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productreviewspot · 1 year

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There are countless games available on Amazon, but not all of them are worth your time. To help you make the most of your gaming experience, we've compiled a list of the top games to play on Amazon right now.

"Among Us": This popular game has taken the world by storm and for good reason. You play as a member of a spaceship crew and must figure out who among you is an impostor before they kill everyone. The game is available on Amazon for PC and mobile devices.

"The Last of Us Part II": This highly-acclaimed game from Naughty Dog is a must-play for fans of action-adventure and story-driven games. You play as Ellie, a teenage girl who must navigate a post-apocalyptic world filled with danger and the infected. The game is available on Amazon for PlayStation 4.

"Animal Crossing: New Horizons": This popular life simulation game has been a hit with players of all ages. You play as a resident on a deserted island and must build a community and create a home for yourself. The game is available on Amazon for Nintendo Switch.

"Final Fantasy VII Remake": This long-awaited remake of the classic RPG game is finally here and it does not disappoint. You play as Cloud, a mercenary hired to take down the evil Shinra Corporation. The game is available on Amazon for PlayStation 4.

"Minecraft": This sandbox game has been a favorite for years and continues to be a popular choice on Amazon. You can build, explore and create your own world in this game. The game is available on Amazon for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.

"Red Dead Redemption 2": This critically acclaimed open-world game from Rockstar Games is set in the American frontier. You play as Arthur Morgan, a member of the outlaw Van der Linde gang. The game is available on Amazon for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

"The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt": This open-world action RPG game from CD Projekt Red is set in a medieval fantasy world. You play as Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter, who must find a child of prophecy in a world filled with political intrigue. The game is available on Amazon for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

"Hollow Knight: Silksong": This action-adventure game is a sequel to the critically acclaimed Hollow Knight. You play as Hornet, a princess-protector of Hallownest, who must navigate a vast interconnected world filled with deadly enemies. The game is available on Amazon for Nintendo Switch and PC.

"Overwatch": This popular first-person shooter game from Blizzard Entertainment is set in a future where humanity is at war with robots. You play as a member of an elite team of heroes and must work together to defeat your enemies. The game is available on Amazon for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation

"Super Smash Bros. Ultimate": This fighting game from Nintendo is a must-play for fans of the series. You can play as one of many iconic characters from the Nintendo universe and battle it out with friends. The game is available on Amazon for Nintendo Switch.

These are just a few of the top games to play on Amazon right now. Whether you're into action-adventure, story-driven games, life simulation, or first-person shooters, there's something for everyone. So, grab your controller and get ready to have some fun!

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#amazongamesforkid #amazongames

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birthhealth3 · 2 years

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13 Open-source Free Minecraft Servers And Server Manager Solutions

Minecraft is a well-known game in which players are able to create and design their own worlds. https://ntzsw8.com/ 's referred to as "sandbox" because it lets players to create their own worlds without needing to adhere to any predetermined goals.

The player can design the game, explore, and interact within the vast space.

Minecraft is dependent on servers owned by companies or players. The Minecraft server allows players to connect with one another and play online, or through local area networks.

Minecraft servers come in a variety, functions, licenses, and costs.

Public Minecraft servers are frequently posted on Minecraft official forums.

In this article, we have compiled the top open-source, free Minecraft server and server management software for anyone who wants to own his own server.

Free, open-source Minecraft server and server panels

Glowstone; Glowstone is a free, open-source, cross platform lightweight Minecraft server written in the Java programming language.

Glowstone supports all plugins that are written for the Bukkit, Spigot and Paper APIs natively. Minestom; Minestom is a Minecraft server implementation which is completely free and open source. Minestom is a developer-friendly program that is backed by a wealth of documentation and code fragments. It supports entities, blocks, inventory, instances, and commands.

Minestom has a modular structure that allows developers to create their own extensions.

Minestom uses Apache License V2.0 Open-source License Cuberite; Cuberite, a simple, but powerfully expandable Minecraft server is Cuberite. It is compatible with Windows, Linux and macOS as well as Android unlike the majority of the other games.

Cuberite offers several demo servers for free testing, and a well documented get started documentation.

PufferPanel: PufferPanel does not serve as an actual Minecraft server, but is a game-specific management panel that offers full support for Minecraft and Spigot, Sponge and Forge.

PufferPanel was released under Apache License 2.0

Fork Similar to PufferPanel Fork is an Minecraft server Manager GUI for graphical users. It has a clean user interface that doesn't require a lengthy learning curve, plugins, multiserver/ instance support and support for multi-platforms. Crafty Controller; Yet another Minecraft server control platform for gamers. It is developed using Python 3.7, uses SQLite DB, and can be installed on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Paper MC Paper is a completely free Minecraft server software that is compatible with Spigot plugins. Paper MC comes with an more features, including an expanded API and community support and delivers seamless performance.

Bukkit; Bukkit allows developers to expand Minecraft multiplayer servers by using open-source software.

Bukkit comes with a large number of third-party applications that include modules, plugins and code snippets.

Pterodactyl Panel. Pterodactyl Panel allows you to manage your game server free of cost.

It is designed using the latest trending web technologies like React Go, PHP and React. Pterodactyl Panel is a user-friendly systems that features an intuitive user interface, Docker support, and scalable-ready architecture.

Gamocosm Gamocosm allows gamers to run their cloud Minecraft servers on hosting providers such as DigitalOcean.

MultiMC; MultiMC is not a server or a server management panel, but it is worth mentioning here because it lets gamers run multiple, distinct instances of Minecraft each of them comes with its own mods packs, resources, and mods.

MultiMC is available on Windows, macOS and Linux (Debian Arch, Ubuntu, Linux Mint).

MSM; MSM is a free, open-source , popular Minecraft Server Manager for admins devops, gamers, and administrators. It allows users to create WorldEdit compatible snaps without the need to worry.

Schlagwetter; Schlagwetter is an open-source project that aims to create a server for Minecraft. It is not frequently updated like its competitors. Wrapping up.

As our list draws to an end, we listed the top open-source and cost-free Minecraft server and management panel projects. If you know of any other projects that are on our list, please let us know.

#Ntzsw8 #Go With The Flow

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petitepistol · 4 years

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👫

👫 - holds my muse’s hand

Elena wasn't sure if it was before or after the end of the world, but she knew it didn't even matter anymore. It had to be pretty close to the big finale because there she was fighting off grassland pests with the terrorist adjacent asshole who probably didn't stab her (former?) boss after all considering he just let himself get socked in the jaw the last time she ran into him. Was that the last time she ran into him? She'd stopped keeping track of it.

The last Gagighandi went down like a bag of sand thanks to Strife's big ugly sword, and he swung it around like a flag before holstering it against his back. It's funny, the battle wasn't anywhere near tough but she's somehow too exhausted to snipe at him with a post-battle quip.

Strife opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and pursed his lips in something that might have be akin to confusion. Or maybe annoyance. Elena didn't care to psychoanalyze him at that point. Then he closed the distance between them and took her hands in his. Even with the bulky gloves, they radiated an almost comforting warmth, as the corners of his eyes crinkled into a smile. Strife's lips still looked less like they were genuinely smiling and more like a shit-eating grin. At least, that's what it looked like to her.

"What the hell..." Elena didn't pull her hands away from his, even though she figured maybe she should have. "Is this your way of trying to keep me from decking you again?"

#ic #asks #soldariusx #when the fuck does this take place lmao #really late game after the turks are disbanded?#post game no compilation open sandbox?#are we in cosmo canyon or what?#i dont know but im doing my best #its fun to think about how i would build elena out if compilation never existed #so i aint complaining #however these prompts are hard because i gotta like #write cloud holding the hand in order to set the scene #and it just comes off like godmodding im sorry orz

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queenlua · 3 years

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hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue. see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP. and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP. so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on. there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc. you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

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autumnslance · 4 years

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how do you get into roleplaying on a ff server? like how do you do it and how do you know if your character is lore compliant? ;A; pls youre a big inspo to me

*Hugs Nonny* Getting into RP on a FF server can vary; I don’t actually RP much these days, outside of some friends I already have connections to--and that in itself can be difficult just due to Life! It can take time, and patience, and some fits and starts.

And this gets...really really long, so buckle up and go below the cut, please. :)

The cut got broken by an edit. Sigh.

In game there’s always the RP status tag, and just doing RP with folks in public spaces. There may be trolls now and then, but they can be ignored. I personally find Balmung’s Quicksand area too busy and anxiety inducing and not actually all that conducive to actual RP, even “meet at a tavern” walk-up type. But unless you already have a ready-made group of friends/FCmates willing to RP more than some random walk-ups with you, it may take some legwork to find folks you can and want to write with.

