Posts made by Reason

@Nessa Cool! Could be the one, thanks will take a peak.

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Really one of the stand-out contributors to the genre over the decades. Creative, determined, and always generous (even in disagreement).

You'll be missed, EUBanana.

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I caught wind that there may have been a spin-off forum from Mush Soapbox that someone started up? Another group of MUSH players that decided to start up a forum dedicated to MUSHing?

If so, would someone mind sending me a link? Either posted in thread or Direct Message?

Thanks!

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@silverfox said in Dune:

To clarify: DUNE the original book and the few after I remeber enjoying greatly.

The sequels were just a bit much.

The original novel was peak Dune, and written with a manageable amount of LSD/Mushrooms. The psychedelics start to overwhelm the subsequent novels to the point that, yeah, of course we're all just sand worms, it all makes sense man.

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@runescryer said in Dabbling, Mastery, Dunning–Kruger etc:

We have more information freely available to humanity than ever before. But it's just as important that we know how to understand the information presented to us. How to separate out the facts from the opinions that are presented as 'facts'.

This is substantially true. Additionally, the opportunity to be presented with opposing views that challenge of own are increasingly more difficult to come across -- ranging from the communities we live in, work in, subscribe into, etc.

Increasingly we encounter strawmen caricatures of actual opposing viewpoints, which acts to our disservice -- we lose the ability to rationally engage with opposition, and fail to correct the parts of our own foundational understandings that require refinement because they are, at best incomplete, at worst... worse.

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@greenflashlight said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

That mutation has bred true 100% of the time ever since, so we may safely conclude no future generations shall have people named Bianca, either.

As a time traveler from the future, can confirm this is correct.

As far as weird/unrealistic gaming stuff, I hate how characters in d20-based worlds mature and grow their skills to increase success in 5% increments. Linear probability is garbage, and game systems that adopt it should be ashamed of themselves.

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@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:

@reason I will break the game, but sure.

...

I'm not joking, I crashed the HSpace 5 test server like 11 times running the dumbest of commands. (Specifically, the dumbest one I can recall at the moment was when I jettisoned cargo while the ship was spinning in place. This tried to put rotational velocity onto a cargo object that did not have a place for rotational velocity to go... this caused the game to shit itself)

But yeah, I'll test chargen code when it gets ready, sure.

Cool. I may take you up on that. And no need to apologize in the event that you crash my test server -- that's the point of testing, afterall.

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@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:

AS FOR RUNNING GAME! I... can't be bothered to run PLOTS, since I barely have time to RP my existing characters, but I will totally help run the math for chargen, be an XP or maybe equipment monkey, and also help to write up the NPC social web diagrams of not just whatever location gets picked, but also all of the places (making sure that the three Crane PCs from the same neighboring city aren't working at odds because they each think the Daimyo wants something different, for example).

Now I just need someone who knows how code and who wants the responsibility of plotz and hosting and whatever.

If your assistance extends beyond XP/Equipment monkeying to include some eventual Chargen Testing, let me know.

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@faraday said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@reason No offense meant or taken. I was just responding to your assertion that it was solely a matter of personal preference. I see it as a usability issue, which goes a bit deeper.

Fair. Design paradigm may have been a better description than personal preference -- there's a notion of preference in a design paradigm, of course, but it may transcend the personal. For instance, in your case, a design paradigm that heavily caters to the users of the system itself (which, may not be a bad paradigm to adopt!).

@rnmissionrun said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

I have noticed that one of the most common complaints that I hear about MUSH on the Evennia Dev site, is the "weird and confusing" command syntax. This includes command prefixes, switches and use of the "=" sign to separate args.

That sounds like the 'Default MUX Parser' version of the Evennia command parser. That's one of the configurations you can inherit into the game, or use at discretion. Mimics some/most/all of TinyMU* syntax, IIRC. Should be optional to implement, though could be the default configuration.

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@faraday said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@reason said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

For example, my own preferences include the reservation of special characters to denote contextual elements of the associated commands.

Yes, that aptly describes the historical significance of the different prefixes. However, my experience tells me that the average player doesn't actually care whether something is implemented as a global, local, or character-specific command, and find the prefixes confusing and non-intuitive.

So while everyone is certainly entitled to their personal preferences on the matter, the feedback I've received is overwhelmingly in favor of removing the prefixes - to the point where players complain when they have to go back to other codebases that still use them. So from a usability perspective, I respectfully disagree that they it is advantageous to include it as a game-specific option.

