Best posts made by skew

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …

It is the time of the Galactic Empire. The arm of Emperor Palpatine extends far and wide. It is a time of peace, where trade flourishes and order is kept by the harsh justice. Many worlds have grown rich, others suffer under the yolk of the Galactic Empire.

Two years ago, the Empire reached a small planet in the Outer Rim, past Kessel Sector. Chontio is inhospitable and dangerous, but the recent technological breakthrough in using the naturally-occurring Mazeri Crystal has promised wealth beyond anyone's dreams...

The people of Chontio struggle with the Empire, with the conditions of a brutal world, with the original inhabitants of the planet striking against the colonizers of Chontio. How will the Tageeri Confederation make it through these harsh times? How will you?

Chontio MUSH takes place in the capital city of the Tageeri Confederation, Davotay, along with its sister city, Gorana. Characters will be citizens of the Tageeri Confederation, and work to aid their home city, their home planet, and their home government... in whatever way makes sense for that individual.

http://chontio.aresmush.com/
chontio.aresmush.com port 3268

Hello everyone! Chontio is finally in open beta. We are accepting new characters! You can go ahead and create via logging in or on the web! If you're logging in, the standard create character password should work, otherwise type tour to log in as a guest.

If you're interested, a great place to start reading is our getting started page. You can also look at our roster characters.

I want to also give a giant THANK YOU to @farfalla (my other staffer + the reason I'm sane) and @faraday (who wrote AresMUSH and held my hand through this whole process), without whom I couldn't have gotten this game open in 2 months. Also big shout out to @Brunocerous who desc'd almost our whole dang grid and @Seraphim73 who has been supporting this project since day 1.

COMING SOON... THE UNNECESSARY MESSENGER SYSTEM

I'm posting this up now before it's done because there's numerous people developing new games on TinyMUX, and I wanted to let everyone know it's coming.

The brief version:
This system will come standard with +txt and +email commands which will allow sending/receiving messages, reviewing old messages, storing messages long-term (in SQL), as well as alerts for unread messages.

This system will also be configured to allow +reminders (as in, you set a reminder for yourself and it pings later), +reallywantRP (a system to send a note to a person/faction/etc that you want to RP with me or handle business or whatever), staff messages, and more!

The design has been to allow many types of systems to be stuffed into the same box. Once I'm done with +txt, I'll basically be copy+pasting different bits of functionality to create +email, +reminder, and more.

My intention will be to use this as an IC tool to progress story as much as an organizational tool. And with that in mind, a quick screenshot!

Currently finished:

• +txt sending
• +txt storage
• +txt display/review

Next:

• +txt auto-reminders
• +email

And now to be an asshole: I'm not looking for your feedback from a theoretical, metaphysical, "game design" standpoint. If you hate the idea of IC +txting, please keep it to yourself. I named the system unnecessary for a reason.

But, if anyone has any additional functionality they think would line up with what I've said above, please let me know! Likewise, if you want to use this system in your game, just hit me up! I'll be distributing the copy+paste install soon as I get a stable version.

ETA on a beta version: Mid September.

I came to MSB today and found that I had this greeny wordy thingy next to my name, and now find myself with the overwhelming desire to learn you people how to do things.

So, today, I will present THE EASY WAY TO BUILD A GRID!

This revolves around a tool (a spreadsheet) created by Mike Wiley. Mike is awesome. He's The Mike. He wanted me to put his e-mail address here, in case anyone wanted to reach out to him, so... willeym@comcast.net.

This tool creates a fast, easy way for you to input information and get the MU code to actually do stuff. This was built for TinyMUX (I think) and so might not work on other MU servers, but I think it should.

Without further adieu, here it is: @Diggy Diggy Hole

Note: It's Google Docs. If you don't have a google account, I strongly suggest stepping forward to year 2009 and getting one. This Google Doc is also set to read-only, so y'all can't use it. You have to copy it to your own personal google drive (via File -> Make a Copy...).

Overview

Diggy Diggy Hole contains 3 tabs. The first (Template) is the template, into which you will input information. The second (Preview) shows a preview of what you will see in the MU itself. The last tab (Commands) will give you the actual output. You will copy and paste this into your MU and it will make things do.

