Free Softcode Suite - Penn and Rhost
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Hey all!
Got a present for everyone. I told @Thenomain about it but I'm still making my way through the threads on this crazy-awesome place. Maybe he's posted about it already but I can't find it.
Have you ever looked at MUSHes such as Multiverse Crisis, Megaman MUSH (M3), Super Robot Taisen, the now-defunct Videoland, Battle Fantasia, or various superhero and Transformers games and thought 'I would love to make one of those but it's a LOT OF WORK?' Well, it was a lot of work because before now all the code those sorts of places ran wasn't really shared.
https://github.com/volundmush/mushcode
If the readme is tl;dr (I hope not, since it contains install instructions!) here's a brief synopsis.
Admin tools for tracking players by accounts/alts, softcoded +Help and +news system. A modernized BBS made to resemble Myrddin's that can import from Myrddin's. A Groups/Organizations/Guilds/Factions system that can be used with @lock very effectievly. Softcoded +radio channels. A (rather complicated to setup unfortunately) scene-logging and scheduling system that integrates with Mediawiki (kudos to Mercutio for that), my own simplified take on an Anomaly-like Job system, and much more.
There is even a fairly simple system in place for running Exalted 2e and New World of Darkness 2e tabletops, provided immersion is not the objective and Storytellers oversee character creation (there is no database of game rules and powers, just tools to mark things down on an approved sheet...). The dice roller and sheet display are some of my best works. Exalted 3e coming soon.
All freely available.
Using this package, Brave New World (a new Superhero game at BraveNewWorldMush.com 9999) sprang up out of nowhere in the course of a week or two. Most of that week was on building the grid and writing policies. They're already quite populous and everyone's having a blast.
So now I feel confident enough to advertise it!
The main support is aimed at the latest (bleeding edge, since it depends on a few things I requested the Penn devs add) PennMUSH, but RhostMUSH is also tentatively supported. I say tentatively because while I've made it with Rhost in mind, I don't have much feedback on Rhost yet and a few things I -know- don't work yet, like +finger or the SToryteller sheets. (I need to recode those using printf instead of align...)
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I recommend people interested to use the heck out of this, Volund sure worked super hard on it and deserves every user, doing crazy stuff with softcode as he does. To me as an outsider to whom mush softcode looks like a wall of very, very long lines, he's been doing some impossibly complex stuff.
Volund's dedication to his Mush softcode suite is famous in Evennia IRC land, since he apparently didn't know any other programming language than softcode from before and learned Python pretty much by asking questions in our IRC support room. He also said for a long time that he would take his work to Evennia when he was finished with the latest update. Veeeerryyyy soooon.
We used to silently wonder if that time would ever come, but it did - and now that he is finished with his softcode implementation, he is working his usual crazy pace on a Python version of this stuff. Kudos Volund, keep it up!
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Griatch -
Added to the Rhost MUSH git repo pages.
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Got this bookmarked for when/if I can ever dedicate the time needed to run something. Thanks for posting this and letting us know about it!
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Do people still use Rhost?
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
They do, indeed. Unfortunately, this code suite still has some issues on Rhost and isn't truly usable in it's current state.
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Is this one of those things that need to go over in whatever the topic was we created for code wars? I'd be interested in knowing what the upsides/downsides are to this version.
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@Thenomain said:
Do people still use Rhost?
It really does have some nice features. None of the mush implementations are completely better in all areas.
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(I was kidding.)
(Mostly.)
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I have used volund's code and coded for it. I give it a rubber stamp of approval. It's nice and intuitive. The built in account system is also nice.
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@Alzie It's a very nice code suite(?). Installs nicely. The only thing I can think of, is perhaps documentation listing some of the more useful functions to be used in any additional softcoding. For example...... What are the various ooc lock functions? isadmin(%0)? isapproved?
Those I can probably find easily enough. But there are tons of more important/useful functions that can be utilized if one can figure them out.More importantly, if the gameconfig or even myconfig settings are to be maintained by additional coding, what is/are the functions for determining the game's and or player's choice for headers, fill, borders? I am pretty sure a player's settings override the mush's.
I am just starting to look into figuring out the functions, and find it tedious.
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It's a good set of code if you have no coder, and you have a theme that can benefit from it. Otherwise, one size fits all does not.
I have witnessed its auto-logging-to-wiki function being used by staff to big brother players across the game, allowing an inclined staffer to immediately pounce on (a) player(s) the moment they crossed some invisible line. While this can be very handy for stopping nutbar roleplay scenes and catching people in the act of breaking rules, it also allows for what is effectively dark spying and instant staff harassment. YMMV, depending on who has control of the game.
I would love to see individual softcode commands from the suite available without having to install and run the entire thing. A pose order tracker can be very useful, but not every game is going to need a +sheet or (gasp) a wiki.
- take care of yourself, kid. 'cause someone really cares about you.
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@Nein
That's my only complaint with Volund's code, really. You can't pick and choose pieces; much like Faraday, unless you grab the pre-installed Penn DB for all of that code and then @decomp what you need, since it's already installed and doesn't need the funky installer checks at that point.Well, that and I don't code with @-commands so I feel like if something breaks, I'm not going to be able to debug it because it's coded the opposite way that I code.
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@Bobotron I've always been wary of code dependencies and libraries. Having worked ages ago on ProtoMUCK libraries and cut my coding teeth on MUF, I recall how much of a pain it was to have to install and compile interlinked libraries just so you could say/pose/look.
And then debug them.
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@faraday's code works because it registers itself, so while it does have dependencies, it's going to warn you ahead of time.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said:
@faraday's code works because it registers itself, so while it does have dependencies, it's going to warn you ahead of time.
Pretty much all of my code depends on the Core systems, but the Addons don't usually have dependencies on each other. They're designed so you can pick and choose. There are a few exceptions, but I've tried to detail those in the documentation.
The 'funky installer checks" that @Bobotron mentions are the way that the code auto-installs itself just by copying/pasting from the installer script. It puts all the objects in the right locations, updates DBrefs as appropriate, sets up player attributes (dark/locked if need be), installs help files, and more. While an @decompile will work for a small multi-descer system or whatnot, the install manager helps a great deal with complex systems. But YMMV.
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Cannot pick and choose pieces?
I beg to differ! The only 'required' parts of the latest version are the files marked 'CORE'.
Everything else is optional, although a few things have inter-dependencies. For instance, there's a synergistic relationship between the Group System and the BBS. If you install both, then the Group Board System is enabled. But both systems work independently too.
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This is really awesome of you, @Volund. Do you know if any of this will work with MUX?
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I've played on SRT, PMUSH, MCM and other game that share the 'heritage' of the bbs, faction code and whatnot that descended from the Transformers 2K5. I often felt that the common structure led to a lot of these games being similar in how they played out despite vastly different themes (Lotta big scenes, forced faction conflict, emphasis on coded combat) but with the code now 'in the wild' so to speak I'll be very interested to see what people who've had nothing to do with any of those games wind up trying with it.
EDIT: Also, impressive amount of work, great job!
