Into The Tiny

Tiny Epic Galaxies delivers on its promise: it has the feel of an epic exploration game, but it comes in a small box and doesn't take all day to play. Now, don't get me wrong, it isn't Xia or Star Wars Rebellion, but it still creates a sense of mighty space empires growing stronger as they explore and conquer new territory.

It's a dice placement game, a growing sub-genre of worker placement where players roll dice to determine what actions they can do in a given round. The actions here are moving a space ship between planets, acquiring one of the game's two resources (energy or culture), using either diplomacy or economy to advance colonization efforts on a planet, or utilizing an established colony's special ability for a game effect.

Players start with 4 dice and two space ships, and compete to exploit the resources of a row of planet cards at the center of the table. Landing on a planet conveys a one-time use of that planet's special ability. Orbiting the planet and taking the time to colonize it takes longer but adds the planet to your pool of colonies, meaning only you may use its special ability. Additionally, each planet provides either energy or culture, so spreading out your ships to take the best advantage of the acquire resource action is critical to having the resources you need to upgrade your empire, which gets you more ships and dice to use on later turns.

As with all the games in the Tiny Epic series, this one doesn't really offer anything truly original, but that's not the point. The accomplishment is that it offers something similar to what you normally only get from much larger and more time-consuming games. The amount of game that designer Scott Almes is able to get out of a minimum of components is astonishing.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) There's a lot more going on in this game than can be expected from a 5" x 7" box, that's for sure.

• Tiny Epic Galaxies official website
• Tiny Epic Galaxies on BoardGameGeek

CHIC PENTHOUSE + DOWNLOAD + TOUR + CC CREATORS | The Sims 4 |

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Need For Speed Games Part 1: The Need For Speed, Need For Speed II

This week on Super Adventures, I've decided to finally write about some Need for Speed. It's the most successful racing game series of all time and it's been around almost as long as Mario Kart, but I haven't written about a single of one them yet!

The trouble with racing games, and the reason I don't write about them much, is that they're all about racing. I mean that's not a problem when you're playing them, many would even consider it a positive, but it makes writing about in detail a bit tricky as all you do is drive down a road, often in circles. Then if you do it right you get to go do the same thing someplace else! I could fill up space by taking lots of screenshots of cars and menu screens, but I'd run out of stuff to say fast as I'm not exactly an expert on the subject.

But I've thought of a clever solution: if I write about lots of Need for Speed games then I don't have to write so much about each one! And seeing as the 25th anniversary game, Need for Speed: Heat, is coming out in four days, I've decided to write four separate parts covering the series' first 10 years, in chronological order, starting with Road & Track Presents The Need for Speed and Need for Speed II!

Read on »

The Untold Sad Story Of Erangel

Erangel, one of the maps of PUBG, is 8×8 km wide containing grass, woodland, urban and sea terrains. According to PUBG team, this map was inspired by a real-life abandoned island located in the black sea near Russia. The story behind this island is full of sadness and sorrowful that might change the way you play this map.

Everyone knows that without struggle there is no success. But the story of Erangel is related to the society who never got the fruit of their struggles.

         

                  Erangel is a fictional island located in the black sea abandoned near Russia. Once this was a happy island but today there is nothing except silence. What happened to this island that it became an isolated land where not even a person exists?

    The story starts in 1950 when the island was under Soviet forces. They used to test their biological/chemical experiments on the local people. The people became aware of it and they decided to protest against it. A large mass gathering of people protested against this illegal experiments. The military also tried to confiscate the protest and bring it under control. They established electrical fences all over the area to restrict the protesters. In the game, the same thing happens where the players are restricted by the blue zone and they are pressurized to come into a small area. 

   

                  The protesters didn't give up and gave their best but in the end, they failed. They didn't get the fruit of their struggles and then they decided to leave the island. One after one they left the island leaving the island abandoned.

          Now the same island inspired to Tencent games and they decided to pick this Island as one of the maps of PUBG and they named the island Erangel. The name Erangel was actually inspired by PLAYERUNKNOWN'S daughter Eryn. 

          So guys you have to think now what is the role of PUBG players on this island? Are they the millitary campers who is trying to confiscate the protest or the civilians who are fighting for their own rights? Tell us in the comments section below!

Chaikin Curves

Sometimes I want to draw Voronoi or similar polygons in a rounded form:

I use a process called Chaikin's Algorithm for this.

Start with a polygon:

Original polygon

Mark the midpoints of each side:

Polygon with midpoints

Then construct quadratic Bezier curves. Each original vertex becomes the control point of the quadratic Bezier, and the two adjacent midpoints become the two end points of the Bezier:

Quadratic bezier curves

Super simple to implement! If you don't have a quadratic Bezier drawing function, you can use the De Casteljau Algorithm to subdivide the original line into smaller lines. Repeat this until you get line segments that are fairly close to the quadratic Bezier.

I used this for this project and this project.

Java: Data Structures And Algorithms - Fox eBook

Java: Data Structures And Algorithms

Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme Vs. Maxiboost On Officially Gears Up For Victory In Southeast Asia

Leading anime video game developer and publisher BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Asia. today announced that MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM EXTREME VS. MAXIBOOST ON will officially be coming to Southeast Asia
for the first time on the PlayStation 4 computer entertainment system. The 2-on-2 EXTREME VS fighting game was originally released exclusively for Japanese arcades in 2010.

