Sunday, March 15, 2020

Hiring: Tools Programmer

Title: Tools programmer
Focus: Engine
Type: Full-time, permanent
Last day to apply: 30th of October 2018

Tired of the constraints of Unity, Unreal and other big engines? Want to be in control and get down into the nitty gritty of engine coding? Come join us at Frictional Games, one of the few companies that still makes their own tech, and get all up in our HPL engine!

We are now expanding our tech team and looking for a tools programmer who will help make the HPL engine better, prettier, and more intuitive. Your work on the engine will be crucial to the rest of the team, but it will also be seen by our modding community.

The position is full-time and permanent. Ideally we would help you relocate to Malmö, Sweden to be close to our core team, but this is not a necessity.

What will you work on?

As a tools programmer, you will be working together with a small tech team that is mainly responsible for our HPL engine, but also tech support for the games.

Here are some of the things you will find yourself working on:

Creating and maintaining the level editor for our proprietary engine
Making intuitive user interfaces
Creating small specialised tools
Working with low-level systems such as IO, AI, rendering, sound, and physics
Working with Xbox and PlayStation versions, as well as possible future platforms
Internal support for a team of developers
Post-launch support.

We also encourage working outside of your area of expertise, and always learning new things. The more areas of development you are willing and able take part in, the better!

If you want to know more about Frictional work practices, you can check out the introduction posts of Peter and Luis, who will be your closest teammates.

What are we looking for?

You have to be a EU/EEA resident to apply.

The person we're looking for is creative, driven and self-sufficient.

Here are some essential skills we require:

Well-versed in C++, C#, Java, or similar
Knowledge in AngelScript, Python, Lua, or similar
You have created an engine or tools for development for at least one game
Strong low-level programming skills
Familiar with linear algebra
Knowledge in working with Widgets / Custom GUI
Fluency in English
Skills in team communication and support
A Windows PC that runs recent games (such as SOMA) that you can use for work (unless you live in Malmö and will work from the office)
A fast and stable internet connection.

These will be considered a plus:

Experience in engine development
Skills in 3D modelling or texture applications
Knowledge in UX design
Lover for tech and messing with the low level parts of the engine
Excitement for creating fast pipelines and making it easy to create awesome art
You live in Sweden.

What do we offer?

We are a small team, which means you will be able to work on a wide variety of things and contribute to our future games in a meaningful way.

We also believe a healthy balance between work and life reflects positively on your work. We offer a variety of perks for our full-time employees, especially who live in or relocate to Sweden. We also don't encourage crunch.

Here's what we offer:

Flexible working hours
Opportunities to influence your workflow
Variety in your work tasks, and ability to influence your workload
Participation in our internal game Show & Tell sessions, so you'll have input into all aspects of the game
Social security and holidays that are up to the Swedish standards
An inclusive and respectful work environment
An office in central Malmö you can use as much as you please
Fun workmates, game and movie nights, and other outings!

How to apply?

Did the position pique your interest? Are you the person we're looking for? Then we would love you hear from you!

We will be looking at applications until 30th of October 2018.

Please send us your:

Cover letter (why you should work with us, what do you bring to the table)
CV
Portfolio (or links to your works)

Send your application to apply@frictionalgames.com!

Privacy Policy

By sending us your application, you give us permission to store your personal information and attachments.

We store all applications in a secure system. The applications are stored for two years, after which they are deleted. If you want your your information removed earlier, please contact us through our Contact form. Read more in our Privacy Policy.

Thursday, March 5, 2020

[The Hacker News] Critical PPP Daemon Flaw Opens Most Linux Systems To Remote Hackers

Critical PPP Daemon Flaw Opens Most Linux Systems to Remote Hackers

Small Things Come In Good Packages

I was drawn to the Kickstarter campaign for Deadwood 1876 by its terrific artwork and simple, elegant graphic design, so let's talk about that first.

It is a great looking game. It comes packaged (like all of the games in the "dark city" series from Facade Games) in a box designed to look like an old leather bound book with a magnetic lid. All the game components other than the cards are made of wood (no plastic) and beautifully designed, especially the three engraved discs that represent the locations in the game. The artwork on the cards is very well-rendered, in a style that is just cartoony enough to be expressive but without looking silly.

The game's design is also very minimal, which appeals to me as a respite from the current trend towards overproduced Kickstarter games with hundreds of plastic miniatures and overdone, hard to read boards and rulebooks. Finally something simple and (hopefully) easy to play.

Or is it?

The rules and mechanics of the game are simple enough. The game consists of Safe cards, Deadwood cards, and three locations at the center of the table. Each player starts with two face down safe cards in front of them, and there is a stack of three more in the center; Safe cards consist mainly of gold in various denominations, with a few guns and other items sprinkled in.

Players also start with a hand of Deadwood cards that represent items used to perform actions: guns for fighting, horses for movement, and various bits of leatherwork such as hats and holsters for manipulating the cards in various ways. Player pawns are randomly distributed among the three locations (more on this in a moment).

The goal of the game is to be in the location whose occupants collectively have the most gold (depicted on their face down Safe cards) at the end of the game. Once the winning location has been determined, the occupants of that location use their remaining weapon cards to fight it out to see who the final winner is.

Play consists of each player playing one Deadwood card from their hand. A card can be played as a weapon to attack another player, in order to either take one of their safes, or to switch places with another player's pawn or force them to leave your location. Weapons have variable strengths but use dice to determine the outcome of combat, so a lower card isn't necessarily a lost cause. Or, it can be played for another effect such as moving between locations (if there's room, each location is limited to a certain number of player pawns), peeking at face down Safe cards, or drawing extra Deadwood cards from the deck.

