Posts made by faraday

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

I think it helped that the characters were supposed to have rather street-level powers, so you didn't really have Superman/Xavier-level folks running around.

Yeah, I mean... there are only so many options. You can either compromise the powers so that the code can accommodate them, you can expand the code to accommodate all kinds of super things, or you can use the code for certain things and deal with others through manual GM intervention. The more manual GM interventions are required (with the ensuing debate around them), the less effective the system becomes.

I think that's true of virtually any system, not just FS3, and is largely the reason WoD combats take forever and a day. (From what I've been told; granted I've never played on a WoD MU.)

@Tat I'm glad you made it work to your satisfaction, but I know from our discussions that it was not a natural fit and it took a great deal of finesse, as you say, to get all the combat stats tolerably balanced. I'm not a comic book person, really, but I don't even know where to begin setting weapon values for Superman's laser eyes or Captain America's shield, for instance. Also the stat values are geared towards normal human abilities (with max attribute representing Albert Einstein, where does Professor X fall?)

@Ganymede I seriously don't think FS3 is a good fit for a superhero game. You could probably square-peg-round-hole it into some semblance of submission, but I wouldn't. Combats only work well because the effects are coded and you don't have to sit around fussing about what happens. It's all automated. Once you throw flexible superpowers into the mix, you lose all that.

@Arkandel said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

Also, fuck naysayers. If they don't like it they don't need to play/use it. It's better to try 50 things and see 1 work out than never trying anything because oh-my-god it might fail.

To some extent I agree, but I also think it's good to take under advisement the lessons of the past. Saying "We tried X on game and it failed therefore it can never work ever!" -- that's naysaying. "We tried X, Y and Z on some game(s) and it didn't work because reasons" is information. If you believe you've got a different set of circumstances or a better idea, or you just think they've flat-out got it wrong, then go for it. At least you know.

@Ganymede said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

Unless there's something you want people to use, for one reason or another.

I was counting the staff under "what the people on your game need/want". Though if you don't provide something that has inherent value to the players, you'll be fighting tooth and nail to get them to use it (as you mentioned with people bypassing +txt with mail).

A system doesn't need to be a monstrosity for people to dislike it. I coded an insanely simple elevator once, but the vast majority of the people on that game were annoyed even by that much code getting in their way. When I rebuilt the grid, I just made an "Elevator" room that connected the floors and there was a collective sigh of relief.

Does that mean everyone hated the elevator? No. Some people thought it was neat. They liked the immersion. On a different game maybe that group would've been the majority. That's okay. People want different things. The trick is to figure out what the people on your game need/want and then give it to them in the most usable way possible.

@Sunny said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

For me, the time period it wasn't showing up on games generally just resulted in my friends and I coding it ourselves -- it didn't stop getting made because it wasn't getting used. I don't buy that, not at all.

I think we might be talking apples and oranges here. There's a difference between automating something people are doing anyway in a low-friction, helpful way vs. coding something that gets in peoples' way for the sake of "immersion".

You (I think?) are talking about a simple, easy-to-use +text <name> command that just highlights the message differently. That sounds handy, sure.

What I was talking about (and @Thenomain too I believe) was a lot more elaborate, involving phone/radio objects and a dozen different commands and multi-page help files. And for the coders, it meant duplicating large chunks of code, since the IC TV system worked pretty much identically to a BBS board, and the IC message system worked pretty much the same as mail, and the IC com system worked pretty much the same as a page. So what you had were systems that were a boat-ton of work to create, and a PITA to use. It was hardly surprising that they fell out of favor.

@Thenomain said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

It died out because so many of us started using 'page' for phone conversations. Mutter code died because people stopped using it. Language code died because people stopped using it.

Even though I've often said that we come from different planets in the MU world, I've had the exact same experience - right down to the parse_pose(<enactor>, :joins in the ranting) function I coded for my Dumb Comlink Code, complete with Dumb Comlink Directory (aka phone book) so you could call up a portable link or one in a room - and yes, they worked differently too.

Sure the comlinks were neat for five minutes, but then it just became a hassle and most people switched back to just using pages.

Most, not all. Some people still like it to this day and that's fine. I don't, though, so I've stopped coding things like that.

@Bobotron Yeah, @Thenomain informed me that the integration with mediawiki is done with a direct SQL connection. Wikidot doesn't allow SQL access, so I guess that's just a mediawiki thing.

Having dealt with the mediawiki database before, all I can say is... good luck. Ares talks to wikidot because it actually offers a coherent API (albeit a limited one that requires a pro plan). You can connect Ruby to a MySQL database pretty easily but I'm just not going to code it. Backdooring into the database is too fragile and hackish to be in the stock install.

ETA: Apparently there's a M-W Ruby API now too. Dunno how stable it is. Might be one for Python too for Evennia.

