Zal.:.

4/13/2020

OWASP Web 2.0 Project Update

Some of you likely recall the talk back in 2016 or so of updating the OWASP Foundation website to not appear so much like a...well, a wiki. That talk was carried forward into 2017 and 2018 and, with each year, the proposal got pushed ahead as there were other, deeper projects to tackle. With the arrival of 2019 and a firm project plan under the guidance of Mike McCamon, Executive Director, we are finally moving toward a functioning, modern website that will be a whole lot less...wiki-like. The journey has been circuitous and, while we are not anywhere near complete, we have a set plan in place to bring it to fruition within the calendar year (second quarter of the year, actually).

TLDR: How Can You Help?

There are certainly ways in which you can get involved now. For instance, we are looking for a clean way to get wiki pages into GitHub markdown format for archival. I have done some work here but there are parsing issues with some of the tools. Do you know a good tool or have you done similar work? Also, are you or do you know a good designer, someone familiar with GitHub pages that can provide some useful help and feedback along the way? A Jekyll expert to help code a theme with a handful of templates would be a great addition. In addition, we could use website server admins who could help with assigning redirects to maintain search integrity. Finally, there will be a great many pages to move that we will also eventually need community involvement in.

So, What Have We Done?

Thus far we have researched various ideas for standing up a new site, including modifying the current wiki, spinning up our own web server, contracting a third party to host and build a new site, and also using existing infrastructure with our own content to launch a new face for OWASP. Our discussions led us to a familiar place, one that nearly every developer in the OWASP space is familiar with: GitHub.

In our conversations with GitHub, it became readily apparent that using the platform would be a win for the Foundation as well as GitHub. Nearly everyone who runs a project at OWASP (documentation or otherwise) uses GitHub. Because our target audience is also mostly developers we know that they are also very comfortable with the platform. And while GitHub has a number of high profile companies using their GitHub Pages, the use of the platform as the basis for the entire website of the number one non-profit foundation in the application security sector is a big draw.

We have run with that GitHub Pages idea and have spent internal manpower on a proof of concept. This proof of concept is less about the UX of the site than the functionality, the ability to utilize the authentication systems, and the ability to utilize automation to push out changes quickly.

Where Are We Now?

We are doing the final stages of website architecture. We are also planning what needs to be in the site, how the pieces will integrate with current projects and chapters, and how we might utilize the community to integrate the pieces so that we have a visually and functionally cohesive website that spans across multiple repositories.

What Is Next?

We will soon be looking for a modern website design that is responsive and clean. We will begin using the knowledge gained from our proof of concept to build out the internals of the website and then we will start implementing the highest traffic pages and administrative areas into the new platform. Once we have the big-ticket items moved we will start looking at what is left and moving over those pieces. The eventual goal would be to have a new, modern website for the future of OWASP while keeping the wiki as an archive of really useful information.

We hope you are as excited as we are about the future of the OWASP Foundation website and will join us as we move toward a modern web presence. If you have any questions or would like to volunteer your time, experience or knowledge, please contact me at harold.blankenship@owasp.com

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4/11/2020

Sega CD - The Other CD Expansion

The Sega CD is treated like the unwanted step-child of the CD expansions. Early CD systems and expansions before the PlayStation were not the breakthrough product their manufacturers hoped they would be. They did not deliver the substantially superior gaming experiences they promised and were generally considered too expensive for what they did deliver. And what they delivered was often unimpressive, ports of cartridge games with enhanced audio and superfluous cutscenes, FMV games which relied on route memorization, PC game ports that had no business being run on hardware that did not have a hard drive, a keyboard or a desk with which to use a mouse and interactive entertainment software which was barely interactive and not entertaining. Today we are going to take a look at the Sega CD, its hardware, its quirks and ultimately the games that make it worth considering as a device on which to play games rather than to put on a collector's shelf.

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4/08/2020

The Ultimate Megadungeon

I feel like I fought long and hard for this review...

