Grandmaster of Catan - Resource Hog

After over 400 ranked games on the Xbox 360 version of Settlers of Catan and however many years, I had a game where I ended up with settlements on EVERY number. So whatever the dice rolled (apart from 7, which didn't come up much at all in this game) I got cards every time.

It's not unusual to gather 7 or 8 of the 10 available numbers (two dice so 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 with 7 being a soldier move) by the end of a game but usually the 2 and the 12 are too far away and, by their nature of being least likely to come up in a dice roll, not worth getting.

I was the Blue player this game, placing 4th/5th at the start. I had my opening settlement in the middle of 5/10/9 (Sheep/Sheep/Wood) and the 8/4 (Grain/Brick) port. The red guy cut off my route to the 3/6 (Ore/Ore) by building a road to it in the first couple of turns but I kept getting sheep I could port trade and the 4 gave me plenty of brick, so I managed to build a road all the way around the 4 and still take that settlement position.

I realised once I'd done that that I had the potential to get them all, so I built up the 12/6/11 (Grain/Ore/Sheep) then down to the 2/5 (Brick/Sheep) and enjoyed my uninterrupted stream of cards, which I used to put the winning settlement on the 4/11 (Brick/Sheep) edge position.

I sometimes stream the games to record them on http://www.justin.tv/umopapisdnpuaq (now http://www.twitch.tv/umopapisdnpuaq for gamers). Here's a video of a different game, I think the fastest one I've had. I've won in fewer dice rolls before but this whole game flew by.



Watch live video from umopapisdnpuaq on Justin.tv

A list of my Catan games on justin.tv

My 'Grandmaster of Catan' status comes from the achievements on the 360 for the game that are all Settler, Builder, Soldier, Statesman, Villager etc.. "of Catan". As I kept playing beyond getting all these my buddy Chronic kept making up new ones. One day after several more ranked match wins in a row I declared to him that I had become a Grandmaster of Catan, based on my win ratio. So it's just a jokey title :)

Catan is a 4 player game, so the average player long term will win 1 and lose 3 of every 4 games, giving them a 25% win rate. Some people (on Xbox Live especially) find it quite hard to deal with the fact they will lose most of the time, even if they do nothing wrong, in a game that takes over half an hour to play.

My current ranked match (where you get matched with 3 other random people) stats are
Played 409. Won 181. Lost 228. This puts my win rate at 44.25% so I've won nearly half my games. If you factor in all the games where people have quit out so the win didn't register I'd still be up at or around 50% which is where I was when I said I became a Grandmaster.

I don't ruthlessly play to win, I play because it's fun. I just somehow have a knack for winning Catan games.

I'm Not Done Racing

I didn't really notice at the time but while I was playing my last Burnout 3 session online, THE last Burnout 3 session online, up there in my friends list was someone playing Portal: Still Alive.

It seems really appropriate considering I made this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiWLBvzoC0A a Portal/Burnout 3 tribute song, when I thought maybe the servers were gone for good before Burnout Paradise came out.

The game kept me coming back for more and now it's gone, there is no more to get, so it's just as well I was eventually able to record a lot of races to re-live the great moments. I am amazed how widely the moments get shared on Youtube as well. People from literally all over the world, down to the tiniest islands and furthest reaches get on the internet and look for Burnout videos to remind them of the joy the game has given them.

Sometimes I look through the Youtube stats and the comments and it really makes me happy to know the spirit of the game lives on in people. There all just waiting for the next Burnout experience to come alive again. I am especially proud that I have been able to help so many people finally achieve their goal of unlocking the Euro Circuit Racer.

Just a 3 year old short shakey-cam video I took of the Euro's unlock video is, to this day, my most viewed Burnout video by far and accounts for 15% of my weekly views on Youtube.

If you've played Burnout 3 online then you know the magic. For those that never did, just watch and listen to the people that did play it when they talk about it and you'll see the way it touched them.

Domo Darko (Remastered 2009) - Domo-kun & Mad World from Donnie Darko

This Gary Jules cover has been very popular since I made this unofficial video for it back in 2003. The vid spread around virally a fair bit and Gary got to see it and liked it enough to put it on his website's front page for the rest of the year. Mad World was used as the trailer for Gears Of War, which probably took more money than Donnie Darko did and was maybe even seen by more people.

I've just gotten hold of high quality footage (originally it was just tiny VHS transfers from the internet) so I've been able to finally make Domo Darko as it was intended, in high quality. Although the fuzzy vids did add to the atmosphere I think.

m3tatweening Phase 3 & 4 combined - collaborative stream of consciousness animation

M3tatweening Phase 3 & 4 combined HQ version (B3ta stream of consciousness) from Fnordinary on Vimeo.

This is a project I did in 2003 where I wanted to use keyframes as a start/finish point and let many people, independently, animate freely between them so they could be all joined up and produce a continuous stream of consciousness. Phase 1 and 2 went very well and people having seen them were very keen to get involved, so it inspired them to really stretch their creativity and produce the best segment they each could.

You will see how, as the video moves to Phase 4, the added inspiration from 3 pushes things even further.

This was designed to be watched at 720 x 576 but since it was made in 2003 it was only available in lesser versions really until now for streaming and mass viewing.

The original page with all the details of the project are here
http://www.fnord.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/m3tatweening.htm.