I meant the AI for your own troops sucked. The pathing is a little off, where I find units that were told to go someplace just sitting a their original place a minute ago. When attacked they just sit there, too instead of retreating or moving in range to attack back. I believe in earlier CnCs you had the option of setting aggression levels for your troops…

Oh yeah, I’ve read Snow Crash. My first Stephenson book. Been reading the Manifold trilogy by Stephen Baxter. Some good ideas in them, some kinda neat ideas but never fully realized…

Hmm, that’s interesting… I guess the question is then whether playing vs. humans is worth it, if the AI is that bad. Have you tried MOO3 yet? What’s your impression of that? By “AI”, do you mean the computer player’s tactics or do you mean the pathing, etc for you to control your OWN units? For the former, it won’t matter vs. humans…for the latter, it could be a showstopper I suppose.

Hey, if you have something where I can try out the game, I’d be interested to see how it plays. Or you can tell me where you got it, heheh…speaking of which Mark, have you read Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”? Fun book, I will send it to you if ya want.

If you are really a “tactics” person you should boot up starcraft, go to battle.net and look for a “use map settings” game called micro wars. it gives you and your opponent each an army which are very different and you battle it out…then it switches the armies so it’s fair…so for example you have a battle of your 6 marines vs. my 3 zealots or something…once that was over, it would give me the 6 marines and you the zealots…and it keeps score…i think there’s like 24 different levels…some of the matchups are really interesting to play…

🙂

Actually, the scenarios where you can’t build a base are the ones that appeal the most to me. I like knowing that it is definitely possible to win with the right tactics given the troops you have. Building a base, on easy difficulty, usually means I’ll have a long game with an assured win since I tend to over build. On hard difficulty or vs. real people, it usually means I will lose. This basically for me makes the game one about maximizing effiency in building your base, and that is not the game I’m interested in.

Thinking about it more, I think the ideal maps for me are ones where you and your opponent have the exact or very similar armies and it’s all up to your battle tactics who wins.

Anyway, I’ve got some bad news… CnC:Generals requires a serial number to play online, much like *craft meaning we all need legit copies if we are to meet online. I did see a LANcraft type of thing for CnC:G, but I *think* it only allows direct connection between two computers. We’d have to play allied vs. computer AI for that to be even remotely fair to me. I’ve tried the first couple of missions last night, and, frankly, I’m not sure I’d want to pay money for this game. Sure it looks pretty, but the AI doesn’t exist or at least is a step backwards from Warcraft 3, so much of a step that I am frustrated at how much micromanaging I need to do for each freakin ground troop.

As for Jet, yeah… one may respect his beliefs, but the pudding is in the cake. I don’t think his movies make it clear enough the idea of karma, or in the case of Kiss of the Dragon the bad guy is so bad that it makes for an uninteresting character. I’d like to see a movie where everyone just has motives, as in real life, and people’s goals will often conflict, not some sort of artificially created black and white world.

So, I’m finally posting. Life’s been hectic this week; we had Intel in for three days and today I was supposed to go to IBM but the snowstorm made me reconsider. So I can catch up on the “Real World” re-run watching.

As far as Jet Li goes, I guess the whole motivation thing seems weak to me. On the other hand, there’s plenty of actors I like who have questionable personal activities (i.e. they are Scientologists, etc). So that shouldn’t matter that much. However, if the Buddhism made him, for example, stop administering dragon kicks to peoples’ heads in his movies, then he’d be going to far. All religions agree on the dragon kick. How making movies connects with Buddhism I’d be interested to hear about…

Hey Mark, I checked out the C&C: Generals home page and it looks pretty interesting. People on the forums always say it’s well balanced, which I think is the most important thing about an RTS game. We should definitely play that or MOO online sometime. I just wish I could go back and play the one C&C game where you could make dogs…I’d love to run over someone’s base with a rabid pack of german shepherds…good stuff. The last installment I played briefly was Red Alert 2. Didn’t ever get into it. I hate the single-player missions where they don’t let you make a base…so you actually have to “conserve” for forces rather than being able to make them shoot each other for fun. Let me know if you are interested in screwing around and learning it together online. What about George money? Is he Internet-accessible up on the mount?

Won our last b-ball game last night…yay for forfeits!

Hey Brandon, shouldn’t you change your name to Big John John?

In the car CD right now: X-Clan’s “To the East, Blackwards”. Just read the song titles (“Funkin Lesson”, “Verbal Milk”, Grand Verbalizer, What Time Is It?”, “Operation Snatchback”) and you know it’s money.

Ya’ll look the same…

Actually, Mark posted the link. He’s the dangerous one.

Even though I haven’t seen “Cradle 2 Tha Grave,” I have to wonder (as you did, B) how he plans to educate the West about buddhism through it. Were buddhist teachings tattooed on DMX? I saw a “making the video” with DMX on it. The director said something like:

“Yeah, now we are just waiting for X to show up. We usually set up, let him know that we’re ready for him, and he’ll drop by when he feels like it. We might wait 4 or 5 hours, but when he gets here, he’s focused. On top of his game.”

