Talking 'Bout Ares

[Ganymede]

This is a development topic opened to discuss Ares and how it was put together.

[faraday]

One of the main reasons I made Ares:

You want more variety? Somebody else needs to solve that problem.

[Catsnake]

@shaggy Is there anything in particular you don't like about it?

Not saying this is your reason (though maybe it is) but I've discovered a lot of MU people won't give other platforms a chance because "it's different". It could be the best RP of all time ever but since it's on ChattyBox (madeup) software, some people won't even give it a chance because "It's not a MU/MUD".

[faraday]

@shaggy said in Games:

I mean no disrespect.

Just for the record - none taken. Ares is not meant to be everything to everybody (no system could be). Polite "I prefer chocolate to your vanilla" or even constructive criticism doesn't bug me.

I do get a bit put off when folks (not you specifically) blame the system for what individual games and players choose to do with it. But fighting that war is getting tiresome, and this thread is already probably veering too far off topic.

I have no games to suggest.

[Reason]

@shaggy said in Games:

All the new games are Ares.
Am I the only one who just doesn't really care for Ares?

I like the concept of Ares -- something that modernizes the genre and improve the accessibility to natively incorporate the web is a step in the right direction. The fact that it's so thoughtfully supported is kind of like winning the lottery for folks that it's a good fit for.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of Ruby and for the VERY LITTLE poking around I've done, the games running it haven't fully grabbed me. My MU* lizard brain still craves a grid of some sort, I think. And a slew of arcane commands that start with @ symbols or + signs.

I dig the ability to elegantly emulate the play-by-post experience, though, and hacking something like that into Evennia some day might be neat.

-r

[Seraphim73]

@reason Just wanted to note that most games that run on Ares //do// have a grid. No, you can't walk it from the web portal (unless you use the integrated client), but you can certainly walk it from your client. Can't help you with the slew of arcane commands that start with @ and + -- when I first started with Ares I typed them by pure muscle memory, and it's taken me a couple of years to not type them instinctively.

On topic: I have been enjoying the heck out of The Network. It's an Ares-based game that uses FS3 and has a very interesting theme: https://thenetwork.mugames.org/

[faraday]

@seraphim73 said in Games:

Can't help you with the slew of arcane commands that start with @ and + -- when I first started with Ares I typed them by pure muscle memory, and it's taken me a couple of years to not type them instinctively.

I mean, you can put in the + or @ if you want. Ares doesn't care. @desc, +desc and just desc are all the same command.

[Reason]

@faraday said in Games:

I mean, you can put in the + or @ if you want. Ares doesn't care. @desc, +desc and just desc are all the same command.

Sure. And no doubt that's configurable under the hood somewhere.

Old habits die hard. When I discovered that Evennia was similarly clipping my special characters, I had to drop everything to go find the damn config file responsible for removing those leading characters from the command parser and disable that feature.

Wouldn't want @desc to get mixed up with +desc or desc, afterall!

@seraphim73 said in Games:

@reason Just wanted to note that most games that run on Ares //do// have a grid. No, you can't walk it from the web portal (unless you use the integrated client), but you can certainly walk it from your client. Can't help you with the slew of arcane commands that start with @ and + -- when I first started with Ares I typed them by pure muscle memory, and it's taken me a couple of years to not type them instinctively.

Ahhh. Cool. As I said, I haven't scratched too deeply at Ares games. It's mostly been impressed on me that Ares allows for A) easy to ship a game concept, B) web-based asynchronous, gridless gameplay. (I don't think I've actually played on a MUSH since, like, 2008).

To be fair, I don't have strong negative feelings one way or the other from a playability standpoint. I'm somewhat ambivalent there. My issue is more focused on coder side of the equation, and having preferences in that regard that lie elsewhere.

-r

[Derp]

@reason said in Games:

Wouldn't want @desc to get mixed up with +desc or desc, afterall!

Dare I even ask why you'd have three versions of a desc command that presumably have different enough functions that a prefix would matter?

[Reason]

@derp said in Games:

Dare I even ask why you'd have three versions of a desc command that presumably have different enough functions that a prefix would matter?

Ha -- I don't actually, was mostly kidding.

-r

[Runescryer]

@faraday said in Games:

and this thread is already probably veering too far off topic.

