Posts made by krmbm

@Bobotron said in Posting Ads on Games:

I've never understood the vehemence against posting ads or requiring an ad trade.

Ditto. If you want to trade, go to their game, login, look for a guest-enabled Other MU* board, post to it, and call it a day. If they don't have one, maybe tell a staffer. Or delete the ad from your game. Or (my personal favorite) just don't worry about it.

@faraday I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree - both on the term "full game" and on the number of people that could do it.

But this does speak to a core issue: MUSH as it is (Penn/Tiny/Rhost) is used by people who want chargen, combat, economy, etc., and by people who want a social game with psychic dragons that can teleport.

I played around with FS3 a while ago just to see what it was like, and because I wanted to be lazy and not write all the boring globals. It was awesome, but it was way more code than I need. I'm sure I could have hacked around and removed all the bits I didn't need, but - just looking at how many systems were dependent on things that I wanted to uninstall - it seemed like a cleaner solution to just start from scratch on my own.

Will it be that way with AresMUSH when it's done? Legit interested. Can you uninstall default plugins and not break your game?

@Griatch said in What is out there? Hard and soft codebases of choice.:

@krmbm said in What is out there? Hard and soft codebases of choice.:

@Griatch said in What is out there? Hard and soft codebases of choice.:

This is a very important point. For all the "bridging power" of mushcode, how many can actually use it to the level of, you know, creating a new game from scratch? I am not familiar enough with the MUSH community to know this number, but I suspect that it's not a large number.

You'd be surprised.

I know several people just within my one tiny subset of MUs that could get a game up-and-running themselves quickly. Partially, this is because installing MU (as has been noted) is generally super easy, especially if you go to a MU* host, where they give you a working environment and all you have to do is upload, extract, and start your MUSH.

That is great and a good boon. It's not what I asked though (or intended to ask). Just starting a server is one thing. The question was how many can then build a full game in mushcode off what the server offers with that download. Maybe the better question would be how many @Thenomain 's and @Volund 's are around these days? It''s not a retorical question - it would be interesting to know.

I'm not sure where I didn't answer that? Maybe I just wasn't specific?

I know several people (myself included) that could install and code a game that they could open to the public, without borrowing someone else's soft-code. You don't have to be a psycho-coder to make a functional MUSH.

Which is pretty much what I think everyone in this thread has been saying: Evennia seems cool! But it seems like it might be a little steep on the learning curve for the average MUSHer.

@Griatch said in What is out there? Hard and soft codebases of choice.:

This is a very important point. For all the "bridging power" of mushcode, how many can actually use it to the level of, you know, creating a new game from scratch? I am not familiar enough with the MUSH community to know this number, but I suspect that it's not a large number.

You'd be surprised.

I know several people just within my one tiny subset of MUs that could get a game up-and-running themselves quickly. Partially, this is because installing MU (as has been noted) is generally super easy, especially if you go to a MU* host, where they give you a working environment and all you have to do is upload, extract, and start your MUSH.

I think everyone acknowledges that MU is archaic, but it's also got a very low barrier to entry, and that's what Evennia lacks for me.

I wish the project luck. I think it has great potential. But I think, as someone else in the thread said, it might not be the right solution for bringing MUSH into the 21st century.

(I also acknowledge that, as a grown-up with a kid and a job and everything, I don't have the time and energy that I did 20 years ago to sit and learn a whole new system just to support my hobby. Maybe some youngster will figure it out for me.)

@WTFE said in What is out there? Hard and soft codebases of choice.:

When I finally got something that worked, I was never actually quite certain if I'd done it right or if I'd merely stumbled accidentally over a configuration that would work right up to the point it stops.

This was pretty much how I felt tinkering with Evennia. I eventually turned it off because it felt like I was holding it together with a shoestring and a prayer.

Try looking around here: http://rpg-directory.com/

It's PernWorld. There is literally no more to know than this ad.

The game is "create character, go to whatever area currently has Search, RP there for 4-5 weeks, get a dragon, idle along with everyone else in the area since now they've all moved over to the next area with Search, rinse, repeat."

