dunebum
Clueless newb
Smells like beer and sweat
Posts: 108
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Post by dunebum on Jun 19, 2017 9:26:28 GMT -5
We all know this game is about to fail as it is cracking from the inside. Staff is losing their shit, the remaining players are losing interest in stagnant storylines, and new players see toxicity as soon as they walk in the door. It's kind of like this for new players:  IMO the only way this game can redeem itself is if it releases its codebase as open source, much like SoI did with OpenRPI. If they did this, at least all the hard work put in by the coders over the years wouldn't be lost to time when the game drops to < 10 players at peak, then < 5 players. I imagine that there are plenty of groups of people who would be happy to re-use the codebase even after ArmageddonMUD dies. |
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Post by BitterFlashback on Jun 19, 2017 11:01:00 GMT -5
I appreciate where you're going with this, but I don't see it happening. You're asking people who fucked everything up with their power tripping to utterly destroy all of their power in a single action.
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ibusoe
Clueless newb
Posts: 176 
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Post by ibusoe on Jun 20, 2017 19:40:35 GMT -5
I appreciate where you're going with this, but I don't see it happening. You're asking people who fucked everything up with their power tripping to utterly destroy all of their power in a single action. Disagree. Open-sourcing was always their best bet. Their insistence on closed sourcing made sense for maybe the first two or three years when they were running, when they were trying to jockey with whatever other RPI MUD were running at the time. Everyone wanted to attract players to the game with the best code base. This quickly became silly for two reasons: *None of the DIKU-derivatives every advanced very far beyond DIKU, if we were honest. It's the limitations of C. I like C, it just doesn't really suit game development. Or maybe I'm getting it slightly wrong, but regardless Armageddon never ended up getting a lot of flashy features. To this day there's no real physics engine. Most of the "cool" features in game are essentially scripts. It's all hackish, which I say with no disrespect intended to the coding staff. They were issued a difficult job. *RPI players don't really care that much about code-base features. If they open-sourced it, this would long ago have freed Arm staff from the burden of managing a code base, when they were clearly struggling to manage other, more essential features of running a game. EDIT: Signifyingmonkey has a good point |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2017 20:42:24 GMT -5
Instead, what if the Arm staff allowed the players to elect 3 new storytellers?
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Post by Amos's Boots on Jun 20, 2017 22:55:39 GMT -5
I mean, they seem to be acting in the best interest of their game by allowing previously undesired players back to play (such as I), simply with a few words spoken. #DorfNation
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Post by BitterFlashback on Jun 21, 2017 9:09:54 GMT -5
Stuff about crowdsourcing maintenance I think you missed the end of his post, where he said it'd keep Arm's code/content in existence after the MUD's inevitable death from disinterest. It has nothing to do with relieving anyone of the effort of maintaining Arm's code while it's still around. If they did this, at least all the hard work put in by the coders over the years wouldn't be lost to time when the game drops to < 10 players at peak, then < 5 players. I imagine that there are plenty of groups of people who would be happy to re-use the codebase even after ArmageddonMUD dies. |
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deadelf
staff puppet account
Posts: 44
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Post by deadelf on Jun 22, 2017 4:32:31 GMT -5
What exactly is in Arm's code that gets you all wet? It looks mostly stock diku to me: smile, kill, eat, drink, n, steal, cast, write, post, junk,... Hell, even ansi color, OLC, mud scripting, and pre-game mudschools were around in the early days. Play some other muds and you will see how unoriginal the code is.
Even if they did open source the code, you wouldn't get the game world. Now imagine the effort it is going to take to create all the npcs, game areas, items, shops. Then you need to reach critical mass. You can't RP without other players. Go read the boards at the mud connector, mudbytes, and I'm sure there are others. There's a huge mud world out there that isn't ARM.
But at the end, it is all that effort and your buddy down the street just finished his app for iTunes or google store. He'll be making money and you'll be managing a hostile mob.
And, if you don't like C, get on github and find a converter to whatever language you do like. Grab SOI's code and start there.
