Benie's Games Blog

So, I might as well go over the latest for A8. To be honest, I’m thinking of quitting the project. Hard to believe, after I jumped at the chance to do another road, yes?
Last night was kind of the reason I thought of quitting.
Basically, I came back from dinner. Saw what we had to do. Suppoe wanted to have the road to split in two to get around this mountain and up to the top, to flatten it out for its next section.

I had an idea, to use the inner lanes as the two lanes that will be the split. Even had a plan on how to do the merge. RedBear was actually against this. So I had the two talk it over. Unfortunately, both of them don’t have Mumble. So we couldn’t talk this through completely.
They (not I), thought of a way to get the entire four-laned monstrosity up, do a 115 degree turn around and get it pointing to where it needs to.
As I said, I was never involved in the decision-making… since then I felt; “why am I even doing this? I’m nothing but a fraud.”

I feel like giving the road to suppoe. He fucking deserves it. His curves made A8 possible… not me. Though he told me he doesn’t want it, due to the fact he doesn’t come on that often. He also claims he doesn’t ‘plan’, he just does it. So Red is actually doing the planning here. Suppoe feels that Red’s curves are only making it worse on him.

I don’t know what to do. I doubt Red would want it, because he too would be the same way. But I just can’t do this anymore.
You may ask “why”. I’m used to straight roads. ONLY.. straight roads. I crack when I have to do a curve. And all A8 has been doing is breaking my spirit.
I mean, I CAN do curves. But only simple ones. I can do a simple 90* turn. That’s it. The problem is, the Mods don’t want those kind of curves. They want more realistic, wide-ass curves that take forever to plan out. Curves like suppoe can do.

There’s others that actually wish they could be like suppoe; to do curves without even thinking about them.. without even planning them. Someone even suggested that I make a memorial somewhere near A8 for suppoe. I told them it would be up to frozen if I can.
And he (suppoe) thinks I can be like him. I only know the basics. The BARE… basics. I’m not like him. I will never be like him.

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It’s done. The curve is done, and so is my employment to it. I’ve quit A8. I should had fucking NEVER agreed to it!! Infact, I’m taking a break from the server. I just can’t stand it anymore.
suppoe with his “you got to try to guess” .. I don’t want to FUCKING TRY!! I want to KNOW the angle is right! FUCK ‘trial and error’!! It’s just not for me.

Basically, what happened is we finally get the curve done. I’m happy. suppoe’s very happy. Red is happy. Also, we finally had a way of talking to eachother without using PMs. I wanted to use Mumble to do team-building exercises. suppoe couldn’t figure out what was going on with his copy of Mumble, I got fed up and asked both of them to get on /p1 instead.
I believe I mentioned this many months ago; they’re the project channels. Anyone can join them, even if they don’t have a project. Personally, I find this stupid. But, there’s nothing I can do about it.
So I got suppoe and Red both talking in there. Felt good. As I said, we got the curve done. While suppoe’s celebrating, I’m flying over what we need to do. I then see a road built where we were planning to do the split. I’m shocked, thinking “Ok…who in the fuck is building roads without my approval?!”
I found out it was Red. I was THIS close from kicking him off the contract for it, but I tried my best to calm down, even when suppoe was all (in PMs to me); “this isn’t going to work. I wanted to do a tunnel here. It looks messed up”. None of us had the balls to tell Red that he fucked up.

Finally I managed to fully calm down, controlling my anger and telling Red to please remove the roads he created. He even said he was going to if required. And so he did.
And then suppoe mentioned how the curve we did before was a mess, yet never told Red about it (he did tell me in PMs before of what to tell him. And despite me telling him over and over in P1 to tell Red what he told me, he never did).
Anyway, Red said that he uses the same program I used to do some of the curves of the first road of the New World. This thing. suppoe act like he was impressed, yet also seemed like “Ehh.. Benie doesn’t need to use this. He just needs to learn how to do curves like me.”(he never actually said this, but I could feel it)
Red had to leave for a bit to do something. I had asked suppoe if Red knew what to set the radius. He believes that Red had just guessed, like himself. This annoyed me a bit.
Red came back, I asked him and he too said the same thing, and suppoe is high-5ing him. This is when I went into one of my “deep depression” things. I’m thinking “Wow.. just wow.” It was like suppoe was trying to give me an unwelcomed wakeup call, that ‘trying’ is the only way I’ll ever amount to anything.
So I flew away from the curve, saying nothing to anyone. I just wanted to go home and think.

