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Topics - Pecon

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31
tl;dr: I'm going to rewrite some Boss Battles content into releasable mods. Vote here to tell me which one you want the most first.

Hi. I'm sure you're all aware that by now Boss Battles is really old. It's been running for almost five years straight. The only break in that streak was midway in it's first year when the shadows and shaders update forced us to build a map and caused a two month hiatus. What I'm not sure many of you remember, is that I've consistently promised to release Boss Battles' content when the server finally shuts down. Sadly, that date does appear to be getting rather tangible at this point; and I fully intend to stand with my promise to release all content when the day comes. However;

It would be pretty unceremonious if I were to just dump all the raw content at once and be done with it. Virtually all the content for Boss Battles is structurally intertwined such that they aren't very usable on their own without modification. So here is my plan. Given the current state of donations, Boss Battles can run until approximately mid June of this year (although I'm hoping to stretch to November 4th to do a 'end of the game' event thing on the anniversary of the server) . Over the next few months I want to revisit a number of mods that were developed for Boss Battles, but could potentially be made to be releasable and used in other servers. These reworks will take time, so I'd like everyone to tell me what things they want to see made into releasable mods the most and I'll work on those ones first. I'll publicly release each finished mod as they are finished.

Please vote here to choose which mod you want to see released first: https://vote.block.land/?action=viewPoll&poll=60

I'd just like to remind you that these releases won't just be arbitrary. You need to remember that all of these mods were initially made just for use in Boss Battles, and as such need reworking to be usable as a standalone mod. Don't bitch at me about not just 'releasing everything', because in their current state literally nothing is actually releasable. The things in the poll also certainly isn't an exhaustive list of things that will be able to be reworked, just the things I kinda want to start on first. More options will appear in the poll later as things are finished.

Feel free to ask questions about what other mods might be able to be reworked beyond this list and/or discuss the mods in general.

32
So yes, I hate coffee but I need something to wake me up some mornings. Give me your energy drink suggestions and in a day or two I will buy everything and try it all. I will probably hate most of your suggestions because I'm super picky about drinks.

Oh, also whatever you suggest it shouldn't be milk based. That's actually one of the reasons I disqualified coffee. Sugar is of no concern because I'm already underweight.

33
Off Topic / Blockland Synchronet BBS
« on: December 11, 2016, 09:00:40 AM »
Ready for a pre-2000's throwback? Come join the Blockland Synchronet BBS and experience a community system that predated the internet!


Because Discord servers are overrated!

What is a BBS? A bulletin board system, or BBS, is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through email, public message boards, and sometimes via direct chatting. Many BBSes also offer on-line games, in which users can compete with each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often provide chat rooms, allowing users to interact with each other. Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web, social networks and other aspects of the Internet. Low-cost, high-performance modems drove the use of online services and BBSes through the early 1990s. Infoworld estimated there were 60,000 BBSes serving 17 million users in the United States alone in 1994, a collective market much larger than major online services like CompuServe.
 - Wikipedia

How do I join/connect? To connect you will need to connect to bbs.block.land via a telnet client. SSH is not available.

Windows: Windows has a telnet client available that is normally disabled, but you can enable it by going to the control panel > add/remove programs > Turn windows features on/off (in the sidebar) > Find telnet in the list and enable it. Type 'telnet' into the start menu and it should show up. When the telnet console opens, type open bbs.block.land and press enter.
Alternatively you can download Putty and select telnet mode before connecting.

Unix/Mac: Open a terminal and type telnet bbs.block.land

Important: If prompted about using any kind of extended ASCII, the answer should probably always be NO since those character sets and features are not really supported anywhere anymore.

Once you are connected, you can sign up for a new account. The new user process is a bit quirky and I wasn't able to disable some of the silly requirements. When prompted to write a letter to the sysop, just tell me your favorite food or something. Your account will be automatically verified.

Okay, now what? Once you make it to the main menu, you'll have a lot of options for what to do. Here are some of the basic things. You can press this key to do: ...