Instructions

Move to your starting point. This could be your build nexus, or in another room that you want to add an additional room to. This tool will create the new room, apply descriptions and drops and etc to the entrance/exit, then move you into the room, and apply the room desc. Finally, the tool will add desc/drop to the exit (which I guess links to your starting location).

Example:

From within the room "The Loop", I am going to create a room for "Wicker Park". I start in The Loop, then copy and paste all the commands into the MU. It creates Wicker Park, puts me into Wicker Park, then descs that room, and then descs the exit to get me back to The Loop.

Considerations

This creates one room, and one entrance/exit. If you need multiple entrances/exits (like, you can get into this building from the sewer, or the street), you will need to do that all on your own.

This tool assumes you will type "out" to get out of the new room and back to the starting location. In the case that the room has multiple exists, you'll want to edit the command and remove "out" and "o" before you run it.

Google Sheets doesn't seem to always spell check. So make sure to actually tell it to spell check.

And that's all I got for now. As people look this over, I'm sure they'll find something I said/did wrong, and I'll add them to this post.

@tinuviel said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:

@admiral said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:

I'd appreciate you not abusing your position.

What position do you imagine he has?

I could imagine @Thenomain in a few positions.

Deep in the outer rim lies a small system with a single habitable planet. Life here is difficult, food is scarce, and comforts are few and far between. Toxic gas covers most of the planet. The native species remains perpetually hostile. Smugglers and criminals hide from the authorities here. A few years ago, the Galactic Empire decided Chontio’s odd crystals were valuable enough to invest in the planet, and with the Empire came stability and wealth… as well as an ever-tightening collar and simmering frustrations. The local government, the Tageeri Confederation, now balances its freedom against its alliance with the Empire.

Player Characters will help guide the Tageeri Confederation and the people of Chontio through the process of contact with the Empire, criminal syndicates, and native forces, cooperating and competing to get the Confederation to a position they want.

Welcome to Chontio.

Chontio is an on-line storytelling based game, utilizing Fantasy Flight Game's Star Wars system. We use Age of Rebellion as the primary source for game mechanics, AresMUSH as our game server, and lore created by the Chontio dev team as well as taken from the greater Star Wars Universe. For information about Chontio and the game, please see our wiki here: http://chontio.aresmush.com/wiki/home

Please note that while the most of our theme and setting has been fleshed out, we are still very much so in development. The wiki will be steadily changing as we add more information and attempt to clean up the flow and feel. This does not mean do not ask questions. Please, feel free!

Chontio is NOT OPEN. You cannot create a character or log in. We anticipate going live on December 1, 2018.

We have also decided to not make a Discord server, so the best place to reach staff ( @AlexRaymond and @skew ) is right here in MSB.

We are also looking for other people who might want to help. At present, that means anyone that would like to help create our grid.

Hello MUers! @Tat showed me BeipMU. Now I'm officially off PotatoMU and onto BeipMu and you should too.

Why BeipMU?

• Spawn windows that are (mostly) better than Potato.
• Multiple input windows (YES FINALLY)
• Active support/community/development.
• Unicode, emoji, full color support.
• Ability to do, like, all the things.

Get BeipMU

First off, BeipMU looks like it's from 1998. Because it is. But it's being actively developed! So let's just move past that.

Anyways, you can go to the website here: https://beipdev.github.io/BeipMU/ And you can install it through the Windows Store here: https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/9NBLGGH4TRSV

Or get the latest release directly here: https://github.com/BeipDev/BeipMU/releases/download/v279/BeipMU_279.zip

For reference, that link above will become outdated if there's a new release, so if you're reading this months after it's posted, go here, look for latest release: https://github.com/BeipDev/BeipMU/releases

Start Using BeipMU

If you downloaded the .zip file, you only need to unzip it in the directory you want it to to live. There's an "assets" directory, which can just stay there, but is not necessary (it contains some sample config information, some sample worlds, etc). The program will write a config file in /%APPDATA%/BeipMU folder, if that's the kinda thing you think about.

Run BeipMU.exe!

