CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

I had a quiet Ingress month, partly because PokemonGo ran several events, and partly because I was focused on finding the discipline I needed to achieve the writing and publishing goals I have. Medal Milestones: This month, I achieved the Onyx Translator medal: Mission Milestones: Oops. None to report. Results for March Goals: FAIL: Platinum Recon— I lost sight of this goal, and have not been doing regular recon activity for the last month. I’ll add this to April’s goals. FAIL: Complete one more mission mosaic —I lost sight of this goal, after one attempt at a mission mosaic, that had to be aborted due to building works that put a portal in the first mission of the series out of hackable range… and then I forgot completely to put time aside for another one as I focused on my writing goals. SUCCESS: Onyx Translator: achieved during normal play. Goals for April:     A chieve the Platinum Recon milestone; Complete two more missi...

Today, Ingress announced that the Guardian Medal was being retire d - and I am glad. Of all the medals, this one has been behind most of the angst and stress I have seen in fellow players,  and I am glad to see it go, because of this. It has also been the main means I have seen players use to taunt their opposition, and not in a game-friendly way. Of all the medals, this one has also puzzled me the most, just from the point of view that, if no player can truly 'own' or 'lay claim' to a portal, why was there a reward for doing so for a long period of time? And, of all the medals, this one did not really require skill or teamwork to achieve (although I would argue that teamwork plays a great part in longevity, and smart selection occasionally helped, while remembering to recharge was an essential skill, too). However, those three points aside, what this medal mostly required was persistence in seeding portals, and a lot of dumb luck. For example, given the high...

Ingress is a game that can be played on your own, or as part of a group. You can seek out the company of other players, play with friends, or play on your own – whatever suits your play style, or life-style best – but what you can’t ignore is that Ingress is a team game. Regardless of whether or not you acknowledge the rest of your team, the fact remains that you are part of it. I find this aspect one of the nicest things about Ingress. I’m not a terribly social person, and there are days when I just need to be by myself, but I find I like the idea that there are people around who are on my side, even if I never see them. Sometimes, however, you can feel like you’re playing completely on your own, that no-one cares what you do, or don’t do, and like your team just doesn’t exist—but there are ways around that. Talk to other agents – there’s a faction tab in your Comms panel. You can use that to communicate to just your own side. If you’ve got time to spare, you can always check to...

It was a pretty big month for PokemonGo, but I still managed to fit some Ingress in around all the excitement. I reached third and sixth in the local player rankings, so I must have done something right… or everyone else was having an off month. One of the two. (I’m choosing to believe the first… which means I will probably have to do more of that micro-fielding thing in future.)   Anyway, top ten was a milestone, I didn't expect to get anywhere near, so that was cool… and then life got busy, as I got my head around what I needed to do next for this writing thing. Medal Milestones: This month, in spite of all the pokemon eggs I hatched, I finally managed to reach my 2,500th ingress kilometre, and received a lovely onyx medal for my trouble. That was cool, too. Mission Milestones: I’m still very slowly working my way through the last hundred missions to reach the Spec Ops onyx, but I’ll get there. Time was short in February, so I aimed for completing just o...

Linking and fielding are two of the best ways to gain experience points, or AP, in Ingress, and you can be quite creative and make shapes built of interconnected triangles, or just see how big a blob of triangles you can make. If you’re ambitious, you can see if you build a patchwork of your team’s colour over an entire suburb, or city… just don’t expect to do it, without some serious opposition. But what does this have to do with keys? Well, last year, while attempting to build Blobby (an imaginary creature made up of a network of interlinked fields), I discovered the value of the opposite team leaving keys on the ground after they’d smashed a portal. I didn’t have to hack for them; I could just pick them up and rework the links. It made building my blob of blue triangles so much quicker and faster, that I was grateful. However, many months after my attempt to build Blobby, I’ve noticed that the opposition in my area seem to do this a lot: they’ll smash up a network of linke...

I finally walked my 2,500th Ingress kilometre, today. I would probably have walked it sooner, but… pokemon. And now, because I play these games side-by-side, I can focus my walking on MORE pokemon, even as I try to level up my other ingress medals. ALL the fun, right? It’s time to move.

Ingress is an outdoor, augmented reality game, with strategic and tactical elements. Kind of like chess where everyone’s having their turn at once, or a game of Capture the Flag, if there were multiple flags and the field was world-wide and the teams unlimited in their numbers with everyone kinda doing their own thing within a team framework. Anyway, I find it fun, and I’m always taking note of what the other side is doing so I can learn new tricks… and then undo it. Right? Cos that’s the game. Anyway, way back in July, I noticed a continued pattern from the local greens (and one I see in some of the local blues, too, but not as many), and I’m seeing it not just the established players, but some of the newer ones to the area, as well. They’ll come in and smash a field, or a portal, but they won’t capture it, or, if they do capture it, they put a single resonator on it. It used to drive me crazy, because I couldn’t make sense of it - and then I found some Real Life constraints wh...