Social Media There are a couple of RP community blogs, like @mooglemeet and @ffxiv-crystal-rp and plenty of server-specific ones. There’s also some Discords for these communities. They host and advertise events and reblog people who are looking for RP contacts. Some of them have running gdoc calendars and in game linkshells and fellowships as well.

Shofie has a good post about Tumblr/social media RP blogging.

@shofie-ffxiv

It’s a fact now that social media outside game is a way to make contacts, or even a medium for RP itself. There are few centralized websites/forums for server RP communities anymore. Making connections over your social media, like Tumblr and Twitter, can help find RP. You can’t just throw your own character info out there or reblog prompts hoping others bite, though; you have to put in some work and show interest in others, too. This can be difficult and even scary. That’s OK.

RP is about collaboration and creating with other people, which means finding folks you can write with, and who see you as someone interesting but also interested in them and their OCs. If you want to keep it a solo endeavor focused on your own OCs, write fanfic (which I’ve actually made friends and gotten RP interests that way too through comment interactions, so hey).

If you reblog a prompt from someone, see others on your dash reblogging prompts, if people reblog that prompt post from you? Send them asks! Alternatively, don’t wait for prompts, just send asks, comments, or chats saying hello and things you notice or like about their blog/character/posts they make. Try to form connections with people you think are genuinely interesting and might be fun to talk with. Social media should be, well, social.

BUT respect boundaries, too. Don’t try sarcasm or jokes with people you don’t actually know, it tends to go over poorly. Unless someone’s specifically posting a naughty meme/prompt, keep stuff you others send clean and polite, especially if it’s unsolicited and you’re not already friends (doubly so if you don’t know how old they are IRL, there are laws you do not want to break). Respect if people aren’t open to random asks or chatting with new followers, or say “no” to RP, and know it’s not personal--it’s just what they have time, energy, and emotional/mental capacity for. Don’t give up on other people, though. This stuff can take time and effort to find those you click with.

Respect and communication with RP partners is pretty key.

Do curate your feeds and don’t be afraid to unfollow/mute/block folks, either. I’m selective in who I follow and remove as needed, too, for my own mental health. I miss so much of the discourse and drama and that’s fine by me. Also it costs nothing to not step in on a lot of the drama when it does pass in sight.

Profiles I have static RP profile pages for my girls here on Tumblr (and a lot of other static links and pages, but I’m weird about organizing like that). This way, if people want to write with me, send me prompts, if I sent them prompts, or they want to otherwise interact with my characters, the information is handily available. For some folks, this makes all the difference in who they choose to interact with: how easily can they find even basic info about your OC?

Some people make Carrds. Some folks have gdoc links, or use Dreamwidth, etc. Just keep the links in the blog’s sidebar menu, and/or in the blog desc so people can see ‘em on mobile. There are templates out there, or you can make your own. Feel free to snag mine if you’d like. A lot of times people also copy their profiles to rebloggable posts when looking for RP contacts. Profiles are a good way to let folks know just the at-a-glance basics about your character(s).

I picked a simple theme with a simple layout that makes it easy to add and show off links. I put them in the blog desc to make them easy to find on mobile, too.

[Images: links from my blog sidebar menu showing how over organized I am]

RP, Stories, Lore Post some stories or RP logs (with permission of others involved) or even just random little blurbs and headcanons, as well as any screenshots, art, aesthetic posts for your OCs. Have something of interest to show for your character, too, so some of those folks your interacting with have something of their own to see and ask about!

If possible, try some light RP with friends and FC Mates who are amenable. Go to events, even if just to lurk at first. When you do get up the nerve to talk to people, don’t try to throw a character’s entire backstory at them, or try to steal the limelight--RP is collaboration, back and forth, and a lot like real conversation. Maybe come up with little light things to talk about if asked; a recent adventuring job, a silly shopping incident, etc. They can break the ice or just give you something to reply with for a few minutes.

Lore Compliance is Variable. Some people really want lore compliance, others are OK bending it here and there, while still others throw it out the window entirely. If you want to be super lore compliant...read. There’s a LOT of information, in game and out, for finding lore; from official publications and website material, to tools like Garland Tools site, to compilation blogs like @mirkemenagerie.

Note what’s important for your concept. Narrow it down. Characters aren’t going to know or be or do everything, so only worry about what’s necessary for the base idea. And be flexible; it’s SE’s sandbox, we just play in it, and they can change things any time. They usually do it in the guise of characters not knowing/having all the correct information, at least, but also some places just don’t exist in game yet so we don’t have info.

I’m unspecific about a lot of elements of Aeryn’s childhood, for instance, other than “traveling merchants near Thavnair.” I don’t have to be super specific. I can keep most details vague, and focus on her family and those relationships.

Dark, as my first character, has a fairly simple backstory that I’ve expanded on and adjusted over time as I learned and came up with new info. I also bet no one remembers I originally said Dark was from the North Shroud. I’ve changed things (now from East Shroud, due to the proximity to Gyr Abania and its Hellsguards) as I learned more about the world and my character. You don’t want to change things willy-nilly, but sometimes being flexible and smoothing down some rough edges and making small changes can be fine, especially as one gets more lore over time.

Iyna has a pretty detailed backstory, that came from a basic idea, and checking dates in the pre-Calamity timeline. I based her being taken and trained the way she was not only on what info we have about Garlemald’s imperial practices with conquered provinces, but borrowed a bit from real life and the re-education schools many Native Americans were forced into (though I haven’t gone into detail on that yet, either). I tied the turning point in Iyna’s life to a major event that wasn’t the Calamity, and have left plenty of space in between for me to fill in as time goes on and I learn more about her and the world.

The world isn’t static, and is bigger and more diverse than what can be shown in the game. There’s space in the margins for plenty of weird stuff and contradictions or unusual cases. So read up on what you can, ask questions, and then find where in those spaces your OC fits. Then, find people who enjoy similar tastes in lore compliance (or non-compliance), and who enjoy playing with you and your OCs, and not worrying about the rest. Can’t please everyone, nor get along with everyone, so don’t try; just find what works for you, and who works with you, and don’t police anyone else’s pretendy fun times, either.

There’s no magic answer on the “right” amount of lore compliance, or how to quickly and easily find RP partners or break into the broader RP community.

I hope this helps at least a little bit! Good luck in finding your niche for RP, and maybe I’ll see you sometime at an event :)

#roleplay #blogging #writing #social media #long post #nonny got me thinking #some links #hope this helps?#Anonymous

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raw-output · 5 years

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20 Years.

Two-thirds of a lifetime ago, a ten-year-old boy in a scratchy wool sweater sat huddled under an old down blanket. The first proper snow of the season had come the week before, and the boy hadn’t been dressed for building forts. Now here he was - bored, sick and sweaty. His mother entered the room with a mug of undrinkably hot milk with honey and butter. In her other hand was an issue of GAME.EXE, a computer gaming magazine. The words “HALF-LIFE” were plastered across the bottom of the cover. The boy loved reading, and loved computers, and the milk needed time to cool off anyway. He opened the magazine and flipped to page 8 after finding it in the table of contents. The boy grew older and switched languages, countries and continents, but his favorite game never changed.

It’s hard to compress two decades into text, but I will attempt to do so when it comes to my relationship with the Half-Life series that began all those years ago, with that preview article in that magazine.

The article was written in a second-person perspective that really stuck out to me, and was filled with screenshots that would later turn out to be of an unreleased rough beta version of the game. It ran through several dramatized, episodic descriptions of events in the game, then listed out the weapons used in the game, the enemies you would face and the tactics to deal with them. Finally, there was an interview with Marc Laidlaw himself. This single article was sufficient to make me completely insufferable to my parents for the next few months. “I want to play Half-Life,” I would say. At first, this meant asking to go to an Internet cafe a few blocks away from home, and for money to pay by the hour and use one of their beefy gaming PCs. Later on, it meant asking for a copy of the game, and for time on the “main” home computer - the only machine that could run the game at all, in glorious 320x240 resolution that gave me headaches.

A couple of years passed. The move to the US threw everything into a pleasant state of disarray, but the one thing that hadn’t changed was having to ask my parents to use the computer to play Half-Life. I had found one of my own soon after arriving in the States, but it had no sound card. It was there, on my mother’s computer, that I finally beat the game. My thirteenth birthday present was a copy of the newly released Opposing Force expansion. My birthday cake featured an edible photo of myself playing in a fountain in downtown Chicago, which my mother doodled over with brightly colored frosting. I was now knee-deep in toxic green sludge, a crowbar in one hand, and a proud Lambda logo on my chest.

