This episode is a slight change of pace from our normal episode length, since neither of us picked a very long topic, but it's always nice to have some variety. It's also the second episode in Jonah's small series of episode going over a brief history of some of the instruments found in a concert band. It's not necessary to listen to the previous week to understand this one, but it also won't hurt. This week, he finishes off the woodwinds with the bassoon and saxophone, then continues to the string bass. Cirdan's topic this week is rather short, but sweet nonetheless, talking about the Insurgency: Sandstorm Modding Collaboration (ISMC for short). It's not quite a complete overhaul of the game, but it adds a whole lot of cool new stuff Insurgency: Sandstorm players don't want to miss.

Are you confused by the title? Good. To find out what it is, you'll have to listen to this episode, in which we discuss the history of 3 concert band instruments - the clarinet among them. Before that, though, we get a re-review of Hollow Knight, Cirdan's new favorite game. Since the previous review, he's put over 50 more hours into the game, allowing him to give a whole new perspective on this modern masterpiece. One of the best parts of Hollow Knight is the soundtrack, which you can find a link to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWZktANV-D8. Please note that in this episode Cirdan was trying some new techniques that will hopefully speed up the editing process in the future, but this being his first time using them some things might sound a bit off this week.

The Rambling Nerds present... (Drumroll, please!): The first ever Mega Topic! Instead of our usual two topics per episode, we've created one massive topic about a game we can both talk about, that being XCOM 2. We've being playing a campaign together in our spare time and have been having a lot of fun with it, so we thought we'd share our thoughts and experiences with you! XCOM 2 is a turn-based strategy game set in a future where you, as the commander of a military group called XCOM, try to free the world from the control of an alien organisation known as ADVENT.  To make this episode truly worthy of the "MEGA" in the title, we've added 3 new sections to our normal game review structure for this week: Plot, Coop, and Bugs. We hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it! Or maybe even more than that, since it wasn't fun when the bot messed up and we had to record the whole thing a second time :)

5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel and Cattails are both video games. That is the only thing they have in common, but that does still technically make this a double video game episode. 2D chess apparently wasn't hard enough for Conor Petersen, so he decided to create a chess variant with some new dimensions: Turn and Timeline. Does that sound confusing? It is! Have fun. Cattails, on the other hand, is a 2D, top-down RPG where you play as a member of a faction of wild cats. You'll spend your days hunting, expanding your faction's territory, progressing along a unique skill tree, and even mining! Does that sound much less confusing? It is! Have fun!

This is the link to the soundtrack for Cattails, if you'd like to listen to it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDOXxv1h510

We apologize for all the lag, voices cutting out, and other various sound issues this week. We're not sure why it was worse than usual, since everything sounded fine while we were recording, but it is what it is now, we guess.

 If you're into tactical games, first person shooters, games where no two rounds are ever the same, or for some strange reason even just games that are set in Bangladesh, Zero Hour could be the game for you. It's got all the stuff just mentioned, and more! If you're intrigued by this description, good! Zero Hour is Cirdan's topic today, so you can look forward to a detailed explanation of the game there. After that comes airships. Today, the most publicized stories about airships are those about disasters such as the Hindenburg. There's more to discover about airships than just the tragedies, though, a lot of which Jonah takes you through in this episode.

If you guessed Insurgency: Sandstorm as the Cirdan's topic for this episode, well done! Sadly, there's no prize except the knowledge that you're doing better than Jonah on this. Insurgency: Sandstorm is the sequel to Insurgency, a first-person shooter which has been covered on the podcast before, in the episode titled "Game-Changing Thruster? Elaborate Hoax? Just what is the EmDrive?". We recommend listening to that episode before listening to this one, since the parts of Insurgency: Sandstorm that are the same as parts of Insurgency aren't discussed in this episode. Jonah's topic for the week is Sun Tzu and his book The Art of War, during which he spectacularly fails to remember the existence of Asia. We apologize for this episode being released a day late, both of us were very busy with school and unfortunately didn't have time to finish the editing yesterday.
An Important Message from Cirdan:
The day after recording, the competitive mode was removed from Insurgency: Sandstorm. Some of the stuff mentioned in the episode may no longer be accurate because of this. I suspect this was done with the express purpose of making my life difficult.

