Speckled Green

Well, those two days were sure eventful. At Sean’s house on Thursday, Ben & Sean were busy working out the coding behind the ATM and getting it to work. I have just read an email from Sean saying that he’s finished putting it together, and now I just have to come up with an acceptable GUI design for them to conform to. Ahh… time to let my imagination roam free. Except I have to remind myself that it has to be doable. So, that will cause several ideas to be immediately ruined.

It was an enjoyable day, with Ben and his MacBook and a school laptop, Sean with his desktop plugged into the TV, and me borrowing my mum’s laptop. Ben certainly had the most resources =]  And when it came to deciding what we would have for lunch (Sean’s mum gave us a choice), since we were running short of dice, Ben even wrote up a script to randomly choose what we would eat for lunch!!

Friday was the more hectic and busy day, at least for me. Starting off, it was Paintball with some Stoop, Back Stoop, and what I like to call ‘anime-group’, or ‘A-block group’. I don’t actually know what they call themselves, but the group included Li, Miho, Steph, Vivian, Ben and Lenny, so I guess you know which group that was.

When we arrived, we were waiting outside for a while, awaiting the arrival of people. After everyone had arrived, we finally went inside, watched the safety videos and signed indemnity forms (which basically said, if we got hurt, it’s not their fault, so we couldn’t sue them…) After kitting up, we played our first game, and had our first taste of the painful nature of being hit by a paintball from a marker. We were divided into two teams of 14, and one team was green (with a green card attached to the front of their marker), the other ‘black’ (because the markers are black). Throughout the day, green team were notoriously ‘campers’. They wouldn’t move up from their base much. I mean, some of them would, but the majority of them wouldn’t.

The first game was a game of plain warfare. 4 minutes of respawn, then you’re-hit-you’re-out. At first it was going fine, paintballs were flying, people were getting hit, and black team (the team I was on), was getting hit the most (good or bad, you decide later after the story). When respawn time was over, then it got less hectic, as people were less inclined to expose themselves. Here was when the green team showed their stuff. Camping back at their end of the field, they held us black team off. Due to the limited range of the markers we were using, we had to move up to actually hit them, causing us to be hit in return. Were we slowly picked off, with only a few of us left. After 13 minutes, the ref decided to call the game over, and out emerged all the players.

Next was a capture the flag (or as you Halo fans might know it, 2-flag CTF). Immediately as the game started (also with a 4 minute respawn), Bryan (black team) ran to to retrieve the flag… and then immediately went diving for cover as paintballs went flying in his direction (fun to watch =]  ). Hiding next to him, I searched for people to target, but alas, once again, Green team was mostly camping at their base, making it hard to get a shot at them or getting the flag to the goal (in case you were wondering, as I know many of you CTF people are, there was a variation to this game. To make it harder, the flags were placed in the middle of the field, and we had to ‘return’ them to the enemy’s base. Yeah, hard). Eventually, Kai, Jeffery and I attempted to move forward, except that we never made it, because Jeffery & I were eventually hit by paintballs raining in through the tree cover, and because seemingly all of the green team was on that side. On another note, green team never even got their flag, so we beat them there =] (either because we were too good at stopping their more aggressive players, or none of them tried, or both).

The next game (as I remember it) was a zombie game. We humans lasted pretty long. But after 13 minutes, we were basically all dead. The zombies finally overran us. Apparently, the ref once saw a team of humans out last the zombies, so after a long while, she made the zombies non-respawnable, and then the humans won. She said she wanted that team on her side if there was ever a zombie apocalypse.

After that was a ‘drug-runner’ game. FBI vs Drug-runners. The FBI were confined to their smaller side of the field, and had to stop the ‘drug-lord’, who could only be hit in the chest and head, from reaching the goal: a container in the middle of the field. The drug-runners had to support their lord, and had 3 minutes respawn. The FBI, the good guys, couldn’t arrest people outside of the border, and had 4 minutes respawn (but they could still shoot at people on the other side of the border =]  ). First up, black team was the FBI, and Anthony Liang was the drug-lord. He, funnily enough, ended up cowering behind some barrels near the back of the field (where they started). The green team failed to make enough ground in the match, and we had them pinned down. After 13 minutes, the ref called off the match and said that Black team won (because the drug-lord never made it to his destination).

Learning from their mistakes, the teams were swapped and Black team was now the drug-runners, with Li being the drug-lord. Our battle plan: gain as much ground as possible, as quickly as possible, and suppress the FBI. Li sprinted up to about 8m from the goal, and the rest of us took up positions around or with him. At first we though we would wait for the respawn to be over before working on getting Li the rest of the way, but then, Lenny (who had the best vantage point looking into and through the container, stopping any advance into it) had to reload, and Li saw his chance. Without telling any of us, he ran for it. And made it!! The rest of the team, meanwhile, was busy blasting people, trying to stop them from attacking Li. He made it, in 2min 47sec. Afterwards, the ref told us the fastest time was 7 seconds. Apparently the first team had done it in 20 seconds, and so, not wanting to be bested, the 2nd team sprinted, screaming, markers blazing and made it in 7 seconds. Yeah, fast (considering they had to run about 40-50m from the actual start point, around obstacles. I think the guy might’ve jumped, or started further forward.)

Afterwards, we moved onto a game called Blackhawk. Originally, the idea was to have to pilots, and get them to the cockpit of the barrel & wood mockup Blackhawk, but then the ref decided to change that before we had even started. New mission: get 4 people inside the helo, without being hit, for 1 minute, non-accumulative. HARD! While Black team did have the better side of the field, Lenny especially from the green team was extremely good at stopping people making it to the helo. However, of all the people that made it, only Black people ever got inside. I was in there!! For about 2 seconds before I was hit. Eventually I made to the cockpit, before I thought I was out because a paintball splattered and got in my hair (I discovered later that I was still in really, but I called myself hit thinking I had been, as I couldn’t actually see my hair, and Owen said I had paint in my hair, but never told me how much.) Unfortunately, the cockpit didn’t count, so I was pinned down there.

The next game we played was a game of attrition. One team assaults a fort, the other defends. First up, black were defending while Green assaulted. Yeah, funny, one of the few maps where camping was a dedicated idea, and Green weren’t first up =]  While we courageously fought from our fort (=] nice eh?), cowering behind the barrels that made it up as some people watched our flanks, we occasionally made pot shots, before ducking very quickly. Tim made a very observant statement halfway through the round: “I got off one shot and got five in return!” Needless to say, it came to a stale mate, as many of us remained behind the fort, while some were like Bryan and moving out to root out the remaining Greens (although I think a few of them were still stuck nearer to the back, we had scared them good!)

After discussing our options about what to do to use up our last ammo, we swapped games, and then decided to play until we ran out. Unlimited ‘respawns’. So, we fought tough and hard. Eventually the Green team ran out of ammo, whilst many members of the Black team tried to fight their way up to the fort, or just try and hit the guys as they poked their head out. I foolishly tried running up their flank, before being peppered by two markers several times. Shirley has good aim…