tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8023044802775635692024-03-07T20:11:09.265-08:00The Sea of Storms BlogTSoS development and random staff musingsLuthienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01352827439802266016noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-15464945071581305122015-06-26T00:39:00.000-07:002015-06-26T00:39:11.292-07:00The perspective of a four-year-old: "Why?"The word has been 'officially' out for about a week on the front page of the website at this point... although I am a blabbermouth who has mentioned it here and there prior to that. xD Reactions appear to either be positive or of the 'do not know what to think' kind. Which is as good as I might expect, because there is truly very little to say about Project Soulcage that can be easily quantified for PR purposes. Besides the timeless <i>'it's not a race, it is a marathon'</i> and <i>'progress is slow, roadblocks are everywhere'</i> thoughts that guide me in this undertaking, I've found it hard to do a post on it on this blog, even though I very much intended to do this on a weekly basis since I started. Alas.<br />
<br />
Let's 'waste' this weeks blog post on an easy subject: Why?<br />
<br />
<b>"Why what?"</b> is probably the question my rebelling four-year-old has to innocently offer in response, so let's get that out of the way right here and now.<br />
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<b>"Why is it named Soulcage?"</b> I needed a name that did not have 'tsos' in it so I wouldn't randomly wipe out our currently functional source code by habitual typing during the actual devving, and 'soulcage' seemed apt of the frustration and work that is ahead of me during this summer.<br />
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<b>"Why bother?"</b> There are a load of little and big reasons. While I kind of arbitrarily decided 'I am gonna do this ' at the start of June, the dream of a mystical rewrite has been around for far longer than that. In terms of documentation, the subject of <i><u>'TSoS Alpha 2.0'</u></i> goes back at least three years when an immortal-only forum section was created for this purpose with some features we'd truly like to have if it happened.<br />
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<b>"Why rewrite as opposed to fix and improve?"</b> Most obviously, there's the fact that there have been a lot of cooks in our kitchen. I've blogged on that subject two times at this point, so I'm not going to go off on another rant (I hope!) but suffice it to say some bugs have been around for many years, even if they're invisible to mortals and merely result into spam for us immortals to sort through. I am currently the most active coder, and I simply do not know the internal logic of Smaug well enough to try and figure out meaning: the initially shoddy fixes I did to the forms code as of recent show very clearly that I lack an understanding of the bigger picture. My belief is that this understanding is more quickly gained by rewriting than by studying it, which is probably the argument that worked as a tipping point in favor of my starting this ordeal.<br />
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<b>"Why doesn't Vandread explain things to you?"</b> Nobody will ask me this, but I'm going to write it down anyway. He explains things a lot, but he has a job during the times I am around, and even then his ability to remember all of it is not perfect. It comes down to saying 'Oh, I saw Sally with your pen', and then you'll just give up on it because Sally is the biggest hoarder you've ever seen. :) Besides that, Vandread has on more than one occasion heard me rant about the codebase with thoughts he himself remembers having whilst trying to figure out the answers; all those things combined show that there is very little 'knowledge' of our codebase amongst current staffers. Sure, some of us know the commands really well, but the knowledge to change or improve is non-existent for as far practical terms goes.<br />
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<b>"Why not?"</b> Exactly. Why not?! My thoughts precisely. There are so many things to be gained from this project, most of which have been given up on and delegated to a 'it would be nice to have some day, but it won't ever happen'. Those ideas and dreams are at the core of Project Soulcage: things that a modern mud codebase ought to have to inspire joy not only amongst our players, but amongst our staff as well. There is also the fact that this codebase is based on an incomplete understanding of the WoT universe: the channeling system in particular is messy and incomplete.<br />
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The very first phase of Project Soulcage has been underway for nearly a month at this point. It has been extremely slow at places: at the time of writing this I have 'consumed' about one weeks worth of not touching it in order to pace myself after running face-first into the implementation of one issue that was very well on its way of souring me on this project: I ended up discarding 4 days of work after I went down the 'wrong' path. And despite my attempts to put Soulcage off my mind for a few days, my mind is still whirring with the thoughts and plans on how to tackle future phases in the most responsible and dependable manner!<br />
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What exactly is involved in this first phase and what other phases there are will be the subject of a future blog post. :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-65105755786029243662015-06-24T19:30:00.000-07:002015-06-24T23:34:11.834-07:00The Wheel is waiting for your thread.<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So here we are, working on a
resurrection of the MUD that most of us have put significant portions
of our lives into. This is a labor of love for those of us who do it,
not exactly a job even though it may feel like it at times, but it is
something that we come back to because of our memories from our time
here. We look back on to those memories and smile, the great times
that we have had coming back, the comraderie of being in a guild and
meeting new people, the thrill of combat against both NPCs and other
players, the glory of being the best at the moment of your particular
talent or trade, the friendly competition between fellow players, and
most of all the escape from reality into a world of your imagination. As the staff here at the Sea of
Storms we also return so that we can help another generation of
players and their characters through these same experiences and hope
that they will find as much enjoyment from them as we have.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We have a multitude of things going on
right now, mostly behind the scenes. Our lead coder, Kimadi is
currently working hard on Project Soulcage. This will give our mud
the stability and features that we need to continue evolving into the
future. Once this is completed we will begin working on several new
features and updating a few things from our current systems. These
are not easy things to accomplish and will take a couple of months
before you as a player see any difference.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Fortunately though, you do not need to
wait for any of this. These are things that we have in store for the
future, but there is plenty for you to day today. We are on the precipice of all the excitement that
Robert Jordan's world can entertain.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The real question now is: <b><u>what is your
role going to be?</u></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
You are the player. You are the reason
why we are here. You are the reason that we work so hard fixing our
code. You are the reason that we run these events and put together
plot lines and story arcs. You are the lifeblood of our MUD, the
future of our universe that people will speak of doing amazing things
and the role models that people strive to become.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We are currently putting together two
story arcs that we will run together, one building off of the other. These arcs will be all inclusive. Everyone
will have the ability to participate in one form or another. It does
not matter how high or low you are in skill in any particular thing.
All you have to do is show up and get involved. You will be included
no matter your strength, skills, anything. Everyone is important and
we want everyone to get involved. This is your chance to get involved
in the history of our MUD, where down the line you will be able to
tell people that you were there when amazing things happened.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
We will be continuing this with
another overarching storyline after this particular thread has
reached its end and it is time to weave another into the fabric that
makes up the Sea of Storms. But, this is not to say that your
experience here has to be limited to staff ran events or our plot
lines. This is your world. Go out there and interact with others.
Have aspirations and go after them. Go on a journey with your
character and see how it turns out. Get involved with other people.
Create your own story lines. This is your story, as the staff we are here to help you and all the other players enjoy your time here and
create that story.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So, don't be afraid to reach for
something, to have aspirations, to build your own story line. That is
what you are here for. Go for it, it may work out just as you have
envisioned or it may not, but the fun is in the journey, not the
destination.</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Its time for your thread to join the
rest of those in the Pattern.</div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-58282278976958204992015-06-09T22:12:00.002-07:002015-06-09T22:12:50.337-07:00The Chrysalis of StormsIt has been a long time since I posted here. For that matter, it has also been a while since this blog saw some activity, although that isn't that long in comparison.<br />
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As of late, the Sea of Storms has been going through yet another revival. It is as natural to us as breathing: be active for a while, work hard on the game, and then real life takes over and things slowly slump away again. My own return to this place was a happy accident combined with a few other immortals popping their heads in, and as such another period of arduous activity has been born. Truly, we are like day and night, a rhythm akin to the Wheel that keeps turning...<br />
<br />
Okay, cheesey jokes aside. What's our plans? I could not tell you, dear readers, but I can tell you what _my_ plans are. At its core, I will do what I can to improve this game. Simple as pie...<br />
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In practice, this means I will try to address the problems I come across. As a coder, the majority of those things will involve coding, although I am not blind to our other issues. But I cannot solve everything alone, and I leave those things to those who are more qualified to deal with them, just like how I am amongst those more qualified to deal with The Code.<br />
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As for how I have been 'improving' the game... I want to draw your attention to the recently implemented 'whatsnew' command and that which was involved in its creation. When executed, it gives a small list of recently implemented changes to the codebase: that is, the majority of stuff that makes up skills, weaves, movement, crashes and so forth.<br />
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But it was not a simple command to implement. The Sea of Storms is an old game - it dates back to the 90s! - and it shows in all aspects of the game. Dozens of file backups, dozens of people who touched the code with varying degrees of code quality applied, many bugs and memory leaks.. all things considered, I often feel it is a miracle this game keeps running. (OK, it has been crashing way too often, but the majority of those were actually due to the machine cutting out! ... and hopefully we'll be able to get to the bottom of that sooner than later, too.)<br />
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Worse, the other internal ports we have available for the purposes of testing changes and building new areas ran on completely _different_ code than the public version everyone was playing on. They were created once upon a time, but not kept in sync, so nobody knew what bugs were hiding in those. All things combined, this means we were dealing with complete chaos. For example, only the public game would successfully start after one of those unexpected server reboots. This left our builders incapable of doing any work whatsoever.<br />
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Thus, what was done first was to find out the latest state of the code. This was placed into source control; I opted for 'git' because it is easy to modify to suit our needs. After that, the development version of the game was made to always mirror the latest modifications. This in turn required I re-work the antiquated Makefile to build the game, as well as consolidate our startup script to handle some issues it did not properly handle beforehand.<br />