Crop circles look really cool. They also appear out of nowhere and have no scientific explanation, making them a popular focus for fringe theorists and New Age groups. This episode, Jonah gives a more scientific look at crop circles, demystifying some of the weirder ideas about them in the process. Also in this episode is Cirdan's review of Brass Brigade, a third person shooter centered around massive, incredibly configurable bot battles. You may have noticed this episode is a day late. Here's a snapshot of our conversation yesterday:
TechnoPorg Yesterday at 5:15 PM

Don't forget to upload the episode today

Taox Yesterday at 5:16 PM

Yea I will when I'm done editing

[5:16 PM]

I'm doing chores right now

[5:16 PM]

It will only take me like an hour

TechnoPorg Yesterday at 5:16 PM

Okay sounds good

[5:16 PM]

Just wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten because I have done that before

Taox Yesterday at 5:17 PM

Well I haven't ever forgotten lol

Taox Yesterday at 9:07 PM

CRAP I FORGOT

[9:10 PM]

THE ONE TIME I FORGET IS THE ONE TIME THAT I WAS REMINDED

TechnoPorg Yesterday at 9:36 PM

Don't worry lol

[9:37 PM]

I'm honestly glad you forgot because I was about to fall asleep and then I realized "Crap I haven't released the episode for today" and got out of bed and ran upstairs

[9:37 PM]

I'm going back to bed now good night

Taox Yesterday at 9:37 PM

Lmao

[9:37 PM]

Goodnight

[9:37 PM]

I'll have the editing done tommorow

[9:37 PM]

Dont worry

If you've spent time in the world of shooter games, you've probably heard about a game called Rainbow Six Siege. What you might not have heard of, though, is its predecessor, Rainbow Six Three: Raven Shield. This episode, Cirdan takes us back to the start of its life in 2003 and gives his thoughts on this old, but excellent game. This week's other topic is compilers in general, but primarily one compiler called LLVM. It's quite a nerdy topic, but hopefully still an understandable and interesting one. We're still having problems with the software we normally use to record, so it's another week using Discord. This is definitely not ideal, since Jonah's ping will periodically  shoot up to 1500 ms and do weird things to his voice in the recording. We apologize for this, and with luck everything will be back to normal next week. In some time zones, it's probably still Monday. I definitely didn't forget to release this episode yesterday.

Have you ever considered that for a large portion of your life, a loaf of bread has been watching you? It's a staple food in almost every culture, and yet it's easily overlooked. This episode, Jonah shines the spotlight on bread, going through its history from 800 000 years ago to about the time of the Roman Empire. It ends somewhere anticlimactically there, because there are no more major advancements in the field of bread after that point. Prior to that, Cirdan reviews Vigor, a shooter/survival game set in post-apocalyptic Norway where you have to upgrade your shelter, craft weapons, and fight other players to survive.

Fun fact: 31 in base 8 is the same as 25 in base 10, a statement generally written in the form Oct 31 = Dec 25. Cirdan, clearly embracing this sentiment, has chosen a horror game called Phasmophobia as his topic. Jonah, pretty far on the other side of the topic spectrum, gives a comparison of Godot and Unity, two popular game engines. This is an important message from Jonah:
I do not enjoy learning from videos. Whenever possible, I use written tutorials, which is probably why until today, I had never watched a video tutorial for Godot. Godot has an excellent manual, but this time, I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I decided to turn towards YouTube. The conclusion of this seemingly irrelevant story? Within the first 10 seconds of the video, it was revealed to me that I had been pronouncing Godot wrong the whole time I'd been using it. Please, while listening to this episode, pretend I'm saying Go-Dough instead of Go-Dot.