Posts made by faraday

@Ghost You'll need to be a little more specific. API stands for Application Programming Interface. It's just a way for one computer program to interact with another. For example: PennMUSH softcode functions are an API for game-level programs to interact with the PennMUSH server program. That API is similar to but ultimately distinct from the TinyMUX softcode API. So what are you looking for exactly?

ETA: I get that you're probably referring to the Rhost API - but what kind of program are you looking to interact with it from.

@Tat said in MU Flowchart:

This is a super awesome goal. I've often wanted to do bodily harm to whoever decided that code should be one blob of indecipherable text that would break if you have mismatching punctuation.

Even though I despise working with it these days and my programmer friends laugh incredulously when I show it to them - it's actually quite a marvel.

I mean... you have to keep in perspective the technical capabilities of when it was written, and also why it was written. It was a scripting language for building and end-user customizations like falcon controllers, multi-descers and vending machines - and for that level of stuff it works just dandy. It had to be done in one blob because the only way of inputting text to the game was a raw telnet connection. And people are still using it decades later!

So I don't knock the original developers - they've made something that has held up remarkably well. It was just never meant for the kinds of ginormous systems people started using it for. Times have changed and we need a better tool for the job.

Which is all, like... way the heck off topic but we were already off in the weeds with My Little Pony so I don't feel too bad.

@Ashen-Shugar When I have some spare ponies I should look at that.

@Ashen-Shugar @Thenomain ++1

If I have my way, I'm never touching another line of MUSHCode ever again. That said, my very small stable of free horses is hard at work on a platform complete with tutorials so you won't need me to.

@Thenomain Yeah, pretty much. My intermediate tutorial walks you through who, finger, and a simple roll. (It also does a multi-pager for some dumb reason that made sense, like, twelve years ago :P)

@Thenomain I like 'finger' after 'who' because one teaches lists and the other teaches parameters and also data storage for custom finger profile fields.

@Ashen-Shugar Yeah the progression I usually point folks towards is Amberyl's manual, then my journeyman level guide and finally some tips for large-scale systems. But all of those docs are ancient and not the greatest.

@Sunny said in MU Flowchart:

It will not teach you mush code, but the Stanford class (it's free) should get the concepts across enough for you to teach yourself the mush stuff using helpfiles, dissecting other peoples' code, and asking for the occasional bit of help. Very few of the mush coders I know are anything but mostly self-taught.

I'm not even sure that learning a mainstream language will help much. I mean, yes, some of the extremely basic concepts (lists, functions) are the same, but the languages are so tremendously different. And MUSHcode is just plain hard if you want to do anything of any complexity.

Frankly I wouldn't steer anyone towards learning MUSHcode at this point. Learn Python (for Evennia) or Ruby (for AresMUSH, which I promise will be publicly available one of these days) and try your luck with one of the next-gen servers. I think you'll end up in a better place - and learn a language that might actually be useful in the real world.

@Lisse24 said in MU Flowchart:

@faraday said in MU Flowchart:

I tried 0 to Mush. I failed. I don't know why things didn't work. They just didn't.

Exactly. And you're not the only one. Not by far. Heck, I've run into server weirdness that threw me for a loop before, and I do this crap for a living.

I'm more than willing to learn, but that requires a coder sitting down with me and teaching which brings everyone back to needing a coder again.

Not really. It just brings you back to having a way to learn. Tons of people learn coding through internet tutorials. It doesn't require a personal tutor (though that's a bonus). It just requires good tutorials or determination. A non-archaic language is also a bonus

For me there are two sides of this.

First - even with the code suites that @Thenomain @Volund and I (not intending to gip anybody those are just the only ones I know of) have created, it requires silly amounts of technical savvy to get just a basic cookie-cutter game up and running. I can go to wordpress.com or wikidot.com and get a blog or wiki set up with a few clicks in about 5 minutes flat, but a MUSH? Forget about it. That's just silly in this day and age. It's one of the problems I'm trying to tackle with AresMUSH.

