Alternative Formats to MU
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Yeaaaah, there's no fix for 'I don't wanna'. It's not a problem with a solution possible.
@RnMissionRun your point may have been that, but then you should have said THAT, and not that you don't believe that it will make much of a difference. It will make a HUGE difference, just not for lazy people.
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@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:
I honestly do not think that simply moving from MUSHcode to Python (or Ruby) will make it 'orders of magnitude' easier. Sure, it might help some folks, but IMO if you don't have the aptitude for coding, simply switching languages isn't going to make any difference.
I stand by my statement based on my 30+ years experience as a professional programmer who has some experience teaching code.
As @surreality mentioned, there are tons of sites out there with good tutorials to teach you how to use Python/Ruby. Literally millions of people have used them. There are sites like stackoverflow.com where you can search for help and people answer questions for fun. And the complexity of the syntax just doesn't even compare.
And let's say you're someone like @Ganymede who lacks the time and/or inclination to learn how to code. That's fine. So you need a coder.
How many MUSHcode experts are out there? A dozen? There are tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of Python/Ruby experts. You're FAR more likely to be able to find a programmer pal who knows one of these languages, or someone who's willing to learn.
If you're unwilling to use the out-of-box functionality, unwilling to learn to code, and unable to find a coder, then I can't help you. Nobody can.
What I can do is make it so that some percentage of games can be created with zero code (where presently even just setting the dang thing up is a technical hurdle, let alone customizing anything) and make it far easier to learn to code. The latter should, in theory, also make it easier to find a coder.
@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:
Lol. I once showed a real coder (a man who has worked as a systems architect in C, C++, and C# and node.js and all kinds of languages for 20+ years) some MUSH code and he stared at it in horror and couldn't figure it out.
Yeah, I've shown MUSHcode to many of my colleagues and the reactions are either dumbfounded horror or hysterical laughter.
That's not a knock against MUSHCode, by the way. It was a marvelous technical achievement in its day, like assembly languages. But that was 30 years ago and times have changed.
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@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@meg said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:
I honestly do not think that simply moving from MUSHcode to Python (or Ruby) will make it 'orders of magnitude' easier. Sure, it might help some folks, but IMO if you don't have the aptitude for coding, simply switching languages isn't going to make any difference. The problem is that doing anything non-trivial in /any/ programming language requires real skill. Non-coders probably won't have those skills, or be interested in developing them.
Lol. I once showed a real coder (a man who has worked as a systems architect in C, C++, and C# and node.js and all kinds of languages for 20+ years) some MUSH code and he stared at it in horror and couldn't figure it out.
He could probably learn Python in a day.
And that's an /experienced coder/ learning. Not an inexperienced one.
That was my first reaction too, but I stuck with it and eventually figured it out
My point was that simply switching languages wasn't going to help people who weren't interested in learning a programming language or who lack the aptitude for coding.
No, but it will make it a whole lot easier for folks who are inclined to try out learning a bit of code. Like, the idea that changing to an easier and more powerful programming language with tons more resources to learn in the world somehow will have no effect on anything is just -- weird.
Yes, people who don't want to try ever learning code will continue to not try to learn code. That will be the case no matter what.
Yep, I'm totally on board with that. I've been tinkering with Evennia for a few months now and I find Python to be a very agreeable language to work with. I just don't see people abandoning MUSH for it.
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@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:
And let's say you're someone like @Ganymede who lacks the time and/or inclination to learn how to code. That's fine. So you need a coder.
Hey. I never said I lacked the inclination.
I really don't have the time. Sure, I may be more inclined to spend time with my kids, workout, cook, clean, wrap gifts, sing, play music, and occasionally sketch, but if I had more time I would definitely try to learn Python and/or Ruby!
That said, I know a bit of MUSHCode, but not a lot of it. If Python and/or Ruby is easier to learn, hells to the yeah, I figure. But I'm a mooch too, being a lawyer, with some disposable money to toss around.
Anyhow! Alternative formats good. Gany, kind of rich and lazy, riding dirty.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@faraday I honestly don't think 'time' is a factor in learning to code any more, either. Not with these new languages. If somebody has time to mush, they have time to devote the couple of hours every week to make the progress in learning. 'Don't want to' is a perfectly valid reason to not do it, but it's not a problem that can be solved in any way by language choice or anything else.
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@ganymede Sorry, it wasn't meant as a criticism. I said and/or. You're just the 'or time' category
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@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:
How many MUSHcode experts are out there? A dozen? There are tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of Python/Ruby experts. You're FAR more likely to be able to find a programmer pal who knows one of these languages, or someone who's willing to learn.
If you're unwilling to use the out-of-box functionality, unwilling to learn to code, and unable to find a coder, then I can't help you. Nobody can.
What I can do is make it so that some percentage of games can be created with zero code (where presently even just setting the dang thing up is a technical hurdle, let alone customizing anything) and make it far easier to learn to code. The latter should, in theory, also make it easier to find a coder.
