So today I found a nifty script that shows your top 10 commands used in bash. This is a very cool script to let you know what you have been doing and tells people about you.
So, this is on the unstable server, where I do most of my experimenting on. It returned these results:
57 cd56 bzfs
43 screen
27 ./obstacle_course.sh
24 ./super_maze.sh
20 killall
16 mysql
13 history
13 g++
13 crontab
So according to these results, I experiment with script running alot, do a lot of file browsing, run BZFS (BZFlag Server) which means I do a lot of testing in BZFlag maps. Screen is up in third also, which means I do a lot of programs that I stay running. I got killall, which I used to kill all my scripts and BZFlag servers. MySQL was strictly for my website. History is just this script XD. g++ is used to convert plugins to .so from .cpp so that they can be used in BZFlag, so I do lots of plugin conversions. Crontab shows up, which I use to modify how often my random map generating scripts run.
So, unstable isn’t the only server I have available, so I took a look at twilight, my strictly BZFlag server: 121 /bzflag/builds/2.0.x/bin/bzfs84 screen
61 killall
35 cd
32 nano
20 ./keepalive.sh
17 ps
17 ls
14 kill
12 bzfs
According to this list, I have bzfs up at the top with 121 uses. So obviously bzflag strictly. Again, we have screen and killall up there, both used for bzfs related stuff. cd and nano (Command Line Editor) are up there too, as I did minor modifications right in the terminal. We have keepalive which is basically a script that runs the whole server (Including bzfs, so bzfs could really be 141). Down near the bottom, ps (While I was experimenting with processes), ls for file browsing, and kill which I used in correspondence with ps. bzfs is at the bottom, these are just failed attempts to execute the top bzfs because I remembered that this wasn’t unstable, so bzfs wasn’t included as a normal function, so you have to go to the actual directory where it’s installed.
Ok, so that was a little interesting with the command line. By the way, that code is:
history | awk '{print $2}' | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"} {print $1}'|sort|uniq -c | sort -n | tail | sort -nr
Placed it in that textarea because wordpress does not show ' and " correctly in a terminal.
Alrighty, next up on the list of stuff to talk about, is Game Maker.
First off, my new game release, Multi-Breakout 2.
(Taken from http://sigonasr2.servegame.org/zgamers/v2/index.php?Multi-Breakout2)
Main Goal Although this may sound like a basic Breakout game, it is not. The concept itself is completely original. Instead of just hitting blocks, you have to hit blocks with 2 other players! You have health, and every time you hit a block, you gain 3 health and your opponents lose 5 health. Over time, this health adds up! There are also powerups you can get, and as you see the effects of each and their icons, you can try to memorize which ones do what. Finally, when you do hit a block, it gets sent to your opponent’s fields after a short amount of time. This means that the more blocks you hit, the more blocks you create on your opponent’s side to block out the stage and possibly make it harder for them to survive!
Some screenies (Click to view enlarged):
Download: multi_breakout2.exe
Alrighty, that’s that. Next up, I have made a Steady Healthbar example.
(Taken from http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=400958)
Title: Steady Healthbar Example Description:The goal of this example is to accomplish a smoothly decreasing healthbar.Most of the time when you play a game, and you lose a health, you see the healthbar
go from a certain point directly to another point.This example makes smoothly decreasing healthbars instead, which can be useful in
lots of ways to make your game graphically enhanced.GM Version: GM 7 Registered: no File Type: .gmk File Size: ~38 kb File Link: steady_healthbar.gmk
This is an example that I am pretty proud of. It shows a ball getting hit by a continuous bullet slowly losing health, and then there’s a DDR-style healthbar that you can press the up and down arrow keys on to make it gain or lose health, smoothly, of course 
So that takes care of the topic of Game Maker. What else have I got…
Oh yeah, I finished reading the Space Odyssey series. Great books, probably the first ever I’ve seen with so much science fiction and action in it. If I were to rate these books in the series on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give them:
2001: A Space Odyssey
8
(Great Book, but I read this one second, so I kinda knew how everything was gonna turn out. Kind of interesting to connect it to 2010 after reading it.)
2010: Odyssey Two
9
(The book that got me started on this series. Just loved it.)
2061: Odyssey Three
6
(Why such a low rating? Well, truthfully, half of the book was retelling of 2001 and 2010, which I sort of hated, but it was still pretty cool that they went out to Haley’s Comet, then to Europa. And Heywood Floyd’s son.)
3001: The Final Odyssey
10
(The best of the series in my opinion. I loved all the future concepts and how communication and exploration of the various planets worked. I just liked the fact that we got to see so much detail from Frank Poole’s mind and that he was living a literal luxurious life.)
So, what am I reading now. Well, guess what? I went to our library, and looked at more of Arthur C. Clarke’s books, and I found a book called “Rama Revealed”, so I picked it and started reading it. Truthfully, another great book so far, I loved the first chapter, already intense with Nicole scattering to a hideout she’d have to live in for a few weeks until phase two of the escape plan can start. Just great. One strange thing though, is that I picked the last book in the series (hmm), see a patten yet? I always seem to pick a book that is not the beginning of a series. But I think it’s kinda cool, because later you can link it to previous reading and put it all into the big picture!
So, now I want to talk to you about a neat little program called CExe.
Cexe’s goal is to produce smaller exe files using the smallest possible exe compression method. It uses the framework of zlib and lzw. It worked quite well with the Game Maker Executables, dropping fightersfield from 6.3 MB to 5.3 MB and dropping simple_race (another one of my unreleased games) from 2.6 to 1.5 MB. Basically, it drops them 1 MB, which could make some difference for some people, so it works. If you really wanted to, you can then put it in a zip file dropping fighter’s field to 4.8 MB and simple_race to 1.2 MB.
This was produced by a person named Scott Ludwig, and that’s the post about CExe, and the download by it. Very nice job Scott, you did well.
http://www.scottlu.com/Content/CExe.html
That’s about all for tonight. Yes, another long post, I think this’ll happen often now since I’ll be posting once every week or so, so I get a lot of stories then post. Anyways, see you later!
I just wanna play for now. One thing I want to create is a large randomly generated BZFlag maze, where there are different colored teleporters so that you can distinguish if you’ve been through a path already. This will hopefully be nice once I complete it, and there will be I think 400 different “squares” in the teleporter maze. This will make for a pretty challenging teleporter maze, and I’ll probably let it rotate mazes every once in awhile. (I may make an added challenge where you must find the flag, then the base!) This’ll be a fun Bash Script to create!
