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Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo
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@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 But if that’s a really old game running an outdated code base… Maybe?
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@icanbeyourmuse Like Charlie Brown, I’m fascinated by failure.
Especially staff failure.
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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…
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@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.
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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.
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@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.
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@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…
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
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@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.
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@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.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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@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.
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@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.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
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.
I thought I initially misread that the only RP you could do as an Alliance member was putting things into lockers but, nope, that’s … what you said. Cool game, I wonder why it’s not around anymore.
they/them
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@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
Ultra simulationist is… fine. Sometimes I’m in the mood for it, but not always.
I don’t even think that is necessarily ultra-simulationist. You can have the ammo count, weapons, whatsits, and doodads, but they don’t need to be actual objects. It’s just inefficient.
@somasatori said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
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.
I thought I initially misread that the only RP you could do as an Alliance member was putting things into lockers but, nope, that’s … what you said. Cool game, I wonder why it’s not around anymore.
Honestly, having the Alliance as a playable faction was a mistake IMHO. But that’s from the mind of a reasonable person, not Mal.
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@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
I crave space trucking and whatnot,
My heartbreaker game that I would build and would never get players is a space-trucking, cassette-futurist game filled with working class, down on their luck types operating ancient machinery and picking apart ships in a ship graveyard post-Expanse-style Earth-Mars war. I love that genre so much, the Aliens-just-a-buncha-folks kind of space game, sort of like in the TTRPG systems Mothership or Orbital Blues.
they/them
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@somasatori said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
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.
I thought I initially misread that the only RP you could do as an Alliance member was putting things into lockers but, nope, that’s … what you said. Cool game, I wonder why it’s not around anymore.
Sit around, RP taking the guns apart, cleaning them, loading up mags and clips for the marines to use when they do whatever (me being a perpetual pilot, I stayed ON THE SHIP), and maybe the occasional gym thing? I think I had one scene chasing down a ship, and then getting told ‘oh, they landed on the pie-rat moon, call it in and run away’. Whee.
@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:
Honestly, having the Alliance as a playable faction was a mistake IMHO. But that’s from the mind of a reasonable person, not Mal.
The Alliance isn’t as objectively bad as the Empire, so it’s easier to be a sympathetic member of their military. My pilot was your basic ‘signed up to get college paid for’ type. The point was to be foils for the independents and criminals. Guidelines for ‘this is how a ship inspection scene should play out, this is what you can give out fines for’, etc.
… except the PCs were undercut in just about every way to keep them from actually being anything but the vague hint of a threat.
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her
