Public Says

1. Oke.io

   Oke.io provides you an opportunity to earn money online by shortening URLs. Oke.io is a very friendly URL Shortener Service as it enables you to earn money by shortening and sharing URLs easily.
   Oke.io can pay you anywhere from $5 to $10 for your US, UK, and Canada visitors, whereas for the rest of the world the CPM will not be less than $2. You can sign up by using your email. The minimum payout is $5, and the payment is made via PayPal.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$7
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-20%
   • Payout options-PayPal, Payza, Bitcoin and Skrill
   • Payment time-daily
   
   

2. Short.pe

   Short.pe is one of the most trusted sites from our top 30 highest paying URL shorteners.It pays on time.intrusting thing is that same visitor can click on your shorten link multiple times.You can earn by sign up and shorten your long URL.You just have to paste that URL to somewhere.
   You can paste it into your website, blog, or social media networking sites.They offer $5 for every 1000 views.You can also earn 20% referral commission from this site.Their minimum payout amount is only $1.You can withdraw from Paypal, Payza, and Payoneer.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$5
   • Minimum payout-$1
   • Referral commission-20% for lifetime
   • Payment methods-Paypal, Payza, and Payoneer
   • Payment time-on daily basis
   
   

3. Shrinkearn.com

   Shrinkearn.com is one of the best and most trusted sites from our 30 highest paying URL shortener list.It is also one of the old URL shortener sites.You just have to sign up in the shrinkearn.com website. Then you can shorten your URL and can put that URL to your website, blog or any other social networking sites.
   Whenever any visitor will click your shortener URL link you will get some amount for that click.The payout rates from Shrinkearn.com is very high.You can earn $20 for 1000 views.Visitor has to stay only for 5 seconds on the publisher site and then can click on skip button to go to the requesting site.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views- up to $20
   • Minimum payout-$1
   • Referral commission-25%
   • Payment methods-PayPal
   • Payment date-10th day of every month
   
   

4. Linkbucks

   Linkbucks is another best and one of the most popular sites for shortening URLs and earning money. It boasts of high Google Page Rank as well as very high Alexa rankings. Linkbucks is paying $0.5 to $7 per 1000 views, and it depends on country to country.
   The minimum payout is $10, and payment method is PayPal. It also provides the opportunity of referral earnings wherein you can earn 20% commission for a lifetime. Linkbucks runs advertising programs as well.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$3-9
   • Minimum payout-$10
   • Referral commission-20%
   • Payment options-PayPal,Payza,and Payoneer
   • Payment-on the daily basis
   
   

5. Cut-win

   Cut-win is a new URL shortener website.It is paying at the time and you can trust it.You just have to sign up for an account and then you can shorten your URL and put that URL anywhere.You can paste it into your site, blog or even social media networking sites.It pays high CPM rate.
   You can earn $10 for 1000 views.You can earn 22% commission through the referral system.The most important thing is that you can withdraw your amount when it reaches $1.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$10
   • Minimum payout-$1
   • Referral commission-22%
   • Payment methods-PayPal, Payza, Bitcoin, Skrill, Western Union and Moneygram etc.
   • Payment time-daily
   
   

6. Clk.sh

   Clk.sh is a newly launched trusted link shortener network, it is a sister site of shrinkearn.com. I like ClkSh because it accepts multiple views from same visitors. If any one searching for Top and best url shortener service then i recommend this url shortener to our users. Clk.sh accepts advertisers and publishers from all over the world. It offers an opportunity to all its publishers to earn money and advertisers will get their targeted audience for cheapest rate. While writing ClkSh was offering up to $8 per 1000 visits and its minimum cpm rate is $1.4. Like Shrinkearn, Shorte.st url shorteners Clk.sh also offers some best features to all its users, including Good customer support, multiple views counting, decent cpm rates, good referral rate, multiple tools, quick payments etc. ClkSh offers 30% referral commission to its publishers. It uses 6 payment methods to all its users.
   • Payout for 1000 Views: Upto $8
   • Minimum Withdrawal: $5
   • Referral Commission: 30%
   • Payment Methods: PayPal, Payza, Skrill etc.
   • Payment Time: Daily
   
   

7. Linkrex.net

   Linkrex.net is one of the new URL shortener sites.You can trust it.It is paying and is a legit site.It offers high CPM rate.You can earn money by sing up to linkrex and shorten your URL link and paste it anywhere.You can paste it in your website or blog.You can paste it into social media networking sites like facebook, twitter or google plus etc.
   You will be paid whenever anyone will click on that shorten a link.You can earn more than $15 for 1000 views.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.Another way of earning from this site is to refer other people.You can earn 25% as a referral commission.
   