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Okay, so I technobabbled you into oblivion at this point. Sorry! Generally speaking, all of this was intended to streamline development and make it easier for me, Vandread and other (future) coders to add to the code, test-deploy it to the server _and_ be able to look back in history to know who made which changes for whatever reason. In essence, this automates a lot of house-keeping that nobody ever did to begin with!<br />
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After all this was done and found to be working out as well as I was hoping for it to be, I moved our other ports of the game over to a similar structure as well, although these are (obviously) not subject to automatic updates. Rather, these will be manually triggered when we deem them ready. Tests are important, and you seriously do not want to suffer 3+ reboots in an hour because Kimadi is hunting down some obscure bug. :-)<br />
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At this point in time, everything has been stabilized, and there is finally a more-or-less consistent environment for us coders to work in. A lot of work with very little to show for it... other than a certain 'whatsnew' command. This command goes straight to the source control that I have set up and displays the summaries for everone to see.<br />
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Besides the fact that we now don't need the inconsistently maintained 'help changes' document any longer, it is my hope it will also serve as a gateway of transparency to the players that things are happening behind the scenes, even if it may take a while for the code to be considered stable enough to be subject to player abuse!<br />
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Not all work is sexy. Some things simply need doing. And if the the Sea of Storms is to escape its own cycle of being, we cannot afford to carry on as we did in the past.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-46217365330897751552012-11-20T13:03:00.000-08:002012-11-20T13:17:56.496-08:00The Role-Players New GrooveHere on the Sea of Storms there has always been a strong culture of quality RP since the very beginning. The majority of newbies are inducted into RP by senior players wielding emotes and poses that are often well written and highly descriptive. Another mainstay of RP on our MUD has been posting length. The standard to which most players hold themselves is about four lines at a minimum. Anything less than that has often been considered lower quality, while anything more than four has been considered higher quality (up to a point at least). In pursuit of this 'higher quality' RP, styles like turn-based role-play were born to enable longer posting length and mitigate the problem that can arise with players interjecting themselves repeatedly when another players long posts. Turn based role-play has never been a policy of the MUD, far from it! It has, however, been encouraged by many players and staff through personal preference as a way to manage larger RPs involving more than two or three people. The downside of this has been a rise in scenes which are beautifully written, take forever (and a day) to play out, and have very little happen in them because the players zone out due to the inevitable 15 - 20 minute wait times between rounds.<br />
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The Staff is, of course, dedicated to quality RP, and we're always on the lookout for areas where we can tweak things. Part of our recent batch of improvements is to add several new RP commands to be used in harmony with emote and pose. These commands are <b>whisper</b>, <b>think</b>, and <b>feel </b>(along with some changes to <b>say </b>and <b>sayto</b>). Some players who have been to other MUDs, may recognize these as commands often seen on RPI MUDs. This is no accident, as these commands are inspired by good experiences staff members have had over the years playing on other RPI MUDs.<br />
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Enough build up though, lets get into the nitty gritty! These new commands are often used in something called real-time RP. This style of RP is one where no order exists and characters/players react to the posts of others as they come. Length is not a focus, but descriptiveness is. An easy way to look at the difference between turn based and real-time is this: Instead of writing a large post with several actions and segments of dialogue, players will instead write smaller posts with less actions and more immediate dialogue to which the other players in the scene can quickly respond to. This allows for the flow of RP to be fast paced and immersive. You know, for things to actually happen in a reasonable amount of time.<br />
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Link: <a href="https://docs.google.com/a/tsosmud.org/document/d/16nor8LTqfrlTepST4yOflX63kuWqWrRrE_ZTs0VBHH4/edit">https://docs.google.com/a/tsosmud.org/document/d/16nor8LTqfrlTepST4yOflX63kuWqWrRrE_ZTs0VBHH4/edit</a><br />
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The link above shows a brief RP where a staff member used the new commands to animate both Master Varian of the Feast of Lights Inn and Lord Kiriak Riatin, a member of a leading Cairhien house. This scene took very little effort to run and moved at a very fluid pace. One can easily see the way pose/emote were used in conjunction with the say and whisper commands. <br />
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The last two commands, <b>think </b>and <b>feel</b>, are primarily for individual players to deepen their own role-play experience. The output from both of these commands display only to the player using them, along with any staff member that happens to be in the room--allowing them to have a better understanding of the characters and motivations if they are running an Event (for example). Players might be surprised how occasional use of these commands can change how they role-play their characters. I highly encourage everyone to give them a try at some point.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-33836660407251698832012-11-14T08:49:00.000-08:002012-11-20T13:20:27.109-08:00Winds of Change are Blowing<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I'd like to welcome everyone back to TSoS's Developer blog. It has been awhile since any posts have been put up here, but that will change going forward. In fact a lot of things on TSoS have been changing lately (albeit, lots of them behind the scenes) and thus we have our theme for today, change! We would like to let all of our players know what we have recently implemented, as well as give some idea what is still on the docket going forward.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />A few updates have already been implemented on the live port in the form of new RP commands. These are really a quality of life change for our current players, and an attempt to make our syntax more intuitive to new players, especially those coming from RPI MUDs. These new RP commands (or new versions of at least) are say, sayto, and whisper. In addition, we will also have think and feel, which represent a new layer of role-play for players on TSoS. All in all, these commands are intended to provide more options and not replace the mainstay commands of emote and pose. These new commands will hopefully be used in conjunction with emote and pose to provide a more immersive role-play environment for players. A devblog will be dedicated to delving into this suite of RP commands a bit further in the near future.<br /><br />Going forward, we have quite a few changes we're working through now, and even more being discussed by staff. Three of these changes are worth mentioning because we expect them to be the next set that we roll out to the live port. The first is a modification to the look command. We're going to tweak look so that it shows a physical description of the target, rather than just an equipment list. This description had previously been accessed solely by way of the glance command. This won't be replacing glance because the particular description that look will pull from will have a limit on length, while glance will continue to provide a more expansive canvass for those inclined to write lengthy character descriptions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Also, we will be tweaking look to enable players to view extra descriptions of the visible items another player is holding. This segues into our second modification which will apply to our craft command. Currently you can almost completely define and describe an item using craft, but you can't edit the item's extra description. In actuality, a lot of items don't yet have one of these extra descriptions, currently shown by using the examine command. We think that it just makes sense to provide players with this level of detail and control, so keep an eye out for this update to craft in the future! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Finally, we are evaluating NPCs and where players can realistically practice their skills, forms, and weaves without having to slaughter entire cities of (possibly innocent) people. As some may notice, the NPC balance is also a little wonky where animals and humanoids seem to have widely varying difficulty, especially at lower ranges of player combat power. Expect to see some NPC balancing changes to be debuting with future area updates to provide a more realistic environment with which our players can explore and interact.<br /><br />While the RP quality has always been a staple of our MUD, there is no denying that having a low player base has imposed significant difficulty for players to progress and move forward on their own. Thus, the focus of a lot of discussions that staff members have had is on change is how we can address this issue. It's not just a matter of how we can grow, but rather how can we improve the quality of the game play no matter the size of the player base? How can we become more immersive, fun, and RP-centered MUD? We're continuing to flesh out these issues and develop ideas to address them, and we'd like to encourage you to speak up here, or especially on the <a href="http://forum.tsosmud.org/">forums</a> if you have ideas yourself. We're marching forward, and we want you to be a part of it.</span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-70544796821349407202010-05-14T09:13:00.001-07:002010-05-14T09:13:06.361-07:00All Things Cairhien<p>First devblog of the summer for me and hopefully not the last. Coming back from my hiatus slowly in all areas from logging in, events, now finally to PR and communication with the player base. That being said lets get to the meat of this devblog. </p> <p>This summer Cairhien is our big theme. Last year in the fall it was the world and the tensions and eventual wars brought on by events and the players chance to participate in those. We had some really fun world events such as Malkier, The Horn of Valere, treasure hunting in the Caralain Grass. Now however it is time to deal with the repercussions of these wars and chaos in the world. What better city then Cairhien to do this, besides maybe Caemlyn. With that in mind the story arcs all revolve around the city of Cairhien and how it is being affected by the refugees, war to the south, and constantly dwindling trade. </p> <p>The player base will be able to help or hinder Cairhien, form loyalties with noble houses or foreign powers, help the refugees or remove them. The opening event for the summer story arc is on May 20th at 3:00 pm PST and is the grand reopening of the Silk Path inn which if you are new, was once the Cairhien headquarters for the Children of the Light within the city. It was destroyed late last fall by two male channelers. After the destruction several player groups decided to rebuild it ICly and we are proud to be bringing it back with updated room descriptions, a memorial plate, and possible a new owner!</p> <p>After the kick off event on May 20th, I will be running two public events a week and 2 semi private or private events as well. These will range from event chains to one shot mini events. I will be keeping track of all the interesting bits through devblogs and schedule event times and dates on the forums. </p> <p>All that being said, I am glad to see the MUD thriving again and promise to remain active until at least the end of the summer to entertain everyone with stories, events, and the occasional contest! <br /> <br />~ Jeshin</p> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-11293488071741885062010-03-11T14:12:00.000-08:002010-03-12T07:58:51.750-08:00Server Trials in Down TimeSome of you may have noticed the last couple days the server was uhh not quite working right. Find out why after the jump. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
The server is running a Linux distro called Ubuntu Server put out by a company called Canonical Ltd.<br />
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Ubuntu is debian based and as such supports apt-get and code repositories. Every 6 months Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu (april and october) and gives them a major version which is the number of years since they started and a minor version of the month. So you'll see 8.04, 8.10, 9.04, 9.10 etc. The next release this april will be 10.04.<br />
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As Ubuntu releases new versions they faze out support for older versions with the exception of LTS (Long Term Support) releases, of which 8.04 was the last and 10.04 will be the next.<br />
