Best posts made by Alzie

Going in. Will report back.

@il-volpe and by 'compatibility issues' you mean 'people are dicks.'

@Thenomain By fires you mean +kinks right? Yeah, that was a great fire. Burned brightly, not too strong, not too weak. Lovely.

I remember the time that automated XP Spends were proposed. Essentially, it wasn't so much objection as it was the insane amount of exceptions. By the time the exceptions got added in the number of categories that you could do by yourself were so minimal that there was no point to it.

@ixokai The reach codebase was special. There were times when we (Thenomain and I) would look at code and then draw lots to decide who got to fix the issue. Then there were times when I pulled the short lot and rather than going through the trouble of fixing it, just rewrote the entire section. Consequently, that's how +roll v2 happened.

The Reach isn't the only codebase that suffers from this though. Any sufficiently large and complex Mu codebase is disgusting. Pennmush's built in lisp style code doesn't lend itself to beauty or organization. RFK's code, for instance, was spread out along 20+ objects and was quite frankly horrendous. Perhaps more horrendous than The Reach. It was huge, complicated and interfaced with a database.

Also, I'm not sure why the reach's codebase was your ideal? Could you elaborate?

@SG As to your original question.
If you want something more focused on a database interaction: https://github.com/ccubed/Mu2/blob/master/Database Stats/Arc

If you want more traditional:
https://github.com/ccubed/UGS

@Jeshin Then perhaps you need to actually define automated systems beyond 'Whatever I want it to mean at any given point in time.'

@horrorhound There are a few still.

For Star Wars: https://www.legendsofthejedi.com/
For Fantasy RP: https://ti-legacy.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

And then most of the listings on:
https://grapevine.haus/
http://www.mudconnect.com/
http://www.mudstats.com/

Bat Mud is fine as is Materia Magica.
All of the Iron Realms games are active.

@Chime said:

I think it was some lingering sense of basic decency. My bad. When he started posting all over unrelated G+ posts (okay, not important stuff, but pictures of cats and things for family that I had semi-public), I think I can safely say that he's not worried about these sorts of boundaries anymore.

I've given him a URI for downloading the tarball. What he does with it is anyone's guess.

This was willm (redacted again at the request of forum staff), owner of a starwars game, gundam seed, and zero. I suspect people could do business with him just fine as long as clear contracts, expectations, and boundaries are set and never crossed. I sure as hell don't want him on any of my systems though.

Again, for those who are vaguely worried about all this: his data is fine and safe, and he has full access to it. He's just been an utter jackass.

http://mudstats.com/World/StarWarsNewJediOrder
http://mudstats.com/World/StarWarsLegacy(NewJediOrder) (same game, duplicate entry)
http://mudstats.com/World/TITAN2100
http://mudstats.com/World/GundamMUSH

edit: removed name at request of staff

Oh, so that's why he sent out the giant email to everyone telling us his host had screwed him and the games were down. There were like 7 emails from him that day.

@GundamAdmin

I really enjoyed our time together and I hope you will all keep in touch. However, the server has been closed down for good. I apologize for the lack of warning, our host pulled a very shady move. After this happened, I realized I had no desire to put the game back up just to flounder.

@Jeshin Perhaps it hasn't been an issue, but Perhaps you never came to a community purporting to be an independent Mu listing that wanted to list any game that met certain criteria. Then when that community expressed that your criteria were vague at best, you responded by saying that the criteria are vague on purpose because you do not in fact want to be an independent Mu listing that lists any game that meets certain criteria.

Perhaps you should just be honest about what you are. Perhaps you should just say: We talk about Mu things and perhaps, if you ask, we'll list your game as an example of what we consider a good game.

@bored @Apollonius I don't think they're bad per se, but they do seem more in the vein of table top GM games because Apollonius is presenting them in the sense that he has a story to tell and everyone else is along for the ride. I don't think that's a bad thing. There have been some good Mu's that have basically been players playing someone's brain novel.

The only thing I have a problem with is: If you're so against politics, then why are you allowing nobles. You can't allow royals without allowing politics. It's like saying 'I want to have merchants, but I don't want to really think about the economy that much.'

@WTFE

The "reasoning" is bullshit and is reverse justification for a stupid design decision

The "reasoning" given so far is wrong.

• @-commands are designated with an @ symbol because they modify the database in memory or on the disk and are meant to be used by game admin. (Saving counts as modification)

• Commands like look or page are part of a specific category of user commands that manipulate the database and occasionally modify it. (look, for instance, does a room description lookup in the object database, while quit will save your player file to disk)

• The + syntax was born as a way to indicate a command that was added by that specific locality - where locality could mean game, owner (in relation to current thing) or some random coder.

And it's a category that's absolutely meaningless to the user.

I don't think you're wrong. It can be removed. Actually, removing it takes all of 5, maybe 10 minutes of work. If I do that however, what should the new standard be? Does everything have a + now? Is it all just the command with no @/+ or what have you? Do we keep the @commands and remove their @? Now we have reserved keywords. You can't have your own commands called, for instance: switch, flag, channel, set, create...(This is a large list)

@HelloProject I think one of the disconnects here is that you're comparing MUDs to MUSHs. The tools available to both are different. The fairest comparison we could have between the two would be any random MUD and Evennia, since Evennia allows us to code in a useful programming language with useful paradigms (insert @Griatch here). MUDs are primarily coded in hardcode. Mostly C, sometimes C++ recently, occasionally Java (I know right? I've seen them though) and I've seen at least one Pascal MUD. They're set up, from the beginning, to support a coder adding new features to their hardcode. Most MUDs also support a rudimentary coding language inside the game itself that is usually referred to as just <insert object type here>PROG. Even that is a better tool than MUSHs have access to. In contrast, your average mush developer has to use the built in lisp like language to do everything. You may say, Why don't you just add to the built in hardcode then? I'm glad you asked.

