Optional Realities & Project Redshift

[Three-Eyed Crow]

The weekly updates are part of what I was sort of referencing when I said that a lot of the issues @Jeshin seems to be having are, I think, coming from aggressive "sales" tactics. Sales people annoy the hell out of me. They just do. That said, I have done a little studying, back in my media days, of how advertising actually works on the brain. And, sadly, tactics that are annoying as fuck will and do succeed on enough people that the standard sales person considers them entirely worthwhile.

Whether that's the right approach here (reading the earlier pages of this thread compared to the later ones is perhaps instructive in this regard, as I don't think this thread got kinda dumb until later in), idk, but it's advertising.

[SparklesTheClown]

@surreality I asked. Back when X-Men Movieverse was a MOO, they had %R but not %T. Unfortunately how they did it was not documented anywhere it would be readily available, so the only way to get it would be to dig through the game's code.

[Chime]

@HelloProject said:

I feel like this would all be solved if everyone just agreed to make a MOO, somewhere in between a MUD and a MUSH.

Yep. There will always be random players that claim they can't code for moo but can for mush. It's best to smile, nod, and ignore them. If they can't pick up moo coding in a few minutes, they probably shouldn't be "coding" on a mush either.

Damn, I sound so jaded and elitist.

In summary, MUSH should refer to a technology type centering around MUs that implement command queues and quasi-quoted function evaluation over a primitive hierarchical object database. It's a soulcrushingly bad design. Like MUDs, mushes have a lot of hardcoded commands and concepts. The community tends to favor RP, but there are always outliers and extras.

Similarly, MUCK is the same idea, but with the "softcode" implemented by a dialect of Forth. Whether that is a good thing or not depends largely on how much you like Forth, but I think most sane developer types would still consider it a step up from MUSH. A very, very big step. Less hardcoding here, so much more flexible. The community is predominantly furry. Whether that is a good thing or not depends largely on how much you like the whole furry concept. They're more accepting of my fascination with octopuses, at least...

MOO went a step further, and instead of using Forth-- an extensible stack-based language-- it uses a stack-based bytecode VM. A javascript-like (but much earlier) language then compiles down to moo bytecode. The bytecode structure is conceptually analogous to JVM or CLR bytecode, but users don't interact with it directly. There is no community left that I've found.

MOO also spun off coolmud and coldc. It's a pretty flexible design, but the implementations are very much showing their age. The beautifully abstract and minimalist hardcode that is its strength is also a community weakness; every MOO is very different.

So. What about MUDs? Well, the have a reputation for -- whatever, who cares; like any technology you can do anything with it. The unifying idea, if there is one, is that more of the game is implemented in hardcode and less in softcode, if any softcode is present. That can be good or bad depending on the implementation language and the nature of the problem you are trying to solve.

Moving forward, why aren't we all using (insert whatever perl/python/java/javascript/etc mini server is popular this week)? Similar too MOOs, there isn't much of an established codebase, and what is there is still far too primitive or incompatible with existing user expectations.

My current direction is actually much more MUD-like; throw almost everything into hardcode and implement it faster/cleaner/better THERE rather than in the softcode layer. Why use a crap baby-language when we can just use a proper one? Mushcode is training-wheels without the bike.

[Chime]

@HelloProject said:

@surreality I actually know some people who used to run a MOO with MUSH-like features, so I'll see if the coder is still around and if they know how to do that.

Well, I was one of those...

Setting up : and ; to preprocess right is easy enough. You still need to handle color all in softcode though, as moo doesn't have any color concept or even decorated strings of any form.

If you have a unified output layer in your softcode, e.g. on player:tell() or the like, it's a pretty simple matter to handle it there. I posted code for this on the old WORA. SurfaceTension (my BluePlanet MOO) had this plus a NOSPOOF implementation in the same function.

.program #4:tell
for line in (args)
  if (index (line, "~") || index (line, "%"))
    line = strsub (line, "~", "~7E");
    line = strsub (line, "%%", "~25");
    line = strsub (line, "%r", "~0D~0A");
    line = strsub (line, "%t", "~09");
    line = strsub (line, "%b", "~20");
    ansicode = 0;
    while (matches = match (line, "%%c[fhuinxrgybmcwXRGYBMCW]"))
      {s, e, rep, sub} = matches;
      ansicode = {5,1,4,7,0,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47}[index ("fhuinxrgybmcwXRGYBMCW", line[e])];
      line[s..e] = tostr("~1B[", ansicode, "m");
    endwhile
    if (ansicode)
      line = line + "~1B[0m";
    endif
    try
      set_connection_option (this, "binary", 1);
      notify(this, line + "~0D~0A");
    finally
      set_connection_option (this, "binary", 0);
    endtry
  else
    notify(this, line);
  endif
endfor
.

