Grid vs Web Scenes
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@Trashcan said in RP Safari - Pacing Styles:
‘Create a Scene’ and fill out the fields, which you will need to do anyway to share it and it’s clunky to do them all from the client.
The power of web UI cannot be overstated. If you want to start a game and you want it to have a forum, working mail, working pages, play screen, events, scene system, modular profile fields, a wiki, literally all of the QoL features that apparently all of these other platforms fail to package into the core code… you go to Ares. It is a game in a box and there is a one click install mode.
I realize there are still tinymux islands out there, traditional moos, etc, but I gather most of this forum is or has been on at least one Ares game. Who would win, a stack of text syntax you have to dig up from the help file to fill out a bunch of fields, or one webpage input field boy.
I’ve run 3 ares games. I set up a grid, people go through the grid to get a feel for it, then permanently retreat to web scene system. I cannot remember the last time I started a scene on the grid. What would happen on Shattered is that I’d log into the client to do a combat scene from the grid because it was easier than working with the combat UI (I think? I never looked into the combat UI too hard), but then I’d also have the web scene open too just in case I missed a pose. And then I’d also have the combat UI open anyway! Three interfaces!
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So, at least on the client, Ares does tell you whether the scene was started on the grid or from the web (which is always a temp room).
You can also easily check how many scenes were a temp room or not, where the grid is always not a temp room. On Shattered, the ratio of temp rooms vs not (i.e. started on the grid) was 4204 to 83.
It’s not never but that’s 50:1.
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@Trashcan Oh shit! I stand corrected, that’s a pretty cool metric.
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@Trashcan said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
TEZ, THIS IS OFF TOPIC, fork me if you want.
fork u
(from https://brandmu.day/topic/643/rp-safari-pacing-styles/80)
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T Tez referenced this topic
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@Yam said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
I realize there are still tinymux islands out there, traditional moos, etc, but I gather most of this forum is or has been on at least one Ares game.
This is YET ANOTHER OFF-TOPIC POST in a thread that was forked already, but a lot of this is ease of actually finding a game. I used to troll MudConnector for games but that site is imo basically unusable now and no replacement has stuck. They certainly exist, I have some of them bookmarked, but they’re neither particularly user-friendly or complete. Ares and Evennia has complete and easy-to-view game listings, so that’s what people know about, at least this audience.
I honestly have no idea how I’d even go about finding a new MUSH/MUX at this point apart from hollering into the wilderness either here or on Reddit’s r/mud section with mixed results.
I want something else to get me through this
Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby
I want something else, I'm not listening when you say good-byeShe/Her or They/Them
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@Trashcan I used to do it all the time specifically so that I could avoid having to come up with the required location name. Physically go to place, scene/start. Sometimes, I would start the client, go to the place, scene/start, then RP the whole scene on the portal via web.
Otherwise I would do whole scene and try to post and realize I didn’t have a location set and it wouldn’t let me because apparently knowing where you are in rp is critically important.
let it be a challenge to you
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@sao said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
because apparently knowing where you are in rp is critically important.
this is why I came up with “Somewhere out there” and “Textlandia” as locations because I am, in fact, out there somewhere.
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@sao I used to do this, too. If it helps you any…
You can also do this by going to the /locations directory on the game, finding the room, and clicking “Start Scene” from there.
It still marks them as Temp Rooms, but it imports location name and room description into the scene for you. Which I like.
The only flaw I’ve found is that, if you then change the location using the portal, it keeps the original room desc in the scene info.
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@KarmaBum Yes! That is the only way I ever found anywhere on Shattered while I existed there, because at that time I was no longer using a client much for a variety of reasons.
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Oh good, other people use the ‘Locations’ menu to start scenes, whenever I say this is almost exclusively how I do it people are surprised.
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@KarmaBum said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
The only flaw I’ve found is that, if you then change the location using the portal, it keeps the original room desc in the scene info.
I thought this for a long time before discovering that instead of going to ‘Edit Scene’ and changing the value for Location, there is an honest-to-god ‘Change Location’ BUTTON under the ‘Play’ menu.
he/him
this machine kills fascists -
@Trashcan I’ll be damned.
