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Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer

wheybags.com

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Re: Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer

#21
post #13

I once did something based on the same principle, for a (very-very light) security solution, atop a simple closed-source media appliance that could play from USB Storage. I made a script on Linux to create a huge directory tree representing every possible sequence of a password of length N. Only one password path through the tree got the viewer to the directory that had the non-kid-safe media files. The non-security…

Love this, but seems to me that if most directories didn't have files, you could `find` your way through...

The "very-very light" part is that it was easily defeated if you removed the USB Storage from the dumb appliance, and plugged it into almost anything else.

If you had only the dumb appliance UI, however, finding the files would be a bigger chore than even energetic kids could accomplish in mere hours, and only if they knew it was there (the "password UI" was also hidden a little).

Re: Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer

#23
post #8

Strange they used shortcuts on Windows, as Windows has had links since Vista: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlin... Either this is because it's not at all well known, or because they think some users will be on XP. (Which would be strange)

Maybe it was easier? Iirc at least in some recent ish Windows versions, by default you needed admin privileges to run mklink. Given that a shortcut is just a regular file, that solves a lot of problems.

Re: Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer

#24

Ah… I think I vaguely remember a similar older program that would (optionally, of course!) as a funny option delete the files when you “defeated” them.

Or Operation: Inner Space. It used the file system to generate sectors to visit to clear viruses from your EXEs, and collecting non-contaminated EXEs to use as currency. It works great with Windows' backwards compatibility, but modern filesystems have so many thousands of directories the game is now impossible to complete. http://www.sdispace.com/

Thanks! Really enjoyed this game, but couldn't remember the name.

Re: Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer

#26
post #13

I once did something based on the same principle, for a (very-very light) security solution, atop a simple closed-source media appliance that could play from USB Storage. I made a script on Linux to create a huge directory tree representing every possible sequence of a password of length N. Only one password path through the tree got the viewer to the directory that had the non-kid-safe media files. The non-security…

Interesting. You’d need about a billion files to store all possible 6 character file names assuming you limited yourself to latin alphanumeric characters. How big are these USB drives?

Re: Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer

#27
post #8

Strange they used shortcuts on Windows, as Windows has had links since Vista: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlin... Either this is because it's not at all well known, or because they think some users will be on XP. (Which would be strange)

Maybe it was easier? Iirc at least in some recent ish Windows versions, by default you needed admin privileges to run mklink. Given that a shortcut is just a regular file, that solves a lot of problems.

That depends on your version of windows (newer versions are more relaxed on it). Also file links are 'weird' in windows.

You have 3 types junction points, file links and directory links. Each one acting in its very weird odd way. Junction points are for local only directories. Files for files and directories can be either local dirs or remote SMB points. Junctions vs dir can be an interesting trade off on what you want it to do. With junciton being faster for many operations but local only. Also if the file is less than ~500 bytes there is no real gain as you will probably just consume MFT anyway either way.

Re: Dungeons and Directories, an exploration game in your file explorer

#30
post #16

> In the end, the current version of the game create 41,514 directories, 15,2041 files (mostly empty files with messages in their names), and 45,399 links, which makes it rather unplayable for those unfortunate enough to try running it on a mechanical hard drive. https://github.com/wheybags/DungeonsAndDirectories/blob/mast... Be warned if you're not using an SSD!

Well, that seems like the ideal candidate for a RAM drive, doesn't it?

Ramdisks are extremely slept on, there is a lot of stuff you can kludge with a ramdisk in a pinch. I had to do some video stream processing the other day and I didn't have time. So I just made a ramdisk and read/wrote jpegs at 30fps, yeah it's stupid as hell, but it worked when I needed it to and that's what matters.
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