@ZombieGenesis Yeah, having a specific project in mind helps a great deal.
It's good to start with a modest project, as you described.
Diving in with "I know no Ruby at all so my first project shall be a full-fledged Shadowrun chargen" is probably not going to have a happy ending.
@Darren said in Learning Ruby for Ares:
Honestly, now that I've done it, I'm thinking about not using it since objects are really little more than just "desc" holders and there are other ways to do that without needing real objects for it.
That's why Ares doesn't come with an inventory system built in (or "thing objects" for that matter). Everything they're traditionally used for can be done in different ways. There's a discussion about this in the chopping block article.
An inventory system could still be useful in conjunction with other systems though. FS3 for instance relies on storytellers to adjudicate sensible weaponry. The system will let you equip a rocket launcher, but that doesn't mean you have a rocket launcher.
If you wanted to eliminate the human factor there and track someone's gear, you'd need an inventory system. Most likely the basis of it would just be a simple list of gear items, which is simple enough. But then you'd also need to figure out how people get gear, what gear is available, what the gear does, how it relates to other systems (like combat) ... all of which is highly game-specific. It can be done, but I'm doubtful that it can be done generically.
@Darren said in Learning Ruby for Ares:
Persistent data needs to be stored in a database model and the model will have to be designed specifically to hold the data that you want to store.
Ruby also allows you to extend existing classes. You have to judge whether the data you want to store can fit onto an existing model or warrants its own.
If all you want to add is a goals field, you can easily do that by just adding a new attribute to the character model. Something more complicated - like a spaceship - you'd want to define a new model for that.
@Darren said in Learning Ruby for Ares:
The real beauty of it is, once you figure out how models work, you can apply that knowledge to Evennia, too since they're quite similar.
Indeed. The concept of database models is pretty universal in any kind of modern application using a database. Pretty much across the board, the programming skills and tools you learn doing Ares or Evennia will translate well to other non-MU programming.
Tangential to the question at hand, but I just figured I'd toss out there that doing a full-blown chargen system in Ares is a big undertaking, but just adding something to record stats in the web portal is trivial. You could adapt the web goals tutorial pretty easily for that and just make it a staff-only command to edit the list of stats.
To the original point - it depends on the game, and how much friction is caused by having to figure out die pools and such manually. On some games it works fine. On others it would be a dealbreaker.
@Botulism said in Possible Return:
What about putting in the system I was using previously?
Not familiar with the old system. Was it coded? If so, old MU code is not compatible with Ares. You'd have to code it from scratch, which is probably more of a learning curve than you wanted at this stage.
FS3 by itself is a pretty simple set of abilities and a die roller. The combat piece is separate and optional. XP is configurable so you could just effectively turn it off.
The descriptive non-rolled traits system is the most flexible and generic.
@krmbm said in Evennia (Arx) webclient feedback:
Also, if I minimized my browser app, the connection dropped. I wound up downloading the iPad MUSH app to finish the scene.
FWIW this is pretty standard mobile browser behavior, on phones and tablets. Ares does the same thing, it's just a bit less disruptive when the connection drops because you just need to reload the page and you can keep playing seamlessly; you don't have to reconnect to your character, catch up on poses, etc.
As far as I'm aware, you need an actual app to get around the task-switch/power-save features to prevent that from happening.
@insomniac7809 said in Water finds a crack:
If my sheet says "good" but I'm in a six-player scene with three "great" and two "peerless," "good" sucks.
I disagree, honestly. If you're still hitting the bad guys 90% of the time, and you're able to contribute meaningfully to the story, then you're still in fact "good" by any objective measure. It may not be fun for you personally - some people want to play a complete badass and that's okay. I've done that too on some games depending on what type of character I was making. I have also played the clueless newbie who objectively does suck compared to everyone else, and the support character who is good at medic-ing but no use in combat. It all comes down to your personal priorities and likes. No system is right for everyone.
Flat XP costs lead to the dino effect. That's fine in a TTRPG with a small group, but can lead to big issues on an open MU with characters rolling in all the time.
XP or tiered-cost chargen is complicated, and for many entails even more min-maxing and optimization dilemmas. It also charges people a disproportionate amount for wanting to start out good.
Every system has its pros and cons. There is no universal "one true system" that's best for everyone.
Flat-Chargen/Exponential XP (like FS3 with the default config... which is btw configurable) is really no different than running a D20 game where you can choose whether you start at level 1 or 10. There's nothing inherently bad about starting out at a lower level. You get the rookie and mentor stories, you get to advance faster while the higher level chars become stagnant and hit the level cap. You'd never want to use a system like this on a PVP game, but on a PVE one? It's perfectly workable.
