Topics

1

Off Topic / Who is Idle?

« on: December 29, 2013, 12:21:07 AM »

Who is the person?
Current general consensus: Otis Da HousKat

Profile:
A Link to their profile - Idle

Interesting facts:

• They have 0 posts and 1 vote [Source]
• They have the most time online, 592d 14h 37m [Source]
• They have a low BL_ID, 414, yet their BL forums registration was in 2011. [See Profile]
• Their signature picture is of two men hanging. The only link I could find on this image was to a Russian site. The image appears to be from a trailer for movie called Hobo with a Shotgun (source omitted on the grounds that there's a stuff ton of gore and I'd rather not be banned). Translating the website's text shows " If you pass in a few words what is happening on the screen, you get something like this: corpses, dismemberment, severed limbs, burned children, gutted bellies prostrelyanny eggs, intestines, krovischa, hell, thrash and burn." If you want the source, just drag the image to Google images (to search by image) and click the .ru Russian website.[Source Omitted]
• Curiously, the image links to Project Xanadu which is was/is some sort of movement for a different type of file/document type system on computers. [Source from xanadu.net]
• Return to Blockland name history. Currently named Idle, it seems a likely active previous name (among the joke names) was Kaphix. Has also used the name Bisjac (perhaps as a joke as well considering Bisjac is the #2 most active on the forums. [Here]

A previous topic:
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=195693.0
From here I tallied the different names people said he was including who said it.

• MackTheHunter: 1 (from Nobot)
• Kaphix: 1 (from Tango)
• Otis Da HousKat: 4 (from Kalphiter, Bisjac, Clone v.117, KoopaScooper)

Many thought he was a bot but apparently Eussorus posted screenshots of the account sending messages, checking other people's profiles, and looking at Bisjac's profile (so seemingly not botlike behavior). This doesn't rule out that a human could not lot into the account of the bot though. [Source about 1/2 way down]

I would just want to know what the one thing that she/he voted on was...

2

Help / How to make someone admin without RTB without giving out admin password.

« on: December 16, 2013, 06:04:33 PM »

I honestly am at a loss for how to do this, does anyone know?

3

Off Topic / Longest thing you could give me to procrastinate

« on: November 15, 2013, 12:35:49 AM »

I have a test tomorrow, it's 1:30am.
I thought a cool topic idea would be to see who can give me the thing that would take me the longest to do to procrastinate ( I won't do it, Im just curious)

Just because this would really be easy if anything went there's a few rules.

1) You have to submit a link. Therefore, it must be on the internet.
2) It has to be mildly interesting, addictive, or engaging. A 10 hour version of "HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA" doesn't count.
3) There has to be content to make it take time. It can't be like "Click this link and wait for 10 hours for the words to come up" or "Surf this forums for 10 hours"
4) Actually try to post something interesting, don't try to find loophole. Spirit of the rules, not the letter :)

4

Modification Help / Modulo of negative numbers

« on: November 11, 2013, 01:43:51 AM »

(Blockland) 3 % -2 gives 3
(Windows calculator) 3 mod -2 gives 1
(Wolfram Alpha) 3 mod -2 gives -1

Which is right?
And can someone explain modulous with the second operand being negative to me?

5

Modification Help / Open up webpage on client (Clientsided)

« on: November 01, 2013, 12:27:10 PM »

Without some sort of third party listener program, is this possible?

6

General Discussion / A poll / discussion on server glitch exploits (not hacking)

« on: October 16, 2013, 05:48:11 AM »

Let me throw out a definition first of all...
Exploiting as defined in the realm of this topic is using any glitch (some game mechanic not meant to occur) to your advantage
Hacking would be creating something for specifically malicious or otherwise taking apart a server (like a radar or aimbot which we are NOT discussing)

Just curious on everyone's opinion on glitch exploiting.
It's pretty obvious that exploiting degrades the server to everyone else who's playing on it.
The other side of the coin is that it can be hella fun/funny for the exploiter, can give an advantage, and depending on the exploit, might even be skill related.