And that brings me to here. I told suppoe, who was AFK, that I had given the road back to frozen, and that I was sorry. Then I told frozen that I would give A8 back to him. I did find out earlier, that I couldn’t even give the road to him if I even wanted to. He wanted me to tell everyone that helped me this, so I told Red. He was a bit surprised, thinking it’s something he may’ve did.
And so… it’s done. Now I don’t have to worry about A8 ever again. And suppoe… :/ The last thing he said to me was “fine”, then logged off the server. Probably never to be seen again.
I could tell (if it isn’t obvious enough) he was very disappointed in me, giving up like this. But really, it’s best. And that’s what I told him before he did log off.

My “road king” days are locked in the Old World. This was when the forced European Motorway system wasn’t a thing (but really, I have no problem with Europeans. You guys are awesome in your own way). It was me in charge, and I did InterMaps. I still love I-0, because it wasn’t anywhere as twisty as A8 is. And I even did the curves in the Northwest section that was near Gund Valley (the tunnel).
I-0 was a straight East-West InterMap; a true Interstate. 🙂 Fucking loved working on that thing. I really wish I could hug it.
But building roads in the New World…. meh. Even if I was to propose that request I had to connect my island to the road network, I doubt it’ll get approved by the Admins.

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EDIT2: After giving it a lot of thought (and watching 8-Bit Game Time fail and fail again with a very hard Super Mario Maker level), I’ve decided that I want A8 back.
Because, I am a dragon. And a dragon NEVER… EVER gives up until they get what they want! And I, want A8 done. With this curve generator, I will be doing the curves for now on(with the help of Red teaching me how to make the program work in my favor). NOT suppoe.
Red last night, actually made me feel better. He said that he didn’t see what suppoe saw when he was trying to high-5 him. He actually saw what I saw. He knew I’ve been struggling, trying as hard as I could to learn how to do these insane curves.

With this program, I feel I can make these curves.

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EDIT3: Long post is long. I’ve been practicing all day, back at my island on doing the curves. Yet I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong for the inner and outer curves of the entire road thing.
I tried playing with the numbers the best I could, using lower numbers for tighter curves and larger numbers for more gradual curves. After awhile, I finally got the entire thing correct.
I had discovered something about the A8 when working on it. Something rather interesting, why it made doing curves so… hard. When doing the inner curves, you have to reverse-thicken with the program. Meaning, I found out the inner white curve was a 49, however, when using the ‘thick’ option, you got to use the blocks it adds, instead of the original blocks. You got to remove them in your mind.
This is due to the center line being thicker than a standard curve.

After dinner, I tried to teach Tulsi how to do curves (using that program). Unfortunately, he has the attention span the size of a walnut. Trying to keep him focused was more challenging than doing the curve. I wonder if this is what suppoe goes through, when trying to teach me how to do curves.
The funny thing about this, Tulsi “wants to” learn; so he can help me with the A8 (when I’m able to talk to frozen again).

Speaking of suppoe, he actually came on later today. Shocked the hell out of me. Told him to call me, that I “had something to show you. Something you’ll like”. He did, saw the curve and was all “no..way..”. I told him I’ve been using the program Red gave me to do curves, and said that I wanted A8 back.

Later on, suppoe actually figured out what Red was trying to tell me about “going in 2 when it gets tighter, and out 2 when it goes out wider”. Each block away from the center line, is the power of two. It wasn’t the way I had thought, however this makes things a LOT easier to figure out.
Then he had to go. Frozen showed up about .. oh.. 10-15 minutes later. I told him I wanted A8 back. He said “go for it”.

So cool, A8’s back under my control. A somber victory. However… I call this a victory in the right direction. A victory when I finally looked into my dragon soul and saw, I CAN do this. I WILL.. do this. I will fear curves no longer.

The A8 will learn to fear the wrath, and the determination of a dragon. The A8 will be completed before Christmas. That I can promise.

As I stated a day ago in my post, frozen informed me that “A8 is go”. Meaning Cortesi gave control to me. I waited all day yesterday for either him or frozen to get on to get the map. What I got in return… fuck. Frozen’s typical “Trick or Treat”. Except it’s it’s a Trick AND a Treat!