Battled my inner demons, smoked a peace-pipe with that old serpent until we were both baked into a fever-dream cake with black rainbow frosting, risked my stack by going all-in against a lavender mo-hawked skeever who I knew was bluffing, and so forth!

Endzeitgeist's Cha'alt review!

I knew it wouldn't be easy, that he'd make me pay dearly for every bit of laziness or self-indulgence, every decision carefully considered and weighed as if standing before an exotic gold idol with a pouch full of sand, every creative choice mercilessly judged.

And yet, I came out unscathed... relatively speaking. I just re-read the damn thing and I'm exhausted. I don't have the time, energy, or even the inclination to refute his claims, except to say that I really wanted an all-caps GONZO fun-house megadungeon. If blasters and sleep spells were commonplace, then really weird stuff would have to be way over-the-top.

Also, for a 90 minute online game or 3-hour face-to-face one-shot of D&D, Crimson Dragon Slayer D20 is just about perfect. It also plays better than it reads. ;)

Those brave enough to see for themselves are welcome to play in one of my Roll20 games or on January 11th in Madison, WI.

VS

p.s. Yep, still pimping the Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise kickstarter - only 5 days left to go!

3/28/2020

Aliens Vs. Predator Free Download

Aliens Vs. Predator - is a first-person shooter video game developed by Rebellion Developments, the team behind the 1999 original Microsoft Windows game and published by Sega for Microsoft Windows and many more.

Bringing the legendary war between two of science-fiction's most popular characters to FPS fans, AvP delivers three outstanding single player campaigns and provides untold hours of unique 3-way multiplayer gaming. Experience distinctly new and thrilling first person gameplay as you survive, hunt and prey in the deadly jungles and the swamps surrounding the damned colony of Freya's Prospect and as the Marine, you'll experience a claustrophobic and terrifying experience where light is your friend but there's never enough.

..:: Purchase the game here and support the developers ::..

1. FEATURES OF THE GAME

• In this video game, you'll experience a terrifying Experience & where light is your friend but there's never enough.
• Play all sides off against each other, in a series of Unique 3-way Online Modes and go tooth-to-claw-to-pulse rifle.
• United States Marine Corps are humanity's last line of defense. They are armed to the teeth with latest weaponry.
• Players will stalk from the shadows and above, passing athletically through the treetops to ambush the Predators.
• Inclu Most Deadly Species in the Universe, the Alien offers you the chance to play as the very stuff of nightmares.

Game is updated to latest version

Included Content

▪ Aliens Vs. Predator - Swarm Map Pack Downloadable Content
▪ Aliens Vs. Predator - Bughunt Map Pack Downloadable Content

2. GAMEPLAY AND SCREENSHOTS

3. DOWNLOAD GAME:

♢ Click or choose only one button below to download this game.
♢ View detailed instructions for downloading and installing the game here.
♢ Use 7-Zip to extract RAR, ZIP and ISO files. Install PowerISO to mount ISO files.

ALIENS VS. PREDATOR DOWNLOAD LINKS

PASSWORD FOR THE GAME

Unlock with password: pcgamesrealm

4. INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS GAME

➤ Download the game by clicking on the button link provided above.

➤ Download the game on the host site and turn off your Antivirus or Windows Defender to avoid errors.

➤ Once the download has been finished or completed, locate or go to that file.

➤ To open .iso file, use PowerISO and run the setup as admin then install the game on your PC.

➤ Once the installation process is complete, run the game's exe as admin and you can now play the game.

➤ Congratulations! You can now play this game for free on your PC.

➤ Note: If you like this video game, please buy it and support the developers of this game.

Temporarily disable your Antivirus or Windows Defender to avoid file corruption & false positive detections.

5. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
(Your PC must at least have the equivalent or higher specs in order to run this game.)

