Posts made by Sparks

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

But at face value, it is just text being sent back and forth. The channel in which it is process doesn't matter to the end-user.

The point is that it doesn't have to be just text being sent back and forth.

Evennia's model is that you have a Portal (which accepts incoming connections, be they telnet, ssh, or the web client) and a Server (which does all the actual work). All the text sent from the Server to the Portal can support out-of-band metadata. For telnet/ssh, this metadata is just stripped off, but why not do things like show a typing indicator in the web client?

You could also do things like make a map in the web client that supports receiving your current location from the server and putting a little pin on the graphical map showing 'you are here'. You could send a list of people in the room as people enter and exit. You could include things like 'this blob of text is a page associated with conversation 1' and make the web client pop the page conversation out into its own window, a'la instant messenger.

A list of people presently online on the game, where you can click on one and have it open a private messaging conversation to them, is arguably a lot more intuitive to everyone who uses the internet than knowing you need to 'page <blah>=<foo>'. Everyone's used to being able to do that on Discord servers already, or Battle.net, or Steam, or Skype, or IRC, or whatever.

And that's without getting into a complete rewrite from scratch where Telnet isn't even part of it, and the web client isn't just some 'richer' way to access it that can use extra metadata.

My corgi when she was a puppy:

My corgi as an adult, pre-wheelchair:

My horse:

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.

To add to what @roz says: my MMO guild buddies are used to a single document/thread per RP, even if that RP involves multiple scenes and moves from place to place. The concept of a grid—of rooms you move between—was both alien and alienating to them when I tried to describe it.

Does that mean they needed a particular "session" of RP to spread across multiple logs? Oh, your client thing just keeps one ongoing log? How do you do two separate scenes with different people at once then? Etc.

There are a lot of assumptions we take for granted; even just knowing "look" and "page" are not givens for newcomers, which can make even learning how to get started a puzzle for folks. Especially when they are used to an entirely different set of assumptions about how RP even works.

@three-eyed-crow said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@apos said in Alternative Formats to MU:

Yeah this has been true from my experience. Like if you take free form chat environments, that happen with largely identical or faster pacing to MUs, there's at least a few hundred thousand people that do that pretty regularly. They have way, way bigger populations than MUs.

This is why my eyes glaze over whenever people talk about how "the hobby is dying." There's TONS of text-based RP, it's just in places most of us don't interact/acknowledge on this board. Like, RPI MUDs aren't much different than MUSHes, but that's still a very different audience. Once you get into stuff like Dreamwidth journals or Tumblr or whatever...people be RPing. If every PennMUSH game imploded tomorrow, I could go find a place to text-based RP. I like MUSHes because of the immediacy they provide and the way they create a persistent, shared world, but I can imagine that being created another way.

My MMO guildmates—who I've followed from game to game across more games than I want to think about—are avid RPers.

None of them, that I know of, have ever MU*'d. (I've tried to drag them onto games a few times, but they find the whole MU* commandset and dedicated client and everything else very strange.) They RP in Discord. On Tumblr. On forums. In Google Docs. And if I want to RP with them, I need to go there. It's eye-opening how many people are RP'ing that way; the number of people doing Tumblr RP probably dwarfs the userbase of this board. The number of people doing forum or Google Docs RP almost certainly dwarfs the entire MUSH/MUX playerbase.

The reason people are talking about it taking 1-3 days for a scene is that's how long RP through Google Docs, Storium, forum RP, and so on can take.

MU* in general are not friendly to newcomers to RP; you'll find them engaging in RP on web forums, or on Tumblr, or in shared Google Docs. To draw new folks into the hobby, whatever comes next should be more approachable.

I mean, I think folks aren't talking just about converting MU* to the web, but rather making something new and web-based for RP that's more approachable to newcomers. But one of the things about it being more approachable is being more friendly to putting it down and coming back later.

I would argue that macros and auto-walk are outdated options too. The whole point is not to think of a web client as just "Potato on the web" or "Atlantis on the web" or "SimpleMU for Chrome", but as something entirely new.

If 'pages' are instead one-on-one or groupchat windows that pop up in an instant-messenger style format in their own little tabbed popout window, why do you need tools to manage pages?

If you have a map right in the client where you can click on a room to go there, why do you need a speedwalk macro?

If 'channels' are part of an OOC communication interface that works like Slack, why do you need spawns when each channel already has its own tab in that?

Etc.

@apos said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I personally feel that the amount of dinosaurs like that is pretty tiny compared to the people that would get introduced into MUs with a web only format. Downloading a client is a big bar for entry for some people, let alone archaic command line interfaces in telnet.

I just wish built-in web clients supported some sort of logging. I feel like there's a place to be all "bind your Dropbox account to your game account" using Dropbox's API, give it access to just an Apps/<whatever> directory, and let the server write logs there for you when you click the 'log' button. Et voila, they even show up on your computer for easy searching, too.

Arx's logging of scheduled events is awesome, but only works if there's already an event scheduled. Ares' scene system is great, but I think all scenes are all public, and on some games—anything involving secrets, PvP, etc.—you don't want every scene publicly readable.

@thatguythere I mean, you aren't wrong. The chargen was arguably more fun than the game.

@thenomain said in System dealbreakers:

@arkandel said in System dealbreakers:

CGen shouldn't be a trap.

Except for Traveller. It's actually kind of fun knowing that you could die in chargen. But it's a short series of rolls so it's no big deal.

Traveller chargen is best chargen for that reason.