Thank you!!!
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@Trashcan mind blown
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Ah the annual rediscovery of the change location button
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@Trashcan said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
Even knowing that you could start a scene from the grid, again, I never saw anyone do it and I never did it even though I’d just come from a game where that was the only way of RPing. Why? Because it is just so much easier to click ‘Create a Scene’ and fill out the fields, which you will need to do anyway to share it and it’s clunky to do them all from the client. You don’t have to wander the grid like a fool peering in shop windows for the right room. You can just select from the list.
It should be covered in the basic help files/tutorial, but even setting that aside - There’s almost no functional difference between starting a scene from the grid and starting the scene from the web portal. If you mark it open to the public, both provide a way for any random person to join the scene and RP according to the scene’s pacing from either the MU client or the web portal.
So yes, it’s different, but it’s not different in a way that (IMHO) makes it harder to play live.
To your other point though - yes, there’s a default private setting for web/off-grid scenes, but it used to default to Open. Lots of people complained, because the majority wanted the default to be private. So I changed the default. You’re saying that game design is influencing behavior, but it’s actually the other way around.
Harkening back to the “old days” - you could start a scene in a TP room or on grid. It’s a choice. Even before Ares there were people complaining about “too many” people doing private TP room scenes, which always felt like WrongFun to me. YMMV of course.
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@Third-Eye I sometimes peek at https://www.mushcode.com/mushlist. YMMV as to its usefulness.
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@Faraday said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
Are we getting more players from other mediums though?
yes. we were always surprised on arx just how many people kept coming in that had no MU* experience at all.
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@Trashcan said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
@KarmaBum said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
The only flaw I’ve found is that, if you then change the location using the portal, it keeps the original room desc in the scene info.
I thought this for a long time before discovering that instead of going to ‘Edit Scene’ and changing the value for Location, there is an honest-to-god ‘Change Location’ BUTTON under the ‘Play’ menu.
EXCUSE ME WHAT
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@Pacha said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
I think another thing to consider is that in the “old” days a lot of the live RP was like…pickup RP. You went somewhere on grid, stuck up your LFG flag and whoever turned up turned up and you sort of just made do with that. This led to a lot of the dreaded Bar RP.
The deliciousness of Ares is (for me) that I don’t have to put up with that any more. I can go and read everyone’s hooks, pick out who interests me (and almost as importantly, who I have no interest in) and then just seek to RP with those 5-10 people.
That lends itself to more 1 on 1 private scenes that can very naturally go async as the parties go about their lives, and I find those scenes tend to be more directed and purposeful. I am going to stick with that scene until its finished, rather than just “posing out” of the bar scene when my interest/patience wanes.
I have two problems with that. The first is that it doesn’t allow for relationships and situations to develop organically. Those set up scenes never seem to be “our characters come across one another and strike up a conversation before becoming fast friends a few scenes later.” They always seem to start in media res. And when they do start as “our characters come across each other,” things feel stilted. You’re in a scene with this other person and you have a very specific direction this scene is supposed to go in, “developing some sort of relationship so future scenes can be had with them.” There is no chance that if things seem to be going sideways in the characters’ interactions that you can pose out or ideally shift more of the interactions to other person’s present.
The second problem I have is that it doesn’t leave room for happenstance. You’re not going to have the scene interrupted by someone barging in unannounced and taking the scene into an unexpected direction. This can be a good thing as maybe those already in the scene aren’t up for a detour and shenanigans, but some of my favorite scenes came about because of such incursions.
Also, I am a weirdo who likes BarP.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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@Ominous said in Grid vs Web Scenes:
Those set up scenes never seem to be “our characters come across one another and strike up a conversation before becoming fast friends a few scenes later.”
Those are almost all of my first scenes with people, no matter if the scene itself was pre-arranged. If the characters don’t like each other, that’s potentially fun. If I realize I don’t like playing with the other player, my character can always just leave and we can wrap the scene.
It’s fine if people don’t like these arranged 1:1 scenes, but I’m puzzled at the idea that they don’t allow IC spontaneity or bailing out if something isn’t working.
