Continuing the Orange Box - Portal

Last time, I wrote about my impressions of Half Life 2, to the point I had played it. Since then, I've continued to progress, and am now progressing through the "Follow Freeman" chapter.

But I've been sidetracked. While playing Half Life 2, I got a little distracted, and played through Portal. Let me say this much: I wish I hadn't heard so much about it or watched so many youtube videos of it. It kinda spoiled the game a bit. However, it was still great fun. I played with the subtitles on, and found that there's a small, but noticeable, amount of dialogue that was omitted during recording. Nothing that would affect the game or the story, but interesting nonetheless.

In general, the game is a balance between FPS skills and problem-solving ability, with the balance tilted heavily towards the FPS skills side. A week or two ago I discovered Portal: The Flash Version, and sent a link to my brother. My brother doesn't play video games outside a few casual, more cerebral flash-based games. He liked the idea of the game, but complained that once he figured out how to complete a level, the rest was frustrating, because of the level of manual dexterity involved. In the "real" version of Portal, I felt the same way--once I figured out how to complete a level, I spent a significant amount of time trying to get my hands to do what my mind was envisioning.

The dialogue, or rather, monologue, is simply brilliant. I could go into more flowery, descriptive terms, but suffice it to say the voice acting and processing are spot-on for the tone of the game.

Overall, I enjoyed it, and have since started dabbling in the advance maps. At the same time, however, I wish Valve had done a bit more to improve replayability. Sure, there are plenty of people with way too much free time who will compete for speedrun records, but the game seems a bit too....prescriptive. The single-available-path is great for a game you play through once, but I guess I was wishing for a few more secret rooms, or high platforms you don't notice if you're just trying to get through the game, or things like that.

One more question: The other day, I attempted to do the Terminal Velocity achievement. I got the infinite loop going fine, and went to go get a snack, leaving Chell to the clutches of gravity. I think I let it run for six or seven minutes before growing impatient, and apparently still hadn't fallen the required distance. How long do I have to loop in order to get that achievement?

Working through the Orange Box

Last weekend, Fry's sold the Orange Box for $20. I've been waiting for a deal like that for a long time, and eagerly picked it up.

I started with Half Life 2, having a desire to keep things more-or-less chronological. To this point, I've progressed through the game up to Nova Prospekt. Here are my thoughts:

• The crowbar needs a greater reach. I don't like having to practically stand on top of a crate before I can hack it open.
• I like how the game now makes it clear which crates include goodies vs. which ones are just props.
• The ammo-carrying limits are really, really annoying. For example, Gordon can carry ten extra clips for his pistol and five extra clips for his SMG, but only two extra clips for the pulse rifle, and only twelve extra rounds for the Magnum. Given the choice, I would happily ditch the SMG, along with all its ammo, in order to carry more ammo for the pulse rifle. Especially since the ammunition for the pulse rifle is so much smaller than the ammo for the SMG.
• Pinning enemies to the wall from across the map is just cool. The fact that your weapon is a crossbow, and your ammo a piece of red-hot, glowing rebar, elevates it to the level of simple brilliance.
• Only allowing the player to carry 10 rounds of said rebar, on the other hand, is mean-spirited. Bad developer!
• I didn't like Ravenholm at all. A bit too creepy, perhaps, but the infinitely-spawning zombies were what really bothered me. On the other hand, I wish I could have brought one of those saw-blades with me through the remainder of the map.
• The air boat was lots of fun to drive. I didn't enjoy the car so much, for several reasons. First, it could tip over, which you couldn't do to the air boat. Secondly, I prefered the gun on the airboat. Thirdly, nobody told me that it had a turbo--I found that out from gamefaqs after failing that first jump several times. Did I miss a pop-up message on the HUD?
• Forcing the player to cross all the way under the bridge, flick a switch, and then cross all the way back is, IMO, nothing but annoying and unnecessary. Showing the player several RPG pickups on the way over was also a dead giveaway that a helicopter is going to meet him on the way back.

As an aside, I am amazed at the physical abilities of Gordon. To the point I've played, I estimate that he has been up for something on the order of 36 hours straight. A day in City 17, a night in Ravenholm, a day driving the dune buggy, and now it's night as I enter Nova Prospekt. In this time, he has climbed hundreds of feet of ladders, driven long distances across rough terrain at ludicrous speeds, shot down several helicopters, destroyed boat locks, played Parkour across an iron arch bridge, dropped shipping containers on bad guys, and caught more air time than Evil Knieval. He's taken hundreds of bullets, been beat up by zombies, chewed up by headcrabs, lacerated by manhacks, deafened by too-close explosions, has had to climb out of his overturned dune buggy several times, has been nearly cut in half by helicopter cannon fire, nearly drowned several times, and electrocuted by those bouncy-ball mine things. He's taken more medication in a day and a half than Dr. House does in an entire season. Gordon carries eight types of weapons, including an RPG launcher, along with ammo for all those weapons. He has fired tens of thousands of rounds from those weapons. He has killed several dozen antlions, scores of zombies, quite a few manhacks and barnacles, and probably hundreds of Combine. No wonder the alarms go off whenever they spot him!

And this for a guy who's been in some sort of hibernation for a couple decades. Anyways.....