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OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257
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Post by OT on Jun 22, 2017 7:09:17 GMT -5
I mean, calling it stock is silly. It's nothing like stock DIKU. The code is dated and somewhat primitive, but anyone who has actually looked at the DIKU stock knows that just about everything has been changed from that. It's like saying a painting is the same as a blank canvas because they have the same shape and the painting has a canvas underneath it.
Still, open-sourcing it wouldn't really accomplish anything. The only thing Arm's code does well is present the framework for a grindy text-based Skyrim kind of game. That's how half the playerbase tends to play it, too. Armageddon has a nifty gameworld for running around and killing shit, and it has player numbers (though dwindling). The former can be replicated but the latter can't really just be grafted onto another game, and who's really going to start playing a new game with Arm's ancient code?
The only way Armageddon could possibly even begin to attempt to redeem itself would be a total change of direction, with a considerable staff shake-up and a new mission statement that puts an end to the reductionist approach and changes that nobody ever asked for. Basically, an admission that they've been doing it wrong for years and that they know things have to be done differently. That'll never happen because it'll rule out much of the current staff and their intentions for the game.
At this stage, with the game in the state it's in now, I'm not sure it would work even if they were willing because the numbers are low enough that they could dip below critical mass. If ever Arm reaches the point where it peaks at less than 30 players, even more players will continue to quit because of the numbers themselves, and then the game is dead.
They had a chance at one point, like a year and a half ago when Nyr was at his worst and excused himself from the community (allegedly; some believe he didn't). The situation was ripe for a statement of intent and an admission that things had gone sour, but they chose to stick to their pride and continue down the same road that led to those conditions.
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Post by BitterFlashback on Jun 22, 2017 9:28:17 GMT -5
What exactly is in Arm's code that gets you all wet? I believe what people want is Arm's code AND content, so they can just throw it on a server and have their own running copy. |
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dunebum
Clueless newb
Smells like beer and sweat
Posts: 108
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Post by dunebum on Jun 22, 2017 10:37:48 GMT -5
What exactly is in Arm's code that gets you all wet? I believe what people want is Arm's code AND content, so they can just throw it on a server and have their own running copy. They've been building on stock DIKU since the early 90's. A lot of love and passion has gone into adding features, scripts, and other cool things that do not exist elsewhere. It would be cool to see other game worlds built with the codebase and all of them sharing the same git respository. Updates from one could go to another. I could easily see it becoming the de facto RPI codebase simply due to the emote code. Some may call this junk. Me, I call them treasures.  |
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OT
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 257
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Post by OT on Jun 22, 2017 10:48:19 GMT -5
The RPI codebase is open source and has essentially the same emote code. Of all things, that's surely one of the least coveted features of Armageddon. Doesn't just about every RPI have the same general emote code, just with different symbols? If anything, I'd say Arm's is pretty weak as it doesn't allow for speech in emotes, making for unwieldy and unnatural emoting styles. This is one of the better features of the newer RPIs. I believe AtonementRPI was the first place I saw it used on an actual RPI and it made a world of difference in terms of portraying your roleplay in a fluid, visually pleasing manner.
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dunebum
Clueless newb
Smells like beer and sweat
Posts: 108
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Post by dunebum on Jun 22, 2017 11:37:44 GMT -5
I'm also not a fan of OpenRPI's style of character generation. It feels cumbersome and I personally like writing an mdesc/sdesc with minimal code input besides sex, height, weight.