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As some may know tsosmud.org also has a mumble server. Mumble has drastically changed their system between 1.1 and 1.2 to the point where a 1.2 client cannot connect to a 1.1 server. Mumble has addressed this by giving people the option to install the "legacy" client and when you try to connect to a 1.1 server it prompts and then opens the 1.1 legacy client and continues connecting through that.<br />
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The first version of Ubuntu to have the 1.2 server in repositories was Karmik Koala or 9.10. Upgrading Ubuntu is supposed to be as simple as do-release-update, bunch of crap happens then it prompts you saying it needs to restart.<br />
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I talked with Luthien about it and my plans to do an update on the server, we figured due to the recent low player count now is the time to do it and that I'd do it during the weekday to give enough time to fix the system if something goes horribly wrong, which with Linux I've come to expect, I just expected more from Ubuntu. <br />
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So Tuesday rolls around and I get to work and ssh into the server and start the update. A quick "sudo do-release-update" command and its off scanning the system, finding packages to update, getting new repositories and away it goes. The update seemed to be going relatively smoothly but when it came time to restart everything went horribly wrong. Apparently 9.10 kernel has severe issues and during load has kernel panics about not having enough memory. Our server has 4 gigs, 9.10 recommends at least 256 megs. We have more than enough memory. As such the system couldn't boot and poof mud down.<br />
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This is where the fun starts. I call Deru Communications (company who owns the rack our server is on) and they had noticed the server was offline as well from their automated checks and was about to contact me too. They hook me up with a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch login so I can see what's going on remotely. Bad things... Very bad things.<br />
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Before I started the update I grabbed the most recent backup off the server and since I work at a web development company we do have some linux servers. I tried to get it running one of them, but I was working with our net admin and we discovered that the servers are missing utilities that are required to run the mud but it could run a PHP based website so I took what I could get at the time and threw the forums up on there and pointed tsosmud.org to it.<br />
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A couple of status posts on there and then its back to work for now.<br />
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So Tuesday night I'm driving down to downtown Phoenix to rescue Chuck (aka tsosmud server) from the rack to take home. I get home late, due to the awesome rush hour traffic in phoenix on the 10.<br />
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Once I finally get home I load up the Ubuntu 9.10 install cd and start a LiveCD session, essentially it boots to linux stored completely in memory so I can mount drives and back things up and try to repair my existing install, but for this I just backed up the database and home directory. Then I shut down and unplugged my backup drive to ensure I wouldn't accidentally do anything that could cause me to lose the data on that drive.<br />
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Turn the system back on and boot into the installation of 9.10 Karmic Koala, remember this is the same CD that let me do a LiveCD from it.<br />
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I start the install, everything is going smooth, repartitioning the main drive, formatting it with the ext4 file system, etc. Everything finishes installing and time to reboot and bad juujuu. Boot seems to be going fine until it loads the mysql daemon then suddenly kernel panics everywhere claiming to be out of memory. Again, 4 gigs for an OS that can run on 64 megs is an indication I'm not out of memory.<br />
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So I assume maybe I have a RAM chip going bad so out comes MEMTEST86 and a couple hours later of no faults found in the RAM at all I have to assume my chips are good. Maybe it was the 64 bit install it didn't like. I can't remember if I set the server up originally as 64 bit or 32 bit so I figure what the hell and started the 32 bit install.<br />
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Everything going well, install was successful, server reboots, apps loading... and BAM kernel panics. Now both these ISO's for 64 bit and 32 bit versions I downloaded off the US server so I figured maybe the ISOs were bad so I downloaded a new one off the canada server for the 64 bit ISO.<br />
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Download finishes, burned to a disk and away we went. Until kernel panics. Now I'm getting mad, its 11PM Tuesday night and I have a server that I'm thinking has a bad hard drive. I mean its not like Ubuntu would put out a SERVER version that doesn't work right? Server versions are built to be stable and not be problematic.<br />
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So I'm thinking maybe the Seagate hard drive is going bad and that I'll have to pick one up from Fry's on Wednesday. But just to make sure I downloaded 8.04 LTS and discovered 8.04 can't install off a SATA CD Rom drive, so then I downloaded 8.10 (What I installed on the server originally) and put that in there.<br />
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Install went smooth, everything should be ok and restarted and poof! it worked! After a few seconds I'm staring at the login prompt and I'm hating Kursed Koala. Now its after midnight and I figure what the hell lets see how much I can go. From the fresh install I do an upgrade to 9.04 Jaunty Jackelope. Update went smooth no issues, booted right into 9.04 no problem. Ok, final chance, I start the update to 9.10, update went fine no issues, server reboots and BAM Kernal Panics. So now I know for a fact the problem lies with Kursed Koala.<br />
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By now its just after 1AM Wednesday morning and I have work in a few hours. But I know the issue so I go to bed.<br />
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During all of this time Luthien was trying to get a copy of the mud working on his laptop, he used to have one that worked but it was before he updated his OSX and once he got it working he couldn't get outside connections.<br />
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Dom managed to get it working on a computer that had 1 of 3 hard drives dead and so I pointed dom.tsosmud.org to his computer to let people log in there temporarily.<br />
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Wednesday I get home and download 9.04 and do a fresh install, works beautifully. Then I get a few things we use installed and reboot and everything working well still, do updates and reboot everything fine. Hook the backup drive back in and get it mounted and restore home directory and database and configure apache2 and by 7PM Wednesday I have the server showing me our home page and running the mud.<br />
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I clean a few things up and turned it off to bring back down to central Phoenix to put back on the rack Thursday. And now I finally have some time to really get into FF13.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-47718075346907592482009-12-10T12:34:00.000-08:002009-12-10T12:34:45.434-08:00Walking the Tightrope<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">First things first, this post is dedicated jointly to Doagle and Stevie Ray Vaughan (RIP) who has provided the title for the post. Go now and listen to one my top 5 guitarists: </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yNuXO60G33w&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yNuXO60G33w&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Ok, now that we've crossed that bridge let's get down to business.<br />
</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><a name='more'></a>The question was raised as to how players can address the issue that can sometimes come up where they get a little too attached to the game, their characters, etc. This isn't really something that's very easy to tackle in any way, and it's definitely not a subject where I'm going to really pretend to be any sort of authority on the subject. I'd encourage people to chime in and share their own ideas for what techniques they use to keep a healthy distance. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">The root of it is in something that's been around for decades (at least). Modern "RPGs" really aren't very much of the sort. You may pick a type of character to play (by that I mean mostly good or bad, as it doesn't tend to get much more complicated than that), and use that to pick dialogue options or such. That, combined with some sort of progression of strength, are sort of the two calling cards of a modern role-playing game. If you think about the history of the genre and about what the very name of the genre means, that's really a pretty poor approximation to the games of old. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">TSoS and other games like it fall into a rather older style of RPGs. They're a lot more akin to the D&D games of yesteryear than they are modern take. You pick a character type...and that's just the starting point. You have to imbue them with a personal history, personality traits, motivations, hopes and dreams, etc. To some extent, it's like your very own multiple personality setup. You're creating a whole different person that you have to try and think like and act for. Sometimes these may be patterned (at least a little) on you, but just as often they may be someone very different.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">There are plenty of stories out there about people who've lost touch with things in their real life from playing D&D just that little bit too much. It's probably not as big of a deal now as it was when I was going to school, but back then it certainly had enough of a reputation even amongst people who knew little to nothing about it. MUDs and their ilk are different in the sense that they aren't really known very much outside of a fairly small subset of the gaming crowd. Even folks that I know that play RPGs really have never heard of the text-based variety other than something like Zork which is really, on some level, entirely different. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">It's just as easy to get a little too heavily invested in your character, their comings and goings, etc. with something like a MUD as it is with an old fashioned D&D game. In some ways it can probably be easier as it probably takes less work to go home and login than it does to get your favorite group together for a gaming session in person. You also will end up with probably a larger group of people that you'd typically interact with, even if just in passing, than the small tight-knit gaming group.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">So when does it all become a problem? Well from both personal experience, as well as years of watching others I'd say that for many the first time when they really realize that there's something amiss is when they lose their first real character. I'm not talking about the one that you had for a couple weeks and then lost because you did something stupid in a roleplay and got killed. I'm talking about the one you had for two or more years, got really invested in, and then had something go wrong leading to a sudden or unexpected death. It is tough to lose something that you've invested so much of yourself in. It may feel like the many hours you invested were taken away too quickly, for little to no real reason. It's kind of what makes the worst part of TSoS's death system losing the character rather than some portion or skills and such. (If you don't feel that way, you probably should reevaluate your relationship with your character or your priorities.) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I think the advice that I would give people in that situation is pretty much the same advice that I would give people in general who would struggle with finding a good balance with respect to their game-play habits in general. We wouldn't be responsible administrators if we didn't want people to play our game and enjoy the product that we're putting out there. On the same line of thinking, however, we also wouldn't be responsible if we didn't worry a little now and again if someone seems to get a little too attached.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I think one of the first things that people who lose loved characters needs to realize is one of the most important pieces of advice that I could give anyone who's hooked on TSoS or any other game. That is to say, at the end of the day when you power down the computer it is still just a game. It's not necessarily any more intrinsically valuable than Monopoly or Connect 4 or Poker. It is something that we do to pass the time and find some measure of enjoyment, it's a game. This particular game is made infinitely more complex than those others due to the element of interpersonal interaction that's involved though. Games are meant to be fun, but they aren't meant to be more than pass times. It's should certainly be the case that the relationship that you have with the game should be a lot less important than the one with your family or friends.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">That isn't to say that there's no value in the game, or that you can't make new friends there that will become close ones. Still, if you find that you're spending more and more time logged in, get really stressed about what's going on or any particular thing that's happened, etc...in all of those situations it is probably for the best that you at least talk to someone about it. There may not be a problem, but venting is a healthy process. Find a friend and tell them how annoyed you are by this silly game. Find an Imm and tell them how frustrated you are that ____ happened and you don't understand why. We're always here to listen to concerns that you might have and to try to help, even if it is just to explain why something isn't going to be different. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Find yourself struggling to deal with managing game time and other priorities? Here are a few tips you could try that might help a little:</span></span><br />
