Tips and Tricks About Computers, Web Development, Linux, the Internet and the Like
Nexuiz
Nexuiz 2.5 is released!
Apr 3rd
Quoting the change log:
Almost a year of hard work, 3000 single changes, new developers and players, a few tourneys and lots of matches have passed since the last release.
Today the Alientrap team is proud to bring you a new and improved Nexuiz! Still trying to achieve this fine balance between fun and a challenge, you will notice lots of small additions that will make playing even more fun.
Some larger changes like the new guns and particle effects will make you want to dive into the great and friendly Nexuiz community, while the large additions including the race game mode, some new maps and improved netcode will take away lots of hours of your free time.
Do you dare to take a look and see for yourself what a totally free and open source game can be?
New features include:
- Completely redone HUD and user adjustable scoreboard
- Totally rewritten Client/Server communication to cut the bandwidth usage in half
- New gamemode “Race”. Try to get from start to end of a level as fast as possible. Available as free-for-all and team variant. Further allows to play with or without a qualification period.
- Added several new weapons (on-hand Grappling Hook, Port-O-Launch, T.A.G. Seeker, Heavy Laser Assault Cannon, Rifle)
- Map editor NetRadiant included
- Improved all effects for eye candy and tweakability
- All maps recompiled with external lightmaps which allow for much crisper shadows
- Added maps desertfactory (DM, TDM, MinstaGib), racetrack (Race) and made aggressor support Key Hunt
- New player sounds, announcer sounds/voices, textures, crosshairs, weapon models, effects and menu skins
- Added support for video capture to OggTheora
- Integrated the Havoc mod into the menu! Havoc servers use quite different physics and weapons, give it a try!
- Fixed a crash with ATI drivers on shutdown or vid_restart
- Fixed several problems with lagging gameplay/crashes/wrong display of effects
- Improved bots (teamworking, bunnyhopping, swimming, better way finding, support for ladders, less CPU usage, faster map loading)
- Better visual display of carried items (Strength, Shield, flags and keys)
- Better parental guidance support with cl_gentle and cl_nogibs
- Lots of tourney-related features (timeout/in, spectator-slots, allready, warmup mode, lockteams, unlockteams, movetoteam_red/blue/…, nospectators, records, cointoss)
- Added some effects customization options like cl_casings, cl_weaponpriority
- Many more map entities allowing for more dynamic maps
- Restructured and improved menu: demos menu and multiple campaigns are back, also added an advanced menu containing ALL settings of the game
For a more complete list of changes see: https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=672474&group_id=81584
As usual, you can download the newest release from our download page.
If you are providing a mirror of the release, please notify us so we can add it to the official mirror list. For any comments, suggestions or questions, please refer to our forum or the FAQ.
Because of many major changes there is NO PATCH available.
To make sure nothing breaks, you should use a new directory to unzip Nexuiz 2.5!
If you use 2.5 and see a server with no gametype it’s an 2.4.2 server, don’t play on those. 
Alientrap is also currently looking for new coders, modelers, mappers and people experienced with creating sound effects. If you feel like helping improve Nexuiz or Zymotic please contact the team via forum or IRC.
You can Download Nexuiz Here. To run Nexuiz, extract the files anywhere on your computer and run the executable. Try GLX first and if you experience problems, you hardware maybe better suited for the SDL version. The main difference between the two is the software libraries they are compiled for.
If you’d like to spread the word, it’s a good idea to share the Nexuiz 2.5 release on your facebook account. You can digg it here: http://digg.com/pc_games/Nexuiz_2_5_is_released
Bash script to convert pngs to jpgs, thumbnail them and generate forum code
Aug 11th
I’ve been working on a tutorial for Nexuiz Ninjaz that requires a lot of screen shots. I’ve been utilizing the command line tool scrot to take screenshots on specific windows. These images however, are large pngs because the scrot date pattern wasn’t working properly when I tried to generate jpgs while repeating the same command. I went forward knowing I could find a way to batch compress these pngs later. Figuring I might as well “add a turbo while I’m under the hood”, I opted to both thumbnail the images (duh) and generate the forum thumbnail code (VROOOM).
So, to convert pngs to jpgs, I created a bash script which uses mogrify to convert, compress and thumbnail them and sed to assist in generating the forum code.