But second - let's pretend you could have a MUSH with all the basic softcode set up in 5 minutes. Most game runners, it seems, aren't satisfied with what comes out of the box (even with modest configuration available). They always have some grand vision for economy code or space code or their own chargen system or crafting system or magic system or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but yeah.... you're gonna need a coder. That's not some grand failing of MUSHdom that's just like: "Hey I want to paint a pretty mural" Well guess what, you're going to need to either be an artist, learn to paint, or hire an artist you trust to implement your vision. Duh.

@Thenomain said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:

@faraday said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:
Except I think that these challenges are the same challenges faced by using existing IP: How to teach people to play.

To an extent. But having created both original and existing IP games, my personal experience is that it's WAY easier to teach people to play when 80-90% of your player base comes through the door with a basic familiarity with the universe.

@surreality I'm familiar
with those sorts of tricks. I've used them before. I believe that's still not the ideal way to display the info in either format and also that it's wholly unnecessary since - as @Tat says - the majority of players don't even notice or care about the lack of in game info. But if it works for you and you're happy with it, doesn't matter what I think.

@surreality The only problem with something like that is that you're basically stuck with the worst of both formats. The ideal way to chunk and display info on small plain-text terminal windows is very different than the ideal way to do so on a wiki. That's not to say you're wrong for doing so; I just don't think the pros outweigh the cons just to support those unwilling to open up a web browser. I haven't had a game with actual in game news files for over a decade. People do just fine.

@Thenomain Otherspace was also very helpful when I was a newbie there, and I recall being impressed by their detailed chargen PDF. There lore files were a bit lacking for me, which is ultimately why I didn't stick around... I didn't feel comfortable extrapolating day to day RP details in their world. But lots of people obviously didn't suffer that same problem.

Having an original theme presents many extra challenges, no doubt, but these games prove that it's possible to succeed in spite of those challenges.

It also helps if you have reasonable expectations. Martian Dreams only had about a dozen players, but we were a tight knit group who had fun for many months in a world I had lots of fun building. Some might consider that a failure or at best an open sandbox, but it was a success by my expectations.

@surreality Okay. I guess I haven't heard a lot from either camp - neither "we need innovation" (I've actually heard the opposite mostly) nor "no one should try something" (though I have heard a lot of warnings that this or that didn't work in the past, which is a legitimate and true observation).

Anyway, I think people arguing "original themes can't ever work" have about as much credence as people arguing "the Earth is flat", so I wouldn't really get worked up about it.

@surreality But... why listen to them? I mean, the idea that original theme games can't work is demonstrably false. Arx, Firan, Aether, Castle d'Image, Otherspace... some of the most famous and arguably "successful" games in MU* history have had original themes.

Incidentally, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with somebody not wanting to invest a ton of time to get into a game. This is not a problem unique to original themes either. I've seen tabletop players shy away from RPGs with heavy lore or complicated mechanics because it's too overwhelming. I personally wouldn't have bothered trying out the 100 MUSH if someone told me I had to watch all three seasons of the show to effectively play there. It's all about barrier to entry. How many hurdles are between me and the fun of actually playing the game.

@icanbeyourmuse No the thing it does goes into a matching attribute named CRON_JOB_xxx that is triggered when the time in CRON_TIME_xxx matches. I forget what args is for.

@icanbeyourmuse There's some help for the cron system here. You just need to create attributes for each cron job telling the cron system when you want your thing to run, and what to do when it runs. The cron system has a loop running in the background like every minute checking to see "is it time for any of these cron jobs to run?"

So you would probably want a cron job to change the weather every day. An hourly cron job could look like this (I think):

|||12|00| <-- runs every day at 12:00

I'm not sure why you need a second cron job to change the season. You can figure out what season it is from the current date. But if you wanted to set that with a cron you can have one that runs every four months.

@icanbeyourmuse Here's a fairly simple weather system you can use for ideas. It relies on Myrddin's Cron System, which you can find in various places to do the periodic cron job. Here's Volund's Version of the cron, and here's mine. I'm sure the original is around somewhere but I can't find it.