Set in the globally iconic GUNDAM universe, MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM EXTREME VS. MAXIBOOST ON enables players to take 2-on-2 PVP combat to the next level with Mobile Suits spanning the entire breadth of the franchise's history. In total, MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM EXTREME VS. MAXIBOOST ON features 183 playable units from 36 different GUNDAM iterations, each with unique abilities designed to match any fan's personal playstyle. Players can choose between three different EX BURST Systems—FIGHTING BURST, EXTEND BURST and SHOOTING BURST—to coordinate with allies and lay waste to all that stand—or fly—in their way!

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM EXTREME VS. MAXIBOOST ON offers 1–4 player online co-op and PVP play. The title will feature Japanese voiceover with English subtitles.

There's A Dinosaur Cloning Game For Everyone

Crowdfunding, pre-orders and limited print runs are rapidly becoming the standard for game publishing, and it is because of this that I had to decide whether I wanted DinoGenics before I was able to play Dinosaur Island. Based only on information from their respective crowdfunding campaigns the two games look very similar, and honestly, how many dinosaur cloning games does one person need?

If I'd been looking at both games at the same time I most likely would have only chosen one, and that one would have been DinoGenics, based on its more conventional illustrations and graphic design -- the obnoxious look of Dinosaur Island remains one of the few things I don't like about the game. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I had to make a decision on DinoGenics after I had committed to buying Dinosaur Island, so I ended up with copies of both games. In the end I'm glad I did.

The two games are similar in that they are both worker placement games about building a zoo filled with cloned dinosaurs, but that's where the similarity ends. DinoGenics is a much more traditional worker placement game, with players competing for spaces on the board so they can get the resources they need to clone dinosaurs, build appropriate enclosures for them, and add enough support buildings to accommodate an increasing number of guests. And don't forget to feed those carnivores, or they'll break out of their enclosures and you'll likely spend a lot of your next turn making repairs...

The game design is solid if not overly innovative, but where DinoGenics really shines in in the quality of its components. The graphic design is excellent and does a much better job of evoking Jurassic Park than the much more stylized Dinosaur Island. The meeples are wood rather than plastic (in my opinion plastic meeples are a disturbing trend in game publishing and a scourge upon mankind), done in very nice greens, browns and greys that make it easy to tell the different types of dinosaurs apart. The cards and tiles are sturdy with high quality printing -- the only thing I don't like is that some of the text on the building tiles is very small and difficult to read.

If I had to choose between DinoGenics and Dinosaur Island, I would probably choose DinoGenics, although I do think the game play in Dinosaur Island is a bit more innovative. In the end the games are different enough that I'm happy to have both in my collection.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) This game features more traditional worker placement style game play than its competitor, but the much more lavish graphic design more than makes up for it.

• DinoGenics official website
• DinoGenics on BoardGameGeek

Brave Browser the Best privacy-focused product of 2020

Out of all the privacy-focused products and apps available on the market, Brave has been voted the best. Other winners of Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards showed that there was a huge interest in privacy-enhancing products and apps such as chats, maps, and other collaboration tools.

An extremely productive year for Brave

Last year has been a pivotal one for the crypto industry, but few companies managed to see the kind of success Brave did. Almost every day of the year has been packed witch action, as the company managed to officially launch its browser, get its Basic Attention Token out, and onboard hundreds of thousands of verified publishers on its rewards platform.

Luckily, the effort Brave has been putting into its product hasn't gone unnoticed.

The company's revolutionary browser has been voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019, for which it received a Golden Kitty award. The awards, hosted by Product Hunt, were given to the most popular products across 23 different product categories.

Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt said:

"Our annual Golden Kitty awards celebrate all the great products that makers have launched throughout the year"

Brave's win is important for the company—with this year seeing the most user votes ever, it's a clear indicator of the browser's rapidly rising popularity.

Privacy and blockchain are the strongest forces in tech right now

If reaching 10 million monthly active users in December was Brave's crown achievement, then the Product Hunt award was the cherry on top.

The recognition Brave got from Product Hunt users shows that a market for privacy-focused apps is thriving. All of the apps and products that got a Golden Kitty award from Product Hunt users focused heavily on data protection. Everything from automatic investment apps and remote collaboration tools to smart home products emphasized their privacy.

AI and machine learning rose as another note-worthy trend, but blockchain seemed to be the most dominating force in app development. Blockchain-based messaging apps and maps were hugely popular with Product Hunt users, who seem to value innovation and security.

For those users, Brave is a perfect platform. The company's research and development team has recently debuted its privacy-preserving distributed VPN, which could potentially bring even more security to the user than its already existing Tor extension.

Brave's effort to revolutionize the advertising industry has also been recognized by some of the biggest names in publishing—major publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, NDTV, NPR, and Qz have all joined the platform. Some of the highest-ranking websites in the world, including Wikipedia, WikiHow, Vimeo, Internet Archive, and DuckDuckGo, are also among Brave's 390,000 verified publishers.

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