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secret-diary-of-an-fa · 3 years

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Crash Bandicoot 4: Better Than You’d Expect (a Review)

Right, you horrible lot. I promised you a review of Crash Bandicoot 4 and, as I appear to be the last stable person and/or thing in the chaos of modern Britain, I suppose I had better deliver. I would say something about Xmas, but what with this being International Year of the COVID Virus, there sort of wasn’t one. With that in mind: Crash 4- what, why and is it any good?

As a kid, I used to really like the Crash Bandicoot games on the old PS1: the levels were beautiful and imaginative (although, to this day, the ‘Road To Nowhere’ level and its sequel in Crash 1 can fuck right off), the characters were funny and compelling and the move-set was entertainingly bonkers. Naturally, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (and yes, that is the real title) pushed my Nostalgia Button even faster and harder than I’d push Boris Johnson down and endless flight of stairs, given half a chance. It helps that it’s superbly well-made by a developer that clearly cares deeply about the games and not just the selling power of their brand name.

The game is a direct sequel to the original three Crash games and sweeps the intervening efforts from lesser developers under the great rug of history. For the most part, this is probably wise considering that their quality usually hovered somewhere between ‘sewage’ and ‘being trapped at a Beyonce concert without a cyanide pill’ (yes, Internet, I still hate Beyonce. Just because I haven’t mentioned it in awhile, doesn’t mean I’ve warmed to the catawalling bint or her irritating ubiquity on otherwise-acceptable supermarket mix tapes. That would require a frontal lobotomy and the removal of my ears, but I digress). I do think it’s a bit unfair on Crash: Twinsanity, which at least had an interesting core gameplay concept and some funny dialogue, even if it wasn’t very well-realised on the mechanical level. But ho-hum: I can nit-pick later during the loose ‘what I didn’t like’ section- these early paragraphs are meant to be mainly praise.

The actual plot concerns an escape attempt by Neo Cortex and N. Tropy, who were apparently trapped at the beginning of time after the events of Crash 3. News to me: I guess you had to collect all the hidden extras to see that ending and, while the 90s were a much slower decade, I still didn’t have time for that shit, even back then. Anyway, they break back into the timeline, in the process shattering reality itself and forcing Crash to make his way across the multiverse and different worlds at different points in history in order to stop them. There’s not a lot of complexity there, but as a justification for having the levels all be radically aesthetically different and providing a jumping-in premise for fan favourite characters, it’s a plot that does its job. Despite it’s simplicity, it’s also offered up with a surprising number of twists, fun cut-scene asides and surprising little narrative flourishes. The re-introduction of Tawna (Crash’s girlfriend from the first game who was tastefully removed after the original developers fired Kevin The Furry from their team) is kind of sweet and handled pretty neatly. And I mean that in the sense of ‘aww, that’s sweet’ not ‘Ah, sweet, bro’, just to be clear. She’s obviously not the same character from the original games, but the developers have taken care to give her enough quirks and entertaining lines that she’s not just the standard ‘Badass Action Girl’ trope made flesh. The levels that where you get to play as Cortex and get into the head of a cartoon evil genius are fun, too, even if they don’t tell us anything about the character we couldn’t have figured out for ourselves.

As with the original games, the worlds and levels have a really idiosyncratic and stylish look. Just looking at the scenery is a blast. My personal favourites are a level clearly based on New Orleans in the middle of Mardi Gras, the planet Bermagula and basically all of the levels set in a Crash-ised version of Feudal Japan.

As nice as the levels are to look at, they’re mostly pleasant to play through, too, with a staggering variety of different gameplay elements coming together to create intricate challenges. That said, I should stress that the phrase ‘mostly pleasant’ comes with a massive, throbbing caveat, which brings us neatly to the designated gripes and nitpicks section of this review.

You see, while the levels are mostly well-designed, there are individual platforming challenges that just lump too much together for any normal person to keep track of and then demand that you solve them at speed and they break the delicate, wafer-thin boundary between ‘fair challenge’ and ‘taking the piss’. Actually, the incidents of this phenomena towards the start of the game take the piss. By the later levels, they’ve graduated to demanding other bodily fluids, too, such as tears and blood. I feel like the developers were a bit too in love with the original games’ reputation for punishing difficulty and got into a bad habit of opting for design choices that emulated it over design choices that were fun.

