Now if you’ve heard a few of those conversations, you know that Francis hates quite a lot of things. Here’s a little music video that proves it:

Via tons of places, but I think I saw it first on Destructoid.

Hope you enjoyed this little interlude And let me take this opportunity to say that the Zerg post is nearly finished, just lacks pictures, and I’m working on the Terran strategy post today. Guess they’ll both be up in the next 1-2 days.

Update 2009-02-03 10:48: Since I’m already linking random stuff, here’s some L4D Valentine cards. But I’ll try to keep random reposts to a minimum, you know there’s delicious.com for such things

If however you’re interested in Twilight Imperium, this little 2:19 movie that shows an entire game of it might be of interest for you (music probably not everybody’s favourite, I love this track though). I did play all three races, and consequently made many mistakes, bear with me

The whole thing took about 250 photographs (and three camera battery reloads) to make, they’re shown at a rate of roughly one picture every half second.

Game Report

So what happens, actually? (Keep in mind that if you haven’t heard of the Twilight Imperium rules before, this might not clear up that much…)

There’s three parties; the Embers of Muaat (a lava dwelling species that starts out quite strong with a War Sun in play already) in red, the Winnu (kinda tech-diplomats, they like to scheme) with purple, and the Emirates of Hacan (focused mostly on trade) with yellow ships.

Note that due to the setup, the Winnu were kinda cut off from the center, while Hacan and Muaat were split by quite some empty space, and obstacles prevented access to Mecatol Rex (the planet in the middle) from two sides, left and right in the video, and kinda split the entire map apart. There’s also just one wormhole, which ends up being the only way to the Wormhole Nexus with its planet Mallice.

In the beginning, all three attempted to grab as many planets as possible, fighting hostile locals and greeting friendly ones -- nothing unexpected until around 0:30 the Muaat went for Mecatol Rex in turn 3 (they had tried successfully to boost their War Sun to a movement of 2 for that, in fact). The tension between the Muaat on Mecatol Rex and the Hacan base next to it (the locals had given them a free base there) kept rising afterwards.

Everybody kept building up until, shortly after 1:00, the Hacan made their move for Mecatol Rex -- their private objective required them to control it. The Muaat proved to be fierce defenders though and only one Ground Force and a single Carrier survived (and they were lucky to get Mecatol Rex, too), so the Winnu, who also needed Mecatol Rex for their private objective, decided to make a dash through the empty space and get some foothold amidst the two other parties.

Another arms race ensued, until at 1:25 the Muaat went for Mecatol Rex again -- they didn’t actually need it, but wanted to keep everybody focused on the central planet. Their private objective was to have 6 planets with tech specializations -- the Muaat had 3 in their own territory, the Winnu had 2 border planets with that and the Hacan had one, all of them with little or no defense. The distraction proved successful (I actually forgot about those border planets later on, with the Hacan in particular)…

1:35 brought a big twist for the trade-centered Hacan, one that the movie doesn’t properly show: Class Struggle came into play, despite them doing everything in their might against it; a law that spreads the wealth from trade evenly, basically destroying one of their biggest advantages.

Around 1:40 another Winnu fleet makes its way slowly towards the center. The Winnu were, at that point, focusing on tech: They wanted Advanced Fighters, to make those little cheap ships into real pests; some action cards helped them (they used Alien Technology, Corporate Sponsorship and Focused Research, all in one round) and they got there -- but not without sacrificing many valuable resources and precious time.

The Hacan had already passed for that round, when the Muaat made their dash for the private objective, between 1:45 and 1:50: The Winnu’s border world fell first, and thanks to the Warfare II High Alert token the Hacan world was easy prey as well. Despite the Winnu voiding the Muaat’s control over Hope’s End with its Artifact through Local Unrest (and thus denying them one victory point), the Muaat still were leading on the victory point track.

The next round then brought the decision -- the Muaat went for the Bureaucracy strategy, hoping for a quick stolen win through Imperium Rex (at a chance of 40%, not bad odds -- but admittedly, I knew it was coming, not sure if that influenced my Muaat’s will to go and see if it was there).

The Hacan allied with the Winnu, seeing Muaat too powerful, and made another go for Mecatol Rex -- successfully at that, a huge step closer to fulfilling their private objective. The Winnu tried to force the Muaat back, too (but left them one planet); they couldn’t wait and build up any longer because otherwise, the Muaat would have run into their backyard with their fast War Sun.

At 2:05, it’s all over, when the Muaat uncover the Imperium Rex public objective and win the game, at 6 victory points.

So, here’s a little something to sweeten up your weekend as well: The ninja cat.

In all honesty, I forgot where I saw it first

By the way, if you like that one, you’ll love Cute Overload.

Linear acceleration, circular boosting in 4 packets with pulses, further acceleration in the proton synchotron (a larger ring) and gain of mass, further energy addition in the super proton synchotron, and finally the LHC itself with 2 rings with opposite directions, which then allows the actual collisions. Really neat.

As for the black hole doomsday scenario that cookie mentioned wasn’t upon us just yet: It isn’t due until October 21st (source, via), so long they won’t do any collisions and just test the two individual rings. Also, it’s just one of many such scenarios, every one just as improbable as the next.

Random related tidbit, an Indian girl commited suicide because she was afraid of dying (via Arathor.net). Tragic, which doesn’t quite mean that I understand it -- as Ramuel in that thread put it so eloquently:

I really don’t get it. I mean if you were thinking about killing yourself and believed the end of the world was nigh, why not just save yourself the hassle and wait until you get sucked into oblivion?

OK, watched them all? Good. It’s important to acknowledge that Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw has done more than do good reviews destroying flames himself, he also invented a style of rambling (in)coherently in short movies without many stops, underlined by drawings.

Daniel Floyd then has picked up this style (he makes no secret of being inspired by Zero Punctuation) and made something else with it -- thought-provoking little episodes of game developer goodies.

Now, the newest of those just came out just two days ago, is about tangential learning in games and how purely educational games aren’t fun, and I haven’t seen it until today. You should watch it, too.

Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun, who got it via Edge. And here’s the link you’re looking for after watching it.

And, just in case you missed the former ones, here they are, in inverse chronological order because we started from the newest one anyway. This one is about sex in games (I admit, putting it into the title was click bait, but the lecture thingy is very good anyway):

And finally, storytelling in games:

And of course, he has a YouTube channel as well.