Topics created by Thisnameistaken

@secretfire said in Input on a new mush idea:

Personally, I'd just make a "north America" grid, make it big but not detailed (focus on highways, a city could just be a single room or two), and then just specify what state the main convoy was in right now.

If you had a few people who like to build like crazy, it'd be rather fun to drop new parts of the grid in front of the PCs as they travel along, and leave their ruins behind. The players declare that they're gonna travel along Interstate 23, heading west, they hang about on the highway grid and RP getting attacked by zombie dogs while having to move cars out of the way of their caravan, you drop Deadsville, TN, in front of them and GM their entry into the town a few days later. After the terrible battle that ensues when Bob the PC rips a zombie-attracting fart, and the PCs get separated fleeing the area, you put a 'HORDE HERE' there. Which maybe somebody will clear out, or maybe you remove it at random eventually.

What fires the imagination about 'The Walking Dead' is imagining ways to solve the problem, which is why everybody likes to criticize how those dumb characters handle stuff. I think you'd really want it to be open-world -- not 'you are trapped in the city with zombies MUSH' but 'Zombies! What are ya gonna do about it?! MUSH.' 'Cause just trying to hold your city territory would get boring, but 'Well, living in this walled subdivision didn't work out, let's build a giant tree-house chicken farm!' type shit would be pretty great.

She is on Fallcoast as Jade.

I'd love the option to ride one of those big bikes they have kicking around. I'd murder if somehow... we got co-op play.

Regardless, I'm excited. I'm pretty sure the ship in the teaser is the USS Constitution in dry dock, so I want to explore its dark post-war secrets!

@Melpomene said:

@Chime If you ever get around to doing that, gimme. 😄

@Thenomain tells me I need to give him a hardcode @whence command first. (tells you where the command you specify is defined, which is rather unexpectedly useful for taking a quick look at whatever bug people are complaining about today...)

Have you got that vtables function documented anywhere? I would've used it if I'd known you didn't have to specify column widths, but the code I found didn't include documentation and taking apart someone else's code is always a PITA. I just want to know what format it expects things in.

I had it beautifully expanded and documented on WORA. sigh.

Really, what you see is what you get.

vtable( LIST ) is expected to work for simple cases; the 0-default column count will decide on its own what a sensible column count for the data and screen is.

I found myself (mostly out of sheer "I CAN code so I WILL code!") making the equivalent of vtables in a different way: it expects a string formatted with two delimiters like so: a|b|c|d~e|f|g~h|i|j|k|l~m|n|o~p|q|r|s|t~u|v|w~x|y|z - and the two delimiters, and it outputs the whole set as a list of columns, fitting them to whatever width is available.

One of the MUSH codebases had a hardcode format function (of some name) that looked much like that. Probably Penn or RHOST.

Gimme if you've got it, reinventing the wheel is fun but I'm not sure I'm doing the world any good. 😉

If you can use it from what I've explained already, you're welcome to it. If not, well, it's broken and you get to keep both pieces.

@Arkandel said:

Sometimes you have a problem. You figure you'll use a regex to fix it. Now you have two problems.

(says someone who uses regexes every day. 🙂 )

They are quick and effective, but for anything of significant complexity, I prefer language that allow easy expression of more complex parsing algorithms. Yes, C/C++ has flex/bison (or lex/yacc if you are truly desperate and your time machine is stuck in the 70s or something). Java has ANTLR, or whatever. Those are effective if you're trying to write a compiler, but tend to be a bit clunky and I've found there is a very large functionality gap between "I'm writing a compiler with multi-file contextual grammar." and "heyyy a few regexes will do fine."

The sweet-spot seems to be language that can readily express simpler recursive-descent or similar parsers without having to break into a whole new language (like bison does). Haskell's Parsec and AttoParsec modules do a fantastic job of fitting exactly into that niche-- especially when combined with the applicative functors module. Being able to add recursive grammar for handling string escapes and other important details make for a huge functionality improvement over more primitive systems like regexs.

So... this project has stalled a little due to the fact that we need help.

We need code help, badly. I can code basic things but I am floundering. We need help. It doesn't have to be long-term help, but we definitely need help setting up, particularly with +dice and chargen code. We're using Rhost and we're debating between using the nWoD (mortal) system or the Exodus (http://www.loki.us.com/images/Exodus_Survivor_s_Guide_v1.5.pdf) system. I'm leaning towards the latter but it will require coding that is beyond my ability.

We're currently using genesismuds as a server and we'd like to move elsewhere, as it is fairly restrictive in certain areas and has some funky quirks. Are there any server providers that people recommend? And is there anyone who can help walk a newbie through transferring a database? And possibly setting up a wiki? Please?

As for the game itself, we have a grid that's 90% ready to go, a setting and theme that is nearly ready (we're still hammering out a couple details, which will depend on the system we go with), and base code (other than dice and chargen/sheet code).

If you are interested, please PM me for more details and information. Or direct anyone who might be interested towards this post. Please. We need halp.

@permabern said:

This Forum doesn't allow posts over 32kb. In 2015.
How exactly do I post a 30 minute or less log of insansity from a MU?

For the love of Cthulhu, please don't post a 100k log here. 😞

Personally, I code in, and recommend, Rhost. All my prior games have used it, and I moved from MUX to that for various security and feature reasons. Not that MUX is bad, mind you!

After a lot of my recommendations and feature requests were integrated into the codebase, and then some, I doubt I'd ever recommend anything else to anyone. And I mean that from a coder's standpoint. When you can @cluster objects and use them as a single object, you change the game on data warehousing. Currently examining this approach for my new bulletin board system I'm writing.

As for game-running, yeah, it takes a lot of skillsets. Most people (none?) can be good at everything AND have the time to run a game, so it is awesome that you have started a small team of people to help with the vision. I too can say that communication and transparency of theme is probably the best starting advice. Always be willing to rewrite and tweak your info files as your players ask clarification questions. On my game, I plan/want to have Q&A sessions up front and solicit feedback as we get started.

Sent you a chat to help you get your tech issues sorted out.