Posts made by Thenomain

@lithium said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

@bobotron Firan had clothing objects, it's also a very big thing on MUD's and some MOO's. Possibly MUCK also but I don't think I've ever played a MUCK.

But what is it? I've never heard of this term before.

@ganymede said in RL things I love:

Economically, I believe that rewards are commensurate with results. If you've been at a company for a long time, but produce the same results as a person who has been there half that time, why should there be any difference in compensation.

Because economically, sustainability is important. If someone can sustain half the productivity for more than twice longer than someone can sustain twice as much, the company's long-term investment in that person has yielded better results.

Also consider the amount it takes to hire someone. This isn't reflected in the instanced view of how much productivity one person has, but the complete view.

We obviously disagree with this, but from my more physics-based learning I must remind business people more frequently than I'd like that work is force over time.

--

Oh, er, this is the RL Things I Love thread, isn't it.

Okay, I bought an iPhone 8 today.

Because I also bought AirPods, my monthly credit card statement will be $20 lower, because I get longer to pay it off without interest.

Oh darn.

@alzie

Possibly consider listing a term for each die, maybe in two different colors or with two different symbols. I don’t know the system yet, but for instance

[good][good][sly]
<sly><bonus><retreat>

Unless there is a clear cut logic to which results will be kept when.

@ganymede

I do think my longevity and loyalty to a company should show, but if it’s immediately non tangible then I’m okay with that. More vacation time, better retirement benefits, etc.

Which is why I’m looking to leave my current job. It doesn’t provide any of that.

@faraday

Sorry. After the fourth time of saying how nothing is perfect and chocolate isn’t vanilla, I wasn’t sure what the goal was. My fallacy may have been mistaking repetition for passion, and if anyone is not staffing to their passions then I feel very sorry for them.

There may be no wrong answers, but as someone focused in usability, some answers are more correct than others. It’s harder because those situations change, but often share similarities. Like vanilla and chocolate.

I know a lot of people think of discussions like this as pointless, but I’m not one of them. There may be no conclusion, but each time we hit this level of preference versus utility, I become a better game designer. We also learn more about the culture as a whole, as it is always changing. I don’t think anyone can run a game well without even a subconscious understanding of this.

@faraday

“You can’t please everyone” is not a replacement for discussing merits and foibles of a policy, especially not if that policy is “this is my preference”. It’s redundant; if you don’t care to have a policy outside your personal preference, then there’s nothing to discuss. There is only one person to please any of the time.

@insomnia said in General Video Game Thread:

It was always the teeth for me in Dragon Age. I think it was the first game I used mods on because of those teeth.

15th Century Peasant Romance Comics, via Hark, A Vagrant!

I played the first Dragon Age as a City Elf, and that beginning hit me right in the nethers so hard that I had to find out what happened. There is only one callback to the intro, but it tore out my heart and spit in my face.

That they tamed the Alienage outlook in later Dragon Ages made a lot of sense, but I still think of DA:O and DA:A as the “correct” vision for Dragon Age.

@pandora

Currently I think the question is whether or not all game reviews/feedback/flaming belong outside of the advertisement board, or just when the original poster is asked or asks.

@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

But different people have different opinions about what constitutes "essential".

And as a game creator, you often have to look beyond your own preferences in order to create a better experience for your players. What I think is a foundation, not the whole of the design.

@arkandel said in Regarding administration on MSB:

It's definitely a Hog Pit issue. I haven't had time yet to read that forked thread but I'll say this - if the posters surprise me and it's a nice civil discussion we'll move it to the Mildly Constructive section. I'm not holding my breath on that one though.

Well sure, because now that it's in the Hog Pit there's no social cues to be considerate. "I towed your car to the south side; it might be okay there, but if it gets broken into I won't be surprised." No kidding?

Ah well.

@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

Wasn't part of the point of this whole thread the idea that people who don't read descs were missing some important bit about the changing parts of the character's desc?

I skipped a lot of the multidescer discussion because really, if you want to use it, use it, else don't. I'm pretty against making anyone pose in a certain way outside the basics: One pose should help give rise to the next. (edit to clarify: I'm riffing on my earlier idea that a desc is a static pose describing what you're looking at. Do it however you want, just participate!)

My thesis in this thread is that if I had to choose between information on a wiki (outside the game) and in the game, I want it in. I concede that there is information that can live 100% off the game, but I don't consider visual cues about a character to be one of them, for much the same reason that I would never play a game where the character name is listed under https://my.fun.game/w/dbref:13

Dbref: #13
Name: Thenomain

I know on BSG everyone's always switching up which uniform they're in, though there's an easy shorthand to say: "Cate walks in, wearing her khaki fatigues..."

And that's the way things have become here in our Mushlikes, and I'll be honest, I prefer it this way.

There was some back-and-forth whether or not this is what killed people looking at the long desc, but I didn't see anything more authoritarian about descs than that.

Unless you consider "don't make me hit the wiki for a desc" to be draconian? Maybe? No?

@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

"A cute brunette with cherub cheeks" is fine. But if you try to make me read two paragraphs about that same character? I'm just not going to read it. Full stop. And even if I did somehow get coerced into reading it? All I'm really going to glean from it is "a cute brunette with cherub cheeks". So the full desc offers no benefit over the short desc for me.

A short desc is still a desc, and there's nothing stopping anyone from making a one-line full desc. It's a pose. It's a finger attribute. It's there to serve an extremely specific purpose: To give people a rough idea of who they're dealing with.

I honestly don't care how the information gets across, as long as it does.

I've been yelled at before for not reading a log, posed snarkily at because I didn't see someone's character offer a handshake, I know more than most people without dyslexia about having difficulty reading things on the screen. The level at which I hate ANSI abuse comes directly from this. I've had people on this very forum laugh at me because of it. You are preaching to the choir.

