Best posts made by Sparks

Roz, you're running an unreleased 0.9.9.5 version I rolled that uses Notification Center rather than the old Growl embedded style; that might be the difference you're seeing there.

If it's horribly broken for others, you can try the unreleased 0.9.9.5 at http://riverdark.net/atlantis/downloads/Atlantis-0.9.9.5.zip — that should at least work a little better on modern versions of macOS.

Edit: I tried to release an 0.9.9.6 fully-64-bit version, but it seems to break scroll wheels and a few other things, so I've pulled that and will keep poking at it.

@Arkandel said in Saving Pages to the Database:

@faraday Encrypt pages with public keys possessed by all parties who want this feature enabled.

Then if any one of them wants to release their contents they can, if not staff can't look at them anyway.

Either you have to store the pages unencrypted in the database for page/recall or the web integration to work (in which case there's no place for encryption in the flow, because the pages are stored decrypted, the thing you wanted to avoid), or you need the user to provide their private key every time they receive a page or use page/recall (impractical and annoying), or you need to have them upload the private key to the game to be used on their behalf to decrypt pages without providing it every time (in which case the key is in the database and the entire thing is pointless because if your worry is "staff might read my stuff", they can still do so as they have your private key on file).

Sure, there are some hacky ways you could try to make it work (writing a custom client for those who want to use telnet, or having the decryption done in JavaScript using a key stored in local storage, and saying pages can only be used from the web portal), but none seem appreciably better.

Unless I misunderstand the Ares design—which is possible, I've only poked at it in small bits thus far—and the database does not play any role in passing information between the telnet side and the Rails web side, this just doesn't seem a practical place to use public key encryption.

I think Faraday's right and Ares isn't MUD-like at all; a MUD user would feel far less at home there than a MUSHer would. A Diku or LP user would feel lost on BSU, while someone coming from a Penn-based FS3 game would feel right at home.

But beyond that: I feel like people assume "MUD-like" has character levels, advancement between those levels, coded equipment, mobs that you can fight in an automated manner, etc. Which doesn't match either Ares or, honestly, the vast majority of the Evennia-based games I've seen.

@thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@tnp said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@buttercup That dog looks like Hitler.

You just invoked Godwin's Dog.

I think you meant Dogwin's Law.

@friarzen said in Space Games and Travel Time? Why? Why Not?:

Huh, I'm surprised to realize how good a setting like Stargate Universe is for this. A single "giant" ship as "game/grid hub" that moves through different star-systems-of-the-week, shuttles for any space-sim minigames wanted, and stargates for instant travel whenever the plot needs it.

I actually had a MUSH I put together—and then never opened—based around Stargate Command. There were little 'soundstages' for any given planet, which would each be linked to a gate address, and the gate could then be dialed to re-link the gate exit in the game room to that particular little set of rooms.

The idea was that all the 'downtime' RP was at the SGC, so everyone was in one place. There would be a 'season-long' arc overseen by staff, but a lot of the actual meat would be individual offworld missions run as PRPs. You'd get together an SG team, dial the gate, poof to whatever little set the PRP runner needed, they'd run things for you there, and then you'd dial home and go back to the SGC.

When I had no other staffers, though, I decided I was not up to running a game solo and put it aside. Years later, I considered using the same MUSH codebase for an SG:A game instead of SGC, but didn't end up doing so.

Several years ago, I ended up playing on a Mass Effect game which had a similar setup; the playerbase were a mercenary crew based on Omega (a former mining station turned sort of lawless outpost). All the downtime and day-to-day RP happened on Omega, and then staff or a player would run a 'mission' that the mercs would be hired for, and a team would be put together, leave Omega, do stuff, and come back. (And a lot of the staff-run missions tied together into a given metaplot arc, while the PRPs were usually more standalone.) So even though there was a whole galaxy that the mercs could end up taking jobs in, everyone would still be together at 'home base' as it were.

I think if you're doing a game with a huge multi-planet scope, something like that makes more sense to do if you want the playerbase to actually have any cohesion and excuse to all interact with each other.

I want to see post-post-apocalyptic solarpunk or hopepunk games. The apocalypse happened, society collapsed and crumbled, and now it's much later. Humanity has rebuilt, but things are different and the ruins of the world from before the apocalypse are the relics that dot theirs.

It doesn't have to be idyllic (that would be boring), but it shouldn't just be a blasted landscape full of people trying to survive. I want to see what they built afterwards, and where society goes after that. I want immense buildings now overgrown by forests and retaken by nature. I want the world that came before to be remembered only in those ruins and in stories carried on for generations.

City of Ember. Broken Empire. Elger and the Moon. Nausicaä. Horizon Zero Dawn.

...actually, wait, forget just the "general post-post-apocalyptic setting" part. What I want is a game literally based on either Nausicaä or Horizon Zero Dawn, or with a very similar feel to one or the other. Probably the latter, as it'd be more accessible to people.