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 | Windows 8.1 | Windows 8 | Windows 7
• Processor: 3.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or any faster processor for better gaming experience
• Memory: at least 2GB System RAM
• Hard Disk Space: 16GB free HDD Space
• Video Card: NVIDIA 7900 or better, ATI X1800 with 128MB VRAM or better graphics

Supported Language: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, and Polish language are available.
If you have any questions or encountered broken links, please do not hesitate to comment below. :D

UCLan Games Design Degree Show 2019

So proud of all our third year Games Design students today on the final submission of their work for BA(Hons) Games Design. There'll be some lovely work and playable games to be enjoyed at the Games Design Degree Show Opening on Thursday 13th June at 6 pm.

Our final year students are now preparing the Games Design Studio for the Degree Show 2019.
https://www.uclan.ac.uk/news/degree-shows.php

We'd love to see everyone there.
There's a variety of awesome games art and loads of playable games! Just a few examples shown below in the pics. Calling out to our ALUMNI...come and join us celebrating the private view on Thursday 13th June from 6 pm!

Sails & Sorcery Progress

I have been continuing to develop Sails & Sorcery, Micheal's "Victorian era organized crime" themed game. After a disappointing few tests with the TMG guys at Origins and GenCon, and several attempts to balance the Plunder role, I have come to the conclusion that the way the role works is too problematic -- it cannot be fixed just by tweaking the costs and rewards.

The Plunder Role

The Plunder role allows you to remove opposing pirates from the board. You get some points for this, but the captured pirates go back to their owner's ship to be re-deployed. Deploying pirates to the board helps you win majority in an area, and then they stay in play for later, while Plundering an area helps you win majority in that area for the round, but nothing more. This sounded like a decent trade-off to me, but in practice it always seemed to be problematic. Part of the problem is the ability for a player to wipe another player out of an area entirely, reversing their progress, or cutting them out of scoring. Some of this might be groupthink, but it tends to scare players away from recruiting and deploying pirates (in an area control game about putting pirates on the board and moving them around).

We tried several versions of Plunder costs (capture 1 pirate per icon, pay N icons, capture N-1 pirates, Capture 1 pirate per *2* icons...), and considered several versions of rewards as well (you can capture ships and they're worth points, you can capture ships and they're NOT worth points, you can't capture ships, you get 1 point per pirate captured, you get 1 point per COLOR of pirate captured, you don't get points at all...). Over the different iterations of the game we even tried giving captured pirates back right away, vs the next round, and we experimented with those pirates going back to the player vs back to the general supply. The point is, we tried a lot of variations, and while each idea had its merits, none of them combined to make the role work correctly!

Re-imagining Plunder

A few times it crossed my mind that perhaps Plunder should do something else entirely, but I hesitated to change the effect because I liked the idea of having a way to remove pirates from areas. After all, El Grande (one of the main sources of inspiration for this game) has effects that add and remove pieces from the areas, as well as move them around. After a recent playtest, the idea of changing the nature of Plunder altogether came p again. One player suggested that perhaps there could be some kind of set collection associated with the role. Another something to the effect of digging up buried treasure. The epiphany I had that got me interested in it this time (when I was hesitant before) was this: perhaps there could be a set of "treasure" tiles, which you "buy" with Plunder. Each one could either give you an effect similar to Davy Jones (add one of your pirates to an area and capture 1 pirate from each opponent there), or some set collection scoring icon (like a gem of a certain type).

This way, a player could "Plunder for control" by going for the tiles with effects, or "Plunder for points" by going for the set collection stuff. My first attempt at this format was to make a bunch of tokens like that, put 4 of them on each area during setup, and make the cost of plundering an area go up each time one of them is taken. I figured that matched the Summon and Build cost structure, so it made some sense. I wasn't sure whether to go with the more strategic option (placing the tiles face up), or the more thematic option (face down), so I sort of compromised -- the tiles were face down, and when you plundered an area, you got to look at all the remaining tiles there and choose one. I tried that version last week, and it had some good points and some bad. Nobody missed the thought of having all of their pirates wiped off the board! However, it was weird that the choice went down as the cost went up (assuming the best tiles get taken first), and I would have preferred less setup anyway.