I also feel that, considering the game takes place across a time-shattered multiverse, the levels might have been a bit more varied. Don’t get me wrong, there are some gorgeous and brilliantly creative worlds on offer in Crash 4, and every level is a visual blast. However, with the single, solitary exception of Bermagula, every alternate universe you visit is ultimately a reflection of something familiar from our own world or culture. N. Sanity Beach is… well, it’s just a tropical beach with generically tribal ruins a bit further inland. The Hazardous Wastes are just an off-brand post-disaster planet Earth that owes more than a little to the Mad Max franchise and where you’ve definitely seen every individual component before (even if they’ve never been assembled in such a Crash-y way until now). Then there’s the made-entirely-of-pirate-tropes world, the Japan-but-not-really world, the Inevitable Fucking Ice World (which keeps getting included in games despite the fact that uncontrollable sliding is even less fun in precision platformers than it is in real life) and the Generically Futuristic City world, because the old Crash games had them so this one has to as well. None of these worlds are bad- like I said, I enjoyed all of them, and the others that didn’t quite merit an honourable mention besides. It’s just that I feel like greater flights of fancy could have been taken: we could have seen some truly alien geography and architecture; viewed whole of evolutionary timelines, all through the lens of Crash’s brilliantly slick, cartoony art-style. The only truly ‘out there’ world we visit is Bermagula, which takes up precisely one fucking level, then that’s your lot: it’s back to Crash-y versions of Earth locales.

I’m also not a big fan of the ‘gems’ system. Yes, it’s great that developers chose to use the gems that were such a big part of previous games to unlock funky little cosmetic bonus costumes for the playable characters. On the other hand, the outfits you unlock should be tied to the number of gems you have overall, not your ability to collect certain numbers from specific levels. That way, your wardrobe would be a measure of your general skill at the game, not of which levels’ platforming challenges you were most willing to put up with for multiple play-throughs.

I’m tempted to compare all this to the superlative one-two punch that was Rayman: Origins and Rayman: Legends- two of the best platforming games ever made. With the exception of a couple of fuck-off unreasonable boss fights, the platforming challenges in those games were perfectly, legitimately fair. Insanely tough sometimes, but fair. Their level and world design also nailed the ‘weird-as-fuck flight of fancy’ vibe as well. Even the Inevitable Fucking Ice World in those games had the decency to throw in some giant cocktail umbrellas and slices of lemon to make you feel like you were ice-skating your way through the world’s biggest Martini while a fucking dragon in a chef’s hat tried to bit a mountain in the background. They also tied cosmetic unlocks to overall performance.

None of this is to say that Crash 4 isn’t good, it’s just that it doesn’t quite measure up to the gold standard set by the Rayman: Origins and its sequel. If it helps, think of it like comparing The Talos Principle to Portal. Yes, the former is good, but it’s never going to outshine the latter’s star. I recommend Crash 4, but if the last platformer you played was the undeniable high water mark of either of the Raymans, just remember to adjust your filters going in.

Before I go, does anyone else find it funny that these games have such colourful, kiddy-friendly aesthetics and characters yet demand a level of competence and coordination that’s usually only achieved by more seasoned, grown-up gamers? I mean, there are challenges in Crash 4- admittedly optional ones- that might one day be completed only if a being comes into existence that has the reflexes of a supercomputer crossed with a surprised feline and is made entirely out of thumbs.

And on that horrifying mental image, I must say goodnight. Tune in next time for my usual end-of-year roundup.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #Crash 4 #Crash Bandicoot 4 #Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time #game review #review

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normanregg-blog · 5 years

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Sydney, Australia has a seductive outdoor lifestyle and great natural beauty. The iconic Sydney Opera House is well worth a visit, and if you have a head for heights, take the Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb for stunning views and a great adventure. Be sure to see the city from the water, explore hidden beaches on beautiful coastal walks, hit the surf, and relax over a long lunch at one of Sydney’s incredible restaurants.

Here are the 15 best places to see and things to do in Sydney, Australia:

1. Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House at sunset

Discover the fascinating history of this iconic Australian landmark and World Heritage site. Set below the famous white sails and the granite Monumental Steps, the Forecourt offers patrons stunning harbor and city views. Or take a tour of the Opera House and uncover the mysteries of the backstage world. Afterwards, make your way down to the Opera Bar, located on Sydney Harbour. This lovely terrace bar on the waterfront has free live music each night and on weekend afternoons.

2. Sydney Harbour

Known as the most beautiful natural harbor in the world, those who come to see it will understand why. Did you know that Sydney Harbour is part of Sydney Harbour National Park? You’ll find many bushwalks with natural flora and, if you’re lucky, local fauna such as the long-nosed bandicoot and little penguin. Whether discovering hidden coves and bays, kayaking, chartering a yacht, flying above in a seaplane, booking a dinner cruise, or simply catching a commuter ferry, there are many ways to experience Sydney Harbour.

3. Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb at night

Positioned across Sydney’s breathtaking natural harbor, this bridge has become one of the most photographed features of the city. Walking across Sydney Harbour Bridge is free; starting at the southern end, take the pedestrian walkway on the eastern side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge roadway and walk to Milsons Point at the northern end. On your return to The Rocks neighborhood, stop for pizza and a beer at the Australian Heritage Hotel, one of Sydney’s oldest intact pubs.

4. The Rocks

The Rocks is essentially the birthplace of modern Sydney. Over the last 200 years, it has morphed from a rowdy settlement of convicts, soldiers, sailors, and street gangs to a thriving, modern neighborhood. The area is a well-known creative and cultural arts hub, as well. Be sure to check out the Argyle Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and The Rocks Discovery Museum. Visit the weekend markets and explore Sydney’s history and culture with a tour of the historic Rocks area. Explore the cobbled laneways, cozy cafes, and oldest pubs in the country.

5. Barangaroo

Smoke rooftop bar in Barangaroo. Image: Tourism New South Wales

Barangaroo is Sydney’s hottest new development, located in easy walking distance to top attractions like the Sydney Opera House and The Rocks district. Here, you’ll find a number of great restaurants, local artist stalls, and a spectacular nature reserve on the edge of Sydney Harbour featuring sweeping views of the water and skyline.

6. Royal Botanic Gardens

Just a short walk around the water’s edge from the Sydney Opera House, you’ll find the natural beauty of the Royal Botanic Gardens. The Gardens boast magnificent harbor views—an excellent place to escape the noise of the city for some peace and relaxation.

7. Bondi Beach

Surfers hitting the waves at Bondi Beach. Image: Tourism New South Wales

Golden sands, blue waters, and perfect waves make Bondi Beach an iconic Sydney attraction. In the mornings, you can enjoy breakfast and coffee followed by walking the Bondi to Coogee coastline. You can learn to surf and catch some waves before heading to the Bondi Farmers Market (Saturdays only).

8. Manly Beach

One of Sydney’s favorite beaches, Manly Beach has a casual atmosphere that feels a world away from the city, all the while just a 30-minute ferry trip from Circular Quay. Experience Sydney’s beach lifestyle firsthand and explore on foot, rollerblades, or bike.

9. Taronga Zoo

Located along the waterfront overlooking Sydney Cove, the Harbour Bridge, and the Opera House, you’ll find Australia’s leading zoological garden: the Taronga Zoo. Discover native Australian animals and exotic species. If you like to get up close and personal with the animals, try the Animal Encounters experience.

10. Darling Harbour

View from the pool at Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour. Image: Tourism New South Wales

Just a 10-minute walk from Sydney’s central business district (CBD), Darling Harbour boasts a fantastic harborside location in the heart of Sydney with some great dining options. Cockle Bay and King Street Wharf also offer funky nightclubs, wine bars, and bistros serving fine food, great cocktails, and late-night dancing.

11. Australia Museum

The Australia Museum has an international reputation for its natural history and indigenous studies research, community programs, and exhibitions. The museum was established in 1827 and is Australia’s first museum, with unique and extensive collections of natural science and cultural artifacts.

12. St. Mary’s Cathedral

Located across from Hyde Park, St. Mary’s Cathedral stands in the center of Sydney as a statement of grace and beauty. It is one of Sydney’s most treasured historic buildings and one of the finest examples of English-style gothic churches in the world.

13. Spice Alley

Dining in Spice Alley. Image: Tourism New South Wales

This open-air food court brings a taste of Asian street markets to Sydney’s fashionable Chippendale neighborhood. Bring a bottle of wine from the nearby Handpicked Cellar Door, stroll beneath the canopy of red paper lanterns, and sample your way through street stalls featuring cuisine from Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and beyond.

14. Paddington Market

Paddington Markets in Sydney. Image: Tourism New South Wales

Every Saturday, rain or shine, Paddington Market has been open since 1973! The market has over 150 unique stalls filled with creative fashion and accessories, beautiful soaps and candles, and pictures that inspire. Take a look at Australian Made section in the market courtyard or try some handmade chocolates and local bread. Relax under the trees with a coffee and soak up the day.

15. Inner West

Sydney’s Inner West neighborhood boasts a variety of local attractions, from family-friendly streetscapes and Victorian buildings to wide-open parks and community-run events. Suburbs like Ashfield and Strathfield are vibrant places to discover the local history on a heritage walk during the day and enjoy a bit of indie rock by night. Newtown’s King Street is the hub of the Inner West, and just under 2 miles from the city center. On the weekends, check out the popular Carriageworks Farmers Market (Saturdays 8 am-1 pm) or the trendy Glebe Markets (Saturdays 10 am – 4 pm).