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<ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Try scheduling things for a while rather than just logging in. That is to say, set up specific times with friends that you're going to get a RP sorted out, and then login for that particular RP and logout and do something else afterwards. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Limit your days or playtime in some way. Take a day or two every week off. Go play basketball or draw something, or play bridge with your family or whatever it is that you do. Just make it a day or two where you leave the MUD client alone.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Don't login while you have other things you should be doing. Is the homework done? Driveway shoveled? Laundry cleaned? House picked up? Flowers bought for girlfriend? If the answer to any is no, leave the MUD client alone until they are.</span></span></li>
</ul><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">All of this basically boils down to use common sense and have a good time. We're glad when people like the game that we've put work into creating for them (feel free to let us know when you like it, it's always nice to hear that) but it's important that people don't always like it Too much. That's when you become a staff member and get sucked into doing extra work, and that's kind of like a fate worse than death.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Anyway, as before, if you have ideas for folks about how you manage things, or want to share an experience where you first realized you were kind of attached, feel free to in the comments below. Until next time, keep on truckin.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Thanks,</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Luthien</span></span></div>Luthienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01352827439802266016noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-90049844152134443452009-12-04T08:19:00.000-08:002009-12-04T08:19:52.516-08:00Guilds and Groups and LeadersI've been asking folks lately what sorts of posts they would like to see on the blog here. The other day a really good idea was put forth by Doagle, who wanted to see something about maintaining a healthy distance between you and your character. This is a tough topic that I'll try to start to address in a later post once I get my thoughts wrapped around it a little more.<br />
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</div><div>In the meantime though, I wanted to take the time to expound a little more on some of this morning's changes (Guilds!) and offer a 3rd plug for one of the related topics.<br />
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</div><div>Over the last couple weeks I've slowly been inching towards the little bit of maintenance that I did this morning on the MUD. Looking at the guild list and seeing some on there that really haven't been cutting it lately, some that have, and some that..well it doesn't matter as much is kind of annoying sometimes. Thus, I decided that I wanted to strip out some of the dead wood to leave room for some new growth. Folks weren't doing much with their nobles, so that was the first thing to pare down. It was kind of a toss-up between leaving two houses and only leaving one. It doesn't make sense to leave Damodred, I figured, since they are the most powerful house ICly anyway (what with Laman being on the Sun Throne), so it had to be one of the others. Riatin is usually the next best choice, so that's what stayed. To keep Damodred down a little, I threw them out along with Saighan. What does this mean? It means that if you want to play a noble, get into politics a little, exert some influence over the city, bluster and try to order about some guards..well you're locked into Riatin for the time being. Once they get back on their feet a bit more we'll bring back some others.<br />
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</div><div>The AFAC (known to some as Aflac) is also out, mostly because nobody can seem to do much with them right now the few times we've tried. I love the idea of having a group to represent the criminal underworld in Cairhien, but I found that this particular one didn't work as well without its founder. Much like what happened to another group, I've tossed them out to leave room in case someone would like to start up their own thief/assassin/etc. guild. It's really a pretty nifty sort of thing once you get into it, so I'd definitely encourage folks to think about it.<br />
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</div><div>The one that may draw a little heat comparatively is probably the Mercenaries of Fortune. The Mercs had a couple people that actually were logging in, though they weren't really doing to much outside their own little group. I think this is all due mostly to a lack of clear vision and leadership to the group now that their founding father is also gone. Limping along simply to limp along seemed to be most of what was happening. We've talked about throwing them out with the bathwater before, but always decided to give it another go. This time, I decided that it was probably time that they go the way of the AotH, etc. before them and disband.<br />
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</div><div>This does a couple things: first, it frees up all the IC "power" they had accumulated, namely the NPCs can now go back to their family. Granted, that wasn't really a huge number, but there's no longer a group of a bunch of mercenaries camped somewhere out there getting into trouble. Second, it also affects the players who were involved. For those who haven't logged in for a while, it's probably not going to mean a whole lot. For those who've been on...well that's a bit different. You're all now free to go do contract work, RP with and teach others, etc. You may have woken up without a job all of a sudden, but that doesn't mean that the relationships that you formed within that group have to go away just because the group isn't there anymore. The opposite is probably also true, since now you aren't really as obligated to teach/RP/hang out with those people from the mercs anymore if you don't want to.<br />
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</div><div>Much like with the AFAC, this also opens the door to a new mercenary group being formed. Someone had asked me a couple weeks ago whether I thought it was possible for them to form their own merc group. The answer I kind of had to give at the time was basically a wait and see thing. It doesn't necessarily make the most sense (at this moment) to have two competing ones, especially where one isn't a rising star and the other is fading away. So with that in mind, if you'd like to form up your own merc group, now's the time to start thinking about it.<br />
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</div><div>On the note of guild creation, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, read the help files for guildstart/guildstart2. They lay out the requirements for starting your own group. There are a couple things in there that tend to be stumbling blocks for people though. The first of those is the CP requirement. If you read up on that, you'll find it's at 150. That's kind of a lot to scrape together for most folks, even if you're pooling your resources. I added a note today to the help files saying that some clemency can be given in this area. What I mean by that is that if you can't scrape together the full amount I'll still consider the group's application, you just won't get as much bang for your buck. Namely, no guild area and such for starters. Just talk to me, and we may be able to come up with a figure that you can meet, don't let a lack of CP be what stops you from putting stuff together. The putting things together bit can be tougher than people realize too. It takes 5 people (total) for a group that wasn't from the books, and 6 for one that was. The reason for that is to make sure that you get off on the right foot and have enough folks to actually be able to RP together, get some interesting guild events going, etc. It can be kinda tough to get that many folks together and have them all agree on things like who should be the leader, etc. though. It's that person that gets interviewed, but they should also be your IC leader too because we want to know how your IC leader is going to operate, not just whether you have someone in your group that can be a convincing salesperson.<br />
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</div><div>One of the other stumbling blocks can sometimes be that you have a really great idea, but you don't really have the muscle to back it up. Say that you want to start an assassin guild. You have a great concept for one, and you have a bunch of friends who want to be part of it, but there's one problem. None of you really have any of the associated forms, skills, etc. On the surface, it would be sheer folly to form a group like that without those things. Well, we can help. If you have some key roles that require someone with a specific background, or particular forms and skills, and none of the people that you have brought together to form your new guild has any of that, it's still something we can help you work around. New guilds are great things, and I like to encourage them. Thus, if you can get the good concept, and the good people together, I'll definitely entertain applications for SSet characters from them to give them a leg up to get started. The apps will still have to be reasonable ones and such to be accepted, but just know that the option is definitely there.<br />
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</div><div>One thing that I think is worth mentioning in all this is the guild leader person (again, really). While it may be, on the surface at least, enough to have a good concept in terms of what'll get you a guild, you're going to need more than that if you want it to succeed and mean something in the long run. Folks, you actually need a plan for what you want to do. Having a mercenary group isn't as good as having a mercenary group with an agenda that consists of more than "fight for moniesz." A starting point might be groups that you want to work for/with, causes you want to champion, innocents you want to terrorize, etc. I'm not saying any of this is like, a pre-requisite for having a guild, just that you should definitely take it into consideration if you want your guild to last.<br />
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All that being said, sometimes it may make more sense for there not to be A leader, but rather for there to be a group. Running things by committee can be a real disaster, but it can also work just fine if the mix is right. This is a viable option for setting things up, though there will still need to be one spokesperson for the staff interview part.<br />
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I think that's about it for now. If you have questions or want to just bounce ideas off me to see if they're feasible, let me know.<br />
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Thanks,<br />
Luthien<br />
</div>Luthienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01352827439802266016noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-55304909216954712102009-10-05T22:37:00.001-07:002009-10-06T06:33:52.420-07:00Why Avoiding RP Makes You a Wanker!<span style="font-family: Candara; font-size: 100%;">Another devblog and another week on the Sea of Storms. In keeping with my original intent of these devblogs to be something informative and relevant, I will be addressing some annoying role-playing tendencies. The chief amongst them being when someone avoids role-playing with others. It’s really simple, when you log onto the Sea of Storms you should, hopefully, be logging on to role-play. <br />
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Now, I realize that some people play the Sea of Storms and enjoy some solo play. I enjoy quite a bit of solo play myself, as do channelers, shady types, and older players with thousands of hours logged. So a good rule of thumb is, if you remember your last role-play in detail and had fun, then you’re doing fine. Normally this equates to something like one role-play a week, which is a fair number with an active schedule in your daily life. <br />
