I have this fantasy of booting up a Sindome backup from like 10 years ago and doing a tour of it so everyone can see how far things have come along, progressed, changed, evolved. Some day, that may happen. Today is not that day. Instead, I'm going to accomplish something similar by pointing out some fun BGBB posts from the past.
I've read through a number of these tonight, they are a good read, and I recommend it for anyone who has the time. A lot of interesting ideas, and a lot of fun seeing things we did/did not do, and the reasons why.
The more things change, the more they say the same. One of the most interesting things to see is how our approach over the years has/has not changed. There are a lot of fundamental ideals that were talked about in these early posts that have become foundational parts of our approach, our theme, our way of doing things. It's also fun to see requests for things from 18 years ago that we have implemented over the years, or that are still things we want to do Someday(tm).
December 21st, 2001 (Ideas): Some Junk I'd Like To See
This thread is some stuff that Murphy wanted to see. Let's take a peak. Ah, Briefcases that you could cuff to your wrist. I think Firestrom put it best when he said: "There are already handcuffs in the game, as for cuffing somebody to something or cuffing something to yourself.. no that hasn't been taken care of yet."
I think his response holds up :) As for containers in general, he had this to say: "There are a few container type things in the game, but containers on a whole need some tweaking so that they're not bottomless pits... this means that everything on the MOO needs to be sized appropriately and the code for capacity needs to be tweaked. Until that is done, don't expect to see anymore released."
Well, we still don't want containers to be bottomless pits. We did manage to get everything sized, mostly appropriately, over the years. We get an alert when something doesn't have a height or weight set, and we see so few of those these days. We also have capacity pretty figured out when it comes to containers. Glad we got that solved.
Of course, then Rastus went on to say: "To add tho, I personally want to make it impossible to sling objects over a certain size. I also want to make it impossible to sling -anything- if you're naked, I mean seriously, where -do- they put that stuff? To counter this we'll release 'containers', bags, cases, backpacks, etc. Some of these will be wearable."
By sling, I have to assume he means 'sheath' which IMO is the only proper name for the verb that puts things in your inventory. You can actually use any of these interchangeably: 'hold use wield unwield sling sheath stash lower'. I prefer hold/sheath.
We did manage to make it so you couldn't sheath certain types of objects or things that are way to big. I remember when you could sheath a corpse! Rastus raises a good point about where naked people are holding their stuff though. In the end, we went mechanics over realism when it comes to being able to keep things on you when naked. We did decide against bags and such, because we didn't want to make 'steal' something you couldn't effectively do.
Rastus continues: "I also plan to add a 'deadlift' verb that will let you lift things you can't normally carry but not let you move, so you'll still be able to hoist a corpse into the air for a few seconds to load it into the trunk of your car."
We went with 'lift' instead.
Rastus from 2001 finished his post with: "I also plan to code super-realistic physics systems into the MOO that will perfectly simulate and handle all worldly interactions in a realistic manner. This, however, may take me a couple of weeks to fully implement... or something."
That code has still got a week or two left.
Lujan then has this to say: "Even though our chars. are supposed to be Withmore's elite, how many people do you know who's gonna stash a .357 in their ass?"
The first thing that stands out is that even 2001 Lujan had the idea that the characters (NPCs/PCs) that are part of the game and not just ambient characters, are the stand outs, the cream of the crop, the bad asses and the people destined for greatness (if they choose to attempt that route). This is still something that we push to this day.
He goes on to say: "And it comes back to the problems with frisk. There is -no- way to frisk someone without them being grappled."
We did solve that problem. @trust for the win.
He finishes with: "And the next person who says we should just work our way around that 'cause WJF has so much power, I'm gonna slap."
Do people still say that? I feel like they do.
Murphy then chimes back in with: "Well, I doin't know about you, but I wouldn't let myself be frisked against my will. There should just be a way to LET yourself be frisked. Doesn't @trust do that? @trust person to action, right?"
Oh, I guess we'd solved this problem in 2001. Go us.
Stonemonk then responded: "This has already been discussed. Find it. Read the boards. Keep them efficient and put posts where they fit so that people reading them don't have to go to 100 different locations for one topic..."
Oh Stonemonk. I miss you. Also, as you can see, we've been telling people to read the BGBB before posting asking for something/starting a topic that might already exist, for a long time! We didn't have a good site search back then, but we do now. It's at the top of the page. Try it out. I use it all the time.
Still, it's funny to me that even back then when we probably had like literally only 100 posts, this was already an issue :)
September 20th, 2001 (Ideas): Grunen's needs MORE DRINKS DAMNIT! Sake for sure. Wine as well.
Nicadeamus thinks Grunen's should have Sake. Let me check if that's a thing. Lulz, nope. No Sake 4 u.
Firestorm then responded, telling people that if they wanted more drink messages they should write some up and send them to him and he would create them. He said people should use @bug to submit them. We didn't have the Fix-It channel back then. If you wanna help us write descriptions for stuff now, do not @bug them :) Instead, use @request-service to ask to be added to the Fix-It Channel.
Johnny then replied: "Should open an oxygen bar on blue/green."
Yeah, get on that Johnny. Where's the fucking oxygen bar? It should give stat boosts too. Improved charisma and int.
