Fake Mobile Game Ads

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Most video game advertisements naturally show the gameplay at its most exciting, thrilling, and successful. Yet there is one common type that doesn’t. Imagine an ad for a platformer where the character misses an easy jump and falls into a pit, a fighting game where they try and fail to pull off a single special move, and so on. That is the changing but obvious world of fake mobile game ads, where the ‘player’ engages in either simple puzzles or a Space Invaders style descending enemy wave game and almost invariably loses pathetically.

See, there’s a reason for this and that’s because the actual game is nothing like the ads. Most of the games depicted in these commercials are city builders with everything taking forever unless you speed the process up with real money. Not very photogenic. The actual ad mode is relegated to a small minigame so that it’s not technically false advertising.

Review: Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army

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Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army

David Isby’s 1988 edition of Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army is perhaps the missing link in the OPFOR puzzle. I have to give the obligatory “this is a Cold War western source” to get it out of the way. That being said, once basic prudence is applied, this is an amazing compendium.

It covers every single major weapons system in the 198X Soviet army detailing not just the paper specs but also the intended doctrinal use and actual combat experience in Afghanistan or with foreign armies. This comprehensive look at the whole and not just the sum of the parts is sadly too rare and is very welcome here.

This is a rare, expensive, and massive book. But it is well worth it to any scholar of the Fuldapocalypse.

The Desert Shield Push South

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So WW3 1987 talked about a classic counterfactual: “What if Iraq attacked south in August 1991 against Desert Shield”? Actual Gulf War commanders have had differing opinions, and of course the context matters. I’ve done a bit of simming in Command Modern Operations, and have come to the conclusion that, well, it would have only been troublesome for the coalition by the standards of the actual war’s total squash. Why? Three main reasons.

  1. Air power is more powerful and immediately influential. Though I’m an air power skeptic, disrupting an offensive in the open is one of the easiest things for air power to do, especially one that’s trained for a much harder Fuldapocalypse.
  2. Geography and politics. That literally every country from Qatar down to Oman was part of the coalition means that the Iraqis literally can’t move far enough to stop the landing of reinforcements in friendly territory of some kind.
  3. Historical context. The Iraqis who didn’t think the takeover of Kuwait was a big deal historically had no contingency plans to move farther south. So they’d be winging it, and that’s not exactly a recipe for success given the other problems.

A Thousand Words: Big Fight

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Big Fight: Big Trouble in the Atlantic Ocean

On one hand, the 1992 arcade brawler Big Fight can be viewed as nothing but a mechanically bland copycat of Final Fight and the like. While this is true, it’s also very hard to deny that the game is also a very weird and bizarre eccentric game with a premise that could have been written by Jon Land, graphics that fit said style perfectly, and translation terrible even by the standards of the day that weirdly adds to the charm.

See, the entire game takes place on a cruise ship/battleship/supervillain base called the “SKELETON CREW”. There are three protagonists with designs that aren’t anything to write home about the standard fast/strong/balanced differences. The normal enemies likewise are standard fare… but then come the bosses. They not only include a sumo-kabuki and an ancient Egyptian mummy-wizard, but the big twist is that after each defeat, everyone except the final boss becomes a playable character.

Every one has the same dialogue, repeated here verbatim: “[boss]: ‘Now I came to my sense. Can you take me into partnership? [character who beat the boss]: Sure.”

It’s not explained if they were mind controlled or whatever, but yeah. The sprites and backgrounds are not ‘good’ in terms of pure detail, but they’re bright and do exactly what they need to do. The ship has a variety of zoos, gardens, gyms, and the like to rival Spaceball One.

Is this a good game to actually play? No better than other ones of its time. Is it fun to look at? Oh yeah.

Review: Xeelee Redemption

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Xeelee Redemption

Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee Redemption is not one of his finest literary moments. What it offers in both theory and practice isn’t any better than his other, better books. And it’d have to be to make up for the huge retcon that ranks as one of my least favorite of all time. Not that the rest of the book is anything special, given that the plot consists entirely of worldbuilding opportunities.

Anyway, after the Baxterian infodumps and excuse plots, the reader finally gets the chance to view a semi-retconned[1] actual physical Xeelee. And it’s just a space bug. Not Exultant’s so totally beyond lesser comprehension beings that effectively are whatever piece of technology they put their Clarketech spirits into, but just a slightly unconventional space bug.

Disapoint.

[1]The term “retcon” is hard when time travelers in universe are constantly changing everything, but it is a distinction.

What Artillery Mobility Means

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From the Heavy OPFOR Tactical:

Now a 199X Soviet-patterned formation isn’t going to be representative of everything (in particular, the commander is not always going to double as a forward observer), but it’s worth noting that the movement involves narrow movement around different parts of the same observed, prepared area, not wide ranging, sweeping kiting.

