An orange in an apple orchard
Was walking to the mail box, and on the way back an older man asked if I was cold—like normal, I’m out in sandals, shorts, and T-shirt and it’s freezing cold out.
“Nope”
“Wow, you must be part escamo or something”
“I was born in Flordia, so I love it: beats 90 degrees!”
đ
Been in/out all morning, but finally woke up around 11:15R, from a dream best described as interesting but alarming :-S. Less then ten minutes passed before the aggravatory pouncing began, and it was less then 15 minutes before I was officially enlisted for slave duty again :-(.
It’s like everyones a big bird with radar…
On the upside, I’ve managed to transfer all the Live Journal entries from January 2009 into Blogger. Really, I hope to have everything transferred before 2010, lol, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve made about 36 posts on Blogger since the beginning, not counting the moved posting. Live Journal says I’ve made 1537 entries (counting that one), and blogger gives my grand total here as 1,076 posts. So, there is about 498 posts to transfer over, Feb-Oct 2009 and part of Nov. 2009.
After that, the new roost will be ready for a party, muahuhauaha!
Managed to get through work, a further reminder that freezing wind and plenty of rain don’t mix very nicely, my hands were almost numb by the time I got inside :-/.
Spent most of my day thinking over the changes for Stargellas input system, but for the most part was thinking about the client/server aspects of the engine, resource loading, and the issue of dealing with cheaters. After taking a very detailed line of thinking about methods to prevent cheating: I’ve decided that it is impossible to crate a PC game that forbids cheating, or it must take the next Albert Einstein to figure out.
Obviously the moment any thing leaves the trusted server, it becomes untrusted information: no data from the client can be trusted what so ever. Most of the more “Industrial” advice about cheat prevention is a totally load of bullshit; more often then not, worse then bullshit. The only way you can stop a cheater, is to close the system down: run your own hosting servers and the clients, in LAN fashion. Then put up the `eyes in the sky` like a casino to make sure no one jacks your hardware. Anything less then that, is basically a lost cause lol. You can raise the ante but you can’t mark all the cards. As soon as tools to disassemble the code or view/change the programs memory enter the picture, the battle is lost: so absolutely nothing on the clients computer can be trusted, even the operating system. Of course, one could easily state in the ELUA that any unauthorized software assisted means of interacting with the software is illegal, which rules out everything save butterflies, but there’s no enforceable method to deal with that. Even attempting to abort program if cracker program X is running or installed, is a wasted endevour: you’d be on the wrong side of the arms race. Whether the game itself is open source or closed source makes no real difference, because obfuscation doesn’t work outside of movies.
Because it’s impossible to prevent cheating outside of your own private arcade (at best), the only viable solution to preventing cheating in an online game, is to give the community the tools to deal with them.
Requiring an authenticated account and having the servers verify this with your own systems before allowing the player to joinâand implementing the means for admins to properly ban that account from their servers. Like wise, a global blacklist for any account banned from more then X servers is a good idea, hehe. That being said, of course there is no reliable way to keep the person from coming back: even if they needed another account name, e-mail address, IP address, and computer hardware. It does however, “Level the playing field” by giving the community the means to regulate itself.
The downside of course being, unless your companies game supports a generic peer to peer (unauthenticated) multiplayer mode, the game becomes a paper weight as soon as you shut down the servers. If those login servers and such are not going to remain in steady operation for at least 10-15 years or so, you’re cheating the customers. (Especially those that coughed up $50 on day one and a pre order.) Even worse are games like Battlefield 2, where you can’t do squat unless you login, because once the server is shutdown, it’s unplayable without hacks. At best, you could hope the company puts all the important server addresses in config files instead of the game exe/dll files, as it makes switching to a community provided replacement a bit less complicated for granny.
In the case of my games, well there’s none of that. The only anti cheat measures to be taken, are those that raise the `barrier to cheating` to knowing how to cheat. Unless I become the next Mark Shuttleworth or something. But then again, my games are being developed for my own enjoyment: allowing others to play them, will just be a side effect of (some day) finishing the projects.
It’s been an easier day then expected: ma wasn’t feeling up to working, so instead I ended up in the super market >_>. On the upside, financial woes aside, I got to spend more time focused on programming :-D.