[SparklesTheClown]

@Chime I'm learning C++. If I ever decide to make a game instead of making money, I'll make all of my games in C++, but there will be no particular difference from a MUSH. Mostly to prove a point.

Obviously I should call it MUSH MUD: Honey Jack and Coke by Night.

Also, you really know how to deliver on code!

[Misadventure]

We have been lucky enough to have many engineer types who have a drive to code, and to share it.

[Jaunt]

@Chime said:

whatever, who cares; like any technology you can do anything with it.

Exactly this, and the rest of your post, 100%.

@EmmahSue

Thanks again. That's a lot of really helpful information, including making it clear to me how to know when you're speaking as a moderator and when you're not. We'll have a chat about how we might adjust our regular posting in a way that's less off-putting to this site, in particular.

@Thenomain

I knew what your stances were, but I've also misunderstood you several times in this thread (typically when you were saying something sarcastically or ironically, and I just couldn't tell). I was just double-checking to make sure this wasn't one of those times.

@Arkandel said:

And once again, you're missing the point -- you are not being bullied because you have a different 'philosophy' of text-based gaming. You're being asked to meet an expected standard of behavior customary to the locale, and responding by arguing, yet claiming to be bullied when people yell at you for it.

Totally wasn't my intention. I strongly believe that a communication breakdown between some posters on this site and myself (and @Crayon and @Jeshin) has come from vague communication. MSB works differently than other forum communities that I frequent, and I obviously don't fully understand it. The request for clarification was purely so that I had the best information to take to the rest of the folks at OR when we chat about this.

I've been entirely upfront here, and will continue to be. I have no ulterior motives here. I don't even know what they'd be.

[Thenomain]

Thenomain Translates Marketing-Speak to English: Episode 4 (OR's proposed new intro text)

@Jaunt said:

Goals of charter re-write: Make it clear what community OR is focused on supporting. Clarify the criteria that we use to determine our sub-genre. Avoid language that might be seen as subversive to other communities, or could be construed as manipulative.

Slide #1 text (major change): Optional Realities is a community and design blog for text-based multiplayer online role playing games (TMORPGs) with a specific focus on character and story-driven games that include permanent character death and automated combat as core features. TMORPGs include sub-genres such as RPIs, MUDs, MOOs and MUSHes.

I think we have determined that treating Muds, Moos, and Mushes as cultures (or genres or sub-genres) was getting in the way of the message. Advice: Strike the last line from the charter entirely; instead explain further in a "Welcome to Optional Realities!" post, or "About OR" page.

Slide #2 text (minor change): Optional Realities is a place where the future developers and long-standing members of our community can come together to share ideas on design, writing, and what makes each of our games most meaningful to its players. Its contributors are leaders from games that have been around for twenty years, as well as new games currently in development.

I think "our community" folds into a we/us expectation, and therefore positions a you/them. Advice: Strike "of our community". Slide one explains who the site is for already.

I have a personal beef with "leaders from games" as reading like a grab for authenticity, but it's more how I feel about the statement. There are other ways to inclusively say, "We are formed from people of all skill and experience levels." Stand on your skill, not on implied age-means-wisdom.

Slide Text #3 (no change): Join us in creating a better, more intelligent, more supportive community for our favorite game genre.

Better than what? More intelligent than what? More supportive than what? Here I think we have the outcome of the "we are tired of X" mentioned by the OR Representatives repeatedly in this thread, while those of us here have no context for that. Advice: "Join us in creating an intelligent, supportive community for our favorite game genre."

Finally: Please investigate a way to not embed the text with the image. HTML5/CSS3 is a thing. I don't know what this would do to important accessibility, so fix the site for screen-readers first, then maybe make my coder heart more happy.

[il-volpe]

@Jaunt said:

"Go the fuck away, nobody wants you here" is bullying.

But, "Meet our standards of behavior," is not bullying.

A: "Blaaaaaaaaarrrp!"
B: "Dammit, don't belch in my face, you're being a dick."
A: "You're being a dick by calling me a dick, and I'll belch where I want."
B: "Go the fuck away!"

Who is the bully here?

You're not talking to all of the OR representatives right now. The thrust of your conversation's been with me.

@Thenomain said:

And yes, Jaunt, you are here officially representing Optional Realities. You are staff there, you are talking about it, you can't get away from that.

What Theno said. You're staff there. You're talking about it. I'm talking about the collective behavior of staff there in talking about it here. You are part of that. You can't just disassociate from it whenever it suits your argument, like.

Please, tell me what the expected standard of behavior customary to the locale is for MSB. You've said this a couple of times, but without more specificity, it's not helpful to me.