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Post by silentlamb on Jun 22, 2017 17:45:10 GMT -5
Staff have been fine to work with for the last while, and have been far from unreasonable for at least the last year. People have been acting toxic towards them since the departure of Nyr, resulting in a rather unpleasant interaction with staff in return. Constantly pushing someone (staff members) will result in them getting burned out and fed up (see Noted Liar Noted Liar Nergal). Unless that's the reaction you're looking for to push some sort of anti-arm agenda, you shouldn't act so surprised when it happens. People have been coming to the GDB acting snarky and generally shitty (in my own view) towards staff (e.g. gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,52596.0.html) and then act even shittier when this approach gets them completely shut down. I'm very happy to give examples of staff being exceptionally reasonable towards myself in requests and even supporting me (shock! They've let me go ahead with plots requiring staff support! - which I can't currently share due to the 1 year rule (wait till october and I may if reminded)). Before people try to say I'm some sort of special snowflake or staff puppet, I've been PERMA banned from the game previously, until staff got so fed up with me returning on alt accounts (I got banned for multiplaying about 3 years ago) they cut me a deal after I offered them a genuine apology, and I've since gotten a few karma and everything. What is killing arm is the community, people are on a constant witch hunt to blame staff for all their woes. Some is warranted, but keep in mind many in staff who have wronged people have since left (e.g. Nyr, who many people have an issue with) but other people (Grumble comes to mind) are completely at fault and probably mentally unhinged. It shouldn't come as a surprise when staff lash out after the level of abuse I've seen them get here. Like, they're people too, you know? I don't want to seem like I'm some brown nosing staff apologist, (Well I am defending them here), but this community is certainly not helping matters. What would really help ARM right now, would be for people to try and settle their differences with staff, or simply ignore anything not too detrimental to their gameplay (deduction of karma/whatever) and play the game. |
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Post by silentlamb on Jun 22, 2017 17:46:10 GMT -5
Nice wordfilter too. Changing Ner.gal to "Noted Liar Noted Liar Nergal" is hardly helping matters and is just pushing people's buttons.
EDIT:
To add to all I've said, constantly claiming the game is dying is not helping either. People have been saying the game is dying since I joined in 2013. It has had its ups and downs, but it has not been till very recently (I've just come back from a 9 month hiatus) I've noticed a decline in players. It's likely temporary (who knows?), but the constant pessimism just drives off new players more so than staff's actions. Take a look at the earliest posts on this forum from 2013, they're all "THE GAME IS DEAD! DOOM AND GLOOM!"
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grumble
GDB Superstar
toxic shithead
Destroyer of Worlds
Posts: 1,619
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Post by grumble on Jun 22, 2017 18:14:37 GMT -5
I don't even post to the GDB, or here hardly anymore even... and if you think even more than a small handful of people in that community take my opinion with anything more than a grain of salt, I believe you'd be mistaken. You've not seen what I've seen. Congrats on being one of the chosen ones, but all I can do is simply point out that I believe you to be mistaken in your judgement as to what's wrong with the game. Also, the "Grumble is mentally unhinged therefor his opinion is invalid" is kind of an old song and dance that I'm not even going to bother getting into.
So no, I don't think I'm what's wrong with Arm. If you knew shit you'd know I originally started posting here to try to encourage people to maybe stop being so negative, even after staff negativity hit me a few times, until finally I just decided, welp... can't keep sticking my head in the sand anymore, ostrich defense is not working. Then I got upset. I may have said some things that were uncharictaristicly negative, no matter how justified they may have been. I haven't played, or really even interacted with either community much since my last banning, which was, quite some time ago, months, heck, feels like a year, but unsure. Every now and then I shitpost over here because I still like talking with this community, but aside from when staff makes a terrible goddamn fuckup they could have prevented with more understanding and less iron-fist, I'm usually quiet.
The staff bashing does not typically start up on here until AFTER the negativity you describe took place on the GDB. Most of the time these days, it's pretty dead on these boards. I admit there could be some people on the GDB whose only desire is to troll and might or might not read these boards. I very rarely fucked with the GDB when I was playing, I tried to stick to the request tool. There were some times I slipped, admittedly, but those were quiiiiiite some time ago. If you think I had anything to do with what's messing up Armageddon, that's quite a stretch and you might want to sit down with a cognitive therapist and go over your tendancy to jump to conclusions. Coming here to finger-waggle at the big, bad shadowboards is kind of laughable, if anything, it's the GDB crowd with their usual toxic snark going at eachother when there's no other outliers to venemously tear into.
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