LinuxLemoner's Blog

Blog moved

Mike — Mon, 23 May 2011 21:13:12 +0000

This blog moved to http://linlem.jgoodliffe.com/. My friend kindly agreed to host it!

Deliantra: Plans for Wassar City

Mike — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:40:12 +0000

Development of my Deliantra mapset, Wassar City, has been slow as of the past few weeks. However, it is not dead: I have recently completed a new quest, and I plan for more small quests to be produced, before I begin work on the larger quests, such as the much-requested quest for the “Negabolt” spell and the missing Palace quest, which has had a placeholder for a long time now. I plan also to scatter random map houses around the city, in the style of other cities.

Wow.

Mike — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:32:33 +0000

I haven’t updated my blog in ages.
Here’s a list of what I’ve been doing in the past 10 months (in no specified order):

I have contributed a new city to Deliantra, as well as some other work.
I have provided regular UnAngband GNU/Linux builds.
I have created a Deliantra Fansite, at http://fansite.deliantra.net/.
I have shortened my nick in some places to linlem or LinLem.
I have developed various text-mode roguelikes or semi-roguelikes.

I look forward to updating on a more regular basis.

Dudley’s Dungeon

Mike — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 10:59:44 +0000

A comic strip of mine got posted to Dudley’s (New, Improved) Dungeon today. What’s better is that it didn’t get the poor votes I expected of it. For those who don’t know, Dudley’s Dungeon is a webcomic about the game NetHack. My strip featured the gnome with the wand of death (or GWTWOD), the Grim Reaper (approximated to Death) and Dudley, of course.

I feel somewhat inspired to create another strip. Perhaps I’ll parody the weakening of Elbereth in SporkHack. Perhaps not.

NetHack is still maintained

Mike — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:33:12 +0000

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

Mike — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:24:33 +0000

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

Mike — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:17:50 +0000

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: 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!

Mike — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:31:23 +0000

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

Mike — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:18:44 +0000

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

Mike — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:59:59 +0000

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.