Discussion: Orienteering Today Catching Features World Series 2006

for those of you not reading Biggins' log or the OT website, this thing starts next weekend (Jan 22).

CF can import maps and courses from OCAD files, which allows you to run on a simulated version of a real map. and they're doing this using recent WOC courses. should be awesome. oh yeah, and there are real (not simulated) prizes.

You sign up from inside the full version of the game (competitions -> tournaments menu). I haven't been practicing much, so hopefully I won't come in last.

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Orienteering Today Catching Features World Series 2006

The series will consist of 8 races. Four races will be the actual men's championship middle distance courses from WOC03, WOC04, WOC05, and EOC03. The other four races will be new courses (one on each map) set by Jan Skricka and Rob Plowright.

http://www.catchingfeatures.com/OTCFWS/

And according to the OT website, Tero himself is among the competitors in the CF series... should be interesting...

Yes you should all play! You can sign up anytime, even after the series has started. The US is a little under-represented in the start list. Not saying that Ken isn't going to hold his own, but he could use some help...

First race (SUI WOC 03 Middle Final) starts in a couple hours and runs for a day and a half. Scoring for the series is best 6 out of 8, so even if you sign up late and miss a few races you still have a shot.

Wooo hoooo! I didn't DNF and I wasn't last! I'm usually in back fighting with the gorilla to get at the controls.

This was a great map to "mouse" on. There's still plenty of time to run the first race of the series.

Okay, I convinced a friend to let me install CF on their computer. One more American. I'm pretty rusty, though. It's not going to be pretty.

Well, I wasn't last, but I didn't exactly improve the US prospects for overall victory, either. Great map - both in real life and in the game representation. Obviously a lot of work went into the map editing. I'm looking forward to the next round.

Okay, it wasn't pretty. But I was still probably "faster" than I would be in real life. ;-) And I think that the course would be a ton of fun to run for real, too.

Sorry Biggins, I tried to do my part, but my laptop can only keep up with the graphics on simpler courses. Looks really cool though.

Well, i just added my DNF to the list, as my computer crashed around #7. The terrain and course look awesome, though!

Is anyone else having trouble loading the test map. I get an error message saying that it can't load the trees since the map was made with non-standard trees. Any ideas?

I didn't have any problem with the test map -- its the old virenda map that comes with the distribution. You might make sure you have updated to the lastest version - go to the downloads page to update.

I totally bombed C12. Otherwise, I'm just slow on the keyboard. Like Cristina, I was a bit rusty as I hadn't played since the summer. I spent some time Friday and Saturday "training."

It's not working on the real map either, and I can't figure it out, which is annoying. Guess I'm out of the tournament.

Non-standard trees? Maybe its the Anza Borrego map :)

If Catching Features includes the Anza Borrego map, would the penalty for 'running into trees' be significantly increased? Ouch!

#12 was my undoing as well. Didn't take it seriously enough and once I had overrun it, I took forever to relocate. I'll be interested in comparing routes with the elites once the race closes. Tero indicated that he might take different routes in CF than in real life. I wonder what he'll do differently.

Carol, if you don't get it fixed for this race, you just take a DNF/DNS. But you can still try to continue with the series. Maybe you can get it worked out by next Sunday.

Yea, thanks. I didn't actually read the rules beforehand and didn't realise that you had throw-away days. So that's good news. Actually, on the Catching Features forum, I'm pretty sure it says that this first race isn't going to count anyways because a lot of people have been having trouble with not being able to see the map.

Poor Biggins. I think he is getting thoroughly thrashed by this event.

I felt pretty awful this morning after too much Ski-O and too little sleep. But I manage to squeeze by with many small mistakes and no huge blunders.

I bailed after 30 "minutes" looking for 12. oh well, it was a cool map. I did notice that tero was in 3rd when I last saw the standings.

it looks like race 1 is not going to count due to graphics problems many people had. see the cf forums for details.

Just wanted to salute Biggins for pulling off quite the feat with the tournament. Having been involved in more version x.0 rollouts to diverse PC bases than I care to recall, the bumps encountered on this first effort appear to have been quite small. It's clear from the results that quite a few people (myself included) had no technical problems whatsoever.

Keep up the good work!

Also keep in mind that Biggins is working on CF at the same time as having a full-time job and training / competing!

CF rules!

Thanks guys! Things are slowly coming back together. I got the comp server back up this morning, and I should hopefully get most of the other stuff up tonight. I think I know whats wrong with the map problem, so I should be able to get a fix out soon.

Enough people had problems with the map that we're throwing out race 1 and adding a new race 9, so get practicing...

Don't forget about race #2 going on right now! The current leader, Albin Ridefelt, I believe is the kid who shot the video of his younger brother orienteering around their backyard.

Boris, did you have trouble loading the map again?

What's the span for the 36 hour window (in CST or GMT)? I don't know if I'll make it to a PC in time for this week's run...

Great course! I really enjoyed it. I went a lot slower this time, completely stopping to check the map rather than reading it on the run like I usually do (in CF as well as real life). No big booms, so I'm currently in 68th, which is way better than last time.

Cristina - in GMT they'll always be from 12 noon Sunday to midnight Monday night. I think thats 6am Sun to 6pm Mon in central time.

Biggins, my computer has the overheating problem (that i will try solving as per Cristina's suggestion) that makes it shut down when i play particularly graphics-intensive games. And yes, Albin is the kid who shot the video and also probably the best 14-and-under orienteer in Sweden.

