kidkonia blogs

Ruby was originally created as a multi-paradigm language. Recently, it's just been a web programming language, thanks to Ruby on Rails. While it's not a bad thing, and has certainly shot Ruby into the mainstream programming community, what about the other parts? What about systems coding?

Well, look no further. I looked and noticed I didn't have the tree command installed on my Xubuntu box, and decided this would be as good a test as any for the workhorse. I fired up gedit and away I went! After only about fifteen or twenty minutes, I'd pounded out a working version.

I've never been a fan of unit testing. I didn't get the point. Why would I write code that looks at the results of this test or that function when that's what I need to be doing? My tests consisted of starting up my application and then navigating my way to the feature that needed demonstration.

But then I started Zombies! 2, and it ended up changing everything.

7DRL is an annual competition to make one thing: a roguelike. The timeframe? Seven days, from start to finish. No code you already used, etc. etc. Basically, it's a Nanowrimo for roguelikes in a week.

I'm going to use something I already tried to do this with: Javascript. HTML and some tricky use of div tags should get me a nice fake console, and then it's just a matter of writing my own curses on top of it. Though I'm not officially in the contest, it starts Monday.

As usual, it's up on Github: github.com/h0rs3r4dish/jack

So, I'm still working on the Wesnoth Strategy series, but a side project has come up while I was doing more multiplayer research.

A while ago I made an IRC game called Zombies!, which was sort of loosely based off of an audio-only miniseries Olothontor and I produced an episode of a while back. It was a turn-based game with support for a few different kinds of weapons, and user-created maps. It was pretty fun, but then I started building on its success.

The patches brought the game to its knees.

Having spent the last four or five days glued to my computer, I figure this is a wonderful way to celebrate the new blog and break in "Ollyblog" with a first serious blog post.

The topic of this first post involves something I discovered: it's called a "NUISANCE" (yes, in all caps).