After each player has had a turn to play a card, there is a heist round, where players use weapon cards to fight it out for one of the safes in the middle of the table. Then another round of play begins, and so on, until all the safes in the center have been claimed. At that point there is one final round, and then the winning location is determined and the final showdown happens.

It sounds like there's a lot going on, and there is, but there is one critical problem. A key strategy to the game is figuring out who has the high value safes, so you can either steal them or make sure you're at the location with the most gold at the end. It's supposed to be a "game of shifting alliances" where you side with the others in your location to make sure you collectively have the most gold, and then backstab them in the final showdown. The problem is that with only four turns per player before the final showdown, you just don't have enough time for the amount of social deduction or level of strategy that the game calls for.

Because of the amount of bluffing and secret information involved, the game relies on all the players having a roughly equal understanding of the rules and especially the strategy, which makes it very difficult to teach. This is a major problem for a game that, like any "shifting alliances" game, needs a large number of players to be interesting.

On the other hand, I think there is a fun game here somewhere, and the gorgeous design and components make me want to keep trying to make it work.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Too much social deduction for a board game, or perhaps too much structure for a social deduction game, but the game is beautiful to look at.

Deadwood 1876 official website
Deadwood 1876 on Board Game Geek

Download IGI 2 Covert Strike Highly Compressed For Pc

IGI 2 Covert Strike Full Review

Welcome to IGI 2 Covert Strike is one of the best Shooting game especially for shooting lovers that has been developed by Innerloop published by Codemasters.This game was released on March 3,2003.

Screenshot

IGI 2 Covert Strike System Requirements

Following are the minimum system requirements of IGI 2.

Operating System: Windows XP/ Windows Vista/ Windows 7/ Windows 8 and 8.1
CPU: Pentium 4 1.4GHz
RAM: 512 MB
Hard Disk Space: 2 GB

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Bimonthly Progress Report For My Twitch Channel, FuzzyJCats, July 2 To Sept 1

FuzzyJCats Twitch Channel

Now that I accomplished the most important improvement to my stream, not caring about numbers, I was able to focus on my goals listed in my last progress report during this period.

I was getting better at talking and gaming at the same time, as it didn't quite take as much effort as before. I was able to stream without exercising just as well as before when I really had to exercise to perform.

Interestingly, as streaming seemed to be more and more natural (though not quite effortless which is where I want to end up at), I felt that near the end of the period, I actually fell into complacency, so I didn't really work on self-care issues, improving fluency, removing vocal tics and filler words, and the like.

I could tell that I was starting to become complacent around last week, because I didn't have that passion I have when I want to improve upon things. The good news is that this week, after realizing that I was almost going through the motions (albeit while streaming, I was having fun being with my community), I rediscovered that excitement and drive to work on improving my content.

I found one obvious area to improve is to have more purposeful gaming while chatting. My default strat of just moving the character around as I'm chatting just to provide some change in scenery is certainly better than nothing, i.e. having my character stand in one place. But clearly, we can do better than that!

Admittedly, the strat was a good crutch as I was getting acclimated to the multitasking, but since it's taking less effort to stream thanks to experience, I'd like to actually chat and purposefully move toward the boss, as boss fights are amongst the most exciting content.

The roadblock is that for some reason, I feel compelled to narrate what I'm doing in gaming, so if I'm moving toward a goal, I'd talk about that, as opposed to talking about more interesting subjects that my viewers present.

Therefore, I have to make a concerted effort to only talk about why I'm doing something if there's nothing else to address in chat, and I can't think of any other topics to talk about.

I feel by consciously gaming purposefully the entire stream, my streaming content will improve immensely. But by doing this, I do in fact have to exercise as that's going to take so much more mental energy than just going through the motions (that might explain why I was recently able to stream despite not exercising).

Fortunately, I exercised for the first time yesterday when my asthma was stable, and I have to make sure that I exercise regularly like I used to during the beginning of my streaming.

I also want to improve being more fluent. Due to being so excitable, my mind goes all over the place, leading to my speaking in fits and starts, and often not completing sentences.

A great example of a streamer who is warm, friendly, constantly talks to chat, addresses and knows all of his viewers, and offers amazing gameplay the entirety of his stream is RichieTwoTeas. Although Richie's a professional streamer, and I'm a hobbyist, it helps to have a lofty goal to strive toward.

I believe that purposeful gaming and fluency are the two major improvements to focus on for my second year of streaming as achievable goals. The third improvement of community building does not appear to have concrete steps to take, but I can work on finding solutions this period. My first stream was on July 25, 2018.

Improving equipment to stream through PC using OBS greatly improves audio-visuals to a noticeable effect, so getting a decent PC and learning how to set up OBS is definitely something I'll be working on down the road.

Although I tend to do better with improving on one aspect rather than multiple, it appears that having good game content and fluency are intertwined, so it won't be "confusing" to work on both at the same time, as they are what you do when streaming.

An easy improvement I made is buying 4 season-specific sub badges through Own3D, which was rather cost-effective, and they often (always?) have 50% discounts. One set of sub badges costs $15 with the steep discounts - you get 3- 6- 9- and 12- month badges. So far, I featured the ice cream and pumpkin sub badges, and the other two will follow upon season change.

Responding to viewers have improved. I obtain logs through Chatty.

Goals Achieved: