Best posts made by skew

If anyone is looking for some new music, a more diverse selection, etc, etc...

http://spotify-starwars.com/

Someone at Star Wars (like, the official whatever) has made up playlists for 22 different Star Wars characters, based on music to fit that character, or something. If you already have Spotify, it'll scan your listening history and tell you who your tastes resemble. If you don't have Spotify, you should be able to browse/search for the Star Wars user to see them and listen... listening is free (with ads) and can be done via the web player.

So far, the lists are really good. One of my dear friends pointed out it's a little lame that Rey and Padme get all chick pop music but... besides that, good!

@HelloProject I didn't really read anything but the first page of posts, but I did want to toss out my most important bit of advice, as it didn't look like it's been said.

Surround yourself with people who like you and support you.

I know the idea of surrounding yourself with "yes men" is seen as very toxic. Surely, it can be a problem. But I've never seen a game owner struggle more than when they had to argue at length with their own staffers. It's truly exhausting and it's generally very bad for the game. If someone disagrees with you, that's fine, you can have a talk, but more often you will see a handful of staffers continually disagree with the head staffer. They harp on things, they continually bring it up, they refuse to let it go. If you find yourself with people like that on your staff, show them the door.

Because, ya know what? If you're doing silly things, your players will let you know. You don't need to get attacked on staff channel for it, too.

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

Actually Constructive About Hobby On A Board About Hobby

You have no idea how much this means to me.

The rest of you should get back to work.

@surreality I think it'd be nice if people just linked to images, instead of embedding them. That way, if you want to see my big image, or my reaction gif, or whatever else, you click and go.

I think that'd be a more positive message for me to have posted than the one I originally did. And that more positive message brought around by your passive aggression and sarcasm, which was super classy and not at all shaming.

Hate to be that guy but could we please keep the thread focused just on Potato MU Client?

And the Chontio web archive is live! Much love to Farday.

https://arescentral.aresmush.com/wiki/chontio/index.html

Look + Feel

So, I won't spend much time here. You want to update the font of the input, the output, whatever? Just right click on the window you want to change and click Settings.... It's pretty straight forward.

Spawn Windows

Here's Beip's guide to spawn windows.

And now here's how I do it. This is what my screen looks like:

On the right, I have all my chat channels spawned. This way everything is still on screen (I don't like tabs/windows/etc) but it's not in my actual scene/rp feed. Now, you can do multiple windows (via puppet windows). But that'll come in a later post (because I frankly don't know how to set it up).

To do the above...

• Create A Trigger: Go to Options on the top, then Triggers...
• You can create a trigger globally, by server, or by character. Choose which one you want to use, then click New in the bottom left.
• On most the games I play, channels are like [Chat]. So, I am going to choose to capture every line that starts with [<Anything Here>] ... and shunt them into the same window. If your game uses different ways to flag channels, or if they use the same marker for channels as they do other things, you should yell at them. Then you set up multiple triggers for your channels.
• To capture all channels, set Matcharoo to: ^\[([^]]+)\] and then check Regular Expression.
• On the Spawn tab, check Active and then input a Window Title. For me, I just did "Channels". If you have multiple triggers (say, you need to individually capture [Chat] and [Help] and whatever else) you can have them go to the same window, or multiple windows. Windows are actually the panes I show in the screenshot.
• That will get your spawn made! Except, the spawn doesn't spawn until it actually receives something, so there's one more step to do!
• Go back into your connection settings, as mentioned above. In the Connect String for the character, input a new line that looks like this: /receive [Channel] stuff. The /receive command will output whatever you send after it onto the screen, pretending it's been received from the MU. So, that's it! Spawns!

Two Input Windows

BeipMU is largely command driven, and the "two input windows" functionality is command driven. Which is to say, you need to send a command to create a second input window. Simple!

• In your Connect String, mentioned in the previous post, you need to input this: /newinput
• If you're using spawn windows, you might want to do /delay 2s /newinput instead. This will ensure the new input opens AFTER the spawn, so that it tucks nicely next to the spawn window.

Other Triggers

This is pretty straight forward...

• Create A Trigger: Go to Options on the top, then Triggers...
• You can create a trigger globally, by server, or by character. Choose which one you want to use, then click New in the bottom left.

