calvin's blog

pov demos

2005-08-13T16:55:00.000-07:00

my pov demos of the last three games we played at quakecon can be found here. i forgot to grab my demos from the brand0n's 5 game. my shot was probably the best in the idle game, at least that's when i felt most comfortable :) anyway, we've off to dinner in a few minutes then back to Quakecon for the final night party and meeting up with the other et players for a final blast.

x6 played a good game vs u5 to take out the ET tournament. winning goldrush well, which was probably u5's strongest map, before u5 came back strongly on ice to cap and win in a bit under 3 minutes. x6 looked pretty solid on radar, getting a good east parts return and then holding west strong. the funniest point in the match was when the r3vers was defusing side but /killed before getting it complete.

u5 really took it to the estonians though, and it made for a good final.

i'll look to put photos up either later tonight or tomorrow sometime.

quakecon day 2

2005-08-13T13:10:00.000-07:00

despite what the rules said, we luckily didn't have to be back at quakecon for 8am to play games, so we had a little bit of a sleep in which was what everyone needed. after breakfast we waited for the shuttle back to gaylord. our first game was vs darkside, and to be honest not many people seemed to be expected us to do very well. most of the ds players seemed to be very confident, so when we won 6-0 it was a very satisfying feeling.

our next game was around 7pm so we had a couple hours to kill, which allowed us to go grab a bite to eat at subway and have an hour to relax before heading back to the convention centre. we decided to choose goldrush to play vs u5, being a map that we practised a lot prior to coming here and then again at our bootcamp with x6. unfortunately that seems to be a very strong map for u5 (tho they are great on all maps as you'd expect) and they pretty much kept us in spawn all map. supply was a little better but really we got outgunned and they were the better team.

second game was vs idle on supply and oasis. uptil now i really had not felt comfortable with my aim, and even tho now things had improved and i was happy with my play, idle played a better game and took it out too.

so that was that. at the start of the day we didn't expect to be knocked out by the end of play. but that's how it worked out and we finished 5th/6th overall. beating darkside was very satisfying but u5 and idle were just too good

x6 idle and u5 have a style of play very different to those that we typically faced back home in aus and nz and we didn't really have time to adjust properly. very aggresive defences and teamwork honed against similar skilled teams making them formidible opponents.

after we finished it was past midnight. we eventually got back to the hotel where we relaxed in the pool after our long day.

pictures to come later once we're back at the hotel and i have the chance to grab some off my camera

no playoff game. final soon

2005-08-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

seems like there was a bug in the system left over from the q3 tournament and there will be no playoff match for 5th or 6th. a bit of a disappointment, especially after bringing all our computer equipment back to play, but never mind.

the decider map for u5/idle was radar, and it was an exciting game. u5 set an ok time, but idle just didn't seem to be able to push u5 back enough around west to take the parts securely. their cp defence, and playing style in general reminded me a lot of x6.

so we're back at the itg stand waiting for the final to start. the doom3 lower bracket final is about to start, after which et should be on. tosspot is setting up some extra speakers for the shoutcasters since the whole venue is very loud and so far if you're towards the back it's nearly impossible to hear what is going on.

idle vs u5

2005-08-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

most of us are at the radio itg area atm watching the idle/u5 watch to decide who wil go on to play in the final and who will come away with 3rd. idle started out really strongly on supplydepot but then u5 absolutely took apart idle on goldrush, the same map they demolished us on yesterday. obviously it was a mistake to pick it :D little did we know.. we were feeling quite confident.

just now u5 finished full holding idle to make it a draw on oasis, and now they're having a break before playing the next decider map radar. this would defintely be the best game i've watched so far at quakecon. u5 would have to be disappointed, having got a plant down at the north gun in the final minute of their attacking round, only to have it defused. their mortaring seemed a little off in the timing, and idle's defusing engineer defintely played a great game, both at north and with multiple defuses at south.

our fifth place playoff match vs warperd sanity is scheduled for 4pm, which is 9am back home in nz. this is at the same time as the grand final between check6 and the winner of this game idle/u5 game. x6 seem really dominant however, so i don't think it'll make much difference who is the eventual winner in the current match.

quakecon day one

2005-08-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

well since quakecon started i have been rather slack as you might have noticed with my qcon coverage. there have been some long days and then not a lot of free time to be typing up news. plus since this is day three everything is starting to merge together into something of a blur :) anyway i'll do my best to recall what has been going on.

