Project X

[ixokai]

@Arkandel said in Project X:

@ixokai That's actually pretty neat. One more question - how much bandwidth would you say a MU* consumes including running a wiki on it, per month? Trying to figure out the right plan here.

Man, bandwidth is irrelevant.

I run Marvel:1963 and others on a linode, and it doesn't even cause a hiccup as far as bandwidth is concerned.

Granted, I use wikidot so don't host the wiki on the server itself, but have before -- and its simply not a thing that mushes and support are something that consumes bandwidth in such a capacity that you even would count.

The resources a mush needs are... minuscule, and that gives a poor showing for how little minuscule is.

[ThatOneDude]

Most hosting services will be similar. Console/SSH/SFTP whateves. I'm curious what the web based mu* is. Are you talking Evennia that has built in "browser support"?

[Arkandel]

@ThatOneDude No, it's a server written from scratch in PHP using web sockets and ajax. It's not telnet over a web browser, telnet isn't being used anywhere. I'm nearly (?) done with the world editing tools, and once that's over I'll start working into making a +job system.

It's just a bit of a process since I need to implement from scratch at least the basics of what others have implemented for MUSHes for years. For example after that come 'boards', then channels, etc.

[Arkandel]

So, as I'm wrapping up the first iteration of the 'grid' system, how would you innovate that concept without telnet's limitations?

For example I'm allowing for a picture (which might become a 'gallery' if there's a case for it) of the room so there's a consistent visual outside of the room description, and of course tagging rooms in a number of ways ("suburban area", "Red Eyes Gang territory", "entertainment" might all fit "Joe's Bar"), as well as starring it by characters to add it to a favorites list, but what else could be done?

How would you implement places on a web interface? One suggestion was to figure out a way to represent them in terms of the room layout but would that be both useful and clear? Representing these things on the UI might also be a disproportionate technical challenge compared to its effects in the game.

There'll be 'locks' per character/group and there's already a WYSIWYG editor of course for room descriptions and world tags. But I'm searching for ideas.

Anything else you'd do with the world building?

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said in Project X:

How would you implement places on a web interface?

Something similar (but better) than folders in a list-view, with or without the expansion arrow. You create an embedded window that until you 'join' you can only see the people there. Once you join, you get a secondary discussion window, a "spawn" if you will.

[Arkandel]

@Thenomain said in Project X:

@Arkandel said in Project X:

How would you implement places on a web interface?

Something similar (but better) than folders in a list-view, with or without the expansion arrow. You create an embedded window that until you 'join' you can only see the people there. Once you join, you get a secondary discussion window, a "spawn" if you will.

That's a good take. I need to figure out how to do these things without sacrificing screen space for them - maybe a hideable panel.

Basically the way I'm doing it so far is container-based and (at least unless I figure out people are really into that) grid-less. You don't need to know how to get from A to B; if B is a viable destination for you - basically if your character/group is eligible to go there - you can pick it from a sortable list based on its tags, or just right-click on another PC and pick "join" then... there you are.

The way I'm doing it, a "room" is the most basic of places you can be in. It contain 'places' of course, but it can also contain other rooms; so for instance you can create - and there's a web interface for that, else I'd go mad - a "bar" which is just that, or you can create a "mansion" which can have a "reception area", a "dining room" and "stables".

This just gives some future flexibility for stuff like, say, creating powers that let you spy on what happens in other rooms in the same vicinity. Maybe. Anyway.

The challenge here is figuring out how to depict all this in an intuitive way, and not have a bunch of random shit take up precious space where poses should be flowing.

The other question is whether a grid is necessary (okay, 'wanted') at all. From a technical POV it's not so hard to link rooms together, and although I personally care little for grids, I do want this to be open enough to be used by others in the future.

[ixokai]

@Arkandel said in Project X:

The other question is whether a grid is necessary (okay, 'wanted') at all. From a technical POV it's not so hard to link rooms together, and although I personally care little for grids, I do want this to be open enough to be used by others in the future.

