Topics

1

Off Topic / ✨ Blocklander of the Year 2019 ✨ - Khaz

« on: December 02, 2019, 06:54:57 AM »

✨ Blocklander of the Year 2019 ✨

It's that time of year! For the seventh time in a row, it is finally time to see who will shine in this winner-take-all popularity brawl! Who will be the one to come out on top?

The rules

• Four nominations max per person. Keep all your nominations in one post to simplify counting.
• You can advertise for yourself however you like; however, I am adding a technical stipulation to how you can distribute the voting link. You will only be able to vote in each poll after clicking the voting link specifically from this topic. Directly sharing the voting link over discord, steam, etc. will not work. You will have to share the link to this topic instead.
• No voting using alt accounts!! I will smite you down.

Bracket

This bracket will be updated as each poll concludes.

Voting link
All polls have concluded.

Reminder: Do not distribute the above link. People will only be able to vote after clicking the link from this topic. Share the link to this topic instead.

Prizes
You will get nothing for winning.

Previous winners

2013 - Winner: Eksi
2014 - Winner: Wrapperup
2015 - Winner: Swollow
2016 - Winner: McJob
2017 - Winner: Conan
2018 - Winner: HULKHOGANWWFWORLDCHAMPION (sorry celau, that's just how it be!)

2

General Discussion / Age of Dungeons (1.1) - A multiplayer RPG dungeon crawler

« on: November 22, 2019, 02:43:41 AM »

Updates | Game Guide | Leaderboard | Profile Lookup

Age of Dungeons is a multiplayer roguelike rpg gamemode with a massive randomly generated dungeon. The game is non-permadeath (though you do lose some stuff on death) and favors long-term progression by leveling, affording higher and higher tier items, and finding rare items. There are three primary combat styles (melee, ranged, and magic) with no strict class enforcement. Outside the starting town, PvP is possible and you'll have to watch your back. All data is saved automatically (but you have to disconnect in town or else it'll count as a death), and your save data transfers seamlessly between any AoD server that is online. Thanks to this, there will usually be multiple servers hosted regionally to give players access to low ping gameplay.

I could go on forever since this is a totally massive gamemode that has seen years of development at this point. I would recommend simply reading the Game Guide if you're interested in the details of how everything works. If this is your first time hearing about this, you've missed out since it has been hosted a fair amount in the past.


Gallery




Update history

Mar 13th 2020 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=31
Dec 18th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=29
Dec 11th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=27
Dec 4th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=25
Nov 29th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=22
Nov 22nd 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=18
June 28th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=15
April 26th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=11
April 19th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=9
April 12th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=8
April 5th 2019 - https://dungeons.block.land/forum/?topic=6
2018 developments, Gource video - https://dungeons.block.land/AoD_GOURCE_x2speed.mp4
Even earlier origins, Dungeon Generator topic (2013-2015) - https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=280162.msg8378047


Credits

Pecon - Programming, design
Conan - Programming, modeling, building, design
Magus - Modeling, building, inspiration
The Brighter Dark - Building
APX - Original music
Zeustal - Building, inspiration
Trinko - Building, item icons
Arekan - Sound effects
Tophat - Q/A testing, balancing, moderation
Siba - Brick models


Special thanks to

ArmyUnit - Donated public and non-public bug mods for use as enemies
Swollow - Small code donations
Vitawrap - That incredibly amazing logo you can see at the top of the thread
Mr. Noßody - Old potion models
Amade - A couple odd models
Demian - Old staff model

3

General Discussion / Halloween is over.

« on: October 31, 2019, 07:29:59 AM »

Edit: it has just finished.

