First image from my gravity simulator

Second image from my gravity simulator

Oh, I suppose you’d like to download the current version. It’s sloppy, but you’re welcome to it! Some code borrowed from the python/pygame tutorials, but the physics are all mine.

Download it here.

Update: Almost forgot!!! Left click adds an additional ball, right click saves a screenshot and clears the background.

Update 2:

This one was after about 30 minutes with 6 balls

Just another image, click to enlarge.

Update 4: Put a video up on YouTube showing what it looks like while running: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOBBPtsu5MM

What else is great about Evony?  Well for one, it’s massively multiplayer.  At any given time, there are thousands of players on your server, all attacking eachother’s cities, resource plots, and generally having a great time doing it.  Joining an alliance gives players a large group of friends to talk strategy with, get help from (you can reinforce eachother’s cities for instance), and when waiting for more resources to build up, alliance chat makes for some very fun conversation.  Due to the generally slow pace of the game, the social aspect becomes much more pronounced, lending the game more of an us-against-them feel than a me-against-the-computer one.

So, now that I’ve talked a little about what Evony is and why it’s so fun, let me give you a rundown of some things I learned early on that should help new players get started right:

1. Use your beginner’s protection – When each player starts, they have a 7 day grace period during which they cannot attack or be attacked.  You should plan to spend a large amount of time playing for your first few days, as build times will be very low at the beginning and you’ll have the chance to build up resources very quickly.  Resource plots are vital to the early game, build sawmills, quarrys, iron mines, and farms up to a pretty good level within the first day.
2. Keep your Town Hall below level 5 – During beginner’s protection, if you get your Town Hall above level 4, you will no longer be protected.  That protection period is vital!
3. Get your friends to play Evony – If you can get your friends to start playing at the same time you do, you’ll all learn more in the process.  I know that my friends have been able to answer questions I had sooner than I would have been able to find out on my own.  Plus it’s fun to "talk shop" when you’re out and about.
4. Join an alliance – Many alliances will not take players until they hit a certain level of prestige, but sometimes just being active daily is enough.  Send mail to some of your neighbors and see if they’re looking for people to join with them!
5. Buy and sell on the market – When you start getting 250k resources and your build queues are full, you should think about buying and selling on the market.  Any time the market has a difference between the highest bid and the lowest offer, there’s room to make some extra gold.  If you have patience, you can make a couple million gold a day.
6. Capture valleys early – Low level valleys are easy to take with a few hundred archers and will greatly increase your resource production.  In the first few days, you should have all 4 valleys available to you taken up.  I personally prefer forests because of how much lumber will sell for in the market, but you can always abandon a valley and take another if you need to refocus your resource production.
7. Keep your mayor’s politics high – The higher your mayor’s politics, the more bonus to resource production you’ll get and the less time it will take to build structures.
8. Use your free speedup – The speedup button doesn’t use any items if the base build time of the structure is less than 5 minutes.  On your first day, most structures will take less than 5 minutes to build.  Free speedups will greatly increase the rate at which you strengthen your town.

So, now that you have some good tips to start out with, go play evony!  You can find me on Server 50, my player name is RedKrieg.

Have fun!

I made a half-assed attempt at commenting the source, because I’m a nice guy. You should be able to get an idea of what I was thinking from there.

Update [20081002003930EDT]: Almost forgot, uses Cairo for drawing. XOrg process maxes the cpu at the resolution I’m using for this thing… NO idea why. Any programmers wanna help?

To install it, you need three packages (at least, I did):
sudo aptitude install kvm virt-manager libvirt-bin

You’ll also need to add yourself to three groups:

• System -> Administration -> Users and Groups
• Click “Unlock”
• Enter password, etc.
• Click “Manage Groups”
• Under each of the following groups, make sure your user name is checked:
• kvm
• vde2-net
• libvirtd
• Reboot!

When you get the system back up, the Virtual Machine Manager is under Applications -> System Tools.

Have fun!!!

while(!0xDEAD) die();

The above code will cause you to live forever for all non-zero values of DEAD.

But alas, this wouldn’t be a very good post here at redkrieg.com were I not to include something at least remotely technical… This weekend I finished preliminary work on my own thumbdrive based distribution of ubuntu. I wrote my own sexy splash screen and modified the themes a bit. I added all the usual programs that I love, set my defaults the way I like them, and even fixed a few bugs in the latest version (upon which this was based). Since it’s thumbdrive based and I have an amazing thumbdrive (OCZ ATV Turbo), it boots and runs faster than any hard disk install I’ve ever used. Unfortunately desktop effects only work on intel video hardware, but at least I have a persistent partition upon which to store any changes I make to the OS. My 4GB drive should be enough for a year’s worth of work if I stay away from video. All of this is thanks to two wonderful tools. The first of which is remastersys, which I use to turn a virtual machine into a full distribution of linux. Secondly, and just as important to this particular venture of mine is pendrivelinux.com‘s tutorial on turning ubuntu 7.10 in to a pen drive bootable (and usable) distro. Now the tutorial as is has some problems, all of which are in the zip file near the end of the tutorial. Many entries in that file don’t work, and the defaults are not set for a persistent install. Luckily for you, fearless user, I have below the contents of my syslinux.cfg for your internet related needs. Also, you can put anything you want in isolinux.txt.

syslinux.cfg:
DEFAULT persistent
LABEL persistent
menu label ^Start Ubuntu in USB persistent mode (saves changes)
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent initrd=initrd.gz vga=0x0317 quiet splash --
LABEL live
menu label ^Start Ubuntu in Live mode
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz vga-0x317 quiet splash --
LABEL xforcevesa
menu label Start Ubuntu in safe ^graphics mode
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent xforcevesa initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL oem
menu label ^OEM install (for manufacturers)
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper oem-config/enable=true initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash --
LABEL hd
menu label ^Boot from first hard disk
localboot 0x80
append -
DISPLAY isolinux.txt
TIMEOUT 50
PROMPT 1

Have fun. I know I am.

Fuck.