Right, so Cortesi got on a bit later on in the day. He showed me “a map”, which was more like a line of sponges marking where the A8’s extension (after it leaves Whitechapel) will go.
From the start, the A8 is nothing BUT curves… all around this beach, even when it starts, it starts at an angle. It does straighten itself out before leaving the beach and heading into the mountains. But here… it’s pure HELL. Hairpin turns. Going through mountains at an angle. WHAT THE FUCK, FROZEN?!?! This makes the hell I went through with planning I-1 years ago, as easy as a child could plan it.

This looks like my greatest challenge since I-1. I…. I’m still questioning my sanity. But I shouldn’t really complain. This is what I love doing on the server. This is what I claim I know how to do well on the server. Frozen wouldn’t had picked me to do it if he didn’t have confidence I can do it.
And do it I shall. However, not without hundreds of people that need to help me with doing specific angles. Until I get to a point where it’s a straight shot, I’m going to continue requiring help.
Though I AM trying to do some of these angles on my own (shock, I know). But I can’t ALWAYS depend on others to help me!
Though thankfully, I have the support of suppoe, RedBear47, and Starcubed. Also Tulsi’s happening. But he too feels the pain I feel. And even suppoe, he nearly blames me for accepting this challenge.

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Update: 10/20/15.. Day 3 of doing the road. Logged in to see that RedBear (who logged in yesterday) had set a lot of stuff while I slept. Not only did he plan where A8 would go ’till it reached the straight area that I could do myself, he planned out another route that he claims frozen approved (as an option). This is a much longer, difficult route, and I’m not too sure if I’m going to approve it to be built.
He also planned out how frozen wants the A-Class road to split into two roads (two lanes going in opposite directions). It looks similar to a road I actually love traveling on in Euro Truck Simulator 2’s Scandinavia DLC (the one in Norway). Except that road is insanely twisty and goes through a mountain, even looping over itself several times before flattening back into a B-Class.
Some members feel that frozen could be possibly breaking his own rules, by stating “no sharp turns”… yet wants me to do hairpin(180*) turns and hard(90*) turns. Also, suppoe didn’t know what a “hairpin turn” is.

And the reason RedBear planned the alternate, longer route, is due to a sudden forced bridge that’ll go into a mountain. He claims it’ll look too weird. Personally, I rather go with weird than go with a longer route. I’ll have to talk to suppoe over it. And Tom_Pairs also wants to talk to frozen about the hard-ass turns.
I think we all wish frozen didn’t think of this road, in this shape.

Yesterday on the MRT Server, was quite busy. A LOT was happening. Had A-Class roads to build, a ferry that someone wanted to install on my island, the GSM (that was kind of in my favor. Will explain the changes), and lastly I had issues with my NVIDIA drivers (that thankfully were fixed easily). And also issues with the server (that aren’t so easily fixed).
Let’s get to it.

Another Ferry
Anyway, I wasn’t on the server at the time. I was prepping the website for the latest videos of my ‘Benie Fails At: Killzone Shadow Fall’ thing. Before I could finish, JohnNotTech messages me on Skype, asking if he could have the slip on my island, Soiled Solitude. I told him sure, and thanked him for it then hopped in.
It was around 12:04pm when I did. Immediately he tried to /tpa to me (even though I wasn’t where I was supposed to). But I got him there.

He didn’t have a ferry ready, said he would need time to build it. I offered him to build it next to the slip at my island, but he decided to do it in the Lab world instead.

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“This is my jam!”
(A footnote(yet deserves to be in this section), after the GSM, frozen told me that I now have control of A8’s construction. He hasn’t sent me the map to show what it’ll look. I’m still waiting for him to get back on to do so)
While this was happening, bestmate66 was trying to get people to help him with the A4 (stating it’s “block-placing drone work”), paying $50 per person.
I asked him “What help do you require, Best?” (I like people being specific on the type of job they need done), and was paid $50 right on the spot. I’m thinking “Hmm.. looks like I better do it.” and /tpa’d to best, and did so.

Here, it was standard clearing/terraforming/road building. This is my JAM right here!! Hell, I would’ve done this for FREE! 😀 So I did my job without question.
AP_Rednax is in control of A4, so we had to talk to him to verify what we needed to do at certain times during construction (such as if to raise the road or plow through the terrain, or to tunnel through).

