Tags: abandonia, alley cat, arena, ascendancy, black cauldron, budokan, bumpy, calgames, california games, celtic tales, centurion, command & conquer, covert action, discworld, dizzy, dos, dosbox, dragonsphere, duck tales, dune, dune 2, elder scrolls, fable, fantasy empires, freddy pharkas, nostalgia, scummvm, sid meier, sierra, terry pratchett
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Abandonia: So many great titles!
Yesterday I stumbled upon Abandonia and I’m currently still browsing through their offerings. Not all games can be downloaded, I found out, but enough of them to make it worth my while. I stopped browsing around Gobliiins, since I already had about 30 tabs open. This is going to be so much fun!
Stuff I’m really happy about:
- Alley Cat, an old CGA game that was probably one of the first games I ever played on a home computer. It’s simple, easy, not very challenging, but it brings back so many memories…
- Ascendancy, a game I actually have somewhere in it’s original packaging. Emphasis on somewhere. Might have been thrown out during the move years ago. But I’m looking forward to playing it again. It had this huge tech tree, if I remember correctly.
- The Black Cauldron, one of those old, great Sierra classics. I haven’t really looked into it yet, but I assume it’s simply playable in ScummVM, which is a great project by itself. I loved this movie, but I can’t really remember playing the game. Still, it should be fun!
- Budokan, one of the first sport-simulation games I ever played. It’s not really that great, especially compared to current games, but I spent a lot of time playing it.
- Bumpy is one of those games that everyone in my family played. We’d compete and help each other get through levels and continue in the game. We’ve spent hours behind the computer playing it, so I’m mostly looking forward to showing my dad and my sister this. I think they’ll enjoy it again, too!
- California Games (which I distinctly remember by the name “CALGAMES”, because that was the name of the executable, if I remember correctly) really is a boring game. But again, one of the first I ever played, so I expect it’ll bring back some nostalgia.
- Celtic Tales I played a lot too, even though I never really got the hang of it. It’s one of those rare games that I actually think about now and again. Mostly because it thought me some stuff about Celtic lore, a subject I’ve been interested in since about that game.
- Centurion! Who hasn’t played that game? Pure nostalgia, although I remember spending a lot of time on that one, too.
- Command & Conquer. Do I need to say more? I should have the original game somewhere, just like Red Alert, a sequel of C&C. This game is a classic. I don’t remember chronology, but I think it’s one of those games right after Dune 2 (which I’ll probably list a little later in this list) and the original Warcraft that made me spend days behind my computer. You know, the kind of game that makes your mother get a little worried that you might be playing a little too much…
- Sid Meier’s Covert Action, yet another game that I spent days if not weeks on. One of the less known titles from Sid Meier (the guy behind the Civilization series!), but I loved this game. It’s probably simple compared to modern stuff, but it felt good playing it.
- I never played Discworld, but I love Terry Pratchett’s world. Being from 1995, this is a fairly old title (in computer game terms, of course), but the screenshots look like a lot of fun.
- Dizzy! Like Bumpy, this is a game both my father and my sister will enjoy, I’m sure. I remember them playing it too.
- Dragonsphere, an old fashioned adventure. You select the commands from the menu and try to solve the puzzles. Together with my best friend at the time (who happened to live next door, which was quite convenient) we finished this game using a walkthrough, I think. Still, another classic I’m sure will bring back fond memories.
- Duck Tales might seem like a strange addition to this list, since most other games are fairly well known genres. Duck Tales are a bunch of mini games that you need to complete, while flying from one part of the world to another. Not much of a challenge, once you master the mini games, since they keep repeating themselves. However, I used to like playing this, so we’re going to chalk up another one to nostalgia.
- Totally different from the much better known sequel, Dune is still a great game. It’s more of an adventure, with some small tactical additions, but I spent hours on it. It’s fairly linear, you can’t do much wrong, but it’s a joy to find it there. I think I finished the game over ten times, but I kept returning to it.
- Dune 2. I mean, Dune 2. What more do I need to say? Dune 2.
