PC Games: UT2004

Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2004) is one of those games I've had for a while and never quite solved, or played much. It was purchased for a graphics programming class taken at Boston College and used in conjunction with Maya to create objects to be placed in a virtual environment, very much like a professional.

I've recently picked it back up and am having a ball. It's a nice break from anything requiring thought, as UT2004 is a pure first-person shooter game. I'm currently working through the tournaments in Single Player and am almost finished with the first round of them, on Average difficulty level. I've found that I'm decent with Deathmatches and Capture the Flag type games, however terrible in Assault and Bombing Run games. While I don't mind having to rely on teammates to accomplish the given mission, I just prefer to be able to accomplish everything myself if necessary.

In Bombing Run games that just isn't possible, as the one with the "ball" can't even shoot back at his/her enemies. So I end up giving the ball to my opponent simply so I can then shoot them and reclaim the ball. Unfortunately that doesn't always work very well. Capture the flag on the other hand I can fire back and defend myself if necessary, which makes it a far easier type game. Even with all that my favorite type is Deathmatch, preferably with many opponents.

Now the game itself is designed for multi player online, something I don't think I intend to do. I'm just in this for the fun of it, but online there are individuals who play far too much and I wouldn't stand a chance, honestly. However when taking the graphics class we had to design a level or two for UT2004, and that I enjoyed. So my thought is to create a level here and there just for myself and see how things go. As you can see from the pictures, the official UT2004 maps are quite extensive and detailed. I'm not quite that good, so I'll be building something basic but entertaining.

Java: Cipher

After the Password of the Day program was created for work, I expanded upon the concept to create a cipher generator/translator. This program would take as input either regular text or already coded text and after choosing a cipher, either decode or code the given text.

The idea was to have the ability to send and receive coded messages, either by email, ingame message system or on bulletin boards without anyone knowing what is being said. Originally this was intended to be used with the Star Strike online game I was playing at the time, however that game died out before the program could be put into use.

All in all, the program is fairly simply. It has four sets of algorithms that can be used to alter given text on a character for character basis. I didn't try to get too tricky, so spaces, numbers and punctuation remain constant between the different algorithms and only letters change. From the Password program one of the text boxes was removed and the drop down menu added for choosing the different algorithms. Otherwise the core of the program is identical. While it definitely isn't up to real world usage, for gaming it would be sufficient to keep any curious eyes and ears ignorant to a message's content.

Java: Password of the Day

After taking the Java programming classes I wanted to put these new skills to real world use. The first project I gave myself a while back was updating a password generating program at work. The current one was a 16-bit program written in ToolBook, and required old program files to function properly. It was time to replace this with a standalone program that was more user friendly. And so the Password of the Day program was born.

Being the first program I've made that wasn't a homework assignment it took a while. Also it was created during downtime at work, so I could only work on it a few hours a week. The program itself is written with the JavaX portion of the API. However I've only run programs from the command line before so finding a way to make the program a self contained executable required some research.

Some browsing of the Java website led to find a post about creating an executable jar file. While this was doable the icon would be very generic, which was a problem. Instead a freeware program was found that would turn java jar files into an executable. This program was called Launch4J. Being freeware there is limited help with any problems I may encounter, however I was not attempting anything complex with Launch4J and therefore only used the most basic commands. An icon did need to be created, and GoldIcon (by GoldShell) fit the bill perfectly. GoldIcon is another freeware program, as I have no budget for this project and since I was going to be doing this for personal reasons as well I needed reliable, and cheap third party programs. SourceForge is an excellent library for such resources.

The Password of the Day program is very simple, and yet highly useful as well. A password needs to be generated, so the System ID that is given by the customer is placed into the first field. The Generate button is pressed, either from the main screen or the File menu, and a complex algorithm calculates the corresponding password to be displayed in the second field. That's it, simplistic at best but a good starter for more complex projects to come.

Internet: Personal Webpage

A while back I experimented with Geocities and created a very basic website, named Silverbolt’s Playground. This site contained mostly information on the online games I was playing at the time, as well as GAB (Good Traders against Bad Traders) information. The game pages are extremely out of date as I got out of online games a couple of years ago. They were stealing too much of my time and in order to play correctly I needed to be online constantly. To avoid having my life consisting of running back to my computer every hour online games were dropped completely and I only play standalone computer games now.

GAB on the other hand is something I am still a part of. It is an online organization for card trading that does it’s best to ensure fairness in all transactions. I can’t even recall when I joined as it was several years ago, however I have not been active with trading for the past 5 years myself. Even though I haven’t traded in years I am still an Admiral and Team Leader of the Gold Rock Team within GAB. I have considered picking this back up to complete my collection of Star Wars CCG cards. I have several of the sets completed but missing a few cards from one or two sets and my choices are either buy them on Ebay or trade for them online. Trading is the more desired of the two options and may happen in the near future.

The website itself is very basic, using the Geocities drag-and-drop feature to place text boxes and pictures onto the pages. Geocities pages can also be created using HTML, however that would require recreating the entire website. I don’t believe I want to recreate information on dead games, but also like the fact there is a historical record of those games available. So if I want to go back to having a website, a new one will need to be created so that the old information remains untouched. At the moment there are no plans to create a new website, several other projects are in queue to be competed first before that one can be researched and decided upon.

PC Games: Diablo II

I'm quite the computer game junkie and can always be found playing one game or another. For a while now that game has been Diablo II, created by Blizzard Entertainment. It's a hack-and-slash game where you create a character and then complete a series of quest, equipping yourself with items found along the way. Originally I picked it up when the game came out, about 6 years ago. Stopped playing it after several months and went on to other games. Didn't pick it back up again until I found an online website dedicated to the game with hints and strategies, along with a very mature community. It's this community that convinced me to restart playing the game, back in August of 2005, and I haven't really stopped since.

I've been playing for a while and gained a great deal of wealth, but some things about my play style were bothering me (not going into details) and therefore I did what is called a "restart". This means that all items and characters created/found previously are removed from the game so that the player starts fresh as if the game were just installed.

Of course the first thing to do at this point is create a magic finding character to find the needed items to complete the game. I did this with a meteorb sorceress named Malice, for whom a Matriarch thread was posted on DiabloII.net. You'll notice that my forum handle is "Mursilis" instead of "Silverbolt", that is only because Silverbolt was already taken. I switch back and forth between the two depending on which is available.

Now that a magic finding character is completed the next step is to use her for finding items. Specifically running Hell Mephisto and Hell Pindleskin. In the meantime a second character will be started, a Plague Javelin Amazon named Chiana. I only plan on questing with one or two characters at a time at most, with one being a Single Player tournament character. I did more before and it got confusing, as well as less interesting for each individual character.

Purpose of this Blog

This blog isn't going to be ramblings about my personal life or my hopes, dreams and fears. Honestly no one really wants to hear about that, least of all me. So instead this blog will be somewhat of a continuation of my last blog, created for a class I was taking at Boston College at the time. The class itself was about 3D design using the Maya program. I am not the greatest of artists so the concepts I understood, actually getting things done in Maya was a different story.

Regardless if was quite a lot of fun and was a continuation of the Java programming classes I had been taking at Boston College the previous year. Since then I haven't taken any more classes, as the rest of their undergraduate programs I've either taken or already know everything in the course material.

Instead I believe I'll start picking up on the Maya and Java programming that I learned to keep it somewhat fresh in my head. I've already done that for the most part with Java, by creating a few programs for work and personal use since the classes ended. I'll post about those later on when I have time.

So this blog will contain computer related ideas and accomplishments, ranging from programs created to games played and everything in between.