L4D2

Watch Out For This Source Engine Exploit

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If for any reason you find yourself playing a multiplayer Source Engine game DO NOT accept any invites from strangers.

Secret Club are a not-for-profit reverse engineering group who’ve found a number of exploits with Valve’s software, which they explain in a series of posts on Twitter. Each of these exploits are remote code execution flaws, which Secret Club told me via email gives a hacker “full control over the victim’s system, which can be used to steal passwords, banking information, and more.”

If what is being reported in the article is true then Valve has been aware of this exploit for two years. This is a serious exploit to have open in the wild, and hopefully the exposure encourages them to get off their duffs to 86 it from their code! Be very careful when playing Source games until this gets resolved.

It’s ironic reading this a day after playing around in GMod with Yutram! Fortunately, it was just the both of us goofing around on maps that would probably be unappealing to twelve year olds Fortnite enthusiasts.

In Which I Became A Sourcerer

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It’s been awhile since I tried tackling Thinking With Time Machine, but I was in something to wake my brain up a little. If you’ve never played it’s a Free Portal 2 mod that you can download through Steam, and I recommend it! I mean it is free so… why not? I’ve also been watching my TF2 and L4D1 and L4D2 servers getting traffic. left 4 Dead 2 had a content update recently and that one has been especially busy. I had to run an update on the server yesterday and I couldn’t because people were still connecting on their client.

There was also some Source Filmmaker today. Yesterday I actually rendered something to incorporate into the video, and now I’ve been working on the main scene where we’re all chillaxin’ in our new digs.

This was probably one of the more Source related evenings I’ve had in awhile, not that I’m complaining or anything.

Happy 4/20! Here are some livestreams

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To celebrate 4/20 I did a couple long overdue livestreams today:

 

Today felt like a good day to explore and blow things up with good friends and company. I’ve been pretty much disappearing into my own world after reading and enduring my daily allowance of depression lately… there is something about being surrounded by people who think this whole thing is fake or overblown, and wanting to open the country again just to get your hair dyed canary yellow just boggles my mind. It’s also one of the reasons why I haven’t been posting much. I’ve pretty much been taking it leisurely today, because I know the next work week for me is going to be hell. They want me to work 6 days in a row, but at least I’ll have two days off in a row at the end of it. I’ve put in for my vacation (again) and hopefully I’ll stand a better chance of getting it. I’m really getting sick of that place.

The Forest Of Zombie Ghosts + Open Thread

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We did another livestream last night, this time a co-op of a Left 4 Dead 2 campaign. It was fun despite what Left 4 Dead 2 wanted to throw at us.

I spent today tidying up my desk area, giving myself a good breakfast for today and probably the rest of the week (do ahead breakfasts are my favorite lifehack), and I did a little shopping on Amazon. I’m putting together a new ensemble for my Red Raidenhood Costume. I have other shopping plans for after work as well, and possibly maybe even during my lunch break.

Other than that I’ve relaxed for most of the evening, just finished playing a bit of Dreamfall The Longest Journey… I had to start over for whatever reason, this time I made sure there was a save in place. I also played a tiny bit of Duke Nukem and Commander Keen… emphasis on the tiny. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for whatever reason. :melon:

I’ll be starting up again on the animated SFM intro for one of the Skyrim videos sometime after work if nothing else crops up. I probably won’t be showing much in the way of WIP photos until sometime late next month.

I’m ending the evening by drinking a nice homemade infusion of white tea and the watermelon tea I got for my birthday; that has been my all day elixir. It will most likely help fuel my imagination for future nightmares to come. :melon:

Left 4 Dead 2 Livestream

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We played a custom L4D2 campaign based in the world of Silent Hill. I crashed a few times, but overall it was fun. I pretty much chilled all day, it was foggy outside for the entire day, I’ve been enjoying my new tea pot! Had some flowering tea today, and played a bit of Okami, some Quake Champions, and then a custom L4D2 campaign. Lived off of my leftovers for the entire day, life’s good… or at least I keep telling myself that. I know I’ll be in for some anxiety level shit at work for at least the next three weeks. These two days off are going to be mental escapes fo sho.

