Kalen Lu

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or CS:GO, has had a lot of interesting changes in the past few months. The most notable update though was the scoped rifles’ cost reduction in October of last year, and the latest update brings even more changes.

In this latest update the biggest change was towards the economy mechanics as well as a debuff to the AUG which I’ll write about later on. In Counter-Strike, you have to buy your own equipment with in-game money which you receive after winning or losing a round. Depending on whether or not you won or lost the round determines how much money your team gets.

Previously if your team won a round each player would get around $3250-$3600 depending on how your team won the round, and that stays the same. However, whenever you lost a round your team would get only $1400 each, and for every round you lost in a row you would get $1400 plus a $500 loss bonus for the number of rounds lost in a row. The maximum amount of money you could receive while losing is $3400 by losing four or more rounds in a row. This was to help the losing team to potentially make a comeback later on in the game if they were losing really badly. If you won a round after having a losing streak then immediately lose the next round; your loss bonus completely goes away bringing your team’s income back to $1400. In Counter-Strike it typically takes around $5000 for a full rifle buy with utility.

Keeping track of your team’s economy as well as the opposition’s can prove useful in winning certain rounds and determining what purchases would be in your team’s best economic interest. (If you survive the round you keep your current equipment and receive income for the next round. However, as a terrorist, you will not receive income for the next round if you survived and the round was lost due to the timer running out.)

The new change makes it easier for losing teams to have a better chance. With the economy update, losing rounds in a row still grants an extra $500 per round lost. However, losing the first round now gives you $1900 instead of $1400. Additionally, if your team had a accumulated a loss bonus, won a round, and then lost the next round; your income for the round lost would only be brought down by $500. For example, if my team had lost four rounds in a row our income would be at maximum loss bonus of $3400. If we won the next round by eliminating the enemy team we would receive $3250. With the new economy system instead of getting reset back down to $1400; my team would get an income of $2900 which is $500 less than $3400. This gives us a chance to have an improved loadout for the next round or potentially save for a full buy the round after.

Before the October update CS:GO and all previous Counter-Strike games have had the whole AK47 and M4 META (Most Effective Tactic Available). Whether you liked it or not these two rifles were the main weapons throughout the games’ generations. However in October, Valve released an update that reduced the two scoped rifles’ prices considerably. The AUG was made $3150 and the SG553 was made $2750. This was just $50 more than the main rifle for each team. Players used them more and people started to notice how effective the scoped rifles were. During the 2019 Katowice Major even the professional teams started to use the AUG in particular more than the M4. For a few months, the AUG was the main rifle of choice for the Counter Terrorist side.

With the economy change, Valve brought the price of just the AUG back up to $3300 which was its original price as well as bringing down a few of the shotguns’ prices by a few hundred dollars. Without changing the actual statistics of the weapons, Valve is trying to get players to use a larger variety of weapons instead of just the standard M4 and AK47.

Those were the main changes to the gameplay for this update. I think that the game is changing in a good way and provides players with more options towards what weapons they play with each round. In the past few months I think Valve has been doing a pretty decent job with their game.

Around this time of the year the schools in our area get our “Mid-Winter break” although everyone just calls it March break. I don’t really have anything to do over the March break, but there are a few things I would like to do.

Just like every other year I plan on spending most of my days playing video games with friends. A lot of my other friends that I play with don’t really have plans over the break either, so most of the times I’ll be playing with them. For individual games, I hope to be able to rank up in CS:GO within the following week. I also want to catch up on osu! with one of my other friends that plays, and maybe play some Apex Legends if I feel like it.

If I’m not playing games I’ll probably be watching anime or working on the song I’m trying to write with the help of my theory teacher. I think it sounds pretty cool, but the goal of the project was to use the guitar for melody and a viola, violin, and cello for the harmony. So far I’ve kind of been thinking of only the guitar so I’m unsure if whether or not it’ll still sound the same when using other instruments.

During the rest of the time my brother, mom, and I are planning to try some new restaurants for a few days which we usually do during either the March or Summer break. I hope that there’ll be something that we find that I really enjoy, but either way it should be fun.

