Best posts made by Ninjakitten

HEY GUYS. 4.00.295 is out, with a short list but a neat one.
4.00.295 - 2020-2-28

• Maps, load/save/edit maps in a new map window. Lots of features! Options->'Show Map Window' to check it out!

• Added system menu option "Don't dock while moving" for dockable windows. (The system menu is found by clicking on the icon in the upper left; this option is in undocked windows and will make sure any undocked window you set it on remains that way while you move it around.)

• Fixed '/exit' command; previously it'd just crash at exit.

• Fixed glitch where a saved stats window would randomly change background colors on restart.

The big thing is obviously maps! It can't automatically make a map for you, because servers don't actually give the client any indication when a person changes rooms -- it's just another line of text like any other. BUT, it can be used to make maps oneself, or one can use a map made by someone else, and it can find routes for you from A to B. Once it knows what to look for, it can even try to keep track of where you are, if you want it to.

The hope is that over time there will be a collection of maps people make of various servers and share.

As usual, it's preferred you use the store version, but there's also one available on github!

@tinuviel I'm kind of a slow writer. It's unfortunate, but even paying full attention and intentionally trying to get faster, I'm more in the 10-15 range most of the time. It can get worse if things are intense. So I'm grateful for the people who think it's worth the wait, but, yeah, I can't really get a lot done in two hours.

@reimesu As a kid on a long plane ride I once made butter by shaking one of those little plastic pots of cream (might've been half and half?) they gave out for coffee back in the day.

I was very bored. But also proud of my tiny lump of butter. >_>

@Testament said in How to BeipMU: The best MU Client for Windows:

I just want to say that I think this program absolutely fucking amazing. Friend of mine got me to drink the kool-aid on it and finally try it. Once I realized I can put borders around different aspects of my inventory, I was sold.

Woo!

• The second text box that you can add duplicates itself every time you open the program. So I suddenly realized I had four spare text boxes that I had to X out of each until I had two. Is there any way to keep it as two, or is because it works as a spawn, and it literally spawns a new text box each time the program is started?

Yup, like the others said, just take it out of the connection string -- as long as you're reasonably up to date, Beip should remember the spawn layout for your window. But! Another possibility is to use /newinput /unique -- that should only create a new input as long as there isn't already one with that name (in this case, no name). Still, you probably don't need it, because the set-up should be remembered.

• I really like how spawns work here. It's actually the perfect setup I've always wanted. That said, I notice that if use 80 text wrap, this effects the spawn window, and I actually had to make the spawn window larger so I could read all the text on channels, as opposed when I had text-wrap off, the spawn window text would wrap automatically depending on the size of the spawn window. Is there any way to two different settings for these, or is it more of a 'one or the other' kind of situation?

There is! This drove me nuts when I switched over, so I feel your pain, and the dev was kind enough to fix it. Set your main window to wrap at 80, then right-click in a spawn and choose 'Settings' there -- you can untick 'Fixed Width' there and the spawns will wrap for their sizes.

Just in case any old SimpleMU users don't know, a way to pause what you're writing to write something else without having to cut and paste anywhere is:

• work on thing one
• hit esc
• write thing two, hit enter
• hit ctrl-p twice
• continue writing thing one from where you left off

If you have a spawn for that game you could also flip to that and just send thing two from there, too, of course. I kinda like the idea of the dual sending windows but too many other things annoyed me back when I tried Potato for me to get the hang of using them, and honestly, the ONE thing that currently bugs me about SimpleMU is being unable to convince my computer that an https link in it should go to a browser, not open a mail program.

Ugh, please stick with mediawiki, not wikidot. Wikidot is set up really weirdly and not very flexible; its template handling is awful. Last I saw you have to do a work-around even to have conditional items in your template -- unless it's changed recently, it won't innately let you have a default for if a variable isn't filled in, or let you not show things if they aren't there.

Wikia (or I guess it's Fandom now...) isn't ideal either, but it's a better free wiki in my experience. It at least has most of what you'd want to use implemented....

The previous version was too half-assed, so I removed it. Then I actually got interested in making things work better, so here's version 2 of the userscript, which is about three-quarters-assed. It seems to work in Greasemonkey in Firefox, and will probably work in Tampermonkey in Chrome as well. Put users you want to ignore in the users array, and threads in the threads array. Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation matter. It doesn't eliminate users entirely (they can still message you, you'll still see quotes of them, threads they reply to will still pop up as having a new post, etc.) but it hides their posts and optionally threads they started.

If I get bored/inspired maybe I'll make a version 3 with more bells and whistles, but for now, here you go.

