Posts made by Sparks

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.

@kanye-qwest said in My first cellphone:

I honestly had no END of trouble with the pixel. I went through four of them before I gave up and bought a Moto X4 for Fi, and have been delighted with it.

@sunny said in My first cellphone:

Pixels have a great camera and shit for quality control. If you get a good one you're golden, if you get a lemon, you're screwed -- I am the tech support for our enterprise account at work, and I had to send a good third of our first round of pixels back for warranty replacement, and then half of the refurbished ones back for another replacement.

This makes me sad. I know the Pixel 2 has had quality control problems, but every original Pixel we got at work for test devices was flawless in its performance, as well as my personal Pixel. I guess I'd hoped the quality control issues were unique to the Pixel 2.

The Samsung S9 is hands down the best phone on the market right now, provided you're not an iPhone user. The plus is worth the extra money; it's faster, and the bigger screen is great (I do use mine as an ereader, though I just have the 8+). We have zero problems with these at work, except for....

I'm gonna counter this slightly; while the S8 and S9 have very good Bluetooth support, I have seen some Really Weird Behavior when connecting to certain Bluetooth Low Energy chipsets. Or rather, failing to notice—and thus failing to connect to—certain chipsets. A Bluetooth packet sniffer turns up that the advertisements are going out fine, the Pixel sees the advertisements, an iPhone sees the advertisements, and the S8+ or S9 goes "Wha? I don't see it. You sure you powered it on?"

But to be fair, I work at a hardware company where we build Bluetooth Low Energy-enabled hardware. So I probably see a lot more weird Bluetooth behavior than the average user.

Really depends on what you want from a phone. I do mobile development for my day job so I switch between iOS and Android as my daily driver, and each has its strengths and weaknesses.

Android is far more customizable; you can do all kinds of things to really make a handset 'yours'. Custom launchers and lock screens, using things like Tasker to make your phone stay unlocked at home or put you in Do Not Disturb mode when face-down on the table or when attached to a car mount, etc. On the other hand, actually doing that customization can be a headache, and Android's Bluetooth functionality—especially Bluetooth Low Energy—is wildly inconsistent, and not nearly as reliable as iOS. There's also the fact that Android's going the same direction as iOS and getting rid of the headphone jack in favor of eliminating ingress avenues (for better weatherproofing).

iOS is far more locked down—it's very hard to customize in any meaningful way, so if there's a bit of behavior you don't like you are really sort of stuck with it—but it's also much harder to break an iOS device as a result. And if you have anything that uses Bluetooth wireless connectivity, generally the experience will be a lot better on iOS. And of course, no headphone jacks any longer; you'll need an adapter if you don't use wireless headphones.

If you do go with Android, I highly recommend a Pixel device; they're a little pricier, but really the most solid Android experience I've found, especially for the first generation Pixels. (The Pixel 2 has a few quirks, and the lack of headphone jack on the 2 gets some people.)

The beta version of the Android build of Steam Link is out; the iOS build should be soon.

If you have a burning desire to cast your PC games to your television via Android TV box (or Apple TV) and don't have one of the dedicated Steam Link boxes, or if you want to be able to play your games in the bathroom on your phone (I'm not going to judge -- much), Valve's got you covered.

Last minute, week-long international business trips.

(I hate air travel.)

@arkandel I use git on a daily basis, and while I used to be the hardcore "I will use the command line, for it gives me POWER over ALL ASPECTS of creation (or at least of this source control repository)!" type, I have come to like the visual representation that Fork (my current favorite) will show me of branches and commits. I vastly prefer the nice graphical format to the older school git log --graph --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit

@faraday By default, to save on mistakes where an alias blocks you from actual game input, Atlantis' aliases require you to put / before them before it'll try to execute them, a'la one of the internal commands (like /log or /clear or such). You can turn that off in Preferences, though.

This has gotten so wildly off-topic from Arx. I should start an Atlantis thread for folks.

That said, I think since A2 is taking a while, I might make one more build of A1 that adds a couple features (like the second input window).

@ominous said in What Is Missing For You?:

Ars Magica

YES PLEASE.

@kestrel said in What Is Missing For You?:

I second @thesuntsar that I would be more likely to consider a supernatural horror game that eschewed the usual teen/college drama cliches and maybe wasn't set in a small town in America. Go big. Go Noir. Like London, New York, or some other familiar, dusky urban playground. As a bonus, the first two have a literal underground/subway which can make for a pretty neat setting.

On the note of "London Underground", if people open more supernatural/vaguely horror games, I'd sort of love to see someone even attempt a game in the vein of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

Man, a Pokemon-esque game that was basically a MU* version of the standard RPGs, with capture/training/gyms, and where the metaplot 'seasons' were some group (Team Whatever) doing something semi-nefarious and trainers needing to stop them... I would play that far more than I should probably admit.

It would actually be fairly possible to make the training/battle/evolution system in Python with Evennia.

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

@auspice On the plus side, from everything I hear actually working in the video game industry is absolutely horrible. It is an aspirational job, lots of people want to work for Bioware as an example. As a result? Those companies then take horrific advantage of people because they know they can get away with relatively poor wages combined with horrific working conditions and unreasonably long hours.

Hi, former professional video game developer here.