X - Browse the programs and games on the BBS. Some of the games are pretty fun and have BBS-wide scorekeeping. Compete for the highest score! My favorite game is Kannons & Katapults.
C - Enter the chat menu, where you can then join a multiuser chat or start a private chat with another online user.
P - Post a message on one of the pubic boards.
R - Read messages on the public boards.

Users can also send email to each other as well as upload and download files from the file areas.


34
General Discussion / Re: Re: Pecon's Halloween Treasure Hunt
« on: October 31, 2016, 09:30:00 AM »



Four treasures await you, but what lurks in this murky world?

The first to complete have arrived.



The difficulty level has been increased.









35
Off Topic / Pecon writes a forum system - The adventure
« on: October 28, 2016, 11:36:02 AM »
So a little over a year ago I wrote a forum for the boss battles website. A few months ago I decided to take that forum and create a more standard forum system from it. I'm pretty bad with naming, I've named the new system REforum for now. If I get an idea for any better name it will most likely change. I guess the basic overall mission is to make a simple forum system that focuses particularly on being lightweight for the client and server, and having an especially small data footprint.

https://github.com/Pecon/REforum

The quality of the code varies a bit since a lot of it was written a year ago and I've yet to revisit a lot of it. Also there are a few aspects I'd like help with.

 - QA
    + I need people to test the forum to find problems. Developer testing only gets you so far. If you can try out the example forum I have set up (a link to it is in the github readme) it'll help me out by recording any errors you run into. Make sure to let me know if you encounter any particularly unexpected functionality (or non-functionality, for that matter). If they have the know-how, it'd help out a lot if someone would try downloading the software and installing it themselves from scratch; I don't have a ton of testing done on the setup script.

 - Graphics
    + Need a non-stuffty default banner logo Pretty sure Insert Name Here has this covered.
    + I'd like a sort of 'default avatar' to show for users that haven't uploaded an avatar yet. Right now it just makes a broken image. Should be 100x100px. Eon won this one.
    + Favicon?
    + Background texture?? (maybe not)

 - Style
    + CSS styling isn't exactly my forte. Styling advice would be appreciated.

You can also help me with the code if you really want to. PM me or something and I'll add you to the repository. There are still many features yet to be worked on.


Current development goals:

 - More structured method of constructing pages, for a more consistent experience (I'm dreading the amount of rewriting this will need)

 - Upgrade abysmal admin panel Done enough!

 - BBcode interpretter overhaul

Preview of how stuff maybe kinda looks right now:




If you want to try it out, you can find a link to where I'm hosting it on the github page. Not gonna risk linking directly to it.

36
This is an improvement on the PHP function Zapk released previously. The most notable change from his function is that this function properly handles the url and character encoding that the auth server expects, thus allowing people using special characters in their usernames to authenticate successfully. Other than that, this function also parses the auth server response to an extent for easier usage.

Code: [Select]
<?php
function 
BlocklandAuthenticate($username)
{
$username mb_convert_encoding(urldecode($username), "ISO-8859-1");
$username str_replace("%""%25"$username);
$encodeChars = array(" ""@""$""&""?""=""+"":"",""/");
$encodeValues = array("%20""%40""%24""%26""%3F""%3D""%2B""3A","%2C""%2F");
$username str_replace($encodeChars$encodeValues$username);

$postData "NAME=${username}&IP=${_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']}";

$opts = array('http' => array('method' => 'POST''header' => "Connection: keep-alive\r\nUser-Agent: Blockland-r1986\r\nContent-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\nContent-Length: "strlen($postData) . "\r\n"'content' => $postData));

$context  stream_context_create($opts);
$result file_get_contents('http://auth.blockland.us/authQuery.php'false$context);
$parsedResult explode(' 'trim($result));

if($parsedResult[0] == "NO")
return false;

else if(!is_numeric($parsedResult[1]))
{
print($result);
return false;
}

else
return intval($parsedResult[1]);
}
?>


  • Usage
    Say the user wants to register under the name "Badspot", and you want valid Blockland users only.
    You would handle the value returned by BlocklandAuthenticate(username). In this case, username would be "Badspot".

    It sends the username and the client's IP address to the auth server, where it checks to see if the IP has played under that username last.

    If their IP address does not match Badspot's IP address (which is saved on the auth server), it will return incorrect. If it does, it will return correct.

