http://www.kongregate.com/games/ahnt/loops-of-zen/

1. Start by looking for places where a piece MUST be turned a certain way.  When there’s a 3-way piece or a straight line, and one edge doesn’t have a piece in that direction (like when it’s the edge of the board), then it’s a dead giveaway that the piece can only be oriented one direction.  Also, when there is a curved piece in the corner it can only be oriented one way.

2. Now look for pieces next to those pieces that you just set that must be turned a certain way to connect to that piece.  Good examples are curve pieces on the edge next to a straight or 3-way piece, or circle pieces with only one connection point next to those same pieces.

3. Many of these pieces that you’ve found in the first two examples were on the outside edges of the board.  Try to finish off the entire outside edges by doing this same techinque.  Use process of elimination to determine which orientations could not possibly work in order to determine which one it must be.

4. Continue working outside in, putting pieces in place which you know are right.  3-way pieces and straight lines are good for this if you can get any piece next to it which does not have a path to that piece, then you know the orientation.  4-way pieces are also good because you know they must connect in every direction.  If they are next to a straight line or a circle piece, you know exactly which way that piece must be oriented to connect to the 4-way.

5. When you run out of pieces which must be in certain directions, look for pieces which at least cannot be in the orientation they display, and change them to one of the possible orientations.  Use this to start putting together the rest of the puzzle.

6. When you get to the end, most of the puzzle will look good, but there will be a few glitches.  These glitches are an extra little piece of loop sticking out which isn’t connected to anything.  You’ll notice that you can change the puzzle to try to repair these glitches, but they won’t be fixed until you can bring two glitches together on the board.  Keep changing the puzzle to move these glitches towards each other, and they will be fixed in pairs as you connect two unconnected glitches to each other to complete a loop.  Repeat until all of the glitches are gone.

That’s it!  There are 50 levels.  The first 30 go from easy to hard.  Then the puzzles get smaller again and include more circle pieces which seem to be more difficult to work out.  Good luck with all 50!

The only F/OSS emulator for N64 had always been Mupen64, which was often criticized for being quite a bit less mature than Project64 and some others. In any case, it was in development so we all figured it would ‘get there’ eventually… Until 2005 shortly after the release of version 0.5.1 (win32), when the project just froze. Then 2006 came and went, then 2007… And seemingly no progress was being made. It was a sad state of affairs because Mupen64 was essentially the only hope for Linux users to have a native N64 emulator for their platform.

Now, finally. After a few years, a new team has come together to work on the Mupen64 codebase, they have dubbed their project “Mupen64Plus” (a little generic if you ask me), and they’re hard at work, hacking away. From the little research I’ve done, it would seem the leader (Richard42) of this new project was a long-time contributor to Mupen64, and the original head of the Mupen64 project (Hacktarux) was planning on adding some of Richard’s new work back to the original project. I’m not sure if this merge happened or not, but it seems that on the Mupen64 homepage, the last version is still 0.5.1 for Windows and 0.5 for Linux. So who knows what happened.

I’ve been hanging out in the IRC channel for the new project for a few days now, it’s more of a developer channel, so I’m a bit out of place, even so, I like hanging out, I figure maybe I’ll learn a thing or two from the masters. :)

It seems everything is well underway. Their homepage already has a release, version 1.3, which worked pretty well for me barring a few issues. This is obviously only an initial release, so don’t expect it to be light-years ahead of the original Mupen64, but with time it could evolve to be the best out there. If you have any problems with this release, make sure you file a bug report in the “Issues” section of that page (I filed one for Ogre Battle the other day), developers need info on problems to be able to fix them, and if you’re not a developer, this is the best way to help. Make sure your report is detailed, provide the md5 hash for the rom you’re using, and list which plugins you were using. Trying different settings on the plugins and seeing if there are different results, and adding this info to your bug report(s) can go a long way towards helping along with debugging.

So now we mere mortals can only wait and see how this unfolds, but it definitely looks very promising. A big thank you to all the individuals working on this fork, and keep up the good work. The N64 and Emu fans of the world are all rooting for you! (I’m such a ham…)

A note on closed-source emulators:

I must say I’ll never understand the concept behind the “closed-source emulator”. After all, the philosophy behind the emulation community at large is to make sure that old classic games do not become forgotten or die off just because a console is no longer in widespread use. After all you can only have so many game systems hooked up in your living room at once, and a lot of these old games can often be more fun then many newer titles. To me, a closed-source project is always more vulnerable for many reasons, not only does it not benefit from the open-source “with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow” philosophy, but I would imagine that a closed codebase is easier to attack if you’re a company. Think about UltraHLE and Bleem! back in the day, if they had been Open Source, it would’ve been impossible to stop the code from spreading and evolving. Neither Nintendo nor Sony would have any legal recourse to stop individuals from hacking on the code. If preserving the classics, and making sure they can run on modern platforms is your goal, then opening the code under an OSI-compliant license is the only realistic option to achieve that goal, otherwise companies do have the power to stop you if they choose.

http://armorgames.com/play/1535/run-soldier-run

You get more soldiers if you lose them, but you don’t want to lose them.  For the most part keep your soldiers together, especially at the beginning.  The balls always jump the same distance each bounce so use that to anticipate where the ball will land and make sure you don’t have a soldier there.  This prediction becomes vital later in the game.

