Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing

[Auspice]

@Sunny said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Sunny said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Denying someone's shared experience because it 'shouldn't' be like that isn't helpful.

No one denied anyone's experience: we shared ours. Please don't insert malicious intent where there isn't any.

Er? Maybe take your own advice about inserting malicious intent? I wasn't making an accusation, it's all good. I was agreeing with you. o.o

My apologies, then. It came across as a condemnation for what the rest of us had said in response to tek's post.

[Sunny]

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Sunny said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Sunny said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Denying someone's shared experience because it 'shouldn't' be like that isn't helpful.

No one denied anyone's experience: we shared ours. Please don't insert malicious intent where there isn't any.

Er? Maybe take your own advice about inserting malicious intent? I wasn't making an accusation, it's all good. I was agreeing with you. o.o

My apologies, then. It came across as a condemnation for what the rest of us had said in response to tek's post.

I apologize that I came across like that, then! I did not mean it that way.

[Auspice]

@Sunny said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Sunny said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Sunny said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Denying someone's shared experience because it 'shouldn't' be like that isn't helpful.

No one denied anyone's experience: we shared ours. Please don't insert malicious intent where there isn't any.

Er? Maybe take your own advice about inserting malicious intent? I wasn't making an accusation, it's all good. I was agreeing with you. o.o

My apologies, then. It came across as a condemnation for what the rest of us had said in response to tek's post.

I apologize that I came across like that, then! I did not mean it that way.

I think I may have felt sensitive since my post to @tek was meant as a 'I promise this isn't just because you're newer to the community: I encounter it, too'

[Derp]

So wait.

If this uses its own internal form of wiki, and isn't compatible with mediawiki, does this mean that I have to learn a whole new form of wiki?

And create all the extensions that are commonly used for it?

[faraday]

@Derp I assume you're asking about Ares. And yes, that's correct. Though I've done my best to mimic wikidot syntax pretty closely, along with the common extensions folks tend to use for MU wikis.

Nothing's stopping you from setting up a mediawiki and just not using the internal wiki, of course. But Ares is designed to be easy for non-techy people to set up and use. Installing and managing a separate mediawiki install is a PITA and getting it to interface with a MUSH doubly so. So Ares internally has everything you need to set up a typical game built in. One stop shopping.

[Auspice]

@Derp

Ares web portal supports YouTube videos.
MediaWiki doesn't

That makes it an auto win in my book.

[Derp]

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Derp

Ares web portal supports YouTube videos.
MediaWiki doesn't

That makes it an auto win in my book.

It's cool! I'm just really brand new to this one and so I'm still trying to wrap my head around what is and is not familiar. I don't mind learning the different stuff. My thing is more 'how much of a learning curve is customization going to be', which also isn't a big deal either way. Just trying to get a handle on expectations.

[Thenomain]

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Derp

Ares web portal supports YouTube videos.
MediaWiki doesn't

That makes it an auto win in my book.

Because people referencing ten million images wasn't enough bloat.

Fan.

Tastic.

[Derp]

@Thenomain said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Derp

Ares web portal supports YouTube videos.
MediaWiki doesn't

That makes it an auto win in my book.

Because people referencing ten million images wasn't enough bloat.

Fan.

Tastic.

Mu admins not wanting ten full four hour videos hosted on their stuff.

This community will single-handedly revive the Vine.

[faraday]

@Thenomain said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Derp

Ares web portal supports YouTube videos.
MediaWiki doesn't

That makes it an auto win in my book.

Because people referencing ten million images wasn't enough bloat.

Fan.

Tastic.

There's no "bloat". It's an embedded youtube link. You can do it on any wiki on earth, Ares' just has a shortcut to make it easier so you don't have to copy/paste iframe code.

If you don't like it, just maybe don't click on the link? But wrongfunning other people for wanting to express their creativity on their character's profile page - whether through images, youtube, spotify playlists, pinterest boards or whatever - is exactly the kind of senseless hostility that makes it hard to retain new players.

[silverfox]

Hum. I really need to get better at my replies. I had a whole thing about apologizing if I came off antagonistic to the web portal on Ares that apparently I didn't pose and we have soooo moved on from that.

Regardless: Totally not trying to shovel shit. I'd gotten the misunderstanding that the main strength of the web portal was to allow for those longer scenes as people were able to pose. I didn't realize it was generally used almost as a replacement client. My bad.

The current discussion: I'm way amused that there is a conversation about coding and culture running simultaneously. I only understand every other post, but entertained anyway.