This isn't a black and white question so I added a few options to the poll to give the different range of feelings.
Discuss your opinions on server exploits


Personally, I think exploits are cool when they add a sense of skill to a gamemode and almost enhance it more. It would be cool if more modders embraced their exploits even coding so that they become "stable" exploits if their players enjoy them.

7

General Discussion / Development Team OR Modding Community?

« on: September 22, 2013, 02:13:16 AM »

One simple question before I go to bed:
Which has contributed more to Blockland, the development team (Badspot, Kompressor, etc) or the modding community?

[Discuss below who keeps the game alive, where it would be if either wouldn't exist, what the game would be like if one or the other was stuff at what they do, etc]

8

Help / Export .ogg's from cache.db

« on: September 09, 2013, 10:33:07 PM »

I opened up the cache.db in sqliteman and it loaded everything fine.
I searched the blobs for "oggs" (which I assumed is something that begins all .ogg music files) and I found all the entries.
When I go to export everything to csv, I expected it to export all the binary data but all I get is:

Code: [Select]

"OggS"
"OggS"
"OggS"
"OggS"
"OggS"
"OggS"
"OggS"
"OggS"
...
Is there any way to get these out? I want to find some more music to listen to.

9

Modification Help / [Resource] Environment information! DayCycle and other stuff!

« on: September 07, 2013, 03:13:58 PM »

Finding the correct position of the sun in dayCycles
Here's some data that I gathered using a test .daycycle file and another script
.daycycle Fraction is the fraction found in the .daycycle file under FRACTION #
The Time Fraction is the fraction by taking %timeOfDay/%dayLength.



I also have the file in .xls and .ods (for you OpenOffice users like me).
http://filesmelt.com/dl/sunTrackingData.ods
http://filesmelt.com/dl/sunTrackingDataXLS.xls

Here is some code snippets to convert from each fraction type as well as the simplified functions and their ranges from the data

Code: [Select]

//Simplified equations: f(x) is Sim Time Fraction, x is DayCycle Fraction
//f(x) = (7/6)x where x <= 0.6
//f(x) = (1/3)x where x > 0.6 and x <= 0.9
//f(x) = 2x where x > 0.9
function simTimeFractionToDaycycleFraction(%dayCycleFraction)
{
%dayCycleFraction = mClampF(%dayCycleFraction, 0.0, 1.0);

%simTimeFraction = (7/6) * %dayCycleFraction;
if(%dayCycleFraction <= 0.6)
return %simTimeFraction;

%simTimeFraction += (1/3) * %dayCycleFraction - 0.6;
if(%dayCycleFraction < 0.9)
return %simTimeFraction;

%simTimeFraction += 2 * %dayCycleFraction - 0.9;
return %simTimeFraction;
}

//Simplified equations: f(x) is DayCycle Fraction, x is Sim Time Fraction
//f(x) = (6/7)x where x <= 0.7
//f(x) = 3x where x > 0.7 and x <= 0.8
//f(x) = (1/2)x where x > 0.8
function simTimeFractionToDaycycleFraction(%simTimeFraction)
{
%simTimeFraction = mClampF(%simTimeFraction, 0.0, 1.0);

%dayCycleFraction = (6/7) * %simTimeFraction;
if(%simTimeFraction <= 0.7)
return %dayCycleFraction;

%dayCycleFraction += 3 * %simTimeFraction - 0.7;
if(%simTimeFraction <= 0.8)
return %dayCycleFraction;

%dayCycleFraction += (1/2) * %simTimeFraction - 0.8;
return %dayCycleFraction;
}
Now this is all cool, but the hell is it useful for?
Well, you could read a .daycycle file and grab specific values based on the time of day now, you can correctly determine whether it's day or night, and any other things you want :D

Other stuff
coming soon

More resources
You can use this in conjunction with http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=241022.0

10

Help / Blockland modifies contrast and screen brightness on startup

« on: August 31, 2013, 06:52:14 PM »

It seems this only happens when a blockland window opens (meaning no other program seems to do this, and it only happens with the blockland launcher and the blockland game window, not the blockland console window which is shown before the game window comes up but after the launcher is finished)
This happen to anyone else? It's annoying

11

Drama / Blockhead 45391 - Chat spam

« on: August 25, 2013, 06:06:08 PM »

How is stuff like this even possible? Like, seriously, shouldn't there be some kinda of prevention against this?
Anyway...
Here's the spam


His ID is in fact 45391

12

General Discussion / Why not add more brick add-ons into the default game?