Thinking about it some more, I decided that this new format is similar to the old one, but limited in how many pirates you can capture, so maybe better than effect or points, it should be effect and points. So for the next playtest, I will try a tweak: I'll put 2 tiles on each area, each with a random plunder cost (between 2 and 6). Then I'll have a deck of treasure cards to the side of the board, with 4 of them face up. Each card will have both an immediate effect, and a gem for set collection scoring. This way, the plunder cost doesn't escalate like it does for building or summoning, but it'll still matter where you are when you Plunder, and it'll still be worth having plunder in your deck to afford the higher cost opportunities. And you'll get to capture or add pirates according to one of the available cards, plus you'll score a few points. We'll see if this version feels better.

If that doesn't feel right, another idea is to make the cost "2 + 1/player with presence in the area" -- which would scale in a potentially interesting way, but might not scale well with player count. But it would save the plunder cost tiles, and a little setup hassle.

A word on theme

At the top of this post I mentioned the theme was supposed to be Victorian era organized crime. Michael did mention that when he dropped off the game, but as far as I could tell, the game was a generic pirate game with monsters you can summon. If he hadn't told me he intended the players to be pirate captains backed by countries, doing espionage and etc, then I would never have guessed it. When I told him about this "buried treasure" version of plunder, he suggested we do something more in line with the Victorian era organized crime theme... which made me consider theme in general...

I think it's good to have a specific or interesting theme to a game. The less generic, the better. However, if the interesting, unusual theme looks the same as a more common, generic theme, then Occam's Razor would suggest that people won't even see the interesting theme.

So it's not a surprise to me that a player actually suggested a buried treasure sort of mechanism in this game, which is not intended to be a "pirate" themed game, but which clearly looks and feels like one.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and plays like a duck...

3/23/2020

Getting A Bit Of Everything In Guild Ball: The Union

Tuesday night is our game night out at Top Deck Games (aka Card Titan online if you're into Magic the Gathering) and last night was the first time I've been able to make one in a while.

It was also the first night in a long time where I was able to get two whole games in, and it ended up being two Guild Ball games for me as the other Warmachine players had already paired off when I was done my first match.

I decided I wanted to play more of my newly fleshed out Union as I'm probably most excited about playing them. I figured I'd post about why I'm personally excited about them given my history and what I feel makes them strong. Please keep in mind, I'm no expert at the game so this is more of a layman's perspective.

Why I'm Excited About Union

I can't talk about what makes me excited to play Union without talking about my previous teams in Guild Ball. I started the game playing Brewers, and then picked up Engineers because well, I like beer, and I'm an Engineer.

Brewers, especially when I picked them up, were more of a fighting team, and Engineers once they got reworked were more of a goal scoring team, so they'd make excellent compliments to each other, or so I thought. Both teams also generally rely on a single captain more than the other. Brewers generally want to be playing Tapper and Engineers generally want to play Ballista.

What I've found from playing both teams is that it's like playing the two extremes of the game. It's not quite as opposite as playing Butchers and Fishermen, but it's close enough to feel limiting.

Union by contrast can more easily play what the developers call a balanced game, looking to get 2 goals and 2 take-outs to get the 12 points to win the game. This is probably why I'm more excited to play Blackheart as my Union captain compared to playing what most people consider to be the stronger Veteran Rage as my captain, though I do enjoy playing both.

My First Dream Team

I wanted to make a team that had as much 2" Melee as possible while also being balanced. Back in June of last year, it appeared that Union had a good 6 player lineup for this:

Blackheart, Strongbox, Harry, Mist, Benediction, Gutter

Then in July the nerfs came for Harry which toned the team's damage output way down, but I still feel as though these 6 players can make for a hell of a team.

Blackheart can still score from very far away, using all kinds of dodge shenanigans to get in range for his 6" kick to nail a goal, quite likely at Tap-In range. He also has Butchery which can give you +1 to damage results against the model hit, and with all non-mascots having 2" melee, it's not hard to stack crowd out's on the player you've hit with Butchery. Strongbox add's +1 TAC in a 4" aura, which again can allow someone like Gutter to get in and do a massive amount of damage, but nearly anyone on the team can be made to hit hard enough to be a problem with that kind of setup.