You'll remember where I mentioned that MUDs are typically designed to facilitate modifications to their core systems in hardcode. MUSHs are not designed this way. Evennia is the only MUSH like system designed from the ground up to be modified at the hardcode level. I'm sure that @Ashen-Shugar will jump in at this point and hold up his RhostMUSH sign. He's not wrong, but it's an advanced code base. Your average MUSH code base, however, is designed in such a way that adding new features to it requires modifications of several built in systems. Unlike in our previously mentioned MUD code base, these systems are spread around and sometimes, they're dynamic. It can be, at times, annoying to add new hardcoded features.

But what about the UX

I don't disagree with anything in particular that @faraday said. Too many commands do have inconsistent and redundant usages, especially on a large game like the reach. That was less a factor of the game system, however, and more a factor of how many different coders touched the reach. Thenomain and I talked to each other and kept our stuff consistent. We could also stop using MUSHcode, that would help a lot. RhostMush and Evennia have much better systems for coding.

Question about why +roll Shorthand Word doesn't work for WoD

Answer: Did you mean Academics, Academics.Accounting, Academics.Pre-Law, Academics.Pre-Med...

@crayon said:

I think you'll find that 'automated systems' is a very simplistic and minor requirement. While the degree of automation required can be construed as vague, having automation at all is pretty simple.

Golly gee guys, why are you so stupid? This is a simple concept.

@crayon Said:

Is it anything-goes, may as well be roleplaying in a Yahoo chatroom for all intents and purposes? Probably not sufficiently automated. Do you have automated systems that generate outcomes rather than leaving it up to the player or some sort of arbitration? You probably qualify.

So again, the definition appears to be any command that a player types which then produces an output. So either we're not as stupid as you want us to be or you're not as smart as you think you are.

On another note, it always warms the nether regions when someone gets their panties in a twist because you're asking them to define something in their pretend fun time project and they resort to insults and intelligence comparisons because they have no legitimate answer.

@crayon Said:

There's a lot of hostility, chest-beating, and elitism going around, and it really turns me off from wanting to try to engage with anybody here, because people only seem to be interested in debating with straw men.

@lithium said in The Mega Shadowrun Denver Shout:

@alzie What archetypes (if any) are people wanting?

Right now, there's a big call for deckers, but since there's a war, they also want murderfaces.

@Griatch your first mistake was assuming people updated their telnet clients. Your second mistake was assuming there aren't people who use zmud.

SimpleMu, Mushclient, tintin++, Z/Cmud, Atlantis along with any number of archaic java clients that the websites that used to host them no longer offer them. See the mudmagic client, mudconnect client, mudbytes client and others.

Off the top of my head:

SimpleMu/Mushclient/ZCMud are mostly used on windows though Mushclient works under wine. However, most people on linux use...

Tintin++ is mostly used on linux because it has some good integration into the linux stack and is CLI based, meaning it doesn't have to get in your way. Also people that use linux like their CLIs.

Atlantis is the mac one. There are others but we don't talk about them, we use Atlantis. Some people use TinTin++ on mac but not many. (Seriously though, the others are either unfinished, half broken or just don't work.)

This is just based on the average discussion around those specific communities.

@Thenomain Why you bothering brocephus? @jeshin already said all he wants from this thread is to use it like a twitter feed where he announces new posts on his blog.

I knew Tia and Zeynasi. I was aspalathos (Sp? idfk. something like that). Welcome to the board.

@cirno and @deadculture Cirno has a host, Cirno need only ask.

@crayon If you can't see the inherent discrimination in your opening statement being Optional Realities is a community and design blog for text-based, online Roleplaying Games with a focus on character and story-driven games that include permanent death as a feature while at the same time giving only games that conform to a completely different set of principles the spotlight then i'm afraid we can't help you. In any case, I do not care. As you stated, you can do whatever you want because it's your project and you're footing the bill, not us.

@Cirno I'm there.

@jaunt 'Yo dawg, I totally came here to participate in civil discussion. Oh did I say civil discussion, dawg I meant i'm here to troll.'

Restricting commands to a subset of the grid is as easy as maintaining a good set of Zone Master Objects. Zone your games and set your commands so they only work in those particular zones. Done. As always, this works great on Mux and Penn, but Rhost has to redefine the wheel and Zones don't work at all like they do on the other two.

@il-volpe Actually, the articles don't say anything.

Community Manager vs. The Troll - Summed up: Hey guys, the internet is mean. Don't be mean back, but don't ban people either, because that might be too draconian. Instead, what you do, is ignore the troll and talk about RP! (Cue Nicholas Cage)

So You Wanna Make a Game - Making shit is hard, mmkay? (Cue Nicholas Cage)

Customer Service and Muds - I wrote an entire article to tell you to let people know what you're doing, to handle player complaints privately and to never commit to anything. (Cue Nicholas Cage)

How to Write Branching Storylines - I will show you how to make flow charts, because you cannot make branching storylines without them. Also you should connect all your plots together, because that needs to be said. How do you do that? Flow charts.

Staff Ethics - Hi, I am going to tell you what is right and wrong. What? You say that ethics are highly subjective, surely you must be joking. You're stupid if you can't agree that these things are wrong! Oh yeah, by the way, the best way to have an ethical staff is to have no staff at all! So automate everything.

Saying that we've already talked about all things may be an understatement. Not only have we talked about them, but so has every other community around gaming ever.