#!/bin/bash # # Convert pngs to jpgs, thumbnail them and generate forum code # Created by Tyler Mulligan - www.doknowevil.net condir=converted if [ ! -d $condir ];then mkdir -p $condir;fi pagename="http://www.nexuizninjaz.com/pics/howtos/map_link_a_ninja/" # Convert to jpg and create thumbnails echo -e "backing up originals...\n" cp *.png originals echo -e "converting to jpg...\n" mogrify -format jpg *.png echo -e "copying to converted directory...\n" cp *.jpg $condir echo -e "creating thumbnails...\n" mogrify -resize 50% *.jpg for file in *.jpg ; do mv $file `echo $file | sed 's/\(.*\.\)jpg/thumb_\1jpg/'` ; done mv *.jpg $condir echo -e "cleaning up\n" rm *.png # Generate forum code for file in $condir/thumb_*.jpg ; do tempname=`echo $file | sed 's/thumb_\(.*\)/\1/'`; echo "[url=${pagename}${tempname}][img]thumb_${tempname}[/img][/url]" done
Future plans call for adding flags to support different image types, and including the ability to take screen shots and generate the forum code on a per screen shot basis.
Sorta Off Topic: I’ve taken a swing at frameworks be developing a new layer of organization on top of cfg files in nexuiz. I’ve thoroughly documented this scalable, fully customizable package I’ve dubbed the Ninja Pack for Nexuiz
Where I’ve been (June 2008 Edition)
Jun 13th
So it’s been another interesting stretch of not blogging. A quick recap involves school, work, play and Nexuiz (which is a cross between work and play). For school, I managed a project called Object Organizer which you can learn more about in the wiki. I learned a lot about code, projects and people during this experience. I hope to share some techniques, such as the jQuery AJAX login I’ve developed with you all soon.
I’ve been really busy with my Senior Project / Nexuiz Community, Nexuiz Ninjaz developing a web based statistics frontend for players to check their stats. It will be similar to an already existing statistics script but we plan on doing a few things different. As the project grows, I will post information I find interesting about the project(s).
My main computer died and my thinkpad was going haywire so I was able to get another computer from a friend in exchange for work and I did a fresh OS install on my thinkpad. Both computers use Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, the desktop dual boots into XP 64bit. I’ve stayed booted into Ubuntu most the time. And I’ve done many neat things with syncing my laptop and desktop. Utilizing programs such as Synergy and Unison.
Ubuntu has improved drastically since I’ve lasted tried it. There are a few annoying bugs… like the fact that xinerama is buggy with games causing me to create a single monitor xorg.conf I run in a different tty just for games but the time I’m spending configuring, is time I was wasting on windows before. As crappy as having my desktop die was, due to good planning I was able to recovery everything I need and this event has gotten me back into Linux.
I hope to have something more for you next post but if you can’t wait, start reading some of my other sites .
Nexuiz 2.4 has been released!
Mar 1st
Yesterday the much anticipated 2.4 release of Nexuiz was had. This is a great milestone for the team as it includes many new features such as better graphics, smoother game play, newer and updated maps, better weapon balancing and new game types. The game now boasts over 10 game types both official and unofficial as one of the diggers describes, Nexuiz is like “Quake 3 on crack”.
Give it a whirl, it’s free!
And if you like the game, please Digg it!
New Nexuiz Website
Feb 25th
Well well well, I’ve been quite busy the past few weeks. Balancing school, work, play and of course the internet (which can fall under all three). In my business I have been maintaining websites for my clients, for myself and creating entirely new pages. Today I’d like to announce the release of the new Nexuiz Homepage, redesigned for the soon to be released version, 2.4.
The new version will be released shortly, I’ll be sure to let you all know when. Check the site for screenshots, videos and more details.
Happy Holidays
Dec 24th
Merry Christmas Eve and Happy Holidays to all. I hope you are enjoying time with loved ones and family. On my time off I’ve been doing a little research. I’m trying to learn more about 3d modeling so I can create more than just maps for the great game, Nexuiz. I’ve been dabbling in Blender 3d, which I came across some some awesome video tutorials. You can check out those Awesome Blender 3d Video Tutorials Here. This kid is really good at breaking down the tools and usage of the program.
I’ve also just finished writing a basic tutorial on map making for Nexuiz. I’ll be back post Christmas with some more application how-tos and such. Happy Holidays!
Nexuiz – A Free-for-all Free For All
Dec 11th
My friend is making a movie for a free open-source first person shoot (FPS) we like to play from time to time. Much like the video below… except, this guy knows what he’s doing 
.
Today I designed some graphics for him to use in the movie.
It should be out in a few weeks. I’ll be sure to post information about it here for those interested.
Oh hey, I’m still here
Sep 15th
I just moved into a new apartment, started a new job and didn’t have the internet for ~a week. I’ve been working on some other projects and I’ll be sure to start posting about them soon.
In the mean time, if you’re bored and you like quick decision making / fast paced gameplay or just first person shooters in general, you should check out Nexuiz. Nexuiz is free, open source and runs on all platforms (windows, osx, linux).
Here’s two examples of the fast paced action via flag caps:
Hope to see you on.
