Posts made by Auspice

@thatguythere said in Make it fun for Me!:

I will be honest my fun is the main goal of RPing for me, or any other leisure time activity I take part in. I will do my best to also make fun for others, on a much we are both the suppliers and consumers for the fun. If we fail to supply then we will have no fun that is true, but unless I am getting some other compensation I won't be in a scene long unless it is also fun for me.

This right here.

Not knowing what's going to happen is the whole point of this for me.

As an author, I always know what's coming next when I write. I know what lurks around the corner. I know what everyone's deep dark secrets are. I know what the big plot twist is. I know everything. It gets boring after a while.

So I roleplay because I don't know what's coming next! I don't know what your character's secrets are! I don't know what the ST has planned! It's in the not knowing that I find enjoyment!

But at the same time, when I'm just a warm body in a scene; when I'm just there for Suzy Q to do all the things, I stop having fun. I want to engage! I want to feel involved! When I go three, four, rounds of just posing to myself... I feel deflated. When I pose a reaction to you, you over there, and that person over there and none of them respond back to me because I'm not the ST or I'm not the person they think is holding all the tricks or I'm not Mr. HotShot... I feel frustrated.

That's right guys: it happens to me, too.
(I've had conversations with plenty of folks, even some people here on the boards, along the lines of 'How do you always get RP so easily?!' Guess what. I've totally been in the scene where I spend five rounds posing to myself. Happens to the best of us.)

But the most fun for me is in not knowing what happens next. It's also the best way to stretch my legs as it were. It's like improv for the writer. I don't know what the other person is going to throw at me! I have to think on my feet!

So I can totally have fun, definitely! In just about any scene!

Just, y'know... engage with me, include me, give me something to do. Don't hog the spotlight.

The 'MY FUN' mentality that has been thrown around of late has been, in my opinion, goddamn toxic.

Because it has turned into this systemic issue wherein people feel enabled ('BUT MY FUN') to ruin other peoples' enjoyment of a game (or the game itself) on the grounds of 'MY FUN.'

"I don't care if other people left the scene, my fun."
"So what if my concept goes against the spirit of the sphere, my fun."
"Who cares if what I'm doing is upsetting to other people, my fun."

We play games that are, by their very base concept and nature, cooperative. Yes, you should be enjoying yourself, but you come here to enjoy yourself with other people. Not at the expense of other people. If the only reason you're here is to have other people bend to your every whim or to be your audience / bit players in the show of you, you aren't playing in the spirit of the game.

When I craft plots (vs. run a one shot), I look into the background of PCs, into their sheets (if publicly viewable), into the type of scenes I've seen them enjoy in the past ("Well, Sue got really excited when we were in that investigative plot the other week versus the combat ones we're usually in...") and I try to provide hooks and things for those people along the way.

When I'm 'the leader' PC in someone else's plot, I do my damndest to not be 'the glory hog;' I mean shit, being the leader already gives you a lot to do! Your team is your responsibility! Look at them, identify who can do what and point them places! Bob, watch our asses. Jane, take point. Cathy, you're great with computers, go fuss with that one over there. I'll stand here in the middle of the pack and hopefully not be picked off by this spider dripping venom on my should- oh shit.

Seriously, I have tons of fun by working with people.

@ixokai said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@jennkryst said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

@ixokai [Place] with a proper HSpace-esque flight simulator. Spelljammer is at the top of my list, but others are potentially neat.

Man, I have no idea why anyone would want that. The idea of a text based player-skill based flight simulator is anathema to me. The whole HSpace thing is a black box of ugh to me

But... but I could dust off my ancient guide to HSpace.

@zombiegenesis said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

Now that Ares is in beta I've been thinking of trying my hand at a plugin. Thinking I might try something fairly simple like Mythic Battles: Pantheon (post-apocalyptic ancient Greece) or maybe Deadlands. Hmmm...

