Kid-friendly, Open Source, Multi-Player/LAN games

I was looking for some kid-friendly, free, open source, multi-player/LAN oriented games that will work on Windows and Linux boxes.  Kept having my kids friends show up after school to play online games.  Hopefully, this will spark some interest in “how” the games were made.  My main criteria were: support multi-player; multi-computer - prefer LAN server over Internet server;  and most-important a low initial learning curve.  I wanted a mix of: real-time and turn-based; 2D and 3D.

Here’s a few that I’ve installed.  I still have to see how the group responds  to the games :

• Armagetron – real-time Tron light-cycle arena clone in 3D.
• Bitfighter –  real-time 2D space combat game with dual-axes controls.
• BZFlag – real-time 3D tank battle game.  This one can be a bit frantic.
• Domination – turn-based 2D “risk” like strategy game that supports alternative world maps.
• Hedgewars -  turn-based 2.5D strategy, artillery, action and comedy game.
• Scorcehed3D -  turn-based 3D artillery game.
• WarMUX -  turn-based 2D Worms-like game.

Here are some that I might try.  Depends on how the games above work out:

• Aeron – a combat flight simulator.
• Freeciv -  turn-based civilization like game.
• FreeCol – turn-based strategy game like civilization.
• JSettlers2 – web-based version of Settlers of Catan.
• SuperTuxKart – a kart racing game that supports up to four players on one PC. Unfortunately, no LAN play at this time.

Extract files from executable installation package/Windows installers

I needed to extract a couple of files that were embedded into an executable installation package.  After a few fruitless googles on recording Windows installers, and automated software removal I finally came across Universal Extractor.  I used it to extract the files from an InstallShield  package in an .exe file.

KODU Game Lab

I was looking for an approachable, kid friendly, programming environment and found KODU Game Lab from Microsoft Research.  Seems fun so far.  Also has an online community web site (KODU Game Lab Community) where you can share games.  The system is built around Microsoft’s XNA for Windows PCs and XBox 360s.  The GUI works with a keyboard and mouse on a Windows 7 PC. Also, works OK  with an XBox 360 Controller for a Windows PC.  I usually end up using the controller for in game play for a second player and almost never for editing.

Games with constructible/destructible environments

If you enjoy Minecraft you might want to check out Ace of Spades or Voxatron.  Both are voxel based constructible/destructible environments.  If you grew up playing Robotron you’ll likely enjoy Voxatron.

A# (ADA for .NET) with Visual Studio Integration

I decided I really needed to build RAPTOR from source.  The program is written in C# and and Ada targeting .NET (A#).   Dr. Carlisle released his last version of the A# compiler and a Visual Studio 2005 plugin via SourceForge in May 2006.  I installed the tool set into Visual Studio 2005 as described here on Windows 7 64-bit.  Although the integration installed it did not work after I patched  VS2005 for Windows 7 (KB928957, KB929470).

Since 2006 maintenance of the A# code was taken over by AdaCore.  They have released a downloadable version of GNAT that targets .NET 2.0 in the GNAT GPL packages at their LIBRE page.  Look for the package that targets dotnet-windows.  At the time of writing it was in a file named “gnat-gpl-2011-dotnet-windows-bin.exe” dated 11 May 2011.

The dotnet-windows package  includes Visual Studio integration.  Appears to be built around ProjectAggregator2 technology from the now defunct Visual Studio Integration Program (VSIP) SDK.  It successfully integrated with Visual Studio 2010 when I installed GNAT.  It might be possible to install the GNAT integration into the Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated) Redistributable Package if you don’t have a full up VS2010 install.  My understanding is that VS2010 Shell can be used to support languages like F# and Python.

Anyways, after I installed GNAT GPL for dotnet I was able to open the raptor.sln in Visual Studio and start tracking down dependencies (missing dlls, files, x64 issues, etc.).

Java Decompiler project

I wanted to check out some compiled Java byte code from a .class file.  Unfortunately, the tool I historically used (JAD via the DJ Java Decompiler) didn’t handle Java version 5 byte code.  Luckily for me a project by Emmanuel Dupuy has released a similar tool called JD-GUI.

MySQL convert time zone from local to UTC

Had to convert a slew of times form local time to UTC time in an MySQL database on a Windows box.  I had pushed a large number of Windows event logs into a MySQL database with LogParser.

While the event log files have the time in UTC format I found that LogParser renders the time as system local time of the computer where it is running. The program doesn’t have any way to know the time zone of the computer where the event log files originated.  I should have originally used TO_UTCTIME in the LogParser queries.

So… on to using MySQL CONVERT_TZ.  Unfortunately, my Windows install of MySQL did not include time zone information needed by the CONVERT_TZ function. I had to download and install the Time zone description tables for the function to work correctly.

The CONVERT_TZ function works with POSIX defined time zone names To avoid the ambiguity of common Time zone abbreviations.  For example I used

UPDATE table_x SET TimeGenerated=CONVERT_TZ(TimeGenerated, ‘America/Chicago’,’UCT’);

To convert a US Central time to UCT/Zulu time.

UPDATE table_x SET TimeGenerated=CONVERT_TZ(TimeGenerated, ‘America/New_York’,’UCT’);

To convert a US Eastern time to UCT/Zulu time.

Now back to event correlation.