The industry is pretty awful in a lot of ways, but I will note a few things:

• It is reportedly getting better; friends who still work in the games industry say that mandatory crunch time is decreasing and horrible wages aren't quite so horrible these days.
• Unfortunately, the 'hire and dump' cycle is seemingly well and truly alive, where people get hired on to staff up a game's development, and then dropped at the end of the game as the studio downsizes back to the previous size. Of all my friends still in the industry, I think one is still at the same company they were five years ago; at least three of them have gone through three companies in that time.
• Even with all that said, there's something special about seeing people playing the game you made and enjoying it. For all that I got super burned out on the grind and decided to do other things, there was a special sort of inner glow you got watching someone play something you helped write, and watching them enjoy it. I've not encountered that many other places.

I mean, all that said, a lot of my friends are still in the industry because they love it too much to do anything else, despite the grind. So if you think it's something you'd really like, @Auspice, then go for it and give it a try!

@ixokai said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@auspice Today I learned I have a super-power, the ability to be tortured by lights.

Fuck you evolution. -.-

I would like it if the ability to hear lights and such was paired with actual super-powers, like telekinesis or something similar.

I feel it's only fair if, in return for the migraines, sufferers get abilities like Eleven in Stranger Things.

@sincerely said in Looking For Old Darren @ Arx:

@nyctophiliac He's been AWOL for a while.

Well, depends whether you mean Old-Old Darren, or just the most recent Darren.

@auspice said in Game Restarts:

@kanye-qwest said in Game Restarts:

1. Reboot any and every game into a game of Pugmire
2. Profit

Where's Parxmire?

As I've said before, it's gotta be "Barx".

@packrat said in General Video Game Thread:

So I watched a Twitch stream VOD for the Battletech campaign that included the intro sequence.

Holy shit, instant sale.

As one of the Kickstarter backers, thus having early access, it's a really, really good strategy game.

I think the best systems are ones that aren't required to participate in the game, but which allow people things to do which can impact the storyline without GM involvement.

Arx's clue system is a great example, in my mind. You can RP with people about the clues, share the clues, etc. If people aren't around, you can organize your clues into theories for easy reference or sharing. It feels more meaningful than BarP, because the clues tie into the metaplot. But you don't need to participate in the investigation system to play; you can get clues from others, or just rely on people who have gathered lore to pull you into the actions those lore bits inspire.

Games like Texas Hold'Em or Scrabble are fun minigames, but I kind of agree with others that they're toys that don't always lead people to add to the story.

Oh, geez, let's see if I remember my MUCK stuff. (This site is largely populated by MUSH/MUX users.)

@asherwolfstein said in FuzzBallMUCK (fbmuck) new installation questions:

I'm trying my best to set up my own MUCK using the FuzzBall MUCK server software (v6 not v7) and the advancedb.db database (with included muf programs). I have logged in as #1 and changed the password, but I'm having trouble changing the password of the Keeper player that also resides in Room Zero (I don't know its password)... can I change the password of another player as the #1 God? Because of that possible wizard access I won't reveal where the MUCK is currently being hosted.

Yep, you should be able to use @newpassword instead of @password to change Keeper's password.

The other thing I'm having trouble with is how to enable player driven character registration. I've noticed that in defaults.h REGISTER is set to 1, making only Wizards able to create new characters. In the end, I want players to be able to register new usernames and characters using the create command at the login screen. I've tried changing the register parameter in data/parmfile.cfg, but that seems to get overwritten when the MUCK exits with the default value? How do I enable the "create" command at the login window so players can simply create new characters at will?

The parmfile configuration file is written out of memory when the game shuts down or saves; you may want to use the @tune command instead to change the parameter while the game is running. However, if you edit parmfile.cfg while the game is NOT running and then start it up, it should work as you'd expect.

Hope that helps!

@scar said in RL things I love:

@auspice He clocked me good. I already have enough snakes.

I would've though there's no such thing as enough snakes for you, @scar.

@arkandel said in Spotlight.:

@sparks said in Spotlight.:

and if you do, you're going to run into "you got a chance to shine once, a year and a half ago, so you can't go on plots anymore", which is a surefire way to burn out otherwise active players (who are the ones who stir up RP when you aren't GM'ing).

That's a pretty good point and a legitimate question on its own right.

Do all players deserve the same access to the spotlight? That is, if you are putting in a lot of your time building up a successful House which your character leads, run plots for its players, recruit others to it, making yourself available as someone in a leadership position and integrating yourself thematically into current politics, then should I as a casual player who's there an hour here and there get to have equal access to metaplot?

Everyone should have equal access to the same tools -- things like actions and investigations, on Arx, or things like gm requests on WoD games, etc. -- that allow them to dig into the metaplot. The same baseline opportunities.

But what they do with those tools will determine their involvement. If someone never puts in an investigation or action on Arx, or never interacts with staff or GM's on a WoD game, they're probably not going to get a metaplot spotlight moment.

Now, like I said, you can find people who seem to be struggling and throw them a story hook or two to get them involved in plotlines. And you should! But that doesn't guarantee involvement. I mean, they still have to run with that hook.

In your average urban fantasy novel, the character who "answers the call" and heads off to investigate when things get weird ("holy shit, magic is real?") is probably going to end up with a heroic moment more readily than the one who ignores the opportunity and sits at home watching Netflix ("eh, I haven't finished Jessica Jones yet; I'll do that first"). Both characters had equal access to the opportunity (saw magic is real), but one chose to engage and the other didn't.