day one started out with breakfast at the hotel and then a trip over to Quakecon, held at the Gaylord convention centre, in our hotel's courteosy shuttle. once there we made our way up to the level qcon was being held at and wandered along towards the tournament registration lines. there we ran into x6 who we had bootcamped with the day before. while standing in line fatal1ty showed up in the vip line next to us, followed by his pk dueling partner zen and the chinese doom3 player rocketboy. it was quite cool seeing these people whose progress i'd previously followed. fat was surrounded by a couple of adoring fangirls, it was quite funny.

the whole convention area where quakecon is being held is split up into three areas. on one side there is the tournament area, in the middle the vendors, and then the other half of the space is taken up by the BYOC area which is really quite large. when we first got in i had a quick look at the tourny setup, which had about 4 long rows of computers, seperated off from the spectator area which had a bunch of chairs, a grandstand and 6 plasma screens to show the matches on.

after everybody was in (which was delayed because when we first registered most people weren't asked to include the computer equipment we were brining in on this registration paper, which is used to make sure you're not stealing stuff when you decide to walk out again) we had a look around the byoc area. it was a little smaller than we expected. most of the vendor pcs were running quake4, the creative stand was setup for the fatal1ty shootouts on quake4 which was already attracting a croud. me adam and jim got into an 8 player doom3 shootout for prizes. unfortunately we were up against rocketboy and zen so didn't do too well :P was fun though

we ran into quite a few other et players around this time, especially guys from kinetic (a team from canada) and warped sanity. definetly cool to meet h3rf after all the scrims i'd filled in with his team for :) we then all jumped on some alienware pcs and setup an etpro server to play on. a bunch of kinetic and no remorse players showed up too and we had some prac getting used to playing on a setup we weren't exactly used to.

later we had lunch with the mapper ifurita who had gone off to this chicken fast food place with danz to grab us some food. the burgers weren't bad and the chips were certainly something - waffle shapped. since you're not allowed to bring food into the convention centre we ate out in the lovely texan heat.

our first game was against an america pickup team called brand0n's 5. setup took awhile, especially getting ventrilo to work. not playing on your own desk and in your own seat is definitely a bit weird. as the lower seed they got to pick a map first for us to attack on. they chose battery which funnily enough was the map we ere going to play. we decided to go with oasis. attacking we had a bit of trouble in the first two minutes, but then we got up off the beach and made the call to rush straight thru to plant the gun in the few seconds before the defenders spawned. luckily for us they didn't spawn back in time and we made it through to plant and set a quick time. we then went on to defend this successfully before moving on to oasis, where we managed to hold out the attacking team for the entire round, securing us victory. brand0n's 5 did well though, breaking our north gun defence and forcing us to defend south for 15 minutes.

so that was our first victory at quakecon.

after that we could leave since that was our only match for the day. we ended up having a wander around the gaylord hotel for 10 minutes while supposedly waiting for the shuttle to arrive. it's certainly something to see, right in the centre is this huge atrium with plants and fountains and stuff, surrounded by the balconies of the hotel rooms. it was huge. we then proceeded to wait an hour while our shuttle went to the other pickup point, which we then went over to while the shuttle went to where we were previously :P eventually we managed to meet up and we went with ifurita to this burger place called fudruckers which did burgers. basically you got the pattey cooked and then put all the salad you wanted on. 2/3rds of a pound defintely makes for a big burger! andrew's "texan size" one was even bigger, lol. they had these little pagers which they gave you and then when your burger was ready they went off, buzzing and flashing red lights :P again different.

afterwards we ordered the shuttle back and sat outside. while there, united 5 showed up. there had actually been some darkside players eatting at the same time as us too. us et players sure have similiar tastes :) while waiting i decided to take a nap on the footpath, and then once the shuttle stil hadn't shown we decided to cross 4 roads of traffic to get back to the hotel. not the smartest idea i guess, especially with two of them being fast moving highways.. it even didn't seem like that great an idea at the time either. no one died! :)

back at the hotel dan i and nick went for a swim, and that was about it. we all knocked off afterwards pretty much dead tired after a long day.

bootcamp

2005-08-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

been awake just shy of 20 hours now, so it's nearly time to knock off. today was our bootcamp with x6. the lan place was called "tru gamerz" and after a few setbacks on arrival, everything got sorted out by about 2pm. setting up et and everything on twelve computers took awhile, and there were all the usual problems associated with lans.. hardware failures and what have you. once we got going there was the odd problem, mainly with night's computer resetting and et quitting. jim's also had a few issues.

anyway, it was great to get some solid prac in on lan before quakecon itself started. x6 are defintely a great team and will place highly come the end of quakecon i have no doubt. was good to be pushed and shown a few things on lan, so a day well spent.

