Category Archives: RC2018/04

RC2018/04 – April 30

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The month has run out.  My project is nowhere near done.  It is in fact barely started.

I have been working on initializing the files.  Seems like every time I made a step forward, I trip over something.  I’ve been working with three manuals in PDF format and a large paperbound book.

It took me days to figure out why I was getting a Protection Violation.  It turns out I was over thinking opening the file and added an unnecessary mode.

Now I’m dealing with a bloated file.  It should be a block in length and yet it exploded up to sixteen blocks.  The record size of the file should mean I could get 16 records in a block.

While RC2018/04 is over, my project is not done, but I plan to keep plugging away on it!

 

 

 

RC2018/04 – April 3

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I had the day off and was going to get a lot done.  Here’s how the day went.

I went down stairs to work on the computer.

Oh look, there’s face book, I should update that and see what’s going on.

A few minutes later (many actually) I click on the email tab.

After reading and sorting out that email I moved onto another email tab.

That one done I remembered a couple of online builder type games, that need their daily updating.

After all that, I remembered I wanted to order a Raspberry Pi.  I’ve never had one before, so I have to look through all the goodies.  I should have a case, and a power supply and an sd card with an OS.  You know what they say, “Time flies when your having fun”.

So there went the whole morning wasted on not getting anything done.

On to Plan B.  I found a spiral notebook and got to work.  I wanted this game/environment to be like a text adventure.  You move around based on what you read in the descriptions by typing commands as small sentences.  Sometimes just one word, like a direction (north, east, south and west) to move.  I plan on using at least North, North East, East, South East, South, South West, West, North West, Up and Down to start with.

I want at least some of the user/players to be able to expand the environment by being able to add on as they go.  This was a hanging point for me because I didn’t want something hokey to differentiate between players and builders.  I figured I would code in a flag for the user and come up with a plan a little later once I get the environment working to tell who was who and impose limitations on the player.  Along these same lines, I need to come up with a way to identify each person so they can interact when they are in the same place.

Last Update: 04-Apr-18

RC2018/04 – April 1

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Once again it’s that time of year, RetroChallange.  Last year I choose a similar project and you can see that down below at RC2017/04 – April 1.  I never got one line of code written.

For this RetroChallenge I plan to write a multiplayer game that will run on an emulated PDP 11/70.  I’m leaning towards a multi-user dungeon.  I once used one that allowed users to add on and that seemed pretty cool.

I’m working along the same lines as last year, in that I want others to be able to play along as it were.  A little later on, as I get things working, you will be able to telnet to puff dot mooo dot com at port 4000 and sign in.  This year we will use account (18,4) with a password of RC.