Posts made by Reason

@golgoth Well, don't thank me yet. Do you have any usable Chargen code yet? Or are you starting fresh?

@Tirit You'd probably have to let me house rule the 5e Matrix Rules.

-r

UPDATE: I've pulled the Evennia docs and am brushing back up on 5th edition. I have about a month and a half of low-commitment RL before Black Hat / Def Con at the end of July, so I'll see about churning out some usable Shadowrun MU* code. No promises.

@Jennkryst I actually don't mind the priority system, and there are some things that I found commendable about it.

I think it was at its best in SR3, when maximum resources and full magician were mutually exclusive via the priority system, but Resources A + Magic B provided some compelling Aspected options.

-r

@Tirit Pretty functional chargen -- Priority system. Adopted the classic feel of the SR Seatle/Detroit style of yesteryear: Moving through "Rooms" to select elements of priority.

I think I had races, normal attributes, special attributes, active/knowledge skills/skill-groups wrapped up. I believe I had also completed Adept Powers, and either had implemented Cyber or had planned the implementation and was mid-way through. May have also had spells done.

I think where I really hit a brick wall when it came to typing, by hand, the full gear catalog.

As far as SR 5 Matrix -- the problem is that everything is so... flat. I think I lot of people got hung up on wireless bonuses for online gear, and couldn't get past computational complexity being a bigger bottleneck than data throughput -- but that's easily addressed just looking at the world around us, and the serious impact that parallel compute is having just today.

What isn't easily addressed is why you would build a flat authentication model with no resource segmentation -- super irritating.

-r

Anyone have any experience with the 'Corporation' RPG system by Brutal Games?

Cyberpunk has always been a guilty pleasure, but its so hard to get it without floofy elves.

-r

So, I actually had a semi-functional SR 5 chargen system for an SR 5 MU implemented in Evennia. And by 'semi-functional' I mean, complete hack job of silly code that I swore I'd come back to clean up sometime once I had a better grasp of how Evennia handled things.

I've got to be honest, the more I read the SR 5 Matrix rules the less motivated I was to actually finish coding an SR 5 game -- have you guys actually played a table top of SR 5?

-r

@Griatch Good stuff. I actually decided to dust off my inactive account just to log in and provide moral support for Evennia.

-r

Interesting. I was wondering if an EP MU* would show up some day. It is a compelling setting. And using my new favorite MU* platform, Evennia, to boot.

Iiiiiiinteresting.

I'm utterly swamped or I'd volunteer to code monkey a few systems for you. Maybe June/July?

-r

@Lithium said:

@Reason One can only hope.

I actually wouldn't mind coding it, if there was a competent staff that could run it.

I wonder if this new CD Projekt Cyberpunk 2077 game will motivate one of us enough to code a cyberpunk game that isn't Denver.

@WTFE said:

@Reason said:

I appreciate your interest in softcode, mind you. I think that the world would be a better place if more people took a moment to think about functional programming. W.W.H.D., that's my moto.

Pity that MUSHcode is to functional programming what SNOBOL4 is to structured programming.

WTF kind of "functional" language doesn't have functions as first-class types that are easily composed!? Oh, right. MUSHcode. The language invented by someone who took a Lisp class but didn't understand it.

Here you go. Ready for Evennia.

Yeah, after some thought, honestly I think that extending LARGE chunks of "soft-code" into Evennia wouldn't be that daunting. Particularly for the BLDR role.

It wouldn't be too difficult to put some simple flags in place to check permissions, publish some quick help files, and then presto -- MU* BLDR-a-tron 5000.

You'd just need A) Time B) Mountain Dew or Lighter Fluid C) List of MU* BLDR commands.

Tirit may have already taken a crack at it on Deep Shadows.

@Jennkryst said:

SHADOWRUN ON BOATS

+1.

Seriously. Why did it take so long for us to get here?

Yeah. Well, it's tough for me to continue here because you don't have a frame of reference beyond soft-code.

So I can talk about "accessibility" and "utility" and attach shiny buzz words next to the modern programming capabilities that surround Evennia, but that's just really words on a page that you don't understand in a tangible sense.

Because your experience as an aspiring coder is limited to a whitespaceless functional paradigm, typed into a chat client.

So we can just agree to disagree.

