Junk Bytes

MSc Dissertation: educational VR flight sim

2025-06-07T02:19:00.008+03:00

Forgot to brag about recently getting my Master's degree!

A few years ago I had enrolled in a Computer Science postgraduate studies programme. While I attended and passed all the necessary courses within the first two semesters, I had postponed my dissertation since I was too busy with my parallel full-time and part-time jobs at the time.

Blockbuster Inc. & other catch-up

2022-12-19T00:11:00.002+02:00

This year has gone by super fast and it's about time for an update.

Since June I've been working with Super Sly Fox as the lead developer on our upcoming game Blockbuster Inc, where you build and manage your movie studio through the decades.

Aircraft maintenance simulator & VR game projects

2022-03-24T01:49:00.008+02:00

Since the start of this academic year I've been enrolled in a Computer Science postgraduate program. I have found a couple of my semester projects to be noteworthy, so I thought I should post about them.

Stick Veterans 2.0: a long-overdue update

2022-01-20T00:19:00.002+02:00

It's been so long since the last game update that I feel nervous writing this.

After a long time of development and rewriting, a new update is finally available.

Stick Veterans 2.0 is now published on Poki, a popular online games website.

Barbara vs Zombies

2021-01-17T23:52:00.002+02:00

A few years back I made a game, Barbara vs Zombies, for my then-girlfriend Barbara.

She used to like an old light-gun game, House of the Dead, so I depicted her dodging and shooting zombies in this one. Included a backstory with silly romanticism, cats, and inside jokes.

It's been nearly a year since we broke up, and this game has been sitting forgotten in my hard disk. I eventually decided it shouldn't go to waste. It is, after all, a game meant to remind us of happy times.

Download and play the game on Gamejolt or itch.io.

I had made an Android version too, maybe I'll get around to publishing it someday.

Hang in there, 2020 was a tough year, but you've made it this far already, so congrats. 💖

-Kostas

Ludum Dare 46: Super Immunizer

2020-04-21T10:59:00.000+03:00

Ludum Dare 46 gamejam has just finished (and seems to have been hugely popular). The theme was "Keep It Alive".

I took part with my cousin Alkis Tagaras (who made the 3D graphics) and my friend Giorgos Giannisis, who made the music. The result is Super Immunizer, a mini-game where you fight microbes as an immune system cell.

Ludum Dare 44 (late update): Alleycat Faust

2019-07-05T19:17:00.000+03:00

Two months ago was the time at which the Ludum Dare 44 gamejam took place. It's been 2 years since I took part in a gamejam (Global Game Jam in 2017), and 3 years since I took part in my first Ludum Dare (LD35 in 2016), so it was about time I re-lived the experience.

A text-based adventure

2018-12-28T14:47:00.000+02:00

SO I made a console game.

A text adventure, specifically.

Written in pure C.

It's all here: https://github.com/kostasvs/MagAdventure

Stick Veterans: the Art in Maps

2018-11-10T02:33:00.000+02:00

These past few months I have been taking a much needed break from developing Stick Veterans. While I miss it, and there are tons of stuff I really want to add to it, personal life issues and a pressing schedule are not helping much lately.

I do, however, make sure to regularly check and moderate the maps that you guys have been making and uploading. It's not an easy job, as I need to playtest each map to see that it plays well, and many maps often need corrections.

Flashy Dansy is now on Android

2018-06-21T05:10:00.000+03:00

Wow, took me almost 4 years to decide to do it. Flashy Dansy is now available on Play Store for Android.

Flashy Dansy is a game I had made for #tagjam15 gamejam, and it is the game that won the jam. I almost feel nostalgic thinking it was released nearly 4 years ago.

Stick Veterans 1.1 (Grenades, Body Armor)

2018-05-12T07:10:00.000+03:00

Found the time and courage to push out another update for Stick Veterans. Version 1.1 brings hand grenades and body armor into the game, among other additions.

Body armor is just a way to endure more damage (RPGs will no longer frag you in one shot). Grenades are quite a game changer, as it means you will have more strategic ways to fight your opponents, but you'll also have one more hazard to look out for. :)

Finally, a feature called Game Rules has been added. This allows customization of score limit, grenade acquisition rules, respawn delay, and a few more rules. More might be added in the future.

To be honest, there were more features that I wanted to include in this update. Seeing how I lacked the time to finish them in a reasonable timeframe, and knowing that there were some pending bugfixes, I decided to push this update as it is. This doesn't make the update any less important, though.

I can't promise when a new update will come again, and certainly can't promise what it will contain. Time will tell; until then, thank you for supporting us. =)

- Kostas

Stick Veterans 1.0 released + 500 maps milestone

2017-12-17T02:05:00.000+02:00

The last time I announced a Stick Veterans milestone was at 100 maps. Since then, Stick Veterans has reached an amazing 500 user-made maps (thank you everyone for making this happen!), and this time I have a proper way to celebrate it: version 1.0 beta has just been released.

Stick Veterans online: Good news & Bad news

2017-11-22T00:13:00.000+02:00

After loads of work, online multiplayer for Stick Veterans seems to be progressing very well. In fact, it is nearly complete, as showing in recent tests.

Today I ran the first playtest with 3 people; we connected over Hamachi, a free VPN solution, and it pretty much went smoothly (except for some non-critical bugs).

