Learning to Code - A Sprite Break

[Jennkryst]

@Roz @Jumpscare said she didn’t know what any of what I was talking about meant, so I explained.

I should have clarified the code combat people are the criminals, for not letting me pet the dog.

ahem

Right now, I’m stuck at trying to even install evennia onto the Linux virtual machine (which finally worked on the 4th try, horray!) So progress is happening, just slow. Efforts to resume after work.

[Jennkryst]

This took a dumb amount of time, but fear me.

[Rucket]

this is a very random comment but

every game should have a command to pet the doggo. doggos good.

that said, this is an interesting thread to follow!

[Jennkryst]

… and now I’ve rebooted, and

evennia start

evennia: command not found

edit: Two hours trying to make it work on my own, I gripe, and then it works before any troubleshooting actually occurs. I hate it here.

[Hobbie]

You could theoretically run Evennia and all its prereqs inside a Docker container to avoid that.

However, that’s advanced work that involves mashing together two ideas that work well in a vacuum.

EDIT: Even more advanced theory, with Evennia running in Docker you could theoretically hook it into k8s to make it autoscale when under load. Why you would do this is another question.

[Istus]

@Jennkryst You likely did not reactivate your venv.

[Jumpscare]

@Istus is right.

1. source evenv/bin/activate
   Make sure you’re in the same directory that you setup your venv before doing this command.

2. python3.9 -m venv evenv
   I don’t know what this does, but it’s necessary from what I’ve seen. I think it sets what Python version you’re using. The latest version of Evennia requires 3.9 or 3.10.

3. cd game/directory
   Replace game/directory with the name of your game’s directory.

4. evennia start
   Now you get to shout orders to Evennia.

[dvoraen]

@Jumpscare said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@Istus is right.

1. source evenv/bin/activate
   Make sure you’re in the same directory that you setup your venv before doing this command.

2. python3.9 -m venv evenv
   I don’t know what this does, but it’s necessary from what I’ve seen. I think it sets what Python version you’re using. The latest version of Evennia requires 3.9 or 3.10.

3. cd game/directory
   Replace game/directory with the name of your game’s directory.

4. evennia start
   Now you get to shout orders to Evennia.

#2 on your list is what creates the venv in the first place, so if it’s already established, then this step isn’t needed. Specifically, it’s telling Python 3.9 to run the venv module and output the virtual environment to the evenv directory, which will be created inside the directory you run the command from.

[Polk]

@dvoraen said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@Jumpscare said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@Istus is right.

1. source evenv/bin/activate
   Make sure you’re in the same directory that you setup your venv before doing this command.

2. python3.9 -m venv evenv
   I don’t know what this does, but it’s necessary from what I’ve seen. I think it sets what Python version you’re using. The latest version of Evennia requires 3.9 or 3.10.

3. cd game/directory
   Replace game/directory with the name of your game’s directory.

4. evennia start
   Now you get to shout orders to Evennia.

#2 on your list is what creates the venv in the first place, so if it’s already established, then this step isn’t needed. Specifically, it’s telling Python 3.9 to run the venv module and output the virtual environment to the evenv directory, which will be created inside the directory you run the command from.

This.

Step 1, that source command, it sets up your terminal window to know where to find your specially set up python that your Evennia is using.

So you have to do step 1 every time you open your terminal and get to work.

Step 3 tells your terminal what files you want to work on. So you do that after.

Step 4 starts evennia, the actual program.

Step 2 is part of the install process and should not need repeated.

[Jumpscare]

Thanks. I must’ve made a mistake at some point.

I consider it a miracle that I’m 97% done with making a game in Evennia and it hasn’t exploded in my face yet.

[Jennkryst]

@Jumpscare Revisiting THIS, (I trouble-shot a bug! There is an erroneous space up in (current _mod + value…) and it made things go wobbly, but I fixed it, huzzah!)

… but there is another error getting thrown.

self.db.characteristics = {

name ‘self’ is not defined

[Jumpscare]

@Jennkryst
Where is that code? Where’s the }? I need to see more. When asking for help on errors, it’s best to post the entire method that the error comes from.
But it sounds like your indentation might be wrong and you’ve wandered outside of a method.
Also, congrats on finding errors in my hastily typed tutorial!