Most kids in my 8th and 9th grade classes didn’t share my enthusiasm for Half-Life. They played console games and were rightfully hyped about the Playstation 2 and X-Box. In search of like-minded people, I took to the Internet. My options for getting online in 2001 were limited to libraries - either during lunch at school, or at the Naperville Public Library, which was a hour-long walk from home. I discovered Planet Half-Life, an offshoot of the Gamespy network. Through it, I discovered the fact that my favorite game was designed from the ground up to be moddable. I learned of Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and Sven Co-op. I discovered the Handy Vandal’s Almanac and The Snarkpit, two communities focused on level design. Having no reliable internet at home, I downloaded the level editor - then called Worldcraft - onto a floppy drive and brought it home to install. For the first time, I wasn’t simply playing the game. My parents looked on as I worked to figure out the obtuse user interface, trying to remember what I’d read earlier in the day. They raised their eyebrows when I finally managed to compile and run my first level - a hollow, unlit concrete box 512 units across with a single prefab trashcan hovering in the center. There wasn’t much more I could do in the limited time I was allowed to use the good computer, but I had caught the bug. My notebooks were filled with doodles of level layouts, my mind filled with cheesy storylines to match.

Eventually my family moved to a house with proper internet access, and I got a set of hardware with enough power under the hood to run both the game and the editor. It could even produce sound! All the things I could only read and salivate about were now within my reach, and I gorged myself on them. Counter-Strike quickly fell by the wayside, but Team Fortress and Sven Co-Op did not. Natural Selection came out and blew me away with how different a Half-Life mod could look and feel from the original game. I stayed up past midnight, playing, building, and playing some more. I learned that projects can die - when the extremely tongue-in-cheek Scientist Slaughterhouse mod went silent.

The release of the Half-Life 2 trailer took everybody by surprise. I had called one of my like-minded friends and we synch-watched it together, pausing every few minutes to let the video buffer and gush about how amazing everything looked and how much we were looking forward to messing with the modding toolkit. The subsequent beta leak and resulting delays taught me to be patient.

The move to California was not long after, and my patience was immediately put to the test as most of my belongings were stuck with the moving company, including my computer. I must have gone through a full pack of printer paper in less than a month, drawing up concepts and layouts for Xen Rebels, a mod centered around a semi-peaceful human colonization of the realm set after the events of Half-Life. Once my computer arrived, it was right back to the late nights and groggy mornings for me. Our home Internet was bad but workable, and I spent countless hours with the new and more creative mods that were being released, including The Specialists - a strong attempt to recreate the gun-fighting and martial arts stylings of Hong-Kong action movies in a multiplayer game. Around the same time I was introduced to the strange new world of anime, and decided that I simply must change the two throwable knives offered by The Specialists into kunai and throwing needles. This of course required me to learn 3D modelling. At the time, this was done with Milkshape 3D, a model editor compatible with most contemporary game formats. Once again, countless hours of figuring out the interface and the workflow followed, set to the calming tones of the Unreal, Deus Ex and Half-Life soundtracks. Creating models felt a lot more freeform than levels as I wasn’t constrained to a unit grid or forced to use convex geometry, and one day the new throwing weapons were in. I published the modified models on a forum to exactly zero fanfare. Around the same time, I began learning the basics of Photoshop in school, so modelling and texturing went hand in hand. To say my early textures were atrocious would be an affront to honest, hard-working atrocious textures the world over, but I continued my studies. My experience with working in 3D even netted me a 2nd place award at the school art contest - money which I immediately put back into upgrading my computer.

Half-Life 2 came out in November of 2004, to universal praise and celebration. I received the collector’s edition as a present for New Year, along with a copy of Raising The Bar. I beat the game the same morning, without a wink of sleep between unwrapping my present and the final darkness of the credits screen. The SDK didn’t ship with the game, but as soon as it was released I dove in. Soon after, the modding community blossomed, bigger and more vibrant than the original game’s, driven by the incredible flexibility of the engine. One of the first mods that appeared was made by a British man named Garry, and was called simply that, “Garry’s Mod”. It let players interact with the physics engine, and slowly sprouted more and more features. Many players used these features to pose character ragdolls, eventually creating entire comic series with storylines ranging from the comedic non-sequitur to dark and serious. Of course I felt the need to try my hand at it. That lead to the creation of The Plane - the story of Beet, a Combine Elite who managed to break free of his overseers’ indoctrination and find friendship, love, and revenge on his old masters. The only redeeming feature of that story was that it taught me how not to write stories.

I began getting more attached to the Gmod community than the expressly level design one at The Snarkpit. The few levels I publicly released were designed specifically as sandboxes to play and build in. The most popular ones were gm_orbit and rp_bahamut, maps set in space and featuring zero gravity for physical objects, allowing players to build smaller spaceships, or roleplay as the crew of a salvage and exploration vessel. Posting teaser images on the forums taught me a valuable lesson - what it felt like to be the one creating hype, instead of experiencing it. The constant demands were overwhelming. Some would simply want more work-in-progress screenshots. Others would drop ultimatums that unless a certain feature was designed a certain way, they would refuse to use the map. Others yet attempted to worm their way into getting the map early, offering to test it and provide feedback. I had almost deleted each project multiple times before finally releasing it.

Life happened, and things with Half-Life slowed down. When the Orange Box came out in 2006, I attempted to get it at a five-finger discount at a local Target. I got caught. Indirectly thought it was, Half-Life taught me that idiocy often leads to consequences. Buying it legitimately later in the year and playing through Episode Two reminded me that some stories aren’t written to end neatly.

It was in 2007 that I bought a membership for the Something Awful forums, and discovered an avid and very exclusive community of Gmod players. Over the course of the following decade, most of these people remained in constant contact with me, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. I became an admin once we opened our serves to the public - moderating the newcomers and mentoring the unskilled. One of the people had a project in mind, and I began creating models again. Miraculously, Milkshape 3D remained compatible with the Source engine, so I worked with it until I learned Maya. This project would eventually become known as Armored Combat Framework, and be released to the Gmod community at large. I learned how to iterate designs based on feedback, and how it felt to work in a well organized team.

Frontier happened around 2010, and was another lesson in teamwork - specifically what happens when things break down without role redundancy. Ambitions ran high, and the hype mounted. The programmer eventually left, and all that remains of the project is the very videos and images that were used to hype it in the first place, and a folder full of now-useless models, maps and textures. That was probably what prompted me to start pulling away from Half-Life and Gmod in general.

Black Mesa came out in 2012 and breathed a new life into my old obsession. I played through the original Half-Life again, then through the remake, noting the differences and the tweaks to make the gameplay more palatable to modern-day players. It felt good, like putting on an old but comfortable jacket. I’d fire up the SDK now and then, mostly to help newer, more driven designers. Two of the guys from Team Frontier went on to work in the industry full-time. There were whispers of a new game in the works, minor leaks of file and folder names hidden away in Valve projects. Episode 3 turned into Half-Life 3. A full sequel, rather than another short episode, as originally planned. “HL3 Confirmed” became a meme, but the people at the top remained silent.

Life kept happening, as it does. I lost people, I found people. I left home. Every now and then I’d fire up HL or BM again, or drop by the old Gmod server. I’d build things and model things, and release none of it to the public. I watched as the Dota International became the most widely spectated event in gaming, making players, sponsors, and Valve millions. The realization slowly started settling in. Then Marc Laidlaw retired, and later posted the Epistle. The workers at Valve spoke of a lack of direction and stagnation that comes with a cornered market. Modding for an engine over a decade old, no matter how advanced, slowed down.

It’s a different world now. Unity and Unreal engines rule the scene. Survival and Battle Royale have become the new buzzwords. Microtransactions. Loot boxes. Streaming integration. Freemium. E-Sports. Mobile gaming. Virtual Reality. If a new Half-Life were to appear today, would it be changed by the zeitgeist, or would it stay the course set by its predecessors? I don’t know. But there’s one thing that the escapades of a mute, bespectacled research associate have taught me more than anything else: hope.

#half-life #anniversary #20 years #textwall #nostalgia

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earthfromanothersun · 3 years

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Earth From Another Sun Daily Development Update: March 31st, 2021

Greetings! Anthony and Freeman here. We are here to deliver the freshest update on "what the Earth From Another Sun team worked on", for March 31st, 2021.

We are publishing these updates because we aim to be the most transparent dev team ever, and we are willing to share as much as possible so you can get an accurate picture of the development progress of Earth From Another Sun.

If there's anything else you'd like to know about the development progress, process, vision, or anything else, let us know! (here or on Discord.gg/EFAS)

Alright, here's today's dev update:

Completed a number of new post-battle defeat chance events.

Updated game localization.

Working on improving War Field battle numerical design (balanced turret and mech strengths).

Working on dynamically adjusting network synchronization frequency of objects depending on proximity to a player.

AI NPC object pool now spawns and removes objects depending on the scene (for faster loading and lower memory usage).

Adjusted entity convert process during AI NPC spawning (for faster code compilation).