   • The payout for 1000 views-$14
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-25%
   • Payment Options-Paypal,Bitcoin,Skrill and Paytm,etc
   • Payment time-daily
   
   

8. Adf.ly

   Adf.ly is the oldest and one of the most trusted URL Shortener Service for making money by shrinking your links. Adf.ly provides you an opportunity to earn up to $5 per 1000 views. However, the earnings depend upon the demographics of users who go on to click the shortened link by Adf.ly.
   It offers a very comprehensive reporting system for tracking the performance of your each shortened URL. The minimum payout is kept low, and it is $5. It pays on 10th of every month. You can receive your earnings via PayPal, Payza, or AlertPay. Adf.ly also runs a referral program wherein you can earn a flat 20% commission for each referral for a lifetime.
   

9. Ouo.io

   Ouo.io is one of the fastest growing URL Shortener Service. Its pretty domain name is helpful in generating more clicks than other URL Shortener Services, and so you get a good opportunity for earning more money out of your shortened link. Ouo.io comes with several advanced features as well as customization options.
   With Ouo.io you can earn up to $8 per 1000 views. It also counts multiple views from same IP or person. With Ouo.io is becomes easy to earn money using its URL Shortener Service. The minimum payout is $5. Your earnings are automatically credited to your PayPal or Payoneer account on 1st or 15th of the month.
   
   • Payout for every 1000 views-$5
   • Minimum payout-$5
   • Referral commission-20%
   • Payout time-1st and 15th date of the month
   • Payout options-PayPal and Payza
   
   

10. CPMlink

    CPMlink is one of the most legit URL shortener sites.You can sign up for free.It works like other shortener sites.You just have to shorten your link and paste that link into the internet.When someone will click on your link.
    You will get some amount of that click.It pays around $5 for every 1000 views.They offer 10% commission as the referral program.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.The payment is then sent to your PayPal, Payza or Skrill account daily after requesting it.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$5
    • Minimum payout-$5
    • Referral commission-10%
    • Payment methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
    • Payment time-daily
    
    

11. LINK.TL

    LINK.TL is one of the best and highest URL shortener website.It pays up to $16 for every 1000 views.You just have to sign up for free.You can earn by shortening your long URL into short and you can paste that URL into your website, blogs or social media networking sites, like facebook, twitter, and google plus etc.
    One of the best thing about this site is its referral system.They offer 10% referral commission.You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $5.
    
    • Payout for 1000 views-$16
    • Minimum payout-$5
    • Referral commission-10%
    • Payout methods-Paypal, Payza, and Skrill
    • Payment time-daily basis
    
    

12. Short.am

    Short.am provides a big opportunity for earning money by shortening links. It is a rapidly growing URL Shortening Service. You simply need to sign up and start shrinking links. You can share the shortened links across the web, on your webpage, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Short.am provides detailed statistics and easy-to-use API.
    It even provides add-ons and plugins so that you can monetize your WordPress site. The minimum payout is $5 before you will be paid. It pays users via PayPal or Payoneer. It has the best market payout rates, offering unparalleled revenue. Short.am also run a referral program wherein you can earn 20% extra commission for life.
    

13. Wi.cr

    Wi.cr is also one of the 30 highest paying URL sites.You can earn through shortening links.When someone will click on your link.You will be paid.They offer $7 for 1000 views.Minimum payout is $5.
    You can earn through its referral program.When someone will open the account through your link you will get 10% commission.Payment option is PayPal.
    
