Đuka

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More than 10 years ago, I “obtained” Duke Nukem 3D. Graphics were better than Doom, everything was in 3D (ok, it was 2.5D) and dirty humor was all around. Since it’s graphic engine cheated a little, game was very playable even on slow systems (a.k.a. those that couldn’t run Quake).

First time I played it in multiplayer was over serial cable. And I fell in love. Game that was good, just became great. When we got network in our classroom (I was at school at that time), first game we played was Duke Nukem 3D. You could have as much as eight players at once on levels that had so much entries and exits that stalking just wasn’t a strategy. You needed to move, and to move a lot.

Some things that were semi-useful during single player game, became great tactical elements in multiplayer. Jetpack gave you possibility to make RPG air-strikes to your enemy, steroids helped you to escape (you were faster than RPG). Hologram was useful for distracting your enemy. While they shoot at hologram, you just shoot at them from your hiding place. You were only limited by your imagination.

Weapons started with your own foot (great if you are on steroids) followed with standard arsenal (pistols and guns). What was unknown before that time was pipe bomb. It worked on a trigger and while it wasn’t that useful against experienced players, it gave great joy of shaming your enemy with it. Real shame came with shrink ray. Once you shrink your enemy, you step on it - “That’s gotta hurt”.

Greatest weapon of them all was mighty RPG. Once you got used to it, you were killing machine. It was slow, it had only small amounts of ammo, but it’s power was undeniable. Tactic that I used with it was not to aim at person at all. Just point it somewhere near person and fire few shots more. Blast from a wall will kill that person without problems. If you are little bit further, it had semi-self-guidance so if your enemy stood still, he was a history. Combining that with steroids was sometimes suicidal since you could end up shooting your self with your own RPG (on steroids you run faster than RPG flies), but master that and there is no force that can stop you. Except another guy with RPG.

From that time, I even had a song dedicated to fifth level (one with a lot of RPGs). It is sung to the tune of Somewhere over the rainbow:

Somewhere over the rainbow,
RPGs fly...
Somewhere someone will kill me
and kill someone will I...

Song may be lousy, but at no time before or after, I sang during game. It was that good.

Today

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First step for playing game would be to obtain it. You can try it with shareware version and when you see the light buy it at GOG.com.

In order to enjoy it more, you may want to check EDuke32. This program will not only give you greater resolution than original Duke, but it also allows using higher quality graphics with some graphical goodies (interpolation, glow-maps, hi-res character models…). It works on all Windows versions without any problems.

Duke Nukem 3D multiplayer relied on IPX/SPX protocol for communication. That protocol is pretty much dead and TCP/IP took it’s place. Dukester X gives new life to multiplayer by providing TCP/IP connectivity. Your IP network can be useful once more. ;)

Full guide for setting your multiplayer DukeNukem 3D machine can be found at Duke3.net.

Special Match

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For those wanting to bridge Starcraft gap between GOM TV’s Averatec-Intel Classic 2 and next one, there is special match. It is between Bisu (current champion) and Jaedong (season one champion).

Very exciting.

P.S. New season will start on march, 15th 2009 (may be changed “according to players’ status”).

[2009-03-23: It seems that “may be changed” part prevailed. Next season hasn’t started yet.] [2009-03-24: New season start date is 2009-03-29.]

Windays 2009

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I got my piece of action at next Windays conference. I will give presentation about Virtual disk support in Windows 7 during technology part of conference.

It cover news regarding support for virtual disks in Windows 7 (hopefully, RC will be out by then), booting inside them and programming API support from C# perspective.

After presentation, I will “leak” content here also.

Fingerprinting

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When I bought my new laptop (HP 6730b), there was one thing that made my eyes glow. It had fingerprint reader. Imagine all possibilities of using it as fancy tool to unlock your laptop by the power of finger. :)

Only problem is that it didn’t look cool. It looked like I am little bit disturbed. I pass my finger over sensor - it does not even see that finger exists. I pass it again - cannot read it properly. Again - oh, no, I am sliding my finger too fast. After a while, people around me went betting whether I will be able to logon within three swipes.

I installed Windows 7 and only device without driver is my fingerprint reader. As one can imagine, I didn’t miss it so much. But suddenly Windows notified me that there is solution for my problem - you guess it - I got a link to driver. It was not my usual driver - original was from HP - this one was directly from AuthenTec.

What have I lost compared to HP’s one? Only thing that seems relevant is connection to TPM which, in security sense, was nice thing to have. However, I cannot believe that there is still same hardware beneath it. Now I really use my fingerprint reader for logging on. Oh, what difference, can a driver make. Not only that, if you uninstall HP’s driver and put this one on Vista, same thing happens - it just starts working.

I can only conclude one thing. Works better without HP garbage.

VB 6.0 in Windows 7

Visual Basic 6.0 will be supported under Windows 7. That means ten more years of runtime being shipped with OS and all applications “just working”. This support is for runtime and supported runtime files (mostly those that came with it). There is no support for controls that were not part of VB 6 delivery (some VB 5 compatibility files).

Development environment (IDE) hasn’t had same fortune. It’s officially supported life already ended but it does work fine on Windows 7 beta 1. I just hope that it will stay like that for final version also.