Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo

[Warlander]

@Pavel This, exactly. Generally the headwiz of a particular game is who decides whether other games are considered ‘competing games’ or not. I’m glad to see that most headwizzes these days don’t seem to see other games this way.

Cujo does. Mal emphatically did, and probably still does if he’s gone on to running another game after he left SerenityMUSH.

So did a number of Mal’s staffers, mostly the long-time staffers who were his friends and hangers-on (staff culture on SerenityMUSH was incredibly toxic, to the point that newer staffers had extremely high turnover and burnout, while the older, much more toxic staff hung around forever). Most likely they were the ones who were cruising other games with Mal to recruit players and harass staffers, and both repeatedly upvoting the game and encouraging excessive upvoting by other players…

This activity was kept very quiet on SerenityMUSH, for obvious reasons; wouldn’t want folks thinking the game was run by jealous and creepy people, right?

[Jax]

Do we need to open a post for Mal and crew? I know Cujo and Mal share some traits.* I don’t know if we’re doing a disservice to those that went through the special hell that was Serenity mush, but didn’t ride the shit show amusement ride that is Aoa.

*Source: I was on both game and interacted with both. Please don’t make pick my favorite turd

[Warlander]

@Jax The World Wonders.

Speaking of turds, this just hit the water today:

======================<* 7: Game Announcements - 167 *>======================
Message: 7/167 Posted Author
Activity and Item Retention Update Aug 18 2023 Cujo

Greetings, denizens.

In an effort to keep the game’s grid functionally flowing, we’re updating the rules of item and property retention. The general rule on this is 30 days of not logging in can result in your starships being recycled back in to the system. 60+ days of not logging in can warrant your ships and items to be recycled back in to the system.

But now, we’re going to add in a period beyond that where if you only login and do not participate in the game, after 90+ days your ships and items are up for recycling back in to the system.

I.e. we need you to participate in the game too, in order to keep your stuff. Please start seeking out RP and garner +noms iff you really want to keep your character’s things on the MUSH. We are a game, we need to continue to keep the game’s grid flowing as it was designed. We need people to play and help create a fun atmosphere for all involved.

So, in summary, please do not just sign-in to try and retain your items, but please consider sending and receiving +noms for viable RP so that the game can just keep being ffun, and functional, as it was designed.

Thanks,

• Staff
  ------------------------------< +bbread 7/167 >-------------------------------

Gee, I wonder who this could possibly be aimed at?

This is pure speculation based on past experience, but I suspect AoA’s vastly-overcoded object list is running in the red again (which is known to happen if you demand coded objects for ammunition packs, healing items, effing BOOZE, and similar things for no good reason). That, and the age-old desire to recycle ships back into the system, whether to allow the dinos to buy more ships or to provide ships to the very occasional new player. Most likely the former, since we all know AoA staff’s concern for the situation of new players could fit inside a thimble, most likely with a lot of room left.

[GF]

I don’t know how code works. Does having unused items affect the system negatively in some way?

[TNP]

@GF Once, a long long time ago, there used to be such as thing as ‘database bloat’. As a for instance, players could only build a limited number of rooms for their homes. That’s almost unheard of now with cheap GB sized storage, cheap, huge bandwidth, etc. But if that’s a really old game running an outdated code base… Maybe?

[Pavel]

@TNP I don’t quite remember how their code works, but I’m fairly sure they use virtual items: Usually set as an attribute on your character rather than an @created object.

Starships are likely made of actual rooms with code objects in them; things like ammunition and the like probably aren’t, and any scarcity is artificial.

[Warlander]

@TNP It is (DSS). Some of their code has been updated, but whether it can incorporate virtual objects or not, I have no idea.

I do know it’s one of the laggiest games I’ve ever been on, and potential database bloat may be a factor (I know severe overcoding is). SerenityMUSH, another infamous DSS game, had similar issues, and at one point was confirmed to have a severe database bloat issue, or at the very least a similar issue to database bloat.

As for ships, the number of examples of different ship models is kept artificially limited there, so there is a hard cap of sorts on the number of ships on the game. Not nearly all of them are taken, but the nicer ships are, and tend to stay that way. IMO, Cujo and Company probably want some non-friends’ ships freed up so they and their friends can claim them.

[Jennkryst]

@TNP If memory serves, it’s Penn, using DSS for sheets and equipment (the same thing that Serenity MU used, except they didn’t have clips for weapon reloads… essentially unlimited ammo, bit this may have changed), TSpace for ships (but only flight/cargo, no coded combat), and other weird subsystems, including elevators you have to wait for, fully mapped out Tatooine desert and Naboo grasslands which took hours to walk around, hope you have a speeder - 15 km per room, forced to wait until X time had gone by before you get to the next room (X based on speeder… speed)

Edit to add - some ships were needlessly excessive, the Millennium Falcon having 15 rooms inside. Others are bare-bone, you’re lucky if you get a cargo bay AND a cockpit. Some systems had up to 20 ships just idling in orbit doing nothing but providing vibes, which is fair, but had no way to dock or board or land on them, so… pointless beyond vibes.

