The night had so much promise but ended up yielding only one of the biggest sporting downers I’ve experienced in a long time. It was truly quite cruel in the end - after fighting back to level the tie at 3-3 (2-1 on the night) and forcing extra time, to lose to a poor call by the ref which led to a quick free kick which caught the Sky Blues napping.

The result means that Melbourne will host the Grand Final (again) and that Sydney now have a one-off sudden-death match against the Phoenix (following their extra-time 3-1 win over the Jets) to qualify for the Championship decider.

As a side note, it was also disappointing to stand in Bay 26 and have so many people around us not singing. Seriously people, one of the biggest matches of the year and you file into the home end and stand there slack jawed and silent. To avoid a repeat, I’ve made sure to grab tickets in Bay 23 for the Preliminary Final where you can always be guaranteed a vocal gathering.

Pictures below from happier times during the night (before the game and at half-time):

Official match stats from A-League.com.au

I would have liked to have published this earlier, but due to the previously mentioned site downtime that was impossible. It certainly was a tremendous night and I’d go as far as to say it’s the most I’ve ever enjoyed myself at a football match. Standing and singing with the Cove as the boys in blue knocked off their fiercest rivals to claim the league title was something I won’t soon forget.

Both goals scored were something special: a long distance volley from Kisel in the first half and, in the second, a superb run and finish from Aloisi. The whole game really had fairytale written all over it. A season high crowd of over 25,000 really got into it, providing a great atmosphere for the match. A season (and therefore career) ending injury to captain Corica took a little gloss of the occasion but, all in all, it was a fantastic night.

With the regular season wrapped up, Sydney move into the Finals series and play Melbourne in the major-semi over two legs. The first leg was completed on Thursday (Feb 18th) in Melbourne with the Victory taking the honors 2-1. The return leg is in Sydney on Sunday (Mar 7th). The away goals rule will be in effect meaning that a 1-0 win would be enough for Sydney to progress straight to the Grand Final.

Some pictures and videos of the night:

From Sydney FC vs Melbourne - A-League 2009/10 Round 27

From Sydney FC vs Melbourne - A-League 2009/10 Round 27

From Sydney FC vs Melbourne - A-League 2009/10 Round 27

From Sydney FC vs Melbourne - A-League 2009/10 Round 27

From Sydney FC vs Melbourne - A-League 2009/10 Round 27

From Sydney FC vs Melbourne - A-League 2009/10 Round 27

From Sydney FC vs Melbourne - A-League 2009/10 Round 27

Had an irritating server meltdown a few days back which pulled my sites plus my main email accounts down. Gradually getting things back up and running again, email’s still down though. I’ll certainly be doing at least one catchup post commemorating the glory of Sydney’s premiership deciding win over Melbourne on the weekend, that’s for damned sure :)

Melbourne’s Asian Champions League commitments have forced the FFA to make an early decision on the first leg of the Major Semi Final (Teams finishing 1^st and 2^nd in the league). With the Victory due in Beijing on February 21^st for their match on the 23^rd -ACL rules require the visiting team to be in town two days prior to a match - the ruling body have set down the game for Melbourne’s Docklands Stadium on Thursday, February 18^th. The match will also feature either Sydney or Gold Coast, depending on results from the final round of the league season.

Due to the Australian National Team’s Asian Cup Qualifier against Indonesia in Brisbane on March 3^rd, the second week of Finals matches (including the second leg of the Major Semi) will be held the weekend of March 6/7 - Unfortunately, this means there will be a huge 16 or 17 day gap between the two legs.

Sydney FC captain Steve Corica today announced that this will be his final year as a player, moving smoothly into a coaching role at the club. With the big match against Melbourne this Sunday to decide the Premiership, it adds just a little more spice to an already thrilling end of season.

Personally, I’ve loved watching Corica play in the Sky-Blue shirt for the last five years and I’d like to wish him all the best in his future endeavors. Here’s hoping he can go out on the highest note possible - how about a Premiership/Championship double - perhaps with a few goals to go with it?

Given how much I adored the first Bioshock, I was a little anxious when firing up the sequel - it had been developed by a different team, there was a new focus on multiplayer - but any doubts were swept away almost from the get-go. I’m about 10 hours in now after a bit of a marathon session, and it really is just superb.

The main change affecting gameplay is the player character being a "Big Daddy" - meaning you begin the game as a hulking, metal-plated behemoth rather than an unarmed and unarmored civilian - and the addition of new, stronger enemies. Chief amongst these are the "Big Sisters", who will pursue you relentlessly as you endeavor to save the "Little Sisters" who are dotted around the city. A new regular foe, the "Splicer Brute" has also been added to spice things up: these guys move fast, pack a punch and can climb up to wherever you’re trying to hide.

The dynamic between your character and the Little Sisters has also changed. As one of the Big Daddies that they are programmed to trust, a key part of the game is escorting them safely around the city while they harvest ADAM. This leads to some of the tensest gameplay, as the harvesting activity draws aggressive splicers from far and wide who will attack in waves - more often than not from multiple directions - while you’re forced to wait. Fortunately Trap Rivets, Portable Turrets and Proximity Bombs give you the ability to build a defensive perimeter before-hand to help deal with the threats.

The other Big Daddies have also been upgraded - explained by one of the Audio Diaries as a counter-measure to the growing number of Sister attacks - and some can take a lot of work to bring down. Big Sisters are newly added, and are armored like the Big Daddies but are agile, fast and can use multiple plasmids. You get a short warning period before they arrive - a piercing scream - which is best used in preparing traps and finding a good fighting position.

The research camera from the first game makes a modified re-appearance: it is now a video camera which you start rolling before a fight against an opponent. Depending on the different ways you resolve the battle, you will gain a better research score eventually leading to better fighting techniques and plasmids.

Anyway, it’s all looking good so far and if it keeps on like this, I’d call this an early contender for game-of-the-year.

They couldn’t have scripted it better - the final game of the season will decide top spot, the first ACL spot, settle the top two positions for the finals and add another more fuel to the already fiery rivalry between Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory.

Going into the final round, the current standings look like this:

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: