Tuesday, January 28, 2020

How to be Terrible at Overwatch

This is something I wrote about a year ago.  It's unfinished (or "work-in-progress") but I thought I'd out it here for now.

After all, what's the point of playing as part of a team and winning the game when, even though you probably killed more players than anyone else, the game result will only mention that you were on the objective for 3 minutes, which impresses no-one.  It doesn't matter if your team loses as long as you're on that leaderboard with the most medals!


Tactics

Work Solo

After you've been killed (along with probably several of your team), don't bother waiting for others to re-spawn and attack en-masse: just charge straight back into the match and get those kills in while you can.

Know where the battle really is

Okay, it's a payload mission.  But (if you're attacking) leave the boring task of moving the payload to other weaker members.  If you can keep a single enemy busy by fighting them in a far flung corner of the map, nowhere near the payload, that's got to be a good thing. And if you're defending, then the further back you can push the enemy the better.  It's not like any of them will be able to sneak past you without you noticing.  Leave moving the payload to the n00bs who are probably cont as good as you.


Team make-up

Stick rigidly to your favourite character, regardless of the makeup of your opposition; that way you get lots of practise at using them.  Don't be tempted to be a healer, they can hardly do any damage.



Characters


Bastion

Make sure that you use his ultimate as soon as you have it.  Even if you've found a great spot to mow down the enemy, use your ultimate and charge right into the middle of the battle with your cannon firing.


Pharah

This ultimate is ideal for getting revenge on a single enemy who's really annoyed you.  Just walk up to them a press the Suicide Ultimate button.  You will die yourself of course, but it's a small price to pay for revenge.


Mai

If you haven't tried this trick before: here's something that the other people on your team will find hilarious: when attacking, just a second before the spawn point opens, build an ice wall right in front of exit.  Brilliant!


Mercy

One thing that impresses every player, and gets you a few more kills (maybe), is when you play as Mercy, rather than heal, show your skill by shooting enemies with your pistol instead.

If you do feel the need to heal, just concentrate on one single player, ideally a tank who has lots of health anyway.  Also, don't bother resurrecting anyone, as it will probably get you killed.

Another good tactic with Mercy is to select her at the start of the game, but then change just after everyone has left the spawn point.  It will take players a few minutes to realise they don't have a healer on the team.

Thursday, January 02, 2020

Reading PS4 controllers on a Raspberry Pi in Java

I recently had a go at trying to get a LibGDX to run on a Raspberry Pi.  Any project.  Unfortunately I failed.  (If you've succeeded, please let me know, but from what I could glean from googling, no-one has succeeded yet.).

So instead I tried to get some Java code working that could read PS4 controllers/gamepads on a Raspberry Pi.  My aim is to use the Pi as a mini-gaming-console, so I can keep it near our big TV and create some simple co-op games that I could play with my kids, rather than drag them over to a small laptop with its small screen.

And I succeeded!  By standing in the shoulders of giants (in this case, the JInput authors) and finding the native JInput modules compiled for AMD, it seems to work.

The repo is here: https://github.com/SteveSmith16384/jinputtest .  Currently only tested with PS4 gamepads.  Let me know if it works for you.