  • Correct
    When correct, this function will return an integer of the user's BL_ID

  • Incorrect
    If it's incorrect, it will simply return false.



    I hope you find this resource helpful.

37
General Discussion / serverstatus.block.land update - Two new styles!
« on: September 16, 2016, 10:25:00 AM »
I decided to have a look at the server status site this morning and have done a few updates.

Changes this morning:
  • Made link generator marginally less stuffty looking.
  • Made link generator page easier to understand.
  • Added some error checking in the script that should make the image show a proper error if it can't reach the server list rather than showing a bunch of garbage.
  • Updated the Modern image template to have a little more room for the server name and gamemode name, especially since the gamemode name was frequently getting cut off.

Here is an example of how they look right now.



I'm welcome to some small suggestions since I have the project open right now.

38
Music / Re: Re: Malware Injection (Hacknet OST)
« on: September 12, 2016, 04:00:08 PM »
Download - Listen

The above version is down-sampled and converted to mono to fit Blockland's preferred format. A full-sample stereo version is here.

39
This tricorder will let you know just about all you need to know about anything you're looking at. I'm not completely sure what use this has in Blockland, but I think people could potentially use it for something creative. Features an amazingly detailed item model made by Aware, which is an almost direct replica of the prop used in Star Trek!

Can scan and show detailed information about the following things:
  • Bricks
  • Players
  • Bots
  • Vehicles
  • Spawned/on the ground items
  • And more!

Known issues:
 - Players and items can't be detected from some angles (engine bug?)
 - Some tools are wrongly classified as weapons or vice versa (please let me know if you find a tool/weapon like this!)

Prefs:
$pref::server::tricorder::displayBrickPacksDefault true. Whether or not to display what brick pack a brick is from.
$pref::server::tricorder::displayHealthValuesDefault true. Whether of not to display health values.
$pref::server::tricorder::displayDangerNotificationDefault true. Whether or not to display warnings when scanning hostile entities or dangerous items.







Download:


Keep this add-on up to date using Support_Updater, updates for fixes and suggestions are expected!

40
Add-Ons / Script_ScoreManagement
« on: August 31, 2016, 05:07:08 PM »
This is a very simple mod I made on commission to someone. It's been about 11 months since it was commissioned, which I figure should be long enough for them to have capitalized off the uniqueness. This should be the last of them for now. Aware and I may have something special in the works for everyone tomorrow though...

This adds some admin commands that gives admins the ability to easily manipulate people's scores if needed. These commands log to the console for accountability.

Commands:
/addScore [player] [amount]
/removeScore [player] [amount]
/setScore [player] [amount]



41
Add-Ons / Server_Guilds - Persistent group teamchat
« on: August 30, 2016, 08:26:27 PM »
This is a mod I made on commission to someone. It's been about 11 months since it was commissioned, which I figure should be long enough for them to have capitalized off the uniqueness. I have a few more mods like this I'll be releasing soon.

This mod is basically a simple grouping system which allows everyone in a 'guild' to teamchat with each other. Guilds persist forever until they're disbanded by their leader. You just use the teamchat key ('Y') to talk in your guild. This would probably make a cool framework for a more specialized mod.

Note: This may interfere with other mods that use teamchat. It also overrides teamchat in minigames. Teamchat will work normally any time you're not in a guild. This mod may also have some other issues, please report any you find and I'll probably fix most of them.

Commands:
/createGuild [guild name] - Creates a new guild. Guild names can have up to three spaces in them and a maximum length of 20 characters.
/invite [player name] - Sends a guild invite to a player. Only the guild leader can do this.
/acceptInvite - Accept an invitation into a guild. Invitation automatically expires after 20 seconds.
/dismiss [player name] - Forces a player to leave the guild. Only the guild leader can do this.
/leaveGuild - Leaves your guild.
/promoteLeader [player name] - Makes the target player the new guild leader. Only the current guild leader can do this.
/disbandGuild - Disbands the entire guild. Only can be done by the leader.
/listGuildMembers - Lists the BL_ID's of everyone in the guild. Shows names for people who are currently logged in.