But "Jessica Chastain in a flight suit" is not useful and may push people out of the client window just to know what you're talking about, and that I have objections about.

@thatguythere said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

@thenomain said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

So just copy the text and paste it into your web browser. It isn't that har—

That is what I do once the scene gives me a reason to care, though I will freely admit that does not always happen.

I was referencing earlier in this thread where a few people were against and a bunch of people were ambivalent at best when they have to leave the game window for some basic information.

"A cute brunette with cherub cheeks", for instance, is one million times more useful to me than "Felicity Jones in a uniform".

(edit, because I got ninja'd by Faraday): I consider at least a shortdesc like that to be critical.

I mean, yes, I should know who Felicity Jones is and be all fawning over her quirky Zooey Deschanel look, but I still had to look her up. Really, I had to look up every actress mentioned in this thread. "Cute brunette with cherub cheeks"? I could know more, but now I know a lot.

Tell me what you want me to know. That's what a desc is. But just like a pose, at least give me something.

--

@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

Another reason I think descs have fallen out of favor is that the entire system is so dang clunky. You have to put in the static desc, create a bunch of outfits

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nobody ever made anyone else use a multidescer. A lot of people have tried, mind, back in the late 90s and early 00s, but I have been resolute even as a coder that if they wanted to they could knock themselves out, otherwise I'mma gonna do my static thing.

@arkandel

Was it a Hog Pit issue? I saw the post and didn't see it that way. Maybe now people have a reason to tear each other a new one; if that was the intent then I get it, else it's not useful for a game review.

@thatguythere said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

For me the purpose of a desc is to give me a rough idea what the character looks like. And that bit is a bad example because I have zero idea who Jessica Chastain is, I am sure I have seen her in things but I do not remember actors names for the most part.

So just copy the text and paste it into your web browser. It isn't that har—

(looks at the thread title)

Never mind. Carry on.

@autumn

Let me go in my past 23 years of logs and...
... wait, I don't log.

... wait, I know that this entire preference discussion is based on faulty memories and logic.

... wait, I've been busy with this insanity:

***demon code***

&pledge.type.vow [v( d.pb )]=Vow
&pledge.type.oath [v( d.pb )]=
  True Name, Obscured|
  True Name, Unsullied|
  Keeper's Name|
  Higher Power
&pledge.type.corporal [v( d.pb )]=
  Mortal Emblem|
  Seeming Emblem|
  Courtly Emblem|
  Title Emblem|
  Nemesis Pledge

&f.name-completion-in-attributes me=
    first( graball( |[sort( get( v( d.pb )/%0 ), i, | )], %1*, | ), | )

// what is the first match for element named "t" and which attribute is it on? 
think 
    strcat( 
        setq( e, 
            first( 
                sort( 
                    crumple( 
                        iter( lattr( v( d.pb )/pledge.type.* ), 
                            u( f.name-completion-in-attributes, %i0, t ), 
                            , | 
                        ), 
                        | 
                    ), 
                    i, | 
                ), 
                | 
            )
        ), 
        setq( a, 
            if( strlen( %qe ), 
                titlestr( 
                    edit( 
                        grepi( 
                            v( d.pb ), 
                            pledge.type.*, 
                            %qe 
                        ), 
                        PLEDGE.TYPE., , 
                        _, %b 
                    )
                )
            )
        ), 
        %qa`%qe 
    )

(result): Corporal`Title Emblem

*Why am I not coding this around SQL lookup tables?!* 
(Because not everyone's games have SQL access set up.)

(many, many edits as I work out very slightly better ways to do this, and fix logic gaps, and nnnngh)

@faraday said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

Side note: I'm not convinced that people ever used descs as much as we'd like to believe, even back in the "good ol' days". I've had an @adesc on every character I've ever played, and it didn't get triggered as much as I would expect, even way back when. So I think these alternatives have filled a void that was always there to some extent.

I've set a desc notification as soon as I discovered @adesc and back in the day it would be triggered at least once per scene. There were two types of people: People who would look as soon as you entered, and people who would look after you posed something even slightly controversial.

Nowadays I see it get triggered a little under once per pose-in.

--

@autumn said in Character Information: Wiki or Mu*?:

@thenomain One other possible contributing reason:

• We started writing longer descs, and people aren't willing to read them.

I don't buy this one. The extensive two-paragraph-desc has been around since the DarkMetal or Paris:FdM days, with it not being uncommon to see it even longer. This was along with multidescers and man, people have always lo-o-ooooved to write!

In a hobby about writing, I can't consider this strange, and that's why I don't buy it.

Along those lines, I suspect that having short-descs show up in +glance, and later in default room views, probably contributed, too.

I will, however, buy this one, even at full price. I'd be tempted to buy one for a friend.

@cupcake said in Good TV:

@thenomain Walk-and-talks in zero gee?

I like to think they would be "float-and-gloats".

@arkandel

Sometimes you even do it on purpose. I would love to see what Aaron Sorkin would do with sci-fi, tho after "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip", maybe he should just keep within his comfort zone.

Well let's examine why people don't look at characters any more.

(Pun not intended, but I left it in when I noticed.)

It's because we, the general "we", pose longer and more descriptive than we have before. Sure some people were always excited to pose 2 paragraphs, but now we get our outfits, mood, accent, and body language as they happen, sometimes repeated when new people enter the scene. I wouldn't be surprised if on the whole we write more than when we had more rotating descs.

I am very bad at scene-sets, but love the touches that I can and other people add throughout whatever situation the scene is about. I know that I'm probably tapped for ideas when I stop.