Badgers

The Valentine's event in City of Heroes has gotten me addicted again. I quickly earned the "normal" badges for it and the costume pieces I missed out on last year. Did the missions again on two alts. I've been playing Ronnatron a lot lately. Not really much going on though. I'm in more Hamidon raids, which is pretty cool. The raid is really pathetic, but it's the rewards that keep me coming. Compared to World of Warcraft, I think Hamidon is better because you always get a reward. You don't roll on loot or hope no one outranks you for it. Unfortunately, the rewards I've been getting aren't that helpful to me (or anyone). But I'll keep it up. Eventually I'll max out my Fortitude. I haven't gotten any heal HOs, which isn't too surprising. There are a lot of healers on the raid and just about everybody is on a supergroup. So I'm sure they either use it themselves or trade to an sgmate.

But today was when all my hard work came to fruition. Before the Hami raid started, I got the Coldhearted badge (defeat 250 Hordelings). A team was farming for it in the V-Day event, so I joined. We started to go for the Weedwacker badge, but ran into a problem. That's when I ditched the team to join Hami.

I then went back to hunting Banished Pantheon spirits (can easily get them in Talos Island during the night). Before I could finish, I joined a team to defeat Jack of Irons in Croatoa, getting me the Giant Killer badge. We also defeated Eochai, but I had the Pumpkin King badge already. I was about to go back to the BP spirits when I got news that Jurassik was up in Crey's Folly. I had defeated him in a mission, but that doesn't give the badge. So when my sgmates where out of their mission, they joined me. We couldn't get enough damage with the five of us that started, so we were inviting while in combat. We did surprisingly well (no deaths, though he could get me below 10 hp in one shot). Eventually we wore him down, getting me The Solution.

I went to check that the Kraken wasn't up in Perez Park (since I missed him due to work last week). He wasn't, so I went back to hunting spirits. And after enough laps around the block, I finally earned the Banisher badge. That was the only one I was missing for the Archmage accolade and now I have the Eye of Magus power! (+Resistance +Defense -Accuracy -Recharge -Speed) I can't really see when I'll use it, but I like having it. Once I find Sally (twice), I'll have the Geas of the Kind Ones (+Accuracy +Recharge +Recovery -Defense). Again, I'm not too sure how often I'd use it, but I'm a collector.

The badges I'm sadly missing are for spending time in The Hollows and defeating Igneous bosses. Which won't be too hard to get. Sally and Kraken will take time. The other ones would be PvP related or crazy hard to achieve (healing, taking damage, earning influence, being held). Those will take a long time, but I'll eventually get them. I think once I get the Weedwacker badge, I'll be calling it quits for a few weeks.

***
Which brings us to the next topic: research. There are quite a few topics I could and should research, but I won't have time for them all. I'm looking into writing some ragdoll physics code. I have a good portion done because of my cloth simulation. I'll need to set up some better collision detection code. And then some sort of bone structure. I can't really use any of our models from Final Project, but I think I can easily gank someone else's.

The next thing I'll want to do is look into using a vertex shader for my cloth simulation. That will help me determine if that way is better, and it'll improve my understanding of vertex shaders (and scripting). I'm pretty eager to get to work on these.

***
Part of my job includes writing labs / programming tests for the students. They learn a bit of C# in PG3, so I was looking into more windows based games. And since my favorite windows game, Minesweeper, has a simple user interface, I started researching the difficulty of programming it. Let's just say that the interface is the only simple thing about it. Not that the game logic is really hard, but the amount of ifs / cases to deal with is just too much. At least in one lab. And if it spread to a second day, it would need to include the second day's material (which would be file i/o). Technically the high score list is in a file, but I don't know how complex this thing should really get. So there are a few things to consider with this.

If I give them a good portion of the game logic so they only write the user interface, do they feel they've actually accomplished something? Would this be better suited as a lab (2.5 hrs + talking) or a test (1.0 hrs, no talking)? If this spans multiple days, should I give them the code they should have written the day before? Will they still feel they've accomplished something?

My thoughts are that they should also write the game logic. I can give them the pseudo code for it, so they aren't wasting their time. (The emphasis should be on the interface and its application, not creating game logic.) It'd be better to have it as a lab since they'll be able to work with each other. Along with giving them the finished code stages, I could explain it at the start of lab. If I give them the pseudo-code, I'm not sure how many problems we'd run into with this. (I sadly expect a lot.) It won't be ready for next month, but I could get a lot done during spring break.

***
So the lab I did have them do is Math Man. It's a lot like the calculator, but lamer. It doesn't have scientific functions, and it will allow you to enter multiple decimal points (which will break it). The numerical buttons are supposed to share the same event handler, so regardless of what button was pressed, one function would be called. The function only had to append the button text to the display. (So if they pressed the "1" button, "1" would be appended to the display.) Too bad they couldn't even do that. A lot got that right, but a lot didn't. I'll need to suggest to the teacher to go over that in class.

The programming test was a Guess My Number game. Too bad students can't read directions. A lot actually completed it to specifications. The ones that turned it in generally missed: error checking for an empty guess, not randomizing on startup, and missing a display label. Their respective points are 15, 5, and 35. I can't believe three people didn't have the label. It was used everywhere in the doc. The average grade came to 81.2%, which is higher than the 75% expected.

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I'm also disappointed in PG2's lack of bitwise awareness. It hurts to see such butchered code. I had most of it working in 5 minutes, and probably could have finished within 10. We had two students finish within 60 minutes allotted. Just two. Out of 36. I'm glad we don't have to grade, though it'd be an easy one to grade. So disheartening.