42
Add-Ons / Event_RandomItems - Simple random item spawning and setting
« on: August 29, 2016, 11:52:36 AM »
This is an extremely simple mod I made on commission to someone. It's been about 11 months since it was commissioned, which I figure should be long enough for them to have capitalized off the uniqueness. I have a number of mods like this I'll be releasing soon. Tomorrow will be something more substantial.

This mod adds the output event "setRandomItem" for the brick class. It has four item outputs, which allows you to choose up to four items that are then selected from randomly. This is simpler than other random item events because it requires no setup outside the event system, but obviously has the limitation of 4 items maximum. (For those wondering, the event system has a cap of 4 output selections)

There are also "spawnRandomItem" variants for bricks, players, and bots. For players this is effectively addItem since the player will instantly pick up the item if they have inventory space.

There are no commands or prefs for this mod.


43
Add-Ons / Script_AntiCamp - Keep moving
« on: August 28, 2016, 01:20:42 PM »
This is a very simple mod I made on commission to someone. It's been about 11 months since it was commissioned, which I figure should be long enough for them to have capitalized off the uniqueness. I have a number of mods like this I'll be releasing soon.

This mod places an alarm light nearby you if you stand around in the same area for too long. Only works if there is a minigame.

There are no commands or prefs for this mod.


44
Add-Ons / Server_Trading - Exchange items
« on: August 27, 2016, 10:26:58 AM »
This is a nifty little mod I made on commission to someone. It's been about 11 months since it was commissioned, which I figure should have been long enough for them to capitalize on the uniqueness. I have a number of mods like this that I will be releasing soon.

This mod lets players exchange items after first offering the items they want to trade and then agreeing to the trade.

Commands:
/trade [name] - Send a trade offer
/acceptTrade - Accept a trade offer
/offer [slot number] - Offer an item to trade by specifying an inventory slot number.
/confirmTrade - When both parties have done this, exchanges the offered items.
/declineTrade - Declines a trade offer or ends a trade in progress.


45
General Discussion / Regarding BlockNet hosting
« on: August 26, 2016, 03:53:41 PM »
Hi. As some of you apparently found out a bit before I expected, I've decided to shut down BlockNet hosting. I'm posting this mostly to clarify some things, and also to let you ask me questions if you need.

When
Shared BlockNet servers are set to simultaneously be shut down on September 14th. People still have access to their files until then. People who had dedicated nodes will have until their next bill was set to be due before their nodes are shut down.

Why
A lot of different reasons.
The main reason recently is that I've been having financial troubles lately that have made managing BlockNet difficult. I originally built BlockNet with a small profit in mind, but I underestimated the expenses and the service ended up just barely breaking even. Rather than going back and raising the prices post-release, I just rolled with it. However, because some months lose money; this has made finances especially difficult for me.

The second reason would be that I'm completely dissatisfied with the state the service was in. I made BlockNet almost two years ago, and I've learned a huge amount since then. I built the service in a way that it can't really be improved. I want to start over from the beginning, make a web-based interface and make ssh access just an optional feature. Many people didn't seem to be savvy enough to understand the ssh based method and understandably didn't stay with the service. However, I don't have the time or motivation to rebuild the service from scratch again.

The last reason would be that I'm just tired of running it. Part of the aforementioned reason was because I failed to design the service in way that it made it low-maintenance for myself. It takes too much of my time, at least it does for something I do for virtually no profit.

The future
I don't want the community to be left in the dark. I'm really hoping someone fills the managed service gap soon so that people have an option for powerful hosting without needing to know how to manage your own VPS. This kind of service is essential to the community because it allows people without vast technical know-how to host high quality servers and greatly increases the opportunities for new great servers to show up.

I don't really want to release the BlockNet framework. Three sections above I explained that the service is basically stuff under the hood. Releasing would be embarrassing because it would show just how much I didn't understand about some things two years ago. However, it's not out of the question. If a stopgap service is desperately needed, I'm willing to hand off the framework to someone competent to run it until a suitable replacement has been developed.

I'm still planning to host my own servers (Boss Battles) for the foreseeable future by myself. However, I may decide to switch to someone's shiny new hosting service if one arises.

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