It may be that you are right and I am just old, set in my ways and resistant to change. My opinions come mainly from twenty year's worth of trying-- with very very little success, mind you-- to get MU*ers to play on non-MUSH games. The population of Arx suggests that maybe times have changed and people are open to new ideas. Time will tell.
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Did you notice the question I posed to you a little earlier in this thread? It got lost just at the end of a page. As you are an Evennia dev I'd be interested in your elaboration on that one. If not that's cool, just not sure if you just missed it.
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Griatch -
@faraday I'm the one who said lazy, because I don't think time's much of a factor any more. I'm too lazy for a LOT of things. Pretty sure most people are. I'm too lazy to learn how to bake bread. This isn't a problem, until I say that I don't want to use a bread maker OR an oven, and that's why I can't learn to make bread.
@ganymede It takes a LOT less time than it used to. If you prioritized it, you would have time. Lack of desire to prioritize it is not a problem or flaw or a bad thing. But it's part of the whole reason that it's so awesome to see these things switching over: it takes WAY less time these days to learn this stuff.
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@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:
It may be that you are right and I am just old, set in my ways and resistant to change. My opinions come mainly from twenty year's worth of trying-- with very very little success, mind you-- to get MU*ers to play on non-MUSH games.
I don't actually disagree with you there, which is why I've been very careful to make Ares as MUSH-like as humanly possible. And as you say - Arx, which is far less MUSH-like, gained traction too. So maybe people are ready for something different.
@Sunny - Yeah I think "lack of desire to prioritize" is usually the reality of "don't have time". I "don't have time" to learn Spanish, but if I spent a few less minutes a day arguing on MSB I could probably learn a little bit. Priorities
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@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:
Yeah I think "lack of desire to prioritize" is usually the reality of "don't have time". I "don't have time" to learn Spanish, but if I spent a few less minutes a day arguing on MSB I could probably learn a little bit. Priorities
But then //who will be here to argue at each other//????
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@rnmissionrun said in Alternative Formats to MU:
The population of Arx suggests that maybe times have changed and people are open to new ideas. Time will tell.
Arx is also pulling from other types of games like RPIs, and sort of combining audiences. @roz has mentioned the Tumblr RPers who've come to Transformers: Lost Light. I don't think it's just about getting the (fairly small) population of MUers to try new things, though that's part of it. I think it's about making games that have appeal beyond the MUSH community, which stripping away the archaic commands and using programming languages people might encounter in other kinds of games (or in their RL jobs) is part of htat.
While I don't have time to code a MU, I can imagine a gamer who works in coding RL finding an Evennia game or Ares game a LOT more appealing to play with in their spare time.
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@griatch said in Alternative Formats to MU:
Did you notice the question I posed to you a little earlier in this thread? It got lost just at the end of a page. As you are an Evennia dev I'd be interested in your elaboration on that one. If not that's cool, just not sure if you just missed it.
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GriatchI did miss it but I won't answer here so as to avoid derailing the thread even further.
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It may be that you are right and I am just old, set in my ways and resistant to change. My opinions come mainly from twenty year's worth of trying-- with very very little success, mind you-- to get MU*ers to play on non-MUSH games. The population of Arx suggests that maybe times have changed and people are open to new ideas. Time will tell.
On my end I don't see the end-players so much so I can't really comment on the willingness of existing MUSH players to try new things. But on the game dev side, there is no shortage of people willing to try a new system rather than the ones they are familiar with.
And more importantly, us in Evennia world get a decent number of new developers on a regular basis - new ones every week at least, sometimes several a day, judging from the questions in our support channel. Many of those are not only new to Python or programming but to MU-ing overall. Will all of those make new awesome games or even go beyond the initial tutorial? No. But more coders flowing into the hobby can only be good for everyone.I did miss it but I won't answer here so as to avoid derailing the thread even further.
Fair enough.
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Griatch -
@faraday said in Alternative Formats to MU:
And let's say you're someone like @Ganymede who lacks the time and/or inclination to learn how to code. That's fine. So you need a coder.
How many MUSHcode experts are out there? A dozen? There are tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of Python/Ruby experts. You're FAR more likely to be able to find a programmer pal who knows one of these languages, or someone who's willing to learn.
This reminded me of something that I hadn't really thought about until now. So in running Arx for about two years, I've had maybe a dozen offers to come on board as a coder, due to someone being familiar with python. It comes up enough that Tehom's staple response is to ask them to do a pull request for Evennia first to show they are serious.
It strikes me as unlikely that any mush would have a dozen people with softcode familiarity offer to come on board to throw in a system for fun. I think even in as small a hobby as this, there's significantly more people with python experience than there is with softcode experience... even on games -made- with soft code.
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@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:
If someone doesn't want to tinker with a modern programming language, they're certainly not going to tinker with the mess that is MUSH code.