Our Australia travel specialists have visited Sydney several times and are happy to chat about the best things to see and do! Call us at (888) 229-0082 to start planning your trip to Sydney, or browse our Australia travel packages.

The post What to Do in Sydney, Australia appeared first on Down Under Endeavours.

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awesomesupercollectiongalax-blog · 7 years

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The Greatest Video Game Music By London Philharmonic Orchestra

Plot abstract ( from Metacritic ): "In Resident Evil four gamers are reacquainted with Leon S. Kennedy, Raccoon City Police Department's idealistic rookie cop from "Resident Evil 2." Read More has been six years since the destruction of Raccoon Metropolis and in that time, the U.S. government has been able to destroy the nefarious Umbrella Corporation. With a strong story and really addictive gameplay, Microsoft made positive to carry onto the rights to Halo even after Bungie, the developer behind the authentic games, purchased its independence from Microsoft and stopped making the sequence. The game's soundtrack was equally mature,” and unlike household-friendly fare like Sonic the Hedgehog and Tremendous Mario World, chirpy melodies had been nowhere to be seen. When individuals take into consideration the music of Portal they'll at all times remember Jonathan Coulton's tongue-in-cheek acoustic number ‘Still Alive', and for good purpose - nothing else has nailed musical humour in video games quite prefer it. However, Kelly Bailey's stellar score is simply as vital at bringing the sterile take a look at chambers of Aperture Science to life, reflecting its numbing corporate training video atmosphere by a simmering series of claustrophobic ambient tracks and fast-paced escape themes. A massively multiplayer on-line game the place players take the function of a spaceship pilot, EVE On-line is one of the only games to understand a truly player-pushed world. Whether it was Vice Metropolis, San Andreas (the GOAT), GTA IV, or the last installment, the game breaks sales records, good points excessive rankings, introduces characters into the video game world that persist with us, and remains considered one of the only franchises that would go away for years and years, but come back and have the world begging for more. Over the years, Nintendo has continued the release Zelda games as certainly one of the flagship games for every new console together with the recently launched Switch, which noticed the launch of Breath of the Wild, an bold Zelda adventure that noticed Nintendo return to its authentic game and give us the 3D, open-world Zelda we knew they had in them. Extensively thought-about THE greatest game of all time, it ushered the Zelda franchise into the 3D world with sweeping landscapes, engrossing story and a memorable soundtrack. Naughty Canine's first huge franchise after giving us the Crash Bandicoot and the glorious, but underrated Jak and Daxter sequence', Uncharted was what we'd get if Indiana Jones met video games (No I am not counting The Infernal Machine” as a result of Indiana Jones games, regardless of how good, should not be Zelda clones). Best Video Game Website did Street Fighter II kick-start a style which flooded the early '90s with copycat clones, but it additionally established many genre gameplay standards that persist even to this day....With a simple premise and subtly deep design, Street Fighter II established itself as a cultural icon for the youth of the time and simply deserves a top spot on our record." It comes in at quantity eight on IGN's one hundred Greatest Games. What we said: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild marries the best bits of the franchise's long historical past with the best bits of the rest of the gaming world, and produces something even greater than the sum of its elements. Considered one of the solely games left in the world (excluding Mario Kart) the place you can go round to your mates for some good, fun gaming.

There will probably be some debate as to who is the greatest video game character of all time is (my vote goes to Link of the Zelda franchise...but does that matter? I will say that he's undoubtedly one in all the greatest characters in the video game world but to say that he's THE greatest goes out on a limb because I feel that Sonic could arguably be a greater character than he isn't to say Crash Bandicoot or Lara Croft or even Zelda for that matter. Since the early '80 when gaming techniques like Atari, Nintendo and Sega first took arcade favourite and made them obtainable to a wider viewers, video games have turn out to be part of the popular culture lexicon.

Nothing is more satisfying than when a bunch of impressed amateurs produce a game-altering slab of fashionable culture on a shoestring, which is just one of the reasons that GoldenEye 007, the legendary first-particular person N64 shooter cobbled together by the inexperienced builders Rare, remains to be thought-about one in every of the greatest video games ever made.