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Go Away
// @namespace   MSB
// @include     http://musoapbox.net/*
// @version     2.0
// @run-at      document-end
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==

'use strict';

(function ($) {

    // Users you want to ignore
    var users = ["Name1","Name2","NameN"];

    // Threads you want to ignore
    var threads = ["Thread1","Thread2","ThreadN"];

    // Ignore threads started by ignored users? (true or false)
    var hideStartedBy = true;

    function cleanUsers() { 
      $.each(users,function(index,value) {
          $('li[data-username="'+value+'"]').css('display','none');
          $('strong:contains("'+value+'")').closest('.card').css('display','none');
      });
    }
    function cleanThreads() {
        $.each(threads,function(index,value) {
            $('meta[content="'+value+'"]').parent('li.row').css('display','none');
        });
        if (hideStartedBy) {
            $.each(users,function(index,value) {
                $('.pull-left img[data-original-title="'+value+'"]').closest('li[component="category/topic"]').css('display','none');
            });
        }
    }

    cleanUsers();
    cleanThreads();

    $(window).on('action:ajaxify.end', function(data) {
        cleanUsers();
        cleanThreads();
    });    
    $(window).on('action:posts.loaded', function(data) {
        cleanUsers();
    });
    $(window).on('action:topics.loaded', function(data) {
        cleanUsers();
        cleanThreads();
    });
})(jQuery)

This time I am on time! New version, quick because a crashing bug was found, but also a feature I've always kind of wished was possible...

4.00.308 - 2021-5-24

• Added 'Input Window - Autocomplete Whole Line'
• Added YouTube link previews -- (to inline images, as thumbnails with titles!)
• Added tooltips to inline images (shows the full video title for youtube previews)
• Fixed a bug with accessibility, can cause a crash if over a line just deleted
• Fixed a hang when inline images/image viewer is on and the URL is not valid

Grab it from the Microsoft Store (ideally), or alternatively from the github, and then go to the Discord and tell Bennet you're as happy not to have to play Youtube link roulette anymore as I am! (I mean, if you are, obviously. But why wouldn't you be?)

@dvoraen So very /signed. I especially like when I suddenly understand why a character insisted on behaving a certain way in a scene some time ago, but I didn't know why at the time.

@Bug-In-A-Jar
I don't actually see in what way that contradicts what I said. I said there aren't incentives to having a high MSB reputation score, beyond it giving a vague indication of, well, your reputation on the board. That's not an 'incentive' in the way I think most people would define one in that context.

I don't think most people particularly like being downvoted -- I never said no one cared. Some people don't, some just find it funny, some probably take it as a badge of honour, some care quite a bit. However, the impression I have is that many or most posters here consider it kind of childish and crappy behaviour to downvote based on the poster rather than the post. Now, if a poster is consistently being an ass, then someone may genuinely be downvoting the posts for content and it may still look similar for a while. If someone or someones enter a thread antagonistically and suddenly almost every post on the side the new arrival(s) vocally dislike(s) has a couple new downvotes, it's not surprising that people will perceive a connection. We can't currently tell if they're right, since the ability to see who downvoted seems to have broken again.

If a poster's opinion is unpopular enough -- or IMO more likely, the poster's mode of expression and treatment of others is unpopular enough -- to get things to where they can no longer downvote*, maybe that person should step back and look at what they're actually contributing. I don't downvote frequently, but when I do it's most often for a few specific behaviours, ones that I frankly think ought to harm someone's reputation.

I'd like to have the ability to see who downvotes what again, but with or without it I think the system has been working both fine and as designed.

* Although I seem to recall you need to get 10 reputation to downvote, I don't actually know if you lose the ability if you fall below that again.

People whose logs you like so much you're downright intimidated to actually try to play with them.

...this belongs also in gripes.

I've definitely recycled. If a char of mine is in two places with the same name and PB, it's the same character. (And I don't really reuse names or PBs otherwise.)

In one case I played the same character on two oWoD games because one was very verrrrrrry slow at the time and I missed the char and thought it'd be interesting to see how he was and wasn't different on game #2. In that case, he started each game in the same position in his life history, with the same starting stats, etc. It was kind of interesting, but I probably wouldn't try that experiment again.

The other times, I've had a character I really liked, but the story ended way too soon. Usually because the game died. In those cases, I've brought them in again somewhere it felt like they fit, usually keeping their previous history... or a version of it, anyway. All the important beats, tweaked to match the new world where necessary. Any missing time ('I played this char at 19 on a game set in 2012 in actual 2005, he'd be, what, 26 now on this 2019 game?'), I figure out what the char's been up to and what effects it probably had.

I've played 40-50 characters in the last couple decades and I've 'sequeled' 5, I think? 6 if you count a few sandbox scenes after one game imploded. One char took me over a decade to find a spot to actually play after a group app collapsed in the forming stages, so, yeah, I damn well did find somewhere else to give him a go when the first spot I found ended up swiftly dying.

