Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread
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@deadculture http://www.lisdude.com/moo/ has an archived version. Apparently the original site is down; it's a shame, since it was up about a year ago or so. It's listed as ghostcore.
Oh fucking well.
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It's funny how many spinoffs came from Cybersphere, isn't it?
HellMOO, Ghostwheel, and Sindome all got their starts from Cybersphere players leaving to form their own games.
Almost with a bunch of others, too. It's a shame to see the game in the sad state it's in.
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@Admiral said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:
It's funny how many spinoffs came from Cybersphere, isn't it?
HellMOO, Ghostwheel, and Sindome all got their starts from Cybersphere players leaving to form their own games.
Almost with a bunch of others, too. It's a shame to see the game in the sad state it's in.
Uh, no. Ghostwheel was Quinn's baby. Quinn's code was what allowed Cybersphere to happen; he was more or less the official original psychocoder for MOO. Got the order a little backward there on one of those. It was not remotely a spinoff from Cybersphere.
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@surreality Yeah. Thank god for Lisdude. That's a guy who got more than half of SquidSoft angry because he made a Star Conquest copy called Miriani.
As for HellMOO, uh- I'm not sure about that, but HellMOO is basically 'Le Edgy Goon Game'.
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@deadculture We should have referred the recent goon squad there. They probably would have fit in great and had a blast from what it sounds like. (There really is something for everyone!)
I may have to poke this a bit more when I have time, though. If I can figure out how to get it running (since MOO is kinda ancient and not so maintained and... yeeeeeeeeah) it may be worth tinkering with.
I always felt Ghostwheel and Cybersphere had a good blend of the various game elements, on the whole. There was stuff to do even if no one was around, but it didn't bleed over too much if at all into RP-focused areas, and the over-wrought creepy sexual code from things like Haven were not in place.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality Yeah, it would be cool to see a MOO running that had similar characteristics as those two; I loved the combat in CS, and the decking code but would make entertaining missions for the various factions instead of what they have in place for, say, the Mafia.
Also, a dinosaur limiter.
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I'd go back if there was enough incentive to it. I don't hate the game. I'd just want to have some RP avenues aside from the standard fair offered.
I guess it would have to be a group app. Something I always appreciated about Cybersphere over Sindome was that you could come in knowing people. You could be someone's brother, or friend, or member of the same cool new gang moving into town.
The game isn't unplayable. It's just... there's very few people there I enjoy RPing with. Those who I do like I do miss, obviously. But you can't play a game just to RP with two other people.
Cybersphere is my favorite game theme/world out there, but that could just be nostalgia talking.
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@Admiral said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:
I'd go back if there was enough incentive to it. I don't hate the game. I'd just want to have some RP avenues aside from the standard fair offered.
I guess it would have to be a group app. Something I always appreciated about Cybersphere over Sindome was that you could come in knowing people. You could be someone's brother, or friend, or member of the same cool new gang moving into town.
The game isn't unplayable. It's just... there's very few people there I enjoy RPing with. Those who I do like I do miss, obviously. But you can't play a game just to RP with two other people.
Cybersphere is my favorite game theme/world out there, but that could just be nostalgia talking.
I would only go in a clique, to be honest. The dinosaurs really take it away from the game.
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@deadculture I went back, and man if you can handle it then good on ya. I just thought it was boring as all get out. Killing Nirvana ahabs is only fun 13 days in a row. Day 14 it's snore city.
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@deadculture Dinosaurs aren't really all that scary.
I can build a character that fresh out of cgen can reliably take on any middlebie.
And every dinosaur will go down to a group of 3-4 people.
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@Admiral It's less their stats and more the availability of resources they have at hand. Which is why 'a clique' is better than going by yourself, most of the time.
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Last I logged in, which was not recently, Lewski was still around.
That blew my mind a little.
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@GangOfDolls If their wiki is current, both the griefer gang (Cyberfuckers) and KiNGs are still active apparently.
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@deadculture Yegods, they have a wiki now? (This may demonstrate how long it's been since I was there. I have not actually been back any time this century.)
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality At least it looks like a wiki to me. Could not be one. Same layout as the rest of the game though.
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Technically Cybersphere was the second MU I approached.
Initially there was some mud thing that I peeked into in 1995, but I didn't do much with that.
Cybersphere I tried making several different characters over a period of time, but I think 96-98 would have been when I was around the most. I don't remember much, but it did leave me with a lasting respect for MOO as a technology, and I still prefer that over MUSH.
The RP seemed sporadic and punctuated by random unexpected PK by people wandering through the scene. At one point I got killed while stepping into the first room, without even saying anything. Guess my desc was that bad.
Didn't really bother pursuing it further until my partner dragged me back in by way of mushes.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Coffea arabica that thoughts acquire speed, the table acquires stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
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@Chime said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:
Technically Cybersphere was the second MU I approached.
Initially there was some mud thing that I peeked into in 1995, but I didn't do much with that.
Cybersphere I tried making several different characters over a period of time, but I think 96-98 would have been when I was around the most. I don't remember much, but it did leave me with a lasting respect for MOO as a technology, and I still prefer that over MUSH.
The RP seemed sporadic and punctuated by random unexpected PK by people wandering through the scene. At one point I got killed while stepping into the first room, without even saying anything. Guess my desc was that bad.
Didn't really bother pursuing it further until my partner dragged me back in by way of mushes.
I do think a coder like you could do something really great to update the MOO codebase for Cybersphere/Ghostwheel/etc. Would certainly make launching a new game based on MOO more viable, and perhaps without the cultural pitfalls that the medium seems to have.
As you mentioned, my latest foray into the MOO had two characters meet an abrupt end by a guy I have described (and I did point this out to a staffer as to why I thought it wasn't a right fit for me) as an elementary school bully with an automatic shotgun. And this guy monopolizes a lot of the game resources and can easily outlast most other people except other veterans.
Not exactly conducive to new players.
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@deadculture said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:
@GangOfDolls If their wiki is current, both the griefer gang (Cyberfuckers) and KiNGs are still active apparently.
Cyberfuckers are in the 23 year span of the game (right? mildly boggling!) newer. They certainly popped up after I stopped playing in earnest. The KiNG$ have sorta never technically died, it would seem. It seems like Lewski mostly 'ran' it in as much as a bunch of thugs can be ran but I do remember brief periods of time where other people temporarily took over as Lewski wasn't logging in or bored with it or whatever.
The wiki is newish, too. The old cs.vv.com website disappeared a few years ago. I think whomever was primarily overseeing the game from a wiz bit position moved a few things around. The old website was maintained by Incognito, who doesn't and hasn't logged in a long time but says he still gets occassional pings from the databases about things. Kingfox also has mentioned the same to me.
Yeah, that's.... not usual. I'm sorry you didn't have the greatest experience but the culture of the game was kind of a weird mix of plot, people who RPed the shit out of their goofy as fuck PCs, and then also a lot of MUD PK culture griefers who would log in and take a running start at Mick the bartender NPC and literally anyone else standing around. Age differences between these two groups were pretty obvious in terms of most characters. The RPers tended to be older (relatively) players who were in college and in entry level careers. The PK griefers were largely teenage boys logging into the game during high school computer labs and shouting 'bewbs!' a lot on public channels. Eventually, IPs that were linked to high schools were banned. Also it was an 18+ game so there was no incentive to allowing kids to hang around.
You were probably attacked for your cyberwear, since corpse looting was a big thing in terms of how to get cyberware you couldn't afford. Many established PCs with nice stuff didn't advertise their nice stuff unless they absolutely had to because you could be easily cornered and dog piled.
The culture of rampant PK and IC death was mitigated by the fact that if you could afford it, you could get a clone which was sort of the resurrection card that was intended to take the sting out of death. There was an instituted temporary brown list on your login so you couldn't immediately log in and start melting down in pages at your murderer. The problem was that getting randomly attacked while standing outside the Sindome for no reason still was pretty galling to enough players, that they'd just log into a guest account and go to town on their attacker. Staff at least when I was around were pretty good about jumping in and @booting people who were doing that.
As part of the character creation screen, staff eventually forced an +accept function where the language included the fact that this game was tough, the learning curve was going to be hard, and to put on your helmet. I don't know that it actually helped anything but at least, the game was WYSISWYG about what gameplay was actually like.
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@Chime We were probably there around the same time.
...and if you ever do something with MOO to make it, well, workable? (As in, there's some hint of a clue how to even get it running... ) Oh, gods, please let me know.
@deadculture said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:
As you mentioned, my latest foray into the MOO had two characters meet an abrupt end by a guy I have described (and I did point this out to a staffer as to why I thought it wasn't a right fit for me) as an elementary school bully with an automatic shotgun. And this guy monopolizes a lot of the game resources and can easily outlast most other people except other veterans.
Not exactly conducive to new players.
^ That. That kind of behavior wasn't tolerated quite as much 'back when'. It's the kind of thing that'd guarantee I wouldn't bother further with a place, too.
@GangOfDolls said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:
people who RPed the shit out of their goofy as fuck PCs
This reminds me of someone whose name I sadly forget, but dammit, they were just too cool. Many late night conversations about tarot imagery and Clive Barker were had.
Dammit, random stranger, you were fucking elegant as hell.
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Most of Cybersphere's still extant problems are not the theme (which is good), the game culture (which are good, I like the corp writeups and stuff) nor the timeline (which is also good). The staffers are also very helpful as of recently. It's the negative, griefing element. I'm guilty of doing some shitty things ICly, too, but it seems that the game punishes new people for being newbies and rewards the oldbies. For instance, the cancer-character I was talking about. He's obsessed ICly about some girl's character, so any dude that interacts with her is going to be under scrutiny, and because of that, he's going to try and kill them. I'm not even joking. That guy's behavior is rewarded because when he ices someone out in the street, he's taking their loot and cyberware. No consequence whatsoever.
They can say it's cyberpsychosis and shit, but to be honest, it's just a guy from PK/griefer culture deciding to find a flimsy reason to kill someone else without trying other methods. Like threatening, blackmailing, sandmanning them and telling them what's going to happen to them if they don't stop. Plenty of ways to be a threatening villain without having a murderboner.
Oh yeah, and to top it off, he gets unoriginal points for naming himself after a famous rapper's second nickname.