You'll probably get a few pages from squicky weirdos trolling for TS in among all that, but that's about as exciting as it gets. "Plot" is a term generally used loosely to imply "stuff we do around Hatching-time."

...TinyMUSH?

Unless TinyMUX is hugely different from MUSH, it will use the child's attribute.

In your example, the child's setting of 0 should be respected.

All those things you said make no sense to me, but I'll take your word for it.

I only voice-chat with people I "know." I would never use VOIP with a PUG, so I just Discord it up.

I never use voice chat for quick-play games in Overwatch. I don't want those people in my ear.

If you're looking for some sort of VOIP to supplement a M* for some reason, I recommend Discord.

If you're not keen on self-styling, there's a decent-looking template to redesign the look of the tabs here: http://snippets.wikidot.com/code:tabview-csi

I've given mine to a handful of people. It's a registry key, so you just need to know how to install one.

Oh. Also. Run as administrator.

If you have issues with things getting "stuck" in world files, it might be the whole "this program's not allowed to change anything in this folder!!!!!!" panic from Windows.

@Derp said in Issues with SimpleMu:

Why do people still use it?

I actually have MUSHclient and Potato installed on this PC, and I find they both just don't work the way I like. It's just a matter of personal preference. I got used to it because of /grab, and now I'm just comfortable with it. It still works, I paid for it 15 years ago, why fix what ain't broke?

As for the auto-connect... While I've never had the problem personally, you could try:

@Insomnia - In your SITES folder (mine is buried in c:\programdata\microsoft\windows\start menu\programs\simplemu\sites), find the .dat file for the affected world. At the bottom of it, there should be a setting that says:

[Settings]
AutoConnect=1

Change it to AutoConnect=0 and cross your fingers.

@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Dread Wolf's Rise:

So I decided to check it out. Apparently this place used to be a Pern game, or their code was cribbed from one. It happens. This is from the "tutorial" rooms:

Since this is very specifically a Pern based game, names that would not fit the Theme are rather frowned upon such as Cyberboy, or Dragonkiller.

Pernisms exist all throughout the tutorial room and there are no existing help files. The login screen says they're in Beta, but I think they're really in Alpha.

This game used to be VirtuaPern. You can still connect using virtuapern.kydance.net 9999. I happened to notice on their wiki that someone with whom I still Pern had removed the tag "VP" and added "DWR."

VP died a heat death back in the mid-2000s. Its owners briefly tried to revitalize it circa 2014, but - from what I gathered - they had essentially just stolen a bunch of Wikidot code from HT (claimed not to have stolen it, but there were actual comments still in the code), slapped it on the web, created new super-special-characters of their own, and then... nothing. The game never went anywhere. You could occasionally find a wizard and a goldrider logged in, but that was about it.

This may or may not have any bearing on how this game is going to run. Just sharing some details 'cause I have 'em to share.

@PuppyBreath said in PuppyBreath's Playlist:

Not gonna lie, Threadfall was my favorite Pern game! I feel like everything else has needed to live up to it since then in my head.

Thank you. I feel like a lot of that is just rose-colored glasses (and the fact that we were trying to break new ground in the genre), but it's nice to hear, even umpteen years later. \o/

A fair few people are kicking around on HT these days, if you can get over the whole "ew MOO" thing.

@PuppyBreath said in PuppyBreath's Playlist:

Threadfall
W'rik

Wow, that just took me way, way back.

I was The Oracle on Threadfall. Also E'van and many others, but yeah. That was "my" game.

@Auspice said in Threads of Pern:

Threads is new. They're not gonna be perfect. But a lot of these points are things they're already working on.

I totally understand, and I don't disagree.

