Logaan’s Site

In a previous update for phpBB 2, they added visual confirmation to the registration page. However, bots have started to get past this so I have devised a very simple solution that just makes it a little more difficult for them.

What this mod will do is change the length of the visual confirmation image to 8 characters, but will also remove some HTML that may give bots pointers to how long your image should be.

Open:
includes/usercp_register.php
Find:
$code = substr(str_replace('0', 'Z', strtoupper(base_convert($code, 16, 35))), 2, 6);
Find in-line:
6);
Replace With:
8);
Open:
templates/subSilver/profile_add_body.tpl
Find:
<td class="row2"><input type="text" class="post" style="width: 200px" name="confirm_code" size="6" maxlength="6" value="" /></td>
Find in-line:
size="6" maxlength="6" value=""
Replace With:
value=""
SQL:
ALTER TABLE `test_confirm` CHANGE `code` `code` CHAR( 8 ) NOT NULL;
And its as simple as that. This one change I made on several boards I maintain had the result of going from 10 or more different kinds of bots to no bots registering at all and have had no more since.

I got Supreme Commander the other day, it looked really nice, lots of really nice graphics, a 3D environment and a few friends recommended it as well.

 But I was a little dissapointed when I played it. Yeah the graphics were nice but the 3D bit was a bit misleading. Its the old 3rd person view, but if you press the spacebar you can look around… I was expecting that the camera was fully 3D and I could move it around one way… move my units then move it somewhere else etc.

“Best RTS experience”… its still lacking, it just seems to be a commander and conquer with some more advanced unit commands and a greater range of units. Homeworld 2 is better than this imho. Even the simplest thing ruins it, like I was playing the training missions (bugger all help they were as well) and I built a huge army of quick units, some tanks and Anti aircraft and like many RTS when i moved them they all get strewn out. All the quick units sped ahead and stopped… then got bombed as there was no AA to help them. Homeworld 2 for example… as soon as you group a set of units, you can choose the formation in which you want them to be and then they will always move at the speed of the slowest unit in that group.

So to me, so far it just seems like another generic RTS with nicer graphics and suffers from what alot of other games have atm with is no innovation… just continuing the RTS genre. Why doesn’t someone remake the old classics, like Dungeon Keeper… that was fantastic.

I do however look forward to Enemy Territory; Quake Wars…and Assassins Creed.