T w e n t y S i d e d
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DM of the Rings CVIII:
His First Decree
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Narbacular Drop
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| The portal in action: Both of those characters are the player. Go in one portal, seamlessly exit the other. This is a pretty simple setup, but when you start mucking about with portals on the floors, ceilings, or at strange angles, it suddenly becomes very confusing. In a good way. |
While reading up on the game I found out that a couple of the designers had already made a portal game – using pretty much exactly the same mechanics – as a project for their portfolios. The game is Narbacular Drop, and it is freely available. This let me play around with the portals idea without having to get another Steam-based game.
It really was a lot of fun to mess around with the portals. It’s a small download, and a great way to kill an hour or so.
Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam
As a follow up to my post back in mid-April: This CAPTCHA thing is incredible. For fellow WordPress users, the plugin I’m using is Peter's Custom Anti-Spam Image Plugin for WordPress. As I said at the time, I used to get many hundreds of spam a day. Traffic here has jumped up since then, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find I’m getting a couple of thousand a day by this point. But all of them bounce off the CAPTCHA, and I never even see them. I only see a spam make it through about once every other week, and I’m betting the ones that do make it though are entered manually.
One more thing to note is that I’m not even sure those few spam are really spam. What I see is that every once in a while I’ll get a comment from someone that is something like, “That’s great!” or “I have always thought so too.” Their name is something harmless, but their URL links back to a page of ads. Are these people really spammers? It’s arguable. Since their name isn’t something like “get a free Wii!” it means they aren’t trying to game the Googlebot. In any case, I tend to can these comments since “me too”-ing doesn’t serve any real purpose, so other readers aren’t missing anything.
In any case, these are really impressive results for a CAPTCHA with only one short phrase that never changes. It really is amazing how well it works. This more or less proves that nearly all spam comes from automated scripts that don’t even attempt to cope with CAPTCHA. I’m more convinced than ever that the CAPTCHAs of warped, mixed case pink-on-purple letters with blue polkadots that are so difficult for humans are pretty much a waste of everyone’s time. An easy-to-read three-letter word is more than enough to defeat automated scripts.
Three in the Afternoon
Warning: Rude language. Also funny.
Prey: Followup
As a follow up to various questions and comments on my initial Prey post:
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| The game really does use the Doom lighting system. This is a good thing. It’s like playing Doom3, except I can see stuff. |
Flexstyle asks, “How gory is it?” I’d have to say: Pretty freakin’ gory. What’s interesting is that for the most part the gore isn’t perpetrated by the player. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Prey: Followup”
DM of the Rings CVII:
And the Clueless Again Shall Be King
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And the Clueless Again Shall Be King”
From The Archives:
Project Frontier
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
Hardware Review
So what happens when a SOFTWARE engineer tries to review hardware? This. This happens.
The Best of 2019
I called 2019 "The Year of corporate Dystopia". Here is a list of the games I thought were interesting or worth talking about that year.
Revisiting a Dead Engine
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
The Middle Ages
Would you have survived in the middle ages?
What Does a Robot Want?
No, self-aware robots aren't going to turn on us, Skynet-style. Not unless we designed them to.
Trusting the System
How do you know the rules of the game are what the game claims? More importantly, how do the DEVELOPERS know?
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?