@SG That's our secret. We're always angry.
Best posts made by Arkandel
-
RE: Something Completely Different
I just hope no one pastes a dictionary definition for 'opinion' or 'hide' to make their point at this stage.
-
RE: Good or New Movies Review
SPOILER FREE review of Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness.
This was very much a Sam Raimi movie. The effects were spectacular (I think the best visuals than any Marvel movie) but many scenes were so clearly all him. His fingerprints were all over this. It was as distinctly his film as Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok.
I quite enjoyed it. So many references. Probably the most meta movie. It gave nerds so much to talk about.
Have fun, folks!
-
RE: How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows
@Ninjakitten Is there a GoFundMe or Patron for this? There is so much work and regular updates put into this project.
-
RE: Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff
@Macha Everyone deals with grief differently. You should, too. It's valid, and natural. It's even part of the healing process - you just lost someone who mattered to you.
When Daphne died - she was my dog. I have dogs now, and I do love them, but I doubt I'll ever bond with another dog the same way I did with her. And that, too, is okay.
It's not either a betrayal of the puppy who's now gone nor a disservice to ones you may get in the future if your relationship to them is different. You shouldn't feel either rushed nor hesitant about having other pets though until you're ready both emotionally and in terms of what your life circumstances are like.
-
RE: How can we incentivize IC failure?
@zombiegenesis Right. I think there's some stigma due to the (admittedly often terrible) players who throw fits if their characters fail at something, but there's a legitimate argument to be made.
For example if succeeding at becoming the Sheriff means you are fed regular scenes by every new character in the sphere and automatic notifications or inclusion in plots that require an 'authority figure', but if your character doesn't get the job then you just... don't, it's not unreasonable that you are bummed by it.
And it's not an easy problem to solve, either. Not every character can be the Sheriff!
-
RE: A new platform?
Many things baffle me, but few as much as debating these things simply because it's demonstratively the case that far fewer players enter MU*ing even as far (far) more people have internet access.
So what gives? Come on, the literacy rate didn't diminish in the time since MU*s' heyday.
I'll give a hint:
@mail faraday=Hello -Hey! @mail/proof @mail/send
is harder to figure out than clicking on "Faraday", picking "Mail", then clicking on "Send".
Back then the convenience of the latter didn't exist, there was very little multiplayer content out there for us to play online than that, and so we learned. Internet users these days are simply used to different, higher standards for usability.
-
RE: Critters!
Some of my critters still aren't over feeling endangered and it bugs me sometimes.
Ruby, my oldest, was a stray when we found her in the streets... in 2007. Dog, you don't need to flinch when I reach out to pet you. You've had 14 years to figure out I'll not actually smack you instead, given that I still haven't.
Roo, my youngest cat, has been around for three years. He was a tiny kittenball when he was adopted. He still freaks out and bolts into a closet if I get up from my chair, walk towards him on the way to somewhere else or in general if I am active while not immobilized (sitting or laying down). Wtf. Get over it!
Bemusedly the other dog and cat in the household couldn't care less. They will both lay across my path on the stairs, making me trip over them, with no shits given.
-
RE: How can we incentivize IC failure?
@faraday It goes well beyond the scope of this thread, but I think a fundamental mistake many game-runners make is that despite of the amount of work and thought they put into all sorts of (quite important) things - the code, the setting and its history, the wiki, etc - they spend relatively little time considering basic questions.
"Set this WoD game in New York or a little town in Maine?" Weeks' worth of fierce debates.
"What are the implications of making feature characters playable?" Eh, I'm sure it'll be okay. -
RE: What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.
@kumakun said in What's out there now and what has been attempted? A codebase discussion.:
I'm curious to learn what other projects are/where out there that tried to add to/improve on the MU experience, and how you feel they succeeded or failed. The only 'next generation' servers I know of that are currently doing pretty good are AresMUSH and Evennia. Are there others?
On the same host as MSB I had started building a web-only MU engine based on websocket, PHP over Apache and ajax components. The very basic parts worked well enough - multiple users, a rudimentary navigation for a grid with a back end to customize rooms, etc.
At some point I ran into a wall when I realized that the more time I spent coding the parts I really looked forward to - such as a hexagon grid-based GUI for PrPs - the less I had to do the stuff I just had to, and didn't really want to since it's boring and thankless; replacements for common systems like bboards or mail, CGen, etc.
I still think ridding ourselves from any backward compatibility with telnet is the way forward. I just can't commit to that kind of workload however.
-
RE: Good TV
Spoiler-free for Game of Thrones.
First of all I love the season - I watch (and in one case, re-watch) episodes immediately as they come out, so this isn't really a complaint per se... but I think a lot of the issues we're perceiving have to do with the limited number of episodes left.
The showrunners decided last season they'd only do 8+6 more. That's it. Maybe they were getting tired or they wanted to go out with a bang or the cast was restless but... either way that's what they set out to do, which put us on an accelerated pace at least compared to what we were used to, which was months of character development and slow build-ups before Big Things happened.
