Ok its been a long time since I’ve made a post here, but here goes.

I’ve been working on a little encryption program for the last day or so which I’m calling OpenSecure, sounds kinda strange but I don’t really mind.

It is written in C (my new favourite language) and currently supports multiple seeds (random number generation), using a little random number gen I wrote. Also in there is look-up tables, a=b; c=f; etc.

It was originally going to be just for personal use but I’ve decided to release it on here open source so you can use it as well if you want to.

Included in this tar.gz is the source code, (Which should compile fine in windows, (Let me know if it doesn’t :D)) and linux executable.

2/12/2008: New version! Go here to read about the changes: OpenSecure-v1.2

1.2: OpenSecure_v1.2.tar.gz -  2/12/2008

1.1: OpenSecure_v1.1.tar.gz -  1/12/2008

1.0: OpenSecure_v1.0.tar.gz -  28/11/2008

The source code is released under GPL.

Ok since I seem to be updating here quite often, I’ve decided to add a Devlog to my page to filter out some of these posts. From now on then the Devlog posts will not appear on the main blog, so click the little devlog button at the top to get more.

Soo whats been happening, well I’ve taken the dynamic view distance and line of sight and made a very basic version which I can expand upon.
What happens now is that everywhere is in the Fog of War except a small radius around the player, its very square at the moment but it will suffice until I get something better in place.

I was getting some errors because of the player trying to access characters that were outside the world array, and to solve this I have added some padding to each side of the map. This seems to have fixed the problem for now although I will probably fix it at some point in the future when memory requirements dictate that I must.

I’ve also implemented world wrap today so when you go to one edge of the world, you appear at the other side. This will be interesting later when we have continents etc. NB. Ships will be cool.

There are now instructions about how to extract compile, and run the source, in a readme file contain in the Tar.gz.

As usual I suggest 7-zip for unpacking if you are on a windows machine.

If anyone gets a chance to compile on a windows machine, please tell me how it goes for you as I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.

As usual any bugs, or if you want something in the source explaining etc, feel free to send me an e-mail. (check the Me page.)

Source: Untitled.14.08.08.tar.gz

‘The Caravan finally arrives at its destination. A river meanders down from slate grey hills and passes through a gorge here, steep slopes rising to the sides. The surface of the river twinkles in the spring sun, dark shapes move sluggishly underneath the dappled surface. Large vegetation is uncommon here, with few trees breaking the monotony of the rolling golden grasses.
A herd of pig-like animals can be seen to the west. The heat distorting their shapes slightly, making them hard to make out.
I think to myself; Here will do.’

If you are a fan of rpg games, or indie games in general you have probably heard of Dwarf Fortress, designed by Tarn (ToadyOne on the forums) and his brother Zach Adams. For those of you who have not heard of this popular indie game however here is an introduction:

The Game-play:

In Dwarf Fortress you take command of 7 starting dwarfs, on a piece of land in a procedurally generated world. The aim of the game - survival of the fortress you are about to begin.
These Dwarfs will do your bidding in a vague sort of way, you are the architect of this fortress if you will; You plan the fort and the dwarfs go about following your orders as closely as they can, taking time to eat sleep and socialise, but at this point in the game pretty much doing your bidding.
As you begin to shape your fortress, your population will grow, migrants and traders will arrive, all feeding your fortress as it slowly grows into a giant metropolis of industry and civilization.

As the game progresses and the players fortress becomes more famous, army’s of your foes appear (maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to attack that elven caravan) and test your defenses, hulking mega-beasts such as dragons making the occasional appearance,

The free-form nature of the game is really shown in the way different players fortresses can look completely different, and also the construct their traps to protect their fortress. For example, in one fortress I had a grand entrance chamber of Moria proportions that would fill with magma at the flick of a lever, turning any would be attackers into molten goo. As the game includes basic fluid physics (semi-realistic water/magma movements, like pressure etc) really interesting traps can be created by using environmental factors to the players advantage.

Adventure mode, in DF is a roguelike game where you take a single adventurer around the world that has been generated, allowing you to visit towns/get quests etc. It is especially satisfying to visit a fortress you have previously abandoned as you can see what has happened to your previous dwarfs and their home. (What happened to all those caged golems for example)

The Stories:

This personally is the reason I play DF, because as you get more and more absorbed into your fortress, you will begin to recognise individual dwarfs and the stories surrounding them.

For example I had a legendary miner, one of my first to arrive to the fortress. He had mined out most of the citadel singlehandedly, and was incredibly quick at blending rock walls to a pulp. However, he was deep in the bowls of one of his masterpiece cave networks when he removed one wrong support, bringing the ceiling above him crashing down. Severely wounded, he was cared for by his friends for several years, all the time getting more and more miserable. Eventually dragging himself to the top of a mountain to commit suicide, only to find he didn’t have it in him.

