Nintendo

Tarantula Island sort of works.

So Animal Crossing New Horizons has a very lucrative way of making money. Tarantula are found in your village occasionally and they sell for 8000 bells apiece.

Curiously I searched for the ideal spawn conditions and found they prefer an emptier area to spawn in with no trees or other intrusions. They also only spawn on the lowest level of the map, and they only appear between 7pm and 5am.

With this in mind I took a trip to an island (these are procedurally generated in case you were wondering) and when I found it was the single level “spiral” Island I thought I’d try an experiment.

I removed all the trees and plucked all the flowers. I also removed the rocks.

Once the island was clear I only had 4 insects able to spawn, and according to my calculations about 4 bugs spawn at any one time on the island.

  • Giant Water Bugs (2000 bells)
  • Tiger Beetle (1500 bells)
  • Wharf Roach (200 bells)
  • Tarantula (8000 bells)

Two of these are really easy to get rid of by just stomping near them. Make sure you run all around the island regularly clearing them, don’t forget the rocks off the top corners of the island.

The Giant Water Bugs need catching but can be released if pocket space is important. They can be a pain if they stay in the middle of the water.

Finally, the goal is the 8000 bell Tarantula.

When you get one, approach it slowly, and stop if it rears up and “hisses”. Once you’re close enough net it.

I’m not guaranteeing this is going to work every time, but a few trips have now proven lucrative with around 144,000 bells minimum a trip, although it may take you 30 minutes or so to fill your pockets.

New game!

I know it’s been out a while now, but I’ve been really fancying Splatoon 2. It’s great! Think messy laser quest…

The only sad thing is that we can’t play two players using just one console.

Blood Moons

Am I the only person who gets totally creeped out by Blood Moons in Breath of the Wild?

A Blood Moon rises once again. It’s a shame the reflection on the water is white. Nintendo usually excell at attention to detail too!

From the bright red moon rising with the halo, the creepy flute trill, to the sparks and black blobs rising to the eventual stopping off the game whilst the voice of Zelda tells you “The Blood Moon rises once again… be careful Link”.

The entire mechanic of the game is there for a reason. Because Zelda is now open world (and so much better for it) and the laws of physics now apply to many things such as trees, rocks, barrels and such, as well as mobs being killed really remaining killed – it would be very easy for the game to break itself if too much changed.

The game, therefore, has the Blood Moon mechanic which respawns all mobs, resets the trees and other movable items, and essentially reboots the world (although it leaves the completed shrines and the divine beasts intact).

The Blood Moon normally occurs after about two and three quarter hours of overworld play. Visiting Hino at the Duelling Peaks stable will confirm if tonight’s moon will indeed be a Blood Moon.

It’s also quite amusing to find that under the right conditions you can trigger one at any time; generally if you try doing something the game doesn’t like and the game detects anything in the physics which may break the engine and crash it, it will force a Blood Moon immediately.

I’ve noticed that the latter Blood Moon also puts you on flat ground too (I once had one whilst I was up a tree swinging a metal block at a camp of Bokoblins). I presume this is because your location may be what is breaking the physics?

Broken Astronomy

Amusingly, Zelda gets its moon very wrong. I can’t honesty think of a game yet which gets it right!

Zelda games have always had the moon opposite the sun in the sky, regardless of phase.

When a Blood Moon occurs it’s akin to a Lunar Eclipse on Earth, although the halo is more like the Corona of the sun visible during a solar eclipse.

In reality, only the full moon is opposite the sun in the sky.

The crescent should be about 45 degrees at from the sun, the half moon (dichotomy) 90 degrees away, the gibbous phase 135 degrees away, and the full moon (and Blood Moon) opposite.

The moon phases in BotW however are very random. Even Minecraft always puts the sun and moon opposite each other in the sky.

Cartoons can’t get it right though. How many times have you seen an evening based section of The Simpsons with a morning moon? The crescent is back to front!

5 reasons to buy a Nintendo DSi

At first the DSi didn’t excite me in any way. I had a DS and I was happy with it, but I then saw something that made me realise the DSi was for me…

1: The Cameras – 0.3 megapixel (read VGA). They’re OK, I suppose, but the included photography and gallery software is really good and some of the effects are worth it alone.

2: MP3 playing – a load of old bollocks… the DSi cannot play MP3’s BUT… it can play M4A files which are readily downloaded from itunes, and you can convert your MP3’s into M4A’s rather quickly using Sound Convertor (available from the Ubuntu Software Centre).

3: DSiWare – there’s a lot of crap, but I must say STARSHIP PATROL is the most awesome game ever!

4: A Browser – don’t expect too much and it will deliver. It’s better to browse the mobile version of sites, although it can cope with bigger sites. No flash though, but then again neither has the ipad!

5: Flipnotes – Animated flipbooks… a great time killer – and with Flipnote Hatena for sharing them it’s superb. Some DSi owners are really creative too!

Yup. Get a DSi. They’re good… or even wait for the 3DS (although I will probably keep my DSi too).

—— take that… SONY!

The moon on a stick?

Today was the first batch of auditions for Manning. I won’t say how they went… you’ll find out in good time.

We have decided to pull the Akoustik gig in October, however, we have a private function booked in October which we will be doing… I’m quite looking forward to it too.

Did you know Blitz Basic is available for PC? – Neither did I!… I may well start programming again…

For now, though, Populous on the DS is keeping me entertained.