Virtual suicide attempts and success

In the middle of the night, out of thin air, popped the desire to play Contra. For those who don't remember or know, Contra is an awesome game that was created for the consoles - for the common people, that means TV video games and such. I was going to play this in my laptop using the NES simulator I had gotten long back from Venki.

However, the simulator was not where I thought it would be, and even after a lot of search it didn't reveal itself (in the process, I realised Google Desktop search was good for nothing, and uninstalled it - it doesn't even have Advanced Search!). I gave up and started browsing. After some time, purely by chance, I came upon the folder that contained the games. Some wise guy rightly said "Stop seeking, and you will find", though he was probably talking about God, not Contra.

Anyway, as Providence would have it, by the time I found this folder, I had lost the interest in playing Contra, and instead wanted to play some Flash game. "Bow Man" caught my eye, and I started it up (here's an online version, but don't you run away from my blog or I'll find you and make you read it; and that won't be a pleasant experience). After a few games, it got quite repetitive - I had learnt to adjust the angle and force by reading the numbers, and was winning too easily.

It was then that I decided to play around with the settings to make things harder. Thee settings window had:

• Something called "show index", which probably referred to the angle and force being displayed near the player when we shoot an arrow (this is a bow-and-arrow shooting game by the way, in case you hadn't guessed). I turned this off to make the game a little difficult.
• An "add wall" option, which I enabled to make the game a little more difficult.
• An "add wind" option, which too I enabled, since "the game was too easy, right?"
• A "vitality" option, which I guess to be the number of arrows needed to kill someone. I increased this from 2 to 4. Don't ask me why.

And with these settings began the longest match I had ever played. Without the angle and force numbers to guide me, I was left to best-effort guesses, which led to arrows that kept landing either too near or too far. The presence of a wall that blocked more than 3/4ths of the screen vertically wasn't helping either. I mean, really? When I chose "add wall", I was expecting a wall that's maybe double the height of the men, or even half the screen. But this was too much!

And the hilarious part was how the opponent Computer player played. At first, he kept shooting as if the wall didn't exist, resulting in all his arrows getting stuck on the wall. Then, he realized the wall's presence, but still didn't realize that there was a wind, resulting in arrows landing far beyond me. After this, he kept alternating between these, resulting in an accumulation of arrows on the wall (I was actually hoping the wall would fall down from the weight of his arrows!) and in the space behind me. As for my part, I managed to create a minor injury on his leg, and that was it. None of his arrows even touched me.

Finally, I decided to take matters into hand and end the game. One obvious way is to close the window, but that is for sissies. Real men never quit a duel just like that. It's victory or valiant death. And so it was decided: I shall kill myself. But I immediately realized this wasn't such an easy job either, because of the presence of the wind. Without the wind, I could have shot straight up, and 4 such shots would probably have killed me. But with a wind blowing, I had to aim perfectly at an angle slightly less than (or more than, depending on the direction of the wind) 90 degrees. After many attempts, I managed to do this too. Here's part of the screenshot of the dead me, along with the arrows of my failed attempts at suicide:

Notice that one of the 'failed' arrows is behind me, which is because the wind suddenly started flowing from left to right before my final arrow. So, I had to shoot to my left for the arrow to reach me, and got it right only in the second attempt.

Also notice the small green leaves on the ground. They indicate the direction of the wind, by flying in that direction. The game designer could simply have used an indicator arrow or something to point to the direction of the wind, but chose to do it in this realistic manner, which impressed me.

Ok, that's all folks, you can now go play Bow Man yourself. Enjoy!

PS: A friend of mine recently wrote a post for the first birthday of her blog, which made me look back into my first post. And whoa, this blog too has had its first birthday come and go (it was on April 17th). Hey blog, I'm sorry for forgetting your birthday, here's a cake for you:

Happy now? Now don't eat all of it yourself, give some to these sweet guests.
And sweet guests, I have provided you the great opportunity to read these wonderful posts, without expecting anything in return. However, I know that many of you are itching to pay me back, so: I accept payments through cash, internet transfer, Mafia Wars reward points, and many other things. However, people sending in bounced cheques are advised to renew their life insurance policies immediately. Thank you.

That's all, this time for real,
Sundar