@Cobaltasaurus said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

@faraday (omg faraday posted in my thread, keep it cool cobalt keep it cool) hi faraday

LOL hi

@Thenomain said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

@chime wrote code to read from a wiki page, so I can’t imagine it being much harder

I can But I'll take the technical natterings off the topic here.

@Ganymede Thanks. For the record, I certainly can't take credit for the repose code. I just built off what @ixokai and @Avarice and others had done before. Having a scene system that automatically posts to the wiki would be tough to do on Penn/Tiny I think. It's been done on RHost through a server-side script and through Ares via the server code. Either way it requires you to have a wikidot pro plan (if using wikidot) or hack into the mediawiki database (if using mediawiki).

ETA: Ares only supports wikidot out of the box. I believe the rhost script does too.

@Sparks said in Forum Factions:

I'm not sure if I should be proud to be in such company, or take this as a message that we're all doing this forum wrong.

LOL. You and me both. Either way, that made my day @Meg. Smiling happy construction workers unite.

@Tinuviel We can agree to disagree. Many of the scenarios are lifted straight out of WWII movies, hence my perspective. At any rate, I agree that it's more of a war MU than a sci-fi MU, even though yes, technically, it does have robots and space ships.

@Tinuviel said in Most active scifi games right now?:

@Lithium BSG:U is less 'sci fi' as it is WWI in space with robots.

Yes, although I'd say more WWII than WWI.

@Sunny I tried to explain how the system made efforts to address the concern you raised about not knowing if you were interrupting something, because scenes are expressly marked as "come one come all". If that doesn't work for you, that's naturally your prerogative. Doesn't mean anybody's being actively excluded or not considered. But thanks for assuming the worst. I'll just go back to my lurking corner now.

@Sunny On Ares the scene system lets you expressly mark a scene as public or private. So if you see a public scene, you know that it's open and can just do a scene/join straight to it. Personally I find this preferable to the traditional grid where you're like: "Oh, Mary and Bob are in the mess hall... are they doing a thing? Can I crash? I don't know them very well so I'm hesitant to page them and ask." To each their own, of course. But I personally prefer freeform scenes (with a set of pre-made locations to get things rolling) over a grid.

@Ganymede said in Project X:

most of my RP happens on the ship.

Of course a lot of RP happens on the ship, but how do people get there? In my experience it's only the first poor soul who has to walk there, and then everyone else just meetme hops over. Did that first person really gain anything by having to walk the grid vs. just picking "Rec Room" from a scene location dropdown menu? Sometimes maybe. But for each of those times, there's also a time where SoAndSo breezes through a room that they aren't really in ICly just to get from point A to point B.

@Arkandel Personally, I would be perfectly happy without a grid. 99% of the scenes on BSGU involve people using meetme/temprooms as it is. But my experience is the same as what other folks have said on the thread: the lack of a grid is a turn-off to some (many?)

Using the WoW example again... there are absolutely people like my friend, who actually enjoyed riding the griffon to a flight point and then riding his horse to the spot. He enjoyed the immersion and the realism and seeing the world. Me? Just summon me there for crying out loud. I don't enjoy twiddling my thumbs while sitting on a griffon watching the scenery go by. It was a useless and highly annoying time sink.

MU* grids are the same, and you'll never please both camps of players.

Regardless, even if you lack a grid you'll still need some kind of map type system to provide context for where things are relative to each other.

@Auspice said in BSG: Unification:

I may love @faraday a little for this.

Thanks @Auspice. Glad folks are having fun. I'm still smoothing out the edges around the new scene stuff but I do like the wiki posting (which was inspired by @ixokai at Marvel '63) and the fact that it auto-logs the scenes to the web portal (inspired by Arx).

Example Web Portal Scene

@Tempest - Double-post to add... you can cut down on the post-event work by having reasonable expectations and tools support. For instance, the event BBS posts don't need to be novels. Here are a couple recent examples:

On Saturday, a marine squad was ambushed while escorting supplies to a forward defense post. One truck of supplies was destroyed and its driver (from the Picon marines) was killed. The other truck was damaged and its Picon Marine driver seriously injured. Several other marines, including Chaplain Kavanaugh, were injured in the ambush. The Cylons retreated once the trucks were hit.

Or...

A recon team was sent to try to get some information on the POW camp's location that Lieutenant Walker was located at. When the Raptor returns with them, Sgt Jonas Ignvar was heavily wounded, Sgt Lyn Arda and Cpl Charlie Wagner looked shellshocked, Cpl Erin Hayes looked pissed, and the new kid, Cpl Kyle Costello looked excited.

We're not talking elaborate AARs here. Just a pithy summary that's easy to write and read. If you want the details - that's what the log is for.

There's also a scene auto-logger tool, and my log cleaner app that auto-formats combat logs for the wiki.

The easier you make it for people to do stuff, the more likely they are to do so.