Hacker Cat Loading Up kkrieger on Illicit Computer Hardware

Anthropomorphic cat typing on a keyboard connected to a cube-shaped computer with built-in CRT Hercules monitor. Image created with Stable Diffusion.

I made this image of an anthropomorphic cat hacker with Stable Diffusion while thinking about the illicit computer hardware in Vernor Vinge’s “True Names” (1981) and award-winning .kkrieger first person shooter that occupies only 96K disk space and procedurally creates its textures, music, and sound effects at runtime–simply put a phenomenal bit of programming. I got wine setup to run .kkrieger on my computer, so I’m thinking a post about it is in the works.