It’s not that hard, and it’s not that fun, but the soundtrack is great.

http://www.addictinggames.com/icescape2.html

The whole premise of this game is that it’s a puzzle and you get to click around and find stuff and move.  Then you get to this control panel to open the door you can’t get through, and you’re stuck.  You can’t get out, and the game is over.

It looked pretty good, but it’s way too short.

Hundreds of teams were created and thousands of games were played. Fifty-three of those teams made the playoffs. Some of the teams used all their pitchers at the end of the season to get their spot and now face a tired bullpen. There is a lot of excitement in the air.

Every two hours, there’s another round of games. This gives your bullpen a bit of time to rest leading up to a hectic 20 minutes of 48 teams all facing elimination at once in the first round of the playoff wildcard tournament. The top 5 teams get automatic entry to the quarterfinals, guaranteed to have their pitchers rested tomorrow when they start. The next 48 teams have to win four straight to get the same quarterfinal spot.

We’re going to do this every month.

A couple of people have asked me why I don’t put ads up on SimYard.  (For those of you who don’t know, SimYard is my new fantasy baseball management simulation webgame.)  The answer is, I will be charging next month to join leagues, and I don’t think it’s right to charge money for something and then make more money advertising to those people.  People are going to play my game because it’s fun and it makes them relax, and advertisements steal from that environment.

So, no ads.  That’s the way I like it.  Please, enjoy SimYard, a brand new webgame that has no ads.

If you like webgames, and you like baseball, and you haven’t tried SimYard yet, then go there right now and sign up.  Seriously, you will enjoy this game a lot!

 http://www.addictinggames.com/slacker2.html

Walkthrough

1. Go to the bar. Inventory > use the badge. This will blind the bartender and let you click the beer mug. Leave.
2. Go to the gas station.  Inventory > use the mug. Now you have a filled mug. Leave.
3. Go to the back-alley. Inventory > use the mug. Now you have the comb. Take the spray can that sits next to the table. Leave.
4. Go to the arcade. Inventory > use the comb. Now you got tickets! (yey!). Inventory > use the tickets. Now you have the pirate hat (OMG!). Leave.
5. Go to the pawn shop. Inventory > use the pirate hat. You get a dollar bill, and a quarter. Leave the shop.
6. Go to the back-alley. Inventory > use the dollar bill. Now you have the plastic gun. Inventory > combine the spray and the gun. Leave.
7. Go to the bar. Go to the pool table. Inventory > use the quarter. Pick up the glass eye. Back to the bar. Inventory > use the eye. Got an eye-patch. Leave.
8. Go to the pawn shop. Inventory > use the eye-patch. Now you have a mask. Leave.
9. Go to the gas station. Inventory > use the mask, then use the gun.
10. MINI GAME: Click the exclamtion marks on time (on fast computers it might be very quick, but you can retry until you succeed). Take the lottery ticket on the floor to the left.
11. Go to the gas station. Inventory > use the lottery ticket. MONEY! Leave.
12. Go to the back-alley. Inventory > use the money. Now you have the ridiculously expensive cd. Leave.
13. Go to the factory. Inventory > use the cd.
14. MINI GAME: Click the exclamtion marks on time (on fast computers it might be very quick, but you can retry until you succeed). Press one of the buttons.

And you’re done!

Doron.

http://www.simyard.com/

Features:

- Create your own team, choose your name, colors, and logo.
- Recruit and dismiss players as you choose.
- You create the lineups and the pitching rotations.
- Play live games against other players.
- New season every month, ending in a huge tournament.

Sound like fun?

http://www.simyard.com/

It’s free, so try it out!

You get extra players on your team by interacting with people at the park. You can use this to raise Buzz for your team also, which results in more fans being generated if you win. The more fans you have for your team, the more money you can make once the leagues start next month. The more money you can make, the more money you can bid on players, and the better team you can put together.

Each month will bring a new season, and new growth to SimYard. The game will grow and change along with the players and the seasons. Join now and help to write a new fantasy baseball history!