Ask the Storytellers

[Eukelade]

What's your favorite IG dish?

Allanaki flame cheese! Oh, and those kuraci cakes, you know the ones.

That makes me a little sad for you guys. I always assumed you had a different editor/processor for building/staff-stuff.  

Actually, before you get too sad, let me (be the first to?) say I don't mind the text editor.  It's sort of like a clunky old car I've been tinkering with for years and the quirks don't bother me anymore. If someone changed it, I guess I'd rejoice. Nicer building tools would be awesome.  But I wouldn't say it's an obstacle...since returning to staff less than a month and a half ago, I've built 50 rooms, 40 objects, and 11 npcs.  I'm not stopping anytime soon, either - there's a lot of projects waiting, and I love to build!

What's it actually look like when you guys enter an NPC to animate it? Can you access its skills, stat, and score in the same manner we can look at our PCs? Do you suddenly gain a prompt with the NPC's numbers? Or do you have to control them through some sort of third-person view?

1) Looks pretty much normal, but with hidden imm vision type stuff like seeing room flags and names. 2) Yes. 3) Yes. 4) Full exorcist style possession or remote puppeteer, both are valid options.

What MUD clients do you use, and how do you keep your notes for the game organized?

Mushclient, google docs, notepad, and notepad++

Also, the amount of color triggers I have for organization purposes makes Armageddon look like an episode of My Little Pony (but only if you squint.)

How many assassination attemps have you witnessed that were linked to mudsex somehow either during/after or used as bait etc etc? LET'S GET TO THE JUICY STUFF PEOPLE.

I'm not going to give a number or anything, (because who has time to keep track of the number of deaths in Armageddon, amirite?), but...there's a lot of relationship-related death in this game.

[Lizzie]

Talia (and anyone else who wants a work-around down and dirty cheap and easy editor):

Notepad. Wordwrap OFF.

Type the entire thing in one line.
Size notepad to fit Arm's text editor's max character line length, MINUS 1 character.
Hard-return each line at the far right of notepad.
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V into the Arm editor.
Finish with a .f to reformat, which usually results in a fairly flawless paragraph.

Make sure that the font and size you use in notepad is the same font and size you use in your Arm editor, or the results will come out weird.

Edited to add: This used to also work in dosedit, but I'm pretty sure it no longer exists on anything later than win95.

[Xolotl]

What MUD clients do you use, and how do you keep your notes for the game organized?

I hopped back onto CMUD from MUSHclient for the automapping feature.  Also I know it really well because I used to use it for other MUDs and such.  The only real issue is that it will randomly eat a command I'm trying to send so I have to send it twice.  Fortunately, I can survive even walking straight into death rooms or a hundred bahamets now!

For organization, I tend to use a Word document that I started, with NPC numbers, item numbers, etc. that I'm working on.  It would be incomprehensible to most people, but it makes sense to me.

[Delirium]

Sublime Text 2. You can set the word wrap to character length. Remember that Armageddon's formatted text has two spaces after each period. Just hit a hard return at the beginning of each line, paste the whole chunk in, and you're golden.

[Rahnevyn]

I'm using MUSHClient with triggers for highlighting and to log stuff. I don't really have need of an auto mapping feature. For organization and notes, I use Google Docs so I can easily share them with other staff members I'm working with.

[nauta]

Talia (and anyone else who wants a work-around down and dirty cheap and easy editor):

Notepad. Wordwrap OFF.

Type the entire thing in one line.
Size notepad to fit Arm's text editor's max character line length, MINUS 1 character.
Hard-return each line at the far right of notepad.
Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V into the Arm editor.
Finish with a .f to reformat, which usually results in a fairly flawless paragraph.

Make sure that the font and size you use in notepad is the same font and size you use in your Arm editor, or the results will come out weird.

Edited to add: This used to also work in dosedit, but I'm pretty sure it no longer exists on anything later than win95.

Hey, just a thought, this and the other idea on how to "editor offline and paste" are really neat.  I imagine we all use different platforms and different editors offline, so for those that are code savvy and itching for a project, how about this:

A simple web editor that gets the precise format right so that you can then just cut and paste that right into the mud client editor.  Hence, something like:

1. [in mud terminal] change tdesc
2. [in web browser] goto armageddon.org/ersatz_editor.html
3. either paste what you have from the mud terminal and edit, or just edit from blank.
4. when done, you could save it (if fancy fancy) or simply just have a button that says: paste this into the buffer in the proper format.
5. [in mud terminal] Paste and hit .f.  Boom!

