I'm Blue, updated Tuesdays and Fridays without fail.

Who Wears The Pants?
July 23, 2002

Further continuity on the roaches thingy. Why is it that those who seem like they SHOULD be terrified of the satanic little bastards are often the ones quickest to take a shoe to 'em? I don't know. But yeah.

Woo. Blockbuster's special little DVD Freedom Pass deal starts today (Tuesday) and dammed if I'm not all stoked to sell me a whole ass-load. Hell, I sell just ONE month-long one and I'll be feeling nice - 2 extra bucks for me! And that means all-time funness. ::does little happy dance in chair::

Two words from my friend Pyroh, just because I can put them here, and they're funny, and yeah:
"dictionate" - combination of words 'diction' and 'enunciate': essentially means the latter.
"evolutionize" - um... another active verb for the noun 'evolution,' to, er, make it seem more dynamic or something. I don't know.
You're welcome.

Blue's Movie Review: "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist." One of the fucking WEIRDEST movies I have EVER seen. It's not really good, but it's not *bad* either: it's just dammed bizarre beyond nearly all belief. If you're in the mood to see something like "UHF" or "Mystery Science Theatre 3000," give it a try. If you're in the mood to see a comedy that actually makes an ounce of sense, see "Shallow Hal" or something, because after a while of this one your head is gonna start to hurt. It's required watching just like Ginsberg's "Howl" is required reading - not next week or even next YEAR, but sometime in your life you ought to see it, if only to say that you did. But yeah.

Well, Jeebus. Get this: after thinking I wasn't going to be able to for the longest time, turns out I actually *am* going to make it up to visit my family in Michigan, if only for a few days. Hence, sine the 29th to the 1st will see me out of the state, Web Guy Josiah will leap into his secondary role as Rantmaster, and will exercise the few small benefits this role allows. So you all have to be nice, or I'll have to be layin' the smack down when next I show up in the 'hood. Honestly. I am not AFRAID to serve up a mess of Double Chocolate Fudge Kick-in-the-Face Sundaes, you can bet on that. Maybe even an extra serving of Whoopass Sprinkles, too.

Well, time to run off once more, except I've got to leave you with this tiny comment: while playing the Sims: Vacation the other night, I had a kickin' party going on, and a fucking DREW CAREY Sim just SHOWED UP. In a limo. Out of the blue. The disturbing thing about this was that when I had one of my male Sims take a quick rejuvenating shower during the party, his thought bubble was of Drew. Made a bit of a disturbing picture: at least *I* think so, and I do believe Mr. Carey would agree (Sim or no). But that's enough out of me. Still looking for that Sim builder, for all those who care ::hopeful smile:: Take care.

All meters up to full,
Annie "Blue" VM

Tangled up in your embrace
- Sarah McLachlan
"Fear"

Alright...remember all my speakings of the writing the mud last week? I have a quick little story to tell you guys. So after mucking around with the mud server I was writing, I got annoyed with the way it was going and decided to try circlemud as a basis. Started mucking around with circlemud source, then realized how impossible it would be to remove all the default classes, races, skills, spells, combat system, and practice system. I then tried working with TinyMUD, ROM, Envy, SMAUG, and even the SMAUG based Star Wars mud version 1.0 and 2.0. Unfortunately, each one of them had their problems, essentially they all use the old-skool DND 1st and 2nd ed THAC0 and percentage skills/spells. As I would like my mud to be based on 3rd ed rules, it would require both the understanding of the source and the patience to re-write it. I don't have either.

There are a few guys whose site I happened upon who re-did circlemud for 3rd ed rules for a class, but unfortunately they do not list the mud server address on the site. I had to blunder around in order to get one guy's email address. Though, once I figured out their naming scheme, I got copies of their 'Meeting Minutes' in word document format. Seems they got pretty far (if not complete) in only a semester. That rocks. I emailed them asking if I could possibly get a copy of the source, but have not received an email back.

Because I lacked the patience to wait any longer, the other mud systems have some annoying flaws, and because I learned quite a bit from mucking around all those mud servers' source code for a total of around 24-36 hours in 5 days - I once again decided to write my own mud from scratch. However, I am doing it right. If I can help it, all of it will be completely dynamic. How do I mean dynamic? In most muds, if you want to add a class, you have to add a definition to the class.c source code, add a class definition file, add flags for things that can be anti-that class, add all the different skills...etc. In this mud, if you want to remove a class (make it inaccessable to new users), delete the class file in the proper folder. You want to rename a class? Rename the file. Other muds also have the same problem with races, zones, etc. As well, unlimited multi-classing a'la DND 3rd ed is nearly impossible for other muds. Again, I have a solution.

Well, time to update the comic and get back to coding this mofo. At around 300 lines I have the login, races, classes, playerfile and help systems working and seemingly completely debugged. I don't have a database quite yet (for objects, rooms, players, etc.), nor do I have a scheduler (for updates to clients during combat, tics, zone reloading, etc.), but I have some really good ideas for how to do them. One feature I'm going to add just for the hell of it is going to be a time command that gives you minutes as well as hours. Can you say w00t?
- Josiah