keith_nt4's Journal: Vacation: Day 5

Ok so maybe this will have to be a quick one. It is after all 1:45am. But have I ever been known to be quick? I don't think so.

Today I didn't do too much or really go any place. A little linux router here, a little attempt at setting up a neverwinter nights server there. I finally 'poked' the right holes in my firewall so others can connect and we can play the game together. I never thought it was going to happen either. It only took...a few hours. I mean sure I could just go "buy" a normal device type firewall and use a fancy interface to open ports on my firewall. Sure I could do that. Sure that might be easier then pouring over out-dated how-tos and other help documents and dealing with sarcastic people on mailing lists. But what would I ... learn? Not sure I'm learning anything useful from this at the moment. I may have though.

Today a book I had ordered a few days ago, on game programming, arrived. The estimate was to arrive Dec. 24th. But it got here early. So at least I can something else to what I can do this vacation. So I made it an hour into that. The book is "teach yourself game programming in 24 hours". I spent a gift certificate on it and i hope it is good. One of the main reasons I bought it was because it the final section of the book it goes into how to make one of my favorite all time games, Missile Command. Or rather one with a close resemblance called "Meteor Defense". But it's the same basic concept. It's been kind of a far off dream of mine to make a game like that since I first played it (through that "microsoft classic" package of games from a few years ago...on a mac; hah!).

My latest goal for my firewall would be to run it through SSH (secure shell) and have it giving IP addresses through a connection to the serial port. This computer running through the serial port would then be running either NT 4 or Windows 2000 server, I'm not sure which, and through that any number of game servers. Like NWN, an old game few have heard of called ground control, and possibly dues ex. Although this other computer I'm thinking of is only a 200Mhz with 32 megs of ram and already seems on it's last legs. Now if I actually get that working it'll really seem amazing.

well I guess that's all for now. So good night to whatever wierd people may actually be reading this.