I was just browsing my Google Maps today when I realised something interesting. Street View over Europe! So I zoomed into Rome and checked out the Colosseum.
hohoho...
If you are observant, you will realise that car plate numbers and human faces have been blurred out like this.
Pan over to the left (<--) where the road is filled with cars. Zoom in to see their license plates blurred out.
Notice how parts of the lamppost are also blurred out. They must be using some sort of image segmentation (dividing an image into logical segments -- clusters of pixels) and machine learning (ah that's a face, etc) to automatically identify parts of the scene to blur. Looks like the lamppost is a false positive.
Somehow this ramming of the Moon Impact Probe at 1.69 km/s reminds me of H. G. Well's Time Machine in which humans split the moon causing disaster on Earth.
Went to Coffee Club a few weeks back and noticed everyone was eating something new on the menu. It's a Caesar Salad with smoked salmon! Being a fan of Caesar Salad, I decided to order it.
I haven't been posting for a long while. Well there're two main reasons. First of all, I have been busy (who isn't?). But, more importantly some two years after the Japanese and Chinese versions, the English PC version of KOEI's Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI was released. Heading down to the shop where I get my games from, I got it for $52. Here's the opening video.
The last time I played a RTK game was version 4 as it was the last English translated version. In those days the game was rather easy. Using a nifty combination of wind direction and fire, a much smaller force could wipe out a large force in tactical combat. This made picking a small force like Liu Bei's in the common ``Dong Zhuo seizes Loyang" scenario a breeze with his super generals Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. For those of you that do not know what I am talking about, RTK is a game whereby one tries to unify China and Liu Bei starts out with a puny city, his two brothers, and some handyman. He is sandwiched between much larger forces.
Unfortunately for me, now in RTK XI there's no tactical combat map, everything takes place on the same map that looks like this.
That means that while I'm out fighting, nobody will be home to develop my city. Furthermore, there's no wind! So much for superior tactics and generals. After wave after wave of Yuan Shao's (a big bully in the north with lots of generals) army being owned by me, the effects of economic neglect starts to show when the enemy returns in full numbers while my army steadily erodes. Super generals give good advantages but not god-like advantages anymore. Take a look at this duel mini-game video.
Now multiple generals may participate in a duel allowing two or three weaker generals to take out a stronger general.
And so, for the first time in RTK history for me, I had to make a tactical withdrawal across the Yellow River to Bei Hai where the 20th descendant of Confucius, Kong Rong, is about to be destroyed by a sneak attack by Guan Yu. Here's a map for perspective. The green square is Ping Yuan where Liu Bei starts and the red arrow charts the ``great escape".
Interestingly, while evacuating Liu Bei from Ping Yuan, Yuan Shao's army captured the port and Guan Yu had to come back to capture it so that his master could flee to Bei Hai. Even after withdrawing to Bei Hai, Yuan Shao pressed on, but Guan Yu being smart in naval warfare routed most of his inferior sailors in the Yellow river.
Now, Gongsun Zan (in orange on the map) was good friends with Liu Bei, and seizing the opportunity of Yuan Shao's weakness (I devastated most of his army remember?), launched an invasion from the rear. Apart from the fact I had to actually withdraw, the next thing that amazed me is that Yuan Shao got his ass handed to him by Gongsun Zan. Something remarkably different from the old RTK 2 to 4 games whereby he was normally the first to be wiped out. Before long the entire north eastern bank of the Yellow River belonged to the Gongsun clan. Thankfully, he's a good friend.
To cut the long story short, for the next part I was pretty much worming my ruler around, being a cheapskate and letting my ally Cao Cao do all the hard work while I capture the cities he sieged from behind. Before long, Liu Bei's realm was formidable and I liberated the Han Emperor. Eventually the Emperor abdicated in his favor. Finishing off all rivals, he became the Emperor of the next dynasty. Right, and that took me like 5 full days of playing the game when I can finish one Civilization 4 game in 2 days.
Some nice aspects of the game included female generals that you can marry of and a system that allows you to create new sworn brothers giving them bonuses. On top of that there is also the Debate mini game that is sort of like an intellectual duel. Here's a screen shot of Zhuge Liang telling Lu Xun to "Shut the f*** up!".
Unfortunately, the diplomacy system is lacking, allies can only be requested to attack but not to defend, also there was no proper way to betray an alliance -- features that were present since RTK 2 on DOS. Oh well, time to best the game with my own created gang of female generals next.