- The Elder Scrolls, Arena is a classic. It’s a huge game. And when I say huge, I mean huge. I wouldn’t be suprised if the world you can walk through is bigger than World of Warcraft. It probably isn’t, but that’s how I remember it. I bought the sequel, Daggerfall, which is more of the same. Still, I enjoyed playing it a lot.
- F-19 Stealth Fighter is one of those games that made me want to join the airforce. It’s very silly, compared to modern games, but it was great at the time. Flying around and shooting enemies down, hoping you’d get them before they’d get you. After you played long enough, you figured out how the AI worked its planes and you’d win every time. But I have so many fond memories of this game, I’ll be sure to try it again.
- I’ve never played Fable before, but the screenshots make me want to try it!
- Fantasy Empires is a game that I hardly recognise. When I look at the screenshots, it seems familiar (especially the wizard in the top of the screen), but I have no idea if I liked it or not. Ah well, we’ll soon find out!
- Freddy Pharkas – Frontier Pharmacist is yet another Sierra adventure. And what a great adventure it was! Sierra has been around during those days for so long and so dominantly, I still wonder what happened to them, how they lost their business. I think I played most of their adventures, simply because they were just so darn good! The story was always well thought out and the game was easy enough to make you progress on a steady pace, but not too easy as to get you bored. That’s true for almost all of their adventures. I miss those times. Freddy will help me relive them.
- Fury of the Furries is one of those games everyone at home played. Yet another one I’m looking forward to show my dad and my sister.
- Gauntlet 2 is very old and obviously based on a game in one of those arcade machines. I remember vaguely playing it, but I’m not sure. We’ll find out!
- Hexxagon wasn’t well known and maybe not really up to standards, but it’s one of the games my dad used to play a lot, so I want to show him. I’m sure he’ll like it.
This is a huge list and I’m only at H! So much to try, so little time… Maybe I should use my vacation days soon…
Tags: abandonia, bards-tale, dos, eye-of-the-beholder, games, oldskool
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Abandonia
I’m old. I’m so old that I remember games that looked really cool in 16 colors. I mean, I actually remember thinking at that time that they looked so cool. That’s how old I am.
But with regards to games, that time was so much better than the current offerings. We had Eye of the Beholder and even earlier Bard’s Tale. I miss those games. I could spent hours at them. Usually with Rutger, my friend and neighbour at the time. He had a subscription to a magazine of which I’ve forgotten the name, but which detailed all kinds of new games every month. So much fun we had.
Now I found this site, Abandonia.com, and I know what I’ll be doing tonight. All those old games, Legends of Arkadia, Elder Scrolls: Arena, you name. Wish I found that site much sooner.
Man, I feel so old now.
Tags: arp, firewall, icmp, invalid, ip6tables, ipv6, nd, neighbour detection, state
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ip6tables: ACCEPT icmpv6 before dropping state INVALID
Spend some hours trying to figure out why our firewall was blocking ipv6 icmp traffic. Apparantly, ipv6 packets start out in state invalid and get valid after some sort of icmp traffic. If anyone can explain it to me, I’d love to hear the details. My guess is that in ipv4, state is somehow set to valid via ARP. Since ipv6 doesn’t use ARP but icmp for neighbour detection, my guess is that you need to accept this before doing any state checking.
Tags: 6to4, DMZ, firewall, ipv6, linux, modem, nat, pointopoint, proto41, sixxs, telnet, thomson
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IPv6 Tunnel behind Thomson modem, continued
My coworker is even better than me. After I thought I fixed it, I noticed that the incoming connection is denied if the machine hasn’t had any outgoing ipv6 over the tunnel for a little while. My coworker, Kees, found the solution and implemented it and now it works! Yay!
This is what you need to do (blatantly copied from Kees’ blog):
:expr add name=ipv6 type=serv proto=41
:firewall rule add chain=forward_host_service name=SixXS serv=ipv6 state=enabled action=accept
:nat tmpladd intf=Internet type=nat outside_addr=0.0.0.1 inside_addr=192.168.4.4 protocol=6to4
:saveall
Let me know if this helped you too!
Tags: 6to4, DMZ, ipv6, linux, modem, nat, pointopoint, sixxs, telnet, thomson
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IPv6 Tunnel behind Thomson modem
Update: My coworker Kees found a better solution, see the next post.
