Best posts made by faraday

@derp said in General MSB announcements:

Do the admins want to set up a non-MSB line of communication for issues in the future and/or updates if and when it finally dies? Like a discord or something?

Having a discord for a message forum seems oddly redundant. Seems like that would just drive a lot of community discussions off the forum.

There are also the Ares forum and Evennia Discussions in the community. I can't speak for the Evennia folks but MSB crew is welcome to post downtime announcements, etc. on the Ares forum.

@arkandel said in What's your identity worth to you?:

I suppose I could have it do so but frankly you'd be well served not sending anything through this forum which constitutes 'sensitive information' of any sort. It's a gaming forum. Don't trust it.

Interesting tidbit - Google is on a bit of a crusade to eradicate HTTP and make everything secure. The other tech giants have been doing the same for telnet (it's no longer available on OSX terminal for example). So in that regard I agree with @Ghost that MUSHes are horrifyingly behind the times as far as security goes.

But I don't see that changing any time...ever, really. I looked into supporting SSL connections with Ares. The game code is trivial, but the steps involved in enabling it server-side were hideous for anyone who isn't an experienced server admin. Until MUSHers are willing to transition to a platform like Storium and sacrifice control over the game code in favor of having a robust, secure, game-on-demand platform, it just ain't gonna happen.

Sorry for the double-post but I just realized I neglected to cross-post a note from the Ares Forums.

With the recent 0.7 release, I consider the code stable and ready for public beta testing. There's a complete suite of tutorials covering installation, configuration and how to code. While bugfixes and minor feature changes are still likely, I do not anticipate any more major revisions to the architecture.

I think it's less spammy to MSB folks to ask specific install/code/help-me type questions over on the Ares forum, but I'll answer questions here too.

@pyrephox said in Spotlight.:

If you're going to have big nobles and tailors as PCs, then I think you need to design the game so that each have exclusive things that are important and meaningful.

Not necessarily. Every game has supporting characters. I may play a mortal bartender in a Vampire game and get some fun RP out of it, but I certainly wouldn't expect "equal access" to the metaplot. It's the same with a deckhand or cook on a Battlestar game, or a sidekick in a superhero game. A tailor in a L&L game seems to fit that bill as well.

The trick, of course, is to make the expectations clear. If someone is playing a supporting role and thinking that they're playing a starring role, that's a problem. But some people like to play supporting roles, and there's nothing wrong with having them.

@wizz said in Coordinates-based Grid:

I had never played an HSpace/etc game so it felt very fresh and ridiculously immersive to me, as you can literally wander (or run/crawl/etc, you set a coordinate and a speed and then movement is automatic) across plains, up mountains, through forests, etc. without the artificial feel of typing in "west" or whatever and moving block by block. It's really stuck with me.

Well you should do whatever makes you happy! I can't help but wonder, though, if it would lose some of that immersive magic once you actually look under the hood and implement it. Because at the end of the day, you're still going west block by block. It's just instead of typing "west" you have a code timer that does "go west" automatically... and instead of having ten thousand rooms @dug in advance, you have a data file with ten thousand entries about what's where so the code knows what type of room to @dig on the fly.

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

So what gives? Why are (some, and not just a few) folks driven to stand out by being assigned prominent positions?

Escapism. For a lot of people, MU*s are about wish-fulfilment fantasy. They want to feel special, which means they want their character to be special. It goes back to the whole issue of IC/OOC separation. It's not enough to be one of the many X-Wing pilots taking part in the assault on the Death Star (which, when you think about it, really already makes them kinda special), they want to be like Luke (making the shot) or Han (taking out Darth Vader so Luke can do it).

Not everybody's like this, of course. Some folks are content just to tell their own story - whatever that may be - in the game's environment. But it's certainly prevalent.

I was able to connect to Arx fine just now with DuckClient 5.1 on Chrome/Mac. There really aren't many protocol options to speak of like the kind Sunny was talking about, so I doubt it's that. The only option is for SSL - perhaps try it with SSL set to never. Or delete and re-create your world.

@three-eyed-crow said in Spotlight.:

Yeah, I'll admit this BS is the primary thing that makes me jaded about the hobby. I think the cheaters and harassers and true bad actors are anomalies. They're terrible, but you ban them and, problem done. But you're going to have to deal with jealousy every day, even from players who are mostly OK a lot of the time.

Yep, same. It's bad enough as a player, but doubly so as a game-runner because you get a constant barrage of "why did so-and-so get more <whatever> than me" and cries of favoritism, etc. It's just exhausting.

