Making Territory Relevent

[Taika]

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo It isn't an issue of want versus need, in my case, I'm willing to learn, but need more hands on guidance than 'Go read this manual'.

[Ex FaviIIa Surgo]

@Taika And I fully sympathize with that. However, I think the best way to learn how to program is to "just do it." And by that, I mean, make your attempt, fuck up, and then figure out why it didn't work. Try again.

Repeat this process however many times it takes. And it will take more than a handful. And if you're paying attention, you'll look back on anything you wrote today in six months and think: "I wrote that crap? It's so inelegant."

This process will continue for the rest of your life, or until you stop learning about programming, whichever comes first.

[Ganymede]

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo said in Making Territory Relevent:

You can't be serious. Border control has been a reality of nations since antiquity. Walls, moats, standing armies, armed guards, and the list goes on are all measures taken to keep the people you want to stay out from entering, and occasionally to keep the people you want to stay in from leaving. The idea that territoriality/trespassing is "an impossible thing to enforce" is simply ahistorical.

Well, of course, ICly it can be done. I just meant from the perspective of staff or players trying to play in a virtual environment.

Plus, I tend to deal ICly with territory defined in terms of street blocks and municipalities, rather than nations or city-states.

I think we're talking about different scopes, but I was sticking to Taika's original post, which relates to a particular game that's based in Manhattan, and didn't really have huge walls up around neighborhoods.

[Ex FaviIIa Surgo]

@Ganymede Yeah but even on that scale, gangs enforce territory all the time. Either on racial lines, or on which "colors" you wear, or whatever. Street gangs are surprisingly effective at maintaining control of specific places, especially as it pertains to controlling underground markets for things like drugs or weapons.

[Ganymede]

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo said in Making Territory Relevent:

Yeah but even on that scale, gangs enforce territory all the time. Either on racial lines, or on which "colors" you wear, or whatever. Street gangs are surprisingly effective at maintaining control of specific places, especially as it pertains to controlling underground markets for things like drugs or weapons.

That's true.

I guess, everywhere I've been, it's been a bureaucratic nightmare to maintain those boundaries. If it can be done, I haven't seen a place where such a policy has been successfully implemented.

[Ex FaviIIa Surgo]

@Ganymede said in Making Territory Relevent:

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo said in Making Territory Relevent:

Yeah but even on that scale, gangs enforce territory all the time. Either on racial lines, or on which "colors" you wear, or whatever. Street gangs are surprisingly effective at maintaining control of specific places, especially as it pertains to controlling underground markets for things like drugs or weapons.

That's true.

I guess, everywhere I've been, it's been a bureaucratic nightmare to maintain those boundaries. If it can be done, I haven't seen a place where such a policy has been successfully implemented.

Yeah. You should also bear in mind that street gangs -- or Packs of Werewolves, or whatever else -- don't have to follow these things called "laws." They can make assumptions, arbitrarily expel people, deploy judicious use of violence, and so on, in a way that would be fucking unacceptable by even the staunchest of social conservative standards in American law today. It wouldn't even be out of line to make-up vague heuristics and combine that with "just trusting your gut" such that a lot of innocent, uninvolved people get wrecked in the interest of maintaining the boundaries. We can just get rid of them all. You know, just in case. This approach... actually works.

It's why right wing populists go out of their way to say "actually fuck all of that nonsense, we could totally remove Mexicans if we actually felt like it." And they're not wrong. The biggest hurdle to meaningful border control in America are our own self-imposed legal restrictions on how we do so.

[Ganymede]

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo said in Making Territory Relevent:

It's why right wing populists go out of their way to say "actually fuck all of that nonsense, we could totally remove Mexicans if we actually felt like it." And they're not wrong. The biggest hurdle to meaningful border control in America are our own self-imposed legal restrictions on how we do so.

We're still talking about how to implement boundaries on games, right?

[Ex FaviIIa Surgo]

@Ganymede said in Making Territory Relevent:

@Ex-FaviIIa-Surgo said in Making Territory Relevent:

It's why right wing populists go out of their way to say "actually fuck all of that nonsense, we could totally remove Mexicans if we actually felt like it." And they're not wrong. The biggest hurdle to meaningful border control in America are our own self-imposed legal restrictions on how we do so.

We're still talking about how to implement boundaries on games, right?

Yes, but the point is that it's entirely feasible to enforce boundaries both IRL and in games and any evidence to the contrary IRL is likely going to amount to legalistic issues.

[Ominous]

@Apos A solution to that is going the "every new character is a new arrival" route, so newbies don't have a faction that they belong to and aren't seen as trespassers or at least as dangerous trespassers.

Another option is simply going the route that Arx appears to be going and the one I would use, which is to make the territories off-grid areas that are handled by board game like mechanics.

[Taika]

I have forgotten how to set up the droplet from digital ocean with the /var/www etc already on it. I have the domain name and the server space. Just need to get the tinymux slapped up, add the flatfile and turn her on. If someone knows how to do this super fast, I could use the help. I've only done it once before using the walk-through in 'How To' and it was a rancid mess.

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out. I'm dumb.

[Taika]

Alright, server is up, flatfile is uploaded. It seemed to load up, but I can't get it to let me connect. Not sure what's going on. Also says the game is running, but the connection bounces off the server.

Bit out of my water with this, but I got farther without help than I thought I would!

[Lithium]

@Taika Check and make sure the conf file is loaded with the right port.

Also, what code base?

[Taika]

I'll pm you.

[Taika]

Had a bit of help, so the game is up, but I still can't get the flatfile to load. Anyone familiar with loading these things?

[Ex FaviIIa Surgo]

@Taika What are you making? And what are you ultimately going for?

[Taika]

Post-apoc 2.0 game, non-futuristic. It's made, just having trouble getting it set up again.

[Ex FaviIIa Surgo]

@Taika What is it made in?

[Taika]

Tinymux