Lately I’ve been working on the computer games I want to build, and finally came to a working title for `StarfighterGame` –> Stargella. With a sub title of vengeance or revenge, which is a perfect title for allowing sequals and expansion packs to be made ^_^. The concept is much like the classic arcade games: simple mindless action. I remember Galaxian and Galaga most fondly, as games that I played in front of Pizza hut as a child. The best free “Clone” that I’ve seen is xgalaga, but it leaves a lot to be desired. What I want, is the kind of game you sit there and play for hours, and suddenly realise you’ve been sitting in front of a computer for the last 6 weeks with a long beard and a torn house coat lol.
The story is simple, also like the great classics: you’ve returned home to the beautiful world of Freyja to discover it is being ravaged by the evil Viekasiekian Empire. Realising that you are the last able bodied star fighter pilot on Freyja, you dive into battle: pushing the Viekasiekian forces back off into space for the final showdown against Emperor Zurick.Game play obviously being in the overhead shooter style of Galaxian and Centipede, but unlike the classics, I want the ship to have full range of movement with the mouse cursor, instead of being constrained to say, left and right, ala space invaders.
Calling the planet Freyja, is meant to encourage the concept that the planet is a beautiful paradise. Like wise, the name of the lead baddy is named in hnour of the graveyard scene from Shakepeare’s HamletâAlas poor Yorick, I knew him well! The intention here, being to thoughts of death and such. After all the Viekasikians are meant to be evil ;). Geeze, try to say that three times fast without twisting your tongue in a loop!
Portability concerns have caused me to have to largely ‘drop’ python from the mixture, along with all high level solutions for general rendering and game development tasks. FreeBSD is a horrible platform for developing a video game on, IMHO, unless you like the low level stuff. So, I’m using a common denominator of fairly ANSI C / ISO C89 compliant code, with SDL as the principal backends for graphics and input handling.
It’s also kind of hilarious, trying to maintain a code base that supports both the GNU C++ and Microsoft Visual C++ compilers, using a *subset* of common C++, is actually painful. However using a fairly common dialect of standard’ish C in GCC/Visual C++ is quite less painful. This is principally because MSVCs concept of C programming is more or less 20 years behind the rest of the world 8=).
Haven’t been updating my journal here lately, been to busy with work…. still 2 or 3 days of labour to deal with to boot.
Router has been giving me grief for at least two days, and previously was a power outage; I’m starting to think that the outage my have damaged the router somehow. If that’s the case, I am really fuckedâbecause I can’t afford to replace the S.O.B.
Even worse, on top of that, I got up to cycle the router again and my finger hit my laptops power button while a port was upgrading, what a fsckin’ night!
The world abounds in aphorisms that convey wisdom to the young, although that advice is usually ignored. Many aphorisms are by unknown authors: “A stitch in time saves nine” (although anyone who has repaired a sail knows that one stitch can actually save 9,000). “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” And many witty people have contributed their own, like this gem from Mae West: “Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.”
My original plans for the night, was to be working on my games and setting up a test suite for the SAS project I’ve got on the side burner. However, since being informed Thursday that my Saturday was being taken *away*, I’ve been tasked with not staying up all night tonight: fat freaking chance of that. So instead of being up until 7 am working on code, I played a few hours of Quake Live, lol.
I expect that tomorrow is going to be a living hell anyway it’s sliced…. have to be used as a navcom so we can get to work, it’s likely to be to be on par with the worst job I ever had, and is in effect, a continuation of the second or third most utterly-exhausting-fml job I’ve ever had…. the kind you feel like you were dead when you get off work, instead of feeling like you’re dying. On the upside, I ought to get to see a few dogs that I haven’t seen in a while; which reminds me of a pair of sad memories[1][2].
One way or another, tomorrow is likely to be a wash out, of torture and getting nothing done. I’m already wishing it was Sunday…… !
Don’t feel like going to sleep, but if I don’t start snoring in the next 15 minutes, I’m not likely to be up tomorrow; would rather be having a snack. I know my body, and in all probability, I’m probably going to be awake for 2 or 3 more hours đ đ :-(.
Been playing QL again, won two matches and placed in a third before taking one extra for the effort.It was kind of hilarious in it’s own sick sadistic way… I won because of applied tactics. The matches were free for alls, and on maps where shotgun, plasma, lighting, and rocket weapons are the most common upgrades to your starter kit: machinegun and gauntlet (buzz saw).
After so many years in [SAS], it’s a triviality for me to be able to calculate the most ‘ideal’ target to engage first with whatever weapons stock I’ve got available…. heard of baddies, shove explosives or paint’em blue with plasma. Even use of the virtually useless machine gun can be useful in a pinch: to pepper the loosing half of a brawl or as a hair cutting follow up to a couple crippling rockets or a plasma flourish, which can sometimes be more expedient then scoring another good splash with the rocket launcher before the enemy manages to kill you lol.
