Of games and scripting, and scripting games

Life's not always a game, but it can seem like it

It's been a pretty long time since I've contributed to either of my blogs recently. Not that I've been doing a lot, though I have been contributing to the coffers of Steam and Indie game creators, mainly through the Humble Bundles.

A little humility goes a long way

Humble bundles are collections of (usually) games typically from Indie developers, and the ones I look at are at a knock-down price. In essence, you specify the price, and specify how you want the price divided up amongst various categories. Independent game developers get much-needed profile as well as a little extra cash in their pockets, any charities get a little bonus and the group organising this also gains a slice. And it's all decided by you and me, the prospective purchaser.

You certainly won't find Call of Duty, Halo 4 or any other big AAA titles in these collections, as those are normally funded by organisations the size of Valve, EA and the likes. No, these are little games, often coded by one person, or perhaps more, but usually no more than ten people.

These humble bundles work best when we're not cheap retards that pay one cent and expect seven good quality games. One current way to combat this is to provide basic games for any amount less than the average. Additional games are provided if the prospective purchaser pays more than the average. If we're prepared to put a halfway decent amount of money towards the games, then developers are more inclined to look at this as a viable way of increasing visibility.

The Humble Bundles provide binaries for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. I think that's fantastic, but I noticed something about contributed amounts for various platforms. Windows users provide more than 60% of the purchases, yet they're the cheapest of contributors. On the other hand, Linux buyers provide the greatest amount for contributions even considering their lowest profile. I wonder why that is?

As a result of my various contributions to their respective coffers, I have stellar little gems such as Gish, Toki Tori, Cave Story +, and many others.

I do run the risk though, of running into an awful lot of games that I'll probably buy, play once or twice, and then hardly ever play again. Minecraft seems to be a very rare exception to this.

One small niggle I seem to have, Steam's copy of Doom3.exe doesn't want to work properly on my computer, and nobody actually knows why. I've downloaded the Doom3.exe from ID, and that seems to work fine. In addition, so does the Linux binary. So it seems that the data files are fine, at least. It's just the binaries.

However, in more testing, it seems it might actually be the Steam interface that isn't running something the steamed-Doom executable expects. Once I was running the beta Steam client, it now seems to work properly.

Except for Defense Of The Ancients 2, which has issues of its own that I have yet to understand.

Houston, we have lift-off

On the topic of Minecraft, I cobbled together a script (called minecrafty) to start off a selection of Minecraft launchers. The launcher handles loading modifications to Minecraft, and my script handles other items such as screen brightness, choosing the right launcher and defining the amount of memory devoted to java.

Since then, I've added other functions. I added in the ability to run a specific server, or download versions of Minecraft, and most recently, to download various launchers. Currently it only works under bash, as that has a far better ability to chain commands together. Heck, bash even has functions, and has done from day one. I don't know if CMD.EXE even has functions, though it has callable subroutines, but I do know it was a pig to write for when I last wrote for it. So I write minecrafty in the bash scripting language.

I can't think of much more to add to minecrafty, as it has everything I need it to have. And frankly, that's often what home coding is all about—scratching an itch. I needed to brighten up the screen before launching Minecraft, and reduce the brightness back to normal afterwards, which is how this all started. In doing this, I found out a little more than I really wanted about how to change brightness on individual monitors (and refresh rates) of my two-monitor system. I was also surprised about just how much detail I needed to know about. For example, someone was having total problems starting my script on their system, purely because they hadn't put things in the same place that I had done on my system. That provided me with the impetus to add in a function to download (and install) a launcher. At this stage, the script supports five separate launchers, with no real plans to support any others—as it is, I only use the one launcher anyhow.

Minecraft got a lot of loving

A lot of Minecraft

Wow. Just…wow.

Back about 13 April 2012 at 23:11 (UTC) or so, Minecraft made five million, five hundred and fifty five thousand, five hundred and fifty five sales, and more by now. I even managed to get a screenshot of the event.

Oh, and as the full sized screenshot will show, I was using a favourite plugin of mine—FlashBlock.

Feel like bacon, anyone?

Let's ham it up

Bacon and eggs go together like…well, bacon and eggs. They're great as a pie, or even on their own without pastry. However, one place where they really don't go together is in a game. Except for one family of games.

First, take a family of birds. They like life. And they like eggs. Funny that, because that's how they become birds. And then there's pigs. Pigs like eggs too, but not for the same reasons. They don't need the eggs to become birds first. They just like eggs. Cooked. Any way they can.

Needless to say, the birds don't like this. In fact they get rather angry about the fact that the pigs (green, in this case) have come along and stolen their eggs, in preparation of a right pig-out. Yes, that's right, I think you've all figured it out by now.

Take some angry birds…

In the game Angry Birds and their sequels, you play the part of some really really angry birds. You're given a catapult, and different sorts of birds, all to kill any pigs on screen. The fewer birds you have to use, the better your score. Oh, and it's even better if you wipe out every piece of structure protecting the pigs too, but killing the pigs is where it's at. Or releasing the other birds, if you happen to have bought Angry Birds - Rio.