Now redeployment is another story, and it’s where the artillery is going to be more inherently vulnerable and varies a lot on the circumstances. IE not so much in a stabilized front like WWI, post-1951 Korea, or contemporary Ukraine, but a lot in a classic Fuldapocalypse, 2003 Iraq, or the Southern African brush. It also depends on how much the artillery has to actually fire (because if it’s forced into moving/hiding, then it’s effectively suppressed).

So for the fictional case study of the Soviet-Romanian War:

  • The northern front is going to be advancing extremely rapidly, close to the best-case paper projections. Deployed artillery will cover the armies when they have to stop, but even the Sovereign Union will struggle to keep their mega-barrages during the rapid advance. Thankfully (for the invaders) enemy counter-artillery capabilities are very weak, especially in the context.
  • The southern front has a lot fewer SPGs (and even less advanced ones) and has to bludgeon its way across a very wide river and through fortified areas. There’s just less room to move and the opponent’s capabilities (due to their better units and C3I on this front) are more dangerous.

Review: Is There Life After Football

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Is There Life After Football: Surviving The NFL

A look at life as an American Football player by sociologists and former NFL player James Koonce, Is There Life After Football is a very interesting and evenhanded tale of how football players (and to a degree many other athletes) struggle culturally. While very few of its points are surprising or shocking, it’s well-written and handled.

The authors are eager to debunk some of the skewed and sensationalist claims of football players recklessly spending piles of money and then ending up as brain-damaged hobos. Careful to cite formal studies, they point out that there isn’t a disproportionately high amount of either financial or legal trouble amongst NFL veterans (a point others such as former player Merrill Hoge have made)-but that it still can and does often happen, with a look at the cultural dynamics to see why.

Indeed this manages to mostly avoid the twin sportswriting perils of what I call the “Johnny Manziel” and “Colin Kaepernick” paths, to use two quarterbacks who both got (in?)famous for things that had nothing to do with their play on the field. The Manziel route is classic media focusing on the freak show excesses, portraying the players as overpaid, under-mature babies, often with moral scolding. (Spoiler alert: Some players are just that). The Kaepernick route is the more modern “sensibility” in which every single player is an underpaid exploited victim of Evil Capitalist Society.

If I had to quibble, I’d say that they lump NFL players too closely together. The stats are skewed by short-career replacement level players, and the compartmenalization of different positions and paths is well-known. Their talk of the “conveyor belt” should have brought more attention to hyped prospects who flame out. The authors mention old-timers who had to work in the offseason and bubble fringe players who knew very well that they were living on the edge. But I’d be curious to see the end result of the worst of all worlds-a sheltered pampered college stardom followed by just legitimately not having the talent to match at the pro level.

But these are minor concerns for an excellent book.

A Thousand Words: Double Dragon 3

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Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone

Double Dragon basically made the brawler what it was. Unfortunately, its position at the height of beat em ups was very short lived. By the third game, an externally developed one called “The Rosetta Stone” that replaces the postapocalyptic streets with a world tour, it had been left behind by the likes of Final Fight. Really far behind.

If Final Fight has fluid controls that only seem slightly worse or clunky now than they did over thirty years ago, this feels like someone at the time who played both would have noticed it. The characters just move like they’re pieces on grooved slots (maybe it was even programmed like that). On top of it, being able to buy power ups with real quarters made this one of the first games with microtransactions.

So yeah, there’s a reason why Double Dragon fell out of favor. It didn’t make good games, and this was definitely not a good game.

Review: Trial By Fire

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Harold Coyle’s Trial by Fire is about a…. second Mexican-American war? Uhh? Oh, it was published in 1992. That explains everything. Besides the (long) setup and (shorter) conflict, we get one of the most controversial cheap thriller characters beginning here: Female infantry commander Nancy Kozak, who has a less than ideal reputation among Coyle’s readers.

Sadly, the book once against reinforces my view of Coyle as a one-hit wonder whose Team Yankee, magisterial as it was, could not be exceeded or equaled by any other book by the same author. It’s a weird anti-Goldilocks mixture of either too fast or too slow, and the understandable but contrived background does it no favors. Hate to say it, but… just read Team Yankee again, IMO.

Making vehicles in Stable Diffusion

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Simple guide to how I bash together vehicles in Stable Diffusion.
First assemble the shape. In this case it’s the bottom of a tank, a suitcase (!), and a line drawing of a large-caliber field piece.

Then load up Stable Diffusion with a controlnet, in this case, depth.

Use the model and prompt (In this case I use Helloworld 6.0), make sure the controlnet is enabled but not too high, and you get…

One self-propelled AH vehicle!