Posts made by Thenomain

Would someone with shell access to Fear and Loathing please contact me on Skype (Thenomain) so I can explain why this particular codebase sometimes hangs on @restart and what to do about it?

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Edit, for the dark humor of those curious:

[Staff] Flamingo feels like we should get you a fruit basket or something, Theno.
[Staff] Thenomain says, “Not until I'm done breaking the game.”
[Staff] Flamingo says, “Don't worry: if you don't break it, I'll try creating a changing breed and inevitably will. 
Every chargen I've ever undergone...”
GAME: Restart by Thenomain, please wait.  (All SSL connections will be dropped.)

This was the last we heard of the game....

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For the less morbid but still curious: I was adding functions to the game to make +shift easier to read and find information in my increasingly deep project of allowing shifting forms for non-Werewolves across my code systems.

The hang is a known issue for the server version that Darkwater was running on. I hadn't even thought about this, and my deep apologies to those scening when this went down.

Nothing is lost. The server is just confused.

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final edit: Looks like the server was either kicked by someone on the command-line, or resolved itself.

@Sparks said in RL Anger:

Pissed off that a friend just passed away from heart failure this afternoon.

Not really sure what I'm angry at. But I'm angry.

I find it's the unfairness of the Universe and the inability to do a damn thing about it.

My best to you and their survivors.

@Sunny said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

'We stopped doing that because we made it way more complicated than it needed to be and people didn't use the way more complicated thing' is a different statement

Did I imply or did you infer? I dunno; I think we could all be better at trying to clarify instead of assuming.

@Catsmeow said in RL Anger:

Don't bring up the Hitchhiker's Guide to me

Yeah, but the before/after Deep Thought was absolutely brilliant.

@Insomnia said in Cheap or Free Games!:

the Final Walking Dead in 2018

Clem! NO!

@Ghost

I'm not saying anyone who minds the difference are bad people, but I get a little tired listening to the complaints. Different medium means content must be approached differently. I approach them the way I approach different directors with plays or covers of music. It's going to be different. How did they interpret it?

I can sense a rabbit hole of going about how people who don't like the interpretation are okay people, and they are, but this being the peeve thread and me stressing how minor the peeve is to me, I'm going to prematurely shrug one shoulder and nod.

@Coin said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

It seems to me like the problem is when these things are made mandatory, rather than by choice, generally.

I have lived through eras where things like 'use the phone code' were mandatory by social pressure.

Maybe people are just into this stuff again and it'll die back out later. That happens with pretty much everything ever.

That's cool. I'm way into that. Hell, I love coding toys. I love people loving the things that I code. As long as we remember that the primary reason, above all others, we do this is to enjoy our time.

(Important Caveat: This does not give anyone permission to do anything they want just because it's fun for them. Not even staff. That is all.)

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@Apos said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

Theno made a comment about that if IC only approaches were popular, then MMOs would do it. That's very funny because RP communities in MMOs tend to fall way harder on the scale of something like RPI. There might be a few hundred roleplayers in a zone, most who have never met one another before, and they just randomly approach one another IC and leap right in with no ooc communication at all. OOC communication would just come after people get to know each other. There's no written code of etiquette or even really understood norms, it just develops because it's very intuitive- someone is there on a character, other people are talking IC and throwing out emotes, someone feels they can add something, they jump in.

c.f. "Not Forced", above. If the community goes that way, great, and the community starts with the game creators. I have yet to see an MMO opt out of OOC systems, so I can't call it a popular game-design decision.

Opting-in to immersion tools is different, and a beautiful thing to behold.

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@Sunny said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

For me, the time period it wasn't showing up on games generally just resulted in my friends and I coding it ourselves -- it didn't stop getting made because it wasn't getting used. I don't buy that, not at all.

While I mostly agree with my fellow coder, I'm going to note that this era was a decade ago, and by "not being made" I mean as a default. We also started with simple language code that was kind of a different form of mutter, but it became complex formulae that would look at your existing languages and make intelligent guesses about how much should be revealed if you do or don't know that language, or if you even have a chance to know which language that is, and we were basing these on understanding of real world linguistics.

It collapsed on itself because (and I'm going to espouse this as a truism): Any code can always be more immersive.

We eventually hit the wall where we'd have to be scanning words for just how complex each individual word would be to translate, and then we'd have to look at grammar, and so forth. And when the coders stopped installing this code, there was no push-back. Few people cared.

Language code, weather code, spy code, phone code, we hit that wall and we took a breath from it. Ten years ago.

I got in...well, not trouble, but due to something I coded for my Motley on Haunted Memories, a single function, pemit(), was locked away from non-staff. All we wanted was a simple Motely channel to talk and plan. Why? I have no idea. Something about wanting to make sure that nobody talks behind anyone else's back?