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Logging on to the Sea of Storms with the intent to role-play is important, since it’s the basis of the game. However, logging on with the intent to role-play then turning down role-play with certain characters is what turns you from a misguided player into a wanker. <br />
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The crux of this problem is set firmly on the player's shoulder. When someone asks to role-play it’s not your character saying no, your character addresses a role-play situation after you’ve started to role-play. Players avoiding certain characters is improper use of OOC/IC information, but it’s one that we typically let slide. Still, when a mercenary, whitecloak, male channeler, or Aes Sedai asks you to role-play you should never turn them down simply because doing so would threaten your character in some way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Candara; font-size: 100%;">All you’re really doing is deciding that you know ICly that character is this or that. So based off that IC information you’re deciding as a player to avoid role-playing. Personally, I’ve always found it to be something of a self imposed handicap. Stories are born out of division and conflict, on many levels ranging from physical, emotional, and philosophical. By choosing to remove this conflict and division and waiting for event immortals to generate these situations you’re depriving yourself of superb role-play.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Candara; font-size: 100%;">I’ll give an example in hopes it helps make my point. As Jeshin the mute, I role-played with Alisa Sedai every chance I could. She knew I was a male channeler and had told me that when my madness progressed that she’d either find a way to help me or gentle me. I knew OOCly that eventually I’d go insane as my taint went up and Alisa would do her thing. This didn’t stop me one bit; characters aren’t meant to live forever. They’re meant to exist as experiences and stories. If their story ends that’s just their story ending. To finish the Jeshin and Alisa example, she eventually kidnapped me to the White Tower when Samiel declared dragon. I managed to escape and join Samiel. The point is that it was a great set of role-plays and gave my character an amazing experience of nearly being gentled and escaping.</span> <br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"></span></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-73665625879369691722009-09-28T12:15:00.000-07:002009-09-29T08:50:18.524-07:00MUD Code Update Life-cycle<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I'm sure some of you probably wonder how we chose what parts of the code to update, what has priority over others, etc. So, that is what I'm going to talk about.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The first stage is, of course, coming up with the concept of what needs to be coded. These concepts can come up from suggestions from the mortals (you guys), on the forums, in-game, or can be an idea hatched by an immortal.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The second stage is discussion among the immortals about the concept itself. The kinks and issues are figured out and solutions, or at least possible solutions, are brought up. This is where most code update suggestions actually die due to them either being wildly unreasonable or providing a serious disturbance of the balance of the game mechanics. However, just because it dies does not mean it'll always be dead, something in the future could change and an idea may be revisited later. Case in point: strong/gifted channeling.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Once it's survived the 2<sup>nd</sup> stage, it's on to determine priority. Priority is determined mostly on the complexity of the update vs. the time to implement vs. its importance. If we have an update that is not important but can be done in a few minutes and is simple, it is likely to get a high priority just because its easy. However if it's a very large and complex update, and it isn't important or doesn't add much to the atmosphere of the game (e.g., breaking rooms into sub-rooms so people in the same room can be grouped differently and not hear each other), it will deemed a low priority task and very likely might never see the light of day.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Bugs are given a high priority and bugs that result in crashes are granted a Very High priority. Most very high priority bugs are fixed shortly within the time of the initial crash.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Once a priority is chosen it get placed on the to-do list and slotted into one of several categories: the " must<b> </b>be done now" (currently the only task like that which isn't a bug fix is the slag command), the "work on these as you get time" (mostly larger 1-2 day coding projects followed by a couple days to debug them), and lastly "don't start these yet" which are the larger, upwards of a month or two projects. The channeling update was one of those.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Large updates are done singly; we won't work on 2 major updates concurrently because of the nature of the task and the resources we have available. However we will throw a bunch of small 1-2 day updates in with the Major release as well. This gives the programming peoples (myself, Kimadi, Luthien) time to take a break from the major task and for Kimadi to fix everyone else's code.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Once the major update is complete, any minor projects being worked on are finished and everything is tested and then promoted to the live player port. Usually, after any major update, we discover after we go live that you mortals did things we didn't anticipate and so we have a round of fixes as a result.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">We don't like to start a new project until after the bugs have been worked out so we're not maintaining more than 2 separate code bases (the live code base and the test code base). But once bugs are worked out and the mud is stable again with the new feature then programming begins on the next update.<br />
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</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">With the amount of time/effort/work and money that goes into this and with none of us getting paid, it's a miracle that it still happens at all. With Kimadi joining the team we hope to see an increase in the amount of bug fixes and real updates.<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-85575368503290139152009-09-23T08:51:00.001-07:002009-09-23T08:51:23.023-07:00Chicken Soup for the Player Killers Soul<p><font face="Candara" size="3">The truth about player killing is that, it’s good! You heard me, player killing is a good thing and is not only good, but a sign of a player who is playing their characters correctly. Now it’s time for the but part. Player killing is good, but when used improperly it is a break to immersion, a harm to the game, and basically a sign that the person who does it might be a huge jerk! I think today’s article will be interesting.</font></p> <p><font face="Candara" size="3">The first thing I’d like to explore is, why should someone player kill? Well, there are a few reasons as to why a character should kill another character. Notice I’m saying character and not player. This is because the first reason you should kill another character is because your character would, not because the player wants to. Another good reason is if they are a male channeler and you know this. Pretty much everyone in the Wheel of Time universe will either attempt to kill a male channeler or flee immediately. In all actuality, the best reason to player kill is if it’s something your character would do, makes sense in terms of a setting aspect, and progresses your story in a meaningful way. <br /> <br />The next logical topic would be when to player kill. The time to player kill is dependant upon two things. The most important of the two being, does killing this character have an extremely large negative repercussion if done now. The secondary concern is Does my character really care about this negative repercussion? If the answer to those two questions is no and no or yes and no then you have yourself the right moment to strike!</font></p> <p><font face="Candara" size="3">So, with those easy to remember and apply guidelines to player killing. We can now look at the metagame downside to player killing. For the most part a lot of players look down on player killing. This is probably because they believe that if you kill someone else’s character you may kill theirs. This is to be expected and hopefully overcome with time. When this happens you just need to continue to role-play your character the way you always have. Just remember that with time and patience most people will get over your player kill and move on, as long as you make sure it is 100% a character choice and not just a player one.</font></p> <p><font face="Candara" size="3">All seems pretty basic right? Make choices about player killing from your characters point of view, don’t worry if people get a little wary of you metagame wise, and keep to your guns regarding your characters actions. There are some some finer points to actually executing a clean kill, but those are for people who are brave enough to try a kill to learn. </font></p> <p><font face="Candara" size="3">Just always remember that role-play and story should be the thought that drives all your characters actions. Including the need or desire to kill another character. When you stop playing your character and start using them to satisfying players desires is normally when you’ve forgotten what makes the Sea of Storms great. It’s also probably when you’ll discover you’re a big fish in a small pond. <br /> <br />-Jeshin</font></p> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-68811476804830545622009-09-22T13:54:00.001-07:002009-09-22T16:57:44.611-07:00My Story from the Old Days<span style="font-family: Candara; font-size: small;">***Disclaimer: This is mostly story with a little commentary.***</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Candara; font-size: small;">Yesterday there was supposed to be a devblog but clearly there was not! Instead we will be talking about the old days and when I say old days I mean like eight years back. So, long, long ago in the before time, there was Jeshin and he was new. He was a mute and a channeler. Perhaps that’s not the most unique first character, but I was new. <br />
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<span style="font-family: Candara; font-size: small;">I originally joined the Sea of Storms in my freshman year of high school, probably back in 2000 or 2001 and, to be completely honest, I also joined the Sea of Storms because of a forum role-playing board called… Actually I can’t even remember anymore. It was a Wheel of Time themed board and one of the staff members there said the concordance would be a good place to use as reference. When I saw it was part of a MUD website, I thought awesome and started to play. <br />
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I logged in and created a character by the name Jeshin. He was a mute, a channeler, a vagabond, and a perfect example of a newbie. My first months with Jeshin were probably some of the stuff that is commented on now. He was one of the only channelers to ever escape Nico, he channeled in the Hall of Servants, and was a general troublemaker. The most outlandish of those is channeling in the Hall of Servants. <br />
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My first experiences on the MUD were meeting Nico, Alyn, Samiel, and Inzu. The last of which was probably a meeting that caused the Sea of Storms years of trouble. Me and Inzu hit it off fairly quickly. We both enjoyed role-playing and the Wheel of Time setting. When he first created he was a gleeman who ended up doing a few shows at the Feast of Lights. At the time Jeshin was a bartender at the Feast. He didn’t really need to speak and he occasionaly played cello in the place of real entertainment. <br />
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Shortly after Inzu was approved for his gaidin sset and became a member of the White Tower. Still, we had already had a strong friendship both in game and out of game. Surprisingly, Inzu joined the MUD to learn English. He was always a fairly good role-player. <br />
So you have a gaidin and a male channeling bartender as the best of buds, you can imagine some shenanigans happened. Shenanigans such as Inzu and Alisa being directly responsible for me being able to get into the White Tower ICly and channel in the Hall of Servants, leaving something like 25 finger flames on the ground. <br />
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That experience, which was role-played, is probably one of the fondest memories I have. Even though it’s terrible, absurd, and completely something I’d be shocked to see today as an Immortal, it was awesome back then. Just to be totally clear, that was possibly the most absurd thing I’d ever seen on the Sea of Storms. Still, It was truly an experience and not a goal I had set. <br />
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I had really intended to include more story here. The more I write this, the more I find that in the last eight years the amount of stuff I could reminiscence about is staggering. So I’m going to tell you the point and, if you’d like to read more stories on the Devblog, post a comment on here asking for it. <br />