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roll-a-troll · 8 months

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Your name is Bafled Roixmr, Miss. You use she/her pronouns, and your blood runs Olive; Lenius is your sign. You're a Rogue, for reasons not yet obvious. You are 43 sweeps old, and you've an interest in weaving, and dabble in troll trapshooting- At least, when the mood allows. You were brought up by your annoying lusus, bandicoot aunc, and you aspire to be like your ancestor, The Accurate. If forced to describe your sexuality, you would say bisexual, and leave it at that.. You have makeupkind equipped, and you're figuring it out.. You use the handle ascendingCorpulence on pesterchum. When you type, you use 2 to replace two, but only when you're comfortable. via roll-a-troll https://ift.tt/7roRtkS, do as you please

#IFTTT #fantroll #homestuck

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techiexpert · 5 years

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IIT-Madras Students created Robot to clean septic tanks and sewers

Students of IIT-Madras came up with a performable sanitation solution, ranged between 10 lakh to 30 lakh. The Sepoy Septic Tank Robot uses high-velocity cutters to cut through the thick sludge in septic tanks and clear drains, once the sludge is cut through, it is sucked out using a vacuum pump, according to a Financial Express report. As a matter of fact, manual scavenging was earlier abolished in 1993, and the ban was later reinforced in 2013. Still it continued to maintain its impact.

Also, according to a 2018 report by the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), one person loses their life every five days while cleaning sewers and septic tanks across the country. These mechanized systems are yet to implemented globally, while the states look to deploy them.The Delhi government currently inducted 200 mechanised systems to clean sewage but each one came at an expensive range of Rs 40 lakh.

The robot developed by the IIT-Madaras students is yet in the testing phase, and the team is still trying to procure sludge from oil and gas companies as it would be thick and viscous, similar to sludge in septic tanks and drains. The team is further being helped and supported by Professor Indumathi Nambi, of the Environmental Engineering group at IIT-Madras.

Deepti Sukumar, National Co-convener of the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA),claimed,“This is excellent work. Under the Swachh Bharat scheme, many toilets are being built in remote areas that have narrow streets. Pumps cannot enter to clean these septic tanks. This invention will be very useful for these cases.”

As reported the machine is supposed to have lab trials in April and May, later on filling the robots that will undergo site trials in July and August. Thiruvananthapuram-based Genrobotics, is also known to address the same problem with Bandicoot that is a spider-shaped robot which helps to clean sewers and drains. The 50-kg, pneumatic-powered, remote-controlled robot can be forwarded down to a manhole where it spreads its limbs and removes sewage. The robotic arm functions in a 360-degree motion to sweep the manhole floor and collect the filth.

The post IIT-Madras Students created Robot to clean septic tanks and sewers appeared first on Techiexpert.com.

source https://www.techiexpert.com/iit-madras-students-created-robot-to-clean-septic-tanks-and-sewers/

#techiexpert

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brandbaskets · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://brandbaskets.in/bandicoot-genrobotics-robot-that-scoops-out-filth-from-sewers/

Bandicoot: Genrobotics' robot that scoops out filth from sewers

The warren of passages leading to the Genrobotics office in a building on the Technopark campus, on the northern fringes of Thiruvananthapuram, doesn’t even remotely resemble the dream lab of Tony Stark, the billionaire genius inventor portrayed by actor Robert Downey Jr in the movie franchise Iron Man.

There aren’t any Artificial Intelligence-enabled assistants strolling around, nor do any 3D holographic images hang mid-air; just a Transformer toy is seen sharing shelf space with a trophy, if you must identify a leitmotif. But beyond the mustard yellow walls and a slumping bean bag at the reception is a hub of activity where, inspired by the superhero, four 20-somethings are furiously racking their robotics savvy to take on a social scourge no less nefarious than any villain in the Marvel universe.

Just about a year old, Genrobotics scripted its headline act with Bandicoot, a 50-kg, pneumatic-powered, remote-controlled robot that goes down into a manhole, spreads its expandable limbs like a spider and scoops out the solid and liquid filth that block urban sewers. It has a robotic arm that, in a 360-degree motion, can sweep the floor of the manhole to collect the debris in a bucket, cleaning manholes in 20 minutes as opposed to over 2 hours that at least three workers would take to do it manually. Through its magnetic mechanism, it also lifts the heavy manhole cover on its own, a job earlier performed by multiple workers. Bandicoot ran its first successful trial in February, at the government medical college in Thiruvananthapuram, and later across the city before it was introduced to the state later that month by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

By replicating all the human actions required to clean sewage, Bandicoot has provided a viable option to end the barbaric practice of manual scavenging in which sewage workers, mostly Dalits, are dipped into mucky manholes that often emit toxic gases and overflow with liquid sewage.