@Ganymede That's fair. And I do really enjoy long-term relationship RP, and how it can affect characters, and have an established relationship with. I will admit I didn't consider that part the "love story"—rather the aftermath—but I can see some people meaning that when they refer to it as the 'love story'. And hey, if it's a sustainable relationship, that's great! Those are the best kinds!

But I do honestly believe many players who are into "love stories" in their RP are focused on the initial romantic arc—the "we love each other" and overcoming the obstacles in order to be together—and not what comes afterwards. And the relationship does not have to be about TS in order to qualify.

@Auspice a couple of months ago we interviewed someone for an engineering position. She's brilliant, and a superb engineer, and absolutely deserves the job, but I won't lie: the fact that she's a gamer and plays D&D did figure into my "hire" vote for her over other candidates, too.

(Especially speaking as the DM who runs the company D&D campaign; one of my co-workers left and the party was down a cleric!)

@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

@sparks said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

but you have the same information on-game.

Not all of it though. The supplemental profile fields are only available on the web portal, as are the setting/wiki files, etc. Because seriously, double-coding everything is a PITA. The only reason as much of it exists in-game as it does is because there are still so many MUSHers who abjectly refuse to use the web portal at all.

Okay, but that's still within reason. Theme files being on the wiki, for instance, and the novella-length backgrounds and so on. The information that is referenced in both places pulls from the same backing store, which is the key.

@Tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Thenomain said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

When is customer service good?

In the context of being/working in customer service, there are occasions when you have truly exceptional customer interactions.

Honestly, my rule of thumb is "whatever is going wrong, it is not the fault of the person you are talking to." The interaction may not always be exceptional, but it should at the very least always be polite. (And even if it is their fault, assuming it's someone else's and acting accordingly will usually be a better path to resolution.)

I mean, if the delivery driver forgot part of your order, don't stand there and yell at them as though you're sure it's their fault; maybe it is, but someone else might have entered your order wrong, the person packing the order might have left something out, etc. If it's the driver's fault they probably feel bad enough already for the mistake, and if it wasn't their fault, being shouted at for someone else's mistake which they had no part in will not improve their night. Nor will it incline them favorably towards helping you solve the situation.

(And if they offer to go back and get the missing thing for you, always good to up the tip a bit to make up for the extra gas they used on that round trip!)

@thenomain said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

@sparks said in The Death Of Telnet: Is It Time To Face The Music?:

Everyone's already used to using the web browser for wiki

For using, yes. For coding, no. And this is something that we're slowly going toward. Evennia and Ares require a shift in how we code.

Well, I don't feel the same interface you use to play should be the same interface you use to code, honestly. (Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by this? I grant I may be.)

I mean, to my mind, one of the best things about Evennia or Ares is that I can use real development tools. I would argue that being able to use PyCharm or RubyMine as an IDE and step debug my code in an actual honest to god debugger is an immense step forward compared to setting an object TRACE, VERBOSE, and PUPPET and letting the spam wash over me.

And moreover, coding separately from the game interface frankly encourages a sandbox rather than just changing the game live; I can have my game in github or bitbucket or gitlab, make changes and try them on my local sandbox copy, find they work, push it to git, pull it on production, and reload the game. If something goes horribly wrong, I can relatively easily roll it back through the magic of source control.

@SG said in Game of Thrones:

On top of that, rumour has it, he writes on an air gaped 1990s era computer, and plans to retire if it ever fails.

The first part isn't rumor; he's outright said in interviews that he still writes on that old computer specifically because it can run WordStar. I don't know about the retirement part, though I could believe "if I can no longer find a computer that runs WordStar" would be a hard and fast condition to him for immediate retirement.

Still, I can actually understand that one.

Lots of writers have specific tools that work well for them and which they've developed their creative flow around. I know people who just write everything directly in Microsoft Word as one giant file. People who write individual chapters in Word as separate files (like my late writing mentor). People who swear by Scrivener and find it hard to really work in other text editors for writing fiction (hi, it me). Even people—very, very strange people—who write everything in raw LaTeX, and probably should look into some sort of therapy.

I personally write most stuff in Scrivener, because it fits my flow; I can keep all my notes and worldbuilding in the same file, I can tie it into Aeon Timeline to keep time straight in things, etc. And sometimes I get stuck; when that happens, I find I can get myself moving again if I go write longhand with a fountain pen for a while; it gets me out of my own head and into a different mental space than typing on a computer does.

When someone's writing routine is disrupted, it can really make it hard for them, though. There was a point where I tried writing a story in Word instead of Scrivener because it was all I had installed on that particular computer, and I just floundered. I know perfectly well how to use Word, but while it was open my brain was stuck in 'documents for work' mode rather than 'I am writing a story' mode and I just could not make the words come to me.

GRRM has been using WordStar since like the late 1980's, I think. So I can understand that with that much muscle memory for keystrokes and all, trying to move his writing process to a different program might very well feel almost impossible.

@duntada Absolutely no one will remember to hit the button. It would require changing years of ingrained habits.