    • Payout for 1000 views-$7
    • Minimum payout-$5
    • Referral commission-10%
    • Payout method-Paypal
    • Payout time-daily
    
    

14. BIT-URL

    It is a new URL shortener website.Its CPM rate is good.You can sign up for free and shorten your URL and that shortener URL can be paste on your websites, blogs or social media networking sites.bit-url.com pays $8.10 for 1000 views.
    You can withdraw your amount when it reaches $3.bit-url.com offers 20% commission for your referral link.Payment methods are PayPal, Payza, Payeer, and Flexy etc.
    
    • The payout for 1000 views-$8.10
    • Minimum payout-$3
    • Referral commission-20%
    • Payment methods- Paypal, Payza, and Payeer
    • Payment time-daily
    
    

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Game: Mega Man The Board Game
Manufacturer: Jasco Games
Year: 2015

Personal History:
I love video games and am simultaneously very bad at many of them, particularly if they require any kind of timing or dexterity. As such, while I've played various Mega Man games many times over the years, I'm horrible at them.

That has not stopped me from loving the visual style of Mega Man though. When this game first appeared on Kickstarter I was excited about it, but when they started releasing significant stretch goals that require a one hundred forty dollar pledge to obtain, I backed away. My love of board game adaptations of video games has a limit.

That limit turned out to be seventy five dollars. I had been watching auctions of used copies on Ebay for a while, and saw this one pop up. With a "flash sale" coupon, after shipping this set cost me seventy five dollars. It was purchased with money made while selling some other stuff on Ebay too, so I did my little "expensive thing justification dance" and pulled the trigger.


Condition:
Everything was complete and in pretty close to new shape with the exception of a signed art print which originally came with the game at this pledge level. The original owner didn't have it, and I didn't care, so all was well.



Gameplay:
(Note: I will be discussing the game as though I had and used none of the extra Kickstarter or expansion items. Those will be discussed later in the review)

To begin, each player places his Mega Man pawn on the start space of one of the six Robot Master boards. Like in the original video games players must clear a level and defeat the Robot Master boss before moving to the next one.


Each level is comprised of a series of challenges. Challenges are described on "Challenge Cards", and give the player a series of requirements they must complete to move to the next space in the level. These cards indicate how many minions are present, what special actions might occur during the battle or upon losing, and which dice must be rolled in order to complete the mission.


On his turn the player flips the next card in the challenge deck for the level he's currently on.  A symbol at the top indicates how many of which minion to add to the challenge (minions have their own cards and will be discussed below). Another large panel on the card indicates what modifiers to this particular challenge exist. On the bottom, three panels indicate which die faces will be needed to roll to complete the challenge.


The "Threat" number on each player's character card indicates how many dice a player is able to use on his turn. The player will choose a number of dice for the current challenge and roll those die, applying dice to the challenge requirements when possible, and activating any other actions that the card might indicate. If all of the challenge requirements have been met then the player has passed the challenge and discards that card, moving forward one space on the level. The player may then select another challenge card and, if he has enough unused dice, attempt to pass this challenge too.


While the above is the basic way a challenge is defeated, it's rarely that simple. Each player has a had of cards which may be applied to the challenge. The player will of course play cards which help them complete the challenge's objective, however the opposing players will be able to play cards which make the active player's job harder. The active player alone and the opposing players as a group are limited in the cards they can play by a cost value printed on the upper right of each card. They may only play a total value of cards up to the value printed on the same area of the challenge card.


Minion cards also make completing a challenge more difficult. A player must roll a starbust image on one of his dice in order to destroy the minion, otherwise the minion deals damage to the player. Opponents may also play cards which activate a minion's special power, resulting in additional damage or limitations for the active player. To help, the active player my spend "Weapon Energy" cubes to reroll as many dice as he'd like in the hopes of getting a more favorable result.


When a player completes enough challenge cards to make his way to the final space on the level he must compete in a Boss Battle against the Robot Master that rules that level. Each Robot Master has its own special attacks which are rolled by opponents. Boss Battles have slightly different rules for playing cards, and players may also use special attacks gained from previously defeated Robot Masters. Once a Robot Master is defeated the player gains his card, his plastic figure if it's the first time it's been defeated, and then moves to the starting space of a different level.