I'm actually pretty excited that people are coding for themselves again. As a game coder I'd be worried about some security, but in my coughcough years doing this, I've seen code abuse happen less than ten times.

This is a mild peeve of mine, but very mild: I have never had problems separating the book version from the TV show version from the movie version from the comic version of something.

@Jennkryst said in nWoD2.0 Support Code?:

@Thenomain Should have disabled pages and @mail, yo.

There are some people who enjoy playing games with no OOC communication channels, but I think if it was a popular choice then at least some MMO would have done it well by now.

Hell, if you want to see a heated debate, start a thread talking about making every person on the game Unfindable.

@Arkandel said in RL Anger:

Posts today that read "I'VE NEVER WATCHED A SINGLE EPISODE OF GAME OF THRONES".

... Okay? They're the same people around superbowl who post "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO'S PLAYING".

Damn, that's not something to be proud of. You're not special because you don't follow the herd, guys. Plus it's one thing to say you don't like something and another to not be into it because it's popular.

Conversely: "Oh my god you don't watch game-or-sports?!"

No, you inconsiderate twerp, I don't watch Game Of Goreporn or Sports-Ball Extreme. Why, in this modern era, are you pushing your social agenda on me like this when I didn't brag about how I don't do these things and didn't push my social agenda on you?

That said, JRR Tolkien wins so hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAAp_luluo0

There is a reason why the phone code I banged out for The Reach (and many WoD games since) is called "Dumb Phone Code".

1. It's simple. Actually one of the kind of cool things about doing this is that I've created a say() function that gets used in 'places' code, et al., which will convert 'say( <enactor>, :grouses, )' into the correct output style for say and pose. This came about because of the phone code.
2. It's silly. Seriously, what's wrong with you people! Next you'll be wanting automated apartment rental code, detailed language code, actual car objects, random emit code, and...oh my god! You've actually asked for this stuff, haven't you!

I'm kidding (half). We coded all of this about ten years ago, and then got tired of it because it didn't add anything to our experience. I mean it; you haven't experienced the dark side of immersion until you've been forced to carry around a phone object and remember the half a dozen commands--yes, really--to do things like hide your voice, block caller ID, mutter in the room that you're in and yet be clearly heard to those on the other end. I couldn't even remember how to answer the phone half the time. And back then, there was a difference between a mobile phone and a land-line phone. And the phone book. We really did this.

It died out because so many of us started using 'page' for phone conversations. Mutter code died because people stopped using it. Language code died because people stopped using it.

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There is nothing wrong with wanting toys and immersion cues. Part of why I'm here is to tell people about their history, and that history is that immersion code breaks immersion. It can remind you that you're in a game, especially when people criticize it (on games where people are allowed to criticize the game, unsubtle Arx jab), and double especially when it creates a division of people who will use the code and people who won't. The number of people who take their immersion seriously can easily push the cliquish.

Trust me; I'm an Immersion Scientist. Here's my badge:

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That said, do things that are fun because they're fun. If people use the code, awesome. If not, who cares. The only math to this is how much time you want to put into the project, and if it's your project, it's your time. Use it fun-ly.

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain said in Forum Factions:

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain you're thinking way too hard about this. stahp. go work on an app instead.

You know I do have a day job, right?

That sounds like an excuse! You could have used your MSB posting time.

(I kid. work is important. apps are not.)

You do realize I'm trying to derail the thread. You are making it very difficult.

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain you're thinking way too hard about this. stahp. go work on an app instead.

You know I do have a day job, right?

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain you're a puppy. i'm a cat. there's your examples.

What kind of puppies are there, though? I mean, puppies are just small, underdeveloped dogs with big eyes. I mean, we could call them kawaiieyed dogs? Would that be a thing?

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain well, this whole forum is full of either cats or puppies. But derailing the conversation is the important part.

Can you give us an example?

@Meg

I don’t understand this one. Are they all cats who derail the conversation?

@faraday

@chime wrote code to read from a wiki page, so I can’t imagine it being much harder to write to all the tables necessary, unless a text file also needs updated. What Tiny can’t do without a bot is ping the command line to, e.g., run PHP.

@Sparks

Blame? Look at the amazing cosmic power she has. I haven't seen this level of non-suckup up-voting in a long time. It's inspiring!

@Meg said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain said in Forum Factions:

@Catsmeow said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain

Shame on you, @Meg is not a project.

I dunno, she made me make a Changeling.

except you never finished and didn't RP with me!

Pretty Princes don't make themselves!

@Catsmeow said in Forum Factions:

@Thenomain

Shame on you, @Meg is not a project.

I dunno, she made me make a Changeling.