/It's okay, Ray. The table broke the fall...

[faraday]

@reason said in Games:

Sure. And no doubt that's configurable under the hood somewhere.

No. Ares commands have no prefix by design (because as @Derp pointed out, it's kinda silly to have multiple versions of the same command.) The parser just ignores it if you type + or @.

@reason said in Games:

It's mostly been impressed on me that Ares allows for A) easy to ship a game concept, B) web-based asynchronous, gridless gameplay.

A is correct, B is not. Ares is a MUSH, and has a grid and client-based commands same as Penn/Tiny. It just ALSO has a web portal, temproom RP, and asynchronous RP support. Ares just gives people options. What seems to bother people the most is that players are using those options to play in different ways than they want to.

[BetterNow]

@faraday said in Games:

I do get a bit put off when folks (not you specifically) blame the system for what individual games and players choose to do with it.

This, this, this. I am on an Ares game that works perfectly for me, because Asyncs abound and I'm in a situation where that is basically the ONLY way I can RP due to living/work circumstances beyond my control.

I am also on one where Asyncs are almost non-existent and I am likely not going to be able to participate there in most anything unless I initiate an async myself.

The games are both Ares, but their CULTURES are entirely opposite. That is in no way due to the codebase, but to the staff and players and how they prefer to play.

[Reason]

@faraday said in Games:

@reason said in Games:

Sure. And no doubt that's configurable under the hood somewhere.

No. Ares commands have no prefix by design (because as @Derp pointed out, it's kinda silly to have multiple versions of the same command.) The parser just ignores it if you type + or @.

@reason said in Games:

It's mostly been impressed on me that Ares allows for A) easy to ship a game concept, B) web-based asynchronous, gridless gameplay.

A is correct, B is not. Ares is a MUSH, and has a grid and client-based commands same as Penn/Tiny. It just ALSO has a web portal, temproom RP, and asynchronous RP support. Ares just gives people options. What seems to bother people the most is that players are using those options to play in different ways than they want to.

So only configurable in a sense of the word that includes hacking apart the parser. Cool. And appreciate the clarification on grid vs. asynch support.

As I said, I don't really have a dog in this fight and improving accessibility and modernizing access are both positive. My only final reservation largely boils down to a chocolate vs. vanilla preference of implementation language, which is much more about creating than playing.

-r

[faraday]

@reason said in Games:

So only configurable in a sense of the word that includes hacking apart the parser.

I mean... the parser, hundreds of commands and help files... I genuinely cannot fathom why you would want to do a massive amount of work, take a step backwards in usability, and alienate many/most existing Ares players, all for no tangible benefit. But technically, yes, it's possible.

@betternow said in Games:

The games are both Ares, but their CULTURES are entirely opposite. That is in no way due to the codebase, but to the staff and players and how they prefer to play.

Exactly. Though to be fair, it is somewhat related to the server. Before Ares those async players would've just been out of luck and had to take their game-related RP off the game. So would many of the work/school-slow players.

And they did! Through the years, I have had so much RP over google docs, email, private servers where we could just stay logged in for ages posing intermittently, even LiveJournal (to date myself). Async and slow-paced RP on MUSHes has always been a thing. The only thing that changed with Ares is that now that RP is happening on the game. And since it's easier, more players are taking advantage of it to play in a way that's more convenient for them.

Which seems like a really weird thing to get upset over honestly.

@Ganymede and co. please feel free to move like the last page or so of posts to a different thread. "Why are so many new games Ares" or something. I feel bad threadjacking but it's an interesting convo.

[Reason]

@faraday said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@reason said in Games:

So only configurable in a sense of the word that includes hacking apart the parser.

I mean... the parser, hundreds of commands and help files... I genuinely cannot fathom why you would want to do a massive amount of work, take a step backwards in usability, and alienate many/most existing Ares players, all for no tangible benefit. But technically, yes, it's possible.

Ha. Well, in fairness I wouldn't want to. That sounds like an awful lot of work.

That said, I think it's a bit presumptive to describe the benefit of allowing special character prefixes as entirely devoid of merit in something that is likely just a notion of personal preference.

