Best posts made by Jim Nanban

@HelloProject Your question about MUSHcode reminds me of my ex. She's a 3D modeler working on government projects that use software primarily designed for terrain modeling. She makes buildings with it.

Their interns from the local university are flabbergasted at how different it is from the Maya/3DS Max (or whatever they're using now), which is intended more for modeling discrete structures. The ones who last beyond the internship are the ones who have learned 3D modeling, not just 3DS Max.

It's similar with code. If you just approach it as "I use if() to match the results of an attribute, and you pull attributes with get()," then all you're learning is MUSH code. You might be able to occasionally apply that knowledge elsewhere, but it's a crapshoot.

If you approach it by trying to figure out what it is you want to accomplish, and then analyzing the tools at your disposal, you'll get more out of it. Sure, until you get something else to use it will be hard to find out if you're "doing it right." But practicing symbolic logic, making project diagrams, putting comments in your code originals, these things build skills at coding vis-a-vis merely having skill at MUSHcode.

FWIW MUSHes taught me that I so don't want to be a programmer. I'd say I'm 50/50 at coding vs just MUSHcoding. So... grain of salt and all that.

Well I did it: I fired it up on AWS. TinyMUSH 3.2. Took 4, 5 hours just from being so out of practice in LINUX (and multitasking), but now I'm logged into a beloved game's database and realizing I'm incredibly rusty at MU*s.

But it's awesome. The game is up, on the interwebs. And it was pretty easy!!

@Seamus said in Course Corrections:

@Ganymede So... what's the PK Stance of the game?

This needs to be a meme.

@Thenomain Agreed, as well as Amberyl's MUSH Manual (even if it is, like the Hitchhiker's Guide, at times apocryphal or at least wildly inaccurate). Make your own +who that displays something a little different. Make your own +finger. Then poke Myrddin's with a stick. First just modify the order of the boards, then try fixing the percent-used display. After that, say, throw the year into the date displayed.

Then go back and burn your custom +who and +finger to the ground and redo them because you're ashamed of the code now.

That should get ya started.

OK, so the upside is it's free for a year.

The down side is it's free for a year, and you provide credit card info (to Amazon, it's safe as any) so after that year they will bill you.

Given the state of MU*s last time I was gaming, a year should be overkill for 90% of them. A year of free development and pilot time. Sounds awesome to me. After that you figure out if it's worth the five, ten bucks at Linode (thanks @ixokai !).

@EUBanana is right, I should write a how-to. AWS's options are a bit intimidating and arcane. Like a bugbear shaman.

I start on Normal, and switch to Easy if it's too time-consuming.
See, I have a job, a girlfriend, and other hobbies. I don't have time to keep grinding against high difficulty stuff. Would it be cool to be a 40th level Dancemaster? Sure, I guess. But it would be cooler to be a Gamemaster with 40th level players at my table every Saturday (when I get a house... soon... ish).

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

The point is, the more stuff you're gonna pile into a game, the lower the difficulty of actually using and figuring out how to use it needs to be. Think about how someone who has never been in a MU before would interact with your code. My first MU was Dragon Ball Evolution (they named it that before the shitty movie came out), a MUD. Everything made sense after a very short while.

This reminded me of what The Angry GM said when explaining why psionics suck in D&D: "Remember, complexity is the currency with which you buy depth. Complexity isn’t inherently bad, but complexity that doesn’t add depth is bad. "

Yeah, a drive-by referencing OP in a 14 page thread. Sue me. (SU* me?)

@Seamus That's sufficient interest for me! I'll probably write it up next week.

@HelloProject Angry usually sources his quotes, so that must be well-known in game design circles. He plays up the one-true-way-ism, but if you stick around you'll notice he's winking while giving some of the best explanation you've ever heard.

Another thing he brings up which is relatable is learning the core mechanic. Once you realize that just about everything in D&D is basically d20+Ability Bonus+Stat Bonus, you can make rulings instead of referring to rules. Just like on a MUD it's "verb action" or on TinyMUX it's "+verb[/option] target[=change]" you can make educated guesses on syntax versus reading +help file treatises. And it's when someone screws up the pattern--like +verb change=target/stat or saving throws or damned grappling horseshit mechanics--that things go haywire.

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

You can also ask: Why is anyone responding to this thread knowing that what they say will have little effect?

Because MU* players (myself included) and the internet as a whole are pedantic twits who wouldn't understand a rhetorical question if it bit them in the--

I will leave this one as an exercise for the reader.

I'll see myself out.

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

Shift + Insert. They're keys. On the keyboard. Which is a board. With keys on it.