And now big things happen constantly - they have literally years worth of set ups they get to knock down now and in doing so some pretty damn talented people are giving us really great work. The CGI is amazing, we're seeing reunions (or even first time meetings) from characters who hadn't shared a set since season one if ever, and certain kinds of battles we had speculated for are just... getting done. That's amazing stuff. But in the process since they only have so much screen time they are skimming over other character relationships which we only get limited glimpses from.
The way I see it is these episodes are at least an hour, sometimes an hour and a half long. We're still getting a ton of bang for our buck here, that's several full feature movies' worth of stuff we're being served, and they're sparing no expenses. Sure, the relative 'rush' means some things are getting handwaved - people travel across the map in inexplicable ways, for example - but it's to serve the plot and to be entertaining.
I dare anyone to say Game of Thrones is not being entertaining this season.
-
RE: What Would it Take to Repair the Community?
@Tirit Possibly. And yet it still beats the alternative.
Something to keep in mind here is that the MU* community at large, as hard as it is to accurately count its members, is certainly in the range of several hundred players. The number of creeps among us, going back years, is vanishingly small in comparison; under 10, possibly half that.
And still their impact on games has been absolutely massive. Entire MU* were completely derailed off their course trying to compensate for their negative impact. Many affected people stopped playing either on those specific MU* or even in general.
You can't coddle that behavior. You can't allow it to take roots. It will be a major net negative if you do, whether you mean well or not.
-
RE: What Makes A Good PRP?
It's like asking "what makes a good dinner".
The timing differs. The company matters. The environment is important. The cook is pretty critical. The mood, too.
It also matters a very great deal how hungry you are in the first place.
-
RE: RL things I love
@Thenomain A robot @Ganymede might be, but no one has ever accused it of being asexual.
-
RE: What Would it Take to Repair the Community?
@Devrex said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:
The ones who hate us now have every opportunity and tool to go hate us over there. We're not bothering you.
Who is being hated, by whom, or why?
I read and post on both forums. Am I with 'us' or 'them'? Who hates me?
-
RE: Specific MU request
@surreality This is true, and even more so - there are times when it frustrates me to see people complain about things which they are at least partially responsible for if not nearly entirely.
A classic case of this is finding a pack. It's such a cliche to see 4-5 people sitting there on a channel bemoaning the fact 'there are no packs' simultaneously - make one!
Roleplay availability? The same deal. "There are no PrPs!" "I'll run a PrP for you, what do you want to do?" "I dunno". Or "There's no one to play with!" "Hey, wanna play?" <silence>
If I sit in a room on my own and make no effort to meet anyone else then I'm not exactly being a thrilling option for them to go out of their way to meet. I get being shy, I really do. But although cliques can be a plague on entire games depending on how they manifest they're orthogonal to self isolation.
-
RE: Good TV
I think The Orville is hitting one thing correctly - very correctly - in that Star Trek isn't really about space battles and pew-pew lasers and acrobatics. I mean it can have those but in its heart it's about the narrative of sensitive human issues discussed in a different context.
I didn't dislike Star Trek: Discovery. It has potential. But let's be honest here, they are not going to spend $8 million bucks per episode about a trial discussing ethical dilemmas. It just won't happen, that's a complete waste of that money.
And that's why The Orville is closer to Star Trek. Because it can afford to do these things. The toilet humor is just a plus in my book.
-
RE: Alternative Formats to MU
@golgoth said in Alternative Formats to MU:
For pages: Click user, send message. That's been done even for telnet based clients, but I think that requires Pueblo Enabled.
So instead of a generic ancient protocol we'd go back to a proprietary one which may or not work for mobile devices and might or not require using a specific client.
For CGen plus-commands: I haven't found a real quick solution for it, but I can. Players just won't like it since the idea that springs to mind is to force the player to ONLY do CGEN.
It's not just CGen - that's just one easy example. There are so many regular game situations (i.e. after you already have a PC) when commands on MUSH just need to be long - look at the syntax to write a bbpost; that's absurd to a newcomer. Every time I have to create a +note (which in many MU* is necessary if you want to purchase certain abilities or merits) I find myself cursing, and I've been using this crap for years.
These are all solved problems with a basic web interface.
-
RE: Good writin'.
I've lots of little (and not-as-little) peeves but I try to not take them too seriously unless it gets distracting.
My main marker is the signal to noise ratio in poses when people are trying to buff their own legend a bit too hard, especially when it crosses into metaposing. "Bob walks in a room and picks up a drink. That's right, a drink, because everyone knows what happens when this guy gets drunk; people get hurt, blood is shed, the police is called. Oh yeah. And wait, is that Jack Daniels? Damn.". I wish I was exaggerating a lot.
But even aside from those things I've got my own preferences. I like meaty poses; unlike @Coin I'll very gladly take a subtle implication of hair color rather than an one-word description for it, and I value the effort someone takes in describing their character's action in flowery prose - I like prose. I'll also take any environmental immersion offered and try to enrich it - is it raining hard outside? Maybe my PC's cheap shows got soaked on the way over so now he's making funny sounds when he walks anywhere.
What I'm saying is there's a difference between the things I enjoy - but which aren't necessary, and I realize are just stuff I like - and what's actually detrimental to a scene since they're supposed to highlight a player's ego and not what makes a character unique or noteworthy. If they're trying too hard to shove how special they are down my throat it's more of the latter than the former.