{"id":3212,"date":"2011-06-24T08:35:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T13:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=3212"},"modified":"2011-06-24T08:45:37","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T13:45:37","slug":"training-wheels-learning-to-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/24\/training-wheels-learning-to-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Training Wheels: Learning to Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a few struggles with Games for Windows Live, that blight upon online PC gaming that still manages to linger, I managed to get Dirt 3<\/em> up and running. As part of my mission of self improvement and genre expansion, I’ve taken to try racing games because 1) I have lots of friends who play them, and 2) how hard can they be? You take a car and drive fast until you reach the end without hitting anything.<\/p>\n

One thing I learned very quickly is that skills from the real world intrude on gaming faster than skills from gaming intrude on the real world. Real world? Hate driving and I’ve never been very good at it. Dirt 3<\/em>? Give me a fast car and an open road and I’m fine, but as soon as there is traffic I freak out and hit a tree. Or do a barrel roll. Or drive into a lake. Not good.<\/p>\n

And all of this, by the way, with super training wheels activated. The Casual setting on Dirt 3<\/em> brakes for you on turns for God’s sake, so you just floor it and steer. Apparently steering is my problem.<\/p>\n

My question is how am I supposed to make the leap from Casual to Not A Child if the game doesn’t teach me the basics on how important braking is? Does my car setup even matter at this level? Are the other cars letting me win? <\/p>\n

Finding the right level for you in a strategy game is not usually a struggle. Generally, we play until the Peter Principle<\/a> kicks in. Then, once we have proven our incompetence for the job, we know that we have a choice to drop down to an easier level and stay there and practice (or never get better) or just tough it out. Or quit, I suppose. But even at these lower and easier levels you are learning the systems and practices that you need to know to get better. In Civ<\/em>, the tech tree works the same no matter what level you are at; research just takes longer. In your typical RTS, the AI will harvest inefficiently and advance more slowly, but the rock\/paper\/scissors system of units and counter units still prevails.<\/p>\n

Aside from learning that I should probably stay on the road, the default Casual setting on Dirt 3<\/em> isn’t teaching me much about how to play the game or how to play a racing game in general. I don’t know which driver’s aids to turn off since I don’t quite know how each will affect my lame driving skills. Even flight sims never defaulted to “Look, nothing can hurt you except the ground. Now go for it.” You needed to turn invulnerability on and then fly your Hurricane through a nest of Heinkels.<\/p>\n

So this weekend I dabble with the settings and see how much damage I can do. I’ve already had some sweet air time that I wish I had captured on the Youtube thing, but knowing my driving ability, I will be taking off again soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a few struggles with Games for Windows Live, that blight upon online PC gaming that still manages to linger, I managed to get Dirt 3 up and running. As part of my mission of self improvement and genre expansion, I’ve taken to try racing games because 1) I have lots of friends who play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,21,141],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-PO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3212"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3214,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions\/3214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}