@ganymede Y'know Ares also has Fate, Cortex and FFG/Genesys, so... you're not stuck with FS3. (Unless you want fully-automated combat, in which case you are.)

But I dig your giant robots idea so I'm happy either way.

@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:

My question is: Is it even possible for one of the other ones to get the killing blow? If not, can they make it easier for Luke to get the killing blow in a meaningful way? Can they mitigate negative consequences, reduce losses, whatever? If not, then no, just participating isn't special at all. In a movie, having a few lines is all you need, but in a game, if there's no chance to affect the outcome beyond your own personal existence, you're not so much a secondary character, you're an extra. And that's never special.

I agree. But that's exactly what I'm talking about... it's not enough that they had a chance to get the killing shot and missed. The sheer fact that someone else got the Hero Moment causes epic levels of jealousy. I've run dozens upon dozens of combat scenes (across different games) where there was no pre-ordained "Luke" and I've seen it more times than I care to think about. It's like if you don't get to be a complete badass, you may as well have stayed home. I think that's a bad attitude to have, and it's alarmingly prevalent.

Here's my cookies system. It probably doesn't do exactly what you want but you could probably adapt it.

Technically it depends on my core systems, but IIRC there are just a few functions it needs, like line() and padstr() from the Global Functions.

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

Why overlook the struggle to survive by making food and water an after thought? You may not need to force people into a harvest mini-game, but threatening the PCs' collective existence should be part-and-parcel to how the game works.

One further thought about this and the whole "survival mini-game" thing... I think a lot of post-apoc TV dramas show what I'm getting at. Occasionally they'll have a "we're running out of water" episode or a food crisis where something dramatic happens getting water, but day to day survival is not the focus of the show because it would be boring to watch. These shows focus on the more compelling aspects of human drama and/or adventure in those environments, not the nuts and bolts of finding enough food and water to subsist.

Now if somebody wanted to make a whole resource/survival aspect for their game because they think it's cool - that's their prerogative. I'm not knocking that, even though it's not my personal style. I just reject the idea that if you're not OOCly forced to fuss with resource gathering that you're destroying and/or polluting the genre.

@HelloProject said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

I highly doubt you or anyone else would go "Well, shit, I miss when my syntax had needless complications".

Actually in my experience that is exactly what people say. Because you have people who have been playing this hobby for 20 years who know that syntax and are used to it the way it is. In a world where people avoid playing on MUX or Penn because the channel system is different, this is not an effect you can discount and expect to be successful.

@Roz said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

For the record, even the +combat commands in FS3 can be simplified. I know because on X-Factor where I used to staff, we aliased simplified versions of them. (Such as adding an "attack" command to alias to +combat/attack and whatnot.)

That comes down to UX style though. Consistency versus simplicity. When everything is +combat/foo it's easier to remember IMHO, as opposed to when some things are +combat/foo and other things are just foo. If having aliases works for you, great. But I would not call it a universal preference.

@HelloProject said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

don't make it a complete mess that needs 5 help files to explain how to use something.

You seem to be fixating on the number of help files. If there are a lot of features to document, and you do a good job explaining not only the syntax but when and why to use them, you're going to get more help files. That's not a bad thing.

FS3 Combat is involved. But there are levels to the documentation: an Interactive Intro Tutorial, a Quick Reference Guide, and then the full Documentation for those who really want to dive into the details.

It's the quality of documentation and the ease of use that matters, not the number of pages. (Btw, I'm sure the documentation can be improved. Just using it as an example.)

As @Ganymede and @Seraphim73 have mentioned, with Ares I've made a concerted effort toward UX while preserving the user experience of Penn/MUX as much as practical. People generally seem to be pleased, but there's always room for improvement. The help files for AresMUSH are all online. You can find them here. Pick a system. Tell me how to make it simpler without sacrificing functionality. (Of course if you ditch features you can simplify the syntax.)

Doesn't need to be (and probably shouldn't be) done in this thread, but I'm completely serious. I'm open to feedback here. Good UX on a MUSH is not some rainbow unicorn.

@three-eyed-crow said in Favorite Minigames:

I did really like this piece of code

Despite my previously-stated dislike of minigames/coded systems, I am genuinely curious -- what made it good? I'd contemplated doing a scavenge sort of system on prior games but couldn't figure out how to avoid making it suck in the ways @Apos listed. How did they avoid the pitfalls of things like....

• Sorry, nobody +scavenged food this week so everyone starves.
• Mary is ignoring the +scavenge system, but is RPing having scavenged something nifty from the rubble anyway.
• Joe had a cool idea for a plotline involving scavenging something, but he's trying to honor the +scavenge code and doesn't run it.
• I've +scavenged seven times this month and all I keep getting is this lousy Cheese Hat.