[Warlander]

@Jennkryst They have since added such ‘features’ as several varieties of weapon powerpacks, medical supplies, coded space combat (which may or may not work; a few ‘work-around’ non-coded space combat systems are still in use), and coded weapon and starship mods and devices to allow them to be added. All the other pointless code you mentioned is still there, including a tram on Coruscant that not only forces you to wait, but demands you pay coded money for the ‘privilege’ of using it.

A number of SerenityMUSH players/staff migrated there years ago after the most recent reopening, which is probably why the game has been ‘blessed’ this way.

[icanbeyourmuse]

@Warlander If you’re so unhappy with it why are you still paying attention to it/on it? IF I dislike a game as much as you do this one, I just quit and forget it then mostly forget it until someone brings it up and I decide to comment.

[Warlander]

@icanbeyourmuse Like Charlie Brown, I’m fascinated by failure.

Especially staff failure.

[Anony Mouse]

@Jennkryst

As far as I know, SMU never did get coded ammunition, but it wasn’t for lack of Mal trying to get it. He was obsessed with this for a long time. On a game with definite database space limits.

Coded ammunition on AoA was because of the constant staff refrain that ‘players have too much money/XP/stuff’, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

I’ve wondered for years if the DSS codebase brings out the number-obsessed twit in terrible MU owners/wizards…

[Warlander]

@Anony-Mouse Actually, SerenityMUSH DID have coded ammunition. Mal threatened on the Public channel to wipe out PCs’ stores of ammunition that weren’t stored in lockers more than once. Actually did it once, which at least one player quit over.

[Anony Mouse]

@Warlander

Ah, my bad.

Can’t blame the person for quitting, frankly. Money was incredibly hard to get on that game, and ammunition was just one more thing to spend it on. Though what difference storing a bunch of stuff in a locker would make as opposed to carrying it around on you is an utter mystery to me.

[Zephyr]

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@TNP I don’t quite remember how their code works, but I’m fairly sure they use virtual items: Usually set as an attribute on your character rather than an @created object.

They do have virtual items. Some things like ammo are always virtual, and then items that are placed in containers like bags and lockers are converted to virtual when in there. When removed they’re given a DB# again.

@Warlander said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

A number of SerenityMUSH players/staff migrated there years ago after the most recent reopening, which is probably why the game has been ‘blessed’ this way.

I believe nearly every Serenity MU player has left, the last few in the last mass exodus. As far as I am aware none of the staff from Serenity were on staff on AoA, and almost all of the nitpicky code or abundance of items has come from Cujo’s obsession to turn AoA into a video game. Which he then gets absurdly angry over because people start collecting and hoarding items. He’s made it so that people are tracked for what they buy, how often they land on planets so he can watch for people who are obsessed with buying things in the system that he designed. He also made it so that he can manually set vendors to prevent people he doesn’t like from seeing the more valuable items.

[Pavel]

@Zephyr said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

They do have virtual items. Some things like ammo are always virtual, and then items that are placed in containers like bags and lockers are converted to virtual when in there. When removed they’re given a DB# again.

That seems dumb to me, but I can’t quite articulate exactly why…

[Zephyr]

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

That seems dumb to me, but I can’t quite articulate exactly why…

It is absolutely dumb for exploit reasons, but they’ve got someone who was caught more than once exploiting systems on staff now, so clearly none of that matters.

[Jennkryst]

@Anony-Mouse You (dbref 1) have a locker (dbref 2) on a ship (dbref 3), 3 guns (dbref 4-6), and 5 boxes of ammo (dbref 7-11) and 100 rounds of ammo (dbref 12-111).

Put the ammo in the boxes, and you just make the ammo counter on the box go from 0 to 20. Now you have cut down on 100 DB objects. Now stick the ammo boxes in the locker, and the locker says ‘item 1 is ammo box 20/20’… and then deleted the ammo box object. Remove the ammo box, the locker will @create an ammo box with 20 rounds.

And that is how 1 locker object handles the work of a specific 105 objects. Remember to put your gun in there, too, along with any magazines or clips, to cut down on even more bloat!

And it is pretty much all the RP you could do as Alliance members, inventory and weapon upkeep. Because player ships are all faster, and the pirates have a psychic who instantly spots any spies you send their way.

Edit because @Zephyr explained it better while I was typing all of that out. So it turns out you just made counter on ammo box go down, and counter on clip/magazine go up, not INDIVIDUAL BULLET objects. Or maybe even that, who knows, it’s been almost 15 years since I glanced at SerenityMU.

[Pavel]

@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

it’s been almost 15 years since I glanced at SerenityMU.

We need to go lie down, we’re too old for this.

[Jennkryst]

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Zephyr said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

They do have virtual items. Some things like ammo are always virtual, and then items that are placed in containers like bags and lockers are converted to virtual when in there. When removed they’re given a DB# again.

That seems dumb to me, but I can’t quite articulate exactly why…

Ultra simulationist is… fine. Sometimes I’m in the mood for it, but not always. I crave space trucking and whatnot, if for only to have a mini-game happening in-window between poses so I don’t alt-tab into another window when it’s not my turn and then you blink and now it’s two hours later and your RP partner went to bed because they responded while you were DISTRACTION SQUIRREL’d, whoopsy.

Buy also because ships are cool. I actually got into working on deck plans for ships because, ironically, AoA staff were like ‘no, your ship is too small for X’ and I was like ‘uh… WANNA BET?’ but that never really went anywhere.