I have told you, repeatedly, pretty much every time I mention these expected standards. Two standards that you lot have violated, which I keep mentioning:

• Don't post misleading adverts. Or links to a misleading charter, as the case may be. (And FFS, don't respond to this with a complaint that you've fixed it, you guys were complaining about the negative response to it months before you agreed to fix it.)

• Don't bump your ad thread every damn week.

Hint! If #2 was okay, everybody would do it! You are not special! Similarly, your complaints that you feel dog-piled on and bullied by the manner in which people told you that your ad/charter was/is inappropriate and misleading indicates that you think you're special, and should be immune to the vitriolic criticism that characterises the 'voice' of this board.

• There are a whole bunch of other standards of behavior! OMG. And you have to learn them organically, because they are manners, see. On this board there are not rules against acting like a dick. You are allowed to act like a dick. But you also get the consequences of acting like a dick. It's magical.

• A good standard of behavior to adopt when entering a new community is to acquiesce when people ask you to conform to some standard of behavior. But you're violating that one, too -- ask OR folks to stop posting the updates every week, the response we get is an explanation about why you do it and a remark that you guys judge the value in doing it above the harm Lithium finds it does. But actually look at this advert board, and you will find that nobody else posts weekly updates. You want to be special. And by funder, you're being bullied when people say, "Fuck off," in response to your insistence on behaving as if you are.

It would be bullying if I posted links to all the new logs on my MUSH's wiki, every week, and nobody minded that, but they gave you shit for your updates. If I had advertised my game as "General Fantasy" and let people get excited about playing Elves and Dwarves only to discover that it's a "Game of Thrones" game and that's not allowed -- if I did that and wasn't yelled at and slapped about until I fixed it and then some afterwards for good measure, then how you're being treated would be 'bullying'. But if I did either of those things, I would get a kickin'.

[SparklesTheClown]

In @Jaunt 's defense, in the professional world you generally say "My opinions do not reflect the opinions of company X".

However, it does not work that way here. Generally staff represent their game in the eyes of this community until they are no longer staff.

[Jaunt]

@il-volpe said:

Hint! If #2 was okay, everybody would do it! You are not special! Similarly, your complaints that you feel dog-piled on and bullied by the manner in which people told you that your ad/charter was/is inappropriate and misleading indicates that you think you're special, and should be immune to the vitriolic criticism that characterises the 'voice' of this board.

I'm not suggesting that we're special. I'm also not naive enough to assume that every piece of vitriol on this board is somehow constructive vitriol. It's difficult to argue against a history re-written by you just to support what you're saying.

Your analogies continue to be pretty off-the-mark and self-biased, but I've lowered my expectations of the quality of your arguments at this point.

@il-volpe said:

And you have to learn them organically, because they are manners, see. On this board there are not rules against acting like a dick. You are allowed to act like a dick. But you also get the consequences of acting like a dick. It's magical.

Regardless of my thoughts on the quality of the 'manners' here, I'd suggest that part of the issue is this site's complete lack of transparency on its expectations of users, and code of conduct. If you want to be more nit-picky of your users than 99% of the other forums in the world, it would benefit you to actually explain what your community expectations are in an accessible place on the site.

If it does exist, I haven't found it, and I have looked.

To respond to you more than that would be to engage you in a continued loop of talking points, and you've not shown a pip of ability to attempt to apply a different perspective than your own.

[il-volpe]

@Jaunt said:

I'm not suggesting that we're special.

Doesn't matter what you're suggesting; you're acting like you think you're special, and intention is not magical.

Regardless of my thoughts on the quality of the 'manners' here, I'd suggest that part of the issue is this site's complete lack of transparency on its expectations of users, and code of conduct.

I dislike some elements of Japanese manners and find them annoying and rude, but regardless of this thought, I cannot reasonably go to Japan and take offense at normal behavior that happens to annoy me, nor do weird things that Japanese people think are rude but which I think are fine AND expect not to be told to fuck off.

If it does exist, I haven't found it, and I have looked.

It doesn't exist, because these are not rules. It is not a code of conduct. It is not a user agreement. If you act like an ass (by the communities' standards of what acting like an ass is) then people will react to you as if you are acting like an ass. Either you adjust and learn to behave in a way that meets community standards of not-assness, or you're an ass. You're allowed to be an ass. But the expectation that doing anything that is not expressly forbidden should never raise ire? That is silly.

I don't think anyone here wants to put a list of rules-of-conduct on the site. Honestly, looking over the site with some measure of throughness gives you a good clue, as does responding to the suggestions of others (I mean responding as in, taking their word for it and complying to some degree, not saying, "But it's not written down to not do that!" or "It's normal on other places!")

Actually, I'm pretty sure I'd annoy plenty of people if I acted about my MUSH ads that I put on "Game of Thrones" fansites and Play-by-Post sites and tablet--top gaming sites the way you've acted about yours, except I would have been booted off the site for it.