And then there's Mist. He's got to be one of my favorite models coming from playing Brewers and Engineers. Now that Slothecian models have been released, he gets a free 2" dodge if he's within 6" of Grace or Benediction. He has Acrobatics, so he's got a guaranteed 2" dodge. He has 2" Melee which is fantastic on a striker, and he's got dodges for days. A turn 1 goal with him when you're receiving is extremely easy to bang in, and with him kicking off it's not impossible to get in that scenario either if your opponent isn't very careful about it.

The Extended Roster

Blackheart wasn't my first Union captain, that went to Veteran Rage, since I could buy him and Strongbox cheaply in a blister and I already had all the other models necessary to make a team with him at the time (a friend had given me an extra Mist model he had as payment for splitting a pizza on game night – damn Guild Ball is a cheap game to get into). This gave me a 6 man of:

V. Rage, Strongbox, Avarice & Greed, Gutter, Mist, Harry

This team was far better before Harry and Avarice & Greed were nerfed, but now that I've fleshed out the guild there's a lot of flexibility on how you can build a solid Vet Rage team.

My 10 player lineup is now:

Blackheart, Vet Rage, Strongbox, Avarice & Greed, Gutter, Mist, Harry, Grace, Benediction, Decimate

As of last night, I tried out the following team for Rage and it worked well into Engineers:

Vet Rage, Strongbox, Mist, Gutter, Decimate, Grace

With this, I have three models with 3 dice kicks, and two models with an 8" kick. While it seems like a lower Influence team at only generating 11 influence, it gets 2 influence for free to fuel Grace every turn. This allows her to give a "free" Quick Foot to extend Rage's personal threat or to make Mist go even further to score a goal.

Since it's a Vet Rage team, few people want to fight into it and so go for goals, allowing me to easily get snap back goals with Mist or if I'm receiving, get a very easy turn 1 goal with Mist. Getting an early goal is a big deal for the team since the extra goal Influence goes a long way to helping Rage do what he wants to do.

It's hard to understate how deadly the team can be with Rage's Heroic or Legendary play and Strongbox's 4" Aura. Last night I had a setup where Colossus (DEF 2, ARM 2, Tough Hide) was crowded out by Mist, Grace, and Strongbox. Rage popped his Legendary play and then charged in for free with Furious. On the wrap I got a Knockdown and did 4 damage. I then spent 4 Influence on Red Fury, not making Rage attack, but making Strongbox, the friggin Turtle attack.

The amount of damage it does in this situation is outrageous: 2 Base Attack, +1 from Shelling Out Aura, 3 Crowd Outs, +1 from Legendary Play, +1 dice from a DEF 2 model being knocked down is 8 total Dice for TAC and +1 to all damage results. Since Strongbox only has a 2 deep playbook, he is able to wrap many times. Even with Tough Hide taking damage off of each result, I was still regularly pulling 5-6 damage per attack after Tough Hide. With 4 Red Fury attacks I easily took down one of the biggest models in the game with a little turtle. He's like an honorary Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, I should try and paint a mask around his face.

Strengths and Weaknesses

One final thing that Union has over my other teams is that with my lineup I really can pick either Blackheart or Vet Rage and play two very different games, which is something relatively rare in Guild Ball.

This isn't to say that the team is nothing but a power house, I actually lack a significant amount of resiliency that I normally have with a lot of Tough Hide models. As it is a lot of my models are either 4/1 or 3/2, which is possibly better than average, but once they get knocked down or debuffed they will take a lot of damage very quickly. So far my games with them have been good, but I intend to play a lot more with the team.

The only thing is…I really want to play more with my Engineers and even my Brewers since it feels like so much has changed in the game since I last played. I'm definitely riding high on Guild Ball in general right now and it feels pretty good.