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The point of my story is: I was new once and made some of the mistakes the new players of today make. I met my best friend on this MUD and have continued to game with him even now. I will definitely go in depth into the shenanigans me and the infamous Inzu got into, if I do one of these again. <br />
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To quote something Inzu once said, “Once you forget it’s a game, you’ve won the Sea of Storms.” If more players tried to immerse themselves rather then game the system. Start treating it more like an experience then anything else. That’s when the Sea of Storms will become more fun then you can imagine. <br />
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- Jeshin</span></span> <br />
<span style="font-family: Candara; font-size: small;"></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-89098937514906791602009-09-19T09:02:00.000-07:002009-09-19T10:18:33.077-07:00Storm LeadersContrary to Jeshin's belief (or at least his publicizing), this isn't just a development blog, and I'm going to post whatever I want. =-)<br />
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So, with that sorted out I figured I'd spare a couple minutes to write a blog post about a blog post. If that seems silly then you are right on the money, but it won't stop me from doing it. Hit the thingy below to get the rest after the jump!<br />
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One of the things in my google reader list is Brandon Sanderson's blog. I put it there, obviously, so I can keep track of what he's doing. Much like Vandread, when Sanderson was announced as the man who would finish RJ's epic fantasy (that's a genre btw) series, I was kind of intrigued. I went and picked up the Mistborn trilogy (go see the reviews on the discussion board: <a href="http://upb.tsosmud.org/viewforum.php?id=23">TSoS Discussion Board - Reviews</a>), read that and was quickly convinced that he's the real deal. Thus, I'm definitely motivated to keep an eye on any new projects he's working on even if they aren't related to the Wheel of Time setting. It's probably that more than anything else that prompts me to share the contents of the post he just put up yesterday.<br />
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There are a couple things that are worthy of note in that post which can be found <a href="http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/825/Storm-Leaders-Book-13-Title-THE-GATHERING-STORM-Prologue">here</a>. The first thing is a discussion of the titles for the final three books in the saga. It seems that they have settled on the title for the second book: Towers of Midnight. Sanderson has some thoughts about the end of it too, so that's worth taking a look at. Also, there are some comments about DRM, the prologue, and chapter 1.<br />
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To some extent, one of the more interesting pieces is the one relating to the title of <i>this</i> post though. Sanderson is pushing the Storm Leaders...umm..thing? Basically, Tor is looking for some volunteers to put in some time when the book tour comes to help out. There are a bunch of tour stops around the country so they are looking for a bunch of folks to work at the various locations. These folks will be responsible for meeting either Sanderson or Harriet prior to the event (aka 'get to' meet them), where they will have the chance to get some books signed early, chat with them about whatever, etc. For many people that's probably the upside, and what comes next is the price you have to pay. The Storm Leaders are going to be doing whatever it takes to get the little aspects of the signing day done. Crowd control, passing out promotional materials, getting water for Harriet/Sanderson, etc., whatever it takes to sort things out. They'll also be doing some of the preliminary work drumming up interest for the event, etc. It's kind of like being on a street team for your favorite band, except that you actually get face time.<br />
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You can find more detailed information about what the Storm Leaders will be doing, the tour stops and dates where this is going on, as well as the application at Dragonmount's website <a href="http://www.dragonmount.com/News/?p=674">here</a>. Am I the only one out there that remembers when Dmount was pretty far from being the leader in the WoT online community? Regardless, niftynifty.<br />
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Normally, this isn't the sort of thing that I would really even consider. Partly because, despite what folks may think, I've been kind of jaded on the whole WoT thing for a while. Don't get me wrong, I think it is probably the premiere epic fantasy series of the 90s, and is really strong. On the same note, I also think that <i>Eye of the World</i> was unquestionably the best of the series, and it's been kind of on the way down since then. I think that Sanderson is probably exactly what is needed to give the series a little bit of a boost for the last few books. Thus, while I haven't read the prologue or the first chapter yet (and don't intend to until I have the book in my greedy little hands), I'm excited for the release. I'd also be excited about the chance to meet Sanderson or Harriet (granted, the former more than the latter probably). Thus, I fully intend to apply for this spot. I don't really have a clue what a good thing to write for the "Why You?" question at the moment unfortunately. Those questions are always a bit deceptive in their importance and are challenging to come up with a good answer to. (Hint: that's why I always ask those of potential new immortals or ssets or newbie helpers at TSoS.)<br />
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If anyone else comes up with something that I should write, please feel free to let me know. Otherwise, keep on truckin'.Luthienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01352827439802266016noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-38781005747960806102009-09-18T08:23:00.001-07:002009-09-18T08:23:59.479-07:00I’m the Dude Playing the Dude Disguised as Another Dude<p>A hilarious line from the movie ‘Tropic Thunder’, where Robert Downey Jr. is playing an actor playing a black soldier from the Vietnam war. It’s also an oddly relevant line to most of us as roleplayers. I’ve seen a lot of players come to The Sea of Storms over the years, who have started characters only to meander aimlessly, further and further from any semblance of character concept. </p> <p>The idea of a character concept can be a little tricky for the average gamer. In almost all cases, we never need one for the other games we play. A character concept is who, what and why our character exists. Each of these helps to provide a better foundation for roleplaying our character and having direction. I’m sure you’ve seen it before, people who have characters seemingly driven by metagaming goals such as level 2 channeling, level 7 forms and ultimate power. In most cases, these characters are poorly roleplayed because they have no concept, they’re just vehicles for the player to reach those goals. The biggest pitfall with thinking this way is that the Sea of Storms is centered on roleplay. So, to enjoy the game and fulfill your goals, a player needs to roleplay well and enjoy it!</p> <p>The first step to creating character concept is to take what you want to achieve as a player and put it into terms your character can understand. I think a good example is someone who wants to be in a lot of events, get forms, skills, and not be restricted to one city. These are pretty common desires from a player prospective. The good news is there are a lot of different character concepts that can attain these things. So to achieve these desires lets take a hunter for the horn, who has lived on the docks of Illian until he was in his early twenties. This gives us nationality, appearance, age, and a possible motivation to rise up out of the hard life of a dock rat. That is who our character is, a young man who worked the docks in Illian.  </p> <p>Now what is our character? Well, having heard stories of glory and respect for the hunters of the past, he quickly drops his life as a dock hand when the hunt for the horn is called again. This gives us his view on his life. He finds the act of hunting for the horn a way to rise up out of his current life to gain fame and adventure. The character we have so far may have been thought of before, but just because it has been used before doesn’t mean the concept isn’t viable. You don’t need to break the mold every time and have a unique, one of a kind idea. In fact, you’ll probably come up with more bad ideas that way.</p> <p>With our who and what in place we now need the why. It should be pretty simple with the who and what thought, we can surmise he had a boring life and wanted the piece of the glamour sung of in the stories. Maybe he had friends who joined the hunt and it goaded him into joining. Perhaps he borrowed money to buy gear and a horse to go hunting for the horn and now he has people from Illian looking for him to repay his debt. These are all ideas that give your character the why for his decisions and actions, such as learning forms to defend himself.</p> <p>The above is a quick and dirty way to figure out a character concept that gives you as a player what you want in your character for roleplay. Another benefit of having a character concept is that Immortals love it. It’s so much easier to design events for people who have an established character concept that an event Imm can look at and understand. Character events also impress older players and make them more likely to give you those forms and skills you want because you’ve thought about roleplay not just code.</p> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-39269039731798943682009-09-16T07:54:00.001-07:002009-09-16T07:55:24.174-07:00Everyone Hates Channelers!<p>Ok, so not everyone hates channelers. Everyone does, however, get tired of new players making channelers all the time. It’s not so much the fact that making a channeling character is bad. It’s really that so many people make them, and they don’t exactly always roleplay them very well.</p> <p>The reality of creating a channeler is that it is really one of the hardest roles to play on the MUD. In the Wheel of Time setting, channelers are a very touchy subject ICly for people. For example, in the first book pretty much everyone in Rand’s village had a very strong and culturally driven view on Aes Sedai and channeling in general. Thus, it is natural to assume that our characters on the Sea of Storms would also have opinions formed by the fact channeling caused the end of the greatest age of the world. This means that not only do the players not like channelers, but that the NPCs of the world are also not overly fond of them… Everyone hates channelers! </p> <p>So, what’s all this nonsense about people not roleplaying channelers very well? It's pretty simple really, there are a lot of common roleplay mistakes that lead to players approaching the character in a different way than is really logical. The first issue arises from the simple fact that in most cases the character wouldn’t want to be a channeler, but the player does. This gives rise to the cases of male channelers that are excited to be destined for insanity and death, as well as female channelers that don’t want to go to the Tower, because channeling is just too cool for school. While these character types are completely possible, albeit rare, the truth is almost every new player who makes a channeler falls into one of these two categories.</p> <p>The second issue that comes up is absurdly knowledgeable characters. The kind of knowledge that an average character in the setting wouldn’t really have, but a player would. For example, most players will understand at least a little bit about subjects like (sa')angreal and ter'angreal from reading the books. However, almost every single person in the setting would have absolutely no clue what these were and would never have heard of them or even suspected that they existed. So we have the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge. This causes things like channeler level 0 people talking about angreals, knowing that a tingle means a female is channeling, and chatting to each other about what flows they’re skilled in as if they were trained in the Tower. This particular issue is annoying to me personally, mostly because it borders on a policy violation for using OOC information in an IC manner. I don’t really enjoy busting people, especially new players, for not understanding the role of a channeler very well. It’s not really their fault after all, the channeler is a harder character to understand and roleplay.</p> <p>The third issue isn’t really the players fault, it's just something that becomes more and more noticeable over time. At certain points during the month, depending on the new player count and some other factors, we can expect the nonchanneler to channeler ratio to be like 1:2 or even 1:3. So with 10 people online, we can expect at least 6 of them to be channelers. The reason why this isn't a problem is the simple fact that people like to play this particular type of character, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that! Unfortunately, it means that the population imbalance becomes pretty noticeable. Channelers were a relatively small percentage of the population in the books after all. We've kicked around ideas like making the only options in creation random and non-channeler. That would certainly make things more realistic, but would also be a pretty big detractor from the 'fun' aspect of things (this is a game after all, right?). It's just food for thought to those of you who love to create channelers.</p> <p>Despite these roleplay difficulties channelers provide a lot of benefits. They are good for players who like a little bit more solo play. They also have quite a bit of good roleplay potential. The channeling system on the Sea of Storms is pretty deep once you start delving into it. A channeler can easily spend a couple months reaching the second level of power, then several more months making themselves a force to be reckoned with. Some of our best roleplayers have been channelers. The concept allows for very in-depth roleplaying, along with some interesting interpersonal relationships with the non-channeler population.</p> <p>Some of you may be asking yourselves, when is a good time to make a channeling character on the Sea of Storms? The answer is any time, as long as you understand the pitfalls of the character. If you’re not in the White Tower, then your female channeler won’t be to well liked by the NPCs of the world. If you’re a male channeler, then everyone and their mum will want you dead. A player should have an open mind about how they play their channeler and be willing to re-evaluate the approach they’re taking if someone offers advice. If a player can understand and accept these simple truths about playing a channeler, then they are well on their way to playing a great one.</p> <p>On a side note, I’ve finally decided to write a how-to guide to roleplaying a channeler on the wiki. I hope that this will help new players and regulars alike enjoy their characters more. I also hope that this will prevent older players from seeing a bunch of misplayed channelers and deciding to off them!<br /></p><p>- Jeshin<br /></p>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-88799747371263490032009-09-14T01:47:00.001-07:002009-09-14T01:49:19.463-07:00Events for Players by Players!<p>It’s a pleasant Monday morning with little to no chance of the Foregate getting any easier to finish. After mapping it for the last steps of the review, the staff discovered that someone managed to botch the layout. Clearly it wasn’t me! Regardless of which event immortal may or may not have caused the issue in layout, it is in the process of being fixed and will only add a few more days onto the release schedule at most. However that isn’t what this article is about, this article is about events. Not just any events, mind you, but events for players by players! <br /> <br />I am, of course, speaking of player events, those often mentioned and rarely seen set of circumstances where a player can run an event just like a staff member. As the only active event immortal on the Sea of Storms, I’ve often wondered what players want out of the game. At first glance I can surmise they want roleplay and story. With a second pass, I can determine that excitement and growth of power is important. On a final overview I can see that, despite the previous two observations, maybe I don’t have an inkling of what the average Sea of Storms player wants out of their gaming experience. <br /> <br />So the event immortal has come to the conclusion that he doesn’t actually know what the players want. Being in charge of creating an fun experience for players through story based roleplay, makes that a bit of a problem. Yeah, it was pretty jarring for me as well. I kind of sat around for a couple weeks looking at options. I could try to change how I ran events to make them less scripted and more reactive to players. When I tried that with my co-event immortal Orson a group of players ended up staring at a door for 4 hours in a roleplay. Clearly a disaster had evolved with the approach of reacting to players instead of providing plot and guidance. To be honest, I only really tried this before realizing maybe the best people to run the events are the players. The only problem with this approach is that players can’t be trusted with forsaken, shadowspawn, rulers of countries, captains of the guard, children of the light, assassins in the great game, etc. etc. </p> <p>From this impasse with allowing players to run their own events arouse the current player event design. A group of players can join a roleplay and have universal control over non-restricted NPCs; barkeeps, serving girls, citizens, travelers, scholars, even Ogier on occasion. I thought maybe I’d discovered the key to providing the players with what they want. Giddy with excitement, I brought the Idea to Luthien and he quickly agreed. In almost eight months of being in place it has been used less then eight times! <br /> <br />I hope that the above explains why I created the player event system, if it doesn’t then here’s a simple version. I trust players to know what they want. I thought players would like to tell their own stories. I know the players on the Sea of Storms can be a creative and fun group. </p> <p>With all this being said, I will be using this devblog entry to announce a new tool in the player event line. Hopefully this will help entice players to use it and grow comfortable with running their own events. Starting on 09.14.09, I will be providing player event kits. These kits will include NPCs with descriptions, motivations, and roleplay notes. In addition, they will include holodeck room descriptions and in some cases premade items.</p> <p>It is my hope that with these easy to use player events, players will start to use the system. There’s a lot of really cool stuff that could be done on the Sea of Storms if the player event system was more widely used. In fact I’ve designed some storylines completely around the player event system. Which causes a bit of a problem considering it has been used only rarely. I can’t release these storylines until players have actively shown they can responsibly control NPCs and story first. <br /> <br />- Jeshin</p> <p> <br /><a href="http://www.tsosmud.org/" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms – Homepage</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.tsosmud.org/playnow.aspx" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms - Play Now!</a></p> <p><a href="http://wiki.tsosmud.org/" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms - Wiki</a></p>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-39154732696149240192009-09-13T16:20:00.000-07:002009-09-13T16:27:38.654-07:00Under the Hood of Our Kitchen Automobile<p>Just like almost all other muds in existence, the Sea of Storms runs by the grace of its volunteers. Most of the people inhabiting the mud today do not know those who started it, and I am one of those individuals. As such, the codebase I am toying with today has suffered 10 years of coding by different TSoS volunteers, and it shows.<br /></p><p>It might even be said that Smaug is a crappy codebase from the beginning. Our version is well over 10 years old, and while we of course made our own modifications, the latest Smaug that was released has had bugs fixed and features added. Simply Smaug, without our realm-specific changes, is already a beast - no coder wants to venture into it if he values his sanity.</p><p>To give an idea of the things that many mud coders need to deal with, there is an abhorring lack of comments in the code, indentation exists in such a way that it tends to make the code more confusing, mysterious variable names, randomly hard-coded numbers, and oh, did I mention there are no comments? Think of a city where they speak a language you do not speak, and street signs are missing or beyond your ability to pronounce: the only way to get around would be to make your own map of sorts.<br /></p><p>Especially for me, who never coded on a mud prior to joining the TSoS staff, it is really easy to get lost. Now that I am done with the city analogy, I will compare TSoS with a bowl of spaghetti. At the base you have Smaug, where every strand of pasta has a purpose but it is very hard to comprehend a bigger picture of how they all fit together. And when you get our own modifications, you can think of it as throwing some sauce into the mix, hiding even more from sight. The end result is very tasty, but to me, it feels as if I am preparing dinner while using someone elses leftovers. Mmmm, TSoS.</p><p>Take today's kitchen affairs for example... a player came to me and went 'yo, Kim my man. I can weary [[his]] ass off, but it is only my ass getting tired'. I went to investigate, and yup, somehow, weary had become a rather dull weave that didn't do much (besides tiring the weaver out). I quickly found the cause: yesterday, we had introduced some updates, including some new weaves. This required some changes elsewhere in the big file o' weaves, and numbers that basically define the importance of these weaves changed as a result. Oops.</p><p>Now, the Code is not supposed to check for any numbers in specific (they only rank the 'importance' of a weave), but one of our past coders had a moment of wisdom and decided that since refresh and weary were so much alike in effect, they should be very much alike in the code. Smaug isn't truly meant to turn weaves into such siamese twins, and using the number that signifies importance, he managed to make it possible to recognise a weary from a refresh weave.</p><p>Did all that go over your head? Don't worry, most people do not have the programmers mindset, and I figured it might be nice to explain a fair bit to those who do like to know how things work. But if you think this post is just pure junk, just log on @ tsosmud.org, port 7070, and send me a tell to inform me that I need to stop blogging.<br /></p>- KimadiUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-49578125854699518512009-09-11T07:38:00.000-07:002009-09-19T10:17:25.906-07:00Channeling Strength and Game TheoryOK, hold onto your hats for a minute while I discuss some mathematics before getting to the game portion of this post.<br />
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There is an area of mathematics called game theory that attempts to formalize what it means to play a game in an intelligent manner. When you apply this area to the study of competitive behavior you get some interesting things. For instance, it deals with solutions of games (how to win, no mater what the opponent does), optimal strategies in general, etc. <br />
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Where might you have seen this area of mathematics before? Well, if you've ever seen the movie <i>A Beautiful Mind</i>, about the life of John Nash, then you've seen a movie about one of the most famous game theorists of all time. It is an area that is heavily applied in economics, which is how Nash won a nobel prize in economics...for doing some mathematics. (He developed the concept of a Nash Equilibrium, which is pretty nifty when looking for solutions in a lot of different cases. Even if, as John von Neumann said, it's "just a fixed-point theorem" after all.)<br />
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So, what area of game theory are we interested in here? It's one of the first things that a new student of the field will learn, the idea of <i>domination </i>where it applies to different strategies. Essentially, if one strategy is better than another in every situation, it dominates that other strategy, and no sane player would ever use that weaker strategy. Domination isn't necessarily the best concept to apply in all cases, but it will serve the purpose for this discussion.<br />
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How does this apply to the MUD? Well I've heard a few players (and Imms) wondering "Why would I ever choose medium or strong channeling strengths in creation when I now have gifted available to me?" Well, on the surface, these people are trying to make an argument that the strategy of choosing gifted dominates the strategy of choosing strong. I.e., that there aren't any drawbacks to choosing gifted instead of one of the other strength levels. Well, this was something that I thought about a little bit when folks were saying "the aLGORITHM is ready to go! Let's implement this mother!" It's worth thinking about, and it's something I put my head together with Vandread about. So, the code already was in place to do what we needed, which is break this domination that gifted has to some extent.<br />
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How is it broken? Well, think about this. There has to be no drawbacks for one strategy to dominate the others, but let me present you with a drawback. Namely, how can you ensure that you'll actually reach your full channeling potential if you choose gifted as your strength in creation? It may seem like a funny thing, but it's pretty crucial. Jeshin has recently posted a comment from Kimadi about our search for realism (at least, as real as you can get in the Wheel of Time setting) in the MUD. Essentially, when we decided to enforce a wider spread of flow strengths, we were trying to get people to set up characters that were closer to the experience that can be found in the WoT books since most channelers there are at least a little bit proficient with all the flows. So what's the other piece of realism that I'm trying to hint at here? Well, in the books RJ made it very clear that the process of going from random shlub to uber-channeler wasn't an easy one. Life as a wilder was extremely dangerous, and not something that a lot of people survived. Certainly, more didn't make it than did. Combine this with the high number of people that choose to create channelers because it is "cool" or whatever, and the result is that it is necessary for people to fail when trying to become totally powerhouse channelers.<br />