Having always prided myself on piloting skills Mech Warrior, coupled with a heavy knowledge of tactical movement from life in [SAS], it’s also possible to calculate more ideal movement patterns for giving myself a small edge. Once you get used to the games controls, you either master movement quickly or die a noobs eternal death.
Combine all that with effective area / equipment denial techniques (king of the kill!) at the choke points, makes for scoring huge numbers of frags quickly unless the swarms of enemies manage to frag you fast… the key is not dying.
Good clean manoeuvring – always being aware of enemy positions, power ups, and obstacles, while taking care to evade enemy fire as you set up a lethal volly. On the first match I won, it was surprising no one accused me of using an aim bot or some kind of crystal ball for the efficiency with which I nailed enemies while snatch power ups, like a maniac on steroids >_>.
Simple bits of psychology, instinctive/near mathematically determined engagement patterns, mental timers, and ever increasing ease of manoeuvring through the game environments multi tasking nature…. and volia, you rack up frags until someone out does you.
In a way, Quake is probably the most addictive action game since the original DooM was released! I’ve never really cared much for Q3A or UT style gladiatorial games, but a few games of Quake are much better at cleansing stress then playing Raven Shield. Experience as shown me, never play RvS when pissed, or you will have a vein popping out of your head lol.
I’ve just posted a call for title/story ideas on [SAS], in the hopes of moving foreward with the TacFPSGame project and my toolkit for working on the Starfighter game.
Today I was reading an arcticle off /. and started to think…. gee, wouldn’t it be an interesting game idea: it started me to thinkin’ and combined with all the Quake Live I’ve been playing lately, get’s me back in the mood to work on game development lol. I really want the FPS to reflect my style of things: it should be fairly realistic in nature, but still a fun action game. Perhaps the original Rainbow Six or SWAT 3 are my strongest inspirations for the tactical elements, while Quake III and Urban Terror remind me of how much fun “Crazy off the wall” can get ;).
When it comes to the general game design and architecture, I know what I want both inside and out. It’s just the issue of having time to work on it. My primary loops at the moment, are working on EPI and some stuff for [SAS], but once that’s done, I’ll have plenty of time, in so far as my available coding time goes that is lol.
I’ve also elected, to start testing a conversion from C++ to Python. I originally elected C++ because it was the lowest common denominator for getting the best tools, and well, I can care less about having to deal with manual memory management. My reasons for contemplating the switch over, is because Python has largely become my standard utility language for cross platform stuffâand I would like to be able to play my games on my FreeBSD laptop!!! 90% of all heartaches have been due to differences between GNU Compiler Collection and Microsoft Visual C++. The most pissy problems being how they implement templates >_>. Ah, sweet, sweet C++, all your best features are also your biggest liabilities.
Most of what I’m interested in, is doing the game logic and stuff, I’m not willing to spend 6 months to 2 years writing a fourth rate rendering system when there is plenty of good open source code to draw upon. Yet, I’m not interested in being limited by most existing engines, like updated Id Tech 3 (Quake III: Arena), Blender-stuff, or the snazzy Unreal Engine 3 that was recently released. You could say, I don’t want an engine, I want a frame work :-/.
I was originally planning to integrate python for AI and level scripting tasks anyway, so big deal… it would become less problem to do it if everythings in Python anyway hehe.
I don’t know what it is about coming home from work, that gives me a feeling of doing nothing: probably an intimate knowledge of how many interruptions I’ll have if I do work on anything :-S.
A lot of thoughts have been on my mind lately. Hasn’t been a very nice couple of days. Much of my time has been spent contemplating large portions of my life, and the future outlook. Really, it is probably a good thing that I can’t update my journal from work, other wise I might actually survive to get things off my chest. When I’m at work, I’ve always managed to have the most focused thoughts: it’s just that time of day, but alas, by the time I get home, there’s too much to worry about to retain most of them for long, until they’re lost to the interrupt storms.
I’ve been thinking about the dynamics of life here and how to describe it, I managed to think of, what would be equal to several type set pages :-/. Too blasted tired to pour over that again but it would vindicate what I feel. The only concise description that I can think of, is emotional torture; I’m not sure if there is actually a definition of that, but it’s what things feel like here, a subtle form of torture. There’s no better way I seem to be able to describe it then emotional torture and people who don’t care, nor are capable of understanding the things done. Any other way of explaining it, I think would require treading incredibly more painful grounds then that, and I’m already well aware of the differences between my and my families definitions of most concepts 8=). I operate on my own, more “English language and logic driven” definitions of things.
