Posts made by Arkandel

Names. Very few characters are called Steve or Jen.

It's always Maximillian and Lillian.

@carma said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

I agree with this. Something I've had to contend with is that writing on a MU* is not the same as writing a good work of fiction.

The vast majority of us are amateurs!

But also RPing on a MU* is more improv theater in writing than it is writing. If for no other reason than that there is no one controlling the narrative 100% of the time, and that there are multiple authors involved in the story's telling.

@derp said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

@rnmissionrun

MushCode: Teaching people modern programming paradigms via the 'have you seen the alternative?' method.

"Nothing you'll see can possibly be worse than this shite"

@faraday said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

@arkandel said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

I found coding for MU* was an invaluable experience. .. I would heartily recommend it to anyone who's looking to get into programming or is curious about a different professional path.

20-30 years ago I would absolutely agree. Now? MUSHcode is so far divorced from modern programming paradigms and languages that any concepts you learn from it don't translate very well.

That said, people learn best when they're passionate about the thing they're trying to learn; doubly so if there's a tangible, useful project that can come out of it. So for you if that's old-school MUSHcode, go for it. Far be it from me to stand in the way of anyone's passion project.

But if you're trying to learn it as a generic stepping stone to get into programming, there are better ways to do that IMHO.

I agree, of course, but with two caveats.

Part of being a successful developer involves more than the programming language or platform itself. Working with others, documenting your work, architecting something you plan to create so that it's modular and expandable for example are still valuable.

But the most important part, I think, is something you touched on; being passionate about a project. That's the kind of madness that leads us to set stretch goals - aiming to get something so ambitious done we don't currently know how to do, or perhaps even whether it's doable with the tools at our disposal. I wonder if at some point Ares might have started out that way?

There may be an aspiring programmer out there right now with some crazy-ass idea about a MU*-like game trying things out to see what works, even especially if it means starting from scratch. And it's exactly the kind of work that leads to professional success down the line, too.

@aria said in Good TV:

her great love, Aragorn, the handsome, brooding warrior who becomes the High King of Middle-Earth.*

The High King of Gondor and Arnor. </LotR snob>

I loved that entire rest of the quote.

@faraday I found coding for MU* was an invaluable experience. It didn't shape my career, since I was already programming since I first got my Amstrad 6128, but it expanded my horizons really fast simply by giving me an incentive to mess around with MySQL when it was relatively new, work with version control and generally as part of a larger team, exposed me to APIs, data conversion, basic systems administration, shell scripts, network and socket code in general...

I would heartily recommend it to anyone who's looking to get into programming or is curious about a different professional path. It's not just internet points. What you can pick up from coding 'rooms' can easily translate into a potentially lucrative professional turn down the road, as long as one doesn't get complacent. Being ambitious with the toys you create on a text editor is a top-notch time investment.

Edit: Understanding other people's code. Expanding other people's code. Fixing other people's code!

@sahin said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

Nonverbal communication.

Yeah but that's a MUSH thing more than anything.

I suppose though intricate plans discussed OOC between players then put into play almost immediately in IC time is very similar for table-top.

@wizz Yeah +help versus help used to be the bane of my life. Especially for 'custom' commands like +aspirations or whatever.

@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.

@derp I use Bob and Jane so screw you all with your cool new names.

@krmbm said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

For me personally, it's because I'm not a 19-year-old who can stay up all night long reading help files and learning to <snip!>

It's probably out of this thread's scope but that's one of the main causes professional developers eventually divert from their original career paths. In your 20s you can afford to enthusiastically stay up night after night wrestling with the cool new technologies, learning them inside and out and coding cool shit to hone your craft. In your 30s and 40s, with kids and a family, obligations, not to mention a body/mind that just can't handle going to sleep at 03:00 and getting up at 08:00 any more, it's a different story.

But having seen that from the other side it's not bad either way. Project managers (or managers in general) with strong technical skills get paid well. And veteran developers who might not be intimately familiar with every newfangled new toy but with a firm grasp on the fundamentals, able to architect and troubleshoot are always in demand, too.

@ganymede said in Things Ganymede has broken:

I will confer with Arkandel about flipping it back to where it was before. I apologize for the inconvenience.

<goes on immediate vacation>

This is a thread just for weird stuff that happens as a result of playing RPGs. They can be about mechanics, the very fact these are games in the first place, that players sometimes get busy, unrealistic mechanics, whatever.