@ganymede said in Testing the Waters for Battletech Interest:
I mean, I know you can do ship-to-ship fighting in FS3/Ares. Shouldn’t be too difficult to modify. It won’t be the same system, maybe, but BTech is mostly awesome based on load outs and universe building.
It depends on your goals. There are several hallmarks of the BTech system that you could not do in FS3 without an obscene amount of code mods. Heat, armor, range, critical hits, death from above, just to name a few.
But if you just want to skin modern-ish tanks and call the vehicles "Mechs" and handwave a lot - sure, go for it.
Otherwise, something like MegaMek would probably be a better solution.
@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
For some people, this RP would be boring however.
That's my point. Not that you can't do it, or shouldn't do it, just that the appeal would be different and narrower.
Look at Western games. Sure there are some gunfighter PCs and the like, but a lot of PCs are just townsfolk. They're content with costume drama and romance interspersed with the occasional bank robbery or blizzard. There's nothing wrong with that at all.
But the overwhelming majority of RPG games are based around settings filled with action and adventure (pirates! spies! soldiers!) because that's what a lot of people are looking for. It is difficult to sustain a steady stream of action in most modern settings.
@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
But like I say, I and plenty others have played modern, no fantasy (no magic, no monsters, no nothing beyond what is in reality already) and are okay in social RP. Whether its just to pass time between the next life emergency/fire at the hospital or to plan some save the whale event. Its not for everyone, but some people like it.
This. On Battlestar games there was plenty of hanging-out between missions. Often it was just kibitzing in the lounge or gym, but it could also be training, debriefs, maintenance, etc. On my western games there were picnics, horse races, business deals, ranch work... the list goes on.
I'm personally not a huge fan of random people who have no reason to interact just meeting in the coffee shop/bar/park/whatever, but social RP can take many forms.
There are some with some snazzy web pages if you look around, but I can't speak to the quality of the games themselves. For example:
@roz said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
I would actually say that Discord's not a great comparison here, because Discord servers absolutely make use of channels, which are, from my perspective, the same exact thing as spawns.
But that's exactly my point. There is a natural visual separation of the data that makes "spawns" in the sense of separate tabbed windows irrelevant.
The Ares web play screen works the same way. (I'm not saying it has 100% feature parity with Discord or that it's perfectly designed in its current form, just that philosophically it's closer than the old MU client model.)
@derp said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:
I have not the first clue where that map is from but boy do I want it. Is that in Ares? Waaaaant.
It's from Sweetwater Crossing, which closed in 2014. Sorry 
Cue the social combat holy war. Or just copy paste from the countless other times we've gone round and round and round on this.
@misadventure said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):
Given the issues with -isms in peoples RP space, could you even have nation based stereotypes like in 7Th Sea? The countries are fiction, but clearly based on one or more country stereotypes from the real world.
Can you? Sure. It's been done. Will it offend someone somewhere? Probably. Is that a reason not to do it? That's entirely a personal decision.
I personally don't find the barely-veiled national stereotypes and conflicts in the BSG universe offensive, but I can see where somebody might. Even so, after umpteen different BSG games, I've never felt a situation where it's like: "OK, we really need to tone down the Virgons (Space British) hating the Leonese (Space French) because it's getting to be a problem." But that's just me. YMMV.
@Griatch I think the biggest issue is that "builders" kind of straddle the fence between "players" and "developers" in terms of their use of inline functions.
For example:
[center( [ansi(b, BLUE)] [repeat(-, 10)] [ansi(g,GREEN)] , 40,~)]
Gives:
~~~~~~~~~BLUE ---------- GREEN~~~~~~~~~~
Where blue and green are shown in their respective colors.
Perhaps if your markup language is sufficiently advanced it could handle this sort of thing, but that might be more complexity than it's worth.
@Thenomain @Griatch FWIW in terms of builders being mini-coders, the common examples I've come up with where builders might need functions are things like spacing/formatting, weather and time of day. My plan for AresMUSH is to make these things into format codes. I confess I stuck with the existing paradigm of % codes for formatting. Ares is geared towards backwards compatibility more than extensibility.
So in addition to the old standbys like %r for a linebreak, you can have things like %l1 and %l2 for those nifty border lines that turn up all over creation, and %timeofday for the time of day, and %weather for the weather, and stuff like that. (Admittedly the latter two are in the TODO column still, but that's the idea).
Edit to add: Oh, and I stole the %x and %c codes from MUX(?) for ansi control. So %xb toggles on blue.