November 8th, 2001 (Ideas) NLMs
Lucifer is talking about quickterms/streetterms in this post. WAY back in the day the grid was coded in the MOO. It wasn't a web interface. This post was made after we created Grid 2.0 I believe. I don't know if quickterms were called NLMs at this time. That's confusing. Did NLM the corp not exist or something? This was two years before I joined the game so I have no idea.
Rastus then responded: "So, yeah, for those of you who have expressed concern at the web forum for people with low bandwidth and such, it is just a feature and there are plans to make it all available within the MOO, just in a less graphically pleasing format.
However... the shift to the web base for the QT is part of the buildup to a future project, of which I can say no more at the moment... Drool people... for something -tasty- is coming."
First off, the 'low bandwidth' comment shows just how much progress the WORLD has made since 2001. Jesus. We were worried about providing a good low bandwidth solution for folks with dialup. Also, we obviously scrapped plans for having an in-MOO accessible Grid. Mainly because that would mean having two codebases that accomplished ostensibly the same thing. Also, bandwidth has become slightly less of a problem.
The juicy thing he was talking about-- that was probably Grid 2.0. Or rather, being able to create and hack nodes in Grid 2.0. Or maybe mail? I am unsure. The Grid definitely existed in 2003 when I joined. I think nodes were added after I joined though.
September 20th, 2001 (Ideas) On Pose
This is an idea by Nicadeamus, in it he states: "Can pose -please- be parsed so that something like this: .smile lightly, "He is indeed doesn't show like: smiles lightly, He is indeedy. I keep missing the close quote, and It's painful."
To which, Rastus responded: "Sure can. I'll send you the code so you can get right to work on it. I'd do it myself, but I'm too busy hunting down the person who wrote the original lambdamoo pose verbage so I can execute him for fucking with my mind. Bugger me sideways, that code makes Damon's QuickTerms look like Snow White. IT'S EATING MY BRAIN. In other words. Probably not."
It makes me chuckle reading this because it is so similar to the sentiments that Johnny and I express in this thread from 2019. Pose is indeed a clusterfuck. We've actually made several improvements to the stock lambdamoo code. That stock code is pretty impressive in its own right though.
December 28th, 2001 (Ideas) Slip Notes or Photos Under a Door
In this post, Alia asks for this to be possible.
Rastus responds: "I'll keep this at the back of my mind along with all the other cool little RP verbs I plan to get around to one day (force person into seat, plant object on person, point person, kill me, etc)"
You can indeed slip certain things under doors now. You can't force a person into a seat. You can plant an object on a person. You can pointout a hidden person. You can... try to run 'kill me'. But suicide booths are more fun.
January 1st, 2002 (Ideas) ATMs
Poster asks for ATMs. We didn't have them at the time apparently. We do now. However, the response from Firestorm holds true today: "Heh, yeah we could do that... but, there's the small matter of security on Red."
Still true today.
December 8th, 2001 (Game Problems & Complaints) Puppet Request
Ever have a great idea to make a command for making puppet requests only to realize that it was inceptioned into your head when you first joined the game in 2003 and read every BGBB post from the past in an attempt to get caught up only to years later make a command that does the thing someone asked for in 2001? That isn't -exactly- what happened here, but it did make me chuckle.
March 11th, 2002 (Game Problems & Complaints Stats Question
Bias wants to know more about how stats work. These days, we offer a bit more info about how stats and skills work than we have in the past. However, the general gist of the responses in this thread is very in keeping with our fundamental goals for the game.
Firestorm says: "Yes, there is a max to stats and skills.. but the odds of your character lasting in the game that long are about as good as getting hit by lightning. As you put more into each skill, the cost to raise it will grow. Some players need to shove 8 UE into a skill just to raise it a very tiny amount. No, you cannot and will not be able to see the amount of points put into your stats/skills."
This holds true today. Johnny provides further context: "we don't show you the numbers behind the words because the goal of the game is to roleplay, NOT to advance your character."
Dominik then says: "I'm liking my chances of keeping dom long enough to max out....eheheheh"
If wishes were fishes. I'm pulling for ya, buddy!
November 30th, 2004 (Game Problems & Complaints) Shroud Issues
Aikao can't get his shroud to work even though he has the skills needed. See, back in the day, shrouds didn't drop. You put your shroud on, and you had to pass a skill check to get it on, and once on, it never fell off no matter what. Also the skill check was tough, and took some weird stuff into account. These days, anyone can shroud up but how long it lasts is dependent on their skill. Also, back then there were only shrouds that disguised you, nothing else. And there were like 6 shrouds in game.
Also, damn Ike, you salty in this thread.
June 7th, 2001 (New Features & Bug Fixes) Hygiene
Johnny posting to announce 'smell' as well as his thoughts on why this is not a trivial update, as it is a system to build on that can modifer charisma, and how npcs react to you, and showing you as 'dirty'. I think it was 2018 or maybe even 2019 when we implemented the actual showing of someone looking dirty outside of smelling them. Built on the self same system. Also, we implemented showers then too!
There is also a mention of 'breath' and if you have bad breath. I... don't think we ever did anything with this? I checked the code and didn't see anything related to bad breath. Kinda... glad this died on the vine?
October 8th, 2001 (New Features & Bug Fixes) @title & @wow
We added @title and @wow! Wow. It's weird to think of a world without those two commands. I don't change my @wow much, but I would miss it if it were gone. I'd also miss @title and I think the rest of us would too.
Anyway, that's my little commentary for this trip down memory lane. Hope anyone that made it this far found it interesting.