[Jennkryst]

@Jumpscare said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@Jennkryst
Where is that code? Where’s the }? I need to see more. When asking for help on errors, it’s best to post the entire method that the error comes from.

So this is what the bit in characters.py looks like:

self.db.characteristics = {
    "Agility": 1,
    "Brawn": 1,
    "Cunning": 1,
    "Intellect": 1,
    "Presence": 1,
    "Willpower": 1
}

Now, in terminal:

(evenv) jennkryst@Ubuntu:~/muddev/FFGTest$ evennia start
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/jennkryst/evenv/bin/evennia”, line 11, in <module>
main()
File “/home/jennkryst/evenv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/evennia/server/evennia_launcher.py”, line 2344, in main
error_check_python_modules(show_warnings=args.tail_log)
File “/home/jennkryst/evenv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/evennia/server/evennia_launcher.py”, line 1766, in error_check_python_modules
_imp(settings.BASE_CHARACTER_TYPECLASS)
File “/home/jennkryst/evenv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/evennia/server/evennia_launcher.py”, line 1733, in _imp
import(mod, fromlist=[fromlist])
File “/home/jennkryst/muddev/FFGTest/typeclasses/characters.py”, line 16, in <module>
self.db.characteristics = {
NameError: name ‘self’ is not defined

But it sounds like your indentation might be wrong and you’ve wandered outside of a method.

I also forgot a space in there, fixed it, but the problem persisted.

Also, congrats on finding errors in my hastily typed tutorial!

The terminal deserves all the credit, it pointed me at the line in question, I just stared at it until I figured out why. But thanks!

… also, I’m sure I have more issues than just figuring out the self.db problem, but.

[dvoraen]

@Jennkryst Is this code snippet just hanging out by itself in characters.py? If so, that’s the source of your error. It’s hard to diagnose your error without seeing your code in full. I presume this snippet is supposed to be in, say, at_whateveritscalled_creation().

[Jumpscare]

@Jennkryst
You might’ve missed me saying it, but it needs to go in the at_object_creation method.

A method is any of those lines that start with def. All of your code in characters.py, rooms.py, exits.py, scripts.py, accounts.py, channels.py and objects.py needs to go inside methods. And methods go inside the class that the file defines.

For the most part, all of your def lines should be at the 1st indentation, and the code inside at the 2nd indentation and beyond.

class Character(DefaultCharacter):


    def at_object_creation(self):
        """
        Called only at initial creation.
        """
        self.db.attributes = {
            "Grit": 2,
            "Presence": 2
        }

Code in commands/commands.py is different and each command is its own class.

class Sayhi(Command):
    """
    Tells the character hi.
    """
    key = "sayhi"
    aliases = ["sayhello"]
    lock = "cmd:all()"
    help_category = "General"

    def func(self):
        self.caller.msg("Hi!")

And the command needs to be added to commands/default_cmdset.py. Most of the lines below should already be in your file. What you add are the first and last lines.

from commands.command import Sayhi

class CharacterCmdSet(default_cmds.CharacterCmdSet):

    "key = "DefaultCharacter"

    def at_cmdset_creation(self):
    "Populates the cmdset"
    super().at_cmdset_creation()

    self.add(Sayhi())

[Jennkryst]

@dvoraen said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@Jennkryst Is this code snippet just hanging out by itself in characters.py? If so, that’s the source of your error. It’s hard to diagnose your error without seeing your code in full. I presume this snippet is supposed to be in, say, at_whateveritscalled_creation().

Yeah, it’s hanging out by itself, so I thought that was the code in full.

@Jumpscare said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

You might’ve missed me saying it, but it needs to go in the at_object_creation method.

It’s more ‘I read what you said and then assumed I knew what you meant by it’.

…

Alrighty, the game is starting again, all new errors are being thrown client-side, so I’ll see if I can figure those out before checking back here.

[Jennkryst]

Update: A week of trying to figure out that damn error, up to and including deleting everything and starting over, has failed, so now my chaos goblin wiki page approach - download the public copy of ArxCode and poke around inside of code that actually works, so I can maybe try to backwards engineer it.

Further updates to come.