Overall, those are pretty much all my plans for the March break. As you can tell there’s not really anything elaborate planned, so it’s all kind of basic stuff.

A few weeks ago when I didn’t go to school due to inclement weather, I got kind of bored since there wasn’t really any school work that I had to do. I decided that since I’ve learned a lot more about music theory over the past months, I tried making some sort of music in the GarageBand program.

When I first started I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t feel like setting up and recording actual instruments. Eventually, I decided to just draw in MIDI notes and started making chords. I wasn’t planning on making an actual song, so I drew in a few chords that I don’t even know the names of. All I knew was that they sounded okay and were in the same key. I looped what I had once to make it a bit longer. It was just an experiment with things, so overall it was only around 25 seconds long.

GarageBand does have many different instruments to choose from. But I actually don’t have all of the sound files downloaded, so most of the instruments are just different kinds of synthesizers. I chose a synthesizer that was electronic and kind of what I wanted but the sound of it wasn’t exactly right. However, you do have some default settings you can change to work on sound design which I used to make it sound a little bit better. I know that you can use external plug-ins like Serum that lets you do things like sound design a lot better than the default one though. Even if it didn’t sound good I had no real expectations or planned on anyone else to listen to it so I just left the sound the way it was.

I added a second track for bass, but it was just another different synthesizer playing the root notes of the chords in a lower octave. When you listen to the loop you can’t really even hear it though. At this point, I also thought the chords sounded a bit flat, so I did a rise and drop of volume whenever the chord changed for a wobble effect. I had used the volume controller before to fade things in and out, so that was pretty simple. It sounds interesting, but you wouldn’t want to hear in an actual song.

After I finished with all the pitched stuff I downloaded a few drum sound sample packs and put in a track for a hi-hat and crash. I only filled a few seconds of the track with the percussion since I just wanted to see what it was like. Working with the audio files of the sound samples was actually easier than I thought. I had expected to have issues with them being too long in length and end up clipping into each other but that wasn’t the case. It ended up making this really short weird triplet beat with a crash at the end.

Overall, I didn’t really plan to go anywhere else with the track, but I did learn a lot of new things about the program and used some of the theory I learned in making the chords. It was a lot of fun and I’d consider trying it again if I feel like it.

Last weekend I went with my mom to see the Richmond Hill Philharmonic Orchestra. Normally my brother Jason would go with her to see the performance, but since he was busy at the time I went in his stead. Here’s what I thought of the whole experience.

Overall, I only learned a little bit about how the orchestra works, but from my understanding, they have regularly scheduled concerts. Each time there’s a new theme in which the pieces are selected for that concert’s program. This concert’s theme was Heroes & Icons. Most of the selected pieces were from know movies such as Superman, Schindler’s List, and Apollo 13. The orchestra is a non-profit organization and relies on donations and fundraising in order to operate.

The concert took place at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts and seemed really well organized to me. There was a pre-concert talk that we missed but from the last bit, it sounded like it was about the evolution of music throughout the years. Before the concert, the conductor Dr. Jessica V. Kun gave a short speech about the orchestra and the theme Heroes & Icons. To me, she seemed very passionate and happy to be conducting the orchestra. She even cracked a few jokes between pieces which made the show more interesting.

As for the music I haven’t been to very many orchestral performances but I can say that I enjoyed it much better than the Winter On The Green concert that I wrote about a few months ago. However, that is to be expected since the Philharmonic Orchestra is professional while the other’s a high school orchestra. I knew most of the pieces from the program except for a few.

Overall I did enjoy the concert and wouldn’t mind going back to see their next concert which is in April. As a group of volunteers, the musicians all seem glad to play as apart of the orchestra.

A few weeks ago I purchased an older version of the Wacom Intuos Pen and Touch line of tablets. I initially got the tablet for the game osu! and was able to use it for a few weeks, so here is what I have to say about the tablet.

First off, since the tablet is an older model that is no longer in production I did get a used tablet although there was no damage to the functionality. The tablet is around the size of my mousepad which is a SteelSeries QcK Small. For scale, I can pretty much extend my hand to reach from one end of the tablet to the other.

