Monday 12/23/2024 Post

 The Green Bay Packers shut out the injured New Orleans Saint and damn it felt good!

Monday Screenshots: MVPs

 I scored back to back MVP nods in Marvel Rivals over the weekend.  One playing The Punisher and the other playing Hela.  I wanted to share the MVP screencaps and some thoughts on each hero.

The Punisher

15 kills / 2 deaths and a clutch quad kill

The Punisher is the first hero that Marvel Rivals players get to experience in the tutorial and I pretty much fell in love from that moment.  He has both range and close up potential as he sports a machine gun and a shotgun.  He also can deploy a stationary turret that he can use to mow down the enemy.  To help him get in place he can deploy ziplines and use smoke grenades.  His ultimate ability turns him into a pumped up machine gunner with shoulder rockets firing down on targets.

The biggest downside to playing The Punisher is his lack of mobility.  While the zipline grapple can sometimes get you out of trouble it is far too unreliable to be a consistent escape mechanism.  It is far better to use the zipline to get in a better position against the other team.  If another duelist or a tank gets in close to me while playing The Punisher it doesn't end well most times but there is something I've gotten better at that helps.

The Punisher has a second weapon with his shotgun and I see many new players overlook this.  It is a strong close range weapon and can delete soft targets up close but is slow between shots and even slower on reload so you have to hit your shots.  The shotgun is also a remarkable tank killer.  You won't win a 1v1 with a tank but if you are pushing an enemy tank or trying to finish one off there is no better weapon to get the job done.

A few things I'd like to see the game fix with The Punisher:

• The grapple zipline is unreliable because it is not clear what parts of a map can be attached to and which cannot.  I am sure this affects other heroes like spiderman as well.
• The smoke grenade needs work.  The smoke lasts for almost no time at all and it is easy for enemies to just push through.  Either add a stun to the smoke grenade if it hits a target or give more control to the player on the pushback so they can use it to juke enemies.
• Many other heroes get some form of health boost or protection when activating their ultimate.  The Punisher does not and with his clear announcement that he is entering his ultimate it is not hard to find and focus fire him down before his ultimate finishes activating.
  

Hela

EZ PZ 18 and 2 match

Hela is probably the strongest duelist (aka DPS) hero in the game.  She is sniper-like with her throwing daggers/swords and has outstanding mobility as she can shapeshift into a bird to escape or reach a perch from which to snipe from.  She also gets a stun orb and can float slowly down instead of falling.  Her ultimate boosts her health and launches her to float above the battlefield while she unleashes bombs.

I honestly only started playing Hela after getting repeatedly wrecked by her in many matches.  There is also a lot of feedback in the community that she is overpowered and after playing her a bit I would have to agree.  She is easy to play and get kills with.  She can lock down areas chokepoints and almost always escape danger with her stun and shapeshifting.  She is also very strong against tanks and if you can land headshots she is the "tank killer" most competitive team comps rely on.

She needs a nerf.

Sunday 12/15/2024 Post

 The Packers excised some demons last night at Lumen field and beat the Seahawks.

The Real MVP Jeff the Landshark

 I had a burst of inspiration and put together a video with some music and a highlight from Marvel Rivals.  Enjoy!

Heartlessgamer Rap

Who knows what the future of AI will look like, but for now, I am having a lot of fun exploring creative possibilities that were once beyond my personal talents, resources, and time. One such pursuit is music creation.

An AI generated image of an old(er) video game blogger creating music.
Sort of not at all what I look like.  I prefer my jeans NOT ripped.

Back in the day, I dabbled in electronic music (over 20 years ago!) and was a fan of the MTV Music Maker—a sort of video game for wannabe musicians. I even had a Napster chat channel where I shared my electronic music, though those early creations have been lost to time. Recently, I've started experimenting with Suno and AI-generated music, reigniting that old creative spark.

After some trial and error and watching YouTube tutorials on the best practices of song prompt writing, I've developed an AI-collaborative approach to lyric writing. The process is a partnership between my creativity and an AI assist. I contribute the core ideas and overall structure, while the AI helps refine the lyrics, ensuring proper length and rhyming.

The collaboration isn't always smooth. The AI sometimes changes key pieces of text—for instance, replacing "Keyboard mouse" with alternative phrases even though "keyboard mouse" is a key lyric considering I am a PC gamer.

These unexpected shifts can lead to more interesting results. When I got stuck, the AI came in with clever solutions. A perfect example is the line "every post he writes erupts," which the AI suggested when I was struggling to incorporate blogging into a verse.

Rhyming has been particularly fascinating. The AI's skill at creating unexpected rhymes—like "alien sand"—has been a delightful surprise. Of course, there are moments when I simply insist on keeping certain lyrics, rhyme or no rhyme, maintaining my bit of control over the process.

The song I lyrics I ended up with:

[Verse] 

HeartlessGamer plays all night long
Virtual worlds where he feels strong
Pixelated lands where he belongs
Chasing dreams with epic songs 

[Verse 2] 

Blogging tales of heroes grand
Defeating foes with just one hand
From dungeons deep to alien sand
He conquers all with a fearless stand

[Chorus] 

HeartlessGamer is his name
In the digital realm he stakes his claim
No heart to lose no love to tame
In pixels and code he’s got the fame

[Verse 3]

Keyboard mouse like a knight’s sword
From level one to final boss
Strategic plays no room for loss
He’s the legend and the lore

[Verse 4] 

Loading screens and power-ups
Collecting lives and winning cups
Every post he writes erupts
With cheers from fans they fill his cups

[Chorus]

HeartlessGamer is his name
In the digital realm he stakes his claim
No heart to lose no love to tame
In pixels and code he’s got the fame 

Lyrics in hand it was a lot of trial and error with different music styles and combinations.  What resulted was a few different versions of the song.  Personally I have a wide ranging music taste.  You can catch me listening to everything from Lean On Me by Bill Withers to Mad World from the Donnie Darko movie to my teenage years dominated by music from Korn.  I tried to mix many of those genres and musical styles into the prompting, but ultimately the style that worked out best was rap and electro-pop.

The two song outputs worth sharing are:

• HeartlessGamer Rap
• HeartlessGamer Plays All Night Long