Despite being outlawed by the government—through the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, and Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013—manual scavenging continues rampantly across the country due to lack of alternatives and casteism. According to IndiaSpend, a data journalism initiative, 102 workers reportedly died in 2017 while cleaning sewer lines manually. That’s an average of over eight deaths a month.

***

Arun George, 25, Nikhil NP, 25, Rashid K, 24, and Vimal Govind MK, 25, launched Genrobotics as a student startup in 2015, during their college days in MES College of Engineering, Kuttippuram, in Malappuram district, a nine-hour drive north of Thiruvananthapuram.

Working as part of the IEDC (the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Cell, about 400 of which have been set up by the Kerala Startup Mission, or KSM, to connect students with the ecosystem), they put together a first-generation (G1) powered exoskeleton, a wearable mobile machine, to help soldiers lift heavy weapons and military supplies in remote locations where automation wasn’t possible. While that created a buzz in the local media and was christened the Iron Man suit after their favourite superhero, the team fine-tuned the model next year and developed the G2 medical exoskeleton designed to help physically-challenged persons, like assisting amputees to walk. A paper on it won the best concept award at the International Conference on Mechatronics and Manufacturing held in Singapore in 2016.

But once they passed out of college, Genrobotics was chucked on to the backburner. There weren’t enough funds for their experiments and the quartet took up jobs with IT services companies, “just as any engineering graduate would do”, says Arun, now the chief administrative officer (CAO).

In times away from their day jobs, they would hop from one event to another to keep abreast of the latest innovations and opportunities in the field of robotics. In one such event organised in 2016 by KSM, the government’s nodal agency for startups, they met M Sivasankar, the IT secretary. “It was he who alerted us to the problem of manual scavenging and told us that the state was looking to mechanise the job,” says Arun.

Once the four staked out the extent of the problem, they figured it wasn’t a part-time job. Against the advice of their families and friends, they quit their well-paying corporate positions and, with a few lakhs of their savings, brought Genrobotics back on track. In June 2017, the company was formally registered and they approached KSM for funds. The KSM vetted their project and gave them a grant of ₹10 lakh, with which they roped in five of their classmates. The nine lived and worked out of a single room, barely slept and saved just about enough to pay for rent and food, channelling the rest towards R&D and production.

It was also around this time that the founding members met with A Shainamol, the then MD of the Kerala Water Authority (KWA), which is in charge of sewage cleaning in the state, to get details about the exact nature of the job. “They had earlier come up with the Iron Man suit so I knew they had ability. They spent hours with our engineers and even the sewer workers to ferret out details about the sizes of the manhole, the nature of the filth, etc,” says Shainamol. Accordingly, they made adaptations to accommodate the unique proportions of each manhole. For instance, controlled expansion of the leg to fit each space.

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Shainamol also encouraged them to apply for an innovation grant given by the KWA. In January, Genrobotics was selected as the first Startup Innovator by the KWA and awarded ₹14 lakh with which they produced the beta version in just over a month.

At a time they were pinching pennies and reusing components from the Iron Man suit to refashion their cardboard prototype into a working product—it took anything between ₹10 lakh and ₹12 lakh to produce a Bandicoot—Anil Joshi, a managing partner with Unicorn India Ventures, caught the buzz around Genrobotics. He was introduced to their work during one of his visits to the state. Says Joshi, “Technology-wise, they have intelligently combined all details of mechanical, electro-mechanical, electronics, etc. Second, they have managed to build a world-class product without much intervention. In Genrobotics, we saw a promising team with a potential to take the company global.” Earlier this year, Unicorn swooped in with a close-to-$200,000 investment.

The single unit of the finished product is now with the Kerala Water Authority, which has ordered 50 more units in the next six months. In early June, Genrobotics will deliver its first order outside the state, to Tamil Nadu. It has received inquiries from the Cochin International Airport, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, the PMO and even from Sharjah.

Bandicoot’s ability to solve a large-scale India-first problem with a global solution has also drawn marquee investors towards it. Among them is Google India managing director and angel investor Rajan Anandan. “What they’ve done is technically very difficult. These robots have to be flexible, mimicking human behaviour. That’s got some serious tech stuff like computer vision which is hard. Also, you have to make it user-friendly. It has to be simpler than a smartphone. Imagine building something that is really really complex but its usability needs to be easier than a smartphone,” says Anandan.

Now that the orders are starting to come in, Genrobotics is gearing up for its next challenge: Setting up a manufacturing unit. At present, it is producing the components at various places, outsourcing some work, and assembling them at Kinfra (Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation). But the team is scouting for an ideal location and sufficient capital to scale up production. Once that’s done, they expect the cost of production to come down considerably.

