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Ranyhyn.net Posts

Yeet or be yoten

Published on September 21, 2019

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

– Terry Pratchett

Three days ago I chose to reinstall a video game called Divinity: Original Sin 2 (DOS2 for short), this was on the two-year anniversary of it’s launch. This post is going to be about that game, and why it’s worth playing.

DOS2 is a role-playing game set in a richly developed fantasy realm. If this seems exceedingly childish and uncool, then this post probably isn’t for you, but you’re welcome to read regardless.

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The ever charming Lord Withermoore

Larian Studios – the development team responsible for creating DOS2 – have an almost unique attitude to the relationship between product and consumer: They understand that games are meant to be fun. A revolutionary concept in a market so dominated by easy cash grabs.

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Sir Lora, a very serious squirrel.

DOS2 is a lot like playing D&D with a fun GM that sets clearly defined sensible rules, and then lets you abuse those rules until it just about breaks the game, and they don’t mind at all – in fact, they encourage it.

First and foremost, DOS2 is a campaign with pre-defined quests. There are milestones you need to get past, but you’ve got a lot of freedom in terms of how you want to reach those milestones.

Yeet or be yoten

Currently, I’m making my way through the game for the second time. My current strategy is to stuff my backpack with heavy items, and lobbing this suspiciously spacious and above all indestructible backpack at enemies. Focusing on Wits and Scoundrel for my stats, I get an increase to critical strike chance, critical strike damage, initiative which is high enough to always get the first move in combat – and some points in Telekinesis to allow me to fling this backpack around like it’s nothing, despite the fact that it’s about as dense as a neutron star.

A quick intro of the telekinesis bag build, by me.

Other ways to break the game

So it turns out that this is far from the only way to make clever use of game mechanics. You could make infinite money with herb gardening, and use that infinite money to buy high quality items. You can also use your herbs to brew tea, which has the interesting effect of reducing the cost of your abilities to 0 if you drink enough of it, making you an unstoppable force.

Tea farming is a legitimate way to master DOS2 as demonstrated by The Spiffing Brit

You can also combine a series of spells in such a way that when the enemy takes damage, you are healed, and when you are healed, your ally is healed – except your ally is undead or afflicted with decaying touch which means he takes damage instead, and then you can make it so that your ally cannot die for two turns, and also make it so any damage taken by your ally is also mirrored to your enemy. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

And then.. Then there’s whatever completely insane gamebreaking black magic fuckery this is:

BruceWillakers demonstrating DOS2 Barrelmancy.

So say we all!

Published on September 10, 2019

A quick recommendation to those who haven’t seen Battlestar Galactica (2004 reboot version) – Go watch it. You don’t like sci-fi? That’s mostly a backdrop for a story that at it’s core is quite down to earth. This saga has been described as a space opera, and if neither of those words sound remotely interesting to you, please keep reading; because if I can’t convince you you’re wrong, at least you can round off this read with a warm self-satisfied feeling that you were right all along.

BSG has an overarching storyline about the last remnants of humanity fleeing for their lives, for reasons you’ll want to find out for yourself. This is a story of survival, of tough decisions, of holding on to existence by the skin of your teeth, with the black veil of uncertainty about what the next moment might bring, creating a tension you could cut with a knife.

There’s also smaller storylines, all about interpersonal tensions, the interesting dynamics between people, some who shared a past before the events of the first episode, others who meet for the first time somewhere in the show, and it’s in these interpersonal storylines we see a lot of raw humanity in BSG. People brought together, people driven apart, alliances, rivalries, conflicts and resolution.

The many stories of Battlestar Galactica are expertly woven together by phenomenal acting, with names like Edward James Olmos, Katee Sackhoff, Mary McDonnell, Michael Hogan, and many many others. There’s a fantastic and I daresay highly integral musical score by Bear McCreary, there’s detailed set designs, great camera work, the lighting is excellent, and all in all there’s almost nothing to dislike about this show, at least in my opinion. There’s a few things, but they only apply to the last season, and is entirely a matter of personal opinion.

Looking up trailers for it on youtube is not recommended, as they’re all terrible and often full of spoilers. Instead you can enjoy this highly misleading BSG in the style of Friends intro.

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

I know many people don’t like sci-fi, some of these people claim it’s simply childish, and all nonsense adventures with no grounding in reality, and apparently therefore not worthwhile for an adult to engage with.

To them I say that actually, fiction is an excellent way to learn more about what it means to be human, and it’s through the genres of sci-fi, fantasy, mythology and suchlike that we can easily pose questions you’d have a very hard time conceiving of without the altered reality you are presented with in these genres.

Battlestar touches upon central questions of politics and philosophy such as what does it mean to be human? Is being a person the same as being a human? It deals with questions of the rights of prisoners, of workers, of citizens of all kinds. It deals with the freedom of the press, power structures, civilian vs military, it deals with xenophobia, and greed and a number of the darker sides to humanity that some people refuse to face, because it’s too disturbing. But it also deals with loyalty, friendship, love, hope, faith, kindness, altruism, warmth, democracy, truth and justice too.

If you liked Game of Thrones, I think you’d enjoy Battlestar Galactica, and even if you didn’t, you might still enjoy it, and I suggest you at least give it a chance. There’s not been anything quite like it, to my knowledge.

LINE-X: The ridiculously robust spray-on material

Published on August 25, 2019

Imagine you could spraypaint high durability onto an object.

Imagining it?

Ok, good.

Turns out that was a waste of time, because you don’t have to imagine it. It already exists, and it’s marketed under the brand name LINE-X.

I was first made aware of this highly interesting chemical over at the youtube channel Veritasium, quite a long time ago, and realized it was a good topic for the blog.

Veritasium playing with LINE-X and explaining the science behind it.

Spraying a melon with LINE-X and yeeting it off the top of a tower, and it bounces like a rubber ball. What’s next? Using it to walk on water maybe?

Well, yes actually. Turns out it lets you walk on water. As long as the water has nowhere to escape to, by for example being trapped in a totally waterproof box.

Sam O’Nella Academy

Published on August 20, 2019

A while back I was on a youtube-binge, and I stumbled across the Sam O’Nella Academy. Quite a large channel, and it’s a small wonder I hadn’t heard of it sooner than I did.

Concept

The channel features hilarious stick figure drawings, while the content creator gives an introduction to a topic, usually some strange or often outright bizarre piece of history or science. He’s a fantastic joke writer, and packs his animations with a lot of personality. The guy definitely understands comedic timing, and that less can be more if you do it right.

Topics

Sam O’Nella Academy has videos on a variety of topics. Here’s a video about pre-industrial surgeries, definitely one of my favorites from this channel.

Sam O’Nella Academy – Pre-Industrial Surgeries

Other great example topics are Tarrare – the Frenchman with an extreme appetite, Why being a pirate used to suck, Fidel Castros weird fixation on dairy, and Diogenes – the Greek cynic philosopher who lived on the street.

Definitely worth checking out this channel.