There's a very nice starting starting guide, so please check that out. But here's the QUICK GUIDE for lazy MUers:

• Click Connection on the top bar. Click Connect....
• Click New... at bottom. Click Server. This part should hopefully be straight forward! You probably want to set Text Encoding to UTF8.
• Click New... again and this time choose Character. This is where we need to add some things.
  • Connect String: This is everything you want the client to send once it receives a response from the server. At the most basic, this is going to be connect <name> <password>. This is also where you'll set up a lot of extras, but we'll get to that LATER! Note: Each line is a separate command, so you don't need ; or anything between them.
  • Connect at startup: Check!
  • Log File...: Click this, browse to where you want your log file saved, and then enter the name of the log file, such as arx_mycharactername.txt. You'll then choose Append current date to log file name so you have a daily log.

And now click Connect at bottom. There ya go, you're connected!

But skew, you promised spawns and two inputs windows! ... Yeah, that's coming in the next post.

@ortallus For you and anyone else that might stumble across... The (very) short version:

Arx is an original fantasy setting based in a very large city (Arx). The mystical and magical are slowly reawakening as the people of Arx rediscover old allies, old enemies, old magics, and the like. The came centers around Arx, which is the seat of power of the Compact - a kingdom formed by the alliance of 5 great houses. The mood there is mostly urban, the theme is fairly relaxed and easy, and the story that is provided is impossibly vast.

By impossibly vast, I mean, you can spend a few RL weeks investigating some oddity and end up finding some 100 year old note that some knight wrote to her liege, which describes some foul evil on the horizon. It's that level of depth in the lore. It's awesome.

@Rinel Hate to be "that guy"... but you might want to just move to Beip.

https://musoapbox.net/topic/2676/how-to-beipmu-the-best-mu-client-for-windows

It has all the features of Potato, and then some. Most importantly it's actively developed and has great support.

Chontio is officially down. The game mostly went down in April of '19, but I didn't have the heart to actually take down the server until today. So, if anyone stumbles across this advert, please know it's no longer working!

Also, AresMUSH has a very handy feature that parses your entire wiki (including character pages and logs) into HTML (thank you @faraday , you're awesome), which I've used. If anyone is curious about any old scenes, you can feel free to let me know.

Sorry if this has already been said, didn't really want to sift through 250 whatever replies. But...

Anyone who knows me knows my opinion of MuSoapBox is quite poor. I think the value in this place comes from advertisements, how-tos, code posts, and other such things that are positive, helpful, and generally not opinion based. So my vote is if the administrators are looking to do something, police those areas a little more firmly.

Ex: Replies to advertisements should be things like "Sorry, how do I connect?" "Please link website" "I just started playing here, if anyone else wants to join" and other positive, helpful responses. Replies to questions about "How do I make TinyMux output a list in reverse order" should be technical responses, not people's thoughts and feelings about the posters intent with their code project.

This has mostly all been covered, but I wanted to toss in some screen shots.

First, if you're playing on a game that's TinyMUX and uses the "usual" +poseorder code, you can do something like... &posebreak me=%r%b%b%[[%xh[name(%#)]%xn]%]

This will add a line break before a pose and the name of who is posing, so you can more easily track certain individuals.
So instead of...

This is the pose done by Ephemeris. This is where Ephea has said stuff. 
This is the pose done by Asteria. This is where Asteria has said stuff.

You get...

  [Ephemeris] 
This is the pose done by Ephemeris. This is where Ephea has said stuff. 

  [Asteria]
This is the pose done by Asteria. This is where Asteria has said stuff.

If your game client doesn't have customizable posebreak, please talk to the game admins! You can also ask if there's a "no spoof" command, such as on Arx. That helps.

Next, as @Roz said you can set quotes to highlight, and names to highlight.

For quotes, do "matches regexp" and "(.+?)". Do it again for smart quotes: “(.+?)”. I chose to use a color that's not BRIGHT WHITE because Atlantis' default colors blend together (white and highlight are the same, I think?).

Next, make sure you have your name + the name of people you are keeping up with highlighted. If the name is something unique, just do "is" and "name". And set a ton of them, to include all your nicknames, friends, whatever you want.