<whispers>Deeeeeadlaaaaaaands</whispers>

I was talking to someone (I forget who, sadly) on Fear & Loathing who was actually developing (or hoping to) WoD plugins for Ares.

I'd really, really love to see Deadlands maybe. Possibly. >.>

@nemesis said in Anyone familiar with Twine?:

@auspice said in Anyone familiar with Twine?:

(set: $operations to $operations + 1)

Where's the debugger you're using?

The one built into Twine. I'm unaware of any other that exists.

@nemesis

Nope.

Doesn't matter if it's:
(if: $operations <= 0)[(goto: "peregrine@end:~$ ^z")]
or
(if: $operations <= 0)(goto: "peregrine@end:~$ ^z")

As soon as the user lands on that node, they're redirected to the node named "peregrine@end:~$ ^z" regardless of what the variable $operations is set to.

Eh. If I can get everything else working happily and that's my major bug for the final pass next week, I'll take it. So far everything else I'm looking at for next week is story polish (like uh, forgetting I buried a variable set to true in act one and did nothing to utilize/resolve it... ahem).

I'll take one major bug.

I can live with one bug for shitty scripting language in a tool I just learned in the past week and a half.

I call that a win.

So (set: $operations to $operations + 1) does not work.
But (set: $operations to it + 1) does.

I got the latter instance of it (with the (if: $this >= 5)[Stuff...] ) working.

However, the initial one of: (if: $operations <= 0)(goto: location) is still just triggering every single time, regardless. It'll dump me there and the debugger still happily says like: 'value $operations = 4'

Thanks debugger. You're super useful.

I've had only had 3 days to write this entire game so far and it's technically due by 11p CST tonight. I don't see it being done. Gonna take the 5pt deduction on my grade, I suppose. At least it doesn't have to be totally bug free this week, just... story complete. Going to use tonight / tomorrow to focus on that.

(This thing has had me so stressed out, y'all: I woke up three times yesterday from nightmares. )

@nemesis said in Anyone familiar with Twine?:

Your particular issue is probably that (set: $operations to it - 1) is equivalent to (set: $operations to $operations - 1) while (set: $operations to operations - 1) is bad syntax.

If that is the case, I'll need to yell at my instructor. Because I used to have it as:

(set: $operations to $operations - 1) and I was told not to do that early on because it's incorrect syntax to double up on the variable indicator.

So meh meh meh. Maybe I'll go through and fuss with just changing them all to 'it' for the latter half of the macro and see if that fixes it.

@tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

It's not as bad as when I was on 56k! 32 down, 3 up. On a good day. Packets going up hill both ways, in the snow! I got lag connecting to MU*s.

I had only 56k ISDN until 2004. We kept getting advertisements for cable in our neighborhood because of our zip code, I guess.

It was like a mockery.

'CALL NOW FOR...'
Call. 'Oh, well, uh... we don't... technically... offer... it there.'

Part of why I stuck to MU*ing! Everyone else was already on to multiplayer games and I was still stuck, y'know, watching images load by the pixel some days.

Okay so.

At the beginning of the game, we have:

(set: $operations to 5)

Later there is a section in the game where certain actions (at links) will cause:
(set: $operations to operations - 1)

Then, I have a single node where at the beginning of the node I have:
{
(if: $operations <= 0)(goto: "peregrine@end:~$ ^z")

(cleaned up of course for the full node, but..)

The intent is: if they've got 0 or fewer operations remaining when they hit that node, they'll go to the node named "peregrine@end:~$ ^z" (it's a cyberpunk game, all the nodes are named jokey *NIX prompts). The issue is, I've even bumped up the starting operations to 8, played through in debug to where I KNOW I'd have plenty left over... Every time I hit that node, it sends me to the end condition.

In my other instance, I have links that will cause:
(set: $interrogatorDisposition to interrogatorDisposition + 1) or set: $interrogatorDisposition to interrogatorDisposition - 1)
depending on what they choose, it's one or the other.