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My kind of GSM / Server issues
(This has to do with both things, as they were happening at the same time)
While the building was going on, I was informed that there’s a GSM coming in three hours (from the time I started working). I had no idea, though the number of people should had told me. Though I thought it was just a normal Saturday.

While I was building, I noticed the issues I saw a few weeks ago when on the server. It was affecting the TPS (Ticks Per Second) of the server. Due to the number of people on the server, it was just making it worse than before.
How I see the issue is easy; physics blocks (Sand/Gravel) lagging before being selectable after falling. I saw this issue on my island, when I was making my underground tunnel to connect my island to the island just off the coast to the Northeast of mine.
The only “fix” is a server restart(though it’s more like a short-term fix). Thankfully, Frumple was ontop of it and did it. He also told us that if you don’t absolutely need to be on the server, to please not do so to help with server load.

So after the second restart (about 20 minutes from the GSM), I got off and also disabled WorldDownloader from loading, fearing that could be contributing to the issue. Plus, this was almost the time the blog post below me, went up automatically to indicate a half an hour ’till the videos went up.

Anyway, the GSM started. The rest of us in the main channel of Mumble, were talking random things like bus lines and other player-related build stuff like that.
About 1 hour and 23 minutes into the private portion of the GSM, Cortesi and JustRobinho come in and say how they’re almost done, and the discussion “is all about roads. Roads roads ROADS!!”, and how they were sick and tired of talking about them.
I’m thinking “Holy wow.. THIS is my kind of GSM! I’m definitely going going to stay on to hear the results!”

See, I want to do a B-Class road from my island, take it due West and connect it to any A-Class road going to Nippia. But to do so, most of the road would be underground until it reaches the mainland. I envisioned the end that connects to my island would be underground, connected to an EElevator. Basically, you’ll stop your car in a parking lot, and head to the elevator to get on my island.
This to me, would be the least ugly approach to doing a road to and from my island.

Anyway, back to the server issues. Frumple eventually set the limit to the people that can join the server to 20. He said that in “a few hours after the GSM”, he would raise the limit. A lot of people got confused of this, with bestmate66 being our guide to tell us what was going on. I really like this, and I see him potentially being Mod-material (mainly due to the fact he’s well-liked among the community).

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So, without further ado, here’s the results of the public portion of the GSM;
-You no longer need permission to do a tunnel for a road(A or B class). You still need to make it realistic, which I’m in favor.
-You still don’t need Admin approval to build a B-Class road. The thing is, if it’s ONLY connected to an A-Class. If it ends in a town that’s not yours, you still need perms. (However, I DO require permission for mine…)
-The term “C-Class” has been thrown out the door, so much that Frumple doesn’t even want to hear it brought up again. They’re just surface streets anyway (aka city streets).

The rest of it, they talked about extending a few of the current MRT rail lines. Frumple also mentioned that Mod applications will be brought up next month’s GSM, which will happen on November 7th. Also, due to CG and Thomasfyfe not coming on in months, Frumple feels that we need more Admins (even if they were to come back).
I have no hopes that my name would be picked to become Mod. More than likely, I say bestmate (as I said before) has a good chance of becoming Mod. That’s really all I see.
I would had also thought Han would be a good candidate… except from what happened last night that I rather not go over(might discuss in my General blog, but with a warning not to disclose it to anyone else), as if it ever got out, people would be warned and/or banned, and it’s best to just let it calm down on its own. So I was forced to change my mind about that… :/

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Despite having issues with my NVIDIA drivers crashing after 1-2 minutes after logging in about three hours after the GSM (went to Burger King for dinner, then had to get my AC out of my window), and… the thing that happened that I cannot explain, I mainly just worked on the remainder of the A4 that AP_Rednax worked on, before and during the GSM.
Also, I became the person to ask of what happened during the GSM for a few people who weren’t there during it. Oh yeah. Frumple had also raised the player limit to 40 on the server. He’s going to try to do a few diagnostic things to find the issue, such as temporarily disable Redstone(RELAX, people! It’s not forever! Frumple wouldn’t do that) to see if that could be causing the issues.

Most people believe the issues started since the server moved over to 1.8, and moved to the Spigot system instead of Bukkit, as it’s apparently dead in the water. The server’s been under heavy load, with Frumple mentioning how they maxed out their memory (8GB). Damn. That’s bad. He said he might look into buying a few machines to try to move come of the crap off the main server, to minimize the load.