« on: August 24, 2013, 11:47:46 AM »

We've already seen this happen with GSFs terrain bricks, why not more?

The two big advantages are:
Compatibility: People who use these bricks now would be able to load their bricks onto any other server without trying to get the admin to download the brick mod. It also makes their saves more stable in case the add-ons are lost, deleted, or for some other reason irrecoverable. Seems like all positives to me.

Variety: Default blocks are amazing and already provide us with tons of variety but adding more won't hurt anyone. The people who don't want to use the bricks could simply not use them or disable them if they really wanted to (like GSFs can be disabled but by default come with the game). If the add-ons were enabled by default or build into the game, it would give some people who have "default paranoia" (building with only defaults when they have many brick add-ons at their disposal for reasons such as lost add-ons, comparability, etc) more bricks to have access to.

I don't know, these are my thoughts. I know there's some default purists out there, but if we add more brick add-ons to the default game, then those bricks would BECOME default and then you get MORE defaults to build with.

Perhaps the question is which ones to add to the game? Should we add all of them? Including the prop bricks? Including the filled bricks (Which would be nice because there's like 2000 of these different packs with different names and all are sometimes incompatible with each other and one pack would unify it all and make them obselete)?
IMO, I think any quality brick could be added, from the chain link fences to the poles.

ADDRESSED QUESTIONS!

Also, your first point has a flaw:
If you want to put your build on every server, make it out of default bricks.

But if we add more bricks, then more bricks are default!
I don't know how much more I can stress this.

a lot of people will not want to search through tons of bricks to find the ones they need. the default set of bricks is fine the way it is right now.

Maybe we need a better menu? I'm sure it could be made way better to display more bricks in less space and be even more intuitive.
Think outside the box on solutions to these problems! :D

13

Modification Help / Can someone explain the trust system?

« on: August 18, 2013, 01:19:17 AM »

In general I want to know if someone can explain how the trust system works?
Also, can you explain the flow of it, how the potential trust things work and where trust relationship data is stored on the client and the server?
How and when does the data from the clients trust list get populated on the server (all those potential trust entries on a clients brick group have to come from somewhere).

What i've picked up so far...
serverCmdTrust_Invite(%client, %targetClient, %targetBLID, %trustLevel):
The entry point of the trust system. Client tells the server he want's trust of target BLID's trust. Server asks target client. Target client responds and lets client know the outcome. Server and both clients now have a copy of this new trust relationship.
serverCmdTrust_Demote(%client, %targetBLID, %trustLevel):
Used to demote someone from trust list. Client tells the server he is demoting the trust of Target BLID. Now both clients and the server have a copy that the relationship was broken.

getTrustLevel(%obj1, %obj2)
Get's the client from %obj1 and %obj2 and compares their trust. How does this comparison work.

More questions for getTrustLevel()
Does the server look ask both clients?
What if a client isn't there?
How do the potential trusts factor into this?

14

Modification Help / Pole brick model?

« on: August 15, 2013, 09:38:42 AM »

Does anyone have this or know the radius, face count, rotation, etc?
I want to create more connectors.

15

Modification Help / DayCycle Questions and Event Question

« on: August 07, 2013, 06:54:33 PM »

Daycycle Question
How do I get the current daycycle offset, like the time of day? (Daycycle.offset only gets what it was originally set to)
(I think I can figure this out if I can find a variable somewhere that determines what time (getSimTime() time-wise) the daycycle began)

Is there any function I can package that loops with the dayCycle (like a tick function so that I can sync some things such as changing the fog distance and sun flare size as .daycycle files do not include these)?

Event question
I have set all the variables on a brick to define an event (eg %brick.eventOutputDelay0, %brick.eventOutputIdx0, etc... for all events)
It seems the events aren't getting applied. How do I apply them?