@Pavel said in Re: Dies Irae:

@somasatori said in Re: Dies Irae:

Scylla set up two pseudo-headstaff through which she could launder her reputation.

So who were they that they had a reputation in need of laundering?

Ah, that’s not really my jam, outing folks and who they played. What I will say is there were enough people I knew that refused to play on the game on account of knowing her from a couple other recent games (Liberation, City of Hope) that I was unable to really get my friend group there.

@Juniper said in Re: Dies Irae:

Software development practices are crucial, but the kind of people who find AI the most useful probably haven’t been introduced to those practices so in addition to potentially being let down by the bot, they’re not doing OTHER project activities that would really help them and the bot isn’t going to introduce them to. Version control, unit tests, checking logs, using a debugger?

I have found AI code extremely unhelpful compared to jumping into a debugger, but those things are also learned skills that you can’t assume everyone has.

This is 100% correct. After I figured out some of the software development practices (in real life I work in mental health, I’m not a software developer), I would use the agent in my IDE to provide suggestions, but often they get in your way. Especially in cursor, the IDE agent will occasionally attempt to autocomplete things and anticipate what you’re going to write, and often it’s completely off base and diverges wildly from what you wanna do.

Notably I did not know this when I took over as code lead on DI in like October 2024, and considering that I had this monkey on my back telling me we needed to “capitalize on the enthusiasm in the Discord server” and open ASAP, I really didn’t have time to learn. I learned how to do Python stuff by a) fixing the vibe mistakes I made; and b) iterating off Kuma’s code.

Edit to add: I agree with @dvoraen here. It’s not a moral thing, it’s more like… you need some knowledge of what you’re doing or what you want out of the code at the end of the day. If you’re just like “make me a WoD game” and take the output as written on the face of it without testing it, examining possible issues, trying to figure out what links to what, etc. then it’s going to come out and be an absolute mess (re: the reality level thing that was described previously).

@Jennkryst said in Re: Dies Irae:

Re: AI Code

So you’re telling me not to trust this ChatGPT Ruby code for the L5R idea? Shock! Horror!

Here’s my suggestion: if you use AI to do your code, use it to help you learn how to code in the language of your choice., So if you’re coding up Ruby and YAML files using ChatGPT (I would not suggest ChatGPT for coding, but use Claude or Github Copilot), ask it to explain to you why it’s doing what it’s doing.

You may still get some hallucinations, but it will help you understand what sort of variables, functions, and how to write it yourself without relying on AI. As you go along, AI can also be useful if you get exasperated with an issue and say “what am I missing here?” Asking it to solely create, develop, and manage a codebase is not an effective use of the software.

Finally, you want to make sure it’s in an IDE and not something you just interface with on whatever website version you choose.

@Tez said in Re: Dies Irae:

@somasatori I’ve run into some struggles with the Evennia layers myself as I dick around with it. I’m sympathetic to the issue.

It’s a bit of a mess. Channels are also a little difficult. According to the Evennia dev discord, they’re aware of the problem and told me that channels were notably kind of strung together and needed some review.

@catzilla said in Re: Dies Irae:

@Tez I can’t speak of the AI part, especially since @somasatori is saying/implying they didn’t use AI code… but the rest is true.

I definitely did a lot, like a LOT in the beginning, because my exposure to Python was me screwing around with a Cyberpunk RED project so when Diablerie I was trying to scramble with the tools I had available. By the end of it, I was only using Claude to consult, but the mark had been made as it were.

@Ashkuri said in Re: Dies Irae:

People couldn’t see each others’ poses, couldn’t see when someone else came into the room sometimes, couldn’t see OOC messages in the room sometimes, it was very difficult to get even simple scenes done.

This was due to a bug introduced into the game when I set up the hangouts and ooc/ic thing. In Evennia there are three levels of abstraction on how characters work on a game: Session -> Account -> Object. I didn’t know this when I initially set up the hangouts/ooc/ic auto-travel stuff, but basically what was occurring was that it was moving the character object to the location, which left the account “object” (or meta object?) in the previous location. This is why sometimes you would see OOC chatter and character movement in the OOC room when you were on the grid.

In addition, it wasn’t telling the session id that the object and account were occupying a new room dbref, so that’s where you would get the issue with people not being able to see each other’s poses in the same room. There was effectively a timestamp error on what could be seen. You might be on a session that hasn’t theoretically started yet, especially if you lost connection or had frequently long idle times.

I ended up figuring this out after I left DI and applied the fix to my local copy.

Edit: Also, I really feel no need to defend myself here. Dies Irae was not my project. Scylla set up two pseudo-headstaff through which she could launder her reputation. I was not chosen as a coder when I started, I was brought on to do Mage.

@Muse said in Re: Dies Irae:

@somasatori while I never played there past a flirtation with Alpha, I will say, I still remain thoroughly impressed with the pioneering you did with Evennia. It’s incredible how much you taught yourself, and what you pulled off.

From what I’ve heard other people say, and based on what was said behind my back, all I did was boil a bunch of water and churn toxic sludge out of an AI data center.

@Warma-Sheen said in Re: Dies Irae:

Of course, there could also have been major drama that wasn’t made public to players or other staff.