I have to point out that this is not entirely true. I learned MUCode for free, at a time when trying to learn Python for free was less possible. The coding boot camps and such were all several hundred dollars, and I did not /have/ several hundred dollars to learn a coding language for what was, in essence, a hobby.
If someone has a brain that is code-capable they don't need much more than the built in help and mushcode.com, at least (and I cannot stress this enough) IN MY OPINION. I learned by looking at code I knew to function and seeing what they did, when I saw a piece of code I didn't recognize? Help in a bare bones server I had up taught me what it did.
I am by no means experienced a coder as say @Thenomain or @Ashen-Shugar or @faraday or @Griatch or any of the other coders who can code rings around me, but, it is entirely possible for someone new to jump into mush code without wanting to tinker with a modern language.
Do I wish I had invested that time into Python or Ruby or something else that could make me actual money now? Maybe. But then I'd also maybe start thinking of coding as work instead of fun.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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@lithium said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:
If someone doesn't want to tinker with a modern programming language, they're certainly not going to tinker with the mess that is MUSH code.
I have to point out that this is not entirely true. I learned MUCode for free, at a time when trying to learn Python for free was less possible. The coding boot camps and such were all several hundred dollars, and I did not /have/ several hundred dollars to learn a coding language for what was, in essence, a hobby.
Okay but like -- we're not talking about how things were at whatever time you learned MUSH. Clearly it was a while ago, since you say that trying to learn Python for free was less possible. But now? There are like COUNTLESS times more resources and help for learning languages like Python or Ruby than there are to learn MUSH.
If someone has a brain that is code-capable they don't need much more than the built in help and mushcode.com, at least (and I cannot stress this enough) IN MY OPINION. I learned by looking at code I knew to function and seeing what they did, when I saw a piece of code I didn't recognize? Help in a bare bones server I had up taught me what it did.
And if someone has a code-capable brain, all they need to learn Ruby or Python is free online resources and a sandbox to start tinkering. The difference is that they'll have countless more resources to help learn and answer their questions. And also the languages are just -- easier to learn. Easier to read, easier to parse, easier to use.
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@griatch said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@thatguythere said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:
For me RP needs to be real time. Again, it doesn't mean this is the only 'valid' way to do it, but that's what would work for me.
This would be the biggest sticking point for me to move away from telnet. If the RP is not real time I lose interest. I tend to wander a bit waiting for a pose if it is longer than 5 minutes. With MUSH this is when i get my house work done peeking back every couple of minutes until things pick up. Sadly with web based this would be were I found a video to watch and the scene would likely be forgotten about.
Out of curiosity, why do you feel telnet is needed for real-time interaction? Modern web browser clients with websockets or ajax/comet can (and do) also produce real-time game play. I can see the argument for long-time mud-clients having more features than their browser equivalents, but telnet has nothing to do with that? Maybe you are referring to "forum RP" when you say "web"?
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GriatchI don't think telnet is a requirement for real time, but in the current MUSH environment things have drifted to the point where things move slower than I would like, I can't see how moving the way to play the game to a program that presents literally thousands of other things to do while RPing will not adversely affect response times. It is not a tech issue but a human behavior issue.
And I will admit I would be part of the problem, if I ended up waiting more than five minutes I would wander down a youtube rabbit hole and cause the whole thing to be even slower. -
@thatguythere said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@griatch said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@thatguythere said in Alternative Formats to MU:
@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:
For me RP needs to be real time. Again, it doesn't mean this is the only 'valid' way to do it, but that's what would work for me.
This would be the biggest sticking point for me to move away from telnet. If the RP is not real time I lose interest. I tend to wander a bit waiting for a pose if it is longer than 5 minutes. With MUSH this is when i get my house work done peeking back every couple of minutes until things pick up. Sadly with web based this would be were I found a video to watch and the scene would likely be forgotten about.
Out of curiosity, why do you feel telnet is needed for real-time interaction? Modern web browser clients with websockets or ajax/comet can (and do) also produce real-time game play. I can see the argument for long-time mud-clients having more features than their browser equivalents, but telnet has nothing to do with that? Maybe you are referring to "forum RP" when you say "web"?
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GriatchI don't think telnet is a requirement for real time, but in the current MUSH environment things have drifted to the point where things move slower than I would like, I can't see how moving the way to play the game to a program that presents literally thousands of other things to do while RPing will not adversely affect response times. It is not a tech issue but a human behavior issue.
And I will admit I would be part of the problem, if I ended up waiting more than five minutes I would wander down a youtube rabbit hole and cause the whole thing to be even slower.What do you do now between poses? Honest question. I feel like everyone I know also has a web browser open while they're RPing, so I don't see how what you're saying it's actually different.
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The internet exists whether you are on a dedicated client or not. Even if I load a game up in the browser or in Potato, I spend the same amount of time between poses doing whatever I want to be doing on the internet to bide my time until my partner writes me something interesting.
