On 19 Sep 2012 16:14, "Ben Sturmfels" wrote:

I'm looking forward to the games night tomorrow night.

Me too! One small complication: we're not supposed to use the wired network in the room. Does anyone have a switch they could bring? Perhaps one with wifi? If not, I'm sure we'll have fun anyway :) Alex

On 20 Sep 2012 10:17, "Adam Bolte" wrote:

I just saw this, and won't have a chance to go back home to get my spare switch before the event. :(

I'll see if we have one spare. Alex

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 03:44:23PM +1000, Sven@GMX wrote:

On 20/09/12 10:55, Alex Fraser wrote:

...

On 20 Sep 2012 10:17, "Adam Bolte" wrote:

...

I just saw this, and won't have a chance to go back home to get my spare switch before the event. :(

I'll see if we have one spare.

Alex

I'll bring a 100Mb/s 5-port switch but doesn't have WLAN. I'll also bring lglive which apparently only needs one computer to run on and others can join as Terminal client.

There is a 24-port 100Mbit switch here on my desk at work (which is my personal property), but it's pretty big. I'm not sure I'll be able to bring it in with my gear on my bike, but will see how I go. How are we for Ethernet cables? I can bring in one or maybe two... -Adam

It's cool, we now have a switch courtesy of Andrew and Brian at work. Please bring a cable if you have one. We can try to find a few here, but I'm not sure how successful we'll be. See you soon :) Alex

On 21/09/12 19:43, Alex Fraser wrote:

Yes, thanks everyone! I had a great time, and I look forward to doing it again. How about we have a normal discussion next month? We can discuss at the meeting how often to hold these games nights.

Thanks to everyone who helped organise it. I really liked finding out about the games other people were playing. Chromium B.S.U, Kiki the Nano Bot, etc. I was also surprised to see BlockOut there - a game I had long since forgotten about. I've been playing that a bit tonight. Regarding having the usual discussion next meeting, that sounds fine and I think is what everyone would be expecting. Are there any important topics for the agenda you have in mind at this stage? Cheers, Adam

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 09:47:31AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:

Adam Bolte

...

I was also surprised to see BlockOut there - a game I had long since forgotten about. I've been playing that a bit tonight.

BlockOut URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockout was a proprietary game in the 1980s; Adam and I (and many other kids) used to play it as a Japanese arcade game. It needed a joystick and seven buttons, six of which were used for rotating the blocks through three axes.

Actually, the version I played was BlockOut (v1) for MS-DOS on an 80286 with 640Kb RAM, a 40Mb HDD and 5.25" FDD - and that was apparently overkill for this. :) http://www.blockout.net/index.php?option=com_openwiki&Itemid=26&id=dos_blockout I just downloaded the DOS version to play in DOSBox for a quick comparison and got hooked again... Anyway, aside from slightly nicer graphics and sound effects in the free software version, the games appear almost identical.

It was a surprise to me when I found a free-software game of the same name that is an almost perfect imitation. I would think this is a clear trademark violation, if the trademark holder hasn't given special permission; maybe they have!

In game, select Credits from the main menu. There it says: Inspired from Blockout(r) (California Dreams 1989). Blockout(r) is a registered trademark of Kadon Enterprises, Inc., used by permission. This USA company produces hands-on sets of ploycubes since 1980. www.gamepuzzles.com So it would seem they were given permission, possibly in return for the website plug (and the website design looks almost as old). California Dreams... that's the same company that produced Street Rod - one of the other games I played back in the day. Looks like somebody has been making a free software Street Rod 3 game too! Too bad it's in alpha, and the developers are rewriting the entire game from scratch - it will likely be a long time before the next release (and it's already been years since the last). http://www.streetrod3.com/ The game also doesn't compile on GNU/Linux due to the old release being aimed at Windows users (which I think won't be the case going forward based on what I saw in the forums), but I briefly tested it under WINE and seems to work.

The only thing it's missing is the end-of-level disembodied grey head shouting important-sounding things unintelligibly :-)

Perhaps that was only featured in the Japanese arcade version, as I don't recall seeing this. 1989 was also the year the first Sound Blaster card was released (which as I understand it was the first consumer PC sound card able to properly playback voice). Sounds cards would also have been relatively rare in PCs until a few years later. This might help explain its absence - if the head was not able to speak. -Adam

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 05:01:06PM +1000, Alex Fraser wrote:

Thanks, Adam, for recommending the PS3 controller as a game pad for use in GNU/Linux. I got one last night from EB - presumably the same kind you got, because it was also $8. The brand is "Spartan", which seems to be EB's generic brand.

That's the one! Actually, Ben S. showed me his gamepad at SFD working perfectly which prompted me to try it out. I figured that most PS3 controllers would talk the same protocol as the official controllers, and at $8 brand new it was worth the risk.

I plugged it in, and it just worked! Even in Blender - so now I can configure Cargo to use it. Mind you, I had tried to get an XBox 360 controller working before without success, so maybe I had already done some of the necessary configuration.

I've never connected a gamepad of any kind to my laptop before and everything worked without configuration. Come to think of it, I do have dongles for the original Xbox and PS1/2 controllers somewhere so might give those a try at some point. There was an article on Phoronix about joystick driver support improving just the other day actually. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE4OTE -Adam