Maybe it wouldn't work technically, but, if I'm at all clear, it'd be a neat workaround.  I know that when creating a new PC or changing tdesc or writing on the board or writing up a SCRIBBLE (maybe other cases too) all the problems mentioned above with using the in-mud editor have been super headachy.  Hence, if we could use an editor offline (but provided on the website so we don't have to figure out the settings ourselves) and then paste that into the mud, that'd be, like, the awesomest.  Could even add to the in-mud editor helpfile or echo a link to the url to the offline editor.

Or I could just figure out what you are all talking about with line breaks and how to set up my own editor locally to do this, but frankly I'm totally lost on the technical side of things.

[Adhira]

Nauta - this might do what you're hoping?

You know...for anyone having problems with the in-game text editor...someone who got bored at work may have tried to help you out there.  Just saying.   

(Admittedly, the downloadable version is better than the web-based version, and both are far from perfect.  But, they do allow you to input text in a text editor of your choice [Word, etc], copy your whole text, paste it into the text limiter program, click format, and *poof*, text you can take and paste directly into the game editor! [And since it already has the line breaks in it, you can paste a whole 'page', or 2000 characters, worth of text into your client's input window at once, because it will basically hit 'enter' at the end of each line for you.]. FWIW).

[BadSkeelz]

What's more interesting to animate: gith or mantis?

[Talia]

What's more interesting to animate: gith or mantis?

I really prefer animating any NPC who can troll taunt talk to you in a language you speak. I mean, I'm not saying that it's always my intent to make PCs angry or terrified or horrified or confused or sad...Yeah, actually, it is.

Also, have I mentioned how much I love spiders?

[BadSkeelz]

Also, have I mentioned how much I love spiders?

You feel a crawling sensation on the back of your neck.

Uh, yeah, maybe, I think you have. . .

Should we be worried when the tarantulas begin to trash-talk us?

[seidhr]

What's more interesting to animate: gith or mantis?

Given a choice between the two, I'd pick mantis, because you can do so many weird things with them (like wiping off their independently-rotating eyeballs with a spiky forelimb) and they're scarier, to me at least, than gith.

[CodeMaster]

What MUD clients do you use, and how do you keep your notes for the game organized?

I actually picked up zMUD again for its automapping feature (huge help for building). For notes? I use Google docs.

How about you guys? Anyone have an awesome automapping client that works well for the MUD? I've gone through about three so far and have settled with zMUD for the time being.

I haven't played around with any automappers for years, but I remember being really into finding a client that could do it right.  Sounds like zMUD/cMUD are the best around.

The other day I was wondering whether I could mine some of my logs from the game, offline, to build a map (I have tons of data of me moving around between various rooms, so maybe...?).

But even with direct access to the .wld file, mapping strikes me as a really challenging and interesting problem, demanding scaling and rearrangements that least distort N/E/S/W orientations (probably NP-hard in general, but easier if it's guaranteed to fit on a grid).  I think, even now, zMUD requires a user to figure this puzzle out his/herself by manually dragging rooms farther apart to preserve layout.

[Xolotl]

I will admint that it is a little easier to use z/cmud to automap as a staffer, because we get room numbers.  I tried using it as a player and just gave up, but now that I see this -


Beginning of Salt Flats [52034]  [NONE] [N, E, S, W]
   The rough, uneven ground here has an underlying reddish-brown color, but
the surface is coated with a thick layer of whitish-gray crystalline salt.
An occasional clump of sickly-looking brown grass pokes its way through the
corrosive layer, preventing the terrain from looking totally barren. Dusty
plains stretch out in all directions, the horizon shimmering in the intense
heat sent down by the crimson sun far above.

Rather than


Beginning of Salt Flats  [N, E, S, W]
   The rough, uneven ground here has an underlying reddish-brown color, but
the surface is coated with a thick layer of whitish-gray crystalline salt.
An occasional clump of sickly-looking brown grass pokes its way through the
corrosive layer, preventing the terrain from looking totally barren. Dusty
plains stretch out in all directions, the horizon shimmering in the intense
heat sent down by the crimson sun far above.

It is a lot easier for me to configure the automapper and make it work.

[Nergal]

What MUD clients do you use, and how do you keep your notes for the game organized?

I use cMUD when I'm staffing. There is a lot of screen spam of potentially useful information, and cMUD makes it easy to put that stuff in a side window. And I plan on trying to set up an automapper as I delve into room-building. As for keeping things organized, I use Notepad++ for myself personally, but the back-end of the Request Tool and other staff tools are really advanced and helps us keep track of lots of stuff.