@Rook said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

Legacy code stacked on legacy code. Hack after hack. Until a complete rewrite happens, the codebases will have these inconsistencies. Then of course everyone will bitch that shit got moved/updated on them and their stuff doesn't work.

Oh I agree. That's why Ares is a complete rewrite. We can't go back and undo 20+ years worth of code drift, but we can learn from it. Platforms like Evennia and Ares provide an opportunity to do better the next time around. The question is: What does "better" look like, in way that won't have everyone up in arms because ZOMG it's different.

@ixokai said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

I don't actually believe any real lawyers are telling any authors that they must say no, though. Its just a sort of urban legend that floats around and people claim to be true.

As Kanye said, I have also seen reputable authors directly claim this. Now are they lying to avoid looking like the bad guy? Do they have crappy lawyers? Dunno. But it's decidedly not just an urban legend.

@kanye-qwest said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

So if an author said "sure, I don't care, make whatever you want" and then happened to write something that was very similar to a fan work, that fan could not then turn around and sue the author for copyright infringement, right?

If the author gave away their copyright without limitation, then that's a dumb decision that could cause some weird legal situations. I'd still have a hard time imagining a court upholding Joe FanficAuthor trying to sue George RR Martin for using an idea from a story that is itself derivative of his original books, though.

That aside, the author has sole right to authorize derivative works, and can create whatever contract they wish (within reason) to protect themselves in the process. Saying: "Yes, you can make a MUSH with these conditions" is a perfectly valid way to protect one's copyright as far as I'm aware. And one smart condition to include would be a disclaimer that the MUSH couldn't come back after the author for using coincidentally-similar ideas. Like @ixokai, I am not a lawyer but I am well-versed in copyright law as both an author and someone who's dealt with software intellectual property stuff.

@Rook Yeah. Although if you really want to get the point across, the mock example also needs to answer the questions: "But what if those modifiers are important" and "But what if those modifiers can have spaces in them"? Because I think answering 'yes' to both of those questions leads you directly to the syntax we already have in the vast majority of cases.

@thenomain said in A Game of Thrones MUX Discussion:

I personally don't see a conflict between "it would be a headache" and "my lawyer told me to", and find the last roughly fifteen posts a good thirty seconds of my life that I won't get back.

It's the "I would really like to, but..." part I find disingenuous. And the "I really can't because it would jeopardize my copyright..." bit leads to the pervasive public misinformation that you have to actively defend copyright or else you lose it. If you don't see a distinction, fine, but there's no need to be derogatory about it.

@Lithium said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

But +code? I don't see what's the big deal honestly.

You've obviously been playing for awhile so I'm sure it's no big deal to you. But put yourself in the shoes of a new player who's never MUSHed before. Imagine you're trying to learn this command set for the very first time.

You naively type help. Great - there are some help files. One of them mentions a mail system. Awesome! You start reading and try to use something.

Oh but wait... @mail is disabled on this game, so all those help files are completely non-applicable. You have to know to go look over in +help to find a whole other set of commands you should be using for +mail.

The next day you type WHO to see who's online. Ok, you get a list, not so bad. But wait... there's this completely separate +who command that would've given you so much more if only you knew it was there.

Now that you've gotten used to all these +-commands, you try to describe yourself. But wait, there's no +desc. You have to use @desc. Now you find yourself having to remember which prefix to use for which command.

Can you address this with "getting started" rooms and tutorials and stuff? Sure. But wouldn't it be so much more intuitive if you didn't need any of that? If there was just one and only one "who" command or "help" command, and if you wanted to extend/override it for your own game you could? I think it would be.

Incidentally @Alzie, Ares is also coded from the ground up to be modified at the hardcode level. It has no softcode system.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I think there are pitfalls if you have travel times more than half a day that are routinely necessary. A few hours can be assumed to take place off-camera without getting in the way of RP, and most folks can suffer through "okay you're going to the boonies for a special one-time plot and you're going to be off-grid for a week" as long as it's once in a blue moon. But nobody wants to do that regularly.

I'm not a fan of hand-waving established travel times because I think it has weird effects. Like - say your Wild West game is set in the middle of nowhere. If you've constantly got people hopping back and forth to the big city like it's no big deal, hand-waving weeks-long travel times, it's really jarring. Same with Firefly, where the lack of FTL and longer travel times is a part of the setting. If you don't want people going on long trips, make a setting where either it's not necessary or there's insta-travel.