@Kanye-Qwest said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

There's a test where they attach an eye tracker/head tracker and make you do a tedious attention game and I was looking away and back with a shake of my head every couple of seconds - that's something I do to refocus on what is in front of me.

This is the accursed QbTest I referred to, which my psychiatrist calls "the worst video game ever." (My psychiatrist is also ADHD, so firsthand understands how torturous that test is.)

Since I didn't want to move my head (as I'd been told a goal was to not move your head), my trick was to say under my breath what the shape/color was when it appeared; that made it far easier to focus on whether the next shape/color matched, without me glancing around/refocusing like that. (It was still super difficult not to look away from the screen. My neck and shoulders were so stiff from forcing myself not to move by the time it was done...)

But yes, as KQ said, developing coping/focusing tricks like that is very much an ADHD thing.

ETA: using timers is literally one of the three reasons I have a smartwatch. Being able to tap the button and say "set a timer for thirty minutes" or whatever keeps me functioning. When I don't set a timer, my tea ends up steeping for an hour or something instead of five minutes...

backs slowly away, staring at the flowchart like it might bite

Okay, I now understand why people complain that writing code for WoD MU*s is difficult. Because that is a bananapants system, and whoever is responsible should feel bad.

@faraday said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

Thinking about this today while on the support chat with Verizon.

Online chat/RP with ADD:

• Read message.
• Start thinking about reply.
• Get distracted.
• Some random amount of time later... "Did I reply to that? Crap."

To quote a common Tumblr response, "I feel called out by this post."

"Well, I'll go flip to this article really quickly and read it while I wait. Oh, there's the timer, I better go change over my laundry. Hrm, while I'm down here, there's that box I meant to sort through, I should take that back upstairs, then maybe I'll go see if that person I wanted a scene with tonight is onl— gah, I was RP'ing! I hope they haven't been waiting too long for a pose!!"

@too-old-for-this said in MU Things I Love:

I for one am SUPER EXCITED to see what else is in store if shardhavens is just the first of many!! Exploration is great fun and I can't express how happy I am to see things being made to help people that want to do EXPLORATION! and ADVETUUUUUUURE! get to do just that.

Shardhavens are just the first part of exploration, yeah, and this is just the first phase of shardhavens; I have ideas for puzzles that work like the obstacle doors, but that reveal treasures/weapons when solved, or even let you find old forgotten lore (@clues). Plus, I still need to get the 'expedition' portion done, which will be what lets players get together a party, pay AP/resources to 'outfit' it, and then travel to a shardhaven.

(I should actually start a design thread about this, come to think.)

Well, I never needed to sleep again anyway...

Getting to GM the beginning of a storyline for players who weren't expecting what's ahead, and watch the OOC enthusiasm and excitement as it sinks in what's just happened. I've gotten to do this several times lately (most recently last night), and the effort of hours of GM'ing feels more than worth it when you hit that moment where the players realize.

(I will admit, though, I am so fond of that moment of reveal and realization that I'm now half-considering looking for ways to do the same thing with some other storylines I mean to touch off as a GM in the near future, even though these don't have quite as natural a point for it as the ones I've recently done...)

@surreality — I'm sorry life's not going well for you; the situation sounds horrible.

As for the 'bring on the mockery', though? I definitely don't always agree with you in discussions on here, but I wouldn't think anyone would mock you over RL misfortunes or a lack of income. Sure, people on MSB verbally spar and talk trash with each other—and mock each other over game-related things—but despite how you doubtless feel at the moment, I don't think anyone here wishes actual physical harm or financial misfortune on their fellow posters or would take glee in it.

(At least I sure as heck hope not; if people are wishing that level of RL harm on each other over pretendy fun-times internet game discussions, I'm genuinely concerned about people's priorities.)

There's lots of other things I could try to say here, but you've asked not to be showered in sympathy, and I can understand that; sometimes receiving sympathy only makes everything feel worse. And even when they are a comfort, words very rarely change anything substantial about a situation like this.

I will instead just say that this is yet another example of how unbelievably sucktastic it is that our country is in a place where not only do many people live close to the edge financially, but where even people who have enough to be comfortable can lose that cushion—and sometimes everything else—with one unlucky medical bill. It is fundamentally wrong that people routinely need to set up GoFundMe's to make medical bills, or keep a beloved pet alive after an injury; our safety net should not have to be "the kindness of internet strangers".

I hope things do work out for you. That treatment for the dental situation is successful. That the financial situation ends up being at least partially alleviated, by whatever means—even if it ends up being the aforementioned kindness of internet strangers through a GoFundMe or something—and life can go on. That eventually this can all be a horrible story that fades to an anecdote you can share with people someday, down the road. I know things often don't work out that way for people, but I can still hope.

And when you're ready to come back I'm sure people will still be here, prepared to argue vehemently over the merits and flaws of different approaches to pretendy fun-time internet games. Because as weird and loud and combative as corners of this place often are, it is still a community, and it'll be waiting when you return.

(Well, short of the server melting, a nuclear winter that takes down the internet, alien invasion, or something similar.)