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I claimed above that the code to ensure this was already installed, but why haven't we seen it? I mean, there are very very very few people around now who remember when gifted and strong were removed from creation, so folks haven't really ever known anything different than the land where medium was king. Thus, people haven't noticed that a medium strength channeler has a much lower chance to burn out before becoming a real force than one with a higher channeling strength.... Well, I assure you, folks are about to notice. All I have to say for folks who choose gifted and then try to work their way up in ability level...good luck, because you will definitely need it. There are ways to make it easier, which of course I won't share, but in general it's something that will require more thought and work than medium ever did.<br />
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So, there's a moderately compelling reason why one should at least think twice before choosing gifted in creation for their channeling strength as opposed to medium. The gifted strategy doesn't entirely dominate the others in this sense, as you are definitely taking a risk of putting a bunch of time in only to fall victim to some tough random number generation in the end.<br />
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LuthienLuthienhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01352827439802266016noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-4114571291078123902009-09-11T07:05:00.001-07:002009-09-11T07:39:19.507-07:00The Thought Behind the ‘Algorithm’ UpdateRecently a patch known as the aLGORITHM has been released on the Sea of Storms. The first thing someone might notice about this patch is the awful use of caps lock. That’s mostly due to my inability to properly type which got it dubbed the aLGORITHM by Luthien. So with the most obvious question out of the way, the next question must be. What exactly did we change?<br />
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Well dreaming was moved back to its rightful place as a major talent. The scholar talent has been properly supported now with the ability to teach various languages such as old tongue or Ogier. Finally we modified our drunk code to affect posts. I know awesome right?<br />
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Wait… we also brought back gifted and strong channelers. In fact the very nickname to the patch was given in reference to the new formula that dictates flow strengths for channelers. I suppose that is the most important update, well that or the ability to finally post URLs containing & in them without double typing &. Nah, channeling is totally cooler so lets cover that.<br />
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Channeling has long been debated by mortals in its balance. Mostly you would have non channelers such as blademasters or soldiers denouncing weaves like wrap, airblind, and any of the more powerful weaves that essentially allowed channelers to pummel others in one on one combat. These complaints have always been responded to by channelers saying that all a non channeler had to do was bring support or simply not go toe to toe with a channeler. Which if you think about it seems a little like common sense. Still with the claim that channeling was to powerful, we still got requests to unlock the strong and gifted channeling talents.<br />
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I asked our new assistant coder Kimadi to give me a statement about the update for the players. Here it is: “The problem with the re-implementation of strong and gifted channeling strengths did not lie into making them possible - that was a few simple lines of code. The true difficulty lied in several aspects, the main aspect being our wish for a 'realistic' environment, which is something that is hard to describe by requirements yet easy for a human to recognize. We did not want people to distribute their flow points to gain very specific code-wise benefits while other matters would be neglected beyond any comparable realism. But on the other hand, restricting players was too much is another matter of concern - both for the purpose of playing, and the fact that even in the world of the Wheel of Time, there are those odd few people who defy the norm as we know it. In the end, both realism and oddities have become fully possible in the new system” – Kimadi<br />
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That pretty much captured the intent of the update in my opinion. However, I still haven’t really told you what we changed in channeling, so I’ll get to that now. In the olden days way way back in the before time there were gifted and strong channelers. These old players could allocate their flow strengths however they pleased the only system in place to moderate the maximum strength in each element was a rather wimpy little +1 extra pt required to raise a strength for every spot above 25. Today’s gifted and strong channelers must have a fair bit of balance to their builds. Just like in the books most channelers are proficient in more then just two flows and none really had an inability to do anything in one flow let alone two.<br />
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Without revealing the numbers involved in the formula I can say that if you have 26 or higher in your main flow then you can expect to have at least 9’s in your lowest. In the past it was 1’s so from the get go we’ve already balanced things significantly. In this patch we also fixed some of the flow skill requirements on fire weaves. The older numbers were higher then their earth and air counterparts and during testing we realized that these ‘slightly’ higher flow skill requirements equated to significant changes in male channeler builds. This was mostly due to their low flow skill modifier in comparison with their female channeling counterparts. This has allowed channelers to have variety in their weave selection. No longer will people be using the same three weaves in every situation. <br />
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Not a lot code was changed in all honestly. The real change has been the in the framework we’ve placed. With the new algorithm in place and new levels of channeling open we can begin to introduce new weaves. A project we are already working on. In addition new channeling talents and possibly a new way to use weaves in combination with other weaves will be implemented. Really this update marks the beginning of what will hopefully be a long line of successful updates to our code engine to support realism and roleplay for our players!<br />
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- JeshinTSoS Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02796791843022296290noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-65453337735886231812009-09-10T08:48:00.001-07:002009-09-11T07:39:39.376-07:00Building the ForegateRecently on <a href="http://www.tsosmud.org/" target="_blank">the Sea of Storms</a> the staff has been reviewing an area called the Foregate. This new addition to the game has been a trying experience for me personally in two ways. The most painful of which was a hard drive failure leading to the loss of a portion of the area as well as the near complete loss of almost 4 months of work on another area. The less painful of which has been my personal laziness to complete it. This area has actually taken me longer to complete then I have been a staff member on the game, just to put it into prospective.<br />
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However, in early august I finally got over my aversion to finishing the area and began in earnest. Upon what was most likely my 242nd attempt to complete the area in the last six years, I realized why it is I always ended up not doing so. The place is a bloody mess! It’s no secret the Foregate has been passed amongst several builders before arriving on my doorstep. One can not imagine the amount of different issues with the area upon final review.<br />
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Normally a single builder for a MUD has a certain style. They also have certain weaknesses. I’m a little iffy on my grammar as you may notice during the course of this blog. So when I build an area, I can expect to have to edit room descriptions from time to time. Well that’s just my personal weakness when it comes to area building. This area has been through several people before me, so now imagine four different problem areas for the whole area.<br />
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I’ll admit the review process of this area has been a lot more work then I’d hoped. I was originally only required to do 25 rooms or so of the area to complete it. Yes, It took me almost five years to do 25 rooms. Of course even after completing those rooms in early August, myself and Luthien have been reviewing the area ever since.<br />
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The review process is pretty straight forward. A sign that we don’t like to let an area sit to long in a complete state without implementing it on the live server. First we go through all the rooms of the area, and by we I mean Luthien. He reads the room descriptions and makes sure they’re grammatically correct and coherent. If they’re not he might put a note up with the rooms VNUM (virtual number) or simply do some immediate triage on it himself. <br />
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The next stage is dealing with MOBs (Mobile Objects) or more commonly known as NPCs by the average roleplayer. I just want to tell you that the Sea of Storms has a custom race listing and MOBs are completely customizable. That being said the MOBs in the Foregate were all Aiel and had 2’s for all their stats. Most if not all had no equipment. Still the greatest sin of all was that one of the previous builders had made these mobs active. So you can imagine me at 3:00 am in the morning chasing down errant NPCs to make edits to them or zap them with a sentinel command to make them stand still long enough to fix them. I can tell you it was not a fun experience to have to hunt mobiles that seemed sentient and intent on avoid me despite my impressive array of commands on the builder port.<br />
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Eventually I ended up stealing the mobs directly from their area into a special room with no exits. I don’t have to mention how creepy this can be for someone running on coffee in the early morning hours but I will say I started to question my ability to be a good stalker…<br />
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Despite all of this, and I do mean IN SPITE of all of this, Luthien and I have managed to bring the area to near completion. I just need to kidnap some more innocent MOBs back to my dark lair for editing and the area will be ready to go live! (Forces Vandread to backup the server just in case!)<br />
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- Jeshin<br />
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<a href="http://www.tsosmud.org/playnow.aspx" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms - Play Now!</a><br />
<a href="http://www.tsosmud.org/" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms – Homepage</a><br />
<a href="http://wiki.tsosmud.org/" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms - Wiki</a>TSoS Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02796791843022296290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802304480277563569.post-86248705590871729962009-09-09T18:39:00.001-07:002009-09-09T18:39:59.746-07:00The Return of Text Based Gaming<p>About 30 years ago games like Zork and Enchanter existed. These were text based single player games much like the first Monkey Islands. From those games spawned something called Multi-User dimensions or MUDs. These were the precursors to MMO’s of today and are probably still just as much fun if not more then the average WoW instance.</p> <p>One of the biggest draw backs to text based gaming is a lack of immediate satisfaction. More often then not a players first experience is had on a telnet connection which tends to be crap. However, recently bc-dev.net guys have designed something called Fmud or Flash MUD. A easy lightweight webclient that allows people to connect to MUDs with ease. With this new, clean, and simple client out there for free it is possible to start trying to bring players back to text based gaming!</p> <p>That being said, I’d like to invite anyone who enjoys a great story and some character development to come try out The Sea of Storms. We are a Wheel of Time themed MUD with a lot of friendly players and staff waiting to introduce you to the fun of text based gaming</p> <p><a href="http://www.tsosmud.org/playnow.aspx" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms MUD - Play Now</a><br><a href="http://www.tsosmud.org" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms MUD – Homepage</a><br><a href="http://wiki.tsosmud.org" target="_blank">The Sea of Storms MUD – Wiki</a></p> TSoS Staffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02796791843022296290noreply@blogger.com1