Finally, sometimes you'll have a name that's very common and appears throughout the game. Example: On Arx, "Mae" is part of "Maelstrom". So we can do a regexp to make sure it ONLY matches the word exactly. So, it'll match Mae and not mae or Maelstrom.

Finally, a lot of games don't use +posebreak, or their +posebreak doesn't make noise. I find the ding letting me know when something happens is very helpful. So what you can do, in Atlantis, is set an Event so it catches some text and dings. This is a two-part process. FIRST, you need the &posebreak code I posted above. Then, go to "Events" and "New Event". For the Conditions, click "Add condition..." and choose "Text: Matches Pattern". Now, I think you could just put in * and that'd be ok. But for me, l did "contains" and then I input the name of the person I'm RPing with. Yes, that means I need to update this, but it's really not an issue for me.
Next, go to "Actions" and choose "Add Action..." and pick "Atlantis: Beep". There you have it, you'll get beeped when a certain poses. Great in small scenes and in big scenes, where you're RPing mostly with a single person.

Please just holler if you can think of something else that might help you! I might be able to make it work.

@wizz said in Halp Me @ Arx:

@kanye-qwest

I already promised someone I was going to lead a small village in song and get an innocent old man committed to an asylum, I can dig it

It's really the kinda thing you have to lean into.

I never intended to stay here and post a lot, but I've been drawn in, and rambling all over the place, so I guess it's time that I identify myself.

Before finding the MU world in 2013, I was mostly RPing on player-ran Ultima Online servers. Anyone play on those?

Since I found MUing...

Past:

The Reach: Claudio; Betsy Carver; EZ Buteau; Florent Fabre; Whitewater (staff)
Requiem for Kingsmouth: Oscar Curran; Green (for RfK not-reboot)
Eldritch: Joey Winter
Bump In The Night: Infestissumam (staff); Joey
Star Wars DOD: Poy Ven
Arx: Cassius (the second one); Jack (original); Kaede
Fallen World: skew (staff); Karma
_Addie

Present:
Arx: Mae
Fate's Harvest: Flatirons (staff)
SF MUX: Ephemeris
Spirit Lake: Green
Chontio: Skew (staff/owner)

Update: We've set a very loose timeline to get us toward a December 1 open date. Progress has been very fast, and using the FFG Star Wars system Faraday already had installed (and has quickly tinkered whenever we found something we didn't understand) has been very simple. Customizing Ares to look and feel and output information we want has been very straightforward.

I also want to add: there's no bells and no whistles. Our system has chargen, sheets, dice, XP, story points, and whatever else is built into AresMUSH. That's it. This game will emphasize stories and RP, not automated systems, minigames, etc. Combat will be done like on a pen and paper game, without automated NPCs or any such thing. No coded space flight (and, really, most of the game will take place in one small space), no dog fights, no... you get the idea.

That said, we are still discussing how to handle aspects that are easy to track in a tabletop, but not exactly easy or balanced on a MUSH. Things like, how do I buy/upgrade my spaceship. We'll get there! I'll add that we are fixing to learn Ruby and Ares to make some tweaks, but that's way down the road talk.

For anyone that's excited and wants more detail, in a week or two we're hoping to show off the public wiki which will help people that are planning characters.

Self plug:

poseorder and repose.

I find these two help people stay in character and don't have to ask questions OOC, don't have to be reminded it's their turn, don't have to scroll back through bboard or job spam to find the most recent poses. Poseorder, in particular, with it's BEEP! is absolutely great for living real life while RPing.

Chontio still exists! Technically. Because I've not had the time to box it all up for safe keeping. So... you can feel free to browse the wiki! http://chontio.aresmush.com/

When we made Chontio, I was aiming for a very original story set in the Star Wars universe. My hope was to pull far enough away from the extended Star Wars lore that casual fans could feel comfortable in the world, yet still have it be authentically Star Wars. I aimed right in between the Star Wars fanatic and the average MUer.

I missed both groups.

Were I to do it again, I'd not use FFG. As Faraday says, people want ships and guns and fiddly systems that I didn't have (and didn't want). People want that grit of a Star Wars game, which includes the books and books of lore and history. I didn't have this, and more than a few players left exactly because of this.

