Posts made by ixokai

When you think staff is being rude and insulting, but it turns out hey, just a misunderstanding and everything is fine?

We focus on Random Bitching and any number of threads about Drama, but, really.

I almost called a staffer an ass today.

Staffer clarified position reasonably, and it turned out I misunderstood a thing.

I apologized for almost calling a staffer an ass.

We move forward.

The world does not end.

We're all friends.

--

I just feel this happens a whole lot more then we hear, but man, do we hear the bitching.

@Chet said in What even is 'Metaplot'?:

I see metaplot as the plot elements addressing the issues that a particular plot is inspired by. Nice and simple definition.

Yet, to me, I've never seen it used that way.

A metaplot is not a plot in that you usually don't do anything about it specifically.

The metaplot is the plot happening in the world around you; you might do plots that it spawns, but it, itself, is not touchable as a PC.

Its the ongoing, large story that's bigger then an individual PC.

In OWOD Vampire, the metaplot was the Jyhad and the eventual rise of the Antediluvians.
In OWOD Mage, the metaplot was the Ascension War.

Etc.

Now, a game can have its own metaplot below (or combining) this game-wide metaplot, sure. There doesn't have to be a single metaplot.

The point is the metaplot is the high level story of the world moving.

On a smaller scale, on the scale of PCs in a city or region, that metaplot will spawn plots that you deal with. These might affect the metaplot, but indirectly. That's why its meta.

@Taika said in How much plot do people want?:

Curious to get a feel for how much big plot (5+ scenes, or spanning months), little plot (3-5 scenes or a couple weeks), or monster of the week type things people are interested in or really want. I know too much is almost as bad (or worse in some ways) thn not enough.

What say ye, hivemind? How much plot is that sweet spot?

Honestly, your definitions baffle me.

I don't count 'plot' in 'number of scenes' or 'spanning months'; if there's 5 scenes spanning months, I'm saying wow, I'm probably bored. But you call that big plot: 3-5 scenes over a couple weeks sounds good, but you're calling that little plot.

I can't really answer you because you're operating on a set of assumptions that don't match either my preferences or my experience.

Ideally, I would like a variety of plot that is both interesting and forward-progressing, but which is also as much as possible opt-in. This doesn't have to be a lot: it is enough that 'something is happening'. Even if I'm not directly in the plot, I can have a scene which is related to it, ideally.

What I don't like:

• Plot which I am forced to be involved in (count most but not all metaplots in this category)
• Plot that is always the same thing: kill bad guy of the moment.
• Plot that can only have a direct, combat answer
• Plot that happens only in the confines of PRPs.
• Plot which doesn't change the world

Everything else is how much plot I want. Depending on how big the game is, peoples timezones, that and more.... that generally determines more how much plot is happening over a desired metric of enough-plot.

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

@Auspice

I just don’t get chicken and waffles.

I barely like waffles.

The idea of perfectly good fried chicken getting ruined by syrup is beyond me.

But I have an anti-sweet tooth. With rare exception if 'sweet' is added to something, I am lass happy then if I had the thing itself.

Now give me a rich sausage gravy and a biscuit with my fried chicken...

@ZombieGenesis
Those are warnings, not errors. Put the whole output.

@faraday said in Information Storage Question:

@ixokai said in Information Storage Question:

I don't know either of these things for facts myself, I wouldn't use Penn if you paid me, but its not everyone else having trouble listening here, man.

I think people are missing the part where @Thenomain said:

The softcode or softcode-style parsing of special characters also makes me cringe. It's starting to make me cringe with 'say' and 'page' too, mind you. I want to have '%' be by default '%' and not need to escape it or use 'page/noeval'.

That's the softcode or softcode-style parsing he's talking about. It's not that the channel stuff is written in softcode. It's that it treats your channel comments like softcode by default. Which leads to having to do some weird backflips to escape things sometimes.

No, I get that completely and have from the beginning.

@Bobotron said it doesn't do that with the new mux aliases. Sure, say and pose does but so does it on MUX and every other server.

@Thenomain said in Information Storage Question:

I have no idea what Penn means by a wrapper, which is why I described—multiple times now—what I personally do not like about Penn’s chat. I think I am reasonably done with explaining myself, considering this part is now longer than the original post.

Yeah, you've explained yourself.

And then didn't listen to anyone else.

@Seamus said its not softcode, there's no prefixes, you can add channel aliases like MUX. @Bobotron explained that those characters are not parsed.

I don't know either of these things for facts myself, I wouldn't use Penn if you paid me, but its not everyone else having trouble listening here, man.

@Thenomain said in Information Storage Question:

@Ashen-Shugar

I don't know why anyone would suggest not using 64k buffers. I can't code without at least 16 anymore, or at least SQL which is preferable but not universal.

I'm seriously curious what the heck you're doing in MUSH that a 32k lbuf isn't considered overkill.

About 8k, though there' some overhead. (On Rhost this is a compile time question; from the default of 4k up to 64k (not recommended))

Also check out the 'grab' function if you have structured data in an attribute.

grab(get(object/attribute),field:*,|)

Would quickly retrieve 'field:<data>' from field:data|field2:data|field3:data.

The only 'special characters' are what you choose to be delimiters. I use delimiters like '->' and '|' to maximize how much I can put into it without possibly using something a user would want to fill out.