[Istus]

@Jennkryst You’re better off looking at Ainneve. It’s actually intended as an example: https://github.com/evennia/ainneve/blob/master/README.md

[catzilla]

@Roz said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@catzilla It depends what you mean by wiki skinning? This has links to various MediaWiki skins and how to install them (which is generally just downloading a bundle of files to the /skins/ directory in your MW directory and then copy-pasting a line of code into your LocalSettings.php). If you mean how to customize a skin, then you’ll generally want to either edit MediaWiki:Common.css or your skin’s CSS file on your wiki itself (so it’ll be like https://yourwikiurl.com/blahblah/MediaWiki:Common.css, or https://yourwikiurl.com/blahblah/MediaWiki:SkinNameHere.css). Common.css overrides the CSS on any skin a viewer may use (since there are usually a few installed by default and users can technically switch around), while the individual Skin.css files will override just that skin. Most game wikis are basically designed around a single skin so you can probably just use either. You can even comment out the lines where any other skins are activated in LocalSettings.php. Using these on-wiki CSS sheet is preferred over trying to edit the raw skin files themselves, since changes there would be potentially overwritten if there were any updates made to MW or the skin.

This was super helpful to an extent! I think I can handle making/modifying a skin once I figure out… well.

So I bought a domain and installed MediaWiki onto it. But now I’m digging into everything and it seems like I have to run a whole server/Virtual Machine on my computer (which is just a laptop and apparenlty I would need to keep it running 24/7) just to make my wiki pretty? I am finding it hard to wrap my head around that every pretty wiki out there is being run on a computer going 24/7.

If there’s a way to get into these LocalSettings and Skins folders I keep reading about, can someone point me in the right direction?

ETA: This will be for a Discord based game so I’m not needing any MUD/MUX/MUSH stuff. If that matters regarding server stuff.

[Roz]

@catzilla said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@Roz said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

@catzilla It depends what you mean by wiki skinning? This has links to various MediaWiki skins and how to install them (which is generally just downloading a bundle of files to the /skins/ directory in your MW directory and then copy-pasting a line of code into your LocalSettings.php). If you mean how to customize a skin, then you’ll generally want to either edit MediaWiki:Common.css or your skin’s CSS file on your wiki itself (so it’ll be like https://yourwikiurl.com/blahblah/MediaWiki:Common.css, or https://yourwikiurl.com/blahblah/MediaWiki:SkinNameHere.css). Common.css overrides the CSS on any skin a viewer may use (since there are usually a few installed by default and users can technically switch around), while the individual Skin.css files will override just that skin. Most game wikis are basically designed around a single skin so you can probably just use either. You can even comment out the lines where any other skins are activated in LocalSettings.php. Using these on-wiki CSS sheet is preferred over trying to edit the raw skin files themselves, since changes there would be potentially overwritten if there were any updates made to MW or the skin.

This was super helpful to an extent! I think I can handle making/modifying a skin once I figure out… well.

So I bought a domain and installed MediaWiki onto it. But now I’m digging into everything and it seems like I have to run a whole server/Virtual Machine on my computer (which is just a laptop and apparenlty I would need to keep it running 24/7) just to make my wiki pretty? I am finding it hard to wrap my head around that every pretty wiki out there is being run on a computer going 24/7.

If there’s a way to get into these LocalSettings and Skins folders I keep reading about, can someone point me in the right direction?

No, you definitely shouldn’t have to run a server. If you’ve installed MediaWiki somewhere, it means that you already have a host. Who’s hosting for you? If it’s somewhere commercial you’ve just purchased hosting, you’re very likely to have shell access, which is what you need. It’s basically the access to use the command line to look at and edit files on a server, versus on your own local machine. You can also generally use a code editor (things like Atom) to connect directly to files like LocalSettings.php for easier editing than doing it via command line. (Or that’s what I do, anyways.)

For skin editing, just know that it’s generally recommended you do this in the wiki via the MediaWiki:SkinNameHere.css page, just to avoid the possibility of edits being overwritten by future updates. Those pages are accessible on the wiki itself, rather than needing any shell/command line access.

For something like designing a your main page’s layout, that’s generally not handled by the skin itself as much; it’ll be moreso just writing out a certain amount of CSS code and tables on your wiki’s main page. You can use your MediaWiki CSS pages to help define classes and such. Depending on how in-depth/complex you’re going, something like the Boostrap extension can also be useful, if the skin you chose didn’t already have Bootstrap or something similar built into it. Basically, at this point it’s just a web design question.