Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread

[Chime]

@surreality said in Cybersphere Nostalgia Thread:

Really, truly, very much want. I am Not A Coder, but if there is anything I can do from my end that would help, I would happily do so.

<3. Really! I'm glad I'm not alone in liking it.

If you want to know what the 'big thing' most people I ever talked to cited as 'why I hate MOO'? You'll probably want to spit.

Yes, well... this happens a lot when talking about why people prefer mush.

The lack of MUSH-style %r and %t for linebreak and carriage return. No, really. The MOO substitutions, and specifically the lack of those specific ones, gave people as much grief, apparently, as the command format, and they adapted to the command format better than the substitutions because the substitutions were so innately ingrained.

Already done-- in softcode, no less. I've posted the moocode to do on wora and.. maybe here? I forget. But yes, specifically %r, %t, and at a bare minimum the normal 16 color foreground/background model via %x or %c. There are observable differences, but the random user trying to

@emit It was a dark and stormy night%r%rIt was very dark.%r%r%tVery stormy!

Wouldn't notice any difference-- it'd just work. And this isn't hypothetical. It's done-and-working code that's been tested on a few random friends of mine. The only reason they knew it wasn't a mush was I hadn't (at the time) implemented page or ooc.

In my deepest, wildest dreams? Good integration with mediawiki in some form (to and from MOO).

MUSH style integration there needs a sql bridge. I can do that, but it's an annoying bit of hardcode. Still, would be much much better as doing it as a non-blocking background task is much easier-- no @trigger nonsense needed, and it can return results in easily manipulated mush list structures.

That said, I do kinda hate the implementation side of mediawiki and the troubles of hosting PHP apps in general. If the hosting side and the keeping-mediawiki-up-to-date side is handled by someone-not-me, then sure, no problem.

My crazy fantasyland dream involved using mediawiki to set up templates (actual mediawiki templates, not cut and paste layouts) that'd look something like this:

{{Creature
|creature-dbref=#dbref
|creature-name=Guppylicious
|creature-type=Goldfish
|creature-desc=This is a monster-sized goldfish. It wants to eat your soul.
|creature-stat1=5
|creature-stat2=2
|creature-power-telepathy=no
|creature-power-superswim=yes
...etc.
}}

...and the game pulling those stats into an object, and dropping those template values into the object's attributes.

The reason why I pine for this kind of thing is that it can be done with forms in semantic mediawiki -- and that means super quick and easy data entry for creators who are not coders or are unfamiliar with MOO. The forms can have set values to error-proof it to some extent. (It would be pretty easy to keep these in a protected namespace that only staff can edit, too, or on a staff-only secondary wiki install exclusively for data of this type.)

Hm. Yes, that has some possibilities. Do note that MOO is substantially more capable than MUSH/MUX in that area; it's hypothetically possible to write a sql bridge in softcode, and quite straightforward to call the JSON API stuff mediawiki and similar apps present rather than messing with sql structures that we aren't supposed to touch.

MOO is also able to have custom server processes running within it; many of us have written webservers (yes really) in MOO. That could make for significant more tightly-integrated wiki work-- but I suspect replacing that functionality entirely in MOO is a bad idea and too much work.

It might even be possible to do a wiki-side chargen through a similar method. This could work with MUX, too, but I am too unfamiliar with SQL and related things to understand HOW to set up the code to pull the right things to the right places in the right directions -- or anywhere at all, actually. It's still way, way beyond me.

It just strikes me as something that would be amazingly helpful for creators and for players, lowering the bar for entry in some respects for true newbies in the hobby.

We should probably put this in a different thread somewhere and continue talking about how to make it happen. In summary though:

• Percent-codes: done
• MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL bridge: not implemented, though some patches are out there
• JSON/XML-RPC bridge: not implemented, but relatively easy-- both for serving and sending.

The idea of getting tools together to let more people contribute toward a working game is something I like very much. I've found the old moo code I'd been working on pre-reach... need to convert repo types to git (I was using darcs way back then, eesh) and I'll see what I can do.

[surreality]

@Chime This sounds excellent!

I have a couple of not-in-use wikis up for sandbox work, and it's worth the $10/month to me to run one on digitalocean toward this end, and for sandbox/dev needs on the wiki integration stuff. (If we can figure out how to get a moo set up on there it might be worth a tut thread here to go alongside the MUX one; I think that thread truly did help contribute to the new games going up and if it makes people more willing to try it out? I'm absolutely game.)

I keep meaning to make a 'Wiki-In-A-Week' site anyway with useful templates folks can copy, setup tuts, and some basic instructions for wiki admin newbies for games in plain language, so this might help me get off my rump to do that.

I have the basics of a system that can get thrown around for experimenting that's free to use (and even when it's done it's going to be creative commons) so there's no one who can/will yell about us automating anything of theirs in crash testing the idea or get anyone called by a lawyer.

[golgoth]

I've logged into Cybersphere on and off for a few years now. I mostly don't remember how to do anything anymore, but it was fun finding random RP in that game. Very few people ever tried to kill me, which I am thankful for. I think one person even toyed with me like a spider watching a fly, but for some reason would generally let me go. Ah, decking.

Edit: Damn it. I'm logging in on there when I get home.