Wasn't it Gene Roddenberry who famously said that mankind of the future will understand their technology roughly as much as we do ours today? The average person of his day understood how to build a television just about as much as the Lords and Ladies of the future.
Personally, I think it strange that people can understand and accept Space Cowboys more than they can understand and accept Space Knights.
3D math functions were put into the Tinys due to Battletech and Star Trek games. @faraday wants to make Ares as comfortable to us Mushlike users, and her games are space games, so range et al. isn’t at all odd.
@Roz said in What locations do you want to RP in?:
Having now experienced the +hangouts code on F&L, the thing I wish it more easily told me when I hit +hangouts/all is: a one or two word descriptor of what kind of place it is
I didn't have enough room for that. Well, I could kill the 'Details' column for it, and just put a checkmark. Though I do have a very small amount of room left over for it. Hm. Until I kill that giant 'Details' column. Hm.
Hm hm hmmm. Hmmmmmmm.
@sparks said in Mass Effect MU*?:
@ganymede said in Mass Effect MU*?:
Because I really can't stop laughing about your idea. I mean, could you imagine a Hanar Maury Povich show?
I think you meant Elcor, but yes, that's brilliant.
This one suspects the babydaddy of disrespecting the Enkindlers.
@Roz said in What locations do you want to RP in?:
@Thenomain said in What locations do you want to RP in?:
@Roz said in What locations do you want to RP in?:
Speaking just as one user among many
Here's my take on "one user among many": You can have brilliant ideas that would help the many. Sometimes you have to defend those views, but just because you're not "the many" doesn't make those ideas any less valid.
Oh, I was just being polite. I totally think my ideas are brilliant.
Maybe, but a lot of people give credence to the idea that popularity means quality. Many people, but especially staffers. (Especially staffers, holy shit.) Mind you, when staffers do it, they are usually using it as an excuse to dissuade conversation, and I hate that shit. What the hell does popularity matter for anything more than one factor in the question, "Is this project worth the time it will take." And even then, a good staffer will make that decision for how they understand the game, status quo as a single point among many.
Mind you, most staffers aren't polite about it, so thanks for that at least. Baby steps!
I don't know who decides what a genre is, but in discussions I've seen and had, Steampunk is either 'around the Victorian era with steam-and-gear anacrotech' or 'a fashion style'. Neither is compelling for a literary style. I'm certainly not going to be the arbiter of this, but when this is as Steampunk as this, I wonder if there is more to it than "check it! gears!"
It's why I like saying that I like "neo-Victorian" and not "Steampunk". Hell, I like "neoretro" now,
edit: Is it Steampunk Pulp? Is it Steampunk High Magic? Is it Steampunk Grit? Steampunk Post-Apoc? I think Steampunk as more a flavor or a setting element, and not itself a thing. How about that?
@ashen-shugar said in Arx on github:
I generally kill people who use tabs in source code.
FITE ME.
(edit: lolkittens)
@Catsmeow said in Where do you draw the line in having your character take what would otherwise be an "IC" action for them?:
Huh...
My phone has not received a text from @Coin
Does that mean I am not liked girl?!
I am also not a girl @Coin likes.
@ashen-shugar said in New +txt/+email/etc code for TinyMUX:
I'd suggest having it as a config option
This.
@faraday said in Which canon property/setting would be good for a MU* ?:
Having an original theme presents many extra challenges, no doubt, but these games prove that it's possible to succeed in spite of those challenges.
Except I think that these challenges are the same challenges faced by using existing IP: How to teach people to play.
Unlike @Sparks' experience, for instance, I think Arx is horrible at this.
(edit: Sorry, that's my continuing bitterness speaking. I think Arx is no better than the bulk of WoD games at teaching people how to play the game they've presented. They have a few passionate people who are eager to help, but I can say the same on the average game I've ever played. Aether stood out as a level of drawing people in that I have never seen since.)
It also helps if you have reasonable expectations. Martian Dreams only had about a dozen players, but we were a tight knit group who had fun for many months in a world I had lots of fun building. Some might consider that a failure or at best an open sandbox, but it was a success by my expectations.
if (( enjoyed( players ) && enjoyed( creators ) == TRUE ) then success = TRUE
Even the more laid back Soapbox community is pretty nit-picky about what to consider a success.
@sunnyj said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
Quite frankly, @thenomain! Where is your LOVE for the ART of coding?! The pursuit of greatness!?
I already know that I'm great.
That's why I pay for my meals with little squibs of code written on the napkin.
As the creator of the Stupid Phone Code, I not only concur, but I might accidentally rename it to TUMS wherever I find it.
("Ums" is good, mind, as that's what I do when thinking what to text. I go "Um" multiple times. Ums.)
How to learn how to code.
