Caltrops - A Mind Forever Voyaging





	[quote name="Ray of Light"]I'm in a room with a pool and some barrels and a lot of the decor is metallic blue. I recognize it as Doom E1L1. I kill an imp. There is no fear, so either this is a theme park or I am so expert at Doom E1L1 that I just could never feel fear in that situation. I don't have a gun but the imp died when I willed it, so everything seems manageable. Another imp goes down. Then Zseni appears! With someone else! This person was someone who knew us both, but (as in real life) there are people I don't look at or acknowledge and he was one of them, so I can't give any other description. He didn't speak the entire time and neither of us addressed him. They are both less at ease than I. I assure them that I know this area well. Zseni says something dismissive containing the phrase "couldn't possibly" and charges ahead in a huff. The third person is already on the way, like he knew she was going to do that. I shrug and follow. We are in a stairwell, two parallel flights of metal grate (not solid, like in the real Doom) divided by a landing. I am on the first (lower) flight and they are past the landing, on the second flight and out of my sight but I can hear their steps on the grate. Doom had a pretty good rhythm to its enemy placement and I'm certain the next one is very close, probably at the top of the landing. She is talking excitedly about music sung by foreigners and I think this is not appropriate conversation for a life-or-death situation, so I steer it back to matters at hand. I start to give a history of the Doom engine and franchise (which, in waking, turns out to be wrong -- "Doom was just a skin of Quake" -- but I was sure of it at the time, as you sometimes are in dreams). Still talking, I reach the landing and turn 180. I look up and there is an imp directly above on a shelf. This setup wasn't possible in the real Doom, with its "two and a half D" engine that allowed only one possible Z-position at any given XY-position, but I am not surprised. Companions in the way, I do not have a clear shot. I remember thinking "this is the price of hubris" and how clever it was of Carmack to design a game that could detect and punish it. Then I woke up. <b>Bonus Caltrops Dream -- provided for Contrast -- which may sound made-up but is not</b>: I had an FPS-themed dream about Sassy some weeks before she came to visit, which I also wrote down. The venue was Q3CTF4 (my best game): <img src=http://i19.tinypic.com/4p2auyv.png> The dream started with us on the center island (blue megahealth in pic) making preliminary chat. There was no third party. The opponent was Sassy herself, playing red (I had blue). The match begins with me attempting shotgun (good for 90-plus damage from 125 at that range) and her dodging with a rocket jump to a bounce pad (just outside frame of pic, near the <font color="limegreen">g</font> in <font color="limegreen">Yoga_with_flag</font>), which then bounced her to the upper platform behind my name (<b>plop</b>) on the scoreboard (scoreboard did not appear in my dream). It's a cagy and skillful maneuver, and also a little silly: there are yellow armors in either base accessible without taking rocket jump damage. Opponents do this to show off. She got the yellow armor there; I got the mega (blue circle). Her only exit from that plat is back to where I am, while my exits are long bouncepad flights that expose me to fire and give her an energy advantage. Sun Tzu calls this "temporizing ground":[quote cite="Sun Tzu's THE ART OF WAYARR"]We may distinguish six kinds of terrain, to wit:<ul><li>Accessible ground; <li>entangling ground; <li>temporizing ground; <li>narrow passes; <li>precipitous heights; <li>positions at a great distance from the enemy.</ul>... When the position is such that neither side will gain by making the first move, it is called temporizing ground. In a position of this sort, even though the enemy should offer us an attractive bait, it will be advisable not to stir forth, but rather to retreat, thus enticing the enemy in his turn; then, when part of his army has come out, we may deliver our attack with advantage.[/quote] This situation is a waiting game (my tactic is to wait for the mega to respawn and use that as the bait Sun is talking about). So I begin to wait, when suddenly she rocket jumps AGAIN to the middle level of the base (near the 7 in Nablard's score column and you can see a yellowish health speck there, which she landed on top of)!!!! This is a very nice play, and would often result in a capture for her even though I've secured the megahealth uninjured. Except she did it into her own base instead of mine. At this point my health/armor would be 200+0 and dropping; her 100+40. Pressing my temporary megahealth advantage, I took the lower bouncepath to her base, which would land me near her position. The gameplan here is to trade large amounts of damage, intending to drain her 140 before my 200 runs out, and then use the pristine base's health spheres to recharge. She moved backward, taking the bouncepad to the upper level, where the flag is. It's ten seconds in: I have yet to land a shot and she has yet to fire one. Wondering if I'm being toyed with, I wake up. [quote name="Fussbett"]Ray of Light invited me to play basketball with his community basketball team. They rent a gym out for an hour and sweat like men. So I get there, and we're in this lounge area, and I see that Ray's friends are all older gentlemen, and I conclude that Ray doesn't tolerate immaturity. [/quote] I used to play a lot of basketball. Also my friends have always been older than I am. This is good dreaming. [/quote]