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Crazy Golf: crazy as in idiotic

Posted on 21/08/2015 Written by Xexyz

When looking back at the 8-bit consoles, there is a natural tendency to think of them as home to many stone-cold classics, games that stand the test of time and are replayable even now, after countless refinements to gameplay have been developed.  What we don't tend to remember is the dross that got pumped out.  Dross like Crazy Golf.



Golf is a precision sport, and it's important that you can easily judge angles and distances.  But this is crazy golf, so let's stick it in Mode 0 where the pixels are rectangles, not squares, and even better let's make it so you can only hit the ball at twelve predetermined angles.  Oh, but let's make sure the angle the ball travels at isn't actually the same as the indicator used to aim.



This is the second hole.  It took me ages to get here, mainly because of an inability to work out the controls.  It turns out that despite pressing space on the title screen, in-game the only keys which do anything are the cursor keys for aiming and power, Q for quitting to the title screen, and space skips to the next hole.  On WinAPE, the emulator I used, you need to enable a virtual joystick, turning Num Lock off on the PC keyboard, and use the 5 on the keypad as a fire button.

Having finally worked this out, the first hole was cleared using a sort of 'maximum power and hope' strategy.  It was a number of straight vertical walls, and the ball bounced around like a mad thing before finally entering the hole, just one over par.

So, the second hole.  No matter what angle I hit the ball at, it kept going back to the start (which was just below the aiming indicator top-left). I had to reduce power a lot and inch the ball down bit by bit.  It took a while to work out that the power works on the number of pixels, and so you need twice as much power to go down the screen as you do to go across it.

I finally got around the bottom, and over to the right of the screen.  Amazing I was able to bounce straight through the pink wall at the bottom, but ended up along the top.


Now, what do you think would happen if I fired off a shot now?  Oh, note that the indicator is showing the direction the club comes from, not the way the ball goes.  I know, that got me as well.  You'd expect it to bounce off the lower green wall, up to the upper green wall, and then back.  But, oh no.  Angled walls don't affect the ball.  It bounces straight back along the same path.  It's basically reacting to the pixel it hits, not the slope of the wall. That doesn't matter on this stage so much because obviously (almost) all the 45-degree angles come in pairs.  But ...


This stage is begging you to start off by bouncing the ball straight down and off that angled wall at the bottom left.  If you do that, the ball goes straight back up!  You actually have to bounce the ball off the left wall yourself, then slowly along the bottom until you get to the bottom-right corner.  And then it's just a case of hitting it up the passageway, bouncing it off the flat wall, and up to the flag.

Oh, no.  The angle of the passageway does not correspond to an angle that you can set the ball at - neither in terms of the indicator at the top right, or the path which the ball goes along (did I mention that they're not the same?)  That wouldn't be a problem if the ball could bounce off the walls on the way up, but remember that the angle it bounces off is due to the pixel sides, not the overall wall, so you are likely to see the ball bouncing backwards down the path.

But look at the screenshot again.  Not only have I managed to get the ball to bounce backwards off one wall, it's gone straight through another into an area with no gap to escape.  I had to fire off random shots for five minutes until the ball glitched through a different wall; which of course was the bottom side of the triangle, meaning I had to work my way up around the path again.

But all that effort was worthwhile.



Because I was tired of being able to see colours and was looking for a solution to make me blind.  I mean, what is this meant to be?  It's actually a far easier hole than the last one, because all the angles are straight, but of course it's still a nightmare due to the use of Mode 0.


And then you come to this.  Again, the angle of the walls isn't matched by a shot angle, so you have the pain of getting the ball down to the bottom and ten through that tiny gap where the green and red walls join.  Remember that the top-right angled wall won't bounce your ball towards the flag as you go up.  After dealing with the horrendous comb at the bottom and the tiny gap, you have to make it through a set of pixels which are pretty much random, and of ocurse affect your ball in random ways, until you get to the flag.

There are more, but they don't get any better.  The entire game is an exercise in frustration, mostly cased by the limited number of angles your ball can travel at.  This is all the more frustrating because the Amstrad is capable of so much more; even in BASIC I wrote a program a few years ago which drew a ball moving at a defined angle, and then bouncing off walls and even being affected by gravity spots on the screen.  Had it even just been in Mode 1, everything would have been much better defined, easier to calculate, and probably less garish.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: CPC, PC

Princess Nom Nom (PC): COMPLETED!

Posted on 05/08/2015 Written by deKay

nomnom-2015-8-5-12-56-53A really quick one this. You know Cookie Clicker? Well, imagine something like that without the frantic clicking. With a fat… blob that appears to be a princess. And you have to feed her. Feed her enough, and she produces minions from her bellybutton, and these minions can gather food and so produce more minions.

nomnom-2015-8-5-12-58-35Unlock new places to get better food from, produce more minions to collect it all faster and in greater quantity, and make the princess even fatter.