@skew said in AresMUSH Updates:

@sparks said in AresMUSH Updates:

(I don't know if Potato does it. Atlantis should, and I think Cmud does.)

Potato does. Options -> Configure World -> Connection -> Send null-byte keepalives?

Yep! That'd be it.

@lithium fwiw, a client that supports silent keepalives being sent will work with Evennia and Ares both to stay alive on Comcast links out of box. Basically, the client will send the same invisible keepalive to the game every 60 seconds that the keepalive flag makes the game send to the client.

(I don't know if Potato does it. Atlantis should, and I think Cmud does.)

@lithium I think it was a conversation about systems that could create emergent gameplay, back on BrazilMUX or somewhere similar. Code never happened on my part, and I don't think there was even a game in mind.

It was an interesting idea, though.

@thenomain said in Code systems that make it easier to get on with the business of roleplaying:

@auspice said in Code systems that make it easier to get on with the business of roleplaying:

@ashen-shugar said in Code systems that make it easier to get on with the business of roleplaying:

This is a hard animal to do as the only 'real' weather code that's publically available is Keren's weather system. Which is out dated, cumbersome, and coded like vomit. Did I mention the vomit? The buckets of horrible vomit?

This is the thing that makes me sad. I'd love to see a good weather code someday, but I'm also aware what a bitch it is.

Hey, @Sparks, remember when you, I, and Larryghost were talking about this, and I was designing code that kept track of ground wetness and snow evaporation rate? I understand if you didn’t, because it was an insanely long time ago now, but I keep wanting to get back to that.

Yes.

I cannot recall why we were doing this. But I do recall that it was a thing that happened at one point, possibly due to insanity and/or lack of sleep.

@mietze said in How much Code is too much Code?:

I just think that my primary yum is narrative. I love writing stuff up and reflecting, and preferably having the mediator dictate what rolls are made. Or to write a narrative for off screen actions in addition to using coded stuff. But that is super labor intensive staff side, and again I’d rather see happy staff than me being able to play to my strengths as a player.

This actually sounds a little like Arx's @action system, which is literally a system designed to reduce the amount of work necessary for staff to do precisely what you describe. You write up actions for off-screen (or sometimes on screen) resolution, bring in assistants, provide what you think are the appropriate rolls, and then submit it. The system can do all the rolls and tally successes for staff, who can then write up a GM response which automatically goes to everyone involved. If they need to, staff can tweak rolls, they set a difficulty for the effort, etc.

This is the kind of code I think helps the game. Things that increase narrative freedom for the players while reducing staff workload. Sure, ASCII art objects can be fun—I have done my fair share of crafting—but when I think what code benefits game narrative most directly I think about things like @action.

@skew said in How much Code is too much Code?:

Coming from a WoD MUSH world, I've decided more is better. Automated systems keep players engaged when the story is not actively being told. That keeps players logging in, keeps them from idling, and keeps them around to actually play when other players go looking for RP.

This. If done right, I think code facilitates storytelling. If I have options for more than bar RP, things which can influence the main storyline but don't immediately require a GM, or ways to queue up GM action that save the GM time, there is a lot I can do as a player. Combat code, exploration code, investigation code, etc.

If done wrong, though, I think it just becomes a stumbling block in players' paths, something you have to navigate in order to find RP. In trying to make a functioning economy, for instance—not necessarily a bad goal in itself—I do think Firan crossed the boundary from one to the other in several areas, like bathing and eating and so on. They came from good intentions but in hindsight became things you had to do in order to RP, rather than facilitating it.

You are a fantastic Alaric.

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

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

@templari We used to have a Chia Head we would wrap and regift to various family members back and forth on whatever the next available gift-giving holiday was as a joke, but then she went and lost it.

In high school, my friends and I had the Birthday Burrito, which was a frozen burrito from a gas station. Until one guy ate it because he was hungry and found it tucked somewhere in his freezer.

There never was another Birthday Burrito.

A friend of mine came to visit once just before I moved, and bought a Guinness while he was here. He left it in my fridge, and forgot it; since he was coming back in another two months, he said "Well, just take it with you and I'll drink it at the new place."

So I did.

He visited, and once again forgot his Guinness. It sat in my fridge for a year, until I moved once again. Just on a whim, we brought the Guinness to the new place when we cleaned the fridge out.

His Guinness has been in my fridge for literally a decade and a half.

At this point, we consider it our household luck totem.

@kanye-qwest said in Characters You Enjoyed Playing:

Honestly/weirdly, the characters I miss, the ones I yearn for, are characters i played in MMOs. Alarice in EQ2. Lianhan! I played a banshee who was creeping on a total party wipe and a mass res brought her back to life into a magical body and she was corporeal and pissed off and WEIRD and creepy.

Oh, man, if we're bringing MMOs into things, I still have a deep and abiding affection for all my WildStar and Secret World characters, even as obnoxious as Google Docs and forum RP can be to try to keep a scene going.

If we're talking just past characters...

Orianne, my young idealistic mutant over on X-Factor NYC. She started out so naively idealistic about the world, and her entire arc was basically an ongoing struggle between that idealism and the realism the world tried to grind into her. With every plot twist and character development, something chipped away a little more at her belief that people could get along. And yet she kept trying so hard to maintain her cheery demeanor.

And that was surprisingly fun to play in no small part because she had such a good group of other players to bounce that development off of, even if the game was small.

(Plus, I always had fun with the many creative abuses of Anne's "puppeteering" power. Who needs a battering ram when you can make a triceratops?)