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As promised, I've started a Let's Play series going into the details of NetHack as I once again quest for the Amulet of Yender through the Mines of Menace. For those who've never ascended, or just wish to understand the game better, I'm going into detail on much of the mechanics behind the game such as wand identification, price IDing, curse testing, and so forth. Hopefully with my guidance, you too can one day ascend into a demi-god. I'll try and update the series Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, but I may miss a day if life gets too hectic.

All my content, unless otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons ShareLike-Attribution license, and encoding in a WebM container with the VP8 and Ogg Vorbis codecs. I'll be uploading the raw WebM files once I have a suitable host to do so.

Introduction to NetHack
  - In which the interface, goals of the game, and dungeon layout are explained.

Let's Play Nethack #1
  - In which we start off as a Dwarvish Valkerie, get our first artifact, and run into trouble.

So, given the success of the livestream, I'm discussing with the staff doing future livestreams to sit back, discuss things with the community and such. We're thinking about once a month, and perhaps doing a multiplayer game that everyone can join in on (I'm thiking either Civilization or Europa Univeralis IV).

However, given my own experiences doing it, I'm going to try my hand at doing a Let's Play. Given its where we started, I thought it would be most appropriate to start with a series based on NetHack, and am working on recording an introduction video which will go over the basis of the game, and help prevent the series from being too repeative (I'll only upload runs which have a decent chance of ascending; generally ones that make it to Mine's End and finish Sokoban, maybe a bit further).

I'll post the intro video and my first episode hopefully this week. I'll probably upload them to YouTube and provide raw files. I'm encoding my raw videos in VP8+Ogg Vorbis in a WebM container, and will be licensing my content under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Once I figure out a place to upload large WebM files, I'll also provide the edited source files for anyone who is YouTube allergic. I'll probably enable monetization on my account and let YouTube place ads in my video, to hopefully get a little money out of it. Beside NetHack, I may feature other games on Linux and open source gaming in general.

NOTE: This is a personal project and not related to SN directly. Unless something is on the main page, assume this is non-SN related, and I'm just writing about it here (since this is the closest thing I have to a blog)

A day that will live in e-fame-y.

Finally got the first set of code committed to rehash to allow use of IPv6 properly (dev.sn.org has had a AAAA record for ages, but IPv6 address handling has been hosed since day 1, that's why we don't publish one for production). Just need to add some UI tags so admins can see if a ipid/subid is IPv4 or IPv6, and we're more or less set here.

Squished an annoying bug in rehash that prevented formkeys working due to changes in how mod_perl works, I dunno worse, the abuse of the MP1 API, or the hack I had to code to emulate the old behavior; here's the comment I left about it:

                # UNBELIEVE HACKINESS AHEAD
                #
                # Ok, under MP1, it was possible to use param as a "semi-persistant" scratchpad
                # that is, to save a new element in the hashref, and get it back by future calls
                #
                # This worked because the older APR methods allowed you to store into the HASREF.
                # even though this behavior was wrong, and bad according to MP documentation. MP2
                # now removed the STORE method from the APR tables so any attempt to write to them
                # goes BANG.
                #
                # Since we can't do that now, we're going to have to fake it. On our first call to
                # getCurrentForm, we'll copy the param tables to a hashref, then shove it into the
                # apache2 pnotes, and then retrieve it on demand.
                #
                # This is a fucking hack, but I can't think of a better way than to refactor a TON of
                # perl, and perl is not a language that makes it easy to refactor ...

Currently deep in working on getting the first rehash (MP2 slashcode) release put together. lithium got rebuilt and is now on the MP2 release. Since this upgrade is disruptive anyone, we decided to go full-in and put in a migration to MySQL cluster as well; which will require some code changes for Search, but otherwise was mostly a drop in upgrade.

I'm just going to leave this here ...

Server: Apache/2.2.29 (Unix) DAV/2 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.8.0 mod_perl/2.0.8 Perl/v5.20.1
X-Powered-By: slashcode 15.01
X-Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the thirty-first century. Caffeinated bacon?

and just say I'm a certifiable madman.

So, it appears we have quite a community of DF players here at SN, and enough I think to warrent getting a succession game going. For those who are unaware, succession games are when one plays for one year (Spring to Spring traditionally), then passes off the fort to the next player in line. Boatmurdered is perhaps the most famous of the succession games ever done, though there are others, such as Battlefailed, Failcannon, and .

I'm interested in doing this, especially since it requires relatively little in infrastructure to setup. I'd like to do it on SN itself, perhaps either with a shared account as journals, or just creating a new section on the site. Obviously I'm going to have to tweak the codebase to allow images, and it gives a way to help build our community out. So, if we do this, here's what we need to decide:

• What version of DF? 2012, or wait for the new release

• What type of biome?

• Any mods?

And probably some other stuff. I've been playing a fort which is at war with the elves, and I find its quite a bit of fun since you regularly get seiged, and requires that we have a badass military to survive (and there are ways, even in stock, to get military training to work and start churning out Lords and Masters relatively quickly.

I recommend we apply bugfixes to the raws such as elven treecap diplomacy, and human merchants, which seriously helps getting the supplies we need. I've had good look with Accelerated Modest Mod for bug fixes, and preventing FPS death even in crud hardware so its my vote if we just don't go vanilla. I also recommend we also use all the DFHack fixes (the patrol bug one is almost essential).

Post below if you're interested, turn list is first come, first serve, but you can sign up for a second turn after your first (likely necessary since I expect only 5-6 players). Regular updates, and timely turns are a must as well. Beyond that, the sky is the limit.

Managed to kick out the first draft of the bylaws, they're here on the wiki http://wiki.soylentnews.org/wiki/Incorporation/Bylaws for anyone who wishes to take a look. I need to fill out some more paperwork, then submit the entirity of the mess to a lawyer. I got a few recommendations, so mostly now is lawyer shopping.

I realize this is a bit of a longshot, and I don't want to run a QA on the site for this, but does anyone have a lead on a lawyer in New Hampshire to help me through incorporation? I'm also looking for a CPA, but those are relatively easiler to locate.

I've looked at various services such as Harbor Compliance, but they don't seem to be legal help, just document filing services ...