Side note - Ares also doesn't have the necessity of differentiating between the built-in @desc and the game's custom +desc. There's just one "desc" global, which you can override with custom code if you need to.

Like you said, though, there are other platforms that do this if it's really important to your game vision.

I feel like you may be under the impression that I'm advocating that you do something different than you have, or am trying to influence/change your preference.

If that's the case, let me disabuse you of that notion -- the default position that you've taken mirrors the default position of the only other modern-language MU* framework. I think you're in good company.

I don't share your preference and I don't look down on you for having it.

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@krmbm said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

My brain-juice gets used for RPing instead of learning to code. I'll stay up late to finish a really good scene, but I'm way too mature nowadays to stay up all night coding. That's for geeks.

Ha! That hurts... because... it's true...

@arkandel said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

@krmbm said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

It's probably out of this thread's scope but that's one of the main causes professional developers eventually divert from their original career paths. SNIP

#facts

This is how some of us find our weapon of choice is interpersonal relationships, powerpoint, confluence, and periodically pointing out that the proposal is probably NP Hard as opposed to living in past lives of reflected DLLs, ROP chains, and reverse shells.

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@faraday said in Talking 'Bout Ares:

@reason said in Games:

So only configurable in a sense of the word that includes hacking apart the parser.

I mean... the parser, hundreds of commands and help files... I genuinely cannot fathom why you would want to do a massive amount of work, take a step backwards in usability, and alienate many/most existing Ares players, all for no tangible benefit. But technically, yes, it's possible.

Ha. Well, in fairness I wouldn't want to. That sounds like an awful lot of work.

That said, I think it's a bit presumptive to describe the benefit of allowing special character prefixes as entirely devoid of merit in something that is likely just a notion of personal preference.

For example, my own preferences include the reservation of special characters to denote contextual elements of the associated commands. Having a '+' in front of a command to denote that it is global in nature and enforced and supported as such, for example, is a mental short-cut that I find personally useful. Similarly having in-game syntactic clues that a suite of commands is local in nature have benefits that I perceive with how I think about MUs*. Character specific abilities/commands that are neither global nor local (in so much as non-local to mean not generally local) may be another example.

Obviously ALL of the above can be achieved without special characters. Some string prefix, for example, could act as a similar syntactical clue. So could some fundamentally different paradigm that doesn't respect notions of global, local, or character specific contexts. Or, I'm sure. a myriad of other ways to view the way of building and playing.

But that really isn't the point -- the point is that it is nice that there are platforms that cater to different chocolate-or-vanilla preferences, because preference is the correct term of art to describe the distinction. Not value. Tangible, or otherwise.

Which seems like a really weird thing to get upset over honestly.

Totally agree here. Native support for asynchronous RP seems like such a tremendous step forward, it's hard for me to imagine why it would be a point of frustration for players.

Perhaps there's some perception on behalf of the complainers that this is a zero sum game -- and by improving accessibility to others, they have lost something for themselves. If that's the case, that's unfortunate.

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@misadventure said in FFG L5R:

Anyone ever considered role rosters, meaning you list the skills and relationships needed (or already established) but the rest of the character is up to the player to create?

Not useful where you want specific family members probably, but a good way to both demonstrate thematic skill sets and tell players where there is a need.

That's a great idea. I don't know if I've ever seen that implemented except in the vaguest sense ("We need a Ripper Doc... that can hack.").

Yeah, cool suggestion.

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@greenflashlight said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

Hit Points. I just can't stop thinking about how weird it is that if you stab a lot of people to death, then you will require more stabbings to be killed than someone who has stabbed fewer people than you.

Yeah, I struggle w/ hit points as well, though mostly as a byproduct of struggling with "Character Levels". If the Hit Points are derived from some combination of attributes or skills, less of an issue.

But yeah for real, "Character Levels". Yuck.

@songtress said in FFG L5R:

@reason maybe build some rough pre built answers to help people narrow down. What clans they might be in.

Good idea.

I think there's always a balance to strike between allowing a game to be as accessible as possible (and requiring a great deal of heavy lifting to bring the source material into the game) vs. a lighter touch and referring players to the source-books.

Both have their merits, but I think that a minimum of having some stock content that drives clarity around core archetype decisions is generally a good call and may have been subconsciously motivating my desire to build an +info system for clans, families, roles, etc., first before hooking up a CG system.

