actually worth a damn. As it stands, Silent Hunter 5 is not available on Usenet, but then, Pinback ain’t playing it either. The impression I’m getting is that Ubisoft knows this DRM is shit and it’s as hollow and pathetic a threat as Tom Benson leaking plans to possibly move the Saints to Albuquerque, NM pre-Katrina.
March 2, 2010 10:19 AM
March 2, 2010 10:47 AM
Pinback: Still just a graphic. The “Send Info” button still appears active, though! Let’s SEND SOME INFO! SOMEWHERE! Ice Cream Jonsey: This is how you play. You send information to your sub in German-controlled waters. By clicking on the “send info” button in Direct2Drive.
Pinback: Yeah! It’s a Doenitz simulation!
Ice Cream Jonsey: THAT’S why Ubisoft needed that remote server. And the genius is, it’s all text based. If this game is any good, we’ve got an early favorite for the 2010 XYZZYs.
March 2, 2010 1:10 PM
Ice Cream Jonsey: OK, it’s got to be ready NOW. Ice Cream Jonsey: Those fat fucks have finished their meals, and went into EditPlus. Ice Cream Jonsey: They must have.
Pinback: Let’s check-a-doodle do that shit! Pinback: Come ON, people. Pinback: Really it just has to be ready by about 6:30. Pinback: That is when I planned on DIVING INTO THE MURKY DEPTHS OF THE ATLANTIC.
Ice Cream Jonsey: It should be ready by 6:30 Ice Cream Jonsey: If that means June 30th.
Pinback: So actually, 6, cuz I’ll need time to download and install and see just how bad the documentation is this time. For reference, the documentation in SH4 was… what’s a word for “the love child of abominable and embarrassing”? Ice Cream Jonsey: ubisoft Pinback: ZING!! Ice Cream Jonsey: FUCK YOU WORM
Pinback: I feel bad for the Romanian developers. This is making people hate Romania even more than they did before, which is not fair. Not completely fair.
Ice Cream Jonsey: I guess what I like is that there is almost literally no place on Earth where this thing shouldn’t be out yet. It’s been March 2nd forever in Europe, even in countries like Romania, where I am not 100% certain anyone tells time.
Ice Cream Jonsey: But yeah, when your entire country is famous for sub sims and the nightly housing of the wretched undead, you tend towards a binary mode of time telling: vampires out / vampires not out.
Ice Cream Jonsey: This is a fucking abortion. It is March second EVERYWHERE. The only places farther west than us are Venus, Mercury, the moons of Mercury we haven’t found yet and the Sun.
Ice Cream Jonsey: Ubisoft’s DRM server better be located in the crabshoe fucking nebula
Ice Cream Jonsey: …
Ice Cream Jonsey: Hello?
March 2, 2010 2:46 PM
Pinback: It’s gotta be ready now, right? Pinback: Let’s take a GANDER. Ice Cream Jonsey: I mean, it’s GOT to be ready now. Ice Cream Jonsey: This is No-Excuse Radio! Pinback: Right. Someone’s gonna die. Pinback: And it’s NOT going to be the captain of any British merchant ships!! Ice Cream Jonsey: Unless that captain moved to Romania to make unreleasable sub games.
Pinback: Unbelievable. Unbelievable! Pinback: Good thing D2D doesn’t have a FORUM, or I would type something angrily into the internet!! Ice Cream Jonsey: DO they have a forum? Pinback: They do NOT. Pinback: Can I buy it off Impulse yet? LET US SEE. Ice Cream Jonsey: Impulse has it??? Ice Cream Jonsey: Last time they fucked you over! Pinback: Aw sure. Gold edition too! Ice Cream Jonsey: Unreal. Pinback: Well, they’re right on top of this one! Ice Cream Jonsey: Let’s complain on Brad Stardock’s forum about Direct2Drive. Ice Cream Jonsey: I’m sure he’d eat that shit right up.
Pinback: Also, from the The World Is Against Poor, Poor Me file: Pinback: I asked the guys at Pho Vy today, “Hey, how come I can’t order (or “pre-load”) any tripe or tendon with my pho?” Pinback: He says it’s a PARKER HEALTH CODE THING. Ice Cream Jonsey: Hahaha, what?? Pinback: Parker has a NO-TENDON LAW, I guess. Ice Cream Jonsey: They’re tendons. Tendons! We even HAVE them as humans. It’s not like the Viet Cong decided to fill their soups with green strychnine.