I got the impression that DMX couldn’t really be bothered to attend his own video shoot. Once he showed up, he repeatedly referred to himself in the third person and sounded more like a charicature of a modern-day Mr. T than anything else. I guess it sells records.

Schrag… you’ve been quiet. Is that ankle keeping you at home (watching re-runs of The Real World)?

Mark, had trouble with the new categories again. Any ideas?

Better try to get some work done.

Days until Hawaii: 15

So Chris, I read that link. Whatever; that’s his bag and that’s great and all. The question as to whether or not that should matter could be applied to movies like say The Omega Code, where the agenda is so apparent (obviously the whole point of the story, but they kinda pushed it, unlike something like the whole Indiana Jones series). I can’t recall if I actually thought it was a good movie, but the whole point of the movie basically annoyed me. This of course would bring up the point of why I’d go to such a thing in the first place as it’s content wasn’t unknown. In some respects, when one is at the point of going to movies done by specific actors, directors, producers, or whatever, one already knows and accepts whatever this person presents. So, yes, as an educated consumer, all I care is that the movie I go to see because of “x” person’s efforts is good. The dilemma; now that I am aware of Jet’s motivation or whatnot, I cannot for the life of me see any influence of this in Cradle. So in this specific case, his motivation matters only in the sense that I feel inadequate for not having drawn a greater insight from watching DMX and Jet pummeling people.

So, read this: http://www.jetli.com/jetli/jet/jet_religion_why.php?bw=high

I knew about this a while ago, but never really put much thought into it. My initial reaction was backlash only because it’s religion, but I think over the last couple of years I’ve since learned to be more tolerant. Do you guys think Jet’s motivations matters at all? As consumers, do all we care about are good movies?

Well, I haven’t seen Cradle 2 the Grave yet, but have heard similar things; that it’s pretty much generic action movie.

Kiss of the Dragon was maybe a little too dark for Jet, and The One was cool in that you could see different fighting styles pretty clearly, but again the actual story kinda sucked. Many of his HK movies also sucked, by the way; it’s just that we tend to remember the good ones. Still, he’s had a higher percentage of good movies than say Jackie Chan (I swear half of Jackie’s movies, especially the 70s and 80s ones, totally blew).

The thing I’ve noticed about all Jet’s movies so far… he’s totally prudish. Have we seen even one on-screen kiss? He doesn’t get it on with Bridget Fonda, his wife dies in The One, Aaliyah and him also don’t end up together. It’s like he’s afraid to “cheat” on his real-life wife or something… And as soon as he got to the US, it seems like his one emotion is grim resolution. I suppose his care-free days of Fong Sai-yuk are over (he’s probably too old to be depicting an innocent laid-back guy), but he’s got to be able to act more than just stoic hero.

A great website on Jet Li, by the way, is his official Jet Li website.

In gaming news, I played the Freelancer demo recently. Pretty fun, but not sure it’s deep enough for me to want to buy it. Maaaybe multiplayer would be cool… I’ve gotten my hands on Master of Orion 3 and Command and Conquer: Generals and will check those out soon, maybe with Ben. I hope to get Splinter Cell and Sim City 4 soon too. Too many games, too little money, too little time. If any of you get the chance, Hitman 2 is an excellent game.

For all your gaming review needs, go to GameTab.

Yeah, Brandon. I have to agree with you. Jet has had less than stellar movies during his US career. I’ve already crapped all over “Black Mask,” but there have been some other (lesser) disappointments. For example, “Romeo Must Die.” I pretty much put “R.M.D.” in the same category as “The Replacement Killers,” i.e., a showy, action-driven vehicle for bringing a foreign talent to US movie screens.

I remember how excited I was to catch Chow Yun Fat in that movie, but the film just lacked something that John Woo captured so perfectly in classics like “Hard Boiled” and “The Killer.” I think that the US versions are too stylized and wind up looking more like a music video than a movie. Not a big leap because the “The Replacement Killers” was the first movie directed by Antoine Fuqua, who was otherwise known for producing rap videos. (BTW: it isn’t just Hong Kong action stars that get these guys. “Charlie’s Angels” was also directed by a music video graduate- the oddly named “McG“.)

We all breathed a sigh of relief that Jet wasn’t treated too badly in “Lethal Weapon 4,” but sadly, things haven’t really improved for him since then. Part of the problem is that the movie houses think they need to team him (or other guys like Chow and Jackie Chan) up with some big name US star: Mira Sorvino, Mark Wahlberg, Jodie Foster, Aaliyah, Owen Wilson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Mel Gibson, DMX, etc.

Instead, they should look to find a script and storyline that fits the skills and talents of the actor. I thought that the studios would have learned more from the success of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” One can only hope…