Posts Tagged ‘move’

GPL Arcade Volleyball – DOS Volleyball oldschool game remake for GNU / Linux

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Do you remember that oldschool Arcade VolleyBall game which was so popular on 16 bit (8086 XT) computers.
I remember this game from the years I was 12 years old, back in the days where we the gamers distributed all the DOS games on 360 KB 5.25" diskettes

I was looking over the games available to install on my Debian GNU / Linux today just to be happily suprised to find GPL Arcade Volleyball an identical game remake of the old Arcade Volleyball 8086 classic freeware game.

I remember we spend many hours with friends playing on the old Manifactured in Bulgaria Pravetz 16! computers
During communism and post communism Pravetz was the only computer brand we could buy from the market, as there was limitations on the exported and imported tech equipment within the USSR union.
Pravetz computers are a literal remake of 16 bit IBM 8086 computers and the computer design and integrals was stolen from IBM 16 bit 8086 / 8088 PC architecture

Arcade Volleyball has set a mark on my generation and I believe many people will remember the times this game was a hit with a bit of Nostalgia 😉
In the Game GPL Arcade Volleyball Debian GNU / Linux

Besides being an identical remake of PC Arcade Volleyball , GPL Arcade Volleyball is even expanded as it includes extra features which the original game lacked. Game includes:

  • Network Volleyball client / server Game (up to 4 players)
  • 6 Game Themes which completely change the game look & feel to be modernistic

Here are few GAV screenshots of the different existing game Themes:

Screenshot GPL Arcade VolleyBall Yisus

GPL Arcade Volleyball Yisus theme gameplay GNU / Linux
Yisus GAV Theme gameplay screenshot

GPL Arcade Volleyball Unnamed Theme Screenshot

GPL Arcade Volleyball unnamed Gameplay Theme Debian
GAV – Unnamed Theme Gameplay

Screenshot GAV FABeach gameplay
GAV – FaBeach Theme Gameplay

GAV supports both Window and fullscreen modes. To enable Fullscreen mode, while inside the game use:

Extra -> Fullscreen (Yes)

Saving preferences is also something which I if I recall correctly the original game lacked. This is done by navigating to:

Extra -> Save Preferences

GAV is said to support Joystick in resemblance to the original DOS game, though I've never tested it with a joy.

One of the greatest GAV game (hacks) is the Inverted Theme. Selecting it inverts the order in the game, where the game player becomes the volleyball ball and the ball becomes the player 😉

GPL Arcade Volleyball Arcade Inverted Theme - remake of DOS Volleyball Arcade
GAV does not yet not have a Free / Open / Net BSD port as far as I currently see, anyways since the game is Free Software probably soon a port will be available for BSDs as well.
The default GAV game controls are a bit untraditional. By default the one player game starts you play Volleyball game player positioned on the left.

For left player the default control keys are:
 

  • z – move player left
  • c – move player right
  • left shift – jump

Right player controls are:
 

  • Left – left (arrow key)
  • right – right (arrow key)
  • jump – up cursor key

GAV supports also a shortcut key for switching between windowed and full screen game mode by pressing F10
Installing the game on Debian and Ubuntu Linuces is done with:

linux:~# apt-get --yes install gav

Unfortunately gav does not have a definition to be added to GNOME or KDE Applications menus, thus to start the game after installed one has to do it manually by typing either in gnome RUN (Alt+F2) or on command line:

linux:~$ gav

Happy playing 😉

Communistic Government BCP epoch deliberately tried to destroy the Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Communism Reality, Anti Communism Poster

As a Child I've been baptized in the Orthodox Church and since then I've been a complete atheist until the age of 21.
What is the reason to get my faith in God in 21? This is a short post to shed some light on the great efforts of communism to erradicate faith in God in Communistic countries and change faith in God with faith in man and how this kind of approach devastates societies.
During the communism it's a well known fact that communists, all the members in the Bulgarian Communist's Party (BCP),has led an anti Bulgarian Orthodox Church government politics. The fact that Communistic Governments are fighting Churches and faith in God is less known among youngesters and hardly known by people part of western democratic societies.