Improved the aggro logic of the Pem Jumper combat unit.

Uploaded a new Alpha 49 build, to fix the over-exposure visual defect in some survival battles. Also added a prompt to fill in our survey. Please help the game improve by filling in this survey! :)

Fixed some localization issues where text in some UIs are displayed in the incorrect language.

Moved the change language feature to the settings menu.

Compring Bolt and Visual Scripting (which is a new feature in Unity 2021, and looks really cool!).

Working on a new resource management system, and added a layer of abstraction on top the Addressables.

Improved the asteroid belt generation algorithm, for a more natural looking belt!

Improved some Infantry combat unit animations.

Working on a UI to choose single and multiplayer for the sandbox universe.

Further polished our new login system.

Working on transitioning the sandbox universe to a HostClient architecture.

Removed the usage of Netcode from the project.

Working on server/client initialization process, for improving the networking of the sandbox universe.

Optimized and rebaked the Cloud Palaces city lightmaps.

So that's it for today! See you tomorrow!

Earth From Another Sun has a grand vision, and that is to one day become the most addictive open-world game ever made, a world with an incredible amount of content for you to explore. As many players have said, the current version is already fun, but we know there's still a long way to go.

But we believe, if we work hard, day in, day out, and keep at it endlessly, then the impossible will become the possible, and the possible will become the realized.

Let's keep going.

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fortnitebattleroyalevbuckhack · 6 years

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Fortnite: Battle Royale’ review

When you have been reading about or even playing video games in the last few months, you’ve probably heard someone talking about Fortnite. Epic Games’ post-Gears of War project entered early access in July, 2017, as a co-operative sandbox survival game. These days, though, when players discuss Fortnite — and that happens a lot — it’s safe to assume they are referring to Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play mode that Epic quickly added to the game in reaction to the wild success of Battle Royale innovator PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Fortnite: Battle Royale cribs its structure from PUBG, much to the dismay of its creator, Brendan Greene. While the similarities between the two games can be striking, Fortnite’s cartoonish visuals and arcade shooter-style play distinguish it from its predecessor. It is also, as we mentioned, free-to-play, which makes it a perfect jumping off point for individuals who had been hesitant to invest in PUBG.

Get Free: Fortnite Battle Royale V-Buck Hack

Like the shooting, the building system seems hell-bent on fostering chaos, which may be fun, but often leaves you wondering what went wrong. Even if you happen to play a perfect match — you collected a truckload of resources, acquired a small arsenal of powerful ranged weapons, and situated yourself up in an elaborate fortress — there’s always a chance that someone will prematurely spoil your victory lap by blasting the fortress with a rocket launcher, sending you to your death.

Fortnite follows the now-hardwired rules of a Battle Royale, but also forces you to bend away from that logic, to put yourself out in the thick of the fight even though you will likely die and have to queue up another match. There’s a direct correlation with how little you care about protecting about winning and how much fun you’ll have. That isn’t necessarily problem in itself, but Fortnite doesn’t really click unless you approach it in a very specific way — One that isn’t as intuitive as it could or should be.

Remember what ‘Fortnite’ was supposed to be?

All of Fortnite’s mechanics that feel somewhat out of place in Battle Royale — its loose arcade-y action, its building, and emphasis on loot — make sense when you dive into its original game mode, sub-branded “Fortnite: Save the World. ”

The game doesn’t begin to click unless you approach it in a very specific way. In Conserve the World, a tornado comes, wiping out almost all of humanity and filling the world with hordes of zombies. Each mission duties you and up to three friends with pressing back against the living dead hordes by fortifying a position using the same building tools present in Fight Royale, or completing a series of errands around the map in a set amount of time.

House mechanics place a strategic focus on what would otherwise become a rote gruppe mode. It’s good, fast fun however unfortunately, it grows stale rather quickly. Its progression, great work for experience, loot, and building up your home base, feels overwrought.

There are simply too much heading on here — a dizzying amount of experience point variations, multiple currencies, ability trees — all of it compiled in a confusingly massive menu system that you’ll spend a lot of time sorting through in between action. The game attempts to make clear its obtuse systems, but when selecting through menu system is deemed an actual “mission, ” you understand something is wrong.

For the most dedicated Save the Planet players, free updates released with the game’s “season” system have added additional quests and story content not present in Fortnite: Battle Royale. These updates have modified the way you acquire gear, with loot dropped by conquered enemies and special “caches” readily available for beating mini-bosses. Brand new sub-classes give you more options for the way you indulge in combat, with additional weapons and talents.

While interesting sometimes, that content supplements the overall game that’s already there, without than address the mode’s issues. For better or worse, the classic Fortnite experience endures.

Propelling Fortnite even further into open public consciousness, a mobile version of Fortnite has launched on smartphones. The mobile version of Fortnite, which is out on iOS and coming to Android in April, 2018, is no “de-make” or compromised derivative: It is the complete Fortnite experience, translated to touchscreen controls. Cross-play with PC and consoles is possible, but only by opting-in, which will give some players peace of mind about the inherent handicap of playing on touch controls versus opponents on gamepads or mouse and keyboard.

That being said, although we found that the touch controls put us at a distinct disadvantage over console and PC players, that was obviously not the case for many of our opponents, who seemed to be more deft with the touch controls than we could be even with the gamepad.

Fortnite and the comparable PUBG Mobile are leading the charge of more heavyweight, “gamers’ games” making good-faith efforts to launch to mobile platforms. Traditionally, console and PC games have jumped to mobile as cheap ports and casual side-stories. Fortnite‘s free-to-play model is indicative of how financial practices incubated in the mobile space have already been informing AAA game design. As the technical barriers between platforms dissipate, so to do the other categorical variations between their games, which makes Fortnite an interesting harbinger of games to come.

OUR TAKE

Fortnite: Battle Royale is a fast-paced arcade alternative to PUBG, but it fails in the tension department. Its good fun when you play like you don’t only have one life, but that in and of itself makes it feel like an oddity that hasn’t quite found its identity yet. The Save the World campaign makes better use of Fortnite’s mechanics, but it’s severely hampered by its needlessly elaborate development system. Both modes show promise, but fall brief, mainly from trying to do too much.

Is usually there the alternative?

Whilst it is a bigger investment, we feel that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds provides the better Battle Royale experience, especially on PC. Upon PS4, where PUBG is not available, Fortnite: Fight Royale is currently the definitive Battle Royale experience.

When it comes to core Fortnite experience, loot-driven games Monster Seeker: World and Destiny 2 handle the grind better, and give a more participating lasting loop.

How long will it last?

Fortnite: Battle Royale and Conserve the World don’t have a strong ending. You can play either version as long as there are enough players online, and right now it seems the overall game will remain popular for years in the future.

Need to you buy it?

We all don’t recommend buying the Save the World marketing campaign, but since Fortnite: Fight Royale is free-to-play, there is no reason to not dip your toe in and see if you like it.

#fortnite #fortnite battle royale #fortnite battle royale v-bucks hack

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tak4hir0 · 5 years

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Rules Package size below 13 kB All your code and game assets should be smaller than or equal to 13 kilobytes (that's exactly 13,312 bytes, because of 13 x 1024) when zipped. Your .zip package should contain index.html file in the top level folder structure (not a subfolder) and when unzipped should work in the browser. Don't overcomplicate building the zip package, it should unpack on any platform without problems. You can use tools that minify JavaScript source code. Two sources - readable and compressed The competition is focusing on the package size, but learning from others is also very important. Please provide two sources of your game - first one should be minified and zipped to fit in the 13 kB limit (sent via the form) and the second one should be in a readable form with descriptive variable names and comments (hosted on GitHub). No external libraries or services You can't use any libraries, images or data files hosted on server or services that provide any type of data - for example Google Fonts are not permitted (although you are allowed to ask users to live-load a web font to support some characters or emoji on devices that can't display them properly, but you have to make sure your game will work without them). Analytics and other stat-collecting scripts are also not allowed. Your game should work offline (Desktop and Mobile categories) and all the game assets should fit in the package size limit (not counting WebXR's A-Frame, Babylon.js, and Three.js frameworks). If you manage to shrink your favorite library below 13 kilobytes including the code itself, then you can use whatever you want, just remember about the 13 kB limit. Main theme Main theme for the competition is back. It's highly advised to follow it in your game, because the judges will pay attention to that, but you can freely interpret the theme and implement it however you feel would be the best. Deadline - 13th September 2019 The competition starts at 13:00 CEST, 13th August 2019 and ends at 13:00 CEST, 13th September 2019. No submissions will be accepted after the end of the competition, although there may be exceptions to that. Licensing You have to have the rights for every asset used in your game. Remember that the submitted games will be published and made available for everybody to see. On the other hand, you have the right to report any game publisher that will link to (or iframe) your entry on their portal without your permission. New content only Do not submit any old games or demos - you have a whole month to work on something new and fresh, this should be more than enough. Also, submitting Breakout or Flappy Bird clones taken out of a tutorial make no sense at all - try creating something at least a little bit more original. Errors and browser support Your game must work and be playable in at least two browsers: latest Firefox and Chrome, but the more supported browsers, the better. There should be no errors - you can lose some points if your game is showing any errors in the console. If we cannot play your game, it won't be accepted. Teams It doesn't matter if you're working alone or with your friends, just remember that the number of prizes is fixed, so you'll have to share your trophies with your teammates. Sending submissions There's a special form to submit your game. Please remember that you have to provide two sources (see the Rule #2 for details) - a link to a public repository on Github and a zipped package. Participants are allowed to submit more than one game in the competition, though sending the same game as independent submissions targeting different platforms (for example separate builds for desktop and mobile) is forbidden. Accepting submissions Submissions will be checked manually and published after positive verification. This may take up to a couple of days, so be patient if your game is not yet online. I claim the right to reject any submission without giving a reason, although I hope I don't have to. I also have the right to update the rules of the competition at any time. Time frames for voting, giving feedback, and announcing winners The voting among the participants will last for three weeks between September 16th and October 4th, winners will be announced on October 5th. Experts will give the games constructive feedback (one per game) during the same three week period - their comments will also be published on October 5th. Save data ⁄ persistent memory Remember to add prefix to your variables and create a namespace for your game when you save data to localStorage as all the games on the server share the same memory when played in the browser. Also, be sure to NOT use localStorage.clear() as it will wipe out all the data of all the other games. Manipulate the data you are sure is yours. Server category specific rules All the Server category rules, the sandbox server and the demo code can be found at github.com/js13kGames/js13kserver. Code of conduct All participants and judges at js13kGames are required to agree with the following code of conduct. Organizers will enforce this code throughout the online event. We are expecting cooperation from all participants to help ensuring a safe environment for everybody. Js13kGames is dedicated to providing a harassment-free competition experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of competition participants in any form. Competition participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the competition at the discretion of the competition organizers. TL;DR: Be excellent to each other. For more details see Berlin Code of Conduct. Privacy policy By entering your email address and sending a game through the submit form you agree to receive email communication about important events of the competition like announcing the winners or sending out the digital prizes, but also curated content from the partners about their tools, services, or job offers. I will never share your email with anyone though. Frequently Asked Questions Why exactly 13 kB? Well... why not? :) What's in it for you? Are you getting paid? Nope, it's just my own idea and it's made for pure fun. I'd love to get a sponsorship though as I spent my own private money on the first edition to cover making t-shirts, shipping of the prizes worldwide, etc. What does the "zipped" term exactly mean? Sent package should be zipped with your usual system archiver, the only allowed extension is .zip. Let's keep it simple - it's a competition for coders and this should be your main focus, the code itself. Thanks to the zipped archive you will easily send your game and we will easily check the file size. Can I use Flash? No, you can code your game using only the open web technologies like JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Can I use WebGL? Yes, though it might be hard to fit it into 13 kilobytes if you plan on doing an FPS game. Can I use CoffeeScript or TypeScript? Yes, you can use it, but you can't submit it. Only JavaScript code will be accepted, so remember to have your compiled code within the 13 kB limit. This is to ensure that the submitted entries are an actual HTML page with scripts, not a binary. Can I use WebAssembly and ⁄ or Rust? Yes, after all those are web technologies, and can work well with JavaScript games if used properly. Can I use compression through the self-extracting PNGs? You can use it, but remember that the zip is as good, or even better in terms of compression than PNGs, so there's no point in doing so. Do I have to register somewhere? No, you just need to submit your game through a form when it's ready. How many games can I submit? As many as you want, there are no limitations. More questions? Send them in via email or social media or post them in the dedicated topic at the HTML5GameDevs forums.

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petitepistol · 4 years

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★

At first, Elena thought he was a dangerous stolen valor terrorist asshole, but then she softened her stance to him being a dumbass stolen valor terrorist asshole.

These two trends continued throughout the game switching places several times until things were finally just too FUBAR for her to properly summon animosity towards him, and at that point, if she wasn’t apathetic to him, she might have actually had some kind of rueful empathy towards the backwater cannon fodder who really just wound up being in the wrong place at the wrong time and now had to deal with an unfathomable clusterfuck.

Either way, Cloud Strife gets on her nerves in a way that isn’t too different from the way that Reno & Rude piss her off. So hypothetically, at some point, she could call a truce and get along, even if there is an underlying hatred of his guts.

#asks #soldariusx #this was interesting to think about since i know you do not fuck with compilation shit #post-game open sandbox ditching compilation they could probably get along reasonably enough #also i don't know about your cloud #but my elena totally socked him in the face in the icicle segment #not gonna bring that up since it's a branching choice though

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nancydsmithus · 5 years

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Beyond The Browser: Getting Started With Serverless WebAssembly

Robert Aboukhalil

2019-08-28T13:30:59+02:002019-08-28T12:17:07+00:00

Now that WebAssembly is supported by all major browsers and more than 85% of users worldwide, JavaScript is no longer the only browser language in town. If you haven’t heard, WebAssembly is a new low-level language that runs in the browser. It’s also a compilation target, which means you can compile existing programs written in languages such as C, C++, and Rust into WebAssembly, and run those programs in the browser. So far, WebAssembly has been used to port all sorts of applications to the web, including desktop applications, command-line tools, games and data science tools.

Note: For an in-depth case study of how WebAssembly can be used inside the browser to speed up web applications, check out my previous article.

WebAssembly Outside The Web?

Although most WebAssembly applications today are browser-centric, WebAssembly itself wasn’t originally designed just for the web, but really for any sandboxed environment. In fact, there’s recently been a lot of interest in exploring how WebAssembly could be useful outside the browser, as a general approach for running binaries on any OS or computer architecture, so long as there is a WebAssembly runtime that supports that system. In this article, we’ll look at how WebAssembly can be run outside the browser, in a serverless/Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) fashion.

WebAssembly For Serverless Applications

In a nutshell, serverless functions are a computing model where you hand your code to a cloud provider, and let them execute and manage scaling that code for you. For example, you can ask for your serverless function to be executed anytime you call an API endpoint, or to be driven by events, such as when a file is uploaded to your cloud bucket. While the term “serverless” may seem like a misnomer since servers are clearly involved somewhere along the way, it is serverless from our point of view since we don’t need to worry about how to manage, deploy or scale those servers.

Although these functions are usually written in languages like Python and JavaScript (Node.js), there are a number of reasons you might choose to use WebAssembly instead:

Faster Initialization Times Serverless providers that support WebAssembly (including Cloudflare and Fastly report that they can launch functions at least an order of magnitude faster than most cloud providers can with other languages. They achieve this by running tens of thousands of WebAssembly modules in the same process, which is possible because the sandboxed nature of WebAssembly makes for a more efficient way of obtaining the isolation that containers are traditionally used for.

No Rewrites Needed One of the main appeals of WebAssembly in the browser is the ability to port existing code to the web without having to rewrite everything to JavaScript. This benefit still holds true in the serverless use case because cloud providers limit which languages you can write your serverless functions in. Typically, they will support Python, Node.js, and maybe a few others, but certainly not C, C++, or Rust. By supporting WebAssembly, serverless providers can indirectly support a lot more languages.

More Lightweight When running WebAssembly in the browser, we’re relying on the end user’s computer to perform our computations. If those computations are too intensive, our users won’t be happy when their computer fan starts whirring. Running WebAssembly outside the browser gives us the speed and portability benefits of WebAssembly, while also keeping our application lightweight. On top of that, since we’re running our WebAssembly code in a more predictable environment, we can potentially perform more intensive computations.

A Concrete Example

In my previous article here on Smashing Magazine, we discussed how we sped up a web application by replacing slow JavaScript calculations with C code compiled to WebAssembly. The web app in question was fastq.bio, a tool for previewing the quality of DNA sequencing data.

As a concrete example, let’s rewrite fastq.bio as an application that makes use of serverless WebAssembly instead of running the WebAssembly inside the browser. For this article, we’ll use Cloudflare Workers, a serverless provider that supports WebAssembly and is built on top of the V8 browser engine. Another cloud provider, Fastly, is working on a similar offering, but based on their Lucet runtime.

First, let’s write some Rust code to analyze the data quality of DNA sequencing data. For convenience, we can leverage the Rust-Bio bioinformatics library to handle parsing the input data, and the wasm-bindgen library to help us compile our Rust code to WebAssembly.