Re: GURPS

My understanding is you're not allowed to use it on a MUSH. Or at least that was the case years ago.

@tekmunkey said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

ROTFLMAO

I logged into this MU

I typed +staff

I got something like 6 lines of

#-1 NO MATCH

So the essential failure was not in general or even with code, it was literally ROTFLMAO

... did you not get the fact that the game isn't being run anymore? That its up at all is because I haven't bothered to shut it down?

@Admiral said in Mage: the Ascension Online:

Ixokai isn't interested?

I'm suddenly interested.

Well fuck you right back, too.

wait.

"automated turn based combat"

for Mage the freaking Ascension.

The consensus war theme where you can do anything with the spheres and paradigm .... has automated turn based combat.

Okay, right, so-- no.

I mean good luck with all that you want to do and I wish you all the luck in the world. But wow, no.

@tangent said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

In re: the State of this Game,

Essentially what happened last winterish into spring: my cousin, who was really kind of like my brother (we grew up together) died and I backed away from here and from Arx to just focus on M63. I don't know if @ixokai would want to finish it someday and rock out. I don't believe there are any plans, which I feel bad about because he kicked so much ass with all the work he put into the code on that place.

As a coder, I wax and wane on how much energy I can put into a project.

I feed on the RP I have; I feed on other people doing things. SW:I didn't fail on builders-- we had a great grid. And I had a solid codebase. But there was an essential failure of energy on some level -- not just with code, but in general.

Its not the first project I've embarked upon that ended up aborted (usually because of a failure to get a critical mass of others doing other things), but it was also not a waste.

The SW:I codebase now powers M1963 (we have completely transitioned from a FS3 based PennMUSH to a system I can better own based on RhostMUSH), as @tnp said. But it also powers the base of a friend of mine making an original theme FATE game.

So, SW:I didn't work out, I don't regret the effort into it. I'm not quite sure on what led to the other staffers not going forward, but I don't care to lay blame. It didn't work out, but the work I put in at least, endures, and I'm happy with the outcome.

I don't really see the "and thus MUSHes" connection; almost none of that is really applicable to any MUSH I've ever played. (Granted, I gave up after awhile when I got tired of thinking 'nonsense...')

MUDs and MUSHes have some things in common but there is a great deal different.

This sounds deeply interesting to me. Fuck Lords & Ladies which I have no interest at all in. Save the goats, man. The goat is LIFE.

Not even joking a little.

@Jennkryst said in Space Games and Travel Time? Why? Why Not?:

@ixokai This is why there are alts, OOC plot rooms, and holographic communicators that let you talk with people across the galaxy.

Riiiight. So its better to have two or three characters that can only sporadically find RP, instead of one who can regularly RP because the setting isn't actively making finding RP hard.

And OOC plot rooms don't solve anything but let people pretend the setting isn't actively making finding RP hard. I won't even get into how 'holographic communicators' doesn't even begin to address the issue at hand.

Any game whose setting is such that any character can't potentially run into any other character is creating hurdles that must be overcome, and making it harder to actually play.

Now, a mobile setting like BSG:U or @surreality mentions would be fine. Since everyone is mobile too, on any given friday night at say 8pm my time when half the RPing universe is going to bed (since damnit I'm PST and they're EST) but I have three or four hours still to RP in, those that remain are all still potential RP partners with me.

If something is making the pool of possible people I have to RP with even smaller then my timezone does, screw it. I won't bother.

The hobby is not as big as it used to be.

The absolutely last freaking thing it needs is, "Anyone wanna RP?"

To be answered by, "Sure! Uhh, you're on Coruscant and I'm on Tattooine, um. I can get there in two hours?"

The more centers of RP there are the harder it is for people to actually connect. The longer people go bored wanting to RP but being unable to for reasons that are built in, the more likely they'll give up and go read a book or watch TV.

@faraday

I'd call it inspired (more STEP then REST), but really, the API is not in any meaningful way RESTful.

A RESTful API would be like GET http://whatever/object/attribute and PUSH http://whatever/object and ...etc. This is more low level then that. There's no URL routing like you'd expect from a REST api.

I think Ash might have misspoken because his job experience isn't really in the realm of REST.

Its a HTTP header-based API that's capable of doing almost anything but it does so by remotely accepting commands or functions to evaluate (and return data from).

Rhost's API is HTTP based but not RESTful.

Rhost listens on a separate API port. You connect to that port, authenticating with a dbref and a password. (This password is NOT the login password but is set with @api/password obj=pw) via Basic HTTP authentication.

The dbref must have the API @power.

The API is entirely header based. If you do a GET request, the 'Exec' header evaluates code as that dbref and returns its result. If you do a POST request, the 'Exec' header is a series of commands that are run. Basically, GET is like u() and POST is like @tri.

There's some other details: POST can have a Time header which will delay the commands that long. GET can have a Parse header which will determine if it evaluates the code as normal, only as substitutions, or ansi, and some other options. It can also have an Encode header to return the content in base64.

This basically allows you to execute arbitrary code / responses in the MUSH from external scripts. And with the execscript() function you can execute external scripts from within the game.

I haven't used it a lot yet, but one way I do use it is before I would have a timer on my game to dump a flatfile every so file. Now, my backup script (run by linux's cron) uses the API to @dump/flat before it runs.