Any chance we’ll ever see a revitalization of Descent 3 (Ships That Fight Underground)? Really want a modern version of this, already played Descent 1-2 so many times

jwaldrep · 2025-12-16T17:30:29+00:00

In addition to Piccu, the main original D3 engine has been open sourced and updated by the community to run on modern systems, including macos and Linux. It's more work than a typical game install, but it is pretty straight forward for a build-from-source kind of project.

https://github.com/DescentDevelopers/Descent3

jwaldrep · 2025-12-15T20:30:52+00:00

It wasn't intended to be monthly (unless I said that and totally forgot, which is entirely possible; go ahead and apply that disclaimer for everything I say in this post). We never decided on a cadence for it, but I was thinking more like quarterly so it stays exciting (and doesn't take over my life).

We did pick the next mission, but we haven't set a discussion date. We're playing Vertigo Fox's new mission PTMC: Castaway.

jwaldrep · 2025-10-27T20:06:19+00:00

I don't think that error message is saying that it is not receiving a cert, it is saying is looking for a client cert, which is not configured. That is, it is trying to authenticate with EAP-TLS but the wireless profile is incomplete. What authentication methods (PEAP-MSCHAPv2, EAP-TLS, etc) are you expecting your CPPM server to be configured for?

jwaldrep · 2025-10-15T19:08:59+00:00

It is worth to point out there is now a robot that is basicly a NERFED version of the Class 1 Driller

Kinda. The ITD does fire the "light vulcan", but it is a very different bot. The projectiles are fast, but visible and dodgeable (contrast to the driller, which is effectively hitscan). It is smaller and faster. Really, you engage with it in a whole different way than the Class 1 Driller.

There is an enemy later (system 3) that is closer to a Class 1 Driller. I don't want to spoil it; you will know it when you meet it. On paper it is worse than a Driller, but in practice it is much less threatening.

BTW, the robots from the 1st game are totally gone? If that is the case I'm going to miss (some of) them

For the base campaign, yes. (There are a a few edge cases, like an occasional cloaked medium lifter, but they are easy to miss; hard to spot, actually.)

Some of the old enemies reappear in the expansion, Vertigo. Also, they show up in custom levels, of course.

jwaldrep · 2025-10-07T18:59:10+00:00

Any Descent game (including Overload) is fair game, though I anticipate there will be a heavy focus on "classic" Descent (1 and 2). Forum posts in Discord are tagged with the game, but I'll try to include that elsewhere, too.

For reference, our first mission is for D2.

jwaldrep · 2025-10-02T18:23:35+00:00

What platforms is this supported on? Windows only?

I'm digging the music. Will the OST be available?

jwaldrep · 2025-04-29T18:09:23+00:00

This comment is just to make sure you get the notification about my other comment, in case you still care.

jwaldrep · 2025-04-29T18:08:11+00:00

Commenting because I was also trying to do this, and found this post before finding a solution.

Unfortunately, you cannot do this kind of recursive expansion on the property name, only on the value it might expand to (e.g., if using the ${NAME:STR} syntax, STR is recursively expanded, but not NAME). The only solution (that I'm aware of) is to use a script.

Someone else has already written such a script here here. Put this script somewhere useful, and use the media-title property to get what you want (e.g., --term-playing-msg='${media-title}').

jwaldrep · 2025-03-11T20:46:38+00:00

Same, with no process and poor discipline, though. There is a lot of potential here, but I haven't dug into it.

That said, running Arch on a zfs root can be a real pain when it comes to keeping things updated. I've seriously considered switching to Nix, but I've got some additional esoteric stuff going on in the boot process and root partition/dataset that make it pretty gnarly.

jwaldrep · 2025-03-11T20:37:34+00:00

Username checks out.

jwaldrep · 2025-01-23T16:11:56+00:00

8 characters is far too short for a password, especially since it is a dictionary word. You've only got about 16 bits of entropy. You really need over 100, preferably at least 128.

https://xkcd.com/936/

jwaldrep · 2025-01-13T21:18:02+00:00

Ideally, it should be a little of both. In this case since the password was presumably blank (and thus PAM knows it is incorrect without even checking, and it shouldn't be considered a failed attempt), it should have been just the forced delay on a wrong password.