@Faraday said in RPing with Nobody:

@somasatori said in RPing with Nobody:

I forgot that this was a thing on Ares MUSHes

It’s not really Ares-specific. I first encountered this with people posting solo vignettes on LiveJournal way way way before Ares. More recently it was a thing on various games with MediaWiki/Wikidot wikis. I think it just gets a little more formalized/visible on Ares games because of the scene type tagging.

Maybe not Ares specific. I meant more that other platforms typically don’t have a built-in journaling function.

@Muscle-Car said in RPing with Nobody:

There was this one very sad sack on a game I used to hang who would join group scenes then post themselves doing stuff solo, not involving or inviting anyone. Even to ignoring invitation. They’d get real miserable and start adding editorial in their own posts like “because she is not needed.” They had very bad traits in addition to that, but I’ll never forget how performatively alone they loved to be.

I guarantee that this person deeply wanted someone to be like “oh, no, you’re a critical part of our group!!! you have to stay!!!”

Ugh, haha.

(Thanks @watno)

I forgot that this was a thing on Ares MUSHes. Most of my experience with solo roleplay has been with solo TTRPG games. Speaking of which, there’s a new sourcebook for Cyberpunk RED called Single Player Mode, which has solo rules for play.

I think there are some useful things with journaling in games, but it’s one of those things where you have to consider the point, perspective, and tone of what you’re writing.

1. Is the actual point of the writing to be a journal for you? If so, it’s probably not going to be any more useful to have it on a website or wiki or something so that other people can read it. Having that is essentially a way to say “Hey, check out the depths of my character, wouldn’t it be cool to RP with me” rather than free creative writing.
2. Is your perspective from your character’s internal thoughts related to something they’re witnessing, or are you mentalizing another character’s perspective? Even if you are taking a relatively positive view of someone else’s character’s perspective, it’s likely best to have a scene with that person.
3. Is this journal going to make you feel worse about a situation that you’re in with your character? Is it going to cause an amount of bleed that would be unexpected beyond a standard scene? If so, for your own mental health’s sake, do not write it. That’s not to say “don’t write sad things,” but more “don’t get yourself further stuck in a rut if you feel your character is having problems that are causing you to relate too heavily to their struggle.” (i.e., consider the tone of what you’re writing)

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Strike Systems:

It’s fine to discuss politics. It’s not fine to propagandize –

At this point in our digital society, any discussion of politics in a mixed space is vociferous propaganda. No one is changing their ideological opinions based on an Internet conversation. Discussions about politics are only civil when a) everyone agrees with what someone is saying; b) everyone is silent or ignores the topic in the general hope that it goes away; or c) everyone has been friends for many years and knows each other’s politics, which largely predate their friendship. Option c is becoming a rarity these days.

RIP Max Horkheimer, you would have loved to hate the Web 2.0 era internet.

Edit: the above applies to discussions about United States politics and may not apply to other countries.

Given my current schedule, I’m waiting for the “RPing with Nobody” thread

(all good points from Gashly and LB)

@Jumpscare said in Strike Systems:

Some people can change. Others can’t.

Man, at this point I’m willing to believe that we’re all pretty firmly set in our behavioral ways when it comes to MUSHing and would argue that most, if not all, people in the hobby will resist changing. This might be due to my WoD-brain. It seems like the vast majority of the WoD MUSH sphere of influence has operated with deeply flawed and bad actors for such a long time that there’s this assumption that having the worst possible personality traits manifest and cause problems are just part of the hobby.

Look at any recent shitty MUSH drama and you’ll see ghosts of the past in there. Recently I saw a game give a lot of chances to a player that multiple people insisted was different, had changed, etc., when they were up the same old shit in private. From overstepping boundaries to people on weird narcissistic power trips to people attempting to manipulate others for their own personal gain, it’s this long series of intergenerational MUSH trauma that’s persisted. And not to be a doomer, but it will likely persist until the end of the hobby because there’s this psychological ecosystem that provides a kind of parasocial and quasi-social connection where very emotionally abused people think this kind of behavior is normal from your text-based friends.

@Ashkuri

I have a question. What do you get out of MUSHing, a hobby wherein you write paragraphs at people in a turn-based format, when you’re not actually doing the writing? What’s the end goal there?

Unrelated to Grounded 2 (though I’m very excited about that!) is The Demons Told Me to Make This Game. It’s early access and only the first chapter is available, but it’s a Disco-like wherein you’re a demon(?) who possesses a couple different people to advance a storyline. Here are some screeners!

And (spoiler for plot stuff)

Spoiler

It’s so funny and very well written.

@Hobbie said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

@Gashlycrumb said in MU Peeves Thread:

the reality of housing shortages

I’ll have to make a note to include that when I launch my Vampire the Masquerade: Sydney by Night game.

Oi just be daring and set it in somewhere like Campbelltown. People can still afford to buy there.

Not that they want to.

Not that they should.

Would love to sit here and have a whinge about this very topic but that’s a whole other… topic lol.

Well, it’s not California or Texas so that in itself would be a draw.

@Pavel said in MU Peeves Thread:

@somasatori said in MU Peeves Thread:

The worst options are deeply reactionary (buying mundane equipment with XP to keep your thumb on the players)

Referencing any games in particular there, Soma? >_>

No, no, not at all

@Pavel said in AI PBs:

Alas, most research I’ve seen thus far has been on clinical applications of LLMs rather than their clinical impact.

“I don’t need a therapist anymore, I talk to ChatGPT and it helps” - BPD patient I was working with