Step 1: Ambryl's Mush Manual.
Step 2: Code 'who'. (find existing who code and take it apart, asks questions about how it works, then code it three different ways)
Step 3: Code 'where'. (find existing where code and take it apart, asks questions about how it works, then code it three different ways)
You are now a coder.
I will note for @a-meowley that a few games I coded for have a new width() function that reads a personal &width attribute.
If you want to encourage anyone to use it point them here:
https://github.com/thenomain/Mu--Support-Systems/blob/master/user-definable%20widths.txt
It never caught on but now you know why I coded it.
Weather Underground has been purchased by The Weather Company, and while I'll miss Wunderground it's nice that they have a pay-out for all their efforts.
They were called Weather Underground because they were taking the information available for free via NOAA and presenting it to everyone on this young system called "The Internet", and not asking for money. It was a passion project that grew up, and now it's passed on into the great beyond of Things Getting Bought Out.
The bad news is that they no longer have a "free" (probably supposed to be short-term) demo API that did everything we needed to do, and more. Current conditions, forecast, tide information, moon and sun information, it was amazing what information they would give out. This means that this system is now defunct.
While the most popular aspect of the Almost Real-Time Weather System was the moon information, I'm looking through systems to reinstate it. So far the following systems are on the radar:
And the piece de resistance, for the werewolves out there:
The missing information that I could get from just one call from Wunderground is tide estimates. This is not critical for most games, but damn I kind of want it now that I don't have it.
Updates as I have them.
Sorry about this, Mushers.
And as a coder, I have to shoulder the responsibility of those decisions that I have to make. Let's be fair; you also hate it when I take extra time to make something as easy as possible on the user because it takes more time and that's time I can't use to do something else. What is being asked takes a metric fuck-tonne of time with the tools I'm using.
What you don't see is my process of exploration, the sometimes hours I take for information-gathering. I am, to be frank, a little put out that you don't consider this discussion here to be me focusing on problems that you--you personally, as well as you the reader in general--have not yet asked me to do.
What I mean to say to you and @The-Tree-of-Woe is that if you don't think I'm thinking of the end-user experience, then you are absolutely insane. I do things that make no sense to me all the time.
I ask of people like you (hating that I'm being put in the position of The Other by you two, by the way) is that you explain to me what your position is. And if I can do things I think is the wrong way to do things, if I can suck it up, then give me and other coders the respect that we are trying and that we are shouldering the things that you find are "the wrong way" for no other reason than because you think what we do is magic.
ProTip: It's a lot of fucking work. You're good at working with coders on a compromise and explaining yourself, @Coin, but in your agreeing with Tree I'm going to use that as a platform to swan dive into this. I did ask Tree that if he wanted to go down this path to make this a different thread, but nnnooOOOooo, and so you get this rant here, this rant that I hold in every time this comes up. I hold it in because as a coder I have to shoulder the responsibility of those decisions that I have to make.
I hear this quietly from other coders, too. I know @Chime left Mu* coding because she got tired of people not respecting even the most basic of miracles. I know @faraday has openly said this is why she keeps partially quitting Soapbox. Hell, even @Cobaltasaurus left here because people would rather tell you what you're doing wrong than trying to make it right.
So no, @Coin, I don't code on my own whim. I code on a lot of information and I try to do things right by as many people as possible. I'm sorry that you absolutely can't stand some aspects of the Tiny platform. I'm sorry that there aren't enough hours (or ponies) in the day. I'm sorry that I don't make a big deal out of how hard this shit is so that you and The Others get complacent that when I say something like "this is the wrong way to approach the problem" you think I'm saying that because I'm lazy or ignorant or ignoring the end-user.
Hopefully this will fix some of that. If not, then whatever. This took a half hour of my day, but I thought it was important not for me, but for your edification. I might be wrong, but at least I tried. And maybe @The-Tree-of-Woe can't understand that this is to help bridge understanding, but I know sure as hell that you aren't this dense.
Being dense is my job.
@goldfish said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:
Any other tips or tricks to help me keep up with what's happening?
Posebreak.
Some posebreaks allow you to create your own header, but if your game doesn't have a posebreak, ask for it.
I have many infamous problems keeping track in large scenes and it's helped tremendously.
So the US Naval Observatory's API (which I've been using for astronomical data, specifically moonrise/moonset and moon phase) is being moved (or has been moved—the navy's site structure is in disarray right now) and therefore is no longer accessible.
@Ashen-Shugar has pointed me towards moon rise/set code (in Python, woo!), and Dark Sky
has "lunar age" and with a bit of help from science-math nerd @Tributary I should easily get this translated to illumination...
...but I really want to flip a table right now. Playing data whack-a-mole with data sources is frustrating.