by Markus Reichel
Greetings, brave admins and hackers!
we thought it is time again to remind everyone (and ourselves) about PacketAssault! Due to recent Android restrictions, unsigned APKs can no longer be installed. Therefore, we updated the 2022 PA project.
The project is still on hold and not on the Play Store, but you can try it right now!
👉 Test it here – Have fun exploring the three levels!
🎃 Happy Halloween!
Interestingly enough, for me, every Halloween is in some kind of way another opportunity to reflect on the status quo. To think about where I am standing, especially regarding the status of my games.
Looking back, the middle of 2024 was turbulent. I got my new job in consulting, and, because working intensively and learning new things was not enough, I also started TU Vienna’s Extended Studies on Innovation. It just felt like the right time. I do not have to mention that doing this program, in addition to my full-time consulting work, was quite challenging, and probably the reason why other progress (like fitness 😅) was suffering from October 2024 until at least July 2025.
Sadly, this also meant that the Halloween Special 2024 did not get much attention. So this year, I declare that Halloween shall not pass with empty-handed! Instead, it will bring at least one change that was already decided back in 2024: Super MX is now called MX: Episode of Darkcity.
There’s still a lot of work ahead to complete the full rebranding, but this step is really important. The original name was a wordplay targeted at the 16-bit Super Nintendo era, but nowadays, that association has faded, since too much time has passed. The new title better reflects the adventure itself, which takes place in one of Xenon’s countries, namely Darkcity.
And here I am, after a lot has happened, and more to come. I have learned so much. And I finally got adequate holidays, and with more energy, creativity, and a repaired fitness routine, I am again ready to further tackle the future!
Life is full of ups and downs. It’s not linear. Keep moving – I will too 🙂
Some of you may have noticed that we quietly pushed a new update for The Last Dimension back in August – this one ensures full compatibility with the latest Android versions.
We now added edge-to-edge fullscreen support and updated software libraries.
You can grab the latest version on Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.sectorinfinity.lastdimension
And yes… we’re definitely looking forward to Halloween! 🎃
For tldr, go to the screenshots at the end of the post.
Lately, I have been asked by my dad if you can search in the chat of the Signal messenger not only by words but also by date. So, the first thing I did was look in the app, and after not finding anything, do a bit of research:
With this thread, I thought that this feature does not exist. As a happy open-source fan, the next thing I did was clone the repository of the official Signal Android app (https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android), and then I started to add a new option to the three-point menu of conversations. While reading the code for a few hours, I suddenly found functions for jumping to a specific date and validating that date (e.g. JumpToDateValidator.kt). Then I realized, that the app already had the feature I was about to implement 😆.
So how do you search in a conversation by date? You first have to activate the normal search. Then, nearby but undetected to the left above the keyboard, there is a button which opens a calendar selector!
And there you have it! You can select a date (if it exists) and the conversation will jump to that date!
I afterwards asked myself, do the other messengers have that feature? And yes, both Telegram and WhatsApp can do that too!
Telegram has the button in the same position as Signal…
and Whatsapp has it beside the search bar. Fascinating!
And that’s it. If you came over to this post by looking for this specific feature, I hope I could have helped you, and if not, maybe you learned something new! 😀
TLD1.3c has been released, fixing a bunch of bugs in the fractal wizard of the editor and the community page in one update. Some people are still figuring out the editor 😉
The Last Dimension 1.3 is officially online! Download or update it at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.sectorinfinity.lastdimension!
It finally releases the fifth level “Chaos Theory”, Play Games Services integration with achievements and a level editor where you can share your levels online!
We know that the editor is, while powerful, quite complex to use, so we are already thinking about ways how to make fractal rule creation simpler. Till then, we again refer to the L-System blog post for creating simple fractals (https://seismic.myftp.biz/blog/index.php/2020/11/19/l-systems-in-games-part-1-basics/).
Have fun!
 Exciting News Alert!  Join me and Plaxarta this Saturday, 11.05.2024, at 18:00 (UTC+2) for an epic journey into The Last Dimension 1.3 with Plaxarta’s live stream on Twitch! 
The TLD development is in full swing! We are not only testing the fifth level “Chaos Theory”, but are also working on a level editor to create your own fractal levels!
Soon, you will be able to create fractals by using our TLDL grammar (https://seismic.myftp.biz/blog/index.php/2020/11/19/l-systems-in-games-part-1-basics/). Currently, the focus is on easy sharing of the game files and code editing compatible with mobile devices. Note that the code visible on the left of the screen is just an overview of the fractal, not the view you will be working with. We are also working on mechanisms to support the code-based approach.
Stay tuned!
Here is a small blog post about a small update! Now, TLD finally remembers if you mute the music. Also, we implemented basic compliance for our European and Brazil users. We consider there will be an option to buy an ad-free version. Stay tuned!
Fi-na-lly! The last academic work I committed myself to. Of course, I was fairly motivated in 2019 and enrolled in Business Informatics and Technical Physics at the Technical University of Vienna. While I learned a lot of fascinating theories and principles, what was really suffering was my time and energy for my game projects. As far as my studies go – I am now finished, and I do not plan any more of them in the next time. I might finally be able to finish the games.
Regarding the thesis, I used the Julia programming language and Jupyter to find efficient ways of calculating correlation functions, which are physical entities which can for instance describe the probability of electrons jumping from atom to atom. These functions are quite useful, as they can be used to derive several important physical quantities. The work contains the analytical derivation of the Fourier transform of those functions, as well as descriptions of the numerical computation. Download it here: