Posts made by faraday

@ZombieGenesis said in Hello!Project's Mysterious Game Project Thread:

re-using names as things linked to the old player will now be linked to the new player even if they're technically different characters.

Just to clarify - that's not technically true. But what would happen is that if you delete Bob's character object, then posts from Bob now show up as "Author Deleted" and scenes with Bob no longer list Bob in the participants list. So you can delete characters and recycle names if you really want to, but it has some side effects because then the original "Bob" no longer exists. That's why it's suggested that you just mark idle characters as gone/retired instead (at least once they've actually made an appreciable contribution.)

@ZombieGenesis said in Hello!Project's Mysterious Game Project Thread:

I've coded many different character generation systems for Ares with very little training in Ruby. The catch is integrating it with the web portal, which takes a lot more effort and work. Even something as simple as displaying a custom character sheet can be a daunting and, for me up to this moment, unachievable task. Nevermind integrating your +roll system into the web portal for usage in scenes. That's not to say that it can't be done but it may take more work than the average MUSH admin is willing to put in.

Some of that might be issues with the documentation/support. Adding your own skills/chargen system is one of the places where Ares is designed to be customized. Continuing the castle analogy - it's designed for you to be able to take out the battlement that is FS3 and attach a new one for whatever skills/die roller system you want.

Now it's true that skills/chargen is inherently complex, and doubly so if you want it to work on web too... but that's true no matter which server platform you're going to use.

@HelloProject Ruby and Python are pretty equivalent in terms of difficulty. Everyone's different, though. I personally picked up Ruby easier than Python - it just gelled more with my brain. But there are plenty of other folks for whom the reverse is true. If you can find a way of picking up Python that works for you, it's probably going to be just as easy as Ruby in the long run.

Here's the bigger thing though - the Ares web portal does a ton of stuff, which is why folks like it, but that comes with a lot of complexity. So if you're going to want to make significant modifications, the learning curve for the web portal code is WAY steeper than either Ruby OR Python.

Anyway - like krmbm said, feel free to hop onto the forum, or stop by the demo game to chat, or I can PM you an invite to the discord.

@HelloProject said in Hello!Project's Mysterious Game Project Thread:

Like, if you know Ruby and such, can you just code the whole game for your liking, or is it meant to function in a very specific way?

The analogy I like to use is that Ares is a pre-built LEGO castle. If you want a castle, it's great. You can add on new battlements or customize the interior in many ways to make the castle your own, but it's still a castle.

Now of course, it's LEGOs. You could disassemble half the castle and try to build something on top of it, but are you really going to be happy with a weird castle/highrise hybrid? You could even take the whole darn castle apart and make something with the resulting bricks, but that's a lot of work. It would be easier to start with a pile of bricks (a blank slate) in the first place.

So bottom line, it depends on how close what you want to build is to Ares' castle, what compromises you're willing to make, and how much work you're willing to do. If it's very different, start with a pile of bricks - aka Evennia or Rhost.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Why no Star Trek games?:

I think the model that worked on a lot of BSG games could work for a Star Trek MU reasonably well.

It depends on the focus. BSG games focus around dogfights and firefights, so it makes sense that the 'star' characters are low-ranking officer pilots and enlisted marines. I don't think that model works too well for most Trek stories, where the adventures are more targeted to the 'movers and shakers' than to Crewman #9.

Not saying it couldn't be done, but I do think it's a big obstacle for a MU.

@Cobaltasaurus said in Welcome to the Euphoria!:

Fixed now, though I added that this morning because I had been getting that error and wasn't certain if I needed it for the civilians org.

Yeah missing the civilians org was probably the original reason you were getting the warning, but since it was misspelled it still thought it was missing.
You only need to have one rank for "Civilian" to make the system happy. You can call it "None" or "Civilian" or whatever.

Ranks I think you just have a typo - Civillians vs. Civilians.

Thanks @krmbm for the assist

@Cobaltasaurus said in Welcome to the Euphoria!:

I cannot figure out how to set up starting attributes for people.

Everyone starts with average (2) in all attributes. If you need to tweak that for some reason, you can add attributes to starting_skills in fs3skills_chargen.yml (even though they're not skills). option here

I cannot figure out why ranks is screaming at me.

Not sure what error you're getting - the web page ranks lists looks ok.

I want to set it so that the psionic skills don't default to 1 pt.