[WTFE]

@il-volpe said:

• There are a whole bunch of other standards of behavior! OMG. And you have to learn them organically, because they are manners, see. On this board there are not rules against acting like a dick. You are allowed to act like a dick. But you also get the consequences of acting like a dick. It's magical.

This is something I laugh at every time I see it on MSB, and every time I saw it on the various incarnations of WORA/SWOFA/whatever: this appeal to legalism.

If you go into some public space, like let's say a restaurant, and start, I don't know, farting loudly and smelling up the place you'll be asked to leave. Asking "please show me in the written rules where this is not allowed" will only be met with derisive laughter and increased impetus to leave. Perhaps with the assistance of bodily force.

So why the sudden expectation in an online forum for everything to be spelled out? Why this appeal to legalism?

Personally I think it's because of the huge number of people who fall waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on the autistic side of the spectrum in this hobby.

• A good standard of behavior to adopt when entering a new community is to acquiesce when people ask you to conform to some standard of behavior.

An even better standard is to stop and watch for a while to see how people interact before jumping in yourself. As you said…

But actually look at this advert board, and you will find that nobody else posts weekly updates. You want to be special.

[Alzie]

@chime Muds don't necessarily have softcode, they have 'programs.' These programs are written in a script like language. I'm not sure what the basis is for the script like language, but it looks a lot like C.

[il-volpe]

@WTFE said:

Personally I think it's because of the huge number of people who fall waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on the autistic side of the spectrum in this hobby.

As an autistic person myself, I protest. Autistic adults bitching about how hard unwritten social rules are? Yep. Autistic adults pretending that unwritten rules don't exist and everybody will be fine with a person doing anything that's not expressly forbidden? Kids do that, and rebelling teens do that.

NT kids are always doing that, too. Because, you know, loopholes are useful for gettin' to do what you want without consequences. If we had a rules-based power structure here, right, it would work; we'd have to change the rules or stop bitching. In the rules-less power-vacuum we've got here, there's no opportunity to call on the law to force anybody to do anything, which makes things sort of rough in a person who doesn't want to negotiate.

[WTFE]

@il-volpe said:

Personally I think it's because of the huge number of people who fall waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on the autistic side of the spectrum in this hobby.

As an autistic person myself, I protest.

I fall into the autistic side of the spectrum myself (if only barely). This is why I qualified it with "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay" there. I've met people who are so completely unable to grasp social interactions that they genuinely believe that if it's not written it's not real; I don't mean in the sense of "assholes" either, but in the sense of "genuinely are incapable of understanding".

NT kids are always doing that, too.

NT?

[il-volpe]

NT = Neurotypical. Not autistic. Though also not a number of other things.

I gotcha with the waaaaay. Though actually, 'severely' autistic folks on forums don't do that shite either, that I've seen.

[Thenomain]

@HelloProject said:

In @Jaunt 's defense, in the professional world you generally say "My opinions do not reflect the opinions of company X".

And when you're talking about company X, that and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee.

(hint: drink fresh-ground, home-brewed coffee; it's very inexpensive)

[il-volpe]

@Jaunt said:

@EmmahSue

That's useful, thanks! So what I'm hearing from you is that the official moderator stance is that you prefer people to not post regular updates (say, weekly updates including new articles and contests or whatnot), but rather just advertise with the first post and then discuss from there. Is that correct?

See, it's NOT A RULE. If it were a RULE @Thenomain, who is also a mod, would have said, "You're breaking the rules, stop or you'll get kicked off," because that's how RULES on forums work. What it is is what @EmmahSue actually said -- it's typical to post once and let it go from there. That's not an official moderator stance, or a rule, it's just a fact.

See, the culture here does not work the way you think. So your appeal to authority ("It's not against the rules!" "What's the official moderator stance?!") is irrelevant. The fact that Theno doesn't mind the updates doesn't mean that other people are not allowed to object to them. If people think you're being a dick, they can say so. You can continue doing the thing they think is dickish, and they'll continue to say you're a dick. There's no list of what-is-dickish for you to cry, "But I didn't do that!" about, and Theno and Emma and other mods are very very unlikely to play Mum and Dad and make a ruling about it. Basically, you gotta be some sort of adult and accept that if you want so-and-so to stop calling you a dick you must stop doing the thing that he thinks is dickish, or wait for him to get tired of paying attention to your doings, or fuck off.

Are there any unwritten exceptions to this rule (say, for major site changes, or extra special things)?

Actually, I told you several pages back. The typical thing to do (and not just here, but most forums, in my experience) is to wait 'til the advert is no longer on the first page of threads, and then post your update-info so it kinda-sorta looks as if you have something to say and aren't just bumping your ad to get it back on the first page of threads.

[SparklesTheClown]

tl;dr: Read the room.