Eventually, she’s satiated and you win. And I won. Yay! If you want to play, it’s free from this site here.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, PC, Post

Seymour: Take One: completed!

Posted on 22/07/2015 Written by Xexyz

I'm pretty sure I completed this at the time, back in 1991, but I couldn't remember it and felt it was the perfect test for installing a CPC emulator.  It doesn't take long to play through, after all.


The secretary being called Pippa still amuses me.



It took me a couple of attempts to complete the game because the timing of the last sequence is trial and error (spoilers: you need to load the film into the camera, tie Faye down, then start the train, run to start the camera, run back and cut the rope, then run back to the camera before you get squished).  But complete it I did, without abusing save states!

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: completed, CPC, PC

iRacing: Promotion

Posted on 10/01/2015 Written by Lufferov

Now that I have my new PC gaming rig setup and running (You can read about that in this post: PC Build - It's done), I have been able to get back to the important task of gaming. More importantly, iRacing!

The good news is, I've managed to get promoted out of the Rookie class and I now hold a Class D license. It was achieved through a few more races, just keeping things clean, not worrying too much about my finishing position, but just keeping my incident points low. That seemed to be the key for me, getting the safety rating high and not worrying about trying to go fast. That's not to say I finished every race last, I had a couple of third place finishes, but the goal was to get out of the Rookie class and worry about iRatings later. You see, once you're out of Rookies, you can't get relegated back down. Now I have a D class license I can't get any lower, that's not true of the next tier, C class can be relegated back down to D if your safety rating drops too far.


So now I've progressed I have more options open to me, I can race an open wheel class in the Skip Barber, the SCCA Spec Racer Ford a Pontiac Solstice or Cadillac CTS-V. There's also the Mazda MX 5 too, which I actually really enjoy driving now that I have a grasp on the handling.

The other cars all have their own advantages and disadvantages. The Skip Barber is great fun, but is a nightmare to handle on cold tyres. The Cadillac has lots of power, but is a real handful. Then of course I have a load more courses available to race on, so if I thought I didn't have enough time to get to grips with things before, I'm really swamped now. You need to choose a series to specialise in really, or you'll just be very mediocre in them all.
Skip Barber - iRacing

I would love to get into the open wheel cars, so that would mean driving the Skip Barber. But I don't have the skill yet, so for now I'm sticking with the Mazda. I think I need to get to grips with the tracks in the slower cars before progressing onto the Skippy.

What that means is that I'm racing in races that don't qualify me to get another promotion. The Mazda is below my MPR (Minimum Participation Requirement), but that's not really something I'm concerned with at the moment. Getting into Class C would be a nice achievement, but really if I just concentrated on that I'd be doing myself no favours. I'd be progressing too quickly for my true ability, that wouldn't be fair on other people racing either. I don't want to start becoming a hazard to other drivers on the track!

Very respectable 2nd place (click to enlarge)
But the Mazda can be a lot of fun and it's suprising how much better I am driving it now. I have far less trouble keeping it on the track (thought that's not always true), and my times are more competitive. When people aren't ramming into me or I'm going cross country because I forgot to brake early enough, I can keep pace with the front runners for most of the time. The one thing I do still struggle with a little is my consistency and managing to complete 20 laps without making mistakes.

The good news is that I am quite good at not hitting other people, but the downside to that is I'm probably being a bit too conservative when it comes to overtaking. If I'm faster than the car in front, I generally just drive slower rather than risk a contact by trying to overtake them.

What's more annoying is being hit by other people, I had a race last night where I started 3rd on the grid with a field of about 19 cars. Into the first corner I was hit from behind and pushed off the track, I re-entered in about 10th. Then at the end of the lap going back onto the start/finish straight, the car ahead of me just spun in front of me, I had nowhere to go so ended up hitting his out of control vehicle. Very frustrating, but no real damage as I had managed to brake enough to make it a relatively light contact. But this meant that other cars behind me carrying speed on the straight cruised right by me. By now I was back to about 15th, so a huge number of places lost on the first lap, and all through no fault of my own.

From here though, things only got worse. I had already picked up 8 incident points thanks to the two contacts that I really had no fault in. But on the next lap coming up to a tight left turn, I started to brake at my normal braking point, but the car behind me had carried too much speed through the previous turn, he lost control and spun his car right into the back of mine. Another 4 incident points bringing my total up to 12, and enough damage that I had to get towed back to the pits. After this I was very disappointed, I didn't want to continue. I retired from the race and lost about .22 points off my safety rating, that's a huge hit for barely completing two laps and not actually having any fault!

