Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

I’ve been picking at a few other randomizers lately for exercise time. Currently working through OoT randomizer, with a plan to try Metroid Prime rando next.

Current seed I’ve been trying across several sessions put bombs, Zelda’s lullaby, and the adult’s wallet deep into the Gerudo desert, forcing me to route in all the shortcuts in the game.

Apparently I remembered those and most of the caves under rocks everywhere, despite not playing this game for many years?

The goose is an incarnation of one or more trickster gods, and no one can convince me otherwise.

tl;dr: I’ve learned to greatly appreciate robot wars as a genre of videogame.

Most interesting is how it selects from the pool of available buffs and debuffs.

The War of the Lions build of the AI seems to consider the balance of opposing units when selecting spells that mitigate physical and magical damage. It’ll also selectively go for Haste, Slow, and Immobilize if that outcompetes KOing a unit outright. Which all is way more nuanced than I ever expected the AI to be when I first played it.

The AI sees _way_ more creative solutions to damage and crowd control than I do, but it can easily get caught in loops with the wrong strategy (ie, units hiding in a corner healing themselves forever).

There are also a few skills the AI will _always_ go for (ie, how it considers skills involving the charm status) that I had to prevent units from learning entirely.

Building around that has been an interesting challenge.

Picking up my old iOS copy and, it actually got better with age.

Back when I ran this on its original build, I meticulously moved all of my units. Spent literal days grinding and micromanaging my party.

Now? I’ve learned how the AI works, and I’m building a party to see how far I can take autoplay.

Under manual control, everyone was a healer with Raise. Under AI control, everyone is instead a DPS, with the ability to end encounters in under three rounds.

A habit I’ve gotten into the past three years: whenever a major development happens, I buy the local papers and put them in my fire safe.

Mostly so, when my niece and nephew ask us what these times were like in 10-20 years, I can pull the stack back out of the safe.

I applaud their creativity in being evil (read: I don’t), but I think I’ll stick to Distance and learning how to go fast in games that don’t directly convert my time into profit.

+: Mario Kart Tour is an actually good racing game that I could keep playing for awhile. They converted it to mobile format surprisingly well, and it’s responsive and fun to play.

-: But it capitalizes on my skill at the game to push other players to spend gobs of real money, and I’m _really_ uncomfortable with that?

For folks asking about bats here: we do have a healthy bat population nearby, but I’m not 100% sure the gnawing on our apples in the tree are from them (young raccoons are also possible, as are squirrels that can’t reach the entire apple).

So, unconfirmed, but if anyone would like to look at the nibble patterns, I’d find that interesting!

Our hummingbird feeder is now feeding the entire forest, at about 4-6oz per day (!!). We’ve brought them reinforcements (two new feeders) to last them through the coming winter.

We managed to salvage about a dozen apples from the tree this year. The rest were eaten by our woodland birds, bats, and squirrels, and we are entirely okay with this.

I’m personally foregoing celebration until 45 and Bojo are collectively out of power, but today’s unanimous (unanimous!) developments on both sides of the pond are encouraging.