New spam technique
Spammers are now creating junk domainnames (short nonsense words made of numbers and letters) in an attempt to avoid blacklist filters. Of course unless a large number of junk domains are used, it is easy enough to add one or two domains to the blacklist and defeat an ongoing attack.
I’m going to have to dump Movable Type soon.
Brandon Rickman, printmaker (ii)
I have the following print for sale, right now in the Art by B Rickman store:
This print was completed in 2002. This is a reduction woodcut in four colors, 8″ x 5.5″ on Stonehenge paper. There are 12 prints in the edition. and I have only 3 copies left.
Reading for February, 2006
Rogue Star by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, the third part of the Starchild Trilogy.
The Giver by Lois Lowry, winner of the 1994 Newbery Medal. And then I read Gathering Blue by Lowry as well.
That’s it for February. The rest of my time was spent feeding and taking care of the new daughter. And playing Civilization IV.
Comments Disabled
I am disabling comments due to a particularly nasty spam attack.
I escaped from the room!
A high-production, interface heavy, and ultimately uninspired “locked room” puzzle can be found on the Firewall promotional site.
Spoiler:
Untitled Project Day 6
[Project in progress]
Okay, trying to wrap this thing up. This is the point at which the Flash IDE becomes useful for building the interface structure. If you’ve got your code properly encapsulated, then constructing an interface around it won’t cause too many problems. Most “Flash game designers” start with a timeline animation, however, and then never get around to creating the critical interactivity that makes the game fun.
I’ve got a splash screen, with a generic button in the lower left corner. Click the button to start the game. Find the three buildings which change locations as you move around.
Untitled Project Day 5
[Project in progress]
I spent about half a day on server-side stuff, creating a php script that will accept high score data (as CGI params) and put it into a MySQL database. The script does some rudimentary checksums to prevent spoofing.
The second half of the day was spent on “alien display” and “alien move logic”. The aliens (disguised as buildings) only move when you are on a different block, and there can only be one alien per block. Once you find an alien (by clicking on it) the building will turn bright green. One alien will move every time you change blocks. The result is a little too erratic, esp. if you have already spotted two aliens and are looking for the third, as the alien will always seek to avoid the player. It is about as fun as trying to guess a random number, over and over again.
In the current version the city is a 3×3 grid and there are 3 aliens to find. A nine block city is about the largest I can make with 51 building assets. The file is 238 kb, which is getting heavy for a stupid flash game.
Hotel Oscar Tango Echo Lima
I just came across HOTEL – an interactive tale by Han Hoogerbrugge. Mad doctors, naked clowns, freak accidents, everything you could want in an interactive tale. Nine out of ten episodes are currently available, the series started some time in 2004.
Reading for January, 2006
The Wanderer by Fritz Lieber. Won the Hugo Award in 1965. The story is pretty much a template plot for a disaster movie, complete with handfuls of oddball/nonintellectual characters who get killed as the disaster worsens.
Gateway by Frederik Pohl. 1978 Hugo Award. The first copy I had (checked out from library) was missing a signature, and had actually been stamped “Withdrawn”, but they sent it to me anyway.
Untitled Project Day 4
[Project in progress]
I did a little work on the game on the 17th, and a little more today, so I’ll call this day 4. 90% of the fundamental code is done, and about 25% of the interface code. In this version there is a small 3 wide, 2 high city that is navigable with the arrow buttons, the arrow keys, and the a/w/s/d keys.
I have doodled some ideas for city layouts for the different skill levels. The easy city will have 6 rooms and 2 aliens, the medium city will be 12 rooms and 3 aliens, the difficult city will have 18 rooms and 4 aliens. I will need more building assets to be able to furnish the 18 room city.
Untitled Project Day 3
Untitled Project Day 2
Untitled Project Day 1