Speaking as someone who plays in the genre currently, I can confirm that several friends and I logged in, looked around, spoke to the wizards, and left without creating characters because:

• No insta-riders were offered. I understand that they allowed (or are still allowing?) a very limited set of insta-riders, but being forced to pick from a very small selection of options sucks, and their availability and approval seems to be controlled by Kyriana.
• Which brings us to Kyriana. The OOC and IC head of the Weyr is massively idle. This doesn't bode well. The only policy in place to deal with her requires that she doesn't log in for 90 days. There's no clause about her actually RPing. She may be a super-duper nice person, but that doesn't make her the right person to play the highest ranking character on a brand new game. That needs to go to someone that wants to RP. It was a bad choice, and it's one the wizards don't seem to be handling.
• And that segues into IC=OOC leadership. Lexi runs the Hold because she's the Lady Holder. Kyriana runs the Weyr because she's the Weyrwoman. Presumably, the Masterharper will run Harper Hall and the Masterhealer will run Healer Hall. This is a huge turn-off. The separation of IC and OOC leadership was a huge shift in Pern gaming, and it's not one that most of us want to rewind.
• 4:1 time. This isn't a deal-breaker, necessarily, but it is a step backward.

So, if they are looking for feedback, I hope they take that to heart. If/when the game makes some positive changes, I'm sure I'll be back to look at it again. In the meantime... There are other Pern games out there that already offer "guaranteed" Impressions (HT does this), which seems to be the game's biggest selling point?

@Songtress said in Threads of Pern:

What would a Modern Pern/Alt Pern game have to look like?

These are two totally different questions. What a Pern game looks like and what an alt-Pern game looks like can be approached much differently. Just to address a "modern" Pern game, though, here's my wish-list/manifesto.

• IC/OOC separation of duties. HT does this by giving each area its own game staff, made up of volunteers. Sometimes, these volunteers are also the IC leaders, sometimes they aren't. Then the areas each have two members serving on the game staff, and the game staff answers to the wizards (who don't actually play; they just make sure the code works and the kids don't throw sand at each other). NorCon ran (runs?) similarly, with wizards there to handle code, and everything else managed by volunteers.
• Require approval. Make new characters write some kind of history (even if it's just a rough sketch), description, etc.
• Don't make a billion areas. PW still tries to run with like 500 Weyrs, and they basically just constantly have to be running Hatchings. Having one or two areas is perfectly acceptable. Personally, I prefer just a single geographic region (i.e., a Weyr and a Hold), but having two seems viable. Just be prepared, if you do more than one area, for there to be constant bickering between the two areas.
• Set it during a Pass. There are a few Interval games out there, but most current Pern gamers would prefer a Pass game. That's why HT did a reboot three years ago to start the game over during a Pass.
• Provide non-Thread conflict. HT originally had this by way of the Oldtimers vs. Nowtimers plot, but that's unraveled, and you can start to see the game devolving into typical "Pern" stuff: Impress, get a boyfriend, have some babies, rinse, repeat. Instead of trying to write Pern's conflict out (color hierarchy, gender issues, non-riders mistrusting riders, etc.), use these as fodder to help drive a story.
• Have stories/plots. There was a game a few years back that looked promising in the sense that it did most of the things above, but the game owner said in no uncertain terms that she wasn't going to be guiding plots. She wanted all plots to be player-driven. After a few months, the players wound up wandering off when it became apparent that she honestly meant that. We had some fun, but we also needed a game that was being guided by someone (or a group of people, whatever) with some kind of plan. HT is currently the most successful and active Pern game because - although there are issues - both areas on the game have active OOC leaders that try to come up with plots. Some plots are more successful than others, but it does give people something to RP about in between baby-making and vying for gold dragons.
• Make dragons easy to get. It's called the Dragonriders of Pern. People will play other walks of life, but dragonriders are going to be the go-to. Allowing easy access to insta-riders makes it so the game isn't littered with nothing but adolescents waiting for Search.
• Don't try to get rid of Hatchings. Like it or not, they still excite people, and they still get people to create new alts and branch out. Just roll with it.
• Slow down time. Pern used to be hard-core with the 4:1 aging. People gradually got comfortable at 3:1, which is what HT and NC currently use. I'd go a step farther and suggest doing 2:1, since current Pern friends of mine have expressed that 3:1 still feels too fast.

Those are some of my observations for what has and hasn't worked over the ~20 years I've been playing silly Pern games.

glhf