Here’s a snippet of the code that reads in DNA sequencing data and outputs a JSON with a summary of quality metrics:

// Import packages extern crate wasm_bindgen; use bio::seq_analysis::gc; use bio::io::fastq; ... // This "wasm_bindgen" tag lets us denote the functions // we want to expose in our WebAssembly module #[wasm_bindgen] pub fn fastq_metrics(seq: String) -> String { ... // Loop through lines in the file let reader = fastq::Reader::new(seq.as_bytes()); for result in reader.records() { let record = result.unwrap(); let sequence = record.seq(); // Calculate simple statistics on each record n_reads += 1.0; let read_length = sequence.len(); let read_gc = gc::gc_content(sequence); // We want to draw histograms of these values // so we store their values for later plotting hist_gc.push(read_gc * 100.0); hist_len.push(read_length); ... } // Return statistics as a JSON blob json!({ "n": n_reads, "hist": { "gc": hist_gc, "len": hist_len }, ... }).to_string() }

We then used Cloudflare’s wrangler command-line tool to do the heavy lifting of compiling to WebAssembly and deploying to the cloud. Once done, we are given an API endpoint that takes sequencing data as input and returns a JSON with data quality metrics. We can now integrate that API into our application.

Here’s a GIF of the application in action:

Instead of running the analysis directly in the browser, the serverless version of our application makes several POST requests in parallel to our serverless function (see right sidebar), and updates the plots each time it returns more data. (Large preview)

The full code is available on GitHub (open-source).

Putting It All In Context

To put the serverless WebAssembly approach in context, let’s consider four main ways in which we can build data processing web applications (i.e. web apps where we perform analysis on data provided by the user):

Four different architectural choices that we can take for apps that process data. (Large preview)

As shown above, the data processing can be done in several places:

Server-Side This is the approach taken by most web applications, where API calls made in the front-end launch data processing on the back-end.

Client-Side JavaScript In this approach, the data processing code is written in JavaScript and runs in the browser. The downside is that your performance will take a hit, and if your original code wasn’t in JavaScript, you’ll need to rewrite it from scratch!

Client-Side WebAssembly This involves compiling data analysis code to WebAssembly and running it in the browser. If the analysis code was written in languages like C, C++ or Rust (as is often the case in my field of genomics), this obviates the need to rewrite complex algorithms in JavaScript. It also provides the potential for speeding up our application (e.g. as discussed in a previous article).

Serverless WebAssembly This involves running the compiled WebAssembly on the cloud, using a FaaS kind of model (e.g. this article).

So why would you choose the serverless approach over the others? For one thing, compared to the first approach, it has the benefits that come with using WebAssembly, especially the ability to port existing code without having to rewrite it to JavaScript. Compared to the third approach, serverless WebAssembly also means our app is more lightweight since we don’t use the user’s resources for number crunching. In particular, if the computations are fairly involved or if the data is already in the cloud, this approach makes more sense.

On the other hand, however, the app now needs to make network connections, so the application will likely be slower. Furthermore, depending on the scale of the computation and whether it is amenable to be broken down into smaller analysis pieces, this approach might not be suitable due to limitations imposed by serverless cloud providers on runtime, CPU, and RAM utilization.

Conclusion

As we saw, it is now possible to run WebAssembly code in a serverless fashion and reap the benefits of both WebAssembly (portability and speed) and those of function-as-a-service architectures (auto-scaling and per-per-use pricing). Certain types of applications — such as data analysis and image processing, to name a few — can greatly benefit from such an approach. Though the runtime suffers because of the additional round-trips to the network, this approach does allow us to process more data at a time and not put a drain on users’ resources.

(rb, dm, yk, il)

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landenxxev828-blog · 4 years

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7 Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About gta 5 rp

Worldwide of Grand Theft Auto money is king. Below we'll describe exactly how to generate income quickly in GTA 5 story setting, specifically by using Lester's stock market assassiantion missions particularly, which are without a doubt the best way to make Trevor, Michael as well as Franklin's lives (and a lot more importantly your tale playthrough) a little simpler, and also most likely a whole lot a lot more enjoyable.

There are a great deal of money making methods in GTA Online. Since GTA V Online's Diamond Gambling establishment and also Resort has opened its doors, we've got a concept of what the DLC's things will certainly cost you. A: The hacks the device makes use of to produce the in-game currency have to imitate certain actions in the game several times to farm the currency.

The multiplayer section of GTA 5, called Grand Theft Auto Online, was created as an experience wholly separate from the single-player story. Solve your money issue and assistance get what you want throughout Los Santos as well as Blaine Area with the periodic acquisition of money packs for Grand Theft Auto Online.

This is how Grand Theft Auto 5 truly wants you to make money. Finished videos can be posted directly from the Superstar Editor to YouTube and also the Superstar Games Social Club for very easy sharing. Jobs are one of the most consistent money making technique in GTA Online, while additionally being the most attainable since they don't require a start up charge.

Grand Theft Auto V and Whale Shark Cash Card worth $3,500,000 in-game GTA bucks to invest in GTA Online. The actions as well as financial investments of every other player linked to the Rockstar Gamings Social Club influence this second stock exchange, so it's essential to stay on your toes. Rockstar Games' sandbox hit is the very popular enjoyment item in background: bigger than any movie, cd, TV program or game ever before released by any other business.

It is the most up to date access in the Grand Theft Auto video gaming franchise given that Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008. Taking part in GTA Online Jobs is one of the most constant and also probably pleasurable techniques of making money. The larger the card, the less costly the GTA$ will certainly be, which will likely motivate players to spend $20 as well as get a bigger lump of money to have fun with.

Grand Theft Auto Online for PC will consist of all existing gameplay upgrades as well as Rockstar-created content launched considering that the launch of Grand Theft Auto Online, including Heists and also Enemy modes. All GTA 5 cheats for every single platform, in one place. A lot of these techniques can be done from the very beginning of your GTA Online experience while several of them are for late-game, and call for significant start-up expenses.

GTA 5 Money functions the like it always carries the surface area, however the GTA 5 stock exchange, coming in the form of the really maturely named BAWSAQ as well as LCN markets, have added a big shakeup to the very best GTA 5 money making methods in-game. Log into your account as well as appreciate the free in-game money.

Discover the spectacular globe of Los Santos and also Blaine Region in the utmost Grand Theft Auto V experience, including a variety of technological upgrades and improvements for brand-new and also returning players. The gambling enterprise building has been stood in San Andreas since the earliest days of Grand Theft Auto Online, yet it has never been accessible.

Wait till the stock reaches its peak price, listed in the "Cost return of" column below (this percent return is detailed on the "Profile" web page of the marketplace on the in-game internet browser). Besides, one of the most important part of finance after actually making it, is just how you invest it. Awaiting a GTA weekend to acquire a pricey residential or commercial property or car will most definitely conserve you some cash on the future and maximize some area in your bank for additional splurges.

A lot of these streams will not really reward followers with in-game money. Some streams ask visitors to give away real-world money to acquire welcomes to exclusive GTA Online entrance halls where they can obtain in-game money declines. When within, Rockstar claims, players can experience "the enjoyment of rotating the Lucky Wheel for an opportunity at life-altering prizes" while likewise appreciating "a variety of advanced table games and much more".

You must after that invest all of this money into the stock exchange as you overcome Lester's goals, one by one, so that you can Go to this website get the highest possible benefits from your business disturbance. If you're playing GTA 5 on COMPUTER, simply hit the tilde trick (~) on the key-board to raise a console, where you can go into these cheats.

The game was developed by the rock stars of the gaming market, Rockstar Games. We've found one of the most useful GTA 5 COMPUTER cheats and compiled them below. A: It is advised to log out of your game session before utilizing the GTA 5 money generator. Money drop streams aren't a brand-new sensation in GTA Online.

This web page does not deal with multiplayer though - but if you get on the hunt for more GTA 5 web pages similar to this then our GTA 5 cheats as well as cheat codes guide is the place you'll want to go - do note, though, that there's no main money cheat in GTA 5. Any individual who claims there is is informing porkies.

These vary from stream to stream, yet typically, players are asked to comply with several social networks accounts, sign up for one or several YouTube accounts, like the stream, follow a follower page and drop their Gamertag or PSN ID right into the chat. GRAND Theft Auto has actually opened up an online casino where players can spend actual money.

Casino poker games appeared in taverns throughout bush West globe in their newest significant update, and also allow players bet in games against either computer-controlled players or each various other. Grand Theft Auto V for COMPUTER offers players the choice to discover the acclaimed world of Los Santos and Blaine Region in resolutions of up to 4k and beyond, as well as the opportunity to experience the game performing at 60 structures per second.

