Posts made by Sparks

I do regret we didn't do more with Orianne and Christian; those scenes were always interesting.

But at least I've got your back as Lark!

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

@yourmamasayswhat

They are a myth. Like Santa clause.

I don't hit on Luca! Does this mean I'm mythical? Or, to pick another word, legendary?

It was a dark and stormy night. And then the murders began.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

And then the murders began.

@Roz said in Web-based MU poll:

And another benefit was just, uh. Searching capability in general. Which the Evennia website build doesn't have, and Arx hasn't tried to add itself yet. (My understanding is that it's a lot more intensive than anyone would like to think.)

Every URL endpoint is provided by different chunks of system. So, for instance, my Paxcomm package for Evennia can add /boards and /mail to the website of an Evennia game.

The problem is, there's no standardized 'search this module' API, so writing 'search' would require modifying the actual Evennia APIs to allow a way for each of these modules to register a search handler per module, which could take a search term and return a title, link, and summary for each result. Even then, that would require each module to then implement this or else the search still wouldn't return results. If this functionality was added and I didn't have it implemented in Paxcomm, then searching bboards wouldn't work.

The fact that any 'app' (i.e., extension to Evennia) can add stuff to the website is very powerful, but makes a centralized search very difficult.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Migraine got so bad this afternoon that I had to leave my out-of-town guest to his own devices (and reschedule some of my work) for a couple of hours while I laid down.

I hate how much it's begun to affect my daily life. I have some days where getting through work is the best I can do.

I just want it to stop.

As a chronic migraine sufferer, I know this feeling so much.

Sympathies.

@faraday said in Web-based MU poll:

@Miss-Demeanor said in Web-based MU poll:

@faraday I wouldn't say they're content with the wiki... given that they felt it necessary to make their own wiki, since the one provided didn't meet the needs of the players.

Oh did they? I didn't know that. (I don't play there, just chat with folks who do.) Curious what needs it didn't meet.

Inability to add pages as players, mostly.

Arx has the Evennia webserver set up to show dynamically generated character profile pages, organization pages, to automatically log public events (and also store logs of private events you can view if you were invited to or attended that event), and so on. You can view a lot of the help topics and other theme right there on the website as well.

However, other than the journals, there's really no way for players to edit content there. Want to write a guide on "How to use the +task system?" Can't do that. Want to make a reference page for public knowledge on a given historical event (like the Tragedy at Sanctum, or the Battle of the Night's Grove)? Nope. Want to write up random additional player content like, for instance, "A Comparative Summary of the Types of Cheese Found in the Lyceum"? Also nope.

That's where a wiki comes in handy: you have much more freedom for guides and other pages beyond what just the staff want to write.

As someone who has had the misfortune to use Invision Board/Mediawiki integration tools, that's a ball of pain I never want to experience again. If one of the arguments is "setting up PennMUSH or MUX2 is too hard", then I think forcing someone to deal with that enormous ball of Nope is not going to improve the situation.

Further, you'd really need the database to be shared, or else when someone gives up a feature character you have to go and rename the forum account, etc. And when someone gets banned—and this is MU*ing, sooner or later someone will get banned—you have to ban them from the main site, from the wiki, from the forums, from the ticket system, from the Slack or Discord you're using in lieu of comsys...

If we want a smooth, easily-maintained, easily-configured system, having it all self-contained is better. Having it as a thing that's pre-hosted so you can go 'click' and make a game—like people setting up a new site on Wikia, for instance—would be best of all.

@Auspice said in Generic sci fi game.:

@Cupcake said in Generic sci fi game.:

I think a generational colony ship game would be really fun. A giant colony ship that's been traveling for a couple hundred years or more, and the people living on it have just arrived at their colony planet.

Oh now I'm imagining playing that person who has only ever grown up with stories of what a planet is like.

Just for the joy of those 'holy shit what is that' moments, I'd likely start such a game a few weeks before 'landfall,' just so folks can get into their chars and then have those first experiences scenes.

While MMO RP is often obnoxious (because most of it ends up taking place in Google Docs, which is a terrible tool for keeping a scene going with any degree of speed), this was actually seemingly what a lot of the early RP around WildStar was like.

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

"Will Code For Videogames."

I don't believe you, mister "sure, I'll write documentation".

Soooo...

Horizon Zero Dawn.

Oh my god.

(If anyone needs me, I'll be hunting robot dinosaurs for the foreseeable future.)

@faraday said in Logging your activity:

@SG said in Logging your activity:

Logging for PrPs to get your xp is cool, or if there's an issue of harassment and you need proof, but the obsessive need to ICly get everything exactly correct is annoying to me.

Like anything, it can be taken to extremes of stupidity. But your character actually experienced this event. I would argue that their ability to remember something that happened to them six months later is infinitely greater than the player's ability. Having logs to jog your memory is helpful.

This.

I don't want to play eidetic memory (unless that's an actual defining trait of the character). But my character for whom this is their life will probably remember who told them about that interdimensional portal that appeared in a greenhouse six months ago, or which person told them the archdemon's true name was Steve.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the player does not live that life, and so will have things like RF attenuation test results, firmware build process, RL family things, and such cluttering up her brain where the character does not.

I log everything, at least for my own use. Because 11 months later I'm like, "Wait, who told me about that thing ICly?" and I go back and look in logs.

But also because I've had fun going back 7 years later and re-reading a great scene with friends from that long ago. Nostalgia!