It's become kind of a cult classic, but I've no idea what following it has, save that it comes top of the category at the App Store for downloading. Suffice it to say that this may not be the game for COD4 or MW3 players, unless they're tired of playing with all their buddies online, and just want some downtime, to rest up the braincells.

Don't think you'll be resting them with this game, though. Even though the target is simple—kill all pigs (or release all the captive birds)— that can get surprisingly hard to do, especially if you're after the full three stars that nearly every level offers. And then there are the chances to get golden eggs, which unlock further levels for you to play on. If you think “Pshaw, how hard can killing pigs be?” then try going through all four games, completing all levels, and all goldenegg levels. When you've succeeded in that, decide whether you want to run back to MW3.

Then there's the inevitable chase for the highest score you can possibly get in each level. I don't quite know how the score is calculated, but the higher you get, the more points you have. And you might even get a golden egg level out of it. If you feel like releasing a bit of frustration, then I'm sorry to say that some of the levels in this game are infuriatingly hard to get. Needless to say, I haven't finished all the levels yet.

The games are cheap enough, at only $4.95 each you're not going to have months of gametime, but it'll while away enough time for the price. The most recent episode costs $5.95, but that's because it's only just been released. In addition, the games are not just available on your humble PC. No, sir. It made an appearance in the smartphone market when I first saw it, and it had become a classic top-of-category by then. Once tablets started becoming more common, it was only a matter of time before Angry Birds (and sequels) topped the charts at the App Store. In addition, you can even play some of Angry Birds for free, in a number of ways. It's available as a Google Chrome applet, a Google Plus game, as a Facebook game, or even as a standalone demo for the PC/Mac (running on OS X)/Android/iPad or smartphone.

And it's a good alternative to Minecraft.

EDIT: Unfortunately, these games are no longer available for download in their PC versions from the original producer, so the only way you can get them is either on disc from retailers that still sell them, or from Steam, who currently only sells Angry Birds: Space through their platform.

Piracy and its effects (link to article)

I've just finished reading an article about piracy that has opened my eyes a bit more than they already were. I'm not going to bother summarising the points in the article, instead, I'm going to point to it instead.

It's available as the Piracy article on tweakguides.com.

'nuff said.
Oh, and due to the controversial nature of the current feeling about it, I deliberately won't be accepting comments. Sorry, folks.

What, more mining?

Minecraft moves up

In my last post, I wrote about a quiet little gem. They've since had a wildly popular convention, made the official release of their popular game, and even managed to update the game further. In the process, they've cracked five million sales, and that's not including the Pocket Minecraft version—that's already recorded more than a million sales in its own right. They've also received awards for being the most popular indie game to date. In fact, it's become so popular that LEGO are going to make a Minecraft set of pieces to go with all their other LEGO boxed sets.

In the process of updating, the Minecraft programmers also teamed up with the most popular provider of server mods (bukkit.org), added several new blocks, and even more cute and not so cute characters. And even more fixes. Oh yes—and recently, Notch gave three million dollars of earned dividends away to his employees, gaining several really grateful responses.

But is the sky really the limit?

No, not yet. But since Minecraft programmers doubled the allowable build height, the ability to build up to level 256 can ensure some pretty tall buildings. After all, how many real buildings can claim to be more than 200m tall? As of today's quick reading of the wikipedia, Dubai has 63, Wuhan has 6, Britian seems to have 4, and in comparison, the United States has more than a hundred. Still, plenty of buildings can be built, and in any shape you could make blocks fit.

Pah! Building is for Pansies! I like my Adventure!

Fine, then I'll send a zombie horde your way. And in hard mode, they'll even kick down doors between them and you—or any other poor soul they happen to want to eat. It rather reminds me of what happens in Terraria under a blood moon. Brainssss, anyone?

The monsters have got a lot better at finding their way to you, making the game that bit harder in survival mode. Now, it's not just a case of building your own impregnable castle, your adventure mode can even include weapon and armour upgrades so you have a little more help on your side. But first you have to go kill a lot of monsters. The more monsters you kill, the better you can make your weapons. In addition, the monsters very occasionally drop other nice little things in addition to the usual bones, rotting meat, string, gunpowder and arrows. Jusssst don't turn your back. You'll never know when the other enemy mobs gain the ability to open doors, smash glass or even smash their way through other blocks.

But I gave up my computer! How can I play Minecraft now?

If you have an Android-powered device, it's likely that Pocket Minecraft will work on it. The Pocket version is still well behind its PC brother, but it is catching up, having recently gained survival mode. The XBox 360 version is expected to come out soon, so all you XBox 360 console owners can look forward to a different way of mining on the controller.

Anyhow, I'm off to go see how long I can survive in a super-flat world with nothing but my wits, a stray village or a lot of dirt blocks stacked up in a tower.