So for example I was talking about this with my university roommate. Our party had received a mission to go infiltrate a no-mans-land kind of territory, locate and kill an evil dude then get back to college a large reward. Simple, right?

This being a game, of course the team suffered... some casualties. One character died and his PC was replaced by another. Then a second guy died. A third. Each of them were quickly replaced by folks we just happened to meet on the way there, who we found tied to a tree, etc.

But the party still had a singular goal - the evil dude needed to die, and die he did!

So in the end we went back to the original quest NPC who looked at us and went "uh who the fuck are you people?" since not a single member of the original group was still alive. There just like, four people she had never seen before who popped up and demanded she honors a deal to someone else and pass the gold.

What's your story?

Winnie gets really excited when I get home and walk toward the back door to let her, and her sister, out to the yard. After all she hasn't seen me in a while, and she wants to be out! So she jumps on my heels because yay. And that's fine.

However when I take Winnie for a long walk, once we get home I let them both out in the back yard so her sister can get some fresh air too. Then the dumb dog still gets excited and jumps on my heels even though she was just out with me.

Wtf dog.

@derp Developers in general tend to be very picky and territorial about their preferences. Vim versus emacs, tabs versus spaces, take your pick.

Ultimately as long as a language works for the intended purpose it doesn't really matter too much. Most modern languages are interchangeable to a large degree, and it comes down to what you're already familiar with or just what you like.

@rinel said in Good TV:

@groth said in Good TV:

It's a bit of a shame and almost weird how as copied as all the other aspects of Tolkiens work are, almost all of them abandon the communal heroism in favor of more straight chosen one narratives.

That aspect of Tolkien's work (along with Frodo failing at the end and Sam--who also would have failed had he been in Frodo's position--rescuing him) requires a very deeply rooted sense of humility that runs counter to modern popular sensibilities. It's rare to find it outside of very serious humanist, philosophical or religious adherents.

It's for the same reason that people continue to draw unsuccessful parallels between Tolkien's characters and other 'similar' ones in fiction.

No, Gandalf wasn't a powerful Wizard because he cast fireballs. Aragorn or Legolas were no one-man armies, either, despite their movie feats.

Hell, the Ring itself didn't have impressive feats on its own - not the catchy type; it couldn't make its wearer invulnerable, give them flight or shoot laser beams. Same as Saruman's 'voice' it made the wielder extremely manipulative, and even that not in a direct 'mind control' kind of way.

Does that mean they were less impressive than their average D&D equivalents? I laugh at the notion.

A first trailer for The Sandman just came out. This looks good!

@ganymede said in RL friends:

I tell law students constantly: the practice of law is applied Dungeons & Dragons. And those who know? Now they know.

Fucking rules lawyers.

@kestrel said in RL friends:

That discourse aside, I'm curious if people within the MU* community have noticed patterns where the people they enjoy socialising with IRL are concerned.

I'd say it'd depend on which time period in my life we're talking about.

Early on when I was young my RL friends were whoever I was associated with based on geography and occupation.School mates, folks at the university, from basketball runs. And yes, those who fit the criteria above and enjoyed similar things took priority; I met my roommate, with whom I still talk and hang out regularly, at a Star Trek group.

But later on as I entered my mid-thirties and people were no longer dating or breaking up but getting married and had kids it became very apparent I could no longer be picky. Friends vanished; they had more important things to do than hang out, and they didn't just magically appear. I'd get close to coworkers while we were at work but not hanging out depended on when they had time; coordinating groups larger than 2-3 at a time got harder and harder, too.

But my hobbies have always been integral to actual close friendships. It may be that I was never really into just generically hanging out. My partner can go out with a friend and drink beers, chat, etc for 5+ hours in a row - I'd never choose to do that. But participate in an activity for that long? Gimme. A long D&D session sounds amazing. Dinner+movie, yes please. Going outdoors to hike is great. I did play WoW with people I knew iRL, too.

On the other hand MU*ing had always been separate for me. None of my friends really played the way I did; a couple played MUDs back in the day but didn't roleplay, and stopped when MMORPGs became popular. It just felt... weird, too, or at least I felt self conscious to rant about random game-related drama when I was with them, which also widened a disconnect. I was investing time in a part of my life that wasn't being actively shared - if that makes sense.

So to answer the original question - I connect with the real world through activities and hobbies. It's just that MUs, specifically, never became a conduit to doing so.