Then there's a node where it has a fairly basic:
{
(if: $interrogatorDisposition is >= 5)[Some text here]
(else)

I've used similar for basic switches (for link decisions) with absolutely no issue. 'Okay they made X decision, so they see Y text in the next node.' But for some reason, having it based on what the variable has built up to at that point... it just doesn't display at all. It doesn't show. Again, I tested it, picking all the choices that would ensure the $interrogatorDisposition variable had built up to be over 5 and... no dice. Didn't work.

Would the SugarCube option of gte work the same as >=? Should I go back in and alter it to try that?

@lisse24 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Tinuviel @Auspice @Packrat

Pretty sure that Tinuvial's connection matches mine, sitting here in the suburbs of a decent-sized U.S. city. Why yes, I do have Comcast, why do you ask?

Yeah, I had Charter when I had mine like that.

And then I tried to get ATT's UVERSE because everyone around me sung their praises and OOOH'd and AAAH'd over how AMAZING they were!

Download speeds of .5-1.5Mbps for more than Charter cost.
I called. Had a fit.

"Well, that's your own fault for living so close to the business district. They get preference over residential customers."

Shit you not, that was their response. And then they tried to penalize me for backing out of the contract. After they, y'know, had guaranteed me certain speeds for the rate.

It was actually the first time I ever yelled at reps over the phone.

Good news:

Achieved victory over one macro that arose today in Twine.

Bad news:

Still stymied by my other problem.

Basically, I can't get (if: $variable >= #) to behave.
(if variable is greater than or equal to number). The game will either ignore it altogether or act like it's true every single time. In one instance, it acts like it's always true. In another, it just ignores it. So right now, I'm leaving it out entirely and just focusing on getting everything else done.

@misadventure said in Anyone familiar with Twine?:

@auspice Sadly, until you have the basic design pattern down, that is always the case. Bugs and basic functionality.

For most of it I have a pattern down (I do wish it was smart enough that it could pick up auto-complete for shit, but noooooo). My main issue is this one bug that I just cannot resolve and I was hoping mebbe someone around here knew it well enough.

It is such a PITA.

I'm losing more time to fixing bugs than I'm spending actually building this damn game for class.

I know this may be a long shot, but hey... gaming community and Interactive Fiction is like MUing's second cousin.

I'm developing a game in Twine and I'm having a bitch of a time getting one of my scripting macros to work. I reached out to my instructor, but the formula he gave me doesn't work either.

So if anyone's familiar with Harlowe in Twine 2, I'd really appreciate the help.

1. What skin is everyone using?

2. What version of Android?

3. Try scrolling down a bit on the page when it disappears. I notice it does this sometimes on Chrome on iOS for me. It just won't show if I'm at the top of the page, but once I start scrolling down, it'll show back up, which might just be a stupid nodebb quirk.

(Unfortunately, this may fall in the category of things we here can't fix because it's a nodebb thing. We don't make the stuff and there's only so far that Ark or I could go in digging around in it.)

About once a week, I have this scenario. One of my clients is supporting ebook software. Most people login to their library (if online) through the primary website, but some people will login through publisher-specific portals. If they login through the latter, they only see the publisher's books.

Makes sense.

So about once a week, at least, I get this:

User: 'If I login to the app on my tablet, I see all my books. If I login to the website, I don't see <specific title>.'
Me: 'Are you logging into <our link> or <publisher specific link>? Please send a screenshot of what you're seeing.'
User: 'I always login at <our link>! <screenshot clearly shows publisher specific link>'
Me: '...You're logging in at <publisher specific link>. If you login at <our> link, you can see every book. Please try this.'

Usually they won't email back. A few especially stubborn ones will, trying to argue that I am wrong and just trying to make them look bad. I don't know why they don't just, from the very first email, go 'oh let me try this other link mentioned and see what happens.'

Honestly, just a few years ago in SC, the best connection I could get was about the same as @Tinuviel's there.

Hell, I'm still kind of stunned I have over 200Mbps down right now.

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