The latest drivers were installed from the official Wacom website and many of their older models of tablets including the CTH-480 are still supported. There weren’t any major difficulties setting up the tablet besides disabling the ripple effect when you touch the pen to the tablet itself which I had to Google to find a fix for.

Even though the CTH-480 is advertised as a drawing tablet I haven’t actually tried using it in any programs to draw. However, touching the pen to the tablet is equivalent to a mouse’s left click and hovering the pen above the surface also works just fine. Therefore, I wouldn’t think that there’d be any problems drawing besides using the pressure sensitivity. Adjusting the area of the tablet using the driver is slightly confusing, but generally, if you’d like to keep your area the same ratio to your screen as long as you have the “force proportions” box checked in the area customization menu you should be fine. Other wise, you can freely adjust the area by dragging the corners around.

Using the tablet for osu! was easy. The only thing I had trouble with was having to change the area to something I was comfortable with. If I were to compare the experience of using the tablet to something else I’d say that it’s almost like getting a new mouse. You can get used to it in just a few minutes but it’ll take a while to get consistent performance. Between getting the tablet and now I’m still getting used to holding the pen and not shaking, but I have made a personal top 5 pp score so I’m happy.

Overall, I think that this tablet is great. I’ve had no input lag or delay and the drivers are easy to use. I’m having lots of fun using it instead of a mouse to play games which mixes things up for me when I’m playing games for a long time.

Ever since a few days ago Apex Legends has been the biggest new game that seems to even be overtaking Fortnite at the moment. As a brand new game with the amount of content it has I think that this can turn into a really good game.

Apex Legends is a game that holds ties to the Titanfall franchise. Although the stories of the games are related, the gameplay is different. Instead of traditional game modes like team deathmatch or capture the flag, Apex Legends is another battle royale game. 60 players land onto the map known as Kings Canyon in groups of three. Your team finds weapons and supplies to fight the other players in order to be the last ones remaining.

What I think makes this game different from games like PUBG or Fortnite is that at the start of each game you choose a Legend which are the eight selectable characters. Each Legend has their own different abilities and ultimates. A squad can only have one of each Legend so a fight can turn out differently depending on which Legends are involved. In Apex Legends you are also able to slide around and climb up small walls. The mobility you have in the game negates the need for any types of vehicles.

The game was built really well with nice graphics and already has plenty of customizable cosmetics. Weapons were taken from the previous Titanfall games and the general gameplay looks smooth. There is a “battle pass” similar to Fortnite’s that contains exclusive seasonal cosmetic items.

Overall, I think the game looks amazing at the moment. The gameplay is good and the game itself is free to play on Origin. However, the game’s engine runs on a modified version of the Source engine which is known for having lots of cheats made for it. Additionally the game’s publisher, EA is also known for creating games that were ruined because of the amount of money that EA expects players to pay for DLC and other such items. Hopefully, the free game of Apex Legends stays free as far as the gameplay goes.

This week I’ll be writing about a new game that is going to be released in a few weeks called Anthem. Just a few hours ago one of my friends asked me if I was going to get Anthem. At first, I’d never heard of it, but after looking at it for a bit I started to think it was a pretty cool game. Here are my initial thoughts on the game.

When I first watched the “This Is Anthem” video I started to get some Halo and Titanfall vibes based on the visuals of the player models. Although it looks like one of those types of games, I think the way the game works is kind of like Destiny where there’s the main storyline with missions and a more open world where you can explore more freely.

The characters you play as are these exoskeleton suits called Javelins that come in four different varieties. The Ranger, Colossus, Interceptor, and Storm. These are pretty much your four “classes”. If I were to compare these four Javelins to more familiar classes in other games I would say that the Ranger is more of an all-around decent at everything class, the Colossus is a tank class that can also deal heavy damage, the Interceptor is comparable to an assassin, and the Storm is like a mage. With each one you can customize a loadout with different components, skills, and weapons.