Pinback: But wait, know what I told the guy after he said I couldn’t have tendon and tripe because the Parker health code? Pinback: KNOW WHAT I TOLD HIM??!?! Ice Cream Jonsey: What did you tell– no! Pinback: I said: Pinback: “That’s just offal!!” Ice Cream Jonsey: AHHAhaha Pinback: DAAAAAahahahaa Ice Cream Jonsey: Ahhhahaha
March 2, 2010 3:41 PM
Editor’s Note: An hour ago, Pinback opened up a ticket with Direct2Drive over the fact that the “Download Now” button was not properly hreffed. Clicking on the “Download Now” button… didn’t go anywhere.
Pinback: HAHAHAHAH Pinback: HAHAHAH Pinback: Well, they seem to have taken my support ticket to heart! Ice Cream Jonsey: Did they write back? Pinback: No they did not, but the button is back to saying “PRE-ORDERED”.
March 2, 2010 4:47 PM
Editor’s Note: Futher investigation has revealed a forum on Ubisoft where people are flipping their shit that the game isn’t out via digital download yet.
Pinback: Check this shit:
Hi [Redacted], Thanks for contacting us, I can confirm that the game is being released today, please bear with us and we’ll have it available to download shortly.
Kind regards, Rich Metcalfe Lead Technical Specialist Digital Distribution
Pinback: Wait, that was from two hours ago. Ice Cream Jonsey: They’re doing great work. Ice Cream Jonsey: Shortly! Ice Cream Jonsey: Someone lost the piece of paper with the bit to flip. Pinback: Another:
I tell you this. This is the first and last time i will try a digitasl download. I cannot believe the problems with this. To top it off the game is buggie anyway. So when we fiasnlly do get it downloaded and installed its not going to work all that well anyway. What a shame!! And no one else is making sub games either.
Pinback: I can’t believe I’m waiting all day for a buggie game.
Ice Cream Jonsey: “The lead designer of Centipede approves of that sentiment.” — shitty Deadspin.com comment
Pinback: HAHAhahaha
Pinback: LIVE BLOG THAT SHIT
March 2, 2010 4:55 PM
We are defeated at the last. The silver shapes were the key to entering the main chamber wherein resides a gloating Mangar. We are trapped like rats in a tiny room where even now the wizard sends his minions to storm the door.
But we are given wise counsel by Soriac, who advises us to try to get this journal to Pellis, in the hope that he will pass on the experiences written here to one capable of defeating Mangar. One final spell, using the life forces of Soriac, Corfid, and myself, will render Isli invisible for a time, enabling her to escape this place with the journal. Yet it is evil magic. Everything we have accomplished will be rent from the fabric of time and destroyed, and as the spell burns itself out Isli will be consumed.
I embrace my companions, and taste the salt of Isli’s tears. Ghaklah has asked for my dagger — he has no wish to be captured alive. As he prepares the spell, I can but reflect that no man could wish to die in better company.
Ghaklah begins. They come.
March 2, 2010 5:31 PM
Pinback: LIVE BLOG THIS SHIT:
March 2, 2010 7:34 PM
Pinback: The install file is just a zip, with no directions on how to install it. Now obviously I know I need to unzip it and then probably run “setup”, but that’s not the point. NOT THE POINT, Robb.
Ice Cream Jonsey: What the fuck? Ice Cream Jonsey: You just DOWNLOAD a zip file on Direct2Drive?
Pinback: Yes. Ice Cream Jonsey: So you can send that to anyone. And all this fucking time, they could have e-mailed you a link to the zip file, which could be nothing more than an ISO of the retail CD. All this fucking time. It came down to a link. A link to a zip.
Pinback: You have to plug in an activation key at some point. Pinback: That is the last obstacle, it accepting my activation code, before I can run it and realize that it doesn’t work.