Bad news is that LAN connections might be the only thing supported, with little hope for worldwide online games. I already mentioned that in the game's web pages (Itch.io post / Gamejolt post) but I shall lay down the whole story here.

In commercial games, online multiplayer is achieved by putting up dedicated 24/7 servers (preferably in various locations throughout the world) to which the players connect.

In non-commercial games (like Stick Veterans), we have to make do without servers, as they cost money (non-trivial amounts of it). As such, we simply allow any player to act as a server themselves, and other players connect to them. This is called peer-to-peer networking (P2P).

The thing is, today's networks are a harsh ground for peer-to-peer multiplayer. Almost every user today is behind routers and firewalls, which are very unfriendly towards P2P.

Player connectivity is impossible unless the player performs advanced firewall/router setup, which requires technical knowledge that not every user has.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the only choice for Stick Veterans. Without the availability of a master server, players will have to make do with VPN programs like Tunngle or Hamachi, or will have to use port forwarding and also configure (or disable) their firewalls.

I have the hopes that a better solution will be found later on, or that players will adapt to these restrictions.

In any case, multiplayer Stick Veterans is soon becoming a very real possibility, something that I am very proud of.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I will see you online in Stick Veterans matches soon.

-Kostas

Take the Flag and Run

2017-09-02T14:03:00.003+03:00

Stick Veterans has been revamped into version 0.9.6, with the most important addition being the Capture the Flag game mode.

More Colors (Stick Veterans 0.9.5 released)

2017-07-30T02:59:00.000+03:00

Version 0.9.5 of Stick Veterans has just been released, marking the 5th update of this game.

SV update 0.9.4 (and what's different about it)

2017-05-26T18:06:00.000+03:00

Two days ago I published a new version of Stick Veterans. Version 0.9.4 marks the 4th update released for this game, and also the one that has taken the longest.

100 Maps

2017-03-19T14:34:00.000+02:00

Stick Veterans has only recently reached the "100 maps milestone", a feat for which I need to thank you guys.

The Hacker Ethic

2017-02-16T15:55:00.004+02:00

For all the hackers out there reading this shitty blog and my foolish thoughts i have a book recommendation for you.

The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen, Manuel Castells, Linus Torvalds

33c3 link dump

2017-02-11T22:32:00.001+02:00

Last year i visited Hamburg between 27-30 December for Chaos Communication Congress (probably the largest hacking conference of Europe). So i'm posting here a link dump of some interesting projects that i've encountered.

freifunk.net
abcdd.org
no-spy.org
cschh.de
hamburg.freifunk.net
tails.boum.org

Freebsd Write Blocker Kernel Module

2017-02-11T20:01:00.001+02:00

Been a long time since writing a blog post so i'm coming back with this freebsd kernel module. I've started last week to code this freebsd write blocker and hope that it'll end up being a kernel module. Still there's much work to be done (reading about all that filesystem shit, kernel services that deal with the reading storage devices and blablabla). Anyway if you don't know what a write blocker is you can check it right here. There's also a linux write blocker so it's a good start for me even if freebsd kernel differs significantly from linux kernel

I'm progressing regardless of the reading stuff so you can check my project or even test it by the time the first beta release will be announced.

You can look at the code on github anastmag/freebsd-write-blocker.

I hope that from now on my blogposting will be more frequent.

I'm planning to write an article about my first trip to Fosdem 4-5 Feb that took place this year. It was amazing.

See ya.

Global Game Jam 2017: Our game "Speaker Rumble"

2017-02-02T15:21:00.000+02:00

Global Game Jam ran a couple weeks ago, and this year I was able to participate. The jam's theme was "Waves".

Teaming up with Chris Sotiropoulos, we made this little game:

We are on Fire

2017-01-11T14:16:00.000+02:00

Quick update on Stick Veterans: new version 0.9.3 with a few additions / fixes / improvements.

Flamethrowers (honestly this alone should be a good enough reason to post).
Slowmotion mode (that too).
More discernible team colors, gameplay improvements, AI behaviour revamped
Other stuff blah blah

Download from Itch.io or
Download from Gamejolt

Stick Around for Stick Veterans

2016-11-04T03:21:00.001+02:00

Stick Veterans, a game I published not long ago, has been updated. New features include:

2D Mode: you can now play the classic, platform-shooter style game, in addition to the already available 3D Mode. You can also play 2D Mode with friends in splitscreen using gamepads.
2 new maps for 3D Mode: "Castle" and "Factory-5".
Fixed the issue with some Mac computers not showing any maps to play.
Other fixes/improvements.

Download new version on itch.io
Alternative link on Gamejolt

Stick Veterans (or "I never thought this moment would come")

2016-10-13T03:46:00.000+03:00

A personal project of mine based on the Stick Soldiers series, a project I first posted about 2 years ago, has finally seen the light with its first public version being uploaded on Gamejolt and Itch.io.

Aerial Battles Anew

2016-08-30T12:46:00.001+03:00

This screenshot. I love this screenshot.

This is a paused frame during a combat between computer-controlled AIs. The far aircraft has just avoided a missile from a third aircraft (not visible here) and is firing at an enemy. The enemy went down in the very next frame.