@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:

I know this is still the coding phase and not the world-building phase, but some of the ideas from the L&L discussion could be done here. Not a full roster where you drop a character and pick up another, but pre-made folks who fill needed roles and with ties to others. People log onto games and ask what is needed... point them at a list with a sheet that is ready to go, minus a few changes if they want.

Another good idea, though to be clear your comment assumes that there will be a world-building phase.

Right now I'm just digging the theme I'm reading and brainstorming the world of possibilities for fun while I experiment with a portable CharGen System built on L5R. This is totally not a MU* I'm signing up to run (though I would take it as a personal point of pride to offer a usable L5R system into the general community) -- more of an experiment than a commitment (though an experiment that doesn't preclude an actual game, on the other end, I suppose).

Which isn't to discourage any world building discussions -- I think those are super interesting and motivating. Just that I don't want anyone to walk away with the impression that this is anything but exploring the space a little for now.

All of that said -- yes, I think having some pre-fabbed tie-ins to help ground the player-base is a good call. I feel like L5R is a bit more "wide open spaces" in its general approach, than maybe some other genres. Having some non-exclusive (from a clan standpoint) "groups/orgs/teams/etc" that a PC can opt into with built-in hooks, contacts, motivations, etc., seems to be a good way to get players going right off the bat. The need for this is a little bit less pronounced in something like Shadowrun where there's a lot of fairly natural reasons why an independent operator is getting chummy with randos.

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@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:

@reason Path of Waves if the new nation is Gaijin. I haven't come across rules for playable Kenku or Naga or anything like that for 5e, but they could be made with the Gaijin rules, too.

This isn't entirely true, I see a school for the Kitsune Shapeshifter, so that could also be used to model other races.

Edit to add: Maybe land route for the Ivory Kingdoms to do stuff. Here have a semi-canon map!

... map won't load, go to fan wiki instead- https://l5r.fandom.com/wiki/World/Planet_of_L5R_and_Rokugan

Cool. I'm going to sort of tuck the theme ideas in the back of my mind right now and continue to just chew through some of the various source-books and let it all digest... while I continue to chip away at coding up CharGen 20 questions, which I think I have a reasonable method of implementing in a way that would be easy for someone to port into a game.

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@faraday said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

It's also important to keep in mind that when learning to code for the newer MU platforms like Ares or Evennia, you're not just learning Ruby/Python. You're also learning the MUSH-specific classes and the "Ares/Evennia" way of doing things.

Super true. General language comprehension is a prereq for the next phase: The wild, wacky, and hairball task of figuring how a thing built in that language works/behaves.

Which tends to make one grateful for good documentation!

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@derp said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

So I've seen a couple of comments now to the effect of 'Ugh, Ruby is such a pain and so hard to program in', and admittedly I'm kind of lost on that one. Especially when it comes from people that can do MU-code and/or are working on Python for Evennia.

Python, to me, seems infinitely more finicky and picky about all of its various little whatsits and One True Right and Only Way-ism. And yet, people still think Ruby is harder?

Why? What's the deal?

Genuinely curious. I'm a ruby amateur, but I'm wondering if there's some kind of programming pitfall that I'm about to step into down the line.

Huh. I've never heard anyone say Ruby is hard to program in.

It is a pretty friendly language, all things considered. And both Ruby and Python share some common lineage. In the end I think a lot of it comes down to personal preference (which is generally true of most languages except PHP, which is an abomination and should have no claim to life).

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@faraday said in Games:

@reason said in Games:

Sure. And no doubt that's configurable under the hood somewhere.

No. Ares commands have no prefix by design (because as @Derp pointed out, it's kinda silly to have multiple versions of the same command.) The parser just ignores it if you type + or @.

@reason said in Games:

It's mostly been impressed on me that Ares allows for A) easy to ship a game concept, B) web-based asynchronous, gridless gameplay.

A is correct, B is not. Ares is a MUSH, and has a grid and client-based commands same as Penn/Tiny. It just ALSO has a web portal, temproom RP, and asynchronous RP support. Ares just gives people options. What seems to bother people the most is that players are using those options to play in different ways than they want to.

So only configurable in a sense of the word that includes hacking apart the parser. Cool. And appreciate the clarification on grid vs. asynch support.

As I said, I don't really have a dog in this fight and improving accessibility and modernizing access are both positive. My only final reservation largely boils down to a chocolate vs. vanilla preference of implementation language, which is much more about creating than playing.

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@derp said in Games:

Dare I even ask why you'd have three versions of a desc command that presumably have different enough functions that a prefix would matter?

Ha -- I don't actually, was mostly kidding.

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