Doing Some Sidebar Stuff

I have been very busy finishing teaching my classes and the holidays, so I took a break from doing any work on my Ren’Py games. I will get back to them as soon as I have time. I also noticed that Thundy’s website is no longer active so I have to depend on the YouTube channel for learning anything more fun.

I also learned that Atom.io is being retired as the Devs are tired of supporting it. So, a beautiful editor bites the dust and I must resort to VS.Code. I mean, it’s not bad, it’s just not as poetic. Making Ren’Py work in VS.Code is not too terribly hard but it is a bit wonky at the beginning. On a sidebar, I have done a few cool things in an otherwise busy and frenetic work schedule.

First, my kids have been begging me to let them play Minecraft Java Edition (all we had before was the Xbox One version). I didn’t want them to play on a public server ‘cuz pervs. So, I created a private server to let them play on it. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I bought a REAL server (HP Proliant DL380p Gen8, to be precise). It was pretty cheap given that the server is ten years old, but with Dual Xeon CPUs and 96GB of RAM, it is still quite capable for most things a fly-by-night dev like me needs. I intend to use this to make some web-based apps long before I consider making them public on my site (the server is 100% local to my network – you can’t access it from the DUB DUB DUBs.) I have already setup my own Apache server and my own MySQL server. I will be experimenting with some other things as well including a MUSH maybe.

Second, through a series of events loosely connected to my Christmas, I got an Xbox GamePass. Initially, this was only so that I could have a “free” version of Minecraft Java Edition to test the capability of my new server. However, this GamePass offers me a lot of video game choices for “free” it’s basically the Netflix of the Xbox world. I experimented with a few games and became quite obsessed with an indy game called “Dreamscaper.” Your character has two worlds: The Waking World and The Dream World. In the Waking World, she has to work on herself by making friends, meditating, creating crafts for people, and visiting various locations to grow. In the Dream World, she becomes a badass rogue-lite hero that must battle her way through 6 levels as she faces her deepest fears, but here’s the catch – if you die in the Dream World, you wake up in the Waking World and MUST battle all the way down through each level again.

Lastly, I have been reading some more things. This helps me get inspiration for what I might want to do in games and also helps me increase my own gray matter in the process. I tend to read Fiction, then Non-Fiction, then Biography/History and repeat. In my last cycle, I read: “Ready Player Two” (sequel to Ready Player One), and Spam Nation (Brian Krebs). I am now reading “One Up Book 1: Level Up!” (didn’t have any eye-catching historical works in my queue, so I went with what I felt like). Let’s hope that all these things together help me get inspired to do more development stuff soon.

Attacks on the Rise

For some strange reason that I am not aware of, my tiny site has come under attack recently by someone trying to use brute force login attacks. I have no idea why anyone would be inclined to do this but it is happening.

Summary of Brute Force Attacks
Two attack numbers. Yesterday was much worse.

If you are one of the attackers reading this, I would ask you to kindly stop coming after my site as there is literally nothing of value on my site. All my code is available on my GitHub so attacking this site will not grant you access to any intellectual property. Also, my hosting provider will lock out my site if it receives notice that my site is producing a lot of noise so all you will ultimately do is put my tiny site offline which should provide no real gain.

If you are one of my visitors and you are reading this, I would like you to know that my site may be performing slower than normal for the moment as my hosting company monitors and throttles my site due to the amount of traffic spikes it is presenting. I am also working with my provider to install a few other mitigation tools in the backend so you might notice my site getting updates and going into maintenance mode here and there. Everything is fine, I am just trying to mitigate as much as possible in hopes that my attacker(s) will get bored and pick another site to attack.

Welcome to I Can Play Dev!

Hello all! I am just getting this website setup so keep your eyes peeled. I have lots of plans for video games and will be posting them on this site as the time allows. You may want to use the tag filters to search for the game or genre you are interested in. You may also want to check the list of Projects above and see which one is interesting to you. Thought there is not a lot of material here yet, it will eventually get busier and you will start to see the plans I have.