Name Highlight:

• Matcharoo: Your character name
• Options: Check "Whole Word"
• On the Appearance tab, check "Change Foreground", then click Foreground... and choose the color you want.

Quote Highlight:

• Matcharoo: "(.+?)"
• Options: Regular Expression
• Appearance tab: Change Foreground, then click Foreground...

Pose Order Alert
This is for Ares, adjust accordingly...

• Matcharoo: %% It's your turn to pose.
• Options: Whole Word
• Sound tab: Check "Play Sound" then choose the sound. On Windows 10, I used: C:\Windows\media\tada.wav cause it's great.

Page Highlights

• Matcharoo: ^(From afar|Long distance to|\S.{1,20} pages|You paged .+? with).*$
• Options: Regular Expression
• Appearance tab: Change Foreground, then click Foreground...

Want more?!!?!?

Join the Discord server. There's some really great folks here. https://discord.gg/3A5quTU

Seriously, join. I promised Bennet a buncha people bothering him!

This is probably self-horn-tooty but... I'm really pleased with the number of people returning, and the number of new players joining. Still small, but finding a scene seems pretty easy. Players hanging about are friendly and helpful. It's good.

Also, way to go @SunnyJ on the wiki revamp. Looks great.

This will walk you through enable spellcheck on the Potato MU client. This was originally posted on Fallcoast (don't recall the author) and I forgot to save it somewhere, then got a new computer, and had to figure it out again. So I'm putting it here!

Install Instructions

Potato uses the aspell spellchecker for accomplish this feature, so first install aspell. The windows version can be found here: http://aspell.net/win32/

Look for "Full Installer". It should download a .exe file that you can run. You can leave all the settings as-is. Once this is complete, go back to the aspell.net page and snag the appropriate language file. That's likely English. This should download another .exe file, and if you used the default settings for the first install, you can use the default settings for this install. Just make sure it ends up in the same spot.

Once that is installed, open up Potato. From within Potato, go to Options - > Configure program settings. In the Program Configuration window, go to Program Settings, then Misc Settings. You should see a field for "ASpell Executable". Input the location that you installed the ASpell executable. If you stuck with the defaults, it should be: C:\Program Files (x86)\Aspell\bin\aspell.exe (assuming you have a 64 bit machine, which most people do these days.)

Once that is in, you should be done. I believe the default is command to activate spellcheck is Ctrl+S -- if it's not, you can go to Options -> Customize Keyboard Shortcuts. You can also click Edit -> Check Spelling.

Please note that there is no "on line" spell check. It doesn't underline words you spelled wrong, but instead opens a window to check.

Troubleshooting

If you hit Ctrl+S and nothing happens, check to make sure you have the keyboard shortcut.

If you definitely have the keyboard shortcut and nothing happens, it means it's not finding aspell.exe, so make sure the path you specified in the Program Configuration window is correct.

If the window opens and you receive an error saying something like "No words found" or "no language found" or something, it means you did not install the language file. Go back to that step, download the language file, install the language file.

As some of you have read, Bump In The Night MUX is closing on August 1st (tomorrow, that is). In the last few days, we (Infestissumam and Amoracchius) plotted up some events and rolled them out, to offer a send off to the game, and attempt to tie up some loose ends, to end stories, to move to the next chapter, etc.

As very few people actually got to see that ending, and those that did have a general desire to have just a little more time to see their story to a close, I've created a play-by-post game for the BITN Epilogue. My intention is to present some details as to what happened, and what the hunters of Southern Maryland would know, and then give players a chance to share how their characters would deal with it all. It will also be a fun place to share the details of your character that you were excited about, but that never quite came up in game. Oh, and, also, I guess you could use this as a means to not lose contact with the people from BITN that you'll miss.

All that said, it's here: http://www.ongoingworlds.com/games/2612

Right now, I'm still typing stuff up, but the last two event logs are posted. More is coming shortly! Feel free to make an account, make a character, and joint he game. I'll be checking every so often to approve new characters to the game.

There's a pretty steep learning curve coming into the hobby of MUing. Getting over that initial hurdle requires some hand holding. In an effort to make that a little easier, @Caryatid has made a new player guide! I've seen similar on different MUs, but I feel that this one is pretty good, and pretty thorough. Note that it's meant to be a general guide, and you might want to edit it with your own relevant information. We've adapted it and put it up on BITN's page.