I play both Ingress and PokemonGo. They brighten up my walk, give me an incentive to get out and about (although, some days, that incentive is stronger than others), and help me break the cycle of negative thought that was helping perpetuate depression. There’s nothing like having to think strategically, or identify what that buzz was and if you’re going to catch it to nudge you out an unhealthy thought cycle, even temporarily. So, in jumping back and forth between games at regular intervals, I noticed that where there were patches of xm on the Ingress scanner, there were usually pokemon that hadn’t shown up on the radar in the pokemon scanner. Cool, right? Check this out. No pokemon near the local stop… and the closest one’s you can see in the scanner are for a stop that’s a couple of hundred metres away. Not a pokemon in sight, but Ingress shows this bubble of xm a short way up the walking path.   The first time, I walked u...

This morning, when I checked in with Ingress, I noticed a key beside one of the local portals. Usually when you click on one of these there’s this little entry underneath to tell you what it’s a key for. Today, it was also accompanied by a picture of the portal to which it connects. Way cool, Ingress.  

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to do a 12-mission series set in Gold Creek Village, in Nichols, in the north of Canberra. Time to Complete: It is possible to do this series in an hour at a brisk walk, however, if you glyph hack, capture, fully deploy and link it can take twice that time - and, if you are playing PokemonGo and spinning every stop, capturing each of the four or five gyms, and chasing down the wide variety of pokemon that you can find there, it can easily take you the three-and-a-half hours it took me. Complexity: This is a very straight-forward mission series with easily accessible portals, and hacking all that is required. It is a good way to get to know Gold Creek Village and become familiar with the wide variety of cafes, sculptures, and tourist locations to which it is home. Terrain and Location Notes:  Location Accessibility: Gold Creek Village can be reached by bus, or by car, and has ample free parking. Traversing the Mission Series: If you pa...

Finding Time to Play: When do I get time to play Ingress? Since I switch between it and PoGo on my morning walks - although I'll admit to giving this game priority for allowing myself to stop... unless I've run out of pokeballs and need to collect more. Generally, the goal of the (mostly) morning walk is to get as many kilometres covered in the 30-45 minutes I have for walking, before the real-world demands some attention, which means whatever pokemongoing or ingressing that happens has to happen without me having to stop. I do, however, allow 5 minutes of exceptions, such as capturing a gym, or portal, but, after that, too bad, what I find is what I'm stuck with, no matter how much I want to change it. Weekends, when I have more time, things are different and I get to stop more, but I must still hit a minimum of one hour's walk on the health app before I can go home and do something else - and, I still to impose a no-stopping rule when I need to get things done. ...

Missions in Ingress form an important part of my program to keep fit. I used them as an incentive to get out the door, and to stay out until I've walked the minimum time, or more. Usually, I find myself doing more because I want to complete either a series or a long single mission. Last Sunday, I completed this cute little series, called the GTC Wander. It's the cure series of dancing aliens forming a rainbow-flag pattern in the middle of the screen.  This one took me through the town centre of Gungahlin, which was very educational as I haven't visited for a couple of months, and the building that's been going on up there is phenomenal. The shopping centres have expanded, and a multi-level carpark has gone in, and the various construction works just haven't finished. Time to Complete: The average time for each mission segment is about 15 minutes, although I took between a half and three-quarters of an hour because I like to glyph-hack, capture, fully depl...

This week, I finished my university studies—but this report is about last week. Last week, I was still suffering from a sore back, while trying to keep up class attendances so that I didn’t drop below the attendance requirements. I wanted to graduate – and not miss out because of a technicality—so, not much got done, as I spent most of the week in bed when I wasn’t trying to do what needed doing.   Week 3 Progress New words produced: 2,741 Works completed: 1 (short story – Memory’s Vampire ) Works edited: 1 ( Army Boots and Stilettos ) Works published: 1 Bloggery: 1,795 University Prep and Assignments: I counted 11 hour s and 39 minutes, but there was more. Writing News Last week saw me scrape through with the e-release of Army Boots and Stilettos . It got out on time, but only just. I completed all last week’s priorities, which were to study for this week’s exams, and brush up the formatting of the first essay in lieu of exams and see if it needs more form...