In my life, I've thrown two of these that I tracked with my eyes for 5+ minutes that never came down.
First was from ground level but in a downtown area. It caught the currents between the tall buildings and just kept going and I lost it after it crossed a street and I couldn't cross fast enough to follow.
Second was from a 19th floor balcony. The two other paper plane designs my friends used fell to the ground in less than a minute. Mine reached about the 4th floor, caught an updraft from the hot asphalt streets, and never came down. It flew so high that it became a dot and eventually wasn't visible.
Cliffs: this design is great for gliding and catching air currents, and will fly forever if it catches the right one. Throw outdoors for great fun.
Everyone hated the hackers, and so did I when they ruined non-hacking games, but it was really amazing to see the kinds of stuff they could do. When it was hacker against hacker, you'd see the extent of their bag of tricks: measures, counter-measures, counter-counter-...-measures, never before seen tricks, etc.
Basic example: You had people that could "fade" which required setting a flag on an opponent's character to make the game think they were falling to their death. The victim's screen would then constantly fade to black as if they were falling off of a cliff, and deaths would be counted against them. Setting your victim's death flag required altering the code for various force skills. For example, you could alter the force grip code to set the "fade" flag instead of the intended "choke" flag on your victim.
That was the most basic hack. Then you had people that had counter-fades, counter-counter-fades, counter-fade penetrating fades, etc. Of course, this is just an example, there were a plethora of things you could do: shoot all manner of projectiles (AT-AT out of a repeater? Sure!), fill the level with water, almost anything you could think of.
Some of the great hackers just couldn't be killed by anything you threw at them, hacked or not, and your attempts to make yourself invincible just wouldn't work against them.
The hacking became a game of its own. You couldn't just alter any code any way you liked, you still had to play by a certain set of rules. The game used (basic) checksums, and you had to be clever with your hacks in order to have them work.
This ease of modification led to some really awesome mods, but it was the ways people could twist the original game within the constraints that really intrigued me.
I think there's still a community on IRC that keeps this game alive, and I bet there's still a hacking community:)
Slashdot Mirror
In my life, I've thrown two of these that I tracked with my eyes for 5+ minutes that never came down.
First was from ground level but in a downtown area. It caught the currents between the tall buildings and just kept going and I lost it after it crossed a street and I couldn't cross fast enough to follow.
Second was from a 19th floor balcony. The two other paper plane designs my friends used fell to the ground in less than a minute. Mine reached about the 4th floor, caught an updraft from the hot asphalt streets, and never came down. It flew so high that it became a dot and eventually wasn't visible.
Cliffs: this design is great for gliding and catching air currents, and will fly forever if it catches the right one. Throw outdoors for great fun.
small
is LEDs, not LED's.
Keys only serve to keep honest people honest. A lock pick and torsion bar can mimic any (average) key anyways.
The story is interesting (on the subject of computer vision) but shouldn't scare anyone.
This game was awesome for it's hackability.
Everyone hated the hackers, and so did I when they ruined non-hacking games, but it was really amazing to see the kinds of stuff they could do. When it was hacker against hacker, you'd see the extent of their bag of tricks: measures, counter-measures, counter-counter-...-measures, never before seen tricks, etc.
Basic example: You had people that could "fade" which required setting a flag on an opponent's character to make the game think they were falling to their death. The victim's screen would then constantly fade to black as if they were falling off of a cliff, and deaths would be counted against them. Setting your victim's death flag required altering the code for various force skills. For example, you could alter the force grip code to set the "fade" flag instead of the intended "choke" flag on your victim.
That was the most basic hack. Then you had people that had counter-fades, counter-counter-fades, counter-fade penetrating fades, etc. Of course, this is just an example, there were a plethora of things you could do: shoot all manner of projectiles (AT-AT out of a repeater? Sure!), fill the level with water, almost anything you could think of.
Some of the great hackers just couldn't be killed by anything you threw at them, hacked or not, and your attempts to make yourself invincible just wouldn't work against them.
The hacking became a game of its own. You couldn't just alter any code any way you liked, you still had to play by a certain set of rules. The game used (basic) checksums, and you had to be clever with your hacks in order to have them work.
This ease of modification led to some really awesome mods, but it was the ways people could twist the original game within the constraints that really intrigued me.
I think there's still a community on IRC that keeps this game alive, and I bet there's still a hacking community :)
I swear, Your Honour, she's a 9000 year old space alien with the appearance of a 12 year old human female...
... with ears and a tail!
We'll all going to die!
I can believable!hmm... nope, can't think of a joke.
It's been done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welchia with mixed results.