Best posts made by Thenomain

@Tempest said:

Alas. Was sitting at like 80 elfroot for a bit and thinking "yeah, I'm set for like, a long time". Then all this random crap popped up with "you need 30 of this, this, this, this!"

Those are probably for the region requests. If you complete them, you get Power, which is only used to unlock new areas on the map. You get it for some quests and closing rifts, too, so with a few exceptions (specializing or quests), they're not really needed. I ended the game with 127 Power and nothing to spend it on.

I don't get the 'logging stands' thing either. I think I've seen like, one ever, and now I need 2 for something and it says I have 0. Apparently those get treated as 'items' too, rather than permanent structures?

The logging stands and stone quarries (stone something, at any rate) are used to improve Skyhold, and I presume that they are "used up" to build the item in question. It seems somewhat trite to me, as well, but it can be explained halfheartedly a few ways. e.g., "You took what we had, and anything we pull in will be used to maintain the structure."

There is an Inquisitor Perk to show all available stone/lumber areas on the map.

Cincerning the Jaws of Hakkon DLC that's been out a while, don't play it unless you want to be spoiled about (or know) The Truth About The Seekers. Otherwise, I've been having a blast with it. Almost had a total party kill on the major Hakkonite battle, within scant percents of my hero's health. Neat.

Additional: I didn't know Jennifer Hale voiced Krem. She is a voice-acting goddess.

We have much in common with glacier watchers.

@Groth said:

The problem here is that we're trying to pretend as if 'simple' has a single definition.

Then this discussion about how @dig is already as simple as it can be is conceded as "stupid", and we move on.

@WTFE said:

Board wargames, China style.

I'm ending my 15-year dry spell with board wargames by buying "DIY" versions of them. They're ... interesting.

This is the only reason I would buy a new printer. I love my cheap laser printer, but a color laser for DIY games (card games are more my thing) would be a lot of fun. I even have a corner-rounder. That's how much I enjoy DIY paper projects.

Here is Board Game Geek's DIY Games update thread.

@Griatch

You have been talking High Technology, but I don't think you have been much on the path of "just learn Python, duh". Among my reasons for my direct reply were asking the poster to pull those below him up with knowledge.

A multidescer in Mushland implies three things. One is a series of commands to store text by category and name (top.manshirt) locally to the current login object (character). The second is to intelligently display these options in legible, pretty output, again for that object's instance. The third is to apply any combination of same to @desc, with the same expectation that the command's enactor and the target are the identical.

Finally, all this without needing to ask permission from the person who controls the main code repository. It's your character object's code, with all the limitations and accesses that are reasonable for it to have.

This is hard to explain on a tablet, because I can't clean it up. Hopefully this clarifies a bit from your solution.

If I'm going to try Evennia, I'm going to try my hand at either 7th Sea or The Strange.

OPEN SOURCE FONT!
FIXED-WIDTH!

HACK!

http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

I've already taken a liking to this in my telnet client. We'll see how I deal with it in my code editor.

(tooltip text: If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.)

@Coin said:

The Strange. I want a The Strange game.

Advertisement: The 'Bundle of Holding' is selling the entire The Strange game line for $24, and the minimal books you need to be a player for $10.

https://bundleofholding.com/

Going on for the next 7 days.

Cheaper then pretty much any other RPG in its class, except perhaps Eclipse Phase because that shit be free.

Windows 8 trained me to shut down the computer in a stupid way. Now that I'm on Windows 10, I keep looking for the idiotic "Charms" to shut down. I will unlearn this bad behavior eventually, but it's annoying in the meantime.

For people reading this thread who are more softcoders, a situation that came up in the Evennia IRC channel:

In order to embed functions, you currently need to type {function( args ). Since my text editor wants to close all brackets, braces, parens, and so forth I suggested another character. They were already thinking about |function( args ), which while I think is better I don't think is very legible. For example:

This is a test|testfunc( me )...

I suggested fully enclosing for functions. The above might be:

This is a test|testfunc( me )|...

Someone mentioned brackets [], and as a Mush coder, this hit a happy spot. The above would end up:

This is test[testfunc( me )]...

However!

Evennia's lead designer wants a single token to mean all inline substitutions, both ANSI and functions. ANSI color codes would use the same inline token. For example: {r for red, {B for blue background, and so forth.

Why is this a problem? Because ANSI color codes would become harder to type if brackets [] were used. I mean, imagine typing this:

[r][h][B]This is really ugly text.[n]

Eugh, no. This would be a lot easier for everyone:

|r|h|BThis is really ugly text.|n

What I've pitched is a mix of both. @Griatch already knows this, so I'm pitching this to the rest of you, whether or not you're a real-world-coder or a Mush/Mux coder. What do you think of:

|hThis is hilited text!|n
|[500This is xterm256 red.|n
[rhB]This is really ugly text.|n
But [get_random_word( this|that|it, | )] is easier-to-read code.

While Griatch thinks about this, I'm wondering what future softcoders might think, and how current realcoders might react.

advanced note

In Mushcode, '%' is the prefix to 'substitution code', such as %n (enactor's name) or %xr (ansi red) or %va (the @va attribute). It provides flexibility and shorthanding. IMO, Evennia's {<ansi color code> is also shorthanding. What I don't know is if my understanding of Mush's % is biasing me toward a better solution.