Anandan’s roadmap for the company over the next 6-12 months? Get product-market fit right based on the learnings from the robots deployed on the field, raise some capital, build a plant, crank out another couple of dozen units, and then get into large-scale business development, “because this is the kind of thing that you should sell to every municipality in the world”. “This can become a very large business, but it is very hard work,” he says.

Bandicoot is a 50-kg, pneumatic-powered, remote-controlled robot. Genrobotics has received enquiries from different states Image: Vivek R Nair for Forbes India

Genrobotics is also looking to create a social impact, rehabilitating sewer workers who would have lost their jobs to automation. For this, it is training them in the use of Bandicoot and developing a simple user interface to help them navigate the controls smoothly. “We had to ensure this machine wouldn’t take away livelihoods,” says Arun.

Says Saji Gopinath, the CEO of the Kerala Startup Mission, “Conventionally, there was a belief that startups involved in hardware have a long gestation period before they can become successful, that the chances of success are low, that you require to burn a lot of money and a lot of resources to start with. These notions have been dispelled by the success story of Genrobotics.”

But, for Arun, the highest point in Genrobotics’s fledgling life lies somewhere else. The whole conversation around ending manual scavenging in the state, he says, began in 2016 when a vernacular daily published a telling image of a sewage worker dunked neck-deep in filth. It reached the CMO and chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan shot off a letter to the KWA and the IT secretary to find a solution on a war-footing. That set the ball rolling for a chain of events that culminated in late-February this year where Vijayan formally launched the Bandicoot. “That day, the robot was operated by the man whose picture had appeared in the newspaper. To see him transform from a sewer worker to an operator is our happiest moment yet,” says Arun.

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totalit · 6 years

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2017 papers confirm tests of existing games with “spending” as future objective.

The practice of incorporating micro transactions and loot boxes into video games has grown from sporadic to omnipresent in recent years. 2017 saw the loot box trend explode and even bleed over from a "cosmetic" model to one that affects gameplay. But in-game items like loot boxes—which commonly appear in multiplayer games—are worthless to publishers if players don't engage with them. Game publisher Activision has already patented a way to drive in-game purchases by manipulating "matchmaking," or how players are paired up with strangers in online multiplayer games. This week, eagle-eyed YouTuber YongYea deserves credit for discovering a similar, though not identical, matchmaking-manipulation scheme being researched and promoted by researchers at game publisher EA. The discovered papers emphasize ways to keep players "engaged" with different types of games, as opposed to quitting them early, by manipulating their difficulty without necessarily telling players. These papers were published as part of a conference in April 2017, and they indicate that EA’s difficulty- and matchmaking-manipulation efforts may have already been tested in live games, may be tested in future games, and are officially described as a means to fulfill the "objective function" of, among other things, getting players to "spend" money in games.

Fair’s fair? Not to EA

While other EA documents or research may exist, YongYea focused his attention on two of EA's published papers in a video he uploaded to YouTube on Sunday: "Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment [DDA] for Maximized Engagement in Digital Games," and "EOMM: An Engagement Optimized Matchmaking Framework." The EOMM paper, which is co-authored by researchers from EA and UCLA and was funded in part by an NSF grant, applies more directly to EA's latest online-gaming controversies. This paper outlines a way to adjust games whose difficulty begins and ends not with computer-controlled difficulty issues (enemy strength, puzzle designs, etc.) but with real-life opponents. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); "Current matchmaking systems... pair similarly skilled players on the assumption that a fair game is best player experience [sic]," the paper begins. "We will demonstrate, however, that this intuitive assumption sometimes fails and that matchmaking based on fairness is not optimal for engagement." Elsewhere in the paper, the EA researchers point out that other researchers seem to assume that "a fun match should have players act in roles with perceivably joyful role distribution. However, it is still a conceptual, heuristic-based method without experiment showing that such matchmaking system indeed improves concrete engagement metrics [sic]." In other words, the researchers are operating in a data-driven manner, clarifying that they don’t necessarily see concepts like “fun” or “fairness” driving the engagement that embodies their thesis. And, as the paper notes, it's engagement, not fairness or fun, that's linked directly to a player's willingness to continue spending money in the game.

EA’s researchers don’t necessarily see concepts like “fun” or “fairness” contributing to their thesis.

