Day: July 17, 2019

Counter-Strike At 20: Two Hackers Upend The Gaming Industry

July 17, 2019 by 62 Comments

Choices matter. You’ve only got one shot to fulfill the objective. A single coordinated effort is required to defuse the bomb, release the hostages, or outlast the opposition. Fail, and there’s no telling when you’ll get your next shot. This is the world that Counter-Strike presented to PC players in 1999, and the paradigm shift it presented was greater than it’s deceptively simple namesake would suggest.

The reckless push forward mantra of Unreal Tournament coupled with the unrelenting speed of Quake dominated the PC FPS mind-share back then. Deathmatch with a side of CTF (capture the flag) was all anyone really played. With blazing fast respawns and rocket launchers featured as standard kit, there was little thought put towards conservative play tactics. The same sumo clash of combatants over the ever-so inconveniently placed power weapon played out time and again; while frag counts came in mega/ultra/monster-sized stacks. It was all easy come, easy go.

Counter-Strike didn’t follow the quick frag, wipe, repeat model. Counter-Strike wasn’t concerned with creating fantastical weaponry from the future. Counter-Strike was grounded in reality. Military counter terrorist forces seek to undermine an opposing terrorist team. Each side has their own objectives and weapon sets, and the in-game economy can swing the battle wildly at the start of each new round. What began as a fun project for a couple of college kids went on to become one of the most influential multiplayer games ever, and after twenty years it’s still leaving the competition in the de_dust(2).

Even if you’ve never camped with an AWP, the story of Counter-Strike is a story of an open platform that invited creative modifications and community-driven development. Not only is Counter-Strike an amazing game, it’s an amazing story.

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3D Printed Snap Gun For Automatic Lock Picking

July 17, 2019 by 31 Comments

At a far flung, wind blown, outpost of Hackaday, we were watching a spy film with a bottle of suitably cheap Russian vodka when suddenly a blonde triple agent presented a fascinating looking gadget to a lock and proceeded to unpick it automatically. We all know very well that we should not believe everything we see on TV, but this one stuck.

Now, for us at least, fantasy became a reality as [Peterthinks] makes public his 3D printed lock picker – perfect for the budding CIA agent. Of course, the Russians have probably been using these kind of gadgets for much longer and their YouTube videos are much better, but to build one’s own machine takes it one step to the left of center.

The device works by manually flicking the spring (rubber band) loaded side switch which then toggles the picking tang up and down whilst simultaneously using another tang to gently prime the opening rotator.

The size of the device makes it perfect to carry around in a back pocket, waiting for the chance to become a hero in the local supermarket car park when somebody inevitably locks their keys in their car, or even use it in your day job as a secret agent. Just make sure you have your CIA, MI6 or KGB credentials to hand in case you get searched by the cops or they might think you were just a casual burglar. Diplomatic immunity, or a ‘license to pick’ would also be useful, if you can get one.

As mentioned earlier, [Peter’s] video is not the best one to explain lock picking, but he definitely gets the prize for stealth. His videos are below the break.

In the meantime, all we need now are some 3D printed tangs.

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Pushing Pixels To A Display With VGA Without A PC

July 17, 2019 by 17 Comments

[Ben Eater] is back with the second part of his video series on building a simple video card that can output 200×600 pixels to a display with nothing but a VGA connection, a handful of 74-logic chips and a 10 MHz crystal. In this installment we see how he uses nothing but an EEPROM and a handful of resistors to get an image onto the screen.

The interesting part is in how the image data is encoded into the EEPROM, since it has to be addressable by the same timing circuit as what is being used for the horizontal and vertical timing. By selecting the relevant inputs that’d make a valid address, and by doubling the size of each pixel a few times, a 100 x 75 pixel image can be encoded into the EEPROM and directly addressed using this timing circuit.

The output from the EEPROM itself not fed directly into the monitor, as the VGA interface expects a 0 V to 0.7 V signal on each RGB pin, indicating the brightness. To get more than three colors out of this setup, [Ben] builds up a simple 2-bit DAC that allows for two bits per channel, meaning four brightness levels per color channel or 64 colors effectively.

See the video after the link for the full details. While pretty close to perfect, a small issue remains at the end in the forms of black vertical lines. These are caused by a timing issue in the circuit, with comments on the YouTube video suggesting various other potential fixes. Have you breadboarded your own version yet to debug this issue before [Ben]’s next video comes out?
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