New Game Master

[Viirin]

I was going to put in a request to become a GM something like 4 years ago, but had stuff going on and was too busy or something. Right now, I'm super not busy (until college starts). I want to become a GM.

What I wanna do: I've gotten pretty good with coding depending on language, and want to do some fixes and development. I focus very strongly on plants, and want to fix some of their issues and do a couple other things that I won't say publicly because they were secret projects I was told about earlier when they were still in development.

[Lach]

That would be amazing we need someone that can help do stuff.

[Josef]

Good luck with that. I volunteered for several years. Prior experience and ran my own small shard. I think the issue is trust. I think there has been a major betrayal in the past.

[Wil]

Two things:

1) Volunteer for AFK duty and you might have a chance. +C isn't looking for another coder, especially not one whose availability disappears in 3 months after +C invests his time training.

2) You can't GM and play the same shard. Conflict of interest. Are you okay with the deletion of your player account here?

[Viirin]

Nevermind then.

Edit: Unless a GM replies, I'll just consider my interest in the shard to just be as the player I've been for the last 5 years or so, as sacrificing that in order to fix some bugs I can take care of in 4 hours would be of an incalculably stupid move on my part.

[culichi]

send colibri an email ( ca@uoex.net ) and let him know your skills. admins are allowed to play on the server incognito so maybe youll need to start a second account to play on while you are an admin or figure something else out with colibri. colibri used to take applications for admin roles in the past dont see why he wouldnt consider you. i think he wants people that are actually good coders and not just big talkers and also players that arnt drama magnets hehe.
good luck

[Eremite]

Typically you'll just keep your existing account and a new GM account is created for you. (At least that's how we did it on my old shard)

Fair warning though - it can be really tough playing your mortal and GMing at the same time due to time commitments. When I initially became a GM waaaaay back in the day, my mortal kinda just got forgotten about and I spent all my time playing with XMLSpawners/C# and running or automating events, lol.

I also kinda considered it bad form to be logged into both at the same time and being in the same general area as my mortal just felt kinda weird. We'd had a lot of problem with people trying to sneakily give themselves stuff. Like opening up a mongbat and using `.set amount 60000` on the gold, then going to kill it, etc. We had a pretty good audit log though and would catch them pretty quickly. Still makes a big mess.

[+Colibri]

Hey, I remembered the avatar and then I also remembered the name. Glad to see you again.

Well the coding or fixing bugs is hard because all our code is very integrated/coupled, so in order to fix a small thing there would be much work to separate for example just the plant system from everything else, then when you send me the fixed thing back, I'd have to re-integrate it, and any bug that happens we'd have to do the whole thing again. For that I'm going to make a javascript engine that runs code. I was already working on such a system a bit, and it was possible to write some javascript code that would move the player around, and create items, but then I realized it's about much more than just that... permissions, integration with everything else, etc... so this system that I'm working in now, has the proper infrastructure to then mix in a Javascript engine. Of course everything that's written in C# will still be legacy code that only I can fix, but I'll try to write most of the new stuff in javascript, so that if something needs fixing, i can just grant a permit to someone to look at the code, and edit it. There's also sandboxing in the works, so for example I could give ability for someone to make changes to code, and then run that code in the sandboxed environment (a facet on the shard where you can't take anything out) and then when it looks like it's all working OK, and i audit the changes, I can push the new version to the default/main game.

And then there's no more need for much "serous training", since we can just chill and hang out and do some code, without any worry that everything will break apart.
The current group of decorators (well, testers of the "contextual commands") is working out great. They only have permissions to build/edit/delete decorative objects (floor, walls, flowers...), so if anyone complains to me that they suspect someone from there cheating with their "GM account" to give their player character resources, or modify their own gear, then I don't have to even spend a second figuring out, because I know it's not possible, and I don't have to check the logs.


The plan is for a few of such "focus groups", a team of players that has a focus for some specific thing. So far we have:
- Mentors - helpers to the new players, although this group needs to be refreshed a bit, needs more players, and yes I know there's several applicants.
- Decorators - technically not yet a team, but we're having a good time in this team of command testers, and it will probably just morph into a decorators group.
- Event hosts - those who are interested in running events
- Game design - for permanent content
And we can all work together, for example someone who wants to run an event will get help from me with coding (and eventually others will be able to do that too), and help decorating it from the experienced decorators, etc...
We'll try to keep the bar for entry low.
For these groups, there's no need for anyone to be anonymous. And if anyone suspects that a certain member of these groups is skewing things to their advantage, we can discuss it and then set up protocols to avoid that.



There's another special group, Moderators...
I found that being anonymous won't really work. If there's 5 people in this secret society, there's a very good chance that 1 of them will leak out info (first just to a good friend, but during the months and years, it spreads quite far).
And also, even if everyone keeps their lips sealed, there's a kind of "hive mind" among the players that they just figure it out. The way a person talks, their times they're usually online, and other things give them out. We have a rule, that with your staff character, you make a few changes to the way you talk, to cover your tracks. But it doesn't work very well in the long term.

So the plan here is that, if someone is a moderator, that can be common knowledge. Being a moderator isn't just about jailing people, but also about being part of an advisory board to notice problems, and figure out what should be done about them. So it will be a very select group of people, it's not just about trust but also a kind of outlook on the world, being able to think in concepts, and staying away from blaming.
While it probably can't be a secret that someone is a moderator, one option would be, that the name of the jailer is hidden. It would be known only to me, and the jailer, and possibly like one senior moderator with an incredible reputation and trust.
But then, as I'm thinking further... if the jailing is justified, and if there's evidence, then there's no need to hide it.
Well, probably best to try it out, and then we'll do some changes... and eventually figure out the most optimal way to do it.

If everything fails, the Plan B (or Plan Z) would be to hire outside moderators... but that also has flaws, since someone who doesn't play this game doesn't understand the little differences.



@Eremite yeah you get a completely different perspective on the world.

[vempa]

Hey @+C,

That sounds pretty interesting... Are you building a sort of transpiler/mediator from JS to server core?
Actually doing something similar on my end (client side though).

Can do some crazy stuff with this like a visual code builder (akin to Sentinel's Logic Apps, for example)


I do personally think that C# is often better than JS/TS if you're looking to maintain reliability though;
Our teams get a lot more stupid, stupid, runtime errors with TS than with Java or C#.
Does usually lower the barrier for entry and time-to-market though.


In any case, I think I'd be interested in assisting, should you want another pair of eyes or hands.


V

[Tuala]

I love the process C! I especially love the idea how groups would be broken down. That way, everything isn’t on just a single group. Everyone has their specialities and can run with it. It also means the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t lives on.

Sounds like exciting times!


-Tuala

[Lach]

Hey @+C,

That sounds pretty interesting... Are you building a sort of transpiler/mediator from JS to server core?
Actually doing something similar on my end (client side though).

Can do some crazy stuff with this like a visual code builder (akin to Sentinel's Logic Apps, for example)


I do personally think that C# is often better than JS/TS if you're looking to maintain reliability though;
Our teams get a lot more stupid, stupid, runtime errors with TS than with Java or C#.
Does usually lower the barrier for entry and time-to-market though.


In any case, I think I'd be interested in assisting, should you want another pair of eyes or hands.


V

Yall are so smart I'm just durr me play game

[vempa]

Yall are so smart I'm just durr me play game

Nah, we just have different ways to enjoy the game, I'd say