• At the lighthouse, the NPC tells me to put the car in the garage so the Combine don't find me, but then the Combine show up anyway. So why should I have put the car in the garage in the first place?
• I was sorely disappointed that I couldn't actually get inside all those abandoned boats.
• I was also sorely disappointed that I couldn't drive the combine vehicles.
• I was disappointed once again when there was no sniper rifle to pick up after I killed the Combine snipers who were camped above the railroad tracks.
• I miss Dr. Breen's voice.
• While driving the airboat, I realized that there is an awful lot of really nice scenery, and I'm just blowing right by it without a second glance. Valve could probably have saved a lot of money by not putting in so much details in the parts of the map you're just flying by anyway!
• Having to register your single-player game online in order to play it is about the most anti-customer thing I've encountered in relation to video games. I can understand it for TF2, but not for HL2 and Portal. Bad publisher!
• I finally figured out that RPGs can fly nearly arbitrarily-loopy paths once you launch them. My hit rate on gunships dramatically improved once I figured that out.
• Antlions are awesome battle-buddies, especially since there's an unlimited supply of them. I like how they can jump ridiculous heights and kill Combine in seconds. It looks like they can't follow me into Nova Prospekt, and that disappoints me greatly.
• I wish I could control how hard I throw grenades. Sometimes I just want to give one a soft lob into a corner, not huck it a hundred yards or try to bounce it back to myself.
• Throwing explosive barrels or gas cylinders at enemies is fun. Really fun. I just need to learn to stand back a bit.

to be continued...

Home Improvement: Attic Stairs

I can now add another "home improvement" skill to my inventory. Last week, we decided to replace our air conditioner. The current unit is original, installed when the house was built in 1993. We're sick and tired of it, because:

• It has a small coolant leak
• It's inefficient, and costs us about $200/month during the summer to cool our 1500-sq-ft house.
• The return air vent and duct are undersized
• It does a poor job of distributing the air about the house--some rooms hardly get any cooling at all, some get way more than they need.
• It's an anti-selling point, when the time comes to sell our home.

So we're getting a new compressor, condenser, evaporator, plenum, and air return, plus a couple new ducts to help with the distribution.

We also noticed last week (before deciding to replace the A/C) that our attic stairs needed replacement. Part of the hinge mechanism was all bent out of shape, and it had nearly destroyed its own pivot. Once we decided to get new A/C, it became apparent that I couldn't postpone it any longer. I took a trip to Lowe's, picked up an attic ladder ($172 out the door), and headed home to take out the old ladder.

The next step was to remove the old ladder. During that process, my lack of trust in the original builders was strengthened. When framing out the space for the original ladder, they apparently ran out of 2x4's, 2x6's and 2x8's. How do I know this? because the original hole was framed a little too large, and they used a slab of MDF and a scrap of baseboard to make the hole the right size for the attic ladder.

Disassembly of the old ladder was by far much harder than installation of the new. The bottom two sections (the ones that fold up) weren't too hard to remove--just a few bolts. The springs, though, were a bit scary. They have a very large k value--enough that neither my wife nor I could get them to stretch at all after I removed them. The springs attached to the hinges with something akin to a u-bolt with threads on one leg. Since I couldn't stretch the springs enough to unhook them, I undid the nuts on the half-u bolts. It's a bit nerve-wracking, because you know that at some point, the nut is going to let go of the bolt, the spring will snap short very very quickly, and the u-bolt will become a high-speed projectile. It makes a big noise, too.

Fortunately, nobody got hurt in the process. After drilling out about a dozen rivets and undoing countless nuts and bolts, I finally had the old ladder out. In several pieces, granted, but I wasn't planning to use it for anythig anyway. Maybe I'll strip out all the nuts and bolts, since those are still perfectly usable.

Installing the new ladder was quite easy, by comparison. It was simply a matter of setting the wooden frame in the hole in the attic and using half a dozen lag screws to secure it to the joists. I was blessed by the fact that 1) the hole created by the frame of the old ladder was perfectly square, and 2) it was nearly the perfect size. Nearly. It was too wide by about 1 1/4 inches. I put in a length of 2x4, making the hole about 1/4" too narrow. Fortunately, the old frame had not been secured all the way to the joist, so a few seconds with the hammer gave me the 1/4" I needed. The entire ladder assembly hooked onto the frame very nicely. Three more lag screws and four nuts later, I was done.

Well, almost. The new ladder is a bit narrower and longer than the old one, so I'll need to re-do the moulding around the opening, but the dimensions are such that I won't even need to buy new moulding--I'll just need to cut down the old stuff. And paint the cover.

The list of other home improvement projects I've done:

• painting the living room, entryway, dining room, kitchen
  
• drywall repair
• laying tile (kitchen, entry, dining room)
  
• baseboards in above rooms
• laying hardwood floors (brother's living room)
  
• added electrical outlet in attic
• laid tile, painted, put in baseboards, added floodlights in garage over the laundry area
  
• running network cables through the walls
• furniture construction (does that count?)
• added hardware to our kitchen cabinets
• toilet repair (on several occasions)
• garage door repair
• replacing the back door
• fence/gate repair (wooden fence, cedar boards)
• landscaping (there are lots of parts to this, but I'll leave it at that)
• minor deck repair
• regrout the shower

And still on the "to do" list:

• fix the wall by the shower (replace sheetrock and baseboards, retexture and paint)
• get rid of wallpaper in master bathroom
• fix small and large dings in drywall around the house
• get new carpet (I'm not installing this myself, but we're getting new carpet soon. I hope)

At some point in the future, I would like to renovate and flip the house, doing most of the work by myself or with a brother or friend. Here are the skills I don't yet have that I would probably need:

• plumbing. I can do some minor things, but I've never done anything with copper piping.
• hanging drywall (along with tape, mud, sanding, etc)
• installing kitchen cabinets/bathroom vanities (my brother has done that, so if the two of us were to work together, we could do it)
• framing a wall (yeah, it's no big deal, but it's something I haven't done)
• window replacement. However, having replaced a door, I figure I'm not too far off on this one.
• major deck repair/construction.
• roof repair
• siding

I'm sure I've missed some. Let me know, and I'll add them to the list.