Each player uses a series of tokens and a cardboard dial to keep track of energy, weapon energy, and lives. Energy is lost through attacks from minions and card effects, and lives are lost by losing challenges and boss battles. When a player has lost all of his lives he removes his figure from the board and restarts it the next turn at the beginning of a level with full lives and energy.


Once a player has defeated at least two Robot Masters he may enter Dr. Wiley's Castle in an attempt to defeat Dr. Wiley. Dr. Wiley's castle works generally like a normal level except for two differences. First, players may choose to fight any Boss Battle instead of a regular challenge in the hope of winning and collecting that boss's special attack. Second, Dr. Wiley must be defeated twice in order to win the game.


So How Is It?:
So the popularity of this game is very squarely centered on the mini figures that come with it. I mentioned the stretch goals at the beginning of this review, and most of those stretch goals were for additional miniatures. The retail base game comes with Dr. Wiley and his six Robot Masters, as well as six identical Mega Man pawns. The Kickstarter campaign and various add-ons also added several Mega Man pawns in new positions, gold versions of several of the figures, Dr. Light, Roll, Proto Man, Rush, two more Robot Masters (Time Man and Oil Man from a PSP game), the large Yellow Devil boss and sculpted versions of all of the minions. It is indeed a big collection of cute little toys, however I have to say they're much cheaper looking and feeling in hand than I had expected. A bit of a let down but they are still neat.


Still, it's a much more visually fun game than it otherwise could have been because of the extras. The most unfortunate part is that this game take forever to play. For-ev-er. If you have several people playing at once a level can take forty five minutes or more to get through, and while the actual gaming needed to get through a level is fine, it's really only fine for a game that's about that long in total. By the time one player is finally able to beat one level I can pretty much guarantee that everyone is sick of playing this game and ready to move on to something else.


This is a shame of course because there's a TON of other evil robots that could have been added to an enjoyable Mega Man game. As it is, the Time Man & Oil Man expansion is likely to be the only one, and all it does is possibly make a game that's too long even longer. That expansion also allows the game to be played with as many as eight players, and I can't even begin to imagine how long an eight player game of Mega Man would take.


I can't help but think that just a little bit of careful editing could have made this game some much more fun. A few less things to consider when completing a challenge card perhaps. As we played we almost always rolled all of the available dice because after opponents cards, Dr. Wiley penalties, attached minions and just generally unhelpful rolls there was almost zero times where anyone felt confident enough to attempt a second challenge card on his turn. The need to complete five challenges just to attempt one of the "at least" two boss battles you must complete in order to then go and complete ANOTHER level, while endlessly waiting for your opponents to do the same, is just so repetitive and draggy that any amusement you felt in the initial rounds is quickly ground down to a tired determinism to just have SOMEONE finish the game before you die.


I'm being a little sarcastic, but only a little. Really one should treat this game as a big box of collectibles with a boring game attached. And that's really unfortunate.

Final Verdict:
There will likely never be a Mega Man board game more lovingly designed than this one, which is a pity since the game here is so long and dull. If you love Mega Man and just want something to put on a shelf then this is an instant win for you. If you're hoping for a good game experience though look elsewhere. It scores an "Average" 3/5 mostly because it's hard to divorce how nice it looks from how tedious it is.

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Some of us have academic degrees and fancy university jobs, and publish peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals. Let's call these people researchers. Some (many) others publish bots, hacks, experimental games or apps on blogs, web pages or Twitter while having day jobs that have little to do with their digital creative endeavors. Let's call those people tinkerers.

So what's the difference between researchers and tinkerers?

This is a valid question to ask, given that there are quite a few things that can be - and are - done by both researchers and tinkerers. Like creating deep neural nets for visual style transfer, creating funny Twitter bots, inventing languages for game description and generation, writing interactive fiction or developing Mario-playing AIs. These things have been done by people with PhDs and university affiliations, and they have been done by people who do this for a hobby. Anyone can download the latest deep learning toolkit, game engine or interactive fiction library and get cracking. So why is this called research when the academic does it, and just a curious thing on the Internet when a non-academic does it?

Let me start by outlining some factors that are not defining the difference between tinkering and research.

