In practice the Caesar cipher offers almost no communication security. There are only 25 possible ways for you to encode your message, so even without the key it’s possible to exhaust decode the message by exhaustively checking all keys. This program has been set up to do just that with the “break” option. Just type in your message and let it try all the possibilities for you.

To increase security with your shift cipher you can advance the key after every letter, changing the key and making it much more difficult to break using an exhaustive method. You will need to communicate to the receiver of the message what the initial shift is (by the value of what A equals initially) and how much to advance the key by every letter. This can be done by simply sending them through separate channels the letter and number they’ll need. So if you received the key “G5″ you’d have all you needed to decode the following message:

Zsu gtka nj Qhkscgwo Zozaoip ds dd ayrzw vwzwqjpzx unlj wnva kebh yw ywxua ljuow re’ft emwwlfhl trkspzjh tj.

Caesar Cipher is written by Joe Larson.

Roguelike Defense doesn’t ramp you up to the task of defending it’s 9 lanes all at once. But it also doesn’t leave you to defend yourself at once. Your initial wall will be enough to mostly slow down the first wave, but you had better develop some strategy quick because every creature that makes it through is a point off your health. When that reaches zero it’s game over. And you may think that you’ve got a grip on thing until the swarm starts rushing your line of defense faster and your mines and woods start running out of resources and disappearing on you.

How many waves will you survive before the horde over runs your castle.

Controls:

• Arrows: Move Cursor
• Space/Enter: Make selection
• Esc: Cancel Selection
• +/- : Change game speed.

Roguelike Defense was written by Marcus Wiseman.

If you find yourself trying to pull of a trick fall and can’t get it to work try using the wrap-around and go the other way. You can aim while you’re falling, but not while you’re flying.

Warpy is written my Marcus Wiseman and utilizes the allegro library for graphics and sound. To hear the sound you will need a “Teleport.wav” sound file that you can either choose yourself or the one included in the executable.

Dice is written by oldlaptop on the Cymon’s Games forum.

Somewhat like BlackBox before it in Laser Sweeper you are trying to discern the location of hidden objects by observing the behavior of shots fired into the unknown space, only in Laser Sweeper the relationship is more direct. The objects you are firing at are mirrors that when your laser hits can reflect 90 degrees. But just because you think you know where the laser turned, don’t be so hasty. Check the distance the laser traveled or you may be surprised to discover it took a less-than-direct route. Even checking the distance your first few guesses may just have to be lucky, but as more of the board is uncovered with skill you will be able to revel the whole board.

Or will you?

Laser Sweeper will take some patience and thought to win. But with some time you may find this becoming your new favorite time waster. Just one more game.

Laser Sweeper was made by Adam Gates (aka radad) and introduced on the Cymon’s Games forum.

Well, maybe a little bit.

Ratfink’s version of the classic game overcomes some of the shortages in the curses input routines by offering 3 different control schemes, each of which are accessible from the (rather cool) main menu or at any time by pressing the 1, 2, or 3 keys. Deflecting the ball with a moving paddle will add or subtract y-axis motion from the ball, which is the trick to scoring against the computer opponent.

asciiPong is written by Ratfink.

So I found this program on allegro.cc, downloaded the source, and did some editing to get it to work with the newest version of allegro, but didn’t make enough changes to justify calling it my own and could never get a hold of the original author, so I posted the modified program in the forums, but never put it in the official collection of Cymon’s Games. Then I came back to it, made several significant changes, enough that I don’t feel bad posting it here.

As a pretty display this program could have been something fun just to watch, but there is a game to be played here. Click on the fireworks to detonate them. Detonate 3 in a row of the same color and you’ve made a chain. Your score is the number of chains you chain together. Break the chain and reset your score. The difficulty is designed to ramp up slowly with only 2 types of fireworks coming infrequently progressing to anything goes at a breakneck pace as your chain count increases. You should never be without the color you need to complete a chain.

If a firework falls to the bottom of the screen without being clicked you lose a life, all existing fireworks are cleared, and the pace of the fireworks is slowed back down, but you keep any existing chains so you can continue to rack up your score unless you break the chain. Post your best scores here.

Fireworks is by el Hamil with additional work by Joe Larson. Fireworks uses the allegro library.

After making the C conversion of Tim Hartnell’s Werewolves and Wanderer I received feedback that the game should highlight in color certain words to make scanning the screen for information easier. So I set about changing the input and output routines to go through curses as well as adding color information in the text.

The original will still be retained for academic purposes, but this is the version that will likely be used to develop future Interactive Fiction games, if future Interactive Fiction games are to be developed.

Werewolves and Wanderer was written by Joe Larson inspired and based on the BASIC game of the same name by Tim Hartnell as found in ‘Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer’ (c)1984.

Werewolves and Wanderer is an old-timey text-adventure in the vein of Zork or Adventure, but much smaller. I recommend playing it in full screen. Werewolves and Wanderer is modified from the game in Tim Hartnell’s book Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer. This particular version of the game tries to hide little from the player opting instead to show you all exits and available commands.

You can get help in the game by typing ‘help’. You can get a list of available commands by typing ‘help commands’. You can type ‘examine’ in certain rooms and you may find some insight into the strange world of Werewolves and Wanderer. It might help to play with a pencil and paper and map out the castle as you navigate it, keeping track of treasure you find and monsters to avoid. Many things in the game are random, but there are a few fixed items. Finding them will be key to reliably navigating the dangers of the ancient abandoned castle.

Reading the code to Werewolves and Wanderers could be an excellent tutor for writing your own text-adventures. Make your own map, creatures, items, and goals, change out the elements in Werewolves and Wanderer and you’ve got your own original adventure. In fact learning how to do this sort of game on the forums is how this game came about.

EDIT: June 26, 2010 – The game has been updated to fix some bugs in the high score table and play again function.

Werewolves and Wanderer was written by Joe Larson inspired and based on the BASIC game of the same name by Tim Hartnell as found in ‘Creating Adventure Games On Your Computer’ (c)1984.

My Adventure was written using an example engine for writing choose-your-own-adventure like adventures. Anyone (even you) could simply by altering the data and make your own adventures to share with friends, family, and readers of Cymon’s Games. Just sent it here.

My Adventure was written by Ratfink on the Cymon’s Games forums.