To test this thesis, in early 2016 EA ran a test on 1.68 million unique players engaged in 36.9 million matches of an unnamed 1v1 game whose matches can end in wins, losses, or draws. Though the paper doesn't offer further specifics, EA Sports series like FIFA and NHL would fit the description given. During the testing period, players were analyzed based on their skill level (itself based on wins, losses, and draws) and also their likelihood of "churning" away for at least eight hours after the match. The players were then assigned into one of four pools of different matchmaking techniques: skill-based; EOMM-sorted (the new matching algorithm intended to reduce churn); "WorstMM" (the complete opposite of the EOMM algorithm); and completely random matching.

The paper describes "existing matchmaking methods that heuristically pair similarly skilled co-players," suggesting that live players were unwittingly dropped into EA's experimental matchmaking pools for this engagement research. But thanks to vague methodology descriptions and repeated discussion of "simulations" on existing player and match data, the paper makes it hard to determine if actual, live matchmaking was affected. (EA has yet to respond to Ars Technica's request for comment.) This EOMM paper also isn't entirely clear about how a player's perceived attributes—including "skill, play history, and style"—correlate with the same player's churn likelihood. This means the paper's thesis can't be written out as simply as something like "bad players will play more often if they're paired with even worse players." (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Ultimately, the paper concludes that this EOMM method of matchmaking reduced churn compared to the existing, skill-based matchmaking standard. In four of its five player-count studies, EOMM bested skill-based matchmaking by up to 0.9 percent; the exception was a smaller pool of players, in which skill-based matchmaking reduced churn more than EOMM by a factor of 1.2 percent. In all cases, EOMM bested both the random and "WorstMM" results. The authors concede that this matchmaking system must evolve to account for factors such as team-battle video games, larger multiplayer scenarios, network connectivity issues, friends lists, and more. They say that "we will explore" all of those scenarios in future tests. The authors also make clear where this modeling could eventually lead: "we can even change the objective function to other core game metrics of interest, such as play time, retention, or spending. EOMM allows one to easily plug in different types of predictive models to achieve the optimization." If our guess about EA Sports 1v1 games is correct, then that division's "Ultimate Team" products, driven by loot boxes and micro transactions, are already prime for the picking.

Missing whale metrics

The Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment [DDA] paper had previously been found and circulated by fans and critics in late 2017, though perhaps it didn't receive much widespread attention because it didn't declare much new in the games industry. This research paper is a higher-level version of automatic difficulty adjustment features that have appeared in single-player games for decades. Simpler versions of this mechanic have appeared in the likes of Crash Bandicoot and newer Super Mario games. This EA research-driven take worked, according to the paper, by analyzing and auto-adjusting games of a mobile, EA-published match-three puzzle game. The paper wanted to see whether automatic adjustments would keep players engaged instead of churning away out of frustration or dissatisfaction. (The unnamed game in question could be a version of Bejeweled, the biggest match-three series made by EA-owned studio PopCap.)

The paper's opening abstract could have settled on simply saying that its preliminary DDA system netted a nine-percent "improvement in player engagement," but the researchers chose to attach an economic model to the findings: that the DDA system had a "neutral impact on monetization." (Certain free-to-play versions of Bejeweled allow players to spend real money to earn a performance-boosting "coins" currency faster.) The researchers go on to speculate that this was because its algorithms retained players that have a high risk of churn but who are also "less likely to spend [money]." Coincidentally, the paper's conclusion mentions a desire to expand DDA testing to "more complicated games with non-linear or multiple progressions, such as role-playing games (RPGs)." We'd also like to see further research to show whether games with more robust online communities or social features, such as online score comparisons, might influence higher-spending "whale" players to spend more, or at least attract more likely whales.

Coming soon? Already here?

Separately, the papers analyze retention methods that, as described, have not been disclosed to players—unlike the clearly marked boosts and aids in newer Super Mario games and the "safe mode" added to horror game Soma. It's unclear whether EA would actively inform players of these kinds of systems, should they be employed in either single-player or multiplayer games, or whether they've already arrived unannounced in EA-published games that launched after these early 2016 tests.

Meanwhile, EA has two big games on the horizon that may marry the single-player challenge tweaks of the DDA study and the matchmaking-driven augmentations of the EOMM one. In addition to Bioware's upcoming Anthem, an apparent space-combat co-op RPG that looks similar to Destiny, EA recently announced sweeping changes to an unnamed Star Wars game. Those changes should add "a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency," which suggests a switch from its original single-player-only vision to a shared-multiplayer one. This 2017 research strongly suggests that EA has a keen interest in applying these methodologies to its future games, but how these single-player and multiplayer systems might combine to quietly and simultaneously manipulate a game's playerbase is not yet clear.

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