I did not lived this time myself, but I heard many stories about the stupidities of communism.
Many older people say, when communism came to rule the Communist Government did immediately destroy some Orthodox Christian temples, some priests were convinced in crimes they were not responsible for etc…
Other priests were send in the Concentration camps and many of them never returned in the society.
"Access" to the Churches was limited and sometimes prohibited to the orthodox layman and often to clergy.
During these terrible communism era, it was prohibited to everybody who is a member of BPC to attend Orthodox Church services or identify himself as christian in public.
I've heard from my grandma an interesting story she witnessed, while she was working as a cleaner in the militia (police).
Here is the story:
One day my grandma wanted to go to the Church St. George located on the city centre of Dobrich city Bulgaria.
A policeman stopped her when she was entering the temple and since he knew her as an employee in the police called her by name and told her that she is not allowed to enter the church building, because she is working in the police.
My grandma asked the militiaman to let her enter the temple to pray for just few minutes and light up a candle (just for this time) without reporting for that in the police.
The policeman agreed to let us in and keep silent that she entered the Church this time,but warned her that if he sees her another time entering the church he is going to report to the respective authorities.
Another part of the Government active politics against the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was by placing an ex-criminals who were sentenced for thefts, rapings, agression or other crimes as a priests in the Church.
By this move the supreme counsel of the bulgarian communist party wanted to break the people confidence in the Church as the true holy apostolic Church. The most fierce communists during these days did their best to present the church of God as a corrupted and void institution who only steals from people and exists only to deceive society.
Yet many years after the fall of communism this people distrust in the church that communists sow through the years.

What is pity is even after the communism is gone for a long, time the churches are only full on biggest feasts and no more than 5% of the citizens are regularly going for Church service or have even the basic knowledge on the Church truths and mysteries.
Following the fall of communism the democratic governments who come to power, elected in a citizen democratic elections did not do much to help the church either, some of them does lead politics openly hostile to our Bulgarian Church.
The last government selected, seems to be less hostile to our Church, but people have once been cut away from the Church and now its really hard for our nation to get back to faith.
The severe crisis (a word that means judgement in greek) and the hardships many people experience started to make some people rethink about what is the meaning of life and made them occasionally go back to faith of our fathers orthodoxy.
What will happen further nobody knows, we need to pray and hope God will have mercy and people will repent for their sins and come back to faith again.

How to convert UTF-8 encoding files to Windows CP1251 on GNU / Linux

Friday, October 21st, 2011

I needed to convert a file which had a Bulgarian text written in UTF-8 encoding to Windows CP1251 in order to fix a website encoding problems after a move of the website from one physical server to another.

I tried first with enca( detects and convert encoding of text files from one encoding to another).

The exact way I tried to convert was:

linux:~# enca -L bg /home/site/www/includes/utf8_encoded_file.php
...
Unfortunately this attempt to conver was unsucesfully, and the second logical guess was to use iconvConvert encoding of given files from one encoding to another to do the utf8 to cp1251 conversion.
I reached for some help in irc.freenode.net, #varnalab channel and Alex Kuklin helped me, giving me an example command line to do the conversion.
iconv winedows to cp1251 conversion line, he pointed to me was:

linux:~# iconv -f utf8 -t cp1251 < in > out

Further on I adapted Alex’s example to convert my utf8_encoded_file.php encoded Bulgarian characted to CP1251 and used the following commands to convert and create backups of my original UTF8 file:

linux:~# cd /home/site/www/includes
linux:/home/site/www/includes# iconv -f utf8 -t cp1251 < utf8_encoded_file.php in > utf8_encoded_file.php.cp1251
linux:/home/site/www/includes# mv utf8_encoded_file.php utf8_encoded_file.php.bak
linux:/home/site/www/includes# mv utf8_encoded_file.php.cp1251 utf8_encoded_file.php