I've often wanted to innovate on grids; specifically, do away with them entirely. Create robust +temproom type code which allows loading/saving of rooms, and all that jazz, but when I've asked here if people would like a game which had no grid but lots of locations to RP in, I got huge negative feedback.

The consensus was the grid made people feel connected to the setting.

[skew]

@ixokai I think @tragedyjones plan for his next MU was to have like 3 rooms total.

On some games (say, Arx), people walkyhr grid and it seems to matter. On other games (like, every WoD game I've played), the grid becomes rather much like a vague frame that is all but ignored, in favor of builds on the grid, or temprooms.

So! For WoD games? I'd love a better solution. I just don't have one.

[Thenomain]

@skew

I disagree. The grid may be a framework, but that framework helps support setting and theme.

Nowadays we may have a closer to 50/50 between grid and RP rooms, but I wouldn’t play on a game that’s gridless.

[tragedyjones]

@skew That is my dream setup but it is not currently supported by the playerbase, I don't feel.

[Arkandel]

@tragedyjones I'll try for a hybrid approach and see if players can warm up to it. So making a grid available for them to peruse through a point-and-click interface (or maybe also alt+cursor keys) but also selecting rooms specifically through tag-categorized selections.

What I'm thinking of is a comment by the original developers of WoW, who claimed they didn't want to add too many flight paths (and hated flying in general) since that shrinks the world and disconnects it from the players. I figure these guys know their stuff, too.

[Thenomain]

I remember RPing on IRC. Different channels were different locations, though if you came in after everyone left you didn't have a chance to know where they went. Otherwise, you got to see which channel they moved to and follow along.

Man, some of those channels were angry.

[Misadventure]

Just a note: WoW is a curated video game play (MUD) experience meaning to hold players attention directly, by code controlled content. The main attraction of RP MU*s are the other players. Keeping players together is a good goal, despite the weirdness of constantly running into the same few dozen characters in a city of hundreds, hundreds or thousands, or millions.

TLDR; Don't just emulate WoW. It isn't the same kind of game at all.

[Arkandel]

@Misadventure It's not about immitating WoW - that was an example. It's about immersion.

I personally don't like grids; as far as I'm concerned figuring out how to navigate from A to B is a meaningless task since my RP-finding process doesn't involve walking in front of a bar in case someone's hanging out there, it's going to that bar - and even more so, that's after using tools like +where, +watch, actually paging people, etc.

If I had it my way I'd go with my original plan, which is a categorized list of hangouts, temp rooms and private properties. But part of the point of this thread is seeing what other people want and think - it'd be kind of silly to come here and ask then ignore the answers because they don't fit my specific playing style.

Having said that I had some other thoughts.

• The first one that occurred to me was actually using Google Maps, with custom (fictional) places on them. It seemed like a fun idea if you based a game in say, Vegas then placed your Elysium on its real actual map, giving players the chance to look at pictures of the street outside it, etc. But I wanted to retain some flexibility here, and since that obviously wouldn't work with non-fictional settings I decided against it.

• Spending time writing grid code will delay me but then it occurred to me that's not wasted time. I'm looking at some interesting hexagonal libraries which could be mighty helpful if I reuse them for other things - such as combat. It'd be kind of useful for a GM to be able to set the battlefield, place his NPCs and physical obstacles on it then have the players seeing it in real time as the PrP unfolds, wouldn't it?

I'm optimistic about all this but we'll see how it goes.

[faraday]

@Arkandel Personally, I would be perfectly happy without a grid. 99% of the scenes on BSGU involve people using meetme/temprooms as it is. But my experience is the same as what other folks have said on the thread: the lack of a grid is a turn-off to some (many?)

Using the WoW example again... there are absolutely people like my friend, who actually enjoyed riding the griffon to a flight point and then riding his horse to the spot. He enjoyed the immersion and the realism and seeing the world. Me? Just summon me there for crying out loud. I don't enjoy twiddling my thumbs while sitting on a griffon watching the scenery go by. It was a useless and highly annoying time sink.

MU* grids are the same, and you'll never please both camps of players.

Regardless, even if you lack a grid you'll still need some kind of map type system to provide context for where things are relative to each other.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Project X:

Personally, I would be perfectly happy without a grid. 99% of the scenes on BSGU involve people using meetme/temprooms as it is. But my experience is the same as what other folks have said on the thread: the lack of a grid is a turn-off to some (many?)

See, my experience on BSG:U is different. Aside from the combat scenes, which took place elsewhere, most of my RP happens on the ship. I like the idea of being openly accessible, and it's proven to be ICly inconvenient at times. But that's the beauty of it, I guess.

[faraday]

@Ganymede said in Project X:

most of my RP happens on the ship.

Of course a lot of RP happens on the ship, but how do people get there? In my experience it's only the first poor soul who has to walk there, and then everyone else just meetme hops over. Did that first person really gain anything by having to walk the grid vs. just picking "Rec Room" from a scene location dropdown menu? Sometimes maybe. But for each of those times, there's also a time where SoAndSo breezes through a room that they aren't really in ICly just to get from point A to point B.

[Arkandel]

@faraday Yeah, in my current design (a work in progress) you can just jump to any room your PC is eligible for, and add favorites for quick jump-to points.

However I do want the grid to have a more functional purpose as well, so what do you think about this: There's a "you are here" marker and of course all rooms have their normal fixed coordinates... but you can switch the context mask though to see them under different contexts; for instance one might be geographical view (you can see room A is in an urban area, room B is in a forest at a glance), another might be domain based (gang territories, Vampire turfs, pack areas, House duchies), etc. Furthermore rooms are color coded based on how welcome your PC is likely to be there - green for "welcome, friend!", yellow for alliances, red for usually opposed factions, etc.

I'm trying to think other cool things we could add to it. On a MU there's only so much you can do before the interface gets in the way, and the screen scrolls too damn much.

[ThatGuyThere]

To me a grid is necessary to make the game feel like a one continuous story rather that a sequence of skits.
To address the point Faraday made, no I don't think the person who walks to x and send out the +meetmes benefits from that action but I think all players benefits from having multiple scenes at location because it makes that location matter. If an event then happens to the location it gives people a reason to care.
Blow up a bar my character has been to a bunch he will likely investigate, blow up a random bar he has never been to or heard of until the post about it blowing up and why investigate or care.
I don't wander the grid to find RP but I do learn a few places on it that my character would frequent for easy scene suggestion.
If every time I go to a scene it is in a location that has never been mentioned before, like it tend to be in temp rooms then it the game to be quickly becomes a series of SNL skits to me, if done well perfectly enjoyable but the actions of one not really impacting the next.
I will admit this also becomes an effort issue for me, random person seeking rp I go sure and pick a spot, low effort to try rping with someone new. Making and descing a temp room changing the effort to enjoyment ratio enough for me to not be the one to do it, I shift the job to the other player of the scene doesn't happen. It might be laziness on my part but I think an effort free space to meet folks is a benefit to the game.

[Thenomain]

@faraday said in Project X:

@Ganymede said in Project X:

most of my RP happens on the ship.

Of course a lot of RP happens on the ship, but how do people get there? In my experience it's only the first poor soul who has to walk there, and then everyone else just meetme hops over. Did that first person really gain anything by having to walk the grid vs. just picking "Rec Room" from a scene location dropdown menu? Sometimes maybe. But for each of those times, there's also a time where SoAndSo breezes through a room that they aren't really in ICly just to get from point A to point B.

But they have the option to walk, they have the option to engage with the grid, with the setting, at their pace. If you don’t have a grid, you remove that potential engagement for everyone.