When Easy Becomes Hard

I am developing a new tool.  The goal is to make the interface of this tool easy to use – roughly as simple as typing a macro trigger.

The challenge here is dealing with all of the possible variables in which a player may encounter.  Such quasi-relevant conditions for which I must plan: in what area is the player?  Where within the area is the player standing?  Who else is in the area?  Are there any environmental restrictions within the area?  How close are the players standing?  Is there any other activity surrounding the player?  What has changed since the last frame of action?

The more I think about what needs to be done on my part, the more daunting the project becomes.  All of these conditionals need to be reflected within the script if I want it to work simply and be easy to use.  I sincerely thought that this would have been a script which I could have written in two evenings.  I am on my second evening of development now, and predict that I may be working on this script all weekend.

Not that I am complaining.  Scripting is a nice way to spend the weekend.  I just wish that it wasn't so hard to write an easy script!

Spamming Me With Science

I came home late Friday night/Saturday morning (boy's night out, don'tchyaknow) and instead of going directly to bed like a good little yapper, I popped online for a moment just to see if anything was happening.

And something was happening!



Slarty was in the fairgrounds sitting very quietly.  I suppose that alone is debatable if it qualifies as "something happening."  But! what Slarty was doing was debugging his latest project: the Clanroid Informer!  And in the name of quality assurance, we sent out some status alerts to test the new application:



Sorry about the spam!  We did it... FOR SCIENCE!

Story Genies

I have been mulling about Jeanne's thoughtful journal entry on reviving role playing within Clan Lord.  One particular comment that caught my attention was a request for more story tools:

Giving everyone more tools aside from different colored text boxes will be useful. Less powerful tools than the apprentice GMs get but something that will make it so creating their own stories will be fun. I'm not sure exactly what tools are needed but I'm sure many folks have ideas of what they'd like to have.

One of the general weaknesses of player-generated stories has been dissemination of a story.  Sometimes word of mouth works, but sometimes it doesn't.  Players should be able to learn of ongoing stories within the Clan Lord world without relying on external sources (such as Thoomcare, for example).  Koppi is a good example of sharing information within the game, but Koppi is better served for news than developing an ongoing story.

What tools could help a player spread a story?  One obvious idea would be a dedicated story NPC, something along the idea of Koppi.  A player could speak some lines of a story script to the NPC, and that NPC could repeat those lines – either sequentially or randomly, at the choice of the player.  But the problem with NPCs is that they can not be created on-the-fly; there needs to be a predetermined number of them.  How many story NPCs would Puddleby need?  One?  Ten?  Thirty?

This lead me to think: instead of NPCs (which need to be created ahead of time), why not use monsters – which may be created on-the-fly?  If you have ever encounter a T'rool then you probably already know that certain monsters possess the ability to hear and repeat phases.  Why not create a new type of monster to assist with role playing and story telling?

These monsters – I'll call them Story Genies – would be something along the idea of a portable pet.  My caveat is that I have given this idea minimal thought, but in broad terms, I envision that story genies would behave thusly:

• The player would obtain a genie bottle from an NPC within the fairgrounds. Each bottle contains one genie.
• The player may name the genie, like "Timber Arm, Darshak Mate," or "Gh'rgh, Summoned Orga Warrior."
• The player may select the genie's appearance by touching the bottle to another mobile (such as a monster, another player, or NPC). Other methods of defining the genie's appearance could be to chain a corpse to the genie NPC in the fairgrounds, or to simply hold a stuffed trophy while holding the bottle.
• The player may speak their story lines into the bottle, and the genie will remember these spoken lines.  I imagine support for standard actions, such as ponders and growling.
• The player would carry the bottle to a location and release the genie.
• The genie would wander around within its released location, speaking its story lines for the duration of the Chaos Storm.
• Story Genies would not attack players or other monsters, but could be killed by other determined players.

Would such a story tool help?  Are there any improvements to this idea?  Is the idea overall worth putting "On The List?"

Back again

I logged on this evening and was greeted by an invasion in full swing.  Ahhh, it's good to be home.

On a semi-related topic, I had been using the trial version of Cornerstone, a Subversion client, for the past 14 days.  The trial ended this evening, and I tried to launch Versions, a competing application.  After launching Versions, it updated itself and then immediately hung and I had to force-quit the application.  I then relaunched it, and tried to set up my Subversion information and could not connect to the server.

Three minutes later I purchased my Cornerstone license, and haven't had a moment's regret.