Lazy Reading:books, talks, games, games

    This Lazy Reading post actually has some good lengthy reading in it.

    • Modern Perl: The Book: (actually a pre-print draft)  Even if you don’t know Perl, I’ve always liked the way the author, chromatic, writes.  Many articles about a language or other technical subject tend to either wander about loosely or become a ‘shopping list’ of actions, but chromatic’s work retains focus.
    • Robert Watson presents Capsicum; a recent USENIX talk on Youtube. (via a number of places)
    • 12 Forgotten Games – the slideshow is of most interest.  (via)  Online games that predate the vast swarm of today’s titles.  MUDs, MUSHs, roguelikes, etc.  The nice thing about the slideshow is the link on each slide to a still-running, still-accessible online version of that game.
    • Kieron Gillen‘s moving away from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, a gaming review site that has some honest to goodness decent writing.  (My Lazy Reading posts are similar to their Sunday Papers for a reason.)  One of his articles was all about ZangbandTK.  I was all set to link to that in pkgsrc, but it’s not there – just games/angband-tty and games/angband-x11.  Darnit.  Anyway, read his article and then go play something roguelike.
    Lazy reading: toeplitz, forking, curating, Nethack

    I totally meant to post this yesterday.  Oops!

    Messylaneous for 2010/02/05

    I’m really behind on my posting (this is why), so I’m piling a lot of stuff in here:

    Messylaneous for 2010/01/15

    Still not used to typing “2010”.

    @Play: going overseas

    The latest @Play column, “A Date With Asuka“, covers an unlicensed Japan-only roguelike in 3D for the Dreamcast.  I had to think about that sentence very carefully in order to type it; @Play is seeking out more esoteric roguelike variants than I thought possible.

    @Play: Fatal Labyrinth

    This time, it’s what happens when you take Rogue, export it to Japan, and then see what you get back as a Sega Genesis console game.

    I had no idea there were so many permutations of roguelike games.  A few years ago, I’d have listed rogue, nethack, moria, [zmw]angband, and ADOM, and felt like I covered it all.