NetHack is still maintained

People are starting to think that NetHack (a roguelike computer game) is no longer being maintained. However, there is proof that people still work on the game: one month ago, on 10 November, they published new Mac binaries of version 3.4.3. We should therefore be looking forward to a new release in the next 1/2/3/5/10/20 years.

At least we still have SporkHack and UnNetHack for the time until then. (SporkHack is my favourite, because the balance is improved, and explore mode is gone. Now, you need Elbereth and your pet. ) This may cause problems for UnNetHack: If they release NetHack 4.x, then UnNetHack is safe. If they release NetHack 3.5.x, UnNetHack might have problems. UnNetHack might then have to use a common Angband variant line:

UnNetHack is derived from NetHack 3.4.3, with additions from SLASH’EM.

Alternatively, if NetHack is no longer developed, the Hack series of the roguelike tree will continue in UnNetHack and SporkHack. Like Moria and Angband.

New releases

Some releases have occurred recently:
Blender 2.50 alpha 0 was released! Finally we know about what all the hype was about.
The buttons are bigger now – great! Being an alpha though, not all the features have a button, but they are still there. One thing I dislike though, is that it is now in perspective mode by default. It’s still easy to switch though, with the 5 key.

Inkscape 0.47 came out! Congratulations to all who worked on it.
That is, not to say I wasn’t enjoying the features already, thanks to Fedora. I guess it is all the users of distributions who don’t ship prereleases in the main repository that are really excited. But then, that can be a bad thing.

KOffice 2.1 was released! YEAH! Hooray for Krita!
I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, but watch this space – as soon as KOffice 2.1 gets to updates-testing, I’ll write up a summary of Krita.
EDIT: It seems that we may have to wait 6 months for KOffice 2.1 to be pushed in Fedora. This isn’t what I’d call “staying close to upstream”: shipping a 8 month old package with a deprecated dependency when a new package with an up-to-date dependency is available and the policy is “stay close to upstream”.
That said, last time I used it (1.6), it was more of an improved KolourPaint, which was really just an improved pixel art program that ships with many computer systems.

Meanwhile, I notice something unusual about my sound now: PulseAudio has ruined all good ALSA practices. Now all programs want to lock the soundcard. And in Fedora, programs seem to be built without OSS support, so that rules out most compatibility layers.

Notes on Fedora 12

Well done Fedora, another release!
On the other hand, you may experience these problems (according to my KDE system):

• Problem: The GStreamer backend may lock the soundcard, preventing programs such as FluidSynth and Audacious from outputting sound.
  Workaround: Make sure the Xine backend for Phonon is available. Give it higher priority than GStreamer in the Multimedia section of the System Settings.


• Problem: KPackageKit may report stupidity, such as “PackageKit must be removed” in an update. I have not tested what happens when you accept this.
  Workaround: Use the traditional su and yum to achieve your package management tasks. See my guide to yum.
  Possible culprit: Could the culprit be Presto’s delta RPM system? (Sorry if I’m wrong.)


• Problem: JACK Audio Connection Kit fails to start.
  Workaround: I don’t know. Try running your application through ALSA instead, if supported.
  Fix: JACK Audio Connection Kit 0.118.0 fixes this bug, and is now in the update pipeline. At the time of writing, it is in the updates-testing repository.


• Problem: SELinux is far more restrictive, issuing warnings for Wine and stopping programs like Deliantra from running.
  Workaround: If your application fails with an execstack warning, turn on the boolean “allow_execstack”.

Hopefully these problems will be resolved in the near future.

Hello world once again!

Yet another new start. Hopefully this time there won’t be another entity called LinuxLemoner. Google tells me I’m safe. I’m aware of a program called Lemon, though. Thanks to the -er ending I’m safe though.

Rogue session

I played a session of Rogue 5.4 today with my friends. The session was highly competitive: one person (Manoj) focused on getting as much gold as possible, I focused on levelling, and a friend called Ben focused on dungeon levels. Manoj was quite weak and lagged behind on dungeon levels, but had gained twice as much gold as me. Ben was the most competitive player, yet only discovered the game yesterday. He quickly found the stairs and had excellent tactics in combat. I had however the highest level in the group, being level 5 as opposed to Ben’s level of 4. (On a combat note, he seemed to like killing ice monsters, which I can one-shot.)

