Thursday, January 22, 2004

Voice Recognition

Looks like Verizon has come up with a new phone support system to replace their front line call center. My business DSL line flaked out a few hours ago, so I called up the business support line to put in a trouble ticket. Their phone system asked me to state, verbally, things like my phone number, what was the problem I was having, whether or not I agreed. If it didn't understand, it would ask again or have me key in the information using the keypad.

All told, reasonably slick for a completely scripted system, and it only took 3 minutes 40 seconds for the system to check the line, detect that there was a network problem, and submit a trouble ticket.

So now I'm waiting around for the service to be restored... I think my co-worker across town jinxed me because he has a cable modem and it went out this morning before lunch.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 10:05 PM

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Spam Counts for Q4 2004

Spam counts for Q4 2004.

Oct - 2895
Nov - 3089
Dec - 3488

I keep all of the spam I get at work in a single folder (for use when re-training my bayesian filters), so it's easy to count this stuff up. All told, it represents around 75Mb of data (roughly 8Kb per e-mail).

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 10:39 PM

Monday, January 19, 2004

Call of Duty

So I've been playing Call of Duty off-n-on over the past week or two. (CoD is a FPS based in WWII, similar to Medal of Honor Allied Assault as it was done by people who left MoHAA's development company after the release of MoHAA.) The first two times I played it through in god mode (yes, how lame) because my reaction times were horrid and I really just wanted to see everything once.

Now that I've gotten back up to speed a bit, I'm playing it through again on "Hardened" difficulty (one step below the max difficulty level). Doing allright for the most part, so far I've only had one level where I gave up completely and switched to god-mode to get past. (Defending the bridge against the multitude of german tanks... although I now have a few ideas of how to survive that section.) Just finished working my way through the dam, getting ready to start the escape on a truck, get to the airfield bits.

Lots of good levels so far

The initial parachute drop on the first mission and the subsequent attack on the town is pretty wild. You parachute in ahead of the invasion forces to plant a radio beacon for the rest of the paratroopers to home in on when they drop. Then you have to clear a manor house (pretty easy) to end that section. The next section you start by running across a field while mortars fall around you and the MG-42 emplacements ahead of you start firing. Middle of the night, so it's dark, and the german anti-aircraft guns are making a hellish racket from various points in the town (and sending up bright muzzle flashes). The counter-attack the next day is pretty heavy and takes a good bit of work to get through in once piece. The car ride is pretty crazy, but not terribly difficult.

Defending the bridge is simply extremely difficult. The initial assault and taking of the bridge isn't too bad if you can find a place to surpress the MG-42 bunker, but the counter-attack the next morning is high-intensity. Germans counter-attack from both ends of the bridge and you have to use either hand-held anti-tank weapons or a Flak-88 gun to take out the incoming tanks. Of course, while you're up on the Flak-88, there's a few dozen germans all taking pot shots at you from just about every compass point.

The chateau section is a tough one, there's a few spots where it's easy to end up with too many germans and not enough health packs. Got myself and my AI-buddy boxed in by 3-4 germans, every time I restored from a quicksave I'd die within a few seconds because they had the tactical advantage. Completely restarted the level the next day and ended up having to clear the house by myself because my AI-buddy gets fragged in the outside courtyard before we infiltrate. Wasn't sure it was doable without a buddy, but ultimately I pulled it off with only a few deaths.

The mission where we hit a PoW camp and have to get in and out within 10 minutes is pretty pulse-pounding because of the time-limit. There's not much time to dilly-dally around, or get lost, or get seperated from your squadmates. It's pretty much 8-straight minutes of flush / frag / flank (yes, I did it with about 2 minutes to spare). The AI-controlled squadmates are reasonably helpful on that mission, although they lack in accuracy.

I think the dam infiltration, demolition and egress is probably the longest section that I've done yet. From infiltration to extraction takes me anywhere from 40-60 minutes, with no level changes (it's all one map). It's not a fiendishly difficult map, you just have to take your time, check your six and clear as you go. Rushing ahead will pull in more germans then you can handle at a time.

Now for the downsides (and some upsides):

CoD is short, playing through on god mode took me about 8 hours to finish all the missions. On the plus side, the game is pretty stable for one without any patches from the publisher, but I've had a few crash-to-desktops and a few "script errors". Usually, I'm able to continue from the previous save point, but sometimes I have to restart the level. Things that I miss from MoHAA is that there's no "sneaking". MoHAA allowed you to either walk/run, where with walking you could sneak up behind guards and often take out opposition before they knew you were there. In CoD, they can always hear you coming, so there's hardly ever the element of surprise. MoHAA also had a nice stat screen whenever you cleared a level or got fragged that would list how many rounds hit you, how many bullets you fired, how accurate you were and where you tended to hit your target (head, torso, left arm, right arm, etc). CoD just puts up a mission success or mission failed screen with a continue button.

On the positive side, CoD has "lean" (ala MoHAA:Spearhead) so you can peek around corners, shoot from cover, etc. Plus, they've added a "prone" position where you're laying down on the ground. This is nice because you're a lot harder to hit then when crouching or standing and it allows you to survive some encounters that would otherwise be terribly difficult.

One of the differences is that CoD only lets you carry two weapons, a pistol and up to 10 grenades, in MoHAA you could carry as many different weapons as you could find. Personally, I prefer CoD's system because it forces you to make choices... do I carry an anti-tank round, or do I grab an extra semi-automatic weapon? Unlike MoHAA, weapons don't vanish when you put them down, so you can switch weapons for a bit, then double-back and grab your old weapon again. It's also more difficult to get replacement ammo for the allied weapons. Unless one of your teammates gets fragged and you snag their ammo, you can't grab ammo from another weapon type. MoHAA used the same "ammo" for both allied and axis weapons, e.g. you could carry a allied semi-automatic and use axis semi-automatic ammo in it. CoD requires you to sometimes ditch your allied weapon in exchange for axis weaponry if you find yourself running low on ammo.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 1:28 PM