First you have to allow skills at "Incapable", which is off by default. option here. Then you can use the starting skills, as above, to start folks with it at 0 instead of 1.

Hit me up here or on the forum/discord if you have any other questions.

@Runescryer said in Netrunner MUDs:

Technically, Netrunner came out first, since it's based directly on the Cyberpunk RPG. All the names of items, Corporations, and system concepts, like Daemon programs & MU, are directly taken from the Cyberpunk setting.

I'm not sure how you figure that.

Shadowrun was published in 1989.

Netrunner was published in 1996.

It is true that the Cyberpunk RPG came out first (in 1988), but Cyberpunk is separate from Netrunner even though they are based in the same setting. Also, Netrunner is based on CP2020 (the 1990 edition) not the original 1998 edition.

@Ganymede said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

This is how my mind works, but I can honestly say I don't feel or believe I have ADHD.

You can certainly have a racing mind and NOT have ADHD.

Executive functioning covers a variety of brain activities (source

Even neurotypical people will have individual variances in each of these functions. You can be scatterbrained (working memory) or disorganized (activation) or impulsive (emotions) without having ADHD. Having ADHD is more about having a cluster of challenges to a clinically significant degree.

@Auspice said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

I have twice now -- twice -- gone on the first leg of a trip with a pocket knife

I stopped carrying my little leatherman tool (with a completely-incidental-to-why-I-liked-it pocket knife) in my purse after the 9/11 security stuff because I just KNEW that I would forget about it and accidentally walk through security somewhere with it.

After forgetting four separate times to bring up a new pack of toilet paper from the basement, I put the empty toilet paper pack wrapper in the hallway so I would literally trip over it to remind me. Then one of my kids was like: "Why is this in the hallway?" and moved it. :facepalm:

@Groth said in Evennia (Arx) webclient feedback:

you could add a special case for web-sessions where you keep them alive for even longer (maybe 5 minutes?) unless quit is used.

Unless my phone is in rest mode or alt-tabbed for more than 5 minutes, then I start missing things.

I get why it works the way it does. My point (and krmbm/bear's as well, I believe) is that from a player's perspective it's disruptive to miss information.

The only ways to solve that are either:

a) Don't let the connection drop. This requires an app AFAIK.
b) Make a way for the game to let you retrieve information (poses, pages, etc.) that transpired while you were offline. This requires a paradigm shift in how people expect to interact with the game.

@Groth said in Evennia (Arx) webclient feedback:

Keep a buffer of the last X lines that were sent to any given webclient session

It's not the last X lines you saw that is the issue, it's all the stuff you didn't see in-between the time your phone alt-tabbed (and the connection dropped) and the time you got back to it.

Not saying you couldn't solve it, but it would be considerably more challenging. You'd have to keep a buffer of the room, but then you run into the expectation on regular MU games that if someone's not in the room, they won't be able to see your chat. (Ares gets around this with the scene system.)

@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.

@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.

@Botulism you can just turn fs3 off with a mouse click. You could install the simple traits tracker with a single command or just use nothing but backgrounds.

@Wretched said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@faraday We need to invent glowing flashing dry erase that speaks to get your attention.

Somebody get right on that.

Yes as well. "Out of sight, out of mind" is definitely a big issue for me. I never knew it could be related to ADD. I can't rely on calendar apps. I need one on the wall of my kitchen, at eye level, in a place I pass multiple times a day. And I also need sticky notes plastered over everything.

@insomniac7809 said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

On the one hand (this is important) we are not healthcare professionals seeing you in person and it's a long-established truth that a layman or first-year student reading a medical textbook or the DSM will learn to their surprise that they have goddamn everything. We can't give a diagnosis.

Definitely good advice.

I do think that self-diagnosis (or "self-assessment" is a better term) has its place when you approach things from a perspective of struggles and strategies.

If you struggle with the same things that ADHD brains struggle with, the strategies that help ADHD brains may help you too, even if your struggles are actually caused by something other than ADHD. In many cases, the label is less important than finding tools that help you.

Dr. Google is no substitute for professional care, of course, but not everybody has the luxury of the time/finances/access/etc. necessary to get it.

@silverfox said in Good or New Movies Review:

Seriously - someone make me a screencastify or something of how to do the damn spoiler tag and I'll put my wall of text back.

You just have to keep the lines inside the spoiler tag 'connected' with no blank lines. I use a dot.

This is a spoiler.
.
More spoiler.

***=Spoiler Example***