With all the criticism of the A-League’s Top 6 playoff format rewarding mediocrity, I thought a closer inspection was warranted.

The first point to clear up is the notion that the league phase of the competition only exists to provide the 6 teams for the playoff series. Not true - the league exists to determine the one team that will be crowned Premiers for finishing the league in first position. Despite the repeated use of the term “minor premiers” in the Australian press, there is nothing “minor” about it - unlike most other Australian sporting competitions, coming first in the A-League is a big deal, carrying with it the title of Premiers along with entry into the Asian Champions League.

The other prize up for grabs in the A-League is the championship, decided by the playoff series culminating in the Grand Final. Qualifying for this championship playoff series is by virtue of finishing in the top 6 places during the league - it might be best to think of it as a smaller scale Cup competition, with positions decided by a club’s performance in the league. The champions are also granted an Asian Champions League berth - unless, like last season, the premiers are also crowned champions - in this case the Grand Final runners-up will be awarded a spot.

Now, getting back to the top 6 system. It’s structured so that the teams are essentially grouped into two separate brackets. The top two teams playoff in a two-legged tie with the winner proceeding to the Grand Final, while the loser moves to the Preliminary Final. The remaining four teams enter a series of “sudden death” matches with the one team that comes out on top qualifying for the Preliminary Final. The illustration below shows the process:

The system is something akin to the NFL’s Wildcards, with the lowest qualifying teams able to progress, but only by overcoming rather long odds.

To sum up the points I’ve been trying to make:

• the league (regular season over 27 rounds) determines the Premiers (first past the post at the end of the regular season) as well as the six participants in the championship playoffs.
• the Grand Final determines the Champions.
• The two teams finishing first and second in the league afforded a much more favorable draw in the playoffs with teams three through six entering a series of one-off, knockout matches.
• Asian Champions League spots are awarded to the Premiers and the Champions.

Thought I’d post some screenshots of the opening levels to the rather nice Doom 2 WAD that is ConsoleDoom. It’s so named because it is a recreation of some of the Doom levels that appeared in the PlayStation version and the Nintendo 64 exclusive Doom64 (the latter of which has also been remade as a full blown Total Conversion entitled Doom64: Absolution).

Click thumbnail for full-size image
cdoom1.png	cdoom2.png	cdoom3.png
cdoom4.png		cdoom5.png

Get it from Doom Depot - grab the files consoledoom.zip and CDoomMus.zip (from the /musicwads/ directory).

Launch it under ZDoom with the following (replace paths as appropriate):


zdoom -iwad /games/share/doom/iwad/doom2.wad -file /games/share/doom/pwad/consoledoom.wad /games/share/doom/pwad/consoledoom-music.wad


After compiling ZDoom from source (using the SVN repository, as recommended), which was a little bit of an adventure in itself (it requires a bit more than the regular ./configure; make; make install routine), I fired it up to discover that, no matter what settings I used, sound was only coming through the right channel. The only way to change this was to set the sound to mono, which had the effect of turning the sound of completely. I thought I’d type up a few notes on how I went about fixing the problem, in case anybody else comes across a similar situation (or, for when I come across the same situation again and draw a complete mental blank).

After some searching, most of the information I could find related to the sound not working at all or issues with the music. Digging a little deeper, it seems that the version of FMOD used at compile time can have a significant effect. The version listed in the ZDoom Wiki is 4.28.00, which seemed to be causing the strange behavior. I downloaded the latest stable, which (at the time of writing) is 42.28.02 and then again followed the compilation instructions on the ZDoom Wiki, with the following changes:

Firstly, download the newer FMOD source -

• FMOD 42.28.02 for 32-bit Linux
• FMOD 42.28.02 for 64-bit Linux

I extracted with tarball to the /trunk/ directory in the ZDoom source. Note that unless you’ll be leaving the FMOD source in that exact spot, it’s better to extract it somewhere you’ll leave it, like /opt/fmod. The reason for this is that the resulting build of ZDoom will look for the FMOD libs in that path, and will refuse to start if you suddenly move the files (as I discovered after a bit of tidying up suddenly rendered the game unplayable).


mkdir /opt/fmod
cd /opt/fmod
tar zxvf /path-to-fmod-download/fmodapi42802linux64.tar.gz

Note: The directories are examples only, obviously. The filenames for FMOD are based on the 64-bit version, so if you have the 32-bit you’ll need to modify accordingly. The same applies to the compile time flags listed in the next step.

I then ran CMake in the /release/ directory, using two flags to let ZDoom know where FMOD’s lib and inc are:


cd /path-to-zdoom-download/trunk
mkdir release
cd release
cmake -DFMOD_LIBRARY=/opt/fmod/fmodapi42802linux64/api/lib/libfmodex64-4.28.02.so \
-DFMOD_INCLUDE=/opt/fmod/fmodapi42802linux64/api/inc -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..