How many assassination attemps have you witnessed that were linked to mudsex somehow either during/after or used as bait etc etc? LET'S GET TO THE JUICY STUFF PEOPLE.

None yet, but I feel I will shout "Achievement Unlocked" when this happens.

[Kronibas]

What's the shortest amount of time, out of y'all's current batch, that folks played before getting added to the wizlist?

[Rahnevyn]

What's the shortest amount of time, out of y'all's current batch, that folks played before getting added to the wizlist?

I checked all the mortal accounts of current Storytellers, and the newbiest of us started playing in 2007. We had one 2006er and a bunch of 2004-2005 folks. One of us created his mortal account in 1997 and another has an account created from the time before accounts even had years in their created dates.

If you're asking about the shortest amount of time between when a player account was created and when the player was brought on staff, it looks like 2 years, but the average seems to be around 4 to 5.

[Talia]

How many assassination attemps have you witnessed that were linked to mudsex somehow either during/after or used as bait etc etc? LET'S GET TO THE JUICY STUFF PEOPLE.

Falling in love and/or agreeing to have sex is the #1 most dangerous thing you can do in Zalanthas. Mul mix ought to be renamed "murder mix."

(Anyone I see calling it murder mix in game gets karma. Not really. But maybe. But probably not.)

[Bushranger]

When you became an Immortal what was the first thing you looked up about the game because of personal curiosity?



Was it an NPC's background? A distant corner of the Known? Some secret history on the Staff Discussion Board? A rare item? Something else completely different?

I think if I ever become Staff I would look up the Sand Lord since I love Red Storm so much!

[Talia]

Only if you don't mind every staffer intentionally mangling your name on a regular basis.

Pet names for other staffers:

Xolotl = Xolotlololololol

Enthemu = Emu

Nergal = Nerd

Nyr + Adhira = Nyrdhira

Then there's Rath, Rahn, Ness, etc. Pretty basic.

When you became an Immortal what was the first thing you looked up about the game because of personal curiosity?

Was it an NPC's background? A distant corner of the Known? Some secret history on the Staff Discussion Board? A rare item? Something else completely different?

It was a while ago now, but I don't think I really looked much up in the world or in the documentation about the world. IIRC, what I did first was read all the recent stuff for my assigned clan(s) at the time (I started on Indies, specifically the Byn) in the request tool, so that I could be up to date on who was who and who was doing what. Stuff players are doing has always been a lot more interesting to me than game lore, anyway.

After that I think I spent a lot of time reading on the IDB, making sure I understood processes and rules, current plotlines and projects, and so on. And then some time delving into the wiki. I think there was some object stuff I took a look at--things from years past that were nostalgic for me and so on...plus, I mean, you gotta look at all the metal stuff in the database, I'm sure everyone does that.

[creeper386]

I got my hands on an item that was somewhat metal. Was the most exciting like five-ten minutes before I died. I've decided that was the whole reason for an HRPT. My death.

Is it exciting to wipe assist in wiping out tons of players in large events? Would you rather try to keep things from being PC blood baths? Are you all secretly Halaster clones?

[seidhr]

When you became an Immortal what was the first thing you looked up about the game because of personal curiosity?



Was it an NPC's background? A distant corner of the Known? Some secret history on the Staff Discussion Board? A rare item? Something else completely different?

I think if I ever become Staff I would look up the Sand Lord since I love Red Storm so much!

Other than just absorbing the sheer magnitude of what all I was responsible for, for self-spoilers, I explored the silt sea and the Grey Forest.  I can't tell you what's out there, or I'd have to kill you.   

[Rahnevyn]

I prefer Nyr + Adhira = Adhnyra. Only a couple letters difference!

[BadSkeelz]

Do you ever look through old reports, looking for mentions of your old characters by other players?

[Adhira]

Do you ever look through old reports, looking for mentions of your old characters by other players?

They don't need to look through them all in hopes of spotting their characters when they have FULL searchability of all requests. Ever.

[Talia]

Do you ever look through old reports, looking for mentions of your old characters by other players?

They don't need to look through them all in hopes of spotting their characters when they have FULL searchability of all requests. Ever.

This is true, and very cool! Sadly, I played all my important/interesting/long-lived PCs prior to character reports moving to the request tool. That happened actually right before I came on staff. So there aren't any old reports in the tool that mention a burning desire to kill one of my PCs