I know I imagine that Evennia might allow me to code my own substitution code, such as: ||n or ||va or ||o instead of [name( you )] or [v( a )] or [obj( you )] respectively.

(note, obj() is for the objective form pronoun: him, her, it, them)

Thanks!

@Royal said:

Friends.

Just think of all the social RP and a one room grid! Minimalist with a sweet soundtrack.

Seamus tried that with Victorian Reverie.

It sucked.

"What about JavaScript?", asked Brian. "I'll just bang my head on the desk," replied Barbie.

@WTFE
I agree with you 100% where I agree with you.

Why would %[...] be insane? I mean, I prefer typing %(...), but for me, visually, the hard edges of the [ are easier to see over the { and ( characters. I don't think %[ is used that often in the English language. By 'not often' I will guess 'not at all'.

I'll also agree with @faraday that some shortcut for ease of typing in situations where little things are little are perfectly fine. % may not be the world's best is not even remotely a sensible token, but having a shortcut character makes life easier on the author. And I'll admit, `|r<text>` is a hell of a lot easier to type than `$[ansi( r, <text> )]`. I'll live with escaping the occasional character for the usefulness of those shortcuts.

Maybe I can live with $(<ansi code>), but I'd also want shortcuts for carriage returns/line feeds/whatever, dbref of self, subjective form of the enactor's gender, and so forth. As I'll get into later, a lot of what I think Evennia is missing in the inline-code aspect is for the builders, not the coders.

Also, I see what you mean about `. I still don't think escaping is horrible, in small doses. Or bigger ones when it's SQL and I can't exactly complain to the ANSI committee.

@Griatch said:

I think @thenomain should probably have referenced this feature request which actually provides the context for the discussion.

I purposefully didn't. For me, the context was my bringing it up without realizing there was a feature request in. Then to throw that concept out into the mixed pool of Professionals and Amateurs, stir, and see what would happen. Which is why ...

We didn't have a compelling enough use-case to implement it since we don't explicitly support softcode and no user had so far felt that nesting was a must-have. With enough good arguments brought forward we might well expand the design to support it.

This is why I'm muddling up the discussion a bit by bringing it here. I was less interested in "would you solve problem x this way?" and more interested in seeing how Mushlike people would respond to "problem x".

I am overjoyed that people jumped on this with input from their own experience. <3s all around.

@faraday said:

@Griatch I think the biggest issue is that "builders" kind of straddle the fence between "players" and "developers" in terms of their use of inline functions.

Emphasis mine. I would make this 72 pt text and blinking bright red if I could. (note: I realize now that I can do some of this, but I'll be nice. you're welcome.)

While in #evennia chat yesterday, another user (acharles) was surprised that allowing players to use color codes was on by default. As a Mud developer, his viewpoint was valid and interesting and entirely backwards from mine. I was surprised that Evennia had inline functions turned off by default.

A good Mush builder is constantly asking me for code to allow for creativity, clarity, and organization. I would say that almost all of my non-RPG-system code is for builders. Yes, I will be doing a lot of that server-side with Evennia, but for example I can easily let a builder change small parts of the description of a room based upon the time of day. I don't have to do anything but expose a function I call `ictime()` and the rest is them.

@desc here=This is Thenomain's happy place, with one window looking out across the landscape. It is [get( me/desc-[ictime( time-of-day )])].
&desc-dawn here=dim and hopeful
&desc-day here=bright and cheerful
&desc-dusk here=maudlin but relaxing
(you get the idea)

I know Evennia is not geared toward coding inside the game, but the shortcuts available mean that the builders are enabled and the main coder is less depended upon. To me, this is a win-win.

Of course, this is only important to the games who give this level of control to the builders. I won't pretend that the Mush niche is more important than the Mud niche. I wanted to expand on Faraday's example with a 'oh god dear god yes a thousand times yes'.

So I read three articles and replied to each on Optional Realities.

In summary: One was enjoyable and conversation did spur from it. One was bland and eh. One baffled me to the point of frustration. My response to this last one edged on the unreasonable, but there's only so much BS I can take in my day.

I'll keep at it, but I said I'd read them on their own merits. I'm giving them a C- so far. I'm hoping I just hit a bad spell for them.

@WTFE said:

Yogi Berra.

It's over.

@TNP said:

I tabeltopped before there was an internet.

Since before 29 October 1969? I am impressed.

The reason I tapped out was because I was treating them there like they were us here. I don't see enough interactivity there to disrupt the ideas that they might have. Nascent communities don't need that.

@Bobotron said:

She has something kinda like this going on

She weighs 15 pounds? Buy a goth a sammich!

What @Tyche said. I've been using it a lot because someone on RenoMux told me it was stupid and that nobody would ever use it.

Only Potato on Windows seems to pass that information along, or TinyFugue if that's the way you roll. Atlantis (OS X) also sends it, so at the very least I can get the benefit of it.

I use my own width() function, too, so that can test how other clients see my code without having to physically re-size the screen. Just set your '&width' attribute to a new number, and viola. I hoped that people using the other Windows Mu* Clients would use it too, but it's very hard to break people out of 80 columns.