Took me a little while to figure out, but I found how to create a point-to-point IPv6 tunnel (cordially provided by SixXS) if you’re behind a Thomson modem. In my case, it’s a ST546, but I imagine this works for other stuff too. WARNING: I’m NOT entirely sure what I’m doing here exactly. IF IT BREAKS YOUR MODEM, IT’S YOUR OWN FAULT!!! Consider yourself warned.
If you still dare, follow this:
- Telnet to your modem and login with your Admin credentials
- Perform the command:
nat maplist. You’ll see something like:
{Administrator}=>nat maplist
Idx Type Interface Outside Address Inside Address Use
1 NAPT Internet 12.345.678.90:22 192.168.1.200:22 1
2 NAPT Internet 12.345.678.90:113 192.168.1.200:113 0
3 NAPT Internet 12.345.678.90:49163 192.168.1.201:5060 1
4 NAPT Internet 12.345.678.90:49205 192.168.1.202:5060 2
5 NAPT Internet 12.345.678.90:49238 192.168.1.203:5060 2
6 NAT Internet 12.345.678.90 127.0.0.1 0
{Administrator}=>
The Interface is important. - We’re going to add a mapping for the 6to4 protocol by giving it the command:
nat mapadd intf=Internet type=nat outside_addr=12.345.678.90 inside_addr=192.168.0.1 protocol=6to4. Replace “Internet” with your interface name, the outside address with the outside address (IPv4) of your modem and inside_address with the internal IP address of the server that you’re going to use for the connection. - Now give the command
saveall - IMPORTANT: I had to ping out before I was able to receive any 6to4 packages! So
ping6 ipv6.google.comand see if the outside world can ping6 your server.
That worked for me. I had a lot of trouble finding this solution, so I’m blogging about it in the hope that it helps someone else. The most important info was found in a post from Richard Menedetter on the SixXS forum. It was hard to find for me, though.
UFO: Alien Invasion development build for MacOSX
I was getting a little tired with version 2.2.1 of UFO: Alien Invasion, so I decided to try my hand at the trunk version. Building it wasn’t that much trouble and since there are no nightly/dev releases for MacOSX yet, I’ve decided to publish it on the web. As a torrent, of course.
You can find the torrent here. Please keep in mind that I’m no developer, so any problems should not be reported here, unless you’re confident it has to do with my packaging it. Hope you enjoy it!
Update: If you’re on IPv6, the torrent is available at SixXS’s IPv6 Only tracker.
Firefox: ASSERT: *** Search: _installLocation: engine has no file!
So if you get the above error, you probably upgraded your Firefox and forgot to restart it. A customer of ours ran into that and it took me a little while to figure out the problem wasn’t with our server, but with his Firefox. Silly message, anyway. But I guess that’s what programmers are good at, confronting their users with silly messages that are unusable if you’re not programming on the application you’re using.
Darcs failed: problem gzwriting file
I got this error from a darcs installed on Etch:
tim@machine:/etc$ darcs record -am 'Initial checkin'
darcs failed: problem gzwriting file: _darcs/patches/20090406120803-59231-78a2a82198e9134e0cf5600d03958044b779cc47.gz-0
tim@machine:/etc$
Google didn’t turn up anything, so I used strace as a last resort. That quickly pointed out the problem, darcs couldn’t read one of the files I tried to add. If you use strace, scroll up a bit and look for something like this:
open("/etc/postgresql/8.1/main/pg_ident.conf", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_NOCTTY) = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
That’s the file I either needed to remove from the record or add to boring (and remove it from the pending file). Or make readable.
Hope this helps someone.
She sure loves to play
I keep most of Aagje’s toys in the garage, since that acts as her kennel until I find the money to create an actual one. She doesn’t mind, though. Usually, I let her keep one Kong inside the house, so she has something to lug around with and to show me when she wants to play. Trust me, I rather have her show me the Kong to play with than have her crawling all over me. She is kind of big.
Tonight, after I finished making dinner, I brought the left over vegetable stuff to my rabbits. I had the door between the living room and the garage open for just a little while, but I just found out that it was long enough for Aagje to bring both her other Kong and the large rope inside. All three of them are neatly piled up on her cushion. Gotta love her.
