Yall ready for this!?

Little taste of whats to come.

Obviously they are not all bugs, but they are all bombin!

> Also, I used the Media feature in wordpress to upload and insert these images, looks slick. I likey.

Every great thing you admire is within you. The reason you admire it is because it is a piece of you that you recognize, feel. A piece of you that is covered up. A part of you that wants to be freed.

My name is Gladiator.

My name is Shuba the Shaman, I fight and I heal. I communicate with spirits of that other world. I am in tune with nature and I feel it’s great energy!

This world was given to us when we were born. We see it for what we think it is. And we accept who we are by what we think. Avoid pain, change. And we slowly die. Life is spent picking up trinkets, hints, and remnants of who we once were. It’s enough to feel good, but not enough to feel complete.

Death will show everyone who they really are. Are you willing to die before you die?

What does it require?

Off with the rats head!!!

http://www.pro-graham.com (Okay, it might redirect here. Go go gadget DNS Server redirect!)

From here I plan to post snippets of code and programming related articles hoping to help people who have found comfort in the same field I currently occupy. My first post should be up this week detailing my advanced AI Battleship application you can play. The application was an extension of an old project I took up with a friend years ago. I recently updated the AI in it for one of my more recent classes as an example of heuristic analysis of grids allowing for advanced play.

Please bare with me as I get my documentation up to snuff and clean the code so I don’t embarass myself too much.

Starcraft2_class is a small subreddit on the site with about 1,400 readers. Its single purpose is for more experienced and skilled players to coach and advise more novice players on the game. As a fairly seasoned player myself I find that I like to spend time coaching others and providing advice on how they can improve their game.

So, what is the topic? Well from the title I’m sure you can guess: Biting off more than you can chew. What I mean to address is an issue in novice players that I’m seeing very frequently that they most often aren’t aware of. The issue stems from players dreaming of reaching the high stars but forget that the path to obtain greatness is one small baby step at a time.

These players watch Day[9] like a religion and have subscribed to every professional tournament streamed online to date. They often follow Idra, Psy, Jinro or Destiny like a cult but all still share the fundamental problem of dreaming too big for what they can obtain (at least at this time).

These players recognize what needs to be done. And that’s the fundamental issue. I don’t want to go too far and say they know too much but it almost comes across as that. They realize the importance of creep spread, saturating bases, maintaining map control scouting your opponent’s movements, teching at a right pace and managing their economy properly but they simply can’t do it all.

They spend a solid phase of their game working their army positioning all the while forgetting entirely to scout the map or expand their vision. They’ll vigorously watch for the larva pop only to neglect the overlord buzzing through the opponent base and once it dies see nothing but partial structures.

And how does one solve this? One step at a time.

It is awesome that players realize everything that needs to be done but it means nothing when you do all of them poorly. If you’re so concerned with your creep spread that you forget to inject larva or research +1 weapons for your roaches you’ve still lost no matter how nice that spread gets.

If you’re a player you feel is guilty of this issue then its better for you to get out there and play some games rather than watch more pro replays. You can keep ramming all the knowledge you want into your head but it will not solve the issue that you don’t have the muscle memory or mechanics to execute it.

I want to stress the importance of practice in this game. More players I see are getting concerned with their rating and it is off setting to them. They abstain from the game to watch professional players and get advice from Mr. Plott but neglect to execute it themselves. I fear it is a mental issue where they believe they’ll get better without actually playing and can return to a shiny Platinum or Diamond rating and once they fail to achieve this are unsettled even further.

So yes, the answer is as cheesy as the 6 pool but the solution is to go play some games. Focus on one thing at a time and don’t get worked up over small details. Broad Strokes (like Day[9] says) are more important than minute details.

But Stank, what’s the announcement?

This is actually unrelated but something I’m quite proud of. I started this post by saying my studies are winding down. What that means is I’ll be entering the workforce ripe with knowledge and ready to get put in my place. I feel however that I have lots to share in the Programming community and have registered a domain to contain these factoids. So, in the future look towards http://www.pro-graham.com for programming blogging, advice, tips and stories. My first post will be regarding a small game AI I wrote for a class this semester. I stand by my work in saying I’ve written the most advanced Battleship AI to date. Such a minor achievement but fun never-the-less.

Best case scenario is taking down 3 more skillful players with 3 less skilled players with excellent decision making. And team work. The underdogs on top!

Imagine the 3 players on a team as a single organism. Characteristics of successful organisms are ones with vision, knowledge, strength, speed, and position.

Terrans need to be in the right position.
Zergs need to be everywhere quickly.
Protoss needs to have strength.

But these things are interchangeable with different units from each race. So this really is not what matters. What matters is how you execute on what information you are given.

A successful organism is able to see what his opponent is doing. The most important thing in war is being able to defend anything. Vision makes the correct defense.

“The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.”

When attacking… “Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”

In other words, attacking is good, but when the targets are poor, the defender wins. Workers, pylons, pieces of tech, command centers. I feel that if given the time, a snipe of a command center is better than the time taken to kill the workers. I could be wrong tho, I haven’t done the math.

Vision of the opponents gives you the information to strike the most critical places. You are able to see the weaknesses. Usually I will just use intuition because I feel the opponent is weak. This works sometimes, other times I lead to disaster.

“Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

I have noticed that when a team is given scouting information, they are much more comfortable, and confident. In 1v1′s if I am feeling uneasy, I just send a probe out to death, to see what they have. With the information I get, I regain the comfort and confidence.

In team games when you scout the opponent really good, they know it, and it even affects their teams confidence. They feel figured out and exposed. They sink into a defensive position. A fighter who has a sudden loss of vision will most likely fall into the futile position, otherwise hurl themselves into desperation attacks, which most likely ends them. Been there. ~_^