Optus and the Fail Whale...

As someone who likes to take the interwebs with him wherever he goes, i am forced into using mobile broadband. While the cost-to-gigabyte ratio is absolutely woefull on pre-paid (around $20 per GB), i tend to find that post-paid contracts can be alright, provided you get some included discounts and find the plan that best suits you. Used wisely, my current monthly allowance can be as much as 32Gb for about $50 a month, which is *much* better than pre-paid. However this only works if i do all my downloading during off-peak hours, if i download during peak hours, the allowance is half of that amount. Fixed line broadband is much better value, although the trouble with this is you can't take it with you and your laptop for a geek gaming session or to be used as a wifi-hotspot. While mobile phones and tablets have built in wifi hotspots these days (predominately android based systems), geeks who like to game are corralled into using mobile broadband to remain, well, mobile.

So why the Optus hate? Why the fail whale for Optus? After all, as a consumer i was quite happy to accept a limited amount of gigabytes for downloading, risk the instability of a mobile service. Granted it was primarily because i have access to an alternative fixed-line interweb with a more generous allowance (with a different telco), however, being mobile or fixed line should not have that much of an impact on the service. The fact of the matter is that it's an Optus service fault that has caused me to rage-quit a closed-beta for the night, simply because this is the third time i have had to reset the mobile broadband during this single gaming session. The fact that i am participating in a closed-beta has *nothing* to do any disconnects from the game, seeming the regular interwebs all flat-line at the same time as well. While i understand that mobile broadband can be a fickle beast, after all a technology that can be affected by external interference is a technology that will sometime "burp" or "fart" badly, hopefully  self-recovering itself promptly. It depends on how sensitive the games-server is to this sort of hiccup which deturmines whether or not you get booted from your game.

Still, i guess i shouldn't be surprised that my "alleged" HSDPA service (which struggles to get over 1.5Mbs d/load during network load) can "peak" at around 3Mbs in my city-centric location (when the network isnt congested or is off-peak). The fact that my mobile phone can cycle from HSDPA to 3G and then to G without me even moving the phone likely indicates more network problems than just disconnects and/or "burps", however,  i can counter that by saying that at on other occasions i can go hours and hours without a single interruption. In my opinion, i should only ever have to connect the mobile broadband once per session, any network collisions or errors should auto-correct and not disconnect. Perhaps it is time i consider a move - after all if the mobile broadband network is as congested and as unreliable as it is now - how bad is it going to be for a fixed line?

This sort of thing affects all types of broadband - even the fixed line interwebs with that other telco burps and disconnects randomly as well. although to be fair, nowhere near as much and when it does it manages to correct its error automatically. From the sounds of things, this happens no matter where you live, as friends have also report such experiences while gaming/interwebbing. However, it is the frequency of these disconnects, the fact that the mobile broadband doesn't "auto-correct" and requires a manual reset and the fact that i still have issues unresolved by customer support (a credit wasn't applied to my account) along with unresolved errors involving usage meters and "walled garden" false-positives (which still remains unanswered by the techies) - All of these issues have made me angry enough to post this long-winded rant. Still, i guess if i cannot find satisfactory answers from Optus soon, this post will make great evidence for the telco ombudsman when i "escalate" my own formal complaint :P

the original fail whale (HHGTTG) : and fyi - optus "burped" again during image u/load - although didn't need a reset that time :)

Mechanised Mech's

Greetings once again. Apologies for leaving it so long between posts, however, circumstances have conspired against me to keep me away from the blog for the past month. Despite having four weeks off from work and no interstate or overseas travel involved (as well as a limited amount of holiday funds), this site is usually the first to suffer when i run out of spare time. It has been a fairly hectic month, even with all the R&R i have had from my recent escape from the city... As the old saying goes, sometimes you need a holiday from your holiday (aka "didn't want to go back to work" ;P).

Those of you who fall under the title "gamer buddy" will already know what this post is all about, seeming i was quite vocal about signing up for the closed beta. For those of you who aren't really gamers you may not know what i am on about here, anyways... HAWKEN 's second closed beta kicked off this weekend. Adhesive games is behind this "free-to-play" (F2P) first person shooter (FPS) and while it seems to thus-far avoid any "pay to win" problems, it definitely falls into the category of  freemium. Not sure that that means? Its a term referring to the fact that you can use real-money to buy in-game gear for the game. While i haven't loaded up all my screenshots here, there are four other MECH's to choose from (as of CB2) with your typical customizing optional extras and skill points and XP.

WoW, these crabs look familiar? ;P

you will die..alot <#include.c  RUS.t >

Rocketeer go BOOM :)

HAWKEN launcher (CB2)

While many standard inclusions in this FPS are smooth and refined, i am an old mech-warrior from back in the day, so it feels *fantastic* to be back in the cockpit of my favorite build. Stomping about and jumping around with boosters and such is great fun and shall be absolutely glorious as soon as my RIFT prototype from Oculus arrives in the post in December (and yes, HAWKEN will be a RIFT supported game). As for whether or not you feel like a soldier strapped into a mech will be entirely up to you. Whilst HAWKEN does not go into as much detail as the old mechwarrior titles of past (eg no damage on chasis or arm segments etc), as of closed beta 2 there was four different mech's with different play styles/customizations and about the same number of randomly selected maps. In my opinion, does this feel like a mech title? the short answer... yes. the long answer, mostly. fans of the original Mech warrior game will not be disappointed, however, keep in mind that this is definitely a shooter (at least at this stage).

First up, the graphical detail is excellent. As far as i know it's built using the Unreal3 engine with both shading and particles look fantastic - on max settings i was able to launch a missile into the air, detonate it into shrapnel and watch as it rained down from the sky (and possibly onto the mech crouching behind cover). Having a good pair of surround sound gear or capable headphones is paramount to sensing any distant combat locations as the map and radar only goes so far. On the default settings, i could play for extended periods without noticeable lag on the GPU's end. Trouble is, there is no escaping the fact that as an Aussie gamer, my lowest lag is 300ms as an average - no better than 250ms on a good day.

While that doesn't sound like much of a delay, in a FPS environment where the foundation of the game stems from frenetic action, its a competitive wall that some find far too frustrating to cope with. Of course, luck plays a part in any match, however - knowing that my target reticule is aimed at where a mech was half a second ago (and not that very second (or < 30ms like most US gamers) is enough to make it hard to keep up. Having said that, playing with ping times that are as excessive as these helps build skill while dialing the graphic fidelity way back to low helps a bit with any graphical lag. This can also help those who are either n00bs (new players) develop their twitch finger or give you plenty of practice if you are a bit rusty at the FPS genre like myself ;P

on the lowest graphics settings (and a different mech <assault> pictured)

The good news is that when you cause damage to another player and then someone else gets credit for your kill, you still get XP from the "assist". Unfortunately though, if you are playing from here in AUS, i doubt that i will ever see the lofty scale of high K:D (kill:death) ratio's as some of the pro's - nor do i think i have the time or commitment to become that good at it. I had intended on posting a print screen of a results screen  (screenshots or it didn't happen right?), however none of the result-screen's i tried to capture when i print-screened have worked. This, however may be a beta-bug or maybe i have been mashing my keyboard a little harder of late. Either way, this is shaping up to be an excellent shooter in an already crowded genre. It manages to bring smooth graphics and some top-notch mech game-play elements to it while serving it all up for free. Sure, you will eventually be able to buy in-game items with real world currency, however as it stands now its anything but pay-to-win.