There was another race where I was actually in 3rd after about 9 laps in a 20 lap race. Myself, 1st and 2nd were all within 2 seconds of each other so it was a close race. Then we came up on a back marker who was being difficult and not moving out of the way. The leader got sick of being held up and tapped the slow car from behind, a good driver would have been able to control that, but this person was obviously not that good as A) their pace would have been quicker and B) they would have pulled over and let us through. Subsequently, as a result of the nudge the driver lost control, 1st and 2nd got through, but then the car lurched across the track and hit my offside rear just as I was going past. Sometimes it just feels like the iRacing Gods have got it in for me!

My car took some damage and my pace suffered as a result, fortunately our pace at the front had been good enough that I was able to lose time on each lap, it meant that the leaders got away from me, but I was still able to nurse my car to the end and finish in 5th, only losing 2 places over the remaining 10 laps.

I'm not terrible after all! (click to enlarge)
It's not all bad news, I have had my first win... YAY! I was still in the rookie class, I started in first and got a good start to keep out of any first corner nastiness. I led the whole race and even had the fastest average lap time to validate my win and prove that I wasn't just holding everyone else up! I did miss out on setting the fastest lap time by around 3/10ths which was a bit annoying, but you can't have everything.

The timing sheet proves it! 1st place. (click to enlarge)
So, my iRacing career is having its ups and downs, but I'm settling in, finding my feet and getting to grips with the vehicles. I hate to be one of those "like driving on ice" people, but it really does feel like that when you have no experience driving these cars. Without the feedback in the seat of your pants from the cars grip and relying solely on the wheel and sound makes it very difficult. But once you've spent time with them, you start to find the limits and can pick up on the indications better. I'm still a long way off being what I would consider to be "good", but with time and practise I hope to get there.

I'll be back with another update when I have something to share.

Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: Class D, Gaming, iRacing, Logitech G27, Mazda MX-5, PC, Promotion, Rookie, Safety Rating, TH8RS, Thrustmaster T500RS, Win

iRacing: New week, new challenge

Posted on 18/11/2014 Written by Lufferov

So I have a bit of a problem with iRacing, it's nothing too serious, but they change the track that I'm eligible to race on every week. As a rookie I only have the option to race one track and one vehicle in competition. I can drive on any track and any circuit in a practise session, but to be eligible for points, it has to be an official race. So that means each week I have to learn a whole new circuit, thankfully the car remains the same, so at least I'm familiar with how the Mazda MX5 handles now.

The problem I have is that I don't have the time to sit down and play the game every day. So just as I get comfortable with a track, it changes and I have to start all over again. Soon it will loop back to the start, and hopefully then I'll be able to compete slightly more competently. I'm not sure how many tracks there are in total, but eventually they will all come back around.

This weeks circuit is Lime Rock Park, it's the shortest circuit I've raced on so far at just 1.5 miles. But it has perhaps the trickiest section of turns to negotiate that I've seen. The first three corners I've found particularly tough to master. I just can't get a line I feel comfortable and fast with.

Lime Rock Park
So anyway, Lime Rock Park is a fairly simple track on the whole, there's very little braking needed for the majority of it. The second half of the track are just small taps of the brake peddle, or slight lifts.

Turn 5 called "The Uphill" is a superb corner, coming off the apex, you accelerate up a hill. It's imperative to get the car in a straight line before you hit the crest. As you do, the balance of the car shifts dramatically, the car goes light and if you don't have the wheels pointing forwards when the grip returns. It's going to want to swap ends on you! Flooring the gas coming out of that turn takes a lot of courage... I can only imagine what that would be like in real life.

Anyway, this week I got my best result. I managed to finish 2nd in a race of attrition. By just staying on the track and taking advantage of other peoples mistakes I made my way through the field. I had a couple of wobbly moments, making contact at turn 3 on the first lap was disappointing, but there was nothing I could do to avoid it. Well I guess I could have had a better start and not been behind the crash in the first place.

The results, proof that I got my second place finish!
To see my other seat of the pants moments, you can watch the whole race in this replay video below.  Hope you like it, I'll be back with more soon!


Filed Under: Gaming Diary Tagged With: Gaming, iRacing, Lime Rock Park, Logitech G27, Mazda MX-5, PC, Rookie, Safety Rating, TH8RS, Thrustmaster T500RS

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Blood is the unintentional theme of this episode, not just in the titles and contents of the games but also in that it’ll make your ears bleed. Maybe? Frankly, I wouldn’t risk it. All that mess for no real benefit, and we wouldn’t want a lawsuit on our hands anyway.

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