With @Caryatid's permission (who is just too dang shy to post on her own), I am sharing her work. You are free to use and adapt this guide to your own MU, just please be sure to credit "Caryatid@MSB".

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kz7UlwY8Qytm4j7TgVN72jjRStKPWpGeAJNmfbK7_Vw/edit?usp=sharing

Does anyone remember Ultima Online? Before I started MUing, I was RPing on an RP-enforced UO server, ran by regular(ish) people. We hunted trolls, we told stories, we had fun. That started back in 2000... Now, after a few years hiatus, Dark Age is back!

The RP in this environment is no MUing by any stretch, but it is decidedly deeper than the RP you find on many MMOs. Characters have thorough backgrounds, the plot is ever developing, the gameplay is meant to be immersive. Dark Age is set in a world where trolls and undead prowl, magic is uncommon and feared, and the nobility fight to maintain order in a Federation shakily rebuilt from the ashes of a formerly great kingdom.

Anyone who's interested can go here: http://da-redemption.com/ ... There's a link to the Discord channel, which is probably the best place to start if you've never played Ultima Online before. You can also message me here, I'm more than happy to answer questions.

And now some samples of what the game looks like:

Oh man. I hear that Mae character from Arx is pretty cool...

Potato is the best MU client, but some people struggle to use it. The documentation on the site is a little difficult to follow, and some of the features are not very intuitive. As such, I'm putting together a little How To so we can all use the best MU client.

Why's it the best? Easy. It has two input windows. That means when you're in the middle of Hot TS and get paged a dank meme, you don't have to ctrl+a ctrl+x to save your half-written pose while you respond to @tragedyjones about how dank his memes are.

Example:

Sweet right? Okay, so, set up isn't very hard. Input a name, address, port for your MU. It'll then open the world configuration menu.

"Worlds" are self contained configuration thingies within Potato. You can configure the default world ("Options" -> "Configure Program Settings") as well as Program Settings, and all the future Worlds you create will pull from the default. Me? I just copy my existing world and modify it.

Within Program Settings, here's some things that are useful:

Under Program Settings -> Misc Settings
Start Maximized? (probably uncheck that)

Within World settings ("Options" -> "Configure Worlds"), here's some things that are useful:

Basics:

• Select Default Char (only after you have added a char)

Characters:

• Add your character. Add multiple. The world can be set to auto-connect to the default character. If you want multiple auto connects to multiple characters, you create multiple worlds.

Display/Ansi, Colors and Fonts:

• Configure your font. Pretty simple.

Display/Miscellaneous:

• This is where you save the Wrap Text size! Go in here, choose "Current Window Size"
• Echo Sent Commands? will make sure your text doesn't echo. Unless you want it to... weirdo.
• Two Input Windows? Uncheck if you hate the best things in life.

Activity Settings:

• Flash Taskbar? This will make if flash when there's activity.
• Show activity, clear activity. This will add a yellow "New Activity" marker on the screen that's held until there's a new, New Activity marker (if you have it clear).

So, that should get you in! Now, some things that might be useful to you...

Edit/Convert...

• Convert Returns to %r - If you copy and paste text into the input box, you can run this command to remove the lines.
• Escape Special Chars - this applies the \ in front of all special characters so they don't get read by the MU code.

Logging

• You can turn this on to easily log a current scene. You can even have it grab everything in the cache. I don't use it, though, because I auto-log! I'll show you how to do that later.

Tools

• Text Editor - Opens a separate window for you to input text. This is useful to have a big writing area. You can then choose to send this text into the window. Just make sure you send it to THE CORRECT WORLD. It's active for the world that was open when you clicked it, not the world that's currently selected.

So, that's it for now... next post will be logging, then next will be events and spawn windows.

EDIT:

I did a write up on how to use spellchecking within Potato on a separate thread. Just for organizational sake, it's here: http://musoapbox.net/topic/840/how-to-use-spellcheck-on-potato-mu-client

And for any of the random people reading this that are clueless... my Arx character got second place in a contest and the prize (that she chose) was a dog (and Arx has coded animal companions).

I give you Scourge, Fang of the Marsh.

