Retro game interview: Ken Silverman (Duke Nukem 3D)

Retro Games

As part of my “I used to play…” series of posts, I get tempted to track down the original developers (which can be tricky enough) and then coerce them into answering some questions.  I’ll be following up this post with a “I used to play… Duke Nukem 3D” one sometime next week.

In this case I contacted Ken Silverman who was the man behind the engine which powered the games:

• Duke Nukem 3D
• Shadow Warrior
• Blood
• Powerslave
• Witchaven I + II
• TekWar
• Fate
• Redneck Rampage + Rides Again + Deer Huntin’

I was a huge fan of Duke Nukem 3D and spent way too much time in Ken’s editor, creating my vision of the perfect level that I never managed to complete and release (but it was flipping awesome ).

Here is the interview, which was conducted via email so I couldn’t really follow up his answers with questions based on them.

Coldfusion Random Session Russian Roulette

ColdFusion

If you have any goodness left in you, please stop reading now, because what follows is completely evil!  Well perhaps I’m overstating it a bit, but I can’t imagine how you’d use it for good.  For any BOFH‘s out there thought, this would be right up your street.

Say hello to the Coldfusion Random Session Russian Roulette web page.  It’s a tiny little Coldfusion application with the sole purpose of indexing every session in that instance, randomly selecting one and then letting it become part of a Russian Roulette game.

• One gun, six chambers, one bullet.
• Grab a list of all sessions.
• Randomly pick one.
• Fire the gun.
• If the chamber has a bullet, empty the session and time it out.
• No bullet in the chamber and the lucky little session gets to live.

Honestly, I can’t see any reason to constructively use this.  I doubt it’d work on shared host and affect other users as that’d be a serious gaping security hole.

Why release something so evil?

It’s not really that evil, if you can put Coldfusion templates on a server, I’m sure there are far more evil hijinks you could get up to like deleting files or screwing up the database.  Plus, maybe some of the session code might prove useful or interesting to someone.

Source and download

• Github – CFRSRR
• Zipped download

Screenshot

Coldfusion Random Session Russian Roulette

Screencast

more about “Coldfusion Random Session Russian Rou…“, posted with vodpod

CF9 Hotfixes RSS Feed

ColdFusion

The coldfumonkeh (Matt Gilford) recently posted about Adobe putting up a list of CF9 hotfixes.  Unfortunately they didn’t bother putting together a RSS feed for them, which would be great for us developers to keep an eye on what’s being released.

MisterDai and Yahoo Pipes to the rescue!

I haven’t even glanced at Yahoo Pipes before but had heard that they’d could be use to do some cool things.  The editor is quite impressive, everything is easily dragged and dropped into place and then linked up.

It offers several ways to consume a source of information on the internet, mess about with it using various methods provided and spit it out the other side.  It’s surprising some of the uses that it’s been put too and I have a few ideas for other pipes already brewing.  I did find it a little slow sometimes and had a problem saving once but otherwise it was smooth sailing.

Yahoo Pipes Editor, CF9 Hotfix source

The end product, a lovely little RSS feed for ColdFusion 9 hotfixes

http://pipes.yahoo.com/misterdai/cf9hotfixes –

*Update*

BigMadKev kindly pointed out that there are feeds available, which he’s also posted about.  I blame coldfumonkeh for this, but for our credit, there isn’t a CF9 hotfix only feed available.  Oh well, at least I had an excuse to use Yahoo pipes for something.

I used to play… Space Rogue

Retro Games

Details

Name	Space Rogue
Developer	Origin Systems
Publisher	Origin Systems
Platforms	Apple II, Commodore 64, PC, Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST and FM Towns
Release Date	1989
Genre	RPG, Space Combat

Game Cover

UPDATE: Managed to track down one of the developers behind the game, read my Q&A with Paul Neurath.

Introduction

Plot

Your character is the son of a famous Jeweller who, instead of following in his fathers footsteps, decides to go into space as a crewman on a merchant vessel. The ship was called the “Princess Blue” and you serve with the crew for a year before they encounter a derelict craft. The captain decides to salvage it and entails you with the task of retrieving the spacecraft. As you make it to the derelict aliens, known as the “Manchi”, attack the Princess Blue and destroy it, killing the crew. When the aliens leave, you are the sole survivor.

Vowing to avenge your crew-mates, you repair the derelict and start on your quest. There is a nearby space station where you’ll need to upgrade the ship and finds ways of making money. Maybe someone there will have information on the aliens who attacked you. Life must go on and you decide what paths it will take!

Zend Server CE 5.0

PHP

Introduction

Zend have released their latest version of Zend Server, version 5.0, which includes a Community Edition.  In this post I’m taking a look at the free Community Edition for Windows, which includes the following (some items are optional):

• Apache 2.2.14 (Can use IIS instead)
• PHP 5.3.1 / PHP 5.2.12 (Selected when downloading the installation)
  • Common and additional PECL extensions.
  • Zend Optimizer+
  • Zend Debugger
  • Zend Data Cache
  • Zend Java Bridge
  • Zend Guard Loader
• Zend Framework
  • Base
  • Extras
  • Dojo
• MySQL Essential Database Server 5.1.43
• PhpMyAdmin
• Database drivers
  • Informix
  • Oracle OCI Driver
  • IBM DB2 RTCL
  • MS SQL Server Native Client