EXTREME HOME MAKEOVER!!!!! Plus other stuff

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As a way to chill Yutram and I decided to play a little bit of a custom L4D2 campaign during livestream this evening… big mistake:

While I like the aesthetic so far, the whole map seems difficult to navigate, and not just because of the endless hordes this game creams its jeans over. I like exploring levels, and they make it difficult in this game to do just that… I’m not sure if this is in the map design itself, the AI Director executing the commands, or a little of both. But I do remember a time when L4D2 didn’t use the endless horde routine, it seemed less boring to have random hordes instead of just an endless crowd.

Other than our misadventures in L4D2 I did finish setting up SFM under Linux the rest of the way this afternoon if I don’t get myself lost on “script writing”, or rather taking notes on which segments to animate, and how to start and end each video. Probably my most favorite part next to doing the animated portions.

But for now sleep needs to happen, that also seems to be when my brain becomes its most creative it seems… as most of the things that come out of it aren’t things that I would typically ponder during daylight hours.

In other news I can still hold on somewhat in L4D2

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Having time to myself = doing things that I haven’t been able to do in a long time. Today/Tonight I played a bit of L4D2 and somehow managed to survive it on Advanced mode, we all only died once! I also decided to configure L4D2’s Steam Controller config for whenever I feel like playing away from the desktop. It has a good set now, the average configuration felt too weird to me. I like jumping with the right grip which was already assigned to voice chat. So I swapped it around the X Button. Shouldn’t matter too much since I mainly use mumble for voice, but on the off chance someone is using the in game voice I’ll be able to chat with the press of a button.

I forgot how not vanilla my game was. I must have like 60 different mods for it? Not a big surprise since I used to review that stuff. Not sure I’ll go back to doing review type videos since so many already do so, but I still want to make videos in general. Dedicating to one style doesn’t seem to be possible for me right now. I guess it depends on the materials I’m recording.

What I did during my days off + thoughts on the new realMyst

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My projects during my weekend included finishing Bioshock Infinite and srcds server attention. Basically that consisted of checking in on the servers I haven’t been on in awhile. I also changed the spawn rate on the special infected in L4D2 to match L4D1’s since it always annoyed me how they sped up the specials in the later game while grouping them all so close together, instead of spreading them out a bit like in the original.

Then of course I saw that realMyst Masterpiece Edition released on Steam today. I decided to purchase it to see what it would look like and well, I have mixed emotions.

First, the game crashed 3 times before finally loading it in 1920 x 1080, anti aliasing doesn’t seem to be working right, and the game isn’t properly optimized. I was getting a framerate of 30 to 45, which doesn’t make any sense on something like the unity engine. I hate to be brutally honest but games like Shadow Warrior and Tomb Raider have a better framerate with more objects being thrown around PLUS better graphic detail (I laughed at those who said this version of realMyst has the best graphics compared to any game out on the market… HA!) Then of course there was that confounded random hangup that took place about every 3 to 5 steps. At first I thought it was due to the autosave feature but sadly that wasn’t the case. Oh, and there was some sort of strange glitch when walking towards the book room where Sirus and Achenar’s books were kept. The room went from being dim, to moving over slightly and brightening up. YOU ARE RUINING MY IMMERSION!!!!!!111111111

But it wasn’t all terrible. I did like the flashlight feature, that was pretty cool. The return of the day/night cycle was excellent, I laughed at the night time butterflies, the water looked nice, although these days it’s pretty easy to make nice looking water as well as adding bloom and shine. But then it is a rerererere?make of a classic game on a newer engine with newer textures so…

Hopefully they fix the optimization soon. It’s really annoying to play it with that constant pausing.