Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

For those that use Linux, read my post yesterday, and decided to check out the website for Dungeon Runners, I apologize. I should have pointed out that their site is very, very unusable on Linux (ok, to be exact, I haven't gotten it to work with any version of Ubuntu, and Firefox). That changed today when I cooked up a small GreaseMonkey script which hides their Flash "movie" that plays in the background. Its not really a movie, its actually just a static image, but its loaded as a Flash movie. Anyways, its quite easy, go install GreaseMonkey, then the following script:

 
// ==UserScript==
// @name           Dungeon Runners Linux Compliant
// @namespace      http://thesnarky.com
// @description    This removes the flash "movie" which blocks the
//                      main site for Dungeon Runners
// @include        http://dungeonrunners.com/*
// @include        http://boards.dungeonrunners.com/*
// ==/UserScript==
 
var objects = document.getElementsByTagName("object");
for(i=0; i<objects.length; i++) {
	var flash = objects[i];
	if(flash.getAttribute("id") == "bg_chars") {
		flash.style.display='none';
	}
}
 

Can download it by clicking here: Script

This finds the one Flash object named bg_chars (which is the offender in this case) and tells him to go quietly sit in the corner. And such, all is right in the world, I don't need to boot into Windows to troll the forums (just to play the game).

I've taken to playin Dungeon Runners as of late, trying to scratch that itch that leaving WoW created. Actually, I'm quite happy to be done with WoW, and Dungeon Runners is casual enough that I can play and not get pressured into sticking on for long hours for "Just one more Ony raid". In addition, Dungeon Runners is free, so long as you put up with ads you barely even notice!

As always I get distracted from playing games by writing stuff for them and DR is no different. They just released a service where you can nab an XML version of a player's data and though it has some bugs its quite a yummy service. I spent the day hacking up a viewer for it, and this is what I came up with:

http://threeplanetssoftware.com/software/dr/

Its fairly empty right now, but the character stuff works as well as NCSoft will allow. In fact better, as I've solved an issue the other developers of these viewers hasn't, the fact that some icons have the wrong name. So, anywho if you want to see it work, you could check my stats: the character's name is Segfault.

Oh and just to satisfy the geeks out there: This is built in PHP, using simplexml to chew though the data. Pretty URLs are (obviously) done with mod_rewrite and javascript on the form. Tooltips are made using the Walter Zorn tooltip library.

In high school I was a voracious reader, but since coming to college I found that my time goes everywhere else first, and reading is just an afterthought for a plane ride, or while waiting for the doctor. Recently I've found the time to get back into reading, and have been enjoying spending time with a good book, no 1's or 0's involved. My choice of literature ranges from epic poetry (Beowulf being the most recent) to "classic literature" (such as Pride and Prejudice) to science fiction, my choice in high school. But I'm not here to talk about my history, rather to write up the first book(s) that actually made me want to write a review. These come from the Black Library, the publishing house for Games Workshop, maker of Warhammer 40,000 (40k), and are part of the history of 40k. I expected a nice "history" lesson, since I like to roleplay when i play any game and now I could really curse the foul beings of Chaos, but got literature that is coherent over the entire set, is well written, and deals with many themes that are extremely prevalent in our society today.
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As evidenced by my last post, I'm playing with a BF2 dedicated server on a daily basis. part of that is me and a roommate finding cool maps and adding them into our rotation. For the last weekish all we have played is Allied Intent Extended because it adds a LOT to an already good game. I went back to the mod's website today and grabbed a bunch of map packs that the dev team had put out, about 16 new maps, to be exact. After tossing these into my dedicated server's AIX directory I decided I did not want to add all of them into my maplist by hand. This would be picking out each new map, and then writing "maplist.append [mapname] [map-type] [max-players]" 16 times. Instead I cooked up a quick perl script that any BF2 server admin can use to make quick maplists. It should be run in the directory of a mod's levels, somewhere like [base-dir]/mods/aix/levels.
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I've been sick the past couple of days which means I've been frustrated that my brain is firing on all cylinders. When I'm sick I try to keep my brain working via coding or the like, so after I knocked out a lil script to help a math professor prove some mathy thing I didn't understand, I turned to the Battlefield 2 (BF2 from here on out) server I run for my house. Thankfully EA/Dice has an official Linux dedicated server that is easy to set up and customize, unfortunately not all mods return the favor. I'll quickly go through setting up the official server, then customizing it, and if I can get it running myself, the Nations at War 5.1 server!
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About a week ago I asked for a recommendation of a good RPG to play. Having kicked my WoW account goodbye and not really ready to pick up Tabula Rasa for a bit, I've been wanting a good single-player RPG. A friend pointed me towards Oblivion, the fourth game in the Elder Scrolls series. I played Morrowind a few years back, and while I didn't get sucked into the story, the game play was decent enough that I figured I'd give Oblivion a shot.