The backslash in the cmake line above indicates that it wraps around to the next line: it should be removed if copy/pasting

Let the process complete and, if there are no errors (for missing dependencies, check here), run make and then go and make a coffee while it compiles. All things being well, you should wind up with a zdoom executable with which you can launch your favorite iwad. Use the following to launch DOOM, for example:


./zdoom -iwad /path-to-doom-wad/doom.wad


And hopefully you’ll be welcomed by the familiar DOOM menu, below:

I ran into a strange issue with DOOM 3’s customizable screen resolution and aspect ratio. It had previously been setup for a resolution of 1440×900 (ration 16:10) but, somewhere along the way, every time the game started up it switched into 640×480. Strangely, this could be set to 1024×768 from inside the game but the DoomConfig.cfg file didn’t seem to reflect this change - still listing resolution as 1440×900.

After a bit of digging on the web, it turns out the “r_mode” switch needs to be set to -1 for the two custom resolution variables (r_customHeight and r_customWidth) to actually be read - otherwise the settings are ignored. In my config, for example, it was set to 5 (which turned out to be 1024×768) which had the effect of ignoring the custom settings I was entering. Changing it to -1 allowed the custom settings to take effect. An example configuration snippet is given below:

seta r_customHeight "800"
seta r_customWidth "1280"
seta r_aspectratio "2"
seta r_fullscreen "0"
seta r_mode "-1"

Note: setting r_fullscreen to 0 will cause the game to start in a window - set it to 1 for fullscreen. The three options available for r_aspectratio are: 0 (4:3), 1 (16:9) and 2(16:10).

A complete list of Doom 3’s configuration options can be found on this page at TweakGuides.com.

Ever since discovering that DOSBox has stable IPX and serial tunneling, I’ve been digging through my old files and rediscovering some classic multiplayer games of yesteryear with my brother (who still has the edge in C&C).

The issue with a lot of multiplayer games from 10 or 15 (or more) years ago is that they either rely on the IPX protocol for networked games or that they only support serial (modem or null-modem) connections. Pushing these over the Internet requires some trickery, in this case in the form of a tunnel to provide what appears to be a direct connection between the participant’s instances of DOSBox.

DOSBox achieves this by having one user’s setup running as a server (host), with any other participants connecting as clients - all that is required is for the host to forward a port through their firewall.

Read the rest of this entry »

The poor quality emergency toilet paper masquerading as a newspaper, Sydney’s trashy Daily Telegraph, has managed to hit a new low. According to the article, Sydney FC’s crowd last weekend was inflated by approximately 2000. They’ve actually sat down and attempted to do a head count from video footage of the stadium - are these the same people involved in Florida’s Presidential Election count mess from W’s first run? Considering the rain (and the thunderstorm warning), most fans had taken to hiding in the covered areas of the venue - which, as the Tele’s photos show, are either partially or completely obscured by shadows, making a manual count rather impossible.

Was it a slow news day? A case of trying to put the boot into "Soccer" while they can? Perhaps wanting to distract attention from the Rugby League "Internationals" being held in England at the moment attracting very modest attendences?. Furthermore, they don’t even seem to be sure who they’re accusing - the article seems to suggest funny numbers from any or all of SFC, the FFA, the SCG Trust and Ticketek.

Seriously guys, we get it: you’re an NRL loving rag catering to a large Bogan segment in an NRL loving town with a large Bogan population - as well as being published by the half-owner of the NRL itself. However, there must be some actual news on which you can report. Maybe even engage in some journalism?

For those interested, a comprehensive thread on the subject is available at SFC’s Unofficial Forum. Several posters have pointed out obvious flaws in the count, including listing Bay 23 (in the heart of the Cover) as being half-full, when their own photo shows it to be at least 80% full at the outside.

After being able to throw a handkerchief over the field for much of the opening rounds, it appears there’s finally a bit of a break on at the top of the A-League ladder. Sydney, Melbourne and Gold Coast have established a little bit of a buffer at the top with Perth and Central Coast perhaps in danger of slipping farther back. The real dark horse seems to be Wellington: they’ve only won 2 matches the entire season, but significantly they’ve only lost 2 as well - the remaining 7 games have been draws. The congested nature of the middle of the table means that turning a few of draws into wins in the second half the competition will give them a good shot at the playoff places.

1. Sydney (7-1-4) 22pts
2. Melbourne (6-3-3) 21pts
3. Gold Coast (6-2-4) 20pts
4. Perth (5-2-5) 17pts
5. Central Coast (4-4-4) 16pts
6. Adelaide (4-3-5) 15pts