On the other end, players were turned off by having to learn a new system that is, imo, horrible for a MU. No fault of Faraday, she did a great job implementing it. It's just not a MU-friendly system.

Were I to redo this, I'd have used FS3 and tweaked it. As @Warma-Sheen said, we used very mild force powers, wherein it was rare but everyone could have access... no way you couldn't easily redo that (as Grey-Harbor has done with glimmer).

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY... In order to run a MU, you need some really good staffers and some really dedicated players. Most of the people who offered to help me never did (shout out to @farfalla and @Brunocerous for did a LOT of helping!). Most of the players who were most excited left the fastest.

Still love Star Wars. Still think it's a great setting for a MU world, which allows enough tech to feel modern, yet enough antiquity to capture some of that "wild west" old style world.

Expanding a little on Rebel vs Empire, Fringer vs Empire, etc, (and maybe repeating myself or @AlexRaymond ?)...

Players will be in the Tageeri Confederation, the governing body of Chontio. All characters will be similarly aligned: they want the Confederation to succeed. What "success" means will be defined by the character (and the most of the application process). Could be you want to snuggle up to the Empire. Could be you want to start a revolution. Whatever the case, we're aiming for "people trying to do good that might get in each other's way". And if that's not clear enough, no one will be playing a member of the Empire or the Rebellion, though you can potentially end up working for either.

And now an update!

• We are writing pages and pages of lore, setting information, plots, etc.
• We have decided we will only be using the Age of Rebellion book, with the exception of Species. We will be pulling in most of the species from the other two books. This might mean adding additional talents that are tied to species or just adjusting the template to use existing talents. Still in the works.
• We will not be using the Destiny mechanic. It's very, very cool to use in a tabletop setting, but in a MU, it doesn't feel like it's going to work (plus, the code mechanics are going to be repurposed).

I think our state goal (to each other) was to have the wiki public by the end of next week. I think we're on track for that.

We are almost to a point where we're going to start building the grid. I've received zero (0) offers to help design a grid, so I could definitely use a lil help! If anyone is interested, hit me up. I know someone out there wants to desc a cantina...

Since I started working on Chontio, I've been watching @Tat build this game up. Listening to how things went in alpha. Trading code. Receiving wisdom and then offering whatever I could, when I could. I am very excited to see this going live!

HYPE!

@secretfire Hi! First off, we're doing our story dev in google docs. So, if you found our wiki (which honestly takes a little trying, as we've not shared it!), you're looking at some pretty slim information.

Moving past that... It seems to me you have some very specific experiences you're drawing from. I do not have the same ones, so I'm really not sure how to address most of this. PCs will be on a planet that's backwater, but still bustling. The main will have some 150,000 residents, and will consist of a blend of species. I don't know where you're getting anything about "no aliens". We're all aliens here - the natives species is totally different! PCs will be interacting with the GMs and the story, which will range from fending off threats to illegal speeder bike races to trying to survive brutal conditions outside the city.

You are correct that everyone being in the same "faction" will limit conflict. That's the idea. This is a collaborative game. But I just don't see a lack of other PCs fighting one another as limiting. And even then, PCs may find themselves at odds, as their idea for the planet goes in different directions.

And now, for all PCs being the same, I really have no answer to that. Characters will be whatever characters wish to be. Pilots, smugglers, soldiers, doctors. They'll pursue alliances, help the Empire spread it's propaganda, rob Imperial convoys, do battle with the native species, fall in love, buy nice hats...

In conclusion, I'm just not sure what it is you have in your head. If the big concern is "how will this game be interesting if players are not fighting each other", the answer is ultimately storytelling. I hope that helps!

@ThatOneDude said in Interest/Volunteer Check: Major Multisphere Chronicles of Darkness:

In regards to a new game... I'm hoping someone(s) can inject some sanity into whatever shitshow of a Law sphere @tragedyjones is trying to put together.

Sounds like there are some sane people out there and I hope they get heard

Just speak plainly. You want to steal from FBI agents and shoot cops and not go to jail, because you like a game where you can break the law and not go to jail. Get that out of the way, and the conversation might get more productive.