(Slight Spoiler warning... nothing end-game)
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Tonight was my first Friday night back at school, and I spent it with the guys I'm now living with playing various games I brought back from the summer. I had intended to do a monthly game review this summer, which never happened, so I'll start now.

Game: Quao - The Ultimate Dictatorship Game
Publisher: Wiggity Bang Games, LLC
Players: 3-6 (We had 4)
Length: About half an hour - a full hour, if I recall correctly
Price: $9.95, extremely cheap for this good of a game

Quick Synopsis: This game is what would happen if World War II (the war) met up with Bullshit (the game) or President, udder (heh heh) chaos. Bullshit is a game where you have to get rid of all your cards (aka a Shedding game) without being called out for lying. President is a game where you have to get rid of all your cards, and some players are in a more advantageous position than others. World War II was a crazy time with people making weird rules, alliances, and generally just running amok if they could. In Quao there's one person who knows the special rules (a made up example could be 'No one can say Rumpelstiltskin'), and the rest just know certain rules/cards in play (such as 'At the start of every turn you must make an animal sound and say what it eats). If either type of rule is violated, Quao makes that offender draw a card. The goal is to get rid of your whole hand, whoever does becomes Quao next round. A game consists of 5 rounds, the winner of the 5th wins the game, of course by that time there's 4 Quao rules, and perhaps 10 other special rules in play, so it gets crazy.

Thoughts: This was a really fun game once you got past the 'these rules don't make any sense' aspect of the first 5 minutes. Thankfully it appears they anticipated that period, and included a 'Sample Game' section in the rules that gives you the guts to jump in and figure out that the rules aren't that bad. We ended up getting really paranoid about what the Quao rules where (none of us looked at them ahead of time) and at least I guessed at it and was completely off base. This led to everyone else knowing one major one except for me, and me going a tad bit crazy trying not to break it... of course I ended up breaking it more in the process. That paranoia really captures the idea of a dictatorship, I was scared for my card's life! In the end this becomes an amazing beginner's game, knowing the cards only makes it not fun for the regular players, the newbies can pick it up quickly (it took us a whole 1 round to get going, 1/5 of a game and we were playing like pros) and it'll all be new and funny to them.

Complaints: I want to see a booster pack. By the end of our third game we knew most of the regular rule cards, and about 4 major Quao rules, just with normal turn over of Quao, not looking through them. Barring that, just sell me a deck of blank cards and I'll write them myself (Draw a card!). I feel like 40-50 more white cards, and a nice stack of 25-30 rule cards would do the trick. This game is too good to have me get tired of it quickly so get me more cards!

Overall (Completely arbitrary and non-comparable) Rating: Extremely fun, just too dang short!

Well, about a week ago the creaters of Weewar had an interview on Galaxy-News.net. In that interview they offered a raffle for 5 free pro accounts. These accounts are normally gained by referring new players to the site, 10 players gets one month of Pro status. However, if you had Weewar and Galaxy News accounts, and sent an email to their giveaway, you were entered into this raffle. And guess what, your lovable neighborhood hacker Snarky won one! So now, of course, I'm getting tons of invites as everyone wants to play with Pro players. Oh, not because I'm good, but because we get to use new maps, and everyone in the games Pro players are in get new units! Death from above now is not only my favorite Space Marine battlecry, also the unit I most want to test!

So, I popped into my favorite IRC channel in the middle of a coversation about some new browser game. I paid it no heed and went back to replaying the Brood Wars campaign in preperation for SC2. Then someone offered to toss me an invite and I decided to try it. I only got through 4 rounds before I had other things to do, but I'm hooked already. This is bad because those of you who know me and browser games... productivity goes waaaay down.

Anyways the game is Weewar (yes, that link gets me a point towards "pro" status for everyone that signs up via it and completes at least one game... if you don't like that feel free to remove everything after the '?'), which is an AJAX based RTS that's pretty addictive and yet very simple to learn. Basically its just land units and cities so far, though it does include terrain bonuses (that I just started using right now to great effect!). However, the maps really change the game as cities generate certain amounts of credits based on the map.

The best part, in my mind, is that this is a fun multi-player browser game that one can come back to. My first game went on hold when we all had to leave after 4 rounds. No matter, the game will be there waiting as we each come back. And you don't even have to check back on the HQ tab, you can set the game to email you when its your turn! I already have two games waiting on other players, simple enough to click "Review last turn", watch what happened, and make your moves.

Bottom line? I'm hooked... I go by Snarky (what a surprise) on the site, hit me up for a game some time! Want an invite, I'll bring you in for your first game (I still have yet to finish one *grin*)!

I've been really busy as of late. That web contract I spoke of has kept me on as a web admin guy for the indefinite future and I'm looking to put together a team of php/mysql programmers to help me! Also, code for my CS classes has stepped up in complexity, so... ow. But in my spare time I'm still coding for fun.... just to clear my mind. The project I've been doing for the past week or week and a half is one Ammon and I are calling Thieves Tavern. What is it? Read on to find out!
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