These stories really make DF’s world come alive, as you feel a kind of attachment to your dwarfs that draws you into the game world much more effectively than most hand written stories.

The Graphics:

Dwarf Fortress uses ASCII to display its graphics. The following screenshot is the same area as described at the start of this article. After a while the way you look at the world is mostly in you imagination, only using the ASCII graphics for basic placeholders of where people are, not what they are doing. Because of this I actually prefer the ASCII Dwarf Fortress more than the thought of a fully 3d version at whatever point it may happen in the future. ASCII is timeless.

The graphics in DF can be improved by the use of tilesets, which replace the ASCII characters with small 16×16 images, allowing players to identify creatures and items easier.

The future:

At the time of writing this Dwarf Fortress is at v0.27.176.38c and you only need to look at the dev page to see that ToadyOne intends to do a lot more to the game before it is anywhere near finished.

Other things to note:

Dwarf Fortress is a hard game to get started playing. I rec-commend bookmarking the dedicated DF wiki and referring to it almost constantly during your first hour or two of play.

The wiki is also very useful as the game does not include tutorials. Because of this players also often find it hard to get started. here is a good tutorial for getting started in dwarf mode.

I absolutely rec-commend playing this game, and try to get through a tutorial. You will be missing out on such a game if you avoid this, because of the ASCII graphics and steep learning curve.

Get the game here.

Thanks Toady for creating such an awesome game!

- Bill

(Started Writing this at 4:25 AM after getting home from work, it is now 7. eek!)

“Our mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.” - Kiva

Kiva.org is a website that allows users to lend money to people all over the world who really need help and are going to use the money lent to them to improve their quality of life.

Several micro-financier organisations train people in third world countries, to become Entrepreneurs. When these people have completed the training course they can choose what kind of business they want to start and apply for a loan from micro-financier organisations like Kiva.

This is where we come in.

We can loan small (or large) ammounts of money to these Entrepreneurs through Kiva which is a website dedicated to distributing these loans. Because the money for each individual may be too much for one person, the donations are usually split up between lots of lenders.

Without organisations like this the other way people in these kind of situations could get a loan is by going to loan sharks, who sometimes charge up to 1000% on the original sum!  The people who the loans go to are really great at paying them back because of how great an opportunity it is, the repayment rate being an impressive 97.35%!

When the recipient of the loan has payed the money back they can get another, slightly larger and so on.

This is a really great way of helping out people in third world countries because we are pretty much always going to get our money back.We’re essentially giving to charity but it doesn’t cost us anything.

Check out the Brotherhood 2.0 video where I found out about Kiva for more. (John makes it sound so much more interesting than I do)

- Bill

Accursed lands is a post apocalyptic MUD (multi user dungeon) A mud is played through a text based interface, similar to games like Nethack. As you travel around the worlds of any particular MUD, information about each area you are standing in is given via description rather than by graphics. This type of game relies much more heavily on the players imagination than games today which use graphics to display the world. Using this method means that the you get far more involved in the world, with atmosphere building naturally around your character.  Muds usually, but not always focus on Role playing between players, and although this is not enforced in AL it is encouraged.

Accursed lands is by no means a new game, having been online since 1996, but since MUD’s don’t show their age as much as games that use graphics, this is a good thing as the games quality has only improved in this time.

In the game you start of a wandering spirit, and after going through a innovative character generation process you are dropped into the world, at a city of your choosing. Now the game begins.

In AL (and all MUD’s) you move and interact with things by typing the command in the terminal. AL however interprets written english, meaning that players do not have to learn new commands. Basically if you type: Get rock; Throw rock at rabbit; You will get the nearest rock and throw it at a rabbit. While this system is great for experienced players it may take some time to learn for newbies. (Accursed lands was the first MUD I ever played) but players are helpful and will usually teach you (while themselves remaining in character) anything you need to know.

The game developers have deliberately left out the list of crafting commands in the game, so if you want to learn how to carve that bow, you’d better start practicing. (When i’m trying to work out how to craft something it helps to think about how I would do it in real life, i.e. attaching line to a fishing rod) although players will be able to help a lot.

The game also focuses on realism, with other players remaining nameless to you untill you learn their name through conversation, (at which point you name them with the name command) and realistic damage models (losing an arm in combat for example.)

While AL may not be the most player populated of MUD’s playing by oneself is equally satisfying as exploring the massive world really makes you feel absorbed in the game.

From the deepest Dungeons to climbing trees and exploring cities the world feels very vibrant in the amount of detail that has been put into descriptions. This game is definately worth a look, especially if you have played other MUD’s before. If you are new to the Genre then it is definately still worth a look, make sure to ask for help.

Accursed lands can be played by the Java telnet service on the website or through a veriety of other methods. (I use mudmagic which is a crossplatform client, allowing me to play from behind my university proxy.)

- Bill