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

I am reasonably certain that if I told every guy who was eagerly awaiting war systems for Dominion or everyone who wants PRP support or any criminal type who wants crime or every apothecary who wants recipes or every combat character who wants combat styles or everyone waiting for magic that all of these will be delayed by a year as I painstakingly look for the most unambiguous verb possible for each command and do my best to make everything as clear as possible through repeated submissions of help files for review that I would be murdered in my sleep.

Honestly, Tehom, weird cases of doubled-up commands like @time/time and such notwithstanding, I think the bigger help would just be something like the guides that are on the unofficial wiki.

As an example, @retainer/@agents/guards is a wildly unclear system to many people. What are the differences? Why are they three separate systems? Which command do I use for various things? It could use a guide. Just to address the single most-common use case, a 'help animal messengers' that guided you through setting up one would solve a lot of problems.

Heck, in the short term, you could even just have the help entry link to the unofficial wiki's unfinished guide on the subject.

Given that players have been quite manifestly willing to write the documentation up for the unofficial wiki, I think you can probably source a lot of the clarifying content from players; you can still focus on coding the big systems in general, and still manage to get the guides and helpfiles clarified.

Players tend to want to help with the things they can, after all.

@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:

This reminds me. How do you feel about revealing things about the character through narration and not in any visible ways? For example: "Bob sits down and grows silent. Ever since he returned from the war he's been reserved in social settings with people he doesn't know well. He lifts his glass and...".

If I'm playing with someone who'd have IC reason to know my character well but doesn't necessarily on an OOC level (new to the game, to the character, whatever), I'll throw things in to try to give them background cues as to something they might know, and why they might know it.

"X rubs at the bridge of her nose idly as she listens, an almost reflexive tic that those close to her know all too well as a sign that she's distracted and stressed."

"Y grimaces as he's handed the plate of greens; his hatred of kale is well-known to those who've ever had the misfortune to share a buffet with him. But tonight, for politeness' sake, he remains silent. (Albeit with visible effort.)"

Etc.

I really think it depends on what your game setup is.

A game where you have open scenes, where I can wander around the city and stumble into a scene that happens to be in public? I feel like your grid should directly reflect the size of your playerbase. If you have only 10 players, you probably don't need hundreds of rooms. But if you have 200 active players, maaaaybe your grid should be large enough that you don't have 10 people in every single room on grid all the time.

Conversely, if you're on a game where every scene is closed/invite-only, I feel like you almost maybe don't need a traditional grid at all. You could do something like have a series of preset descs to pull from, a map to show where those locations are, and a temproom system where you can use those descs easily. (After all, otherwise you have the problem of "Joe and Kate are using the bar, but I wanted to hold a scene there" and you have to use a temproom anyway.)

@Thenomain — you're not wrong.

@Lithium said in Advice For Anxious ST Novices:

The best games I've ever had, I came up with the introduction and then let the players go from there, what they decided to do, determined where the story went. Admittedly this means it is difficult for new ST's who are not used to running off the cuff but it is without a doubt, the story that the players feel the most invested in because it is their own story.

One of my earliest long-term storytelling experiences—basically an online tabletop game—I had everything all planned out. I had an NPC who the party was going to rescue from possession, who'd then be grateful and would provide them with information they'd need to get started, and an avenue of approach to the people they needed to talk to.

And in the very first session, the players misinterpreted the possession, decided the NPC was evil... and killed him. Needless to say, I watched my sheaf of notes basically go up in metaphorical smoke, and had to completely wing it from there.

It ended up being a lot of fun for everyone involved, but it taught me that I should never go "okay, this is how you'll progress" and set it ahead of time; if you try to railroad the players to one specific choice, someone is likely to end up disappointed. Either the players (feeling railroaded) or you as the ST (when the players refuse to stay on the rails).

Since then, I'll usually prepare story 'beats'. Like, "if the players do X, I can have Y happen, and I think that's a likely path so I'll have some preparations made for that". ("If you find the giant demon-beast that you might stumble across, I'll have a truly Lovecraftian description of it already prepared so you don't have to wait 20 minutes on me to type one up.") If you do go to this casino, here's a few NPCs I can use in this scenario; if you don't, hey, I'll find ways for you to stumble across this one of those NPCs. Etc.

I'm right about what the players will do maybe half of the time; the other half of the time, I find myself going, "Well. I did not expect that. Let's see what happens next." And honestly, those can be some of the best ones.

I think this is partly on Evennia, not just the Arx staff. (Sorry, Griatch.)

Specifically, Evennia generates a lot of the documentation automatically for each command; in a lot of ways, this is great; you include the documentation in the command source code, and a helpfile is made for it. No worries about documentation being out-of-date; you edit the command, you edit the description RIGHT THERE. I wish more things supported this.

But conversely, if you alias a command to another command then 'help' for both commands will give you the same help text; this leads to the home/+home, time/@time versus guards/@guards/+guards situation you describe. And additionally, since the coder is writing the documentation right there in the command, you... well, are getting coder-written documentation. Which (as a coder) I must admit is not always the ideal; sometimes you want an editing pass by someone who doesn't think in terms of code.

(That said, I object on general design principle to having command, +command, and @command do different things.)

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

@Thenomain
@clues are mechanical means of tracking who knows what.

But they're not! I mean, the whole problem was that many of us (me included, as noted) treated them as if they were just a means of tracking who knew what. Which is why they spread so far so fast, and left poor Apos spending a non-trivial amount of time every week writing like 30 new ones.

They're supposed to be a mechanical means of tracking who has the proof of what.

It's possible to know something ICly without a @clue, after all; I could tell you something, and now you know that thing even if I don't share the @clue. It's when I give you the @clue—the proof of that thing—that you have the evidence to know it's right, or to potentially convince others.

At least, that's my understanding based on discussions of the system.