From thinking back through the ages, I can recall a time where I was actually happy in life: the only worry in the world being that my brother would pop the final cork and our mother would leave us holding the bag. Spanning ~90% of the range of memory I have been searching through, hell, I can even remember a time when my family was borderline on becoming homeless, and being far better off on the inside. Since, I guess the mid ’90s, things have been increasingly bad. The price of progressing from being a pawn in their games, to being an appetizing target to punt around the line of fire.
No one has dared lay a finger on me in years, at least a lustrum or more. The only place I fall under assault is where nothing can ever show through but my eyes in the dark. Last time anyone tried getting violent with me, my mother ended up with sore wrists for a few days: because I had locked her hands together until she finally “Chilled out”. All I had down was bump into something in the hallway and it sparked firsts flying. I have no problems with disciplinary action when I do wrong, but ahem, just being pissed enough to try pounding at me doesn’t cut it ;). Under normal circumstances my reactionary back then (cica 2003-2004), as it would be today if someone started up like that, would be my old triple combo followed up by a point-decommissioner to put them flat out on the deck before they could counter, but I only restrained her from doing harm. I spent enough years of my childhood, hearing my mother going on and on about how her first husband beat her, that I am incapable of ever striking a woman: my mother included. So obviously no intent of harm was in my heart, only a forceful deescalation. Looking back at the past, it is ironic, because the impetus for developing my combative-knowledge was to protect my family in the event of emergency, not to protect myself from them lol. It’s been almost that long, if not longer since I’ve been involved in any brawls, but the muscle memory is always sharper then the muscle.
After that incident in the early-mid 2000s, I think is when my family figured out that I had learned much to much about fighting, to be vulnerable to any blow they could dream of landing without my permission. Since then, at least in my mothers case, she knows how to dig in by other means. It’s like being ripped apart without taking a blow.
Perhaps it’s probability that my families crazy sign-of-weakness thing, would likely making me a target the likes of a bleeding fish in a shark tank, or that *hammering* just what this shit does to me through anyones head, would be much more painful then dying inside… but all the same: I rarely make an issue of it. I’ve learned through experience at trying, that it does no good, save to give more ammunition to hit me with again. Life here has allowed me to develop one hell of a poker face, because any sign of cracking would likely be like putting blood in the water, and that means being dug into deeper. Whatever I feel on the inside, you won’t see it cross my face unless I put it there, or I’m ready to keel, and it takes a lot of hurting to get me there.
I believe that you can try to build people up or ripe them down, through your words and actions. For the most part, I believe in building people up instead. Because I know all to well how it feels to be ripped down and torn apart by the wolves. The only time I do widdle away at people around me, it’s in jest to cause a chuckle, and my friends know it’s a joke: other wise I wouldn’t say any of the negative remarks I do make. That’s how I am, I don’t believe in inflicting the same pain upon others arbitrarily. My mother on the other hand, is a master of making me feel miserable…. an absolute master compared to anyone else. Never underestimate how your treatment of another person, can impact them, that’s the one thing I’ve learned from my family.
Over the past couple days, I’ve looked at a very large portion of my life. The only thing I can say, is that they don’t care as long as their agenda is archived… because I don’t know if I can emotionally tolerate another explanation. It’s impossible to hit me but it’s easy to strike me in the heart, that’s what they do. Nailing until it hurts inside, and any attempt at making that known, is just going to see things get worse.
The other day a friend asked me if I was ok, I told her I would probably be fine in a couple days; I was at a bit of a loss for words. In the past decade’ish, my family has pushed me hard enough. Three times in my life, I’ve come close to a nervous break down and bounced back from it. Once contemplated suicide and never will again, period. I’ve also had several depressive episodes (IMHO anyway) and enough periods of “bleeding out” from this place. These fucks will never kill me. It even shows in my call sign… like a spider, if you want to crush me, you really have your work cut out for you.
Today I was remembering a song I used to sing to myself silently as a child, whenever my family managed to hurt me where the sun doesn’t shine. In thinking about it, it feels more like an slaves song, something no one else in my generation is likely to comprehend (the history majors aside). How much has really changed since then? They still do it, only more often and with greater skill.
All I can say, is my D-Day is coming….