Assignment: Hack Civilization
Loki Hack 1999
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Profiles in Hacker Courage

We have an extremely talented group of people hacking at Civilization: Call to Power. Below is a brief introduction to the hackers and their projects.

Thomas Hudson

Thomas is adding a new wonder to the game. Once completed, the wonder will cause all lawyers in the game to explode in a nuclear blast.

Occupation: Developer at Cygnus Solutions
Traveled to Loki Hack from Atlanta, GA.
Quote: "Use the source, Luke!"

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San Mehat

San is working on allowing players who have been dropped from a network game to easily rejoin as the correct civilization.

Occupation: Senior developer, VA Linux
Traveled to Loki Hack from San Jose, CA
Quote: "I just wish I had a PIII Xeon 5000..."

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Brendon Tuck "Friar"

Friar is working on several projects. He has completed a patch which allows the game window to be specified from the command line. The new value is then saved to the preferences file. He's also working allowing players to purchase obsolete military units with public works. Each such militia unit will deduct one population from the host city.

Occupation: President, Zendragon Software
Traveled to Loki Hack from Rochester, NY
Quote: "I'd like people to play CivCTP with these changes and tell me what they think."

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Jon Taylor

Jon is porting CivCTP to GGI, a cross platform API for multimedia applications.

Occupation: Engineer, Creative Labs
Traveled to Loki Hack from San Jose, CA
Quote: "I'm doing this to show people how powerful GGI really is."

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Roberto Peon

Roberto is working on a number of enhancements. He has already created a smaller footprint installation of the game which only requires 15MB of disk space. In addition, he is modifying the radar map so that it will always be centered. As if that we're enough, he's also hacking space to take orbiting into account. Each turn, cities and units in space will orbit around the planet.

Occupation: Student, Georgia Tech
Traveled to Loki Hack from Atlanta
Quote: "I've learned a lot more than I thought I would."

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Daniel Vogel

Daniel is porting the video functions from CivCTP to ClanLib, an object oriented library which 'does all the fancy things a programmer could ever want.'

Occupation: Student, Karlsruhe University
Traveled to Loki Hack from Karlsruhe, Germany
Quote: "Those who know can't explain and those who don't can't understand."

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Ian Nelson

Ian is adding an option which allows the computer AI to control a players units. Turn on the option and the computer will decide what you explore, who you attack, where you found new cities, etc.

Occupation: Developer, IBM
Traveled to Loki Hack from Boulder, CO
Quote: "Loki Hack is just one of the many exciting things happening in the Linux world, and I'm having a lot of fun participating!"

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Ryan Gordon Runner-up

Ryan is developing a bunch of ways to while away your time while waiting for other players in a network game. Some of the diversions he's including are a tetris-like game and pong.

Occupation: Developer, Sales Vision
Traveled to Loki Hack from Charlotte, NC
Quote: "I'm completely exhausted but it's been a lot of fun."

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Nick Leippe

Nick is adding a "Don't Panic" button tot he game. When pressed, this button will cause random events to happen in the game. Some times to other players, and sometimes to you!

Occupation: Developer, MyComputer.com
Traveled to Loki Hack from Provo, UT
Quote: "I'm waiting 20 minutes for the code to link -- again!"

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Joshua Shagam Runner-up

Joshua has reimplemneted the map generation routine as a multi-fractal based landscape generator. The new code generates thousands of different kinds of maps.

Occupation: Graphics Developer/Researcher
Traveled to Loki Hack from Fairfax, VA
Quote: "Hi"

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Chris Swiedler Runner-up

Chris is creating special attributes for the different civilizations. For example, one civ's units may have an advantage in battle in mountain terrain. Another might have a bonus in trade.

Occupation: Developer at RememberIt.com
Traveled to Loki Hack from Atlanta, GA
Quote: "I want a stuffed penguin."

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Christopher Yeoh First Prize Winner

Christopher is enhancing the Spy unit by allowing it to infiltrate an enemy city. If successful, the Spy is destroyed, but you are able to view the infiltrated city's stats until the enemy pays to remove you. Chris is also adding extra units such as land carriers and stealth carriers.

Occupation: Developer, Maptech
Traveled to Loki Hack from Denver, CO
Quote: "Loki Hack was a great idea. It's great to work with game code. I've never had a chance to do this before."

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Rick Bischoff

Rick is adding cheat codes to CivCTP. These codes will allow users to do things such as remove the fog of war and launch units into space from anywhere on the map.

Occupation: Developer, Caterpillar
Traveled to Loki Hack from Peoria, IL
Quote: "I would like to see the Linux user base grow up."

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Andrew Henderson Runner-up

Andrew is adding an ambush attribute to the military units in CivCTP. In a conflict, the ambush qualities would be taken into account during resolution. He's also adding tile improvements and tweaking unit stats to better account for ambush and surprise.

Occupation: Developer, Lockheed Martin
Traveled to Loki Hack from Orlando, FL
Quote: "If no one wakes you up, you can easily type 500 screens of k's with your forehead."

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Mark Coletti

Mark is spending his time improving the CivCTP code base in the hopes that it will someday go open source. His work is certainly popular here, as one of the first improvements was to speed up compile times!

Occupation: Developer, SAIC
Traveled to Loki Hack from Washington, D.C.
Quote: "This event is further proof that without caffeine, civilization would not be possible."

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Eric Raymond

Eric is adding a libertarian government type to CivCTP. Libertarian governments will not be able to move military units outside of their home territory, but will receive large science and production bonuses. Once a libertarian government is chosen, all fascist and communist civilizations will immediately declare war on it.

Occupation: President, Open Source Initiative
Traveled to Loki Hack from PA
Quote: "As a long time gamer and fan of the Civilization series, I thought this was great!"

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Dennis Payne

Dennis has resurrected the Aztec civilization. He's also added a flat earth mode, so that units on the extreme right edge, for example, can no longer move right and wrap around to the left side. Dennis is also exploring the possibility of adding units to the game (I suggested Barney the dinosaur, who would attack a city and turn all of its citizens to entertainers...).

Occupation: Developer, SoftScape
Traveled to Loki Hack from Holliston, MA
Quote: "Can I get back to you on that?"

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John Hall "Reeves"

John has created an autoexplore command. Units told to autoexplore will automagically begin to explore the surrounding countryside."

Occupation: Student, Georgia Tech
Traveled to Loki Hack from Atlanta, GA
Quote: "A blue screen of death on a palmtop!!!!??"

 

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