.---------------------->Physical Characteristics<---------------------.
|                                                                     |
| Species: Dog?           Gender: Male            Age: Adult?         | 
| Height: 11 inches       Eye Color: Black                            |
| Hair Color: White       Skin Tone: Patchy                           |
.---------------------------------------------------------------------.

((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))
 )@(                                                    )@(
((@))   What is this creature? It certainly bears no   ((@))
 )@(    resemblance to any one animal at first sight.   )@(
((@))   It is tiny, no more than six or seven pounds,  ((@))
 )@(    it most looks like some disturbing mix of dog   )@(
((@))   and some large water rat.  Long, silken white  ((@))
 )@(    fur covers the head, ears and tail as well as   )@(
((@))   each of the paws from the elbows down,  while  ((@))
 )@(    the the rest of the body is utterly, entirely   )@(
((@))   bald.  The flesh of its body is  spotted pink  ((@))
 )@(    and gray.  Those fluffy locks whip around  as   )@(
((@))   he walks around.  Beyond  his odd appearance,  ((@))
 )@(    the creature has a terrible aggressiveness, a   )@(
((@))   near permanent snarl on his thin muzzle.  His  ((@))
 )@(    large beady eyes look out at the  world as if   )@(
((@))   he is just waiting  to take a bite out of it.  ((@))
 )@(               http://bit.ly/2jnDG32               )@(
((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))((@))

Hi All,

I have finished my Pose Order Machine, and I'd be more than happy to share it with whomever would like to use it. At present, this code is running on Fallen World MUX and Shadows Over Reno MUSH. So far, there have been no issues reported (though, admittedly, there are only a few people using it).

Overview:

The code is designed to alert players when it's their turn to pose, as well as keep track of pose order. It is entirely opt-in (as in, you need to turn your alerts on), though you can always use +poseorder to see who last posed, how long ago, etc. If a player doesn't pose for 45 minutes or leaves the room or disconnects, they will be wiped from the pose order.

Note that the alert can be set to BEEP at you. This functionality is supported by TinyMUX, but I've been told some clients will not process the beep/bell.

Code details:

This code ties into the @hook object. If your game has +poseorder, there's a good chance that this will work. Each time a pose is sent (@em, pose, ", , :, whatever) it logs the time and dbref of the poser to the local room object. Each time an additional pose is sent, it clears that player's existing pose. The hook will also process the list, decide who is 'next up' and send out an alert.

To clear out idle players, and those no longer in the room, I am using Myrddin's mushcron, and it is set up to run every minute and check for idle players.

I have attempted to make this as easy to install as possible. It's mean to go through Muxify ( http://muxify.musoapbox.net/editor.html ), with some comments being doing in block, while others are done as @@. It's likely not going to come out of muxify exactly perfect, but hopefully it's pretty close! NOTE: Muxify will not work on my Chrome or Edge. Use Firefox.

If you have any questions, if you'd like help installing, etc, etc, please just ping me here, or on Fallen World MUX as skew, or Shadows Over Reno MUSH as skew. This is the first code I've ever shared, and so I'm fairly sure I borked something up, so please don't hesitate to poke me, and please be vigilant installing it.

The code can be found here: https://github.com/skewskewskew/MUSHCode/blob/master/Pose Order Machine <POM>

Cheers!

His schedule (and life) is drifty, but nothing terrible has happened. Just extra busy and will hopefully be back soonish.

We've got a few colorblind players on Chontio, and I've been piping feedback back to @faraday as it comes up. Its been minimal. Things like... the default AresCentral setting for pages was %xb, I think? It's %xh%xg now (or something). We will continue to keep eyes open!

And, ofc, if anyone sees anything on Chontio that touches on accessibility, just lemme know (or, ya know, let Farday know).

Trying out Fear and Loathing. On there as Olesia.

@scar That was me! Still have the doll you made me.

Idea sounds wonderful. I regularly think about playing in a Star Wars universe without any of the, uh, Star Wars? I really dig the tech level, the way the government works, the mood and feel of the worlds. It all really interests me, but I hate the idea of being beholden (entirely) to a story that's fixed, or even a story where the "heroes" and "villains" are so well defined.

All that said, no idea how I can help. Compared to most everyone else here, I'm probably on the bottom end of the "Fan Knowledge" ladder. But I'll be happy to offer what I can?