Very impressive breakdown, and it looks like you’ve built an awesome foundation. I’m excited to see where you might take this going forward - different ship wreck types seems like an obvious next step, but I can see the potential for a whole lot more. Maybe this system could be used to improve things like trail ruins and other archeology related structures? This is very cool. Kudos

It also seems like there’s some sort of unlock mechanism for what civs will be available for you to choose from in the next era - you’ll assumably have to do certain things in an era to unlock specific civs for the next era

I’m taking a break from Animal Crossing to try and finally finish Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. We’ll see how far I get this time. It’s got a lot of classic RPG feel that I really love, and the Ghibli animated cutscenes are gorgeous, but I’m really not used to having to “watch” my games, so we’ll see.

The oldest system I have would be the NES. My brother received it sometime before I was born. I’m just holding onto it for him, though - it doesn’t get played right now. I actually intend to clean it all up and retrobright it before sending it back to him… eventually… The oldest system I have that still gets occasional use would be my Gameboy Color, which I received, with Pokemon Red, for Christmas when I was 8 or 9. Unfortunately, I need to find a better plastic polish, to take some light scratches out of the lens, and until I do, it will remain disassembled… I’ve also been contemplating using the board for a complete boxypixel overhaul, but there’s something about still having my full original GBC that I’m having a problem getting over…

Continuing with my wizard’s island in Animal Crossing, although I’m more just putting my daily time in right now. I finally worked up the drive to continue on my Minecraft chateau build, so that’s eating most of my creative energies right now.

I’m not super sure. If I recall correctly, we’ve known for a while that something was going on, because surface hearing alone couldn’t account for all of the water evaporating from oceans, but we couldn’t tell what. In defense of humanity here, the concept of photons interacting with something as comparably massive as molecules is kinda wild. We were caught way off guard when the photoelectric effect was announced, and that’s photons interacting with whole atoms instead of just elementary particles. The idea of the photomolecular effect is thus even wilder.

If you read the article, it’s pretty clear. Instead of the energy of the photons being used to heat the water molecules to state change, that energy is used to break the molecular bonds between small groups of water molecules, and those groups are small enough to then be picked up by the air and evaporate. This way, the energy contained in a photon is converting much more liquid water to water vapor than if that same amount of energy was actually used to excite the water molecules, as in a microwave.

I own and have played the Gameboy remakes a few times. I would say going 1-2-3 shows the progression of game mechanic development really well - each feels like a refinement of the previous with some fresh new ideas added in. Additionally, though it’s a fairly loose tie , the story across the 3 of them is related. That being said, though, I believe 2 is pretty widely considered to be the worst game in the entire franchise, so… Your mileage may vary. It is admittedly the one I’ve played least, and I probably haven’t picked it up in the better part of 2 decades, so it’s a bit vague for me anymore.

Last weekend I just needed something simple for a while, so I finally started an Animal Crossing island on my switch lite. My wife and I have put a bunch of time into crafting an island on our original switch, so it’s been fun to start so over. I forgot just how slow moving the game is, though. 😛 My plan for the island is to keep it standard fantasy themed - my house will be a wizard tower on a hill, amidst a dense forest. There will also be a “secret” fruit forest that you have to quest for. All the houses and buildings will be located in a single, village-like area with some farms

Still running around in BotW. I finally beat all of the divine beasts, and am just about to finish up the Champions’ Ballad DLC. After that I’ll do some quest clean up, some dragon hunting (need to get the Wild gear up to max), and then I suppose it’ll finally be time to storm a castle.

Pokemon - I love the whole series for what it is, but if I had to pick a favorite I would probably go with Heart Gold.

Wind Waker - I was late to Zelda games, and this was the first I ever beat. The whole feel of the game still keeps it as my favorite - it’s a lot of light-hearted fun, with gorgeous visuals and fantastic music, but still tells a story that feels grave and important.

I think I shall boot Breath of the Wild back up, and see if I can’t finish soon-ish. I got about half-way through during the Christmas/New Year’s holiday break, but then got distracted by a restart of the Minecraft server I play on. :-P

I haven’t played most of these, but I will gladly add an endorsement to the early Harry Potter games. They often only tangentially related to the movies, but they had some awesome mechanics, and played into the full story really well.