tomorrow we have to checkin for the touurnaments by 11am local time, which is 4am in NZ. our first game is at 5:30pm though it could well start late knowing how well things at quakecon are organised. that is 10:30am NZT.

really looking forward to getting the whole quakecon experience proper underway.

until next time. ciao :)

tidbits

2005-08-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

morning in dallas. everyone is awake by now, bar nick.. who has an excuse. when he and justin did turn up last night, the bag troubles had continued.. he was without his. hopefully it will turn up later.. but really, 2 lost bags in the space of a few hours! hopefully we don't lose the objective quite so easily :D

last night dinner was from "the servo" as the aussies call it. (petrol station) buritos to microwave back at the hotel, and apple juice. not bad, and it was pretty much straight to sleep after that. woke up around 6am and have been up since (8am now). about to head down and grab some breakfast in a minute.

must say, hooray for the internet and being able to access my desktop back home remotely. i've been busy grabbing stuff and checking up on irc from the hotel, which has a nice internet connection and a decent upload speed too. i'm just uploading some movies i took from the plane, which will be accessible here:

http://www.rotflmfao.net/calvin/quakecon/

the biggest one is of our american airlines flight coming into land at dfw. hopefully the movies aren't corrupt as the ftp program has cut out a couple of times while uploading. let me know if there are any problems.

more thoughts from yesterday:

the qantas crew did an announcement how american authorities don't like passengers "congregating" on the plane, especially around the toilets (what about the queues?) i found this rather amusing, but the best thing was when the old biddy told me and dan if we could please be quiet (while discussing et at the back of the plane :p), and that we were congregating which we weren't allowed to do!

the inflight entertainment was a step up from when i last travelled. individual tvs, and phones, interactive games, movies and all that jazz. what was a let down was that even though you could select from about 5 movies, it wasn't "on demand" so you still had to start watching them whenever the system decided to start playing it. didn't watch anything for longer than 30 minutes, but caught a bit of hitch hiker's guide. the chess program was incredibly bad, even on "hard", giving up its queen for pawns.. oh well.

in lax going through customs, they didn't even check up after i made a customs declaration saying i had food/dairy products/whatever. just waved me thru without even a glance at my bags. so i made it in with my secret stash of museli bars and satchet juice \o/ i'll be unstopable now..

in dallas once we got off the plane you could really feel the heat. which was a nice change from auckland's weather i'll admit. when we went out to the gas station for a feed at 11pm at night, shorts and tshirt were sufficient. i think they will be for the whole trip hopefully.

hotel is really nice. there's a pool and spa downstairs along with a gym, business centre, free brekkie.. we can get free shuttles over to quakecon and back which is great and takes a load off the mind.

anyhow, enough typing. dman is giving me grief :P he wants to go have brekkie, and i'm hungry too so until next time!

ps. the movies are in quicktime format, so if you want to be able to watch them, go to:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download

also, there will be more updates and photos on the modus operandi homepage

travels

2005-08-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

after about 20 hours of traveling from Auckland NZ i can happily say that modus operandi has landed in America, and are even all in the same state! a few mishaps along the way made sure we were kept from being bored. firstly someone knicked off with dan's luggage upon our arrival in LAX, which included the all important mouse and keyboard. thankfully this turned up later when we arrived in dallas. justin and nick caught a later connecting flight thru from lax and havn't quite arrived yet.

first impressions of dallas are: it's hot! the hotel is nice and air conditioned though, have a free local shuttle and net access, along with free fruit and other niceties :P all up it's pretty relaxed here even after a long flight.

tomorrow we'll be lanning it up with x6 which will be great prac before quakecon itself starts the following day. supposedly u5 are going to be at the same internet cafe, which will make things interesting.

below are some photos:

one of our two hotel rooms with jim sprawled out :P

taken over the pacific ocean a few hours out of los angeles

the team at LAX airport waiting for our connecting american airlines flights thru to dfw
from back, left to right:

schism xeno dman
courageous calvin
danz angelus

american highways as seen from above. puts auckland's "spaghetti junction" in its place

blogger photo test

2005-08-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

just a blogger photo test to see how things work :)
this is my setup at home. no doubt things will be a lot different over in DFW

last minute rush

2005-08-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

well, our qantas flight out leaves in a little under 9 hours so i figured it was time to create a blog.. as opposed to packing.

most of the mo guys are now over in sydney having flown across from melbourne and adelaide yesterday. they'll be coming over to auckland where they'll meet up with dan and i. jim is coming over by himself on the actual plane that will be flying us across to LA.

it's going to be interesting meeting everyone after a year of playing ET and chatting on venty.

check back for future updates :] photos too!