An Unnamed Lava Board

Week Summary: In the past week I managed to get over 80 million total points within 70 no-powerup games, with an average score of 1.1 million. With powerups, the highest score reached was a bit over 5 million.

Time crunch on projects this week - including a senior project, so I can't really play much as a result. (One project is related to VR, located on the previous post).

For those who are still playing, there's a 30 idol reward if you manage to reach lvl 80... (confirmed by devs)

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Rerelease:

When the board was introduced again in November, a few new changes were made: the official name became Major Mouthful, Epic Fruit is not available (but it was fixed that Wed), and spirit animals can be used here. That said, a skilled enough player can get well over 9000 K on this board.

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OK, this board is essentially Face Your Fear (Zuma's Revenge Board) flipped. They didn't have a name otherwise, but it looks like a lava board (at least to me), and it looks more hand drawn.

TIP:

• Balls are clustered so tightly together that Sun Frog might have some good uses here (it takes four well placed shots to clear a curve).
• Double gaps are possible here if you don't mind sticking a ball very close to the end (Scott's statement about triple gaps being possible on the board is a bit misleading).
• Epic Fruit is absolutely necessary for high scores.
• Try to avoid tension when playing the last few seconds of the game and try not to look at the score. In very close games, it only takes one mistake to cost you the top of the leaderboard.
• Note that when doing double gaps, if positioned correctly you can safely destroy balls on the first row with a hot frog without destroying the gap setup. (see above image)

VR and Modular Stuff

Image of the prototype version of the VR map that our group (of four) was doing for a class project (under construction), where users are required to find various objects in an office building.

A much simpler version of this map was used due to a lack of time (and knowledge converting from Sketchup to an OpenGL Format) to implement the entire building.

Currently researching ways to optimize memory usage for large buildings (with > 50,000 polygons).

Fun Fact: I like modular stuff. Easy to put together, very adaptable to different situations, and for computer related stuff, easy to reinstall just about anything with little need for pre-req programs.

Sliding Gap Rule

What the pros usually don't tell you about manipulating gaps for high points. A must-read for this week's board, Life's a Beach. (And for some other boards, too) You need to have fast hands in order to do these techniques, so pick up on your speed.

Note: This week's Zuma Blitz board is "Life's a Beach" (it was supposed to be last week's board) and its respective page is on this link: Life's a Beach. I will post a picture update of the board and an updated strat when I have the time to do so, as I currently have several school projects that I need to finish on.

Improv in the Banquet

An improv at the Circle K End of Year Banquet. You're given a few minutes to prepare, however, but as for the results...

The 5K Walk/Run

124E. Run and complete a marathon (at least 5K). (Goal Completed)

The runners at the starting line.

The goal description is incorrect as it's supposed to refer to a run/walk event that's at least 5 kilometers in length.

DNT (Delta Nu Tau) held their first annual 5K Oral Cancer Walk today, so I decided to try it out.

Without any training, I unfortunately slowed to a walk over half the time, but managed to complete it in 48 minutes 26 seconds. It was the first time that I did this.

Vindictus Companion Cube

I actually find this surprising and funny as an April Fool's Joke. The companion cube is a reference to the game Portal. Given that Vindictus uses the Source Engine, which was developed by Valve Corporation, who made Portal... it makes sense.

(Note that although I haven't played Portal at the time the post was made, I later played (and completed) it when it became free from Sept 17-20, 2011.)