Danzels Internets

Ironshod releases Reverse Maze

Hi Everyone

I’ve been working hard the last 6-7 months doing the coding for Ironshods latest iPhone/iPod touch game: Reverse Maze

Reverse Maze is a maze puzzler where all controls are backwards. Your goal is to get from the starting point to the exit without touching any walls or objects.

Go get it on the App store now

DSP Update - March 9th

This week I finished off save support. As far as I have tested saving and loading everything (that matters) works! Finally!

I cleaned up the code in the new font system, then started on cleaning it up and moving freetype out, so I can build without freetype. The way it will work is there will be an external tool powered by freetype to generate the font files (image and settings). Then I won’t need to link against freetype, which is good as I don’t have it set up on my mac, and may not have it on other platforms I want to build DSP for.

I did a bit of work on the level select menu, as shown here:

The top right area isn’t implemented yet (nor are the scores). The top right area will show an image of the selected level and a brief description.

Next week will be: Finish menu, finish refactoring font system, end game handling, new level?….

Vodafone NZ iPhone 3G

I bought a 16G iPhone today <3

We tried it with a pre-paid SIM card (after activating it through iTunes with my SIM which is on account - not an iPhone plan) and it worked fine for phone and txt.

VFNZ data will work while on pre-paid. It doesn’t even work on corporate APNs, believe me I have tried! Even the Apple Corporate configuration utility didn’t help

After talking to the Vodafone NZ iPhone help desk, they mentioned that iPhone has its own APN (like a blackberry on the special blackberry plan), so that would explain it.

Don’t let the store people convince you that you need a data plan to activate it, you definitely don’t! iTunes does it all.

WiFi works of course, If you are in Hamilton then drop an email to shane@velocitynetworks.co.nz - they have set up a WiFi network in the CBD and are providing free access to iPhone users!

Hopefully when the jailbreak arrives we’ll be able to use non iPhone APNs on it like people with hacked 1st Generation iPhones can now!

Update: Talked to the iPhone support team again today, they might be able to set up the corporate APN on my iPhone, they need to talk to level 2 support who don’t work on the weekend of course!

The person I talked to confirmed that they lock down the APN so that people on pre-paid can’t access data. (Bastards!)

Update 2: Got a call back, apparently I need the iPhone APN set up on my SIM to be able to access my corporate APN (which didn’t even make sense to the person I was talking to). Of course to have the iPhone APN set up you need a data plan on your SIM, which negates the whole point of a corporate APN!

Back to waiting for the hacks….

Update 3: You can get data to work on prepay (and apparently corporate APNs, just not mine… ), details:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=76&TopicId=24033

http://www.unlockit.co.nz/

The Darling Room

Recently my mates Fiancée started her own beauty therapy salon. I’ve been told it is totally awesome, but not being a female myself, I don’t think she’ll give me a treatment lol.
If you are a female in Hamilton, then you should go get yourself treated at The Darling Room Beauty Therapy!

mintshot.co.nz cheating / hacks / security flaws etc.

NOTE: The following contains instructions that may violate the mintshot TOS, anything you do is your own fault.
This is being posted so that the public can see how badly written mintshot is, which will hopefully kick the developers into fixing it so that those people who enjoy watching ads can get paid for it (I’m not one of them).

Mintshot is a poorly coded, insecure and easy to cheat website.
The level of security shown on the site makes me worry for the future of web development.
The security problems detailed in this post, allow users to gain more m$ (the currency on the website) than they should be able to, thereby giving them an unfair advantage over the people who use the site legitimately.

Layman’s version: People can cheat on mintshot and get more money than you. This will let them win every auction and get all the prizes!

Continue reading mintshot.co.nz cheating / hacks / security flaws etc….

Defence Station Portable 1.1a

Update: Release 1.1a to fix the bugs in the 1.1 release
Download links updated too

And like clockwork (on some sort of clock that distorts time and sleep) here is the DSP 1.1 release.

Don’t forget you can still vote for Defence Station Portable on NeoFlash HERE
Thanks for all your votes!

This version has a slightly longer River TD, plenty of playability fixes and fixes/improves the bugs that prevented many other people from releasing their own maps.
There is also a difficulty modifier, so daring folks can try play the levels through with more difficulty. Try beat River TD on 2.0x difficulty, I DOUBLE DARE YA!

Mapdevs, check the updated leveldev.doc, the file formats are still the same but you can now override more of the images, check levels/test as an example

ChangeLog:
Add “How To Play” level.
Difficulty multiplier. (bigger number = more enemy HP)
Show tower stats while placing one.
Add “Save the house” mode.
Show range rings when upgrading towers (Yes, you can upgrade towers! select one on the map with X)
Show Wave XX/XX Text between waves.
Most game graphics customisable by level.
Fix loading levels made on windows.
Fix Quitting level in middle of wave stops player starting wave.
Fix points (Max 10 points / normal enemy, 40 points / boss. Quicker kill = more points)

Downloads
PSP
Linux
Windows

Something new ;)

I’m working on something new and have been for a while.
Hint: It doesn’t have keyboard input.

Expected release date: 20th August, or slightly before.
(Wow that cooincides with the NeoFlash competition)

AFKIM 3.2

Thanks to ZX-81 there is now IR Keyboard support for afkim.

Head over to his site to grab it

I haven’t had time to check it into SVN yet, Will do when i get some time…

AFKIM 3.1

Minor update for AFKIM.
Probably the last release (other than bugfixes if/when required and a piKey version when I get a keyboard) as I don’t use AFKIM anymore (DSLinux + ssh + screen = FTW)
Don’t forget that afkim is open source, check the readme for the SVN location. If you do make some changes then email me and I can integrate em and make another release or hook you up with a SVN account.

Changelog:
Resolver shouldn't lock up anymore.
Jabber account adding.
Removed Splash.


Download Links:
OE Version
1.5 Version
[EDIT] Download links updated, thanks to LOCOSP for pointing out I forgot to update an image!

Enjoy as always.
My next project will be something that doesn’t need character input, if I ever decide to finish and release it

PDF To Image

I wanted to view a PDF on my PSP, but unfortunately the PDF was full of images so the usual viewer bookr didn’t want to load it. Luckily I managed to figure out how to convert the PDF into JPEGs so I could view them. Since I hadn’t found a guide in my searches, here is a rough guide of how I did it.
The Tool of choice for this exercise is ghostscript, in particular the command line component ‘gs’. Ghostscript is a PDF/PS interpreter, available on linux and windows (SF.net Download). The magical command line I used was:

gs -sDEVICE=jpeg -dJPEGQ=95 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dDOINTERPOLATE -sOutputFile=m_%d.jpg -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -r57×58 M.pdf
What does this all do?

• sDEVICE=jpeg -dJPEGQ=95
• Defines the image output format, there are alot of image types that can be saved, I chose JPEG as the PSP cannot view PNG images in the built in image viewer.
• The list of available outputs can be found by running gs with no command line arguments, or by visiting http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/cvs/Devices.htm
• -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 -dTextAlphaBits=4 -dDOINTERPOLATE
• Antialiasing settings, these make your output look the best. Use them.
• -sOutputFile=m_%d.png
• The output file name, %d implies you want to split images by page, the %d will be replaced with the page number.
• -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE
• Batch processing options, makes gs output all of the images without stopping and confirming.
• -r57×58
• Resolution of output images, I had to play with this a bit to get the exact numbers, depends on your input file too.
• M.pdf
• The name of the input file.

Anyway, so you run that and suprise suprise you get alot of images, ripe for viewing Enjoy.