So, clearly, I think there's merit to it. I think it's a little weird if someone always and only plays Bob the Whatever on every game in every genre, but if it makes them happy, okay, just make it fit. If someone was having fun playing Bob on CoolGame and CG dies and SpiffyGame over there is similar enough that Bob could've moved from CoolGame's Los Angeles setting to SpiffyGame's New York, have fun. Just... make it fit.

@krmbm said in OOC Knowledge Levels Question:

You get a little reminder to download them if they're going to time-out

That's a thing I'd wondered about! Does it send you a mail or something?

Yes. Yes please. I need to figure out how I'd find more time and who/what I'd want to be but if there's a Discworld game I will be there.

Even with the 'people though' worries.

Augury was great, and the Masq-revival was one of my favourite and most important games. My character there still holds the record as the one I've played longest overall and for the most scenes, as well. We were lucky to have her.

@mietze said:

I don't fudge rolls or ignore them--but I do require when people make them that they include how they're going about doing something (unless it's just a straight up thing). Sometimes this gets me fussing from some players "What? I've never had to tell anyone how I'm going about investigating, I just want to make my roll and then I get information," or "I don't know how I'm going to persuade/intimidate does it matter? I just want to roll and be done with it." Not very often though. Most folks are happy to do that, because it means the response is personal. Creativity is rewarded--if someone can sell me on what they want to try, I'll let them, even if that means that none of my plots ever goes quite to plan.

I'm of two minds on this, as a player. Generally, if my character is trying to do something, I'll try to explain how as well as I can, because it's more interesting and fun, and because sometimes I come up with something really good. I really enjoy when thinking through how to approach a thing is rewarded; I especially love when GMs/STs will allow some weird lateral-thinking maneuver a chance to work.

However, sometimes my character has a whole lot more dice in a skill than I would. How is my character going to investigate X? Honestly, much as I wish I did, much as I've mulled it over, maybe I still have NO idea in this particular case. But s/he does. To me that's what having the stat at that level means: s/he will have the talent/training/experience to know and think of ways to do this thing, and to judge whether A or B is more likely to be effective.

I try to play the downsides of characters not knowing things I do (random example: one would have had a decent chance of explaining away a conversation where someone else was heard saying too much as having been about a roleplaying game, but that character has never RPed, knows nothing about RP, and wouldn't see the point if he did, so his actual cover story was decidedly weaker), so I don't think I should be penalized when, even though I do try to research stuff my characters are supposed to be good at but I'm not, I still don't know how to approach doing X. S/he does.

As a benefits-for-creativity/cleverness thing, sure, please do ask me how the character plans to approach it; that's awesome. But if I don't really know? That's part of why the character has a stat. You may only use it in the first form, I don't know, but I've encountered this both ways, and the latter's been frustrating enough that, well... this post now exists.

@faraday said:

@surreality said:

Which gets sticky if someone is also active on wikidot for something not related to this hobby. There are just enough stalker issues that this could create more problems than it solves, unfortunately.

Interesting. Every game I've played on in the past few years uses Wikidot for their game wikis, and people have no problem creating additional logins if they don't want to use their OOC one. Some even create different wikidot logins for each game if they're worried about being stalked. :shrugs: It's a solved problem in my game circles.

@Roz You could tie it together with Wikidot too - I've done player/alt lists before on Wikidot in an automated fashion. That said, if you're more familiar with MediaWiki there's no reason to switch other than the universal login aspect for alt verification.

But if people are making separate accounts to join the wikidot wiki, how do you have any universal login alt verification in any way more than you do with a mediawiki where they have to make a user account to make their list anyway?

Making your own wiki instead of one on a wikifarm gives you MUCH more control over it, in my experience.

@faraday

Ahhh, I see where you're coming from with that! Yeah, in a situation where all the games people would be coming from already use the platform and they already have a username connected to that info for the other game(s), that would be handy.

Since not all the games that would be involved use wikidot, though, I don't think it would be as useful for this. Plus, those of us who didn't have wikidot names (or have ones that aren't our MU* community identities) would be in the position of having to worry about the potential username conflict instead, then, and I suspect there's a lot of usernames already in use on wikidot.

I'd really love if I could see a bigger preview of a post -- like, if under the submit button's down arrow there were a 'preview' option which would show me what the post would look like as if I'd submitted it. That is to say, full-sized, not half the screen wide and in a short box. It works fine for a post this size, but I just don't feel like I get a good view of anything that needs scrolling.

@Thenomain
...which is why I mentioned really not having had problems even without one.

People messing with pages they oughtn't hasn't been an issue once we banished the bots, and would be easily rolled back if it did, so I don't feel a need to have stricter/more ACLs before allowing players to just make their own accounts. I wouldn't hate HAVING more ACLs, but for me the problems of "annoying players by delaying them" and "making even more work for staff" currently outweigh the potential problem of "a non-spammer making bad changes."