Re Culture: I am so in the boat that responding to everyone in a scene is not what happens in real interactions. If you haven't interacted with me, or I don't have a particular reason to interact with you (especially if I am already talking to Sally Q here), then I shouldn't need to pose at you until it feels natural. If you pose, "Hi Juniper!" Obviously, I should respond in some way directly, even if it is just, 'waves vaguely at Bob.'

When people assume someone else is 'ignoring' them I get all antsy and just want to avoid the fuck out of other interactions with that person.

[Auspice]

@Derp said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Auspice said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Derp

Ares web portal supports YouTube videos.
MediaWiki doesn't

That makes it an auto win in my book.

It's cool! I'm just really brand new to this one and so I'm still trying to wrap my head around what is and is not familiar. I don't mind learning the different stuff. My thing is more 'how much of a learning curve is customization going to be', which also isn't a big deal either way. Just trying to get a handle on expectations.

I think it's a very easy transition. Ares natively provides so much for you. If you know markup, divs,and css? You're good.

And you don't even specifically need the second two.

Fara also provided a link to markup on every input box.

EDIT: if anyone wants to click around an Ares web portal, I can provide a temp pass to my testing character. It exists purely for me to test cg shit.

[Jennkryst]

@mietze said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

I would realistically need to hire staff.

Depending on game, would def staff for 0 monies, or just... like. Free access?

I'm in the past, so this might be covered in later stuffs, buuuuuut...

If you're charging for a thing like this, make it as widely accessible as possible. Or do a thing like ThenoCode where multiple games run off the same things, so updating one game updates all. Hell, if you're charging for access, let the charging allow access to any of the games being run. That might soften the blow for folks who would otherwise have a hard no for paying for stuffs.

I'm tied up working the Census (and holy shit, it's exhausting, but also amazing? Paid from the time the ignition starts to leave home, basically until car turns off coming back. Apply today!), but maybe after all of that is said and done and I can get out from under various debt and the like, I can like. Latch onto a coder to TEACH ME THEIR SEEKRITZ. Because there are several features I've seen at different games that I'd just fucking LOVE to compile together into the Ultimate MUSH Codebase That Everyone Loves Forever.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

There's no "bloat".

There is on the screen.

It's an embedded youtube link.

Guess what I think of many embedded YouTube links. Just guess.

If you don't like it, just maybe don't click on the link?

If it's embedded, it's taking space.

But wrongfunning other people

This is not a word with a definitive meaning. You're putting words into my mouth and I would appreciate if you didn't.

But as I expect you to have a very definitive dictionary in your head, you could be constructive and explain what that word means, instead of slinging vague epithets.

is exactly the kind of senseless hostility

Sure, if I did that on a game yeah, maybe someone calmly taking me--or anyone else doing such--aside and explaining this would be handy.

This kind of senseless hostility toward differing opinions creates the Staff-to-Player animosity that we've been fighting for decades.

[Apos]

I don't think it's constructive to adopt a dismissive approach towards one of the most popular features that people use as a creative outlet, and therefore is taken as a reflection upon their approach to the hobby in general. It implicitly says their way of approaching the hobby is incorrect, and the way they enjoy the hobby is not welcome and should not be supported.

I mean. That would be one definition of wrongfunning, I guess.

[Thenomain]

@Apos

Your definition is approachable and even-handed. Thanks.

[Auspice]

a) 9 times out of 10, the YouTube embeds are on a tab on someone's profile page. You would have to purposefully click on the 'Music' (or whatever they named it) tab to see it.

b) Know how sometimes people will 'set the mood' in a scene set with a link to a song? Now it can be showcased at the top of a log. This may bother some (oh no a few inches to scroll!), but given the core design aesthetic that Faraday has been working to achieve, it looks so much better (and 'cooler') visually than just a raw link that takes you away from the log / opens a new tab.

[Griatch]

@Groth said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Griatch said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

Yes, I know well these techniques, and as said all of them are available as stateful commands or even as ready infrastructures like EvMenu in Evennia. These have no problem with REST, they are saved to the database. If necessarily wanting to go the room-based chargen route you can of course have commands on rooms in Evennia too (but personally I find it ugly to use rooms to mimic what can be handled by a proper multi-option menu ... but I digress).

The point about rooms is that they're the simple way to do things. I think it's unhelpful to someone who wants to develop a game to give them shortcuts that they'll regret later.

A room is simple sure. If there is a story/tutorial/aestetic reason to use rooms for the chargen, go for it. Not using in-world entities (like rooms) to describe and code out-of-world actions (like chargen) is my personal preference.

I think Evennia Attributes are an example of this because they might look really tempting and easy to use when someone is starting out, but later when they come further trying to design their game systems and maybe want to migrate their database they'll come to the realization they need to rewrite everything because attributes are kind of awful when you actually try to do anything with them.

It sounds like you are talking from experience here, have you run into this situation with your game design?
(For those reading this and not knowing what we're talking about, Evennia Attributes allows you to associate an arbitrary piece of data to an object and then use it from there. The boon is that it will be stored persistently in the database for you behind the scenes so you don't need to worry about it. It makes for a powerful way to group and organize persistent data. Here's an example of assigning stats to a character object:

# storing stats on `character`    
character.db.stats = {"HP": 10, "MP": 12, "SP": 8}
# getting all of stats back 
stats = character.db.stats 
# checking HP
hp = character.db.stats['HP']
# decreasing HP
character.db.stats['HP'] -= 1

Attributes are excellent for organizing data but they are not suitable for all things, particularly larger structures that you may want to query in the database later. So, to use the above as a (contrived) example: if it's important for your game design to find out which of the characters across your entire game that has below 5 HP, then querying the database for that will be less efficient if Attributes are used (basically since a generalized structure like this cannot be search-optimized in the database as well). For the same reason, making a BBS system or Mail system where each mail is an Attribute will likely be less efficient - and for this, you may want to make a new database model instead; that is, a new db table with specialized columns for exactly what you want a mail or BBS post to be. This scaleability is what I presume @Groth refers to.) That was the longest parenthesis I've done in a while.

I think it's better in cases like that to simply give people an entirely non-code way to handle things. Already in the 1980's we made a distinction between coders and builders and I think that's the right way to go.

Ok. I personally prefer to make things in code - it's much faster and much more powerful than relying on an intermediary builder-layer. The drawback is of course that you need more of a technical background and knowledge of the library resources. Hence we do supply builder commands out of the box.
Evennia is a programming library, first and foremost though. A developer is welcome to build whatever build commands and structures they want to make things easier for their builders.

That said, I'm not at all averse to adding more builder resources to the Evennia distribution, we are actively trying to do so in fact - as optional contribs.

Instead of giving people shortcuts to code menus and text adventures, why not straight up give them tools to generate menus and text adventures?

This sounds like a tautology to me. What you describe as "Shortcuts to code menus and text adventures" are the tools to generate menus and text adventures. Don't confuse non-code building with tools not being available. The two have very different audiences.

If you look at various game dev toolkits, they're usually some kind of simplified scripting interface available designed to make it easy for people who don't know how to code to make things happen.

So softcode? Or are you more referring to a point-and-click thing? Edit: Reading on, it appears you are.

You could argue that the first 'code' I ever did was messing around with the Starcraft map editor.

It shouldn't be that hard to make a web interface for Evennia to allow people to make Zork style adventures without ever having to touch python.

I wouldn't say that. Don't underestimate the complexity of Zork and other IF games. Consider Quest, which is an engine point-and-click way to make IF games in your browser (I made this many years ago in it) - it is solely focused on this style of gameplay, has lots of resources and still, trust me - I really wished for the ability to fall back to code to do what I wanted. Non-coded creation is simply very hard to make flexible enough; there will always be things you didn't think about that the dev wants.
But sure, a simpler Zork-style web creator would make for a nice contrib.

[mietze]

@Jennkryst to be clear, I will never make a for profit or fee based mush. Ever. I owned my own business for many years, it is a lot of work. I also though that process became aware of some of the more annoying things about private contracting, reporting online income, how my municipality and state expects the same to be collected, ect.

I also think staffing on a volunteer basis can be bad enough with people's entitlement and pressure, the last thing I want is some kid chasing me around screaming "I PAID my two dollars!!!"

[Griatch]

@mietze said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Jennkryst to be clear, I will never make a for profit or fee based mush. Ever. I owned my own business for many years, it is a lot of work. I also though that process became aware of some of the more annoying things about private contracting, reporting online income, how my municipality and state expects the same to be collected, ect.

I also think staffing on a volunteer basis can be bad enough with people's entitlement and pressure, the last thing I want is some kid chasing me around screaming "I PAID my two dollars!!!"

I think the only sane payment solution for a hobby endeavor like this (at least for the sanity of the hobbyist) is something like Patreon - with an explicit notice that donations are completely optional and won't give the donor anything in return except the knowledge that they are supporting something they like.