First of all, it's not about whether you work at a university and have a PhD. People can do excellent research without a PhD, and certainly not everything that a PhD-holder does deserves to called research.

Second, it's not because research always is more principled or has a body of theory supporting it. Nor is there typically a mathematical proof that the software will work or something like that. It's true that there are areas of computer science (and some other disciplines) where research progresses trough painstakingly proving theorems building on other theorems, and I have a lot of respect for such undertakings, but this has little to do with the more applied AI and computer science research I and most of my colleagues do. On a technical level, much of what we do is really not very different from tinkering. Some of it is good code, some of it bad, but typically there is a good (or at least interesting) idea in there.

Third, it's not really the publication venue either. It's true that most of us would trust a peer-reviewed paper in a good conference or journal more than something we find on a blog, and peer review has an important role to fulfill here. But what was once a sharp boundary is now a diffuse continuum, with a myriad of publication venues with different focus and different degrees of stringency. Quite a few papers make it through peer review even though they really shouldn't. Also, the traditional publication process is agonizingly slow, and many of us might just put something online right away instead of waiting until next year when the paper comes out. (I personally think it's prudent to always publish a peer-reviewed paper on substantial projects/artifacts I contribute to, but I sometimes put the thing itself online first.) It is also becoming more common to post preprints of papers on places such as arXiv as soon as they are done, and update them when/if the paper gets accepted into a journal or conference.

So we are back to square one. What, then, is the actual difference between tinkering and research? Let me list four differences, in order of decreasing importance: scholarship, testing, goals and persistence.

Scholarship

Probably the most importance difference between tinkering and research is scholarship. Researchers go out and find out about what other people have done, and then they build on that so they don't have to reinvent the wheel. Or if they do reinvent the wheel, they explain why they have to reinvent the wheel and how and why their wheel is different from all the other wheels out there. In other words, researchers put the thing they have done into context.

For example, almost seven years ago I made some experiments with evolving neural networks to play Super Mario Bros, and published a paper on this. The work (and paper) became fairly well-known in a smallish community, and a bunch of people built on this work in their own research (many of them managed to get better results than I did). Last year, some guy made an experiment with evolving neural networks for Super Mario Bros and made a YouTube video out of it. The video certainly reached more people on the internet than my work did; it makes no mention of any previous work. Seen as tinkering, that work and video is good work; seen as research, it is atrocious because of the complete lack of scholarship. The guy didn't even know he was reinventing the wheel, and didn't care to look it up. Which is fine, as it was probably not meant as research in the first place, and not sold as such.

Good scholarship is hard. It is easy to miss that someone tackled the same problem as you (or had the same idea as you) last year, or 5 years ago, or 50. People use different words to describe the same things, and publish in out-of-the-way places. Once you found the literature you must read it and actually understand it in order to see how it is similar to or differs from the idea you had. Because good scholarship is not just listing a number of previous works that are vaguely related to what you, but rather telling a believable, coherent and true story where all those previous works fits in, and your own work makes a logical conclusion. Therefore good scholarship takes a lot of searching and reading, a lot of time and effort. It's no wonder that lots of people don't want to spend the time and effort, and would rather get on with the tinkering.

It's common for incoming PhD students and other students to question the need for the scholarship when they could spend their time writing code. So let me go through some reasons for doing good scholarship, in order increasing importance. (Beyond wanting to get a PhD, of course.)

The perhaps most immediately important reason is common civility and courtesy. If you do a thing and tell the world about it, but "forget" to tell the world that person X did something very similar before you did it, then you are being rude to person X. You are insulting person X by not acknowledging the work she or he did. Academics are very sensitive to this, as proper attribution is their bread and butter. In fact, they will generally get offended even if you fail to cite other people than themselves. Therefore, the easiest way to get your papers rejected is to not do your related works section.

What about someone who doesn't care what academics think, or about getting published in peer-reviewed journals and conferences? Any point in spending all that time in front of Google Scholar and reading all that technical text written by academics with widely varying writing skills? Yes, obviously. Knowing what others have done, you can build on their work. Stand on the shoulders of giants, or at least atop a gang of midgets who have painstakingly crawled up on the shoulders of taller-than-average people. The more you know, the better your tinkering.

