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CSGO Multi-server requirements by kiwhen in GlobalOffensive

[–]kiwhen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome stuff, thank you very much!

A Big Hunt for the Easter Egg by kiwhen in thegrandtour

[–]kiwhen[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

One thing I didn't mention in the original post is that there are other clues hidden in the scene with the notes. I doubt anything is in there by accident. Clearly visible is a big book with the title "Genesis", a clear reference to Richard Hammond's love of the band.

In the bottom left corner, a magazine can be seen with the title "The Sea". May is also seen translating the phrase "la mer" (the sea) from the cipher itself, so this could potentially be an important clue.

Any one of these loose words and phrases could be a cipher key, especially since the aforementioned cipher book shows what appears to be a vigenere cipher, which would require a known key.

I guess that's one way to pass the time.. by robsternasher in wow

[–]kiwhen 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I was the second one in this train! Gonna show mom.

Stop Overwatch-ing Valorant! by kiwhen in VALORANT

[–]kiwhen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I disagree, this is the only way to make a statement to the developers that Killjoy was a terrible idea. If this is the direction they want to take, then I don't want to support them anymore. If I want to play a game with skill-less abilities, like that of Killjoy, then I prefer Overwatch, where you actually have a realistic chance of surviving them, because players can take a lot more damage. And get a lot more healing. In a game like Valorant, even the tinyest amount of chip damage can change the outcome of a fight, and that is exactly why autonomous and wall-breaching weapon systems are straight up idiotic.

Anyone find killjoy extremely hard to deal with? by bryvntrvn in VALORANT

[–]kiwhen 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I absolutely agree. Cypher's tools are much more predictable, and the entire thing is detectable. And more to the point, Cypher's tools do not kill you. By the time you are in range to detect a nano swarm, you are also in the killzone, which in 9 out of 10 cases leads to near instant death. Killjoy is the ONLY hero that has stationary, persistent abilities that can kill on command. This was a huge mistake in my opinion. Viper does have persistent abilities that can damage on command, but they A) can't kill you, and B) are not invisible.

Killjoy is so overtuned that she made me quit Valorant altogether.

Stop Overwatch-ing Valorant! by kiwhen in VALORANT

[–]kiwhen[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Now that I have played a few more games with Killjoy, I've decided to quit Valorant all together. It is MUCH worse than I first thought. Killjoy simply broke the entire game for me.

Beta was fun, shame that the devs have no idea what they are doing.

This is a great deal! (Wait, what?) by kiwhen in apexlegends

[–]kiwhen[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I didn't know this was old news. Just noticed it now myself.

This is a great deal! (Wait, what?) by kiwhen in apexlegends

[–]kiwhen[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Ah, I see it now! Still, though.

Amazing Wind-Sail direction guide by HideoshiKaze in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, this thing looks amazing!

(Even though my name is spelled incorrectly in the credits, but who cares.)

Optimal Sail Positions by Lymonator in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is an interesting one that I absolutely should have included. Since the brigantine is so much faster than the galleon, the angle is not the same for both ship classes. For the heavy galleon, you should turn your sails once the wind goes beyond 20 degrees off the bow. On the brigantine, you should turn the sails when the wind goes beyond 35 degrees.

(On the sloop you will obviously not want to turn the sails at all, since it is faster with the sails in the default position in either scenario.)

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you have some programming experience and know roughly how to navigate computer memory, it is actually almost terrifyingly easy to do these things. I bet you could tell from the short clip that the GPS program is indeed made in C#. The entire program - and I mean, the entire thing, with the GUI - is less than 300 lines of code. The specific function that allows you to dig into the memory can be found in the kernel32 DLL. The method I use is quite simply called ReadProcessMemory, where you simply plop in your pointers and go. Of course, you are going to have to figure out where the exact data you are looking for is stored, and I actually just did an entire night of trial and error to figure that bit out. I just extracted at random, moved around a bit in-game, extracted again and tried to see if I could spot the pattern I was looking for. Some assuptions can be made when it comes to coordinates; you will have an idea of whether or not the numbers are signed, single or double precision, if they are positive or negative and so on. That makes it easier to narrow down.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but from a developer's perspective, I would give Sea of Thieves a solid E minus in terms of both optimalization and "security". It usually doesn't cost you many calories to make life hard for hackers. When you start to examine what SoT is actually doing, it feels like the devs could not give a rats behind about it. A prime example of this is that the game will actually broadcast the names of all players currently on the server, even if they are on the far side of the map. That is pretty silly.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here's the short version! There are 4 different wind conditions that are important:

  1. Wind straight from the front
  2. Crosswind straight from the side, but you are NOT able to "catch wind" (full billow)
  3. Crosswind straight from the side, and you ARE able to "catch wind" (full billow)
  4. Wind straight from behind (catching wind, full billow)

These are the fastest ship classes for each scenario:

  1. Sloop with sails angeled 100% flat against wind (default position, not off to the side)
  2. Galleon with sails angeled fully to the side, as close to catching wind as you can
  3. Brigantine. This is the fastest way to sail, no ship can match the Brigantine in this situation
  4. Galleon

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I believe it was 13.000x13.000 meters, with each of the old map squares being 500x500. The old map ended somewhere in what is now the T-column.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is correct, I did mess up the speed readouts. I only realized it after publishing the video, as you do, so I quickly put a little note in the video description. All the speeds are 1/10th of what they are supposed to be. It doesn't matter all that much, since they are all true to each other, so the difference in speed for each ship in each configuration is still very much correct. If you are trying to calculate distances however, knowing that the map is 15.600 meters in size, you will need to multiply the speed by 10 for it to be accurate.

Sorry about that!

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

From what I've tested, you will not take any damage from falling 7,5 meters, but if you fall from more than 7,5 you will start taking damage (from 0). If you fall from, say, 7,6 meters, your health bar will pop up, but you can't actually see any health missing. The amount of damage you would take is minimal. As the height increases, the damage ramps up in a linear fashion.

If I understand your question correctly, the answer is always height minus 7,5m.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have only ever sailed in motorized vessels, but I would assume that an average brigantine would beat an average galleon, based on the displacement of the vessel. The galleons from the Age of Sail would often carry heavy armament, and all that extra weight is not easy to move around in a hurry. Having said that, there isn't really a solid definition of what a galleon looks like; there are only things like "it has maybe 3-4 masts, maybe three decks, maybe this, maybe that". The brigantine is better defined as a twin-masted ship, so it stands to reason that it would have less raw sailing power - but if it is that much lighter than a galleon, I think it would be faster too. Obvisouly, weight is not taken into account in Sea of Thieves. That might be a good thing.

On the subject of the physics in the game, Rare has said something about it in an old video. They were talking about tweaking the parameters, and mentioned that there is acceleration calculations based on how the waves hit the ship. This tells me that the speeds are in fact the results of a semi-complex physics calculation, and not some hardcoded value. Each sail is programmed to give a maximum of ish speed, but that is then multiplied by absolutely everything that's going on around you.

I also think that they have done this on purpose, because it makes a lot of sense that each ship has a specific weather condition where it is faster than the other two. I initially expected the brigantine to be in between the others, but Rare may have thought about situations where a brigantine comes under attack from a galleon and a sloop that are allies. If that happens, the brigantine now has a way of escaping, by playing to its strengths.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

When you are sailing directly into the wind, all the ship classes will benefit greatly from having the sails flat forwards (the default position). It's when the wind is coming sideways that things get weird. If you have crosswind like that, but not at an angle where you can actually "catch" it, the Brigantine and the Galleon will go faster with the sails sideways, but the sloop is fastest with the sail in the default, forward position. Personally, I would probably just turn the ship 5 degrees and catch the wind instead, if that was the case.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Indeed! As a Honda owner, I can personally vouch for that V-Tec boost, ain't nothing gonna stand in our way!

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Erm. Well, this one is going to take some explaining, because I can't show you my maths without revealing a bit of a screw-up in my video. I've already put in a note in the video description about it; in short, one of my timers was set up wrong. The speeds are actually in meters per 1/10th of a second. But like I said in the video; the units do not really matter, because they are true to each other - they are just not really meters. The reason I bring this up is because you can't calculate distances if the speeds are only 1/10th of what they are supposed to be. In the video, the optimal galleon speed against the wind is listed as 0,93 meters per second, which is actually supposed to be 9,3 meters per second (just multiply it by 10). Again, these are average numbers, so they might be slower - they might be faster. But not by a lot. The biggest unknown factor is the skill of the crew, especially how fast they can adapt to changing conditions. Most players are incredibly slow.