4

Add-Ons / AutoModerator - Moderate chat using public machine-learning based models

« on: June 17, 2019, 08:31:22 PM »

Features   Installation   Configuration   FAQ

AutoModerator is a server mod for utilizing publicly available machine learning models via API to automatically moderate your server's chat. You can even fine-tune what sort of things it is sensitive to, with 8 different moderation models to utilize. Contrary to what I might be implying in the title, this mod does not implement any machine learning in torquescript as that would be horrendous. Rather, this uses Google's Perspective API to brown townyze chat after it is sent. This mod obviously cannot completely replace human moderators, but it can help moderate chat in extremely hectic situations, and can help keep your server more peaceful when there are no moderators online.


Features:

• Keep your server moderated to some degree 24/7. Give your fleshbag human moderators a break.
• Unbiased and impeccable scrutiny.
• Highly customizable sensitivity. Choose what moderation models to care about, what models to ignore, and everything in-between.
• Keeps records separately from clients. Clients rejoining won't make the AutoModerator forget what they have done.
• Accountable. Admins are always notified about the AutoModerator's decisions, and those notifications are also logged in the console for your record keeping.
• Fault tolerance. In the case of a service outage, chat is cached and brown townysis re-attempted until service is available again.
• Experimental mode. You can set AutoModerator into an 'experimental mode' in which it will never take actions, but will inform you of the actions it would take under its current settings. This makes fine-tuning your sensitivity values to fit your needs much safer.
• AutoModerator will never betray you. Probably.

Installation:

• Acquire a Google API key with the Perspective API enabled. Follow these instructions until you have created an API key and enabled the API.
• Download Server_AutoModerator.zip
• Place it into your add-ons folder.
• Start a server with Server_AutoModerator enabled.
• Take the API key from step 1 and do /autoModeratorSetKey <your api key>.
• Shut down the server. This will ensure the package preloader is installed correctly and your API key saves.
• (Optional) Open Server_AutoModerator.zip and edit settings.cs to configure your settings.
• Host anything you like with Server_AutoModerator enabled!

Settings and configuration:

AutoModerator has a lot of settings. To edit the settings, you simply open settings.cs from within the zip file and edit the settings to suit your needs, then restart your server. The comments in the file explain what each setting does.

Of these settings, the sensitivity settings are probably the most important. These settings show the 8 models the AutoModerator can evaluate chat by. A higher value in a category will make the AutoModerator care more about that category and take action more quickly when a user's chat violates that category. A value of 0 will completely disable that category. As long as a value is lower than 11, it is impossible for the AutoModerator to take action based off of a single message, but it will take action when it sees a trend of violations in that category. How quickly it determines that trend is based off the sensitivity value.

Available moderation models:

• Toxicity - A general model aimed at detecting behavior that will generally drive people away from discussions.
• SevereToxicity - A general model also aimed at detecting behavior that will drive people away from discussions, but focused on much more 'severe' behavior which overlooks a lot of behavior that could be considered more acceptable in informal communities.
• IdentityAttack - A model that detects language that attacks a person or group's identity.
• Insult - A model that detects insults.
• Profanity - A model that detects profane language. (Default configuration disables moderating this category)
• Threat - A model that detects threats of harm or injury towards other people or groups.
• loveuallyExplicit - A model that detects language that is highly loveual. (Default configuration disables moderating this category)
• Flirtation - A model that detects flirtatious language, pickup lines, etc. (Default configuation disables moderating this category)

Default values for moderation models in settings.cs:

Code: [Select]

$autoModSensitivity["Toxicity"] = 1.5;
$autoModSensitivity["severeToxicity"] = 4;
$autoModSensitivity["IdentityAttack"] = 5;
$autoModSensitivity["Insult"] = 4;
$autoModSensitivity["Profanity"] = 0;
$autoModSensitivity["Threat"] = 2;
$autoModSensitivity["loveuallyExplicit"] = 0;
$autoModSensitivity["Flirtation"] = 0;

In addition to these, there are also settings for changing the AutoModerator's name, adjusting the time of mutes, writing custom warning messages, and configuration for running your own middleware if you so desire.