But to see the primary reason to do our scholarship before (or during, or after) tinkering we must lift our eyes beyond our own little fragile egos (yours and mine). It is about the accumulation of knowledge and progress on the scale of the human species. If we learn from each other, we can ultimately push the boundaries of what we collectively know forward and outward; if we don't learn from each other, we are bound to do the same things over and over. And it's way more likely that others will learn from you if you make it clear how what you are doing is different from (and maybe better than) what was done before.

So if you want your little hack or bot or whatnot to contribute to science, in other words to the evolution of humanity, you should do your scholarship.

Testing

Here's another big thing. A tinkerer makes a thing and puts it out there. A researcher also tests the thing in some way, and writes up what happens. Tests can take many shapes, as there are many things that can be tested - it depends on what you want to test. Generally the test is about characterizing the thing you made in some way. It could be performance on some sort of benchmark. Or a quantitative characterization with statistics from running your thing multiple times. Or maybe a user study. Or why not a qualitative study, where you really take your time to interact with your software and describe it in detail. The point is that if something is worth making, it's also worth studying and describing. If you don't study it when you're done, you're not learning as much as you could. And if you don't describe it well, nobody else will learn from it.

Interestingly, the tinkering and testing can sometimes be done by different people. There are quite a few academic papers out there that systematically study software that other people built but did not care to study in detail. This ranges from performance analysis of someone else's sorting algorithm, to large parts of the academic field of game studies.

Goals

Why do you tinker? Because of the thrill of trying something new? To hone your skills with some tool or programming language? To build useful tools for yourself or others? To get attention? To annoy people? Because you had an idea one night when you couldn't sleep? All of these are perfectly valid reasons, and I must confess to having had all those motivations at point or another.

However, if you read a scientific paper those are usually not the stated reasons for embarking on the research work presented in the paper. Usually, the work is said to be motivated by some scientific problem (e.g. optimizing real-value vectors in high-dimensional spaces, identifying faces in a crowd, generating fun game levels for Super Mario Bros). And that is often the truth, or at least part of the truth, from a certain angle.

While tinkering can be (and often is) done for the hell of it, research is meant to have some kind of goal. Now, it is not always the case that the goal was to get the result that was eventually reported. A key characteristic of research is that we don't really know what the results will be (which is why most grant applications are lies). Sometimes the result comes first, and the goal afterwards. Fleming did not set out to discover Penicillin, but once he did it was very easy to describe his research as solving an urgent problem. Also, he had been working on antibacterial compounds for a long time following different leads, so he recognized the importance of his discovery quickly.

Usually, goals in research are not just goals, but ambitious goals. The reason we don't know what the results of a research project will be is that the project is ambitious; no-one (as far we know) has attempted what we do before so our best guesses at what will happen are just that: guesses. If we understand the system so well that we can predict the results with high accuracy, chances are we are tinkering. Or maybe doing engineering.

Of the papers I've written, I think most of them started with some kind of problem I wanted to solve, so in other words a goal. But many others have been more opportunistic; we had a technology and an idea, and wanted to see what happened because... well, it sounded like a cool thing to do. Interestingly, I have never found it a problem to describe the research as if we had a particular goal in mind when we did it. This is probably because I always keep a number of high-level goals in mind, which implicitly or explicitly help me shape my research ides. This brings us to the next difference between research and tinkering.

Persistence

You know Einstein's paper that established the special theory of relativity? A guy in his twenties, having published one a few papers before, publishing a single paper that revolutionized physics? Most papers are not like that.

Most papers report tiny steps towards grand goals. Results that are not in themselves very exciting, but hopefully will help us sometime in the future solve some problem which would be very exciting to solve. Like generating good video games from scratch, curing cancer or algorithms that understand natural language. The vast majority of such breakthroughs don't just happen - they are the results of sustained efforts over years or decades.  Recent progress we have seen in Go-playing builds on decades of research, even though it is sometimes reported as a sudden move by DeepMind.

Tinkerers are content to release something and then forget about it. Researchers carry out sustained efforts over a long time, where individual experiments and papers are part of the puzzle.