One thing that I’m curious about is the three more specialized classes. Usually, in a lot of RPG games, partying revolves around “the Holy Trinity” system. This is where three different types of classes work together. A Tank class, DPS class (Damage Heavy Class), and Healer class work together in battle. What I’ve noticed, is that the game’s website doesn’t really mention how the recovery system works. Even the “magic” focused Javelin Storm has no mention of any types of HP recovery of any kind in its list of skills. The closest thing I could find is the “Quickening Field” skill that creates a field that reduces cooldown on abilities for allies to enter. This would only make sense if each party member had their own skill to recover on their own. If it was a more fantasy type RPG someone could just “pop a potion” and recover, but in a futuristic game like Anthem that revolves around exoskeleton suits I can’t think of a way that one would instantly recover on their own.

Other than the class system, the main missions in the game do seem pretty normal to other games like it. It also contains dungeon equivalents in the game from what I saw in the “This Is Anthem” video. I asked my friend if he knew whether or not the game would be super grindy or not. As in, will you have to play the game a lot doing the same thing. After some searching, you can actually choose the difficulty of the missions you go on. So if you’re looking for better loot or more of a challenge you can choose harder difficulties, but if you’re more of a casual player you can choose the easier difficulties.

So far Anthem is advertised as a PvE game with no multiplayer beyond partying with a few friends, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they later expanded towards some sort of PvP as well. Once the game comes out on February 22 I will watch some reviews and see some actual gameplay and then make the decision on whether or not it’s worth $80.

A few days ago some of the guidance counsellors from the main high school that students from my elementary school usually transfer to, came to our school to talk to us about course selection for high school. Although going into grade 9 we don’t have much flexibility in which courses we take, they still told us all about which credits we had to get, which electives are available, and everything else we need to graduate.

The system we are using to plan out our courses is a website called myBlueprint where we choose eight courses (including the compulsory subjects) and whether or not we would like to take the academic, applied, locally developed, or open course if the options are available. As grade 9’s there are six compulsory subjects which are English, Maths, Science, French, Geography, and Healthy Active Living Education. Besides those six, we have the option to choose our own elective courses.

The open and locally developed courses are there for students that are having difficulties in that subject whereas applied and academic are the courses that most people take which are at or above grade level. For English, Maths, Science, French, and Geography I selected the academic courses because it’s better to take the academic courses if you are trying to go to university. I’m still not 100% sure which direction of work I would like to go in the future, so I decided to take the academic course for all the subjects. The Healthy Active Living Education is just one subject with no other options, so it’s just a course everyone takes.

As for my elective choices I selected Orchestral Strings Beginner course and Non-Traditional Visual Arts. The reason why I chose Orchestral Strings is because I find playing music quite fun. Additionally, I’m learning how to write music for these types of instruments, so I think it’d be good to actually be able to play one of the orchestral string instruments. I also chose the beginner course because although I can play guitar I have no experience with specifically orchestral strings and little experience with reading ledger lines. I chose the Non-Traditional Visual Arts because when I read the course description it seemed more interesting to me than traditional art. The course revolves more around media and technology like, video, computer animation, and digital imaging. I felt like this was something I could get interested in, so I chose the course.

In addition to the two elective courses we chose, we also had to select two other alternate courses in case our first two choices couldn’t be made for us. The two alternates I chose were Exploring Computer Technologies and Business. These two things are also things I’m kind of interested in, but not so much as the other two I chose as my first choices.

Overall, there’s not really too much I look forwards to in high school, but there are somethings I’m interested in like maybe getting the chance to have music class every day for a whole semester.

This week again I don’t really have anything to write about so it’s more of reviewing the Fortnite updates. To be honest I’m actually starting to play the game even less than before. Even if there’s a new patch I didn’t even try to experience it to the fullest, but instead I’ve been getting back into CS:GO a lot more.

Although I feel like most of the attention to this patch is the new scoped revolver, I think that there are a lot more interesting things to be addressed in this latest patch. The new revolver holds six shots of medium ammo just like most of the other revolvers before it and deals 42/44 base damage depending on the rarity. In my opinion, this new weapon is kind of like the heavy assault rifle in terms of damage. However, my friends have told me that the revolver has almost no spread once scoped in. From what I have seen and read I can’t really see myself using the weapon. Even if the damage and accuracy are high I don’t think that this weapon would replace anything in my loadout of weapons. Six bullets aren’t enough to replace an assault rifle, it’s pretty obvious it won’t be replacing shotguns or SMGs, and the Deagle doesn’t waste your medium bullets and has similar damage and accuracy if you use it properly.

