• 18Sep 09

  Wouln't it be weird if a team hung a scoreboard over the football field? ...

  ... but fortunately, haha, nobody is stupid enough to do that. ...

  Wait. The Dallas Cowbosy put the largest, most expensive HD-video screen on the roof of their new stadium, hanging directly over the middle of the football field? And its already been hit by tall punts?

  Man, that is just stupid. If you're a football team owner, you know that kickoffs and punts get pretty high up in the air. And you know that most punters in the league right now go with very high pooch-punts when trying to pin the other team close to the end zone. So why would you put an expensive scoreboard/screen over the middle of the field like that? Sure, it sounds like a cool idea, but, five seconds of rational though should have reminded you that punts get pretty high.

  Ok, so the scoreboard is there. Its not going anywhere. Now we need to figure out how we are going to deal with balls hitting the scoreboard. The NFL has already ruled that balls hitting the screen will be "do-overs" AND that it will be a challenge-able play. http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-cowboys-nfl29-2009aug29,0,7168724.storyBut this is just an interim ruling. What are the long-term potential implications of this video screen? What other objects already exist on the field or in the stadium that can interfere with the ball? What precedents already exist?

  1.) The first obvious thing that pops to mind is the goal post. Any time a pass or kick bounces off a goal post upright or crossbar, the play is dead. It is certainly not a do-over. The goal post is technically considered to be "out of bounds".

  2.) Another "obstacle" on the field are referees. I am not 100% sure about this (could not find it in the rule book), but when the ball hits a referee, the ball is still live until it touches the ground or the play is otherwise ruled dead.

  3.) The Stadium itself is out of bounds. Far enough out of bounds that it is generally assumed to be impossible for a player to catch the ball while the player is still in bounds after the ball has contacted a part of the stadium. So if a ball hits part of the stadium or goes into the crowd, its a dead ball, out-of-bounds.

  4.) People on the sideline. Because the sideline itself (the actual white line) is so wide and all off-field personel are supposed to be behind that line, balls that contact a player or person out-of-bounds are considered to be out-of-bounds and the play is dead (even if it has not yet hit the ground). If a person on the sideline comes into the field of play, it is a penalty if the person is a player for one team or the other, and play is stopped if some other individual comes onto the field (and in this case, a play may be redone).

  5.) Again, I am not sure about this one, but if the ball comes into contact with an obstacle in the air such as a flying bird or object thrown from the stands such that the ball is deflected, the play may be re-done. In the case of a neutral object, such as a bird, The play might be re-done. I don't know if this has ever happened, or if there is an actual rule. Maybe play just resumes as normal. I don't know. In the other case, if an object is thrown by someone in the stands and it hits the ball, the play will result in an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty on the home team (or maybe its determined by which team the fan who threw the object is a fan of).

  So, in summary, the Cowboys video screen seems to best fit under category 3 or 5. In case 3, the ball is ruled out-of-bounds. However, it has already been established that it is possible for a player to touch the ball after it has hit the video screen, so we can't necessarilty call the play as dead and out-of-bounds, since this situation does not fulfill the assumption of case 3 that the ball cannot touch the stadium and still be interacted with by an on-field player. Well, you might ask "What about domed-stadiums?" Is there a rule that regulates the minimum height of a dome? As far as I know, no such rule exists. But so far, all donmed stadiums have been built sufficiently tall so that no human kicker or quarterback is capable of kicking or throwing the ball high enough to contact the inner dome (if somebody has an example to counter that assertion, I would love to hear or see it). So domed stadiums still fall under the assumption of case 3, the ball cannot contact the dome during the course of legal play. So does that mean we are left with only case 5? Is the Cowboy's Screen the equivalent of a bird flying in the path of the ball? Or is it equivalent to a bottle being intentionally thrown by an angry fan (in this case, Jerry Jones) to interfere with normal play?

  What are the possible results of this screen's presence? Do we have to establish a vertical limit to the field-of-play? A third-dimensional sideline (or "heightline")? How is this rule to be enforced? Will "kicking the ball too high" become a penalty for kickers and punters? Will throwing the ball straight up in the air to try to hit the "heightline" or video screen be penalized as "intentional grounding"? What happens if the league eventually sees a quarterback with the arm-strenght to literally throw the ball across the field who puts a high enough arc on the ball to hit the video screen? If this quarterback is physically capable of throwing a 100 yard Hail Mary, will he hit the screen? If so, the Cowboys' video screen will hinder the ability for a team to score in such a situation. If my team is down by 6 points with the ball on the 1 yard line and only 1 second left on the clock, and I have a QB with a 100-yard-arm with the capability of throwing the ball 100 yards into the endzone. This game has the potential to go on indefinitely with the QB repeatedly throwing the ball downfield and hitting the video screen resulting in a "do-over" until either a.) he gets sacked and play ends or b.) he gets a receiver who beats a defender allowing the QB to throw a garuanteed touchdown.