Manoj was probably the most focused player today, having the lowest level and focusing on his gold, unfortunately neglecting combat and dungeon levels. He explored the dungeon carefully, probably because I told him about the 3×3 room rule (which I shouldn’t have done).

Ben was probably the most tactical player today. He always seemed to know when to run, and when to fight. He used the wait (.) command frequently to regenerate HP. However, he immediately went down stairs when he found them, which could be dangerous. His highlight is probably when he found a 2×3 corridor formation, and there were few rooms in that level!

I tried to focus on levelling and experience and as such, got the highest level. I only went down when I cleared the level of monsters (I quite liked the ice monster too, actually). However, I had an increased chance of death that way, because I could find an hard monster (an example at lower levels would be a hobgoblin). My highlight was when I found a room full of monsters, and that helped me gain a level!

It was a great session today and if possible, the Rogue games will be continued tomorrow. If so, a similar journal will be posted tomorrow. Feel free to make a bet on whether there will be deaths tomorrow, and if so who.

A word on Jamie Goodliffe

There is a person named Jamie Goodliffe linking to my site. I know this person. He is a Mac fanboy, and acts like Big Brother – deleting criticism. (Compare to Big Brother making people “unpersons”, dropping things through the memory hole. Or to Big Brother sending people to Room 101.) When I made corrections to his post to help him, he simply deleted it, and left me a message on Google Talk:

I don’t approve criticism.

Oh, so what do you approve? Spam? I can see that. I left a comment to his page later, reading:

It seems you have deleted constructive criticism. I will refuse to help you, and be associated with you. Either remove the link, or leave this comment here.

Mike

To make matters worse, he repeatedly added me to his blog, trying to force me to make him an editor to mine. I refused, and deleted his blog from my list. More than once.

If you are reading this, Jamie Goodliffe – yes, I have revealed your full name. Just like you did to me. And I will refuse to delete this post, no matter how many times you ask.

Flat Icon Theme preview

The first preview of my (quite flat) icon theme (named Flat) is here. Only one icon for now – accessories-calculator. I hope you like it:

If you’re counting the buttons, there is supposed to be a pi button, and the red rectangle at the top is a solar panel, for those who use battery powered calculators..
In this icon, I tried to capture the roundness of everything on a typical calculator – no sharp edges. The highlight on the buttons was the hardest part – until I remembered the stroke options. This was just done on an Inkscape 0.47 pre-release.

KDE 4.3 pushed to Fedora 11

I noticed Fedora 11 has pushed KDE 4.3 to the stable repository. This is great news from a functionality perspective, but not so great from a disk space perspective. Fortunately, I have plenty of disk space. It requires kdm and its settings though, and another helping called xdm (something which I haven’t heard in a long time). I’m wondering if that will ever get used though (I have gdm). Hopefully it should be a smooth ride! Another interesting dependency is eet, from the Enlightenment project. They are apparently going to release their E17 WM soon, with plenty of eye candy – are bets on to be better than KDE?

UPDATE: Actually, it also pulled in the KDE workspace. How nice! I’m running it now with Air, but I will still reinstall for Fedora 12 (my system is a mess! Currently the problem has been temporarily fixed by compiling applications myself and storing them in my home directory. I have modified various programs to do this correctly.) On a great note, I noticed that the Nodoka theme goes well with Oxygen! It’s not perfect, but it will do.

PulseAudio

It seems that PulseAudio still breaks your audio. After a few weeks of using JACK as a workaround, I finally decided to remove it, because there aren’t enough applications supporting it. You’ll need to get rid of gnome-bluetooth to remove it though, I don’t know why. Strangely, bluez (Bluetooth drivers) depends on it. But seriously, who actually uses Bluetooth? (I may be a little biased, since I have never used a mobile beyond using it properly, that is, making phone calls and texting.)

MurrineDark 2

This is an improved version of the original MurrineDark theme, based on the default theme of Ubuntu Studio. This improved version includes an Openbox theme (GlossyEvil) and three color variations (red, green and blue). Enjoy!

You can get it from MediaFire here.

Just to be safe, I’m tri-licensing this under GPLv3, CC-By-Sa 3 and my personal license in the About Page.

For those who don’t know, MurrineDark is my first GTK theme. This is an improved version.

For those using KDE, there is an almost equivalent colorsheme called “Silver and Grey”. It is available on KDE-Look.org here. I believe there is a different colored scroll bar though (black as opposed to gray).