Commands (Super-admin only):

• /autoModeratorSetKey <api key>
• /toggleAutoModerator

Attack of the middleware

Unfortunately, the Perspective API requires an HTTPS connection to connect to. This means that Blockland cannot connect directly to it, and some 'middleware' is required which Blockland connects to via HTTP, and the middleware then performs the HTTPS connection to the API to request chat brown townysis. AutoModerator is pre-configured with a public middleware I am hosting, so really you don't have to do anything about this if you don't want to. However, if you wish and have the capability you may want to run your own copy of the middleware. The greatest benefit to running your own middleware would probably be that you don't have to rely on the uptime of my server for your AutoModerator. If you want to run your own copy of the middleware, you can download a copy of it here: https://leopard.hosting.pecon.us/dl/qeorw/middleware.php. Once you have set up the middleware, you can change the middleware settings in settings.cs to configure your AutoModerator to use it.


FAQ:

Q: How does the AutoModerator punish players?
A: When a player triggers the AutoModerator, they will first receive a warning letting them know that the AutoModerator doesn't approve of their chat behavior. Subsequent incidents that trigger the AutoModerator for the same category of behavior will cause mutes of increasing duration (the durations can be modified in the configuration). The AutoModerator will never ban/kick players.

Q: Can this prevent spam/moderate gameplay problems?
A: No. This is only a chat moderator. And, at least for the moment, it doesn't deal with chat spam either.

Q: Will this stop me from saying [...] on servers??
A: That will depend entirely on how the host decides to configure the AutoModerator. By default, the AutoModerator is fairly lienient and will let you do just about anything at least once without triggering; but the host could easily decide to change the behavior to be more or less sensitive.

Q: Is this an invasion of privacy? Will the AutoModerator remember everything I say forever and stalk me on myspace?
A: Chat sent to the brown townysis API is fairly anonymized. Usernames are not sent alongside chat, and typically lacks conversational context. Additionally, the fact that most AutoModerators will run through the public middleware means that the chat coming from your server will be mixed up with the chat coming from any other servers also using AutoModerator. Sorting through this information to track people or log their chat in any meaningful way would be basically impossible. That being said, all chat sent to the brown townysis API is recorded and used to further train the machine learning models; but it's anonymous data.

5

Off Topic / [Userscript] BLF Incognito v1.2 - Hide your actions from the "Who's Online" list

« on: June 03, 2019, 09:52:11 AM »

This userscript will hide your recent actions from public visibility in the "Who's Online" list by overwriting them with a view to the board index. This does not work 100% of the time, but it should be more than enough to keep your actions generally more private.

This userscript works by hooking the click event on all urls on the forum, and quickly requesting the board index before navigating to the link. Normally you might think it would be better to simply request the board index after each page load, but this does not work since there is a ~8 second cooldown before your last action can be updated again. Hooking only the urls also means that what you are doing could be revealed if you refresh the same page over and over again rather than navigating using the links on the page. As far as I can tell there isn't much of a better way to go about this due to the cooldown on last action updates.

To install this, you will need a userscript manager such as Greasemonkey (for Firefox) or Tampermonkey (for Chrome), or something equivalent since there are multiple others out there.

https://pecon.us/userscripts/incognito.user.js

6

Off Topic / oops ignore

« on: May 25, 2019, 09:49:00 PM »

.

7

Off Topic / Agora (forum system) development - v2 Massive design overhaul!

« on: February 17, 2019, 06:58:44 AM »

Been a long time since I posted an update about this, because this design overhaul had me working on the forum system in a staging environment for over half a year before it was ready to be used publicly. This update adds a template-based theme system, which while still not 100% complete does at least give the forum the modern look and responsive design it's been in dire need of. Additionally, a number of new features have been added such as the ability to view the posts of users, a session manager that keeps people logged in between visits, and more minor things.