Oh. Whoops! Didn't realize we were fighting.

Also: Uh, shadowrun. Stuff. Here. Totally on topic. Go Shadowrun. And... shouts in the dark!

@Derp said:

Which... doesn't mean that it isn't open to anyone who wants to learn, that just means that it's something that they'll have to put some actual work into, and maybe seek a mentor. Much like anything else anyone could ever hope to learn. But all of the documentation for it is included in the help files, along with examples and such, and outside of a few concepts which are rather buried, you need not ever really seek an outside mentor. It's all self-contained. But more importantly, it can be used within the game itself without having to worry overly much about server access. Ergo, open to anyone who wants to learn.

Except that any MU user can create their own softcode to do specific things they want it to do that might not be important enough to implement game-wide, and they can do so without having to worry about server access, etc. Anything that could super easily break things is largely denied due to permissions. The same cannot be said of Evennia. It might not be something that a great many users ever pursue, but it's something that I find important enough to dissuade me from looking into Evennia.

You've mentioned server access twice. You understand that "server access" in Evennia's case means a desktop, 2 minutes spent downloading a Python distribution, and a pulse. Right?

There are literally thousands of hours of youtube videos explaining how Python works. There's absolutely no comparison. MU* softcode is as approachable as a purple, pulsating vomitorium.

I appreciate your interest in softcode, mind you. I think that the world would be a better place if more people took a moment to think about functional programming. W.W.H.D., that's my moto.

But it just isn't tenable to hold up 'accessibility of code resources' as the primary thing holding MU* softcode at the forefront of text based online game dominance.

@Thenomain said:

Those who publish, win.

For a second I lost track of myself -- are we discussing tenure or hobbies?

@Derp I would have to respectfully disagree with your characteristic of MU* code being open to anyone who wants to learn. MU* code is open to anyone who wants to search archaic remnants of an age long since past, and invoke an animal spirit code guide with a mix of peyote and pleasant page-chats.

Which isn't to diminish the importance or joy or learning MU* code anymore than the importance or joy of learning Haskell (or really any functional programming paradigm, for that matter) -- just that hanging your hold-ups on the accessibility of MU* code is odd when it is 1) Not actually accessible afterall 2) Less accessible than a number of modern languages (by orders of magnitude), including the direct contrast of Evennia's Python.

My own concerns are much closer to the challenges of changing creatures of habit.

We of the MU* like our MU*ness to be of a certain character.

Evennia is a foreigner in that regard, who exhibits the capacity to over time learn our languages and holy customs, but has not yet made a pilgrimage to the shrine of... whatever soft-code gods we hold dearest.

That said, it is exciting -- I feel that it is a step in the right direction, for both the sustainability of the hobby with respect to code support (I will probably never write another line of MU* soft-code so long as I live. Maybe. Okay, probably maybe.), as well with respect to the accessibility of new players (Native web client vs. reskinned 1970s Telnet).

A moment ago I revisited a fleeting split second of internet innocence.

It was refreshing, if brief.

I discovered this thread after poking around (admissions of an infrequent lurker), read the first page with optimism, and then skipped to the last page to see where it wound up.

As mentioned; brief.

They absolutely do. So much so, in fact, that the last time I visited the community site I saw that they were collectively creating and documenting a game to showcase Evennia.

The core hang-up I've had about it is that there are so many, shall we say, "quality of life" components of a MU* that I've come to expect over the years that someone would need to go and explicitly extend into Evennia.

What would actually be pretty cool is if a bold and intrepid code monkey coordinated a module with the Evennia team to 'MUSH-i-tize' it, to put a number of the common player-based commands in, available out of the box. I.e, To MUSH-Evennia is the product of a core Installation + subsequent MUSH extension.

Presto. Modern MUSH, SQL DB, Django Web framework. Knock yourself out. I mean, doesn't it feel a bit archaic to actually download and use a mush client?

If that ever got off the ground, I'd be happy to contribute to the effort -- I think among the largest barriers Evennia has is player adoption. They certainly aren't running into technical limitations in the near future.

EDIT, Continued

Apologies for the edit -- To continue along the train of thought for BLDRs, though, after some thought I imagine that some straight forward extensions couldn't recreate elements of a BLDR experience similar to the existing experience.