For example, my own preferences include the reservation of special characters to denote contextual elements of the associated commands. Having a '+' in front of a command to denote that it is global in nature and enforced and supported as such, for example, is a mental short-cut that I find personally useful. Similarly having in-game syntactic clues that a suite of commands is local in nature have benefits that I perceive with how I think about MUs*. Character specific abilities/commands that are neither global nor local (in so much as non-local to mean not generally local) may be another example.

Obviously ALL of the above can be achieved without special characters. Some string prefix, for example, could act as a similar syntactical clue. So could some fundamentally different paradigm that doesn't respect notions of global, local, or character specific contexts. Or, I'm sure. a myriad of other ways to view the way of building and playing.

But that really isn't the point -- the point is that it is nice that there are platforms that cater to different chocolate-or-vanilla preferences, because preference is the correct term of art to describe the distinction. Not value. Tangible, or otherwise.

Which seems like a really weird thing to get upset over honestly.

Totally agree here. Native support for asynchronous RP seems like such a tremendous step forward, it's hard for me to imagine why it would be a point of frustration for players.

Perhaps there's some perception on behalf of the complainers that this is a zero sum game -- and by improving accessibility to others, they have lost something for themselves. If that's the case, that's unfortunate.

-r

[Arkandel]

@catsnake said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@shaggy Is there anything in particular you don't like about it?

Not saying this is your reason (though maybe it is) but I've discovered a lot of MU people won't give other platforms a chance because "it's different". It could be the best RP of all time ever but since it's on ChattyBox (madeup) software, some people won't even give it a chance because "It's not a MU/MUD".

People will always, and I mean always go where others already are.

It's a matter of attracting a critical mass of players interested in a genre first. The rest will come, invited and recruited by their friends or just because it's where RP already is.

[Coin]

@arkandel said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@catsnake said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@shaggy Is there anything in particular you don't like about it?

Not saying this is your reason (though maybe it is) but I've discovered a lot of MU people won't give other platforms a chance because "it's different". It could be the best RP of all time ever but since it's on ChattyBox (madeup) software, some people won't even give it a chance because "It's not a MU/MUD".

People will always, and I mean always go where others already are.

It's a matter of attracting a critical mass of players interested in a genre first. The rest will come, invited and recruited by their friends or just because it's where RP already is.

Which is why if you want to start a game you're best off with ten or so players ready to dive in from the word go.

[faraday]

@reason said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

For example, my own preferences include the reservation of special characters to denote contextual elements of the associated commands.

Yes, that aptly describes the historical significance of the different prefixes. However, my experience tells me that the average player doesn't actually care whether something is implemented as a global, local, or character-specific command, and find the prefixes confusing and non-intuitive.

So while everyone is certainly entitled to their personal preferences on the matter, the feedback I've received is overwhelmingly in favor of removing the prefixes - to the point where players complain when they have to go back to other codebases that still use them. So from a usability perspective, I respectfully disagree that they it is advantageous to include it as a game-specific option.

Side note - Ares also doesn't have the necessity of differentiating between the built-in @desc and the game's custom +desc. There's just one "desc" global, which you can override with custom code if you need to.

Like you said, though, there are other platforms that do this if it's really important to your game vision.

[Reason]

@faraday said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@reason said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

For example, my own preferences include the reservation of special characters to denote contextual elements of the associated commands.

Yes, that aptly describes the historical significance of the different prefixes. However, my experience tells me that the average player doesn't actually care whether something is implemented as a global, local, or character-specific command, and find the prefixes confusing and non-intuitive.

So while everyone is certainly entitled to their personal preferences on the matter, the feedback I've received is overwhelmingly in favor of removing the prefixes - to the point where players complain when they have to go back to other codebases that still use them. So from a usability perspective, I respectfully disagree that they it is advantageous to include it as a game-specific option.

Side note - Ares also doesn't have the necessity of differentiating between the built-in @desc and the game's custom +desc. There's just one "desc" global, which you can override with custom code if you need to.

Like you said, though, there are other platforms that do this if it's really important to your game vision.

I feel like you may be under the impression that I'm advocating that you do something different than you have, or am trying to influence/change your preference.

If that's the case, let me disabuse you of that notion -- the default position that you've taken mirrors the default position of the only other modern-language MU* framework. I think you're in good company.

I don't share your preference and I don't look down on you for having it.

-r