Previous topic: https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=318994.0

Github repository: https://github.com/Pecon/Agora

Features:
 - Template-based theme system. (Similar to making themes for Wordpress)
 - Modern default theme with fully responsive design.
 - Session manager. (UI for users to control their sessions is planned but not done)
 - Avatar system that supports animated gifs and static images up to 100x100px, and with high quality resampling of larger avatars.
 - Uncomplicated code (No unexplained regex, things are generally written in a pretty straightforward manner)
 - All features supported without Javascript (Javascript still enhances some features)
 - Powerful BBCode parser written specifically for Agora (No regex used. Very straightforward to edit.)
 - Optional email address confirmation system
 - Private messaging system
 - Lack of feature bloat (or an excuse as to this list being short)

To-do:
 - Add more user preferences and controls
 - Add boards
 - Add more admin tools and further improve existing ones
 - Search feature

If you would like to help, the most needed things right now would be:
 - A default favicon.
 - A background image/texture, maybe.
 - Suggest a nicer (open source) font for the default theme? There have been some complaints about the current one.
 - You may also make a pull request if you would like to contribute code changes or submit a new default theme.

Note, if you want to make a theme that is just a color edit, I plan to make a separate functionality for themes to have different color schemes which users can individually choose to use. You shouldn't make a new theme just to change the colors, and if you want to make a color scheme for the Twilight (default) theme just let me know and I'll keep you updated for when color schemes are added. Making a theme is only for if you want to completely redesign the look and layout of the forum.

Additionally please keep in mind that if you wish to contribute, you cannot use any copywritten materials. So for example if you made a banner graphic, it can't feature any image or photo that isn't original work or in the public domain. Some good sources of public domain images can be found at creative commons, nasa, or a few other select places that produce content exclusively for public domain use.

Screenshots:

The thread index


A thread


A user's profile


If you're interested in testing out the forum system, a link to the testing forum can be found on the github page.

8

Modification Help / Boss Battles Content Dump

« on: January 27, 2019, 10:38:31 PM »

This is a dump of most of the add-on files in Boss Battles. Many things were redacted for various good reasons, but for the most part everything is here. This is from a snapshot of the server in 2017, so some small changes that were made since then are not reflected in this dump.

Do not release add-ons from this dump unless you know what you are doing. Lots of the add-ons in this dump have cross-dependencies, rely on some inherent feature of the Boss Battles server, or require special configuration which makes them unfit for release as-is. Some of the dependencies may have even been removed from this dump. Thoroughly test anything you decide to try to use from this dump.

https://pecon.us/storage/Boss_Battles_Add-Ons.7z

9

Add-Ons / Gag Mute

« on: January 26, 2019, 10:16:56 PM »

Gag Mute
Version 1.0




Commands:
/gag [name]
/ungag [name]

Translates all chat from the gagged player into ballgag.
Ballgag persists through deaths and won't get overwritten by other images. Filter and ballgag do not persist between reconnects.

Credits:
Pecon - Code.
Trogtor - Model.
Dominoes - Test subject. Probably consented to this.

Server_GagMute.zip

10

General Discussion / Boss Battles week (again)

« on: January 18, 2019, 09:15:42 AM »

It's that time again! For no particularly good reason whatsoever, I'm hosting boss battles again for the upcoming week. Be sure to drop by soon if you want to re-experience this horrendously overtooled gamemode!



In case you missed the last hosting event, here is basically what has happened:

- Boss Battles was hosted for a week on november 4th as a nod to the 'anniversary' event that used to happen every year at that time. Had Boss Battles been hosted through last year, it would have marked the 7th anniversary. I did not make a topic during this event, which is why you probably missed it.
- A lot of music has been improved and a few new tracks have been added.
- Players who originally donated $20 now have access to a small selection of tracks that used to be hidden. Obviously this is a highly exclusive privilege, since it has not be possible to donate for a very long time now. (And no, I won't be re-opening donations. It would be stupid to donate to a dead server.)
- The Rotondo boss is now the 1000 Degree Knife boss, which features a player model by Conan. It is effectively the exact same boss but just with a new appearance. Contrary to what people might tell you, even the hitbox of the boss is exactly the same as before.
- There are probably some other things but I don't really remember them. Bug fixes probably.