Albin Ridefelt is no longer 14-and-under. He turns 15 this year so he competes in H15-16 over here. The rest is true - he was number 1-2 last year in H13-14...

Monday morning is just a very bad time for me to try to use my brain for orienteering. I wish the schedule was somewhat more flexible and extended into Monday evening PST.

So I hooked up my projector to the laptop and shot Catching Features against the wall. Nothing like running thru full size scenery looking for o-controls. Great rendition of the map.

Now that is a brilliant idea. I've been waiting 6 years for a good excuse to buy a projector. Thanks!

Now put your treadmill in front of that wall and you're all set. I suppose using your mouse at a brisk run might take some getting used to though...

Doesn't catching features have a replay mode? Maybe you could just project a re-run and run on the treadmill with a hardcopy map...

Well, you know where this is leading... soon biggins will have requests to make a console version of CF à la "Dance Dance Revolution", but instead of a dance pad it comes with a multi-directional treadmill...

And then we can get O on the school curriculum in West Virginia too! That'll be great for the image of the sport!

The alternative is to stop playing CF and go outside into the big, bad woods...

God bless America.

Bear in mind, though, that it's Daddy-O who did the projector thing, and since he's #4 on training volume over the last year, I think you have to cut him some slack. Like, maybe you should have to average 10 hours/week of actual physical activity before you're allowed to play CF in VR mode. :-)

Lets see, each school gets a console and 2 dance pads for $750. If each school has, say 200 students (I'm being conservative), with a 6 hour school day, that works out to (6.0/(200./2))*60. = 3.6 Yes, a whopping 3-1/2 minutes of physical activity per day, for a total of 18 minutes a week. They'll burn more calories walking from the candy machine to the computer room than actually using it.

Let them eat cake.

Or rather, given that this is West Virginia, let them eat donuts!

Let them eat Cake Donuts! Mmmmmm....

The alternative is to stop playing CF and go outside into the big, bad woods...

I don't have CF, so I'll settle for the big bad woods - even if it is raining...

You don't have it? What are you doing? Got get it! you can't do physical training 24 hours a day.

Eddie: I recommend funnel cakes. I think they may pack more "nutritional" value. A donut like inside, deep fried on the outside. You can have them with mayonnaise.

Funnel cakes are good, but even harder to find than cake donuts.

I know where to find them but I've never heard of a cake donut.

This is a cake donut:

Back on the CF simulation, if I actually ventured out on that WOC map and course I'd still be wandering around lost based on my game performance. Sometimes it may be better to try these things in the safety of your home, with a convenient source of donuts at your fingertips.

Is it bigger than a regular one? Laced with sugar and cinnamon?

Its about the same size - sometimes a little smaller. Some people like to cover them in powdered sugar or cinnamon, but thats just crazy talk.

Nothing beats a good fruit cake!

Cake donuts are denser than regular ones.

B-i-i-i-i-iggins!!! I have paid CF in the beginning of january and till now have not received the license.

Well, I'll admit that I wasn't in the best frame of mind (had a few drinks celebrating 12 years of marital bliss this evening), but what was up with the map for round 3? Colors were completely different from normal CF maps. I could hardly read the contours. Anybody else have trouble, or is it something with my settings?

I spent 5-10 minutes studying Thierry's route on Runoway, and it seemed to help. I had a very good race up until the last 3 controls, where I completely lost my rhythm. There was some sort of problem downloading results from the server, and I'm not sure if I'll get an official time. My unofficial time was around 52 minutes.

That is only 2 minutes more than my split for the first control!

Crap! I didn't have time to play until after work and it was too late to get an official result. Finished (unofficially) between Eric and Jeff. Some legs I did really well and notice some improvement in my CF navigation. But I had a few big bombs. Eric, I didn't have any color issues.

Well, strange. My contour lines are yellow for just that map. (They still are - it wasn't the alcohol). If I can get that fixed by next Sunday, I'll play the next round, otherwise I'll skip it. It was frustrating to not be able to read the lines quickly in such a subtle area.

Hm... I don't have any problems with the lines, but I can't see green areas on the map.

Have you tried just changing your monitor brightness / contrast?

Could do that, but I don't understand why it's different for just this map. All the other maps are displaying just fine. Also, the 3D window is just as I like it, and any monitor changes would obviously affect that as well. Anyway, I'd hate to give the impression that I'm unhappy with CF on a public forum, I just wanted to know if it was something universal or unique to my computer. It appears to be the latter.

Eric, try posting to the CF discussion forum. Maybe someone there has had a similar experience.

Just "ran" the latest course. This time I didn't waste 50 minutes bailing out to the edge of the map that wasn't the edge of the map. Thanks Greg for putting together some top notch maps!

I messed up #1, #3, #4 and #16.

For those of you who don't have the game, but still want to see the fun of Jeff running really far off the map, you can go to the series page at OT, click on the "complete results" links on the left side, and see the routes for each person.

Missed the start window again but had a decent non-scoring run for me. No huge, relative to my usual humogous, errors. As Jeff said, "top notch maps." I think that was the longest CF race I'd ever run.

I should say when I was *on* the map, it was superb!

Unfortunately I wasn't home to race last week, but I warmed up today by running last week's course. The warm-up race itself went pretty bad, but it seems that the familiarity with the terrain helped for the actual scoring race.