A text Myst Online project

[Mystler]

Well, I logged out by clicking the "Sign Out" link yesterday, of course closed the browser tab and even shut down my PC. After Christopher told me, I logged in and signed out again and it looks like I'm still online...

[belford]

Hm. I guess the web server is holding onto a websocket connection that should have closed. That's sad.

What I may do is disallow having two open connections at the same time. Although that would mean I'd have to drop the autoreconnect feature I was thinking about... eh, neither of these things is urgent.

I do not have time right now to dig into all the programming questions, but one note: in timer (scheduled) code, you have to specify the location of any property you reference. So

locations.hill.foo = locations.hill.foo + 1

The reason you can't put [[foo = 0]] in a piece of text is that you don't know where or when text will be displayed. It has to be a passive operation. When the player clicks on a link, that's an action, and you can set properties at that time.

[KathAveara]

That'll be why my moon works. That's all done in realm properties.

[belford]

Yup! The timer code does not run in any particular location, so property assignments go to the realm level instead.

Would have been clever to explain that in the docs, wouldn't it? Next update. Sorry about that.

More random answers, now that I've scrubbed the bathtub:

There should be a way to move other players (say, to dump everybody down a trap door). Currently there isn't. There should also be a way to panic other players out (say, if the