The next thing that was mentioned was the return of glider redeploy as an item. It’s a consumable that has ten charges and it works the same way as the old glider redeploy except it takes up an inventory slot and you can only use it ten times. A few more things to note in terms of weapon changes is that the minigun now has an overheat cooldown after six seconds of fire. Balloons, stink bombs, and scoped ARs had their rarities dropped by one value. Pretty much all sniper rifles in the game now have the same projectile trajectory as the heavy sniper which means that the bullets will now all travel slower. This could change the way that people use the sniper rifles because at long ranges you actually see the bullet flying towards you and can move out of the way before it reaches you.

There were also a few notable gameplay changes. Zip lines now let you change the direction you move in by moving in the direction you want to go. You will now also slowly accelerate on zip lines rather than go at top speed from the start. Building destruction from zip lines was also turned back on apparently, but I didn’t even know it was turned off. Sensitivity values now have a third decimal place so you can even further fine-tune your sensitivities. You will also no longer build walls into the ground which I think is great because you’d always get mad when you were getting shot at and all of your walls were placed in the ground and not in front of you. One last thing I’d like to mention is that the plane’s volume has been reduced so you can’t hear them from like 200m away.

That’s it for this week’s major changes in my opinion. If I could I would like to write more about CS:GO in the future, but I can’t think of ideas to write about. I probably won’t play Fortnite this week unless a friend invites me to, instead I’ll probably be playing osu! or CS:GO with friends.

Again this week I can’t really think of anything to write about, so for this week I’ll be writing more about the popular game Fortnite and it’s recent patches. In the past few weeks Epic Games has added a few new things and have also made a few other changes as always.

There were a few things added that I’m pretty sure were just for the holiday season such as the 14 Days Of Fortnite event. Different LTMs have been brought back along with new challenges with rewards. The end date for the event had supposedly passed, but it seems like there was some miscommunication between the community. Therefore the event is now extended to January 15. Another thing that I think will be gone soon is the Present! that was introduced a few weeks ago that’s a throwable item. When thrown the Present! it creates a one by one that takes the form of a present, and inside there’s a 100% chance that you’ll get some sort of legendary rarity item as well as other consumables.

As for new items, there have been two new ones. The first one that was introduced was the Boom Box which is a throwable item. When thrown the Boom Box deals large amounts of damage to structures for 18 seconds and has 400 HP. It is impossible to place new buildings in its radius and already built structures will take damage over time and eventually break. In my opinion, this item’s another way of indirectly nerfing building in the game. This could be an attempt at closing the skill gap between players that can build and those that cannot. The second new addition is the suppressed bolt action rifle. It’s the exact same as the previous bolt action except it’s suppressed and does 10 less base damage than an unsuppressed bolt action. It comes in both the epic and legendary variety. I can’t really see this weapon being used too much, but it’s something new nonetheless.

There were also a few items added and removed. The biggest change is the removal of the burst assault rifles from the uncommon to rare variety. Personally, I think this is a good thing because whenever I play Fortnite nobody used to use them. If you killed a player they’d usually never have one in the inventory, and if they did it was most likely early game. If you had one in your own inventory you’d be constantly looking for any other type of assault rifle even if it meant downgrading rarities just for an automatic rifle. Overall, it wasn’t used at all. The six shooter pistol was also removed and the dual pistols were added back, but it doesn’t seem like anyone cares about those two.

For gameplay changes there were a few bug fixes for zip-lines, but the Biplane changes were the big thing. Since they were introduced, the planes have been seen as pretty overpowered. It seems like most of the nerfs made to the planes were increased damage taken from hitting structures and the increased health damage penalty from 25 damage to 50.

Overall I think that the item and weapon changes aren’t bad, but the I think the planes and Boom Box could use some more balancing. I’ll probably still be playing in order to keep up with all the updates that are coming out.