Ice Cream Jonsey: Yeah, I am looking forward to that. Pinback: I hear it’s a bit buggie. Ice Cream Jonsey: You steer something German in the game all right, but it ain’t a sub Pinback: Ha! Pinback: Alright, I’m GOIN’ IN. Pinback: Christ, there’s already a 70 meg patch. Pinback: I guess that’s good? Maybe it won’t be so buggie.
Ice Cream Jonsey: What the fuck?? Ice Cream Jonsey: How … how the… Ice Cream Jonsey: Jesus Christ
Pinback: Yup! “patching to 1.01″. Ice Cream Jonsey: Nothing they do can surprise me any more.
Pinback: I am now struggling to create a ubi.com account, which is required. Ice Cream Jonsey: Is there a captcha? Ice Cream Jonsey:Tell me there is a captcha. Tell me they put a CAPTCHA there for a service that only provides an authentication benefit for those fucks at Ubisoft and is therefore useless to spam. Pinback: There is not.
March 2, 2010 7:44 PM
Pinback: It isn’t using 3D hardware acceleration for some reason. I’m getting about 2 FPS. Pinback: Now I’m reading that if you have a 256 meg video card, you’re hosed. Pinback: How can this be. Pinback: I can run every other game at max settings smooth as silk.
Well, maybe it’s not quite over yet.
In one of the more aggravating days I’ve experienced as a Tiger Woods fan, I got to watch him basically kick the ball around the course, making lots of pars, while everyone behind him magically turned into world-beaters, all of them having the rounds of their lives, knocking in miracle shots like they were eating potato chips, and turning what should have been a runaway into a nail-biter, and I use that not as a metaphor for excitement, but as an admission that many of my fingers are actively losing blood as a result of the gouges I bit into them earlier today.
Thankfully, mercifully, due to a stone-cold, you’d-never-make-that-shot birdie at the 14th, and Padraig Harrington fucking up the last hole, he still has a two shot lead. And even more thankfully, the gaggle of douchebags making a charge generally choked properly toward the end of the day, leaving only two real challengers left.
Let’s take a look at them now, as we try to choke back the bile of this day of anguish.
Tiger is at -8, which is where he was yesterday after the 17th hole, so it can be said that since then, it’s been a pretty gruesome grind.
—
Y.E. Yang (-6) : Tiger’s playing partner tomorrow is Y.E. Yang, the winner of the Honda Classic earlier this year, and who matched Tiger’s first round of 67 today to launch himself into the final group of the weekend. He is a fierce competitor with a will that refuses to— wait… I’m sorry, did you say Y.E. Yang? WHO THE MOTHERFUCKING FUCK IS Y.E. YANG, AND WHY IS HE PLAYING IN THE LAST GROUP WITH THE GUY WEARING THE RED SHIRT TOMORROW? This can’t be happening. Y.E. Fucking Yang. Although after today he is the most recognizable golfer in the world to one Ice Cream Jonsey, because of two simple words: Magenta pants. Well, I’ve got two simple words for ol’ Y.E. Yang: No Fucking Way. THREAT LEVEL: I GOT YER Y.E. YANG RIGHT HERE.
Padraig Harrington (-6) : Fucking Paddy, man. On Friday he hit what was possibly the greatest golf shot ever hit, from the lip of a bunker, like 250 yards, to 10 feet. It was cute, then. It was like, “aw, poor Paddy, gonna lose, but at least we have these nice replays of that amazing shot.” But he is really trying to make that shot be one that they’ll play a hundred times, going, “here was where the momentum turned!”, and “here’s where he showed the heart of the competitor that would lead him to victory over the so-called ‘legendary’ Tiger Woods!” If this happens, I will kill myself, for real, live on this BBS. This absolutely cannot happen. The “Padraig winning” thing, not the “me killing myself” thing. Who cares about that. THREAT LEVEL: I WILL KILL MYSELF LIVE ON JOLT COUNTRY BBS.
So what was setting up to be a ceremonial stroll around Hazeltine, while I sat on the couch and drank myself into a stupor with a goofy grin on my face, is now a hard-bitten war around Hazeltine, while I sit on the couch and drink myself into a stupor with a gnarled grimace on my face. And then possibly killing myself, live on this BBS, at the end of the day.
I TOLD U I WAS HARDCORE
