Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits
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@faraday said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:
@ominous said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:
@faraday For me it depends on the culture of the game. If there are no emits then people can set however they like, changing the time and the weather. If there are emits, the time and weather is what the server says it is. Don't make sets that disagree with it.
That's a fine theory. The reality is that people just don't do that. Time, weather and ambiance emits are at best treated as an inconsistently-applied guideline because it's annoying when your RL schedule only allows you to be on during the IC middle of the night (or middle of the workday), or you can't get people together for a RP scene because the weather isn't cooperating, or it takes 3 RL hours to do a scene that only lasts 30 minutes IC but +time says otherwise, or ... the list goes on and on.
That has not held true in my experiences. This is stylistic and cultural that is specific to MUSHes, not to MUs in general. On games I played that had a high amount of them, players just don't set the same way because they treat the environmental messages as the a shared accepted norm for what the reality is, and only wrote about things outside the scope that would already be defined.
Basically, players treat the game world as another player. In so much that you don't metapose and say what another player is doing, they just don't do it in any way that would contradict the game world. I did not run into elaborate scene-sets until I played a MUSH for that reason. I think of it as just an entirely different RP style, not one that's better or worse, but it definitely exists, and it's one I think of a lot when some RPI players try a MUSH and are very confused because cues just don't exist and there is so, so, so much more handwaving that can be very offputting since they aren't sure what's valid and what's not.
some fucking idiot who people only like because he's good at taking credit for the work of everyone under him, just like every other fucking L&L headwiz.
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@apos said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:
This is stylistic and cultural that is specific to MUSHes, not to MUs in general.
Okay? But we don't usually include MUDs and RPIs in our discussions here because they have completely different rules and expectations. My statement was talking about MUSHes, because ignoring that stuff when it suits you is, as you said, stylistic and cultural to MUSHes.
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@faraday I don't think it would stay that way or that it is unlikely that players would adopt whatever is the norm. That is more what I was getting at.
some fucking idiot who people only like because he's good at taking credit for the work of everyone under him, just like every other fucking L&L headwiz.
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@apos said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:
@faraday I don't think it would stay that way or that it is unlikely that players would adopt whatever is the norm. That is more what I was getting at.
Fair enough. I disagree (that it'll change or catch on), because I think having more control over your environment is one of the key factors distinguishing a MUSH from a RPI/MUD. That said, I realize that it's a spectrum not a switch, and games like Arx and Firan straddle the fence. So I'm not saying it could never work, just that it's not the norm.
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I play RPIs, MUXes, and MUSHes and manage to navigate the cultural differences just fine. As for fixing the issue of only being able to play when the server says it is daytime, that can be solved by using alternative time ratios. 1:0.5 would work. You log on and it is 3 am on the server. You log on the next day at the same time and it is 3 pm the same day on the server. This also helps address the issue of stopping by a bar for one or two drinks and conversation at 6 pm Tuesday and you leave at 6 am Wednesday as time will be flowing slow enough that a 4 hours IRL scene was only 2 hours in-game.
If your server needs the weeks to fly by, use time skips. At convenient time IRL when few people are playing, say 5 am, have the server jump ahead four to six days.
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I like them. I love them. I love them like I love switches in descs for time of day and season and weather, even though nobody bothers reading room descs most of the time.
I am that old school asshole, still loving these things.
I also think an opt-out is just plain necessary, because for frequent players, it gets repetitive.
If there's some sweeping 'everyone in town right now would notice this', there's always @wall and similar commands or setups to make sure no one misses one time major emits like, 'oh, hey, a volcano suddenly erupted two blocks over!' just by turning off the ambience emitter.