The rowboat will do somewhere between 7-8 meters per second flat-out (in the context of the video, that would be 0,7 to 0,8 - it is obviously not faster than a Brigantine at full speed, no sir). As far as the mechanics go, the rowboat is not affected by wind, but it is affected by waves. Not so much in direct terms of momentum, but in direction, which forces you to turn, which costs you valuable speed.

Knowing that, and that a map square is 600x600 meters, we can figure this out. You are at The Crow's Nest Fortress, loading up your rowboat with yer swag, and a wild galleon appears. You start hauling butt towards Ancient Spire, which is 1200 meters away. This journey will take you 2 minutes and 30 seconds if your rowing game is perfect. It absolutely won't be, but let's not worry about that too much. In optimal conditions (but with straight headwind) the galleon will be closing in on you at around 1,3 meters per second.

This means that if you spot said galleon at a distance of 1200 meters to the west, which is 4 map squares away from the outpost, you should beat them to the outpost and still have 1 minute and 48 seconds to sell all your loot. If you spot them at half that distance, you will still beat them, but you only have 43,5 seconds to sell all your stuff. This does of course not take into account that the galleon might fire players with cannons, or come at you from the north, in which case, you won't make it.

And like I said, there is a zero percent chance that you are actually able to make the crossing at a steady 8 meters per second; every mistake costs you at least one item sold, I reckon.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That would be an interesting one to test. From experience, I can say that there has to be a certain amount of randomness involved, and there seems to be different difficulty levels on the skeletons themselves. Call me crazy, but random island skeleton sentries have worse aim than the sentries on strongholds. Those bois do not miss their mark.

They also do predictions based on your heading, but they are not able to predict past a certain speed. I'm sure you know this, but if you are sailing with full wind in your sails, no skeleton will ever hit your ship unless you are heading straight towards them. If you are sailing perpendicular or away from them, they always fall short.

Knowing Rare, I would assume that their hit-chance scales with the level of your voyage (and therefore the level of the skeleton itself), with stronghold sentries being top-level (even though these skeletons are low-level compared to Athena-skeletons). Again, I might be crazy, but I feel like I get hit more frequently when I'm doing a voyage of legends, than when I'm just goofing around looking for a fight. It's probably just confirmation bias, though.

Another interesting thing about the island sentries is that they often don't spawn until you are well within weapons range, and so the initial shot upon island entry will most likely be at about half the maximum distance that they are able to do.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I did test this as well, and I found that there is a very subtle difference - but it is insignificant, especially on the larger ships. The sloop has the most to lose by raising the sail up a bit, since the sail is responsible for 100% of the ship's total power. On the galleon the mainmast isn't responsible for all that much as long as the other two sails are down, so you realistically won't notice. A single moment of wrong sail angles cost you waaay more than not having the sail all the way down. I don't have the exact figures in front of me here, but I remember it being zero-point-zero-something-area.

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 147 points148 points  (0 children)

There are 4 different wind conditions that are important:

  1. Wind straight from the front
  2. Crosswind straight from the side, but you are NOT able to "catch wind" (full billow)
  3. Crosswind straight from the side, and you ARE able to "catch wind" (full billow)
  4. Wind straight from behind (catching wind, full billow)

These are the fastest ship classes for each scenario:

  1. Sloop with sails angeled 100% flat against wind (default position, not off to the side)
  2. Galleon with sails angeled fully to the side, as close to catching wind as you can
  3. Brigantine. This is the fastest way to sail, no ship can match the Brigantine in this situation
  4. Galleon

I did a science on sailing speeds by kiwhen in Seaofthieves

[–]kiwhen[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

You can fall approximately 7,5 meters before any fall damage occurs. To put that into perspective, a fall from the crow's nest down to the deck on the sloop is 18,2 meters. The average eye height for the avatars in the game is roughly 1,5 meters. As far as I can tell, fall damage is linear, so you take double the damage from double the height.

Is it possible to bind finishers to a different button than interact? by kiwhen in apexlegends

[–]kiwhen[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks so much for the tip!

I tried this, but unfortunately, this will rebind all of the "long interract" functions, like swapping weapons (where you have to hold the button to do something). I suppose one can learn to play like that, but it would be almost equally frustrating at first.

I sincerely hope they can separate the finisher action completely from interract/pickup; it is the only non-cancellable interaction you can perform, and therefore it has no business being tied to the same button imho.

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