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System Name | Pioneer |
---|---|
Processor | Ryzen R9 7950X |
Motherboard | GIGABYTE Aorus Elite X670 AX |
Cooling | Noctua NH-D15 + A whole lotta Sunon and Corsair Maglev blower fans... |
Memory | 64GB (4x 16GB) G.Skill Flare X5 @ DDR5-6000 CL30 |
Video Card(s) | XFX RX 7900 XTX Speedster Merc 310 |
Storage | 2x Crucial P5 Plus 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs |
Display(s) | 55" LG 55" B9 OLED 4K Display |
Case | Thermaltake Core X31 |
Audio Device(s) | TOSLINK->Schiit Modi MB->Asgard 2 DAC Amp->AKG Pro K712 Headphones or HDMI->B9 OLED |
Power Supply | FSP Hydro Ti Pro 850W |
Mouse | Logitech G305 Lightspeed Wireless |
Keyboard | WASD Code v3 with Cherry Green keyswitches |
Software | Windows 11 Enterprise (legit), Gentoo Linux x64 |
This came across my desk this morning. It is surprisingly well written for a general population piece on these kind of efforts. It's an article about old programming tricks in old video games and the like, that are being rediscovered (and are still in fact useful) today.
Specifically, it's about "Entombed," an Atari game that was capable of generating completely random solvable mazes using a simple 5x5 number matrix that no one really knows how/why it works. To this very day, it remains unexplained, and the best explanation for the code working at all they could get from the devs that they had a team member work on it while "not entirely sober" until it apparently, "just worked." Today, the programmer who wrote it cannot be contacted so it's means of functioning remains a mystery lost to the ages. They can find no mathamatical pattern or reason the code should work either, it's actually a trick they cannot replicate. Pretty cool stuff.
I'm a bit involved in this idea (the reverse engineering as "archealogy" aspect), if only in hobby. I used to be big into the NES reverse engineering and programming scene. Different animal, same cause. I also used to help in the early days of minecraft with deobfuscating the class files. It was fun too, but completely different. Still the same idea, you are uncovering secrets that either no one else knows anymore, or they don't want you to know.
If mods feel this is not appropriate section, they may move it where appropriate. It seems more serious than lounge stuff though...
Specifically, it's about "Entombed," an Atari game that was capable of generating completely random solvable mazes using a simple 5x5 number matrix that no one really knows how/why it works. To this very day, it remains unexplained, and the best explanation for the code working at all they could get from the devs that they had a team member work on it while "not entirely sober" until it apparently, "just worked." Today, the programmer who wrote it cannot be contacted so it's means of functioning remains a mystery lost to the ages. They can find no mathamatical pattern or reason the code should work either, it's actually a trick they cannot replicate. Pretty cool stuff.
I'm a bit involved in this idea (the reverse engineering as "archealogy" aspect), if only in hobby. I used to be big into the NES reverse engineering and programming scene. Different animal, same cause. I also used to help in the early days of minecraft with deobfuscating the class files. It was fun too, but completely different. Still the same idea, you are uncovering secrets that either no one else knows anymore, or they don't want you to know.
If mods feel this is not appropriate section, they may move it where appropriate. It seems more serious than lounge stuff though...
The mysterious origins of an uncrackable video game
With the digital equivalent of trowels and shovels, archaeologists are digging into the code of early video games to uncover long forgotten secrets that could have relevance today.
www.bbc.com