Doing research therefore requires having goals on different time scales in mind at any given time, and being able to extract high-level goals from level-goals, and seeing where new results fit into the bigger scheme of things. That is why I consider my attempts (together with colleagues) to chart out the research field and establish grand challenges as some of my most important. See, for example, our paper on challenges for procedural content generation, or on challenges for neuroevolution in games, or our attempt to structure all of research on AI in games.

Interestingly, when I started doing research I did not think I had much persistence at all. I also did not understand how much it was needed. Both of these realizations came later.

Acknowledgements

This post was inspired by my recent reading of Matti Tedre's "The Science of Computing", a history of the debates about what computer science actually is. He argues that computer science has variously been seen as mathematics, engineering and science, and that this debate has gone back and forth for as long as there has been computing researchers, with no clear end in sight. Reading the book, I felt that most of my research is not science, barely engineering and absolutely not mathematics. But I still think I do valuable and interesting research, so I set out to explain what I am doing.

The post was also inspired by discussions and arguments with a number of my colleagues, some of which have rather exclusionary ideas of what Science is and how Truth should be attained; and others who don't seem to think there's much difference between a blog post and a journal paper and who question the need to do all of the boring parts of research. I hope I have been able to make a good case for doing good research.

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Possibly one of the best tank warfare simulators ever to be created, Steel Fury is also a candidate, though, for me Panzer Elite is my first choice. The huge variety of theatres, missions and machines alone is reason enough. You are able to fight the war from 1939 through to 1945, if you and crew survive.

Ostpak is my favourite to play, especially the early years, I think it was originally called the blitz pack. There are such great collection of models created by the rivet counters that made up Panzer Elites community.




I have changed very little with regards to their models, I have, where possible added new 3d wheels to all of the vehicles also some model additions, luggage and other subtle improvements for those vehicles involved in the early war years in the battle for the East.




It was my love of this early war version of Panzer Elite that I recall as one of my earlier encounters with PE in the late 90's and with the help of Brit44 and Slomo I was able to modernise the panzer's on both sides to give me a more enjoyable experience.




When Daskal asked for the models to add to Ostpak I was happy for them to see the light of day, as my many attempts to get Slomo to help me revamp Ostpak where put on the back burner while he finished Normandy44 and the desert missions.

So Daskal stepping up was very fortuitous for me, Ostpak and Panzer Elite


Link Ostpak 2

Panzer Elite continues with a refreshed instalment of Ostpak, thanks to Daskal.

Brit44Aldo for keeping the game alive and working on modern machines and countless other tasks, without him there is no Panzer Elite today.

Also the many contributors that went into making Ostpak, some of whom are no longer with us, rest in peace dear brothers in arms.

Alas my very dear friend Chris Slomo Williams has now passed away, rest in peace.

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Let's not judge this one by its title screen . . .

. . . even though the first game had an awesome title screen.

No "bumpy forehead" aliens in this setting.

The various campaign scenarios in the original game.

Strategic gameplay takes place on a rotating starmap meant to simulate a 3-D universe.

One of my lame attempts at space combat.

The backstory is reasonably well-told with title cards.

They're not kidding about the "skeleton" part.

What "plight"? You live on a technologically-advanced Eden where your enemies seem to have forgotten about you.

"Character creation."

Well, we now know how the first game ended, canonically.

I like dialogue options, but so far they've broken down into: 1) the straight, obvious option; 2) the kind-of dumb lie; and 3) the emotional option that still basically recapitulates #1.

Running around Mercury and picking up minerals. The large-scale rover window (lower right) is quite small.

Returning to base with a near-full cargo manifest.

This seems to be everybody's reaction.

Humanity's fate didn't seem so bad until he got to this part.

My crew files a "report from the surface."

They're not just "spider-like"; they actually spin webs on their bridges.

The alien ship destroys me in our first encounter.

The last option tempted me, but I was boring and went with the first one.

My own starbase. Why can't I name it?

One part of a nine-page starmap that came with the game. I'm tempted to print it out and assemble it on the wall in front of my desk. I suppose it depends on how long the game lasts.

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