Best posts made by Darren

It's amazing how perfectly edible and delicious food can turn into the stuff of nightmares when combined in ways no sane person would ever contemplate.

@Jennkryst said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@Darren said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

@Testament said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

The Expanse.

That is all.

I made an attempt to start an Expanse game around two years ago and absolutely no one was interested

I probably jumped at the idea, but shouted 'CAN FLY SPACESHIPS?!?' and scared you off.

Nonsense! Space systems are my jam.

Man, even begging has gone high tech. On my way in to work this morning, I was approached by a homeless guy asking for money. When i gave him my usual "Sorry mate, I don't carry cash" (which is true enough), he whips out an iPhone 11 with a Square reader, at which point I laughed and walked off. This is worse than the woman that told me she took PayPal, and the other woman who 'helpfully' pointed me towards the closest ATM.

I dunno wth that thing is, but I wouldn't get it wet or feed it after midnight, if I were you.

I don't remember any sensation of warmth when they gave me morphine but a CT scan with contrast? That crap they inject you with burns all the way in and keeps on burning >.<

Speaking of checks in the mail, we had been told nearly a month ago that there wouldn't be any Christmas bonuses this year due to 'financial hardship'. The mail man showed up today with a registered package and what was inside? Our paychecks, plus Christmas Bonus checks! Alas that $1007 is probably going to just cover my AMEX bill this month but it's still nice that they cared enough to give us something.

Have spent the entirety of Christmas Day so far chilling by the fireplace with my laptop working on code. Best holiday ever!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Take one box of Kraft Mac n Cheese. Use half & half instead of milk, real butter, 2 slices of Kraft singles plus a couple of slices of sharp cheddar (or Velveeta if you like it gooey). Prepare the mac 'n cheese, then toss in two or three hot dogs that have been cut into quarter inch circles, and one of those tiny single-serving size cans of peas. Combine well, nuke for a minute, then enjoy! You can swap out the hot dogs for half a can of Spam that has been cubed and fried until crispy on all sides.

It might help to just think of it as a MUD server, like PennMUSH or TinyMUX. After installing Evennia and initializing your own game, you basically end up with a very barebones MU* with only a few commands, rather like what you would have if you started a PennMUSH game from scratch. You get a channels system, page/say/emit/pose commands, builder commands, very basic room and characters classes, and not much else (ie, no mail, BBS, jobs, scenes, etc systems).

For the record, I had started work on an Expanse game earlier this summer but I was never able to find any help so I ran out of steam and moved on to other projects.

The server is still up and work could easily be resumed if there was sufficient interest. It's Evennia though, and mostly just code at the moment; there's no grid or anything yet.

IMO the real problem is that MUs have become such a niche thing that they are, for all intents and purposes, invisible to everyone that doesn't already know about them. Solve that problem and I think there will be plenty of room in the hobby for Ares' "MUSH-in-a-box" approach, Evennia's "some assembly required" approach, and even traditional MUs.

Here in MD we call Pepsi, Coke and similar things "soda". LeCroix, Jarritos Mineragua and similar things, we just call "water".

@A-Meowley said in Evennia 0.9.5 released!:

@Darren Thank you - this is clarifying!

So once you have that sweet framework in place, you could use Python to code a bespoke +jobs system, for instance -- or if an accomplished Python coder had already written a functional +roll system using XYZ game specs and you got permission, you can slot it in to the existing codebase?

Absolutely. While Evennia is intentionally bare-bones out of the box, it's not that difficult to zhuzh it up.

Hard to believe he's been gone for more than a year now

@Ghost said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

When I first got into the hobby, I would browse games on Mudconnector. As a new player I didn't give a shit if a game was a MUCK, MUD, MUSH, MOO, etc. I was purely in "I don't care what the nerds call their site. I want to play an RPG.*" mode.

And, honestly, after spending more years in the hobby than I care to count, I still really don't care about the difference between a MOO and a MUCK. I'm willing to bet, though, that the negative social BS on any Mx game similar.

^^ this.

I never let the type of server dictate whether I would play a game. If it sounded fun, I would give it a shot. Neither have I ever noticed any meaningful difference between a RP heavy MOO, MUCK, ColdMUD or whatever and a PennMUSH/MUX. Culturally they are so similar that the differences just didn't matter. Things don't really start to get different until you get into genuine MUDs, where game-play revolves around gearing up, gaining levels, questing, etc instead of RP.

Just last week, I was walking out of Popeyes with my chicken sandwich and cajun fries and this guy approached me in the parking lot, said he hadn't eaten in a couple of days and did I have a few dollars he could have to get something to eat. I was like "Dude I don't have any cash on me but if you're starved I can buy you something to eat. What do you want?". Do you know what he said? He said "Naw, that's Ok."

I have never had anyone take me up on the offer to buy them food. Ever.

The only problem seems to be with resizing the input window, which does something odd to the output window. Most of the time I can just /clear and everything is fine. Other times it crashes.

@Ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

@gryphter

The Outer Worlds.

Darn it. Why isn't this on Steam yet

@TNP said in Trivia for Health:

Grapefruit juice can react very badly if mixed with the wrong drugs, either negating them or increasing the toxicity. Google for more info.

I learned the hard way that my blood pressure meds and grapefruit juice do not mix

The last pair I lost, they dried out sitting in a hot car for three days while I was away on a camping trip. It was shortly after that that I decided I really didn't like the hassle of dealing with contacts and went back to glasses. I still keep disposables on hand for special occasions like if I have to dress up for something, I generally prefer to wear contacts rather than glasses.