  • Posted Sep 18, 2009 2:15 pm PT
  • Category: Sports
  • 0 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Tweet
• 11Sep 09

  Why the Beatles: Rock Band is overpriced

  From my review of "The Beatles: Rock Band":

  :

  The game comes packaged with only 45 songs out of the Beatles 200+ song catalog, and a LOT of really great songs are missing. I can understand why somefavorites like "Yesterday" and "Eleanor Rigby" are absent, but where is "Hey Jude", or "A Day in the Life" or "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "Help!"? To put this in perspective, the first Rock Band had almost TWICE as many songs on the disc. And with the complete "Abbey Road" and "Sgt. Pepper" albums already announced as DLC, I can't help but feel somewhat shafted by EA, Harmonix, and Apple Corps.
  Fortunately, I was able to get a pretty good deal on the bundle, so I do not feel too terribly bad about buying some of the DLC when its released. But I can definitely see how someone who blew $250 for the bundle and maybe even another $100 or $200 for one or both stand-alone guitars could feel completely ripped-off. That amounts to basically $10 per song!!! Plus, one of the guitars you bought won't even be useable (since the game did not separate John and George's guitar tracks), AND, you'll still have to shell out another $20-$50 or so for a second and third microphone, and maybe even more if you want microphone stands, AND if you want the cymbal expansion for the drums, it'll be an extra $30+! All added up, that is well over $500 for a game with only 45 songs.

  Don't get me wrong, its a good game, and if you're a Rock Band and/or Beatlesfan and already have the instruments, its worth picking up.

  But be warned, if you are expecting a game that contains the complete works of the Beatles as interactive songs, or a detailed interactive documentary on how their music was made, then you might be very dissapointed when you play the game and discover that you spent $550 for you and up to 5 friends to complete the Story Mode in under 4 or 5 hours.

  So in addition to the game being a whopping $10+ per song, it is also well over $100/hour! For the same price, you can buy 6-Day Park Hopper tickets to Disney Land and California Adventure for a family of FOUR. Granted, the Disney Land trip will cost you significantly more in transportation costs, logding, food, and inevitable gift shop purchases. Regardless of the hidden costs of Disney Land, its pretty ridiculous that I'm comparing the cost of a video game to tickets at a world-renowned amusement park.

  • Posted Sep 11, 2009 3:38 pm PT
  • Category: Games
  • 2 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Tweet
• 2Aug 09

  You'd think advances in AI would lead to more competent NPCs ...

  Is anyone else getting sick of the insistence on developers to give us completely incompetent NPCs that follow us around? Especially when the NPCs are required to survive in order to pass the mission? Everything from RPG party members tosquad-mates in action and shooter games tothe blockers in football games. I am sick to death of being given a tag-along character who can't hold their own in a fight yet insist on running out into the middle of a raging battle with their sword or guns drawn. With all the advances in Artificial Intelligence that have happened in the past 20 years, why are we gamers still forced to put up with dumb-ass tag-along characters?

  I don't know, maybe I'm just weird because I feel an obligation to try to keep NPC characters alive when I play games. Two games have brought up this complaint. I have recently been going through "The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion" and have been playing the new NCAA Football 10, and the AI in both games is just flat-out retarded. At least Oblivion is a couple years old. But why are AI-teamates and blockers in football games still so unbelievably incompetant? These games are released every year, and every year people complain about how piss-poor the blocking is, and every year EA says they are going to improve it, and every year the game comes out and the blocking still sucks. In this year's game, I have even found myself incapable of running the game on even the easy difficulty because there are simply no holes to run through. Every rushing gain that I make either comes from a broken tackle or forward progress since running backs always fall forward for an extra four yards when being tackled. Good lord, EA, fix the blocking already! Or at least let us make pre-play blocking adjustments when we can blatantly see that a certain defender is going to be a problem. Even the the ability to shift your blocking left right or up the middle hasn't helped make run blocking passable.

  As for Oblivion, GOD, the NPCs are dumb! They just go running straight into fights and get themselves killed. They never block, they never heal themselves, and they never retreat back to their party members for support or healing. And because they are running wildly at full-speed from enemy to enemy, I can't even run out and heal them with my healing spells because there is no target lock, so I have to line up the spell on the run in the hopes that it will hit, but it never does because the NPCs zig-zag all over the place. And as I said earlier, I have a compulsion to try to keep these characters alive. So if one of them gets themselves killed, I will often reload. Not that it helps. I can play the same mission 10 times and focus all my efforts on healing and supporting the NPC, but it won't help. He always manages to find the most dangerous enemy and go straight at him, letting every enemy in between hit him on his way.

  This problem was not as bad in Fallout 3, but still existed. The best example is Dogmeat. Dogmeat just loves to run out and get himself killed by supermutants and raiders. And once he's gone, you can't call him back.

  Bethesda, for future reference, if you are going to give us NPCs, give us the ability to effectively communicate with them in battle. In reality, you don't need to be right in front of somebody or even looking at them in order to talk or give orders. Having to do so in a video game is Bull. Bethesda (and other applicable game studios), from now on, all you're games should have an "NPC" tab in the main menu so that at any time, we can pause the game and issue orders to any NPC that is currently in our party or following us. Orders should include: "Attack aggressively", "Attack conservatively", "Retreat", "Defend Me", "Defend Ally", "Regroup", "Heal", and so on. And if you want to go to the trouble, you can even tie in their willingness to follow orders to whether or not they trust our character.

  Heck, with the incompetence levels of NPC s in most games, I'm surprised that the CPU-controlled band-members in Rock Band don't fail out of songs and ruin your gigs.

  No more needless NPC deaths. Please.

  • Posted Aug 2, 2009 11:56 pm PT
  • Category: Games
  • 2 Comments
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Tweet

See Previous Blog Posts »