The GTA online money generator enables players to hack the Superstar web servers as well as adjust the information to give their accounts as much in-game money as they require. Grand Theft Auto V for PC additionally brings the debut of the Superstar Editor, an effective collection of innovative tools to rapidly as well as quickly capture, share and modify game video from within Grand Theft Auto V as well as Grand Theft Auto Online.

youtube

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mumfather-blog · 5 years

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A Criminal that will be multіmillion-dollar Сrypto-mining offers Been Uncοverеd

The foremost is to create an internet webpage up including a software that hijacks the computer’s Central Processing Unit. Unsuѕpecting tourist towards the web site quickly pick their СPU oνerloaded as well as their followers blasting. Without a doubt, the ruse is generally dropped by shutting thе web page that will be liable. Cyberseсurіtу professionals has assessed this sort of task by checking the internet content which contain this type of spyware and calculating exactly how hours which happen to be lots of people are checked out and also for the length of time. The technique that will be second much more challenging to іnvestіgate. It offers сrypto-minіng trojans, usually tucked in genuine laws, that consumers unѕuspectinglу put in аnd run-on their own computer systems. This trojans is made to feel difficult to recognize. Sοme spyware switches down when the duty was launched from the consumer supervisor, therefore the proof of the task is difficult to read. Kinds merely activate as soon as the Central Processing Unit is actually idlе, from the expectation that the consumer need to be from the product.

But it's precisely this technique that has had let Paѕtranа and Suarеz-Τangіl to evaluate the game of those genoil zec miner amd which happen to be harmful. The laws that will be harmful information on thе swimming pools it links tо therefore the purses that resources is compensated into. The professionals just draw out these records for a measure this is certainly big. They compiled one million exampleѕ оf crypto-mіnіng spyware running between 2007 аnd 2018. Then they assessed the laws present and went the trojans on a sandbox this is certainly secured to see just what it performed. Thаt announced the swimming pools usually involved with illegal сrуpto-mining. Additionally shared thе purses, permitting thе professionals observe exactly how cryptοcurrenсy this is certainly muсh got obtained. “We subsequently study costs which happen to be openly open to the purses from minіng-pоolѕ being a prize for exploration, аnd quote income for all the various marketing,” they state. The outcomes of your testing creates curious learning. Thе professionals find Мonero is definitely probably the most cryptocurrenсy that will be well-known attackers and this the size of the activity are incredible. Pastrana and Suarez-Tangi declare that a lot more than 4.3per cent of all of the Monеro cryptocurrеncy іn blood supply may be the full results of unlawful task. Blog post was developed by using GSA contents creator Demоversіon.

Paѕtrana and Ѕuаrеz-Tаngil concentrate their own learn about this sort this is certainly next of spyware, also called bіnary-based trojans. In addition to their evaluation try disclosing. Very first, some history. Cryptоcurrency exploration is the method that encryрts an archive оf purchases so it may not be altered or interfered with afterwards. This encoding must sufficient become powerful to really make the record nearly impossible to reenginеer. That will require considerable running energy, that is a reference this is certainly useful. So miners were compensated fοr a small amount on their effort of сrуptocurrency. That’ѕ why the procedure is also known as exploration: since it produces money this is certainly latest. The exploration procedure can be so extensive thаt miners usually join along in swimming pools. In this manner, they integrate their particular control electricity and display out of the then benefits, which have been compensated into cryptocurrency purses. Cryрtomіning spyware doеs all this work by using the control energy of their variety pc. Іt normally operates by getting оpen-soυrce exploration software that really does the encrypting, finalizing right into a exploration share then moving any payoff in to a budget.

And it's also a company this is certainly lucrative. Rate of exchange fοr cryptocurrenсies have actually diverse very in the long run. While there is no genuine strategy to discover once attackers changed their particular benefits, Pastrana and Suаrez-Tangi had to calculate all of them. Вut despite having traditional quotes, thе profits is huge. “Our revenue review shows advertisments with mυlti-million income,” they state. 56 million over the past a decade. And a lot of of thіs has been gathered by way of a amounts that will be reasonably smaller of. “Οne with the major reasons associated with popularity of e-commerce that will be unlawful the fairly affordable аnd higher rеturn of investments,” saу the professionals. Preventing thіs task this is certainly illegal hard, often. Throughout their studies, Рastrana and Ѕuarez-Tangi reрorted illegal purses on the exploration swimming pools which are premier for the wish they might become blocked. Nevertheless they ran up againѕt twο dilemmas. Very first, some non-coοperativе swimming pools would not exclude purses connected to malwаrе this is certainly cryptο-minіng. 2nd, ѕomе illegal that will be winning advertisments put a few swimming pools on top of that, which makes them most durable to takedown functions. Οne countеrmeaѕure generally seems to nevertheless work effectively. Evеrу occasionally, cryptoсurrency government make modifications to your formulas utilized to exploit the money. At these times, the exploration applications must be up-to-date. That’s not really a irritating challenge for genuine minerѕ. But mіners being illegal to discover a strategy to revise the trojans they've got marketed round the online. That’s not suсh an job this is certainly smooth. Monerο altered the formulas double іn 2018. “Іn eaсh modification, about 73% and 90% from the advertisments stopped their unique functions,” ѕay Рastrana and Suarеz-Tangil. That’ѕ fascinating efforts that lifts the cover for a massively rewarding but mainly unreportеd task this is certainly violent. In addition, it recommends an method in which is very effective fracture straight down upon it by frequently upgrading exploration formulas. It’ll getting fascinating to observe how the сryptocurrency area responds.

Сryptocurrenсies became magnets fоr illegal tasks such as for example scam and thieves. But certainly one of less-rеported criminal activities could be the utilization of taken handling capacity to exploit cυrrenсiеs such Βitcoin and Monеro. Thе profits within this thieves may then feel traded the real deal money, enjoying payoff which can be huge destructive stars. Exactly how considerable were thesе exploration this is certainly illegal and exactly how much funds manage they generate? Now, we obtain a remedy because of the services of Sergio Pastrаna from the Chаrlеs ІII college of Mаdrid in The country of spain and Guіllеrmο Suarez-Tangil at King’s college or university London. This business posses reviewed thеse sites in more detail for all the opportunity this is certainly initially ѕay thеy produce mυch wealthier pickings than anybody got thought. 50 millіon. In addition they embark on to show the way the cybercriminals execute her criminal activities. Thіs report provides the greatest methodical learn of destructive binary-based crуptο-minіng,” they saу“Τo the very best of the information. You'll find really two techniques to take energy that was control.

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etechwire-blog · 6 years

Text

Best Linux distro for developers in 2018

New Post has been published on https://www.etechwire.com/best-linux-distro-for-developers-in-2018/

Best Linux distro for developers in 2018

More popular versions of Linux such as Ubuntu focus on enhancing the user experience by automatically updating packages and providing flashy, resource-heavy GUIs.

While user-friendly distributions (distros) certainly have their place, in this guide, we’ve tried to get back to the glory days when developers would customise their Linux build. These Linux distros allow you to fine-tune your development environment so whether you’re a veteran programmer or relative newcomer, you can get on with your coding.

In short, whatever your programming preferences, you’ll find a distro to suit your needs in this top 10 roundup.

1. Arch Linux

Arch Linux offers a powerful level of customisation during setup, allowing you to download and install only the packages you need. While this is definitely not for newbies to coding, the fact you can install only a minimal number of programs on your machine using the Arch Build System and Arch User Repository, reduces the possibility of anything interfering with your coding.

This means, for instance, that you can install a barebones window manager like i3 to be certain your system will respond quickly when using your chosen text editor. If you run into difficulty, the Arch Linux Wiki offers a helpful installation guide.

2. Debian

Debian is one of the oldest Linux distros and is built with stability in mind. All programs included with Debian have to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Packages are carefully selected and tested for inclusion in the ‘Stable’ branch of Debian meaning that while some may be dated, there’s very little chance of system instability, making this OS ideal for programmers.

The Debian website has extensive manuals, including a chapter on programming talking you through the basics of creating a script, compiling it, and using Autoconf to allow your scripts to be compiled on other Linux distros.

3. Raspbian

Raspbian is the default operating system which is included with the Raspberry Pi. As the Pi was designed as an educational tool, Raspbian is the perfect OS for those interested in getting started with coding.

The Raspberry Pi website hosts some impressive guides on using the visual programming tool Scratch, which is used to create animations and games. There’s also an excellent section on getting started with Python, which is supported out of the box.

Younger coders might prefer to learn to use the programming language for Minecraft Pi, a mini-version of the highly popular sandbox game.

4. Gentoo

Named after the fast-swimming penguin, Gentoo is sometimes called a ‘meta’ distribution as users download and compile its source code manually according to their needs. This not only makes it a perfect match for the hardware requirements of your machine, but it allows you to decide exactly which versions of packages can be installed.

Gentoo suffered a minor setback a few years ago when its comprehensive Wiki went offline. Fortunately, it has since been restored and now includes the official Gentoo handbook. There’s also a small diehard Gentoo following on Reddit if you need further help.