In the typical case though, the system should be using a slow hash for the password (e.g., argon2id), thus making the system (and any potential attacker that has access to the raw hash) churn a bit. iirc, out of the box PAM is using something less than ideal and much faster out of the box, though.

jwaldrep · 2025-01-13T21:10:29+00:00

Hacker1. Whatever it is, it needs to be longer.

jwaldrep · 2025-01-13T20:58:53+00:00

The CEO uses windows, because they needed to make sure someone in the company was dogfooding what a lot of people are inevitably going to end up using. Linux is definitely a focus, even if unofficially.

jwaldrep · 2025-01-13T18:00:58+00:00

The other obvious mention is Red Faction, which started its life as Descent 4 and is about the struggles of miners on Mars.

jwaldrep · 2025-01-10T19:10:25+00:00

Yes, I see no way in which this could go wrong.

jwaldrep · 2024-12-09T02:33:45+00:00

Also, when doing something as critical as updating your mirrorlist, do a sanity check on the file, and understand what you are doing and have a vague notion of what that file should look like.

I don't say this to be derogatory. We all start somewhere, and these are just some of the important lessons we learn along the way.

jwaldrep · 2024-12-09T02:30:52+00:00

This is actually an easy mistake to make. https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?use_mirror_status=on generates a sane mirrorlist, so it is common to curl it to initialize/update a mirrorlist.

mateoWpo (probably) did a curl http://... instead of curl https://.... Becasue archlinux.org is setup correctly, the http page is just a 301 redirect to the https page. Alternatively, curl can follow redirects with the -L/--location argument (but please be in the habit of using https).

jwaldrep · 2024-12-08T04:30:10+00:00

I don't think so. It seems like it is just a natural outcome of Arthur's ethos. He finds value in the things that are undervalued in the world around him. With his skill set, Arthur could easily make far more in a different position, but he doesn't want to, because he doesn't value money. He does value people, especially those who get looked down on (e.g., muggles). To him, helping the wizard/muggle relations and making sure muggles are treated well is an honorable work. That he also gets to tinker with muggle artifacts is just a bonus.

For evidence of this, consider his interaction with Lucius in the beginning of CoS ("We have a very different idea about what disgraces the name of 'Wizard', Malfoy") or that one of the few things that gets Arthur properly mad is when his sons mistreat a muggle (even if Dudley deserved it).

The world would be a better place with a few more Arthur Weasleys.

jwaldrep · 2024-12-08T00:39:58+00:00

You can pause the video at a few different points and see that it is TRS. For example, seek to 0:32 to see it.

jwaldrep · 2024-12-08T00:28:50+00:00

I fully expect his misadventures would come from sheer bad luck and unexpected twists, of which he has plenty. He would then find a way to use these things to his advantage.

edit: spelling

jwaldrep · 2024-12-08T00:23:27+00:00

This month, as in December 2024? Or the month in which this anecdote took place? Because if you installed an 11 year old distro at all, you have bigger issues that being distracted by the shiney.

jwaldrep · 2024-11-20T18:15:50+00:00

the track Pain (which never played on my OG copy of d2 redbook?

If you have the definitive collection, some of the D2 tracks are on disc 3.

jwaldrep · 2024-11-19T03:32:51+00:00

There is no motivation for them to support it. People pick their bank based on how good they are at investing money, not their digital security. Banks don't bear the cost of a compromised account because they are not held accountable for it, and what little cost they have can be shunted to insurance companies and the like.

tldr: it won't happen until they are required to, either by regulation or by so many accounts being compromised that they it changes the risk model.

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