11

General Discussion / Boss Battles is up this week

« on: September 07, 2018, 06:22:47 PM »

It'll be up until about next sunday. Point earnings are 5x higher than normal so that you can make reasonable progression in the short timeframe.

12

Off Topic / mega.nz official Chrome extension compromised, stealing passwords and keys

« on: September 06, 2018, 01:35:42 PM »

The official mega.nz Chrome extension was compromised and updated maliciously to steal user's passwords to various online services including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Github, and various cryptocurrency wallets. The extension has already been removed and disabled, but if you had it installed any time in the past few days you should immediately change your passwords for all the affected services. The Firefox extension was not impacted.

Unfortunately, Google decided to disallow publisher signatures on Chrome extensions and is now relying solely on signing them automatically after upload to the Chrome webstore, which removes an important barrier to external compromise. MEGAsync and our Firefox extension are signed and hosted by us and could therefore not have fallen victim to this attack vector. While our mobile apps are hosted by Apple/Google/Microsoft, they are cryptographically signed by us and therefore immune as well.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/mega-nz-chrome-extension-caught-stealing-passwords-cryptocurrency-private-keys/
https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/mega-file-upload-chrome-extension.html

13

Off Topic / 10 years ago I made an account

« on: September 04, 2018, 08:18:55 PM »

https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?action=profile;u=10369

I'm one day off but whatever. Time well spent.

14

Off Topic / Userscript - Please don't remove my avatar thanks

« on: July 23, 2018, 02:28:50 AM »

Simple userscript that prevents the update profile page from setting your avatar to nothing.

This is not infallible, double check that the radio box isn't present before updating your profile.
Credit to Jia for putting their avatar on the line to test this method initially.

https://pecon.us/userscripts/avatar_ductape_fix.user.js

Edit: I made a tiny mistake which caused the script to not run if you accessed the profile settings via a certain link. Make sure you're on v1.1.

15

Off Topic / Agora (forum system) development thread

« on: May 19, 2018, 10:31:28 PM »

The issues with the bbcode parser here at the BLF inspired me to resume work on this project of mine. Agora is a lightweight forum system focused on fast performance (both on the server side and for the client) and a small storage footprint. The design of the forum is somewhat inspired by SMF, but I plan to do a major overhaul of the theme structure in order to enable a much more device-aware design so that it works nicely on both desktop and mobile devices.

Old topic: https://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=309127.0

Github repository: https://github.com/Pecon/Agora

Features:
 - Robust bbcode parser (tables!)
 - Avatar system that supports animated gifs and static images up to 100x100px, and with high quality resampling of larger avatars.
 - Uncomplicated code (No unexplained regex, things are generally written in a pretty straightforward manner)
 - All features supported without Javascript (Javascript still enhances some features)
 - Powerful BBCode parser written specifically for Agora (No regex used. Very straightforward to edit.)
 - Optional email address confirmation system
 - Private messaging system
 - Lack of feature bloat (or an excuse as to this list being short)

To-do:
 - Add boards
 - Add more admin tools and improve existing ones
 - Overhaul visual design
 - Search feature

If you would like to help, the most needed things right now would be:
 - A default favicon.
 - A background image/texture, maybe.
 - You may also make a pull request if you would like to contribute code changes.

Keep in mind that if you wish to contribute, you cannot use any copywritten materials. So for example if you made a banner graphic, it can't feature any image or photo that isn't original work or in the public domain. Some good sources of public domain images can be found at creative commons, nasa, or a few other select places that produce content exclusively for public domain use.

Screenshots:

The thread index


A thread


A user profile


If you're interested in testing out the forum system, a link to the testing forum can be found on the github page.