Junk Bytes

Kostas here, in the past three days I postponed working on the "dragboxes" project to work on a new idea I had, for which I am actually excited. This will be a simple mini-game where you are an egg and fight against enemy eggs using guns. I am going for the fun factor in this game: using interesting weapons, and having a good-looking mechanism for the egg-breaking. The first phase of the project is ready and demonstrates the breaking of the eggs. Downloads: EXE:  omelette_d1.zip   on Dropbox ( Extract first ) (Windows only, 1.45 MB) Source:  omelette_d1_gmk.zip   on Dropbox (Game Maker 8.0 file, 0.13 MB) Screenshots:

In my first post I described a small Game Maker project I am working on. Today I implemented a few additions to the project. Changes: Implemented a very basic scripting module, to allow dynamic behaviour Created switch blocks that execute a script when they are placed properly on switch plates Created banning areas, which prevent player boxes (heart boxes) from passing though but let other blocks through Made the motion of the boxes smoother, to allow finer player control

Eventually, after some brainstorming conversations with Kostas we decided to create this blog in order to post our work. As you may guess my name is Anastasios. My interests are comprised of computer security, linux, operating systems and many more low level programming concepts :P. Finally and before my first post, I would like to thank Kostas for taking care of junkbytes.com because i wasn't involved in the creation process. May the source be with you Kostas :) . So regarding my first post, last days i encountered a very interesting way to execute ptrace. What is ptrace system call ? ptrace is a system call found in several Unix and Unix-like operating systems . By using ptrace (the name is an abbreviation of "process trace") one process can control another, enabling the controller to inspect and manipulate the internal state of its target. ptrace is used by debuggers and other code-analysis tools, mostly as aids to software development. (wikipedia.org)

School is finally ending, so that's one thing less on our minds. Anastasios and I have been tinkering with code and software for quite some time. Our specific interests in programming are very different, but we enjoy sharing interests and cooperating in small projects. Anastasios recently suggested that we make a small blog to post our concepts and experiments, and I liked that idea. This is Junkbytes.com, the blog we started, and aims to slowly grow with posts about everything we may be working on, mostly programming-related.