Tags: car, electric, environment, fortwo ed, gm volt, green, MiEV, smart
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Electric vehicles: None (that I want) really available yet
That includes the Tesla thingy, which I would want if it didn’t cost about half of what my current mortage is. I doubt my bank will agree to giving me such a loan.
There are a few available that are okay, but they generally do not fit the requirements I set out in an earlier post. One thing that I’m going to adjust is the range. It seems not possible yet to get 250km out of a charge at any decent speeds. So I’ll lower that requirement to 175km, which would be enough for me to reach our office in Eindhoven and get back home again to Merkelbeek and have some little to spare.
But even with that change, there’s nothing available yet. Most stuff is simply too slow, real city cars that can hardly reach 50km/h. I’m too impatient for that.
There is some stuff that I’m keeping an eye on, though. Out of my price range, but very interesting, is the Mitsubishi i MiEV. Priced around €37k, it’s way above my budget, but the technology looks very mature. Except for the price tag, it does fit my needs.
The electric Mini (couldn’t find a definitive homepage about it, but go Google it, you’ll get lots of results) is an oddball too. It fits except for the price. Damn it. Always wanted to own a Mini again. I read on several blogs that it will cost about $50k, so the i MiEV is probably the way to go. They’re currently only on lease in California (for a whopping $850 a month).
Then there’s the Smart Fortwo ED (you don’t want to look at the size of that URL…). At 110km/h it’s almost good enough. Currently, it would be priced at around €22k, which is still a bit too much for me, but getting in a far better range than the other cars.
Lastly, there’s the GM Volt, which, despite being an American car, is very promising. Another one that’s out of my price range, though. But it arguably has the best specs for a decent price, which is expected to be around €22k, like the Smart Fortwo ED (the latter will hopefully drop in price a lot!).
Those are about all the serious contenders that I could find. Like I said in my previous post, there’s a lot being written, but very little is actually available already. And the stuff that is available, is either way too low-specced or way too expensive. But 2010 is going to be an interesting year, since most of the cars I described here, will hopefully be available for consumers by then. I’ll be sure to go and test drive some of them, just to get a feel for it. And buy myself some lotery tickets, since it seems I need more money.
Pikatim, I choose you!
For reference, Blah Tafelpoot is one of my characters in D&D :P Yes, I’m a geek. Su me.
Electric vehicles: So much noise, so little sellers!
So my ’92 Ford Fiësta probably won’t be certified again this year. Or only after a large investment in repairs. So I’m looking at new cars, most specifically, electric cars.
I really want an electric car, since it’s way cheaper and much more durable (less moving parts) than conventional cars. A (plug-in!) hybrid would be my second choice, but I don’t really think they’re that much better for the environment and they still require large amounts of petrol. Also, I don’t drive that much. About 10km in the morning to the train station and the same 10km back home. Sometimes I drive an additional 20km to visit my father or about 10km to go shopping. That’s it. Electric would be so perfect for me!
But it’s so hard to find any resellers around here! Recently it’s been in the news that Amsterdam wants to have 1 million electric cars in their city in the year 2020. That ambitious, but should be too hard. But if you want to follow the trend, or rather, beat everyone else to it, you’re out of luck. There’s a lot of talk about them, but only the very expensive models can currently be bought. I cannot find anything that meets my demands:
- Top speed: 120 kph (I want to drive on the Dutch Freeway without annoying my fellow-drivers)
- Action radius: 250 km or more
- Large enough for myself, Aagje, a passenger and groceries for a week
- Not too fancy, a radio and the ability to open my window is more than enough luxury for my taste
- Priced around €10k, total for a consumer.
- Should be rechargable by a normal 240V Dutch socket.
If possible, it would be really nice if there was an old-fashioned petrol engine that could charge the batteries to increase the action radius and to give you a backup if you run out of juice. But I’d settle for electric only. And I don’t care if it takes all night to replenish the batteries. I also don’t care if the car looks a bit goofy, it’s a tool for me, I don’t care how it looks.
I’ve been searching the web for a while now, but I haven’t found a thing yet. I’m so frustrated.
