Completely slipped my mind, been working on this site since last year, incremental updates and the like. These guys are a little band from Tiverton, Devon and have built up quite a following – great fun to design for, I’ve done them some flyer’s, album artwork and branded them with the distinctive slashed diagonals – I hope they do well, they deserve to.
By all means go and check out their site – The Brethren don’t forget to listen to a few of their tracks at the bottom of the page. They even have a store and you guessed it…. a nicely themed myspace page.
I was going to write a review of this game and then realised I have neither the time or inclination at the moment and all I really wanted to do was show the world the fantastic ending video – seriously, if you own the game DO NOT WATCH THIS, play it through and complete it yourself, it makes it so much more worthwhile.
There seems to be a great deal of confusion among the million(s) or so gamers currently engaged in the pass time know as matchmaking on Halo 3. I must admit, I’ve been a bit baffled by how ranks, and skills and experience seem to work. Imagine hearing someone say to you (over live) and I quote:
“So if I’ve got 36 exp points, and a skill of 11 in social team doubles games what rank would that give me in a ranked slayer match?”
I don’t know, to be honest don’t really care, but for all you stat whores out there – you probably do.
So here it is (as best I understand it):
You get 1 EXP or RP (Ranking Point) point for being on the winning team in any type of game (social or ranked) or if you place in the top 49% in a free for all match. – so if you were playing lone wolves and there were 16 players, you would need to place 8th or higher to gain any EXP. It is possible to get more than 1 EXP point for being on the winning side of a team, several people have reporting jumping 2 points in CTF, but this is most likely due to a high skill, high kill count and several flags captured / dropped.
You can play ANY type of game and gain EXP be that social or ranked.
Skill is only obtained from ranked games, and is based on a number of factors – badges earned, people killed, kill vs death ration, killing streaks team awareness, life expectancy etc. Skill can go up as well as down and you can’t achieve officer ranks (explained in a bit) unless your skill is over 10!
Ranks are the badges that appear next to your name in matchmaking (recruit / sergeant / general etc). All of the lower ranks (apprentice / recruit / corporal / sergeant / gunnery sergeant) need no skill to attain, they are purely based on EXP points gained. Once you hit the required EXP, you get that rank – applies to all game types and modes.
Officer ratings require skill to get, if you don’t have a skill rating of 10 or higher you could have 5000 EXP points but you would never progress past the rank of gunnery sergeant. Officers need both a high skill rating and a good amount of EXP.
Finally, the little numbers that appear when in matchmaking next to your rank represent your usefulness at that type of game, you’ll notice if you change the gametype the number changes depending on how much you have played that type of game.
EXP can’t be lost unless you quit a match in which case you can wave bye bye to a little chunk of EXP. Skill is lost when you lose a match or perform badly (like team killing, getting your arse kicked excessively, short life expectancy etc).
That should clear it up for most people I hope – and no I’m not saying this is exactly how it works, but that does seem to be the general consensus across the web at large!
In the last post we covered a world with GPS / Friend Tracking / Latte’s and a prevalent advertising model involving our lovable capitalists Starbucks. We’re heading off to a slightly different convergence model this time around – that of the humble bar code.
The bar code has been with us for as long as I can remember, it’s elegant black lines transposed against a bright white background strewn with an assortment of numbers few if any understand. But where can this humble stock checker take us next – enter Microsoft with the advert of the HCCB or to you and me the High Capacity Colour bar code, consisting of minute triangular coloured squared this barcode can hold 300 times the information of the traditional bar code that we all know and love. The bar code we have at the moment can not either do a great deal or store a great deal of information – in order to push our technologies we need the extra capacities that the HCCB affords us.
Picture the scene a few years from now, you wander into a shop with your iPhone V3 and spy a new HD TV that you really want, you snap a picture of the bar code on your mobile, your mobile in turn (with its persistent online connection) downloads all of the information directly from the manufacturers website (they may even be an entire section of the net dedicated to this – something like .pinfo / samsunghdtv42sp2.samsung.pinfo) onto your browser – you know everything you need about the product and want to buy it, great.
Your phone looks up the price of the TV in all stores with a 50 mile radius (calculated with GPS) and gives you a rundown on the pricing differences and stock levels, shows you a map of how to get to the store, shows you the store contact details so you can reserve it (or the store website / order form) – even works out the comparative cost of fuel use to get you there – what do we get? The best possible deal.
Barely a few years ago, this kind of information architecture and distribution would have been considered impossible, but with the advent of the new ‘web’, faster speeds, everybody with a permanent mobile pocket based browser and a new found trust in the internets’ ability to deliver the truth, there is now no reason why we should think that we can’t or more accurately won’t follow these lines in the not so distant future.
See more of the HCCB at: http://research.microsoft.com/research/hccb/
Update 14th May: A prototype version of something similar to the above by Jefferey Sharkey Android Scan.
Up early this morning, breakfast in the Ameri-Chinese restaurant (which was actually pretty good) and then packed bags, headed off to the car drop off point – dropped off one mustang – slightly scuffed (I drove over a curb last night after a few beers, in the parking lot) but otherwise unharmed. Nobody noticed and we were soon in the Airport boarding our plane to NY (after a 3 hour delay to the flight). Stopped for some portugese food in the Airport and boarded the plane back to Bristol.
Disaster – No baggage for Darren! Didn’t even make it to NY, filled in a form, not happy at all and headed back home – lucky for me, my luggage turned up 2 days later – but hey, at least they couriered it to me – so forgive and forget!
It’s cold, raining and green – just like England should be – now if I can just find the i-405 form and enter my application for permanent resident status I can move to the USA on a more permanent basis :)
Met up with the people we needed to see to discuss some more business related ventures – had a great lunch out on a balcony overlooking the bay in Baltimore – really nice view, average food – long wait times. Wandered around Baltimore for a while taking in the local shops, got told that some sunnies would set me back $5 then found out they were $255 – no thank you!
No more driving for me today, passenger all the way back to DC, booked ourselves into the Marriott at Dullies Airport so tomorrow, we have a short distance to go to catch our flights! TIP: Don’t stay at the Marriott at Dullies (most of Mexico was working there), their restaurant was staffed by a load of incomprehensible Chinese people, it was so bad we left and headed down to the Old Town to grab a bite to eat – 2nd best steak I had! My GOD – ordered a bowl of onion rings – England = Onion rings the size of crisps, America = Onion rings the size of onions, only managed to eat two and I was stuffed!
Back to the hotel, practiced some magic and zonked out with sheer exhaustion.
In the