5. Ubuntu

Unlike barebones distros like Arch Linux and Gentoo, Ubuntu is designed to be ideal for beginners, complete with a desktop interface and automatic updates.

Ubuntu is the chosen distro of the Android Open Source Project for building source files. The Android build is regularly tested using the most recent versions of Ubuntu.

You can also install other development environments using Ubuntu Make.

Ubuntu now supports the ‘snaps’ application packaging format, using the Snapcraft tool, which allows you to write apps in the programming language of your choice and package them with all the required dependencies. Visit the Ubuntu Developer portal here.

6. Fedora

Fedora is a community supported derivative of the commercial distribution Red Hat Linux. It also enjoys the distinction of being the distro of choice of Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds.

Aside from being very easy to set up and install, Fedora has a dedicated Developer Portal. Simply click ‘Start a Project’ to see dedicated guides on developing web, command line, desktop and mobile apps. There’s also an excellent section on working with hardware devices such as Arduino.

If this wasn’t enough, the Fedora repositories also include Eclipse, a fully featured and multi-language IDE. Eclipse is probably best known for Java, but also has a C/C++ and PHP IDE. You can expand its functionality even further with plugins.

7. OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE (formerly SUSE Linux) is a distribution specifically designed for software developers and system administrators. Installation and system configuration is a breeze with the integrated YaST tool. This allows you to install all the ‘-devel’ packages needed by developers with one click.

OpenSUSE comes preinstalled with all the basic tools a software developer needs, such as the Vim and Emacs text editors, build automation tools such as CMake and packaging tools like RPM. The operating system also comes with OBS (Open Build Service), a tool for developers to build software for various distros and platforms.

8. CentOS

Like Fedora, CentOS is a free, community-based variant of Red Hat (a commercial version of Linux). Many of the packages are the same and theoretically it’s possible to build a version of CentOS which is functionally identical to Red Hat itself, although this is difficult to achieve in practice.

This results in a highly stable system. The CentOS repository also contains the Developer Toolset, which boasts a range of essential programming tools.

For developers, the Xen virtualisation platform offers a way to compartmentalise your projects and run applications safely inside a virtual machine.

You can find instructions on how to do this and other developer tips in the excellent CentOS Wiki.

9. Solus

Solus is special in that it’s one of the few Irish Linux distros, and also because it follows a curated rolling release model. The advantage of this is that once you’ve installed the OS, you can keep running updates rather than a major upgrade. Solus, however, tries to avoid installing extremely recent packages and beta software to maintain system stability.

Solus supports several editors and IDEs such as Atom, Idea and Gnome Builder, as well as the Git GUI, GitKraken. The Solus project website also claims that the OS supports a number of programming languages such as Go, Rust, PHP, Node.js and Ruby.

10. Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux is an extremely lightweight distro based on either Ubuntu or Slackware. The entire OS is only around 330MB in size, meaning it can be run entirely in RAM as well as installed to an ordinary hard disk. It comes with a minimal number of packages, although you can add more, such as ‘devx‘ which contains various development tools.

The Puppy Linux ‘Wikka’ details the programming languages supported by the OS. One notable language is BaCon, which can convert code written in BASIC to C.

The Wikka also has an extensive selection of tutorials on writing Bash scripts and getting started with Python.

#developers #distro #Linux

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cryptnus-blog · 6 years

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Nebulas (NAS): The New Ethereum (ETH) Killer

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/06/nebulas-nas-the-new-ethereum-eth-killer/

Nebulas (NAS): The New Ethereum (ETH) Killer

Today, there are hundreds of distributed applications (DApps) based on Ethereum. This number will grow into the thousands and then the tens of thousands. With all of these DApps, there lacks an efficient search engine for blockchain applications and smart contracts. This is an enormous problem for users not being able to search and find the right DApps. This severe limitation is holding back the blockchain industry, much like the Internet before Google.

With these challenges, there needs to be a self-evolving blockchain system based on value incentive. One platform that is addressing these challenges is Nebulas (NAS).

Nebulas (NAS) is an open source public chain, capable of supporting all functions offered by Ethereum, including decentralized apps, token-issuing, and smart contracts. Nebulas also features innovative core technologies:

Nebulas Rank (NR) will help users find information in the blockchain universe and investors make informed investment decisions on projects.

Nebulas Force (NF) will help developers and communities initiate projects and issue assets with less friction and more control.

Developer Incentive Protocol (DIF) will reward developers who contribute to the ecosystem.

The Nebulas mainnet launched on March 30, 2018. To foster a sustainable and healthy ecosystem, the Nebulas team is committed to encouraging more developers to continue to build more and higher quality decentralized applications (DApps) on the Nebulas mainnet. The Nebulas team has established a “Nebulas Incentive Foundation” funded on a daily basis by NAS tokens derived from DPoS bookkeeping.

With this incentive plan, Nebulas hopes to find and nurture the future champions of blockchain development — those special developers who will lead and inspire in this transformative technology shift. Nebulas selects outstanding DApps according to its algorithm. By encouraging developers to create on Nebulas, all parties contribute to the overall development of blockchain, and every participant in the Nebulas ecosystem is given the opportunity to benefit for the long term.

The Nebula 1.0 Eagle Nebula mainnet has all the features of Ethereum and surpasses the second-generation blockchain in several ways:

Nebulas is developer-friendly and supports the use of JavaScript to write smart contracts and DApps, making it easier for anyone to get started.

Nebulas is the only blockchain that implements the world-renown LLVM compiler, features superior performance through concurrent technology, with a transaction processing capability of 2000TPS.

Nebulas is more secure, stable, and has strong expandability. It also provides novel measures to invoke smart contracts and upgrade protocols.

Any platform that can attract the most diversified number of developers is the most valuable. For example, the Apple App Store has opened entirely new prospects for mobile applications by establishing an application ecosystem that creates tremendous social value and business returns. This is the strategy behind the Nebulas Incentive Program.

On the Nebulas platform, every DApp developer has the chance to share the ecosystem benefits based on their contribution to the blockchain world. This is made possible through the DIP protocol. Outstanding developers in the community receive NAS from DIP offering. Those developers who make contributions to the community ecosystem growth are rewarded, which will create a positive feedback mechanism offering to community developers.

Nebulas hopes to further extend NR’s functionality, i.e., by making information indexes for blockchains. Combining NR with a “keywords” mechanism, Nebulas can sort and manage information in a relevant way. In doing so, users of blockchains will be able to access more relevant and high-value data (including information, assets, smart contracts, DApps, etc.).

Compared to the Google search engine in the Internet world, with continuously explosive and tremendous information growth of blockchains, an information index and search engine for blockchains becomes an indispensable and necessary requirement. It will be an essential tool and the starting point for many users to explore the world of blockchains. With the power of information index and searching, as well as combining the Internet’s mature business model, Nebulas hopes to open up unprecedented business potential.

The Nebulas Incentive Program has already seen big awards. In week 2, a total of 226 people, including developers and referrers, won more around $250,000 worth of NAS rewards. The weekly Champion was an independent game developer, whom we believe created the first sandbox management strategy game based on blockchain. The game, named ”Cell Evolution,” was created in just 10 days, and won the 10,000 NAS prize.

So far, more than 2100 DApps have been deployed on the Nebulas mainnet in its two months of operation, surpassing the number of DApps on Ethereum. In order to further improve the performance of the mainnet and enrich the ecosystem’s technical tools, technical materials, and promotional resources and build a benign community ecosystem, the Nebulas team has officially launched the “Nebulas Bounty Rewards Program.”

As with any blockchain project, it’s important to look at the team involved. Here, Nebulas does not disappoint and delivers what is perhaps the most impressive team we have seen. Nebulas founder Hitters Xu was a founder of Antshares (NEO) and also the former founding leader of Ant Financial’s Blockchain Platform, He’s also an ex-Googler in the Search & Anti-Fraud team. Co-founder Robin Zhong is the former architect of Ant Financial’s blockchain platform. Lastly, co-founder Guan Wang was also a co-founder of Antshares (NEO).

Overall, Nebulas is one of the most ambitious blockchain projects we have seen. With a strong team behind Nebulas and an incentivized reward system for developers, Nebulas has the potential to become not just the Google of blockchains, but also the true Ethereum (ETH) killer. As the second week champ of the Nebulas Incentive Program and experienced game developer Wu Xiao said:

“It’s lonely being a developer on Ethereum. There’s very little support.”

Look for more developers to continue embracing Nebulas over Ethereum.

Learn more about Nebulas:

Official website: Nebulas.io

Github: github.com/nebulasio/go-nebulas

Slack: nebulasio.herokuapp.com

Telegram(EN): t.me/nebulasio

Twitter: @nebulasio

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.

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