I’ll make an attempt to keep this short…no, there isn’t a new version of the TFC Ranking Program, but more on that later. I just wanna say that I’m extremely proud of my l33t $Kl!llZ (or whatever those cyber posers say) from playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II again. The first time I played it (about two years ago), I was already cheating by level 4 (fly mode, mostly). This time I haven’t cheated once and I’m already to level 17. All my restraint from killing friendly NPCs paid off, too, cause this time I got to pursue the light side of the force. I really didn’t want to have to kill Jan after level 15. She’s a damn fine woman and I hope she gives my a striptease when I kick Jerec’s ass. Anyways, here’s some screenshots:

My father just came in with the new PCGamer (August) and what’s on the cover? Why, it’s JC Denton sporting two FN P90s! Deus Ex 2…Badass! Also, looks like Raven is gonna make a Jedi Knight 2 with the Quake3 engine…Badass! It’s a good day to be a gamer, my friends.

And of course, I took an hour or two yesterday and today to do a few bug fixes and additions to the TFC Ranking Program. Remember, YOU can only edit the database ONCE (to create your member file). There’s going to be a reason for this later on. Here’s my plans for the next beta version (v1.3b probably):/p>

• Text dumps (for the rank log and error log); it’s already in but needs some fine tuning (like scrolling)
• When a death score of 0 is entered, the program with automatically compensate so there’s no divide by zero error; again, this is already in
• Minimum kill score of 10; this won’t be too hard to add
• Member rank and rank scores can be read from the “Read Database” function
• Better error handling; doing my best with that
• I’d like to add some encryption to the dat files; now that will be a lengthy bit of coding
• Anything else you’d like to see, just lemme know and I’ll do it if possible

I was certain that it would be at least one more day, but it only took some time yesterday and 6 hours today to finish coding the official beta (v1.0b) of the TFC Ranking Program. I actually added 18kb to the program since yesterday’s v0.65b. I want all S&L members to test it with their own scores (doesn’t have to just be from TFC) and even pass it around to any gamers you know for them to test.

You can only edit the database once to add yourself; the password is again “yoda”. The ranking system is totally functional, except it will only produce a rank score (reason for the beta). If you run into any errors, be sure to check the (new) errorlog.txt for details on what went wrong.

Because I suck at QBasic and my last achievement in using it to program was StoryTeller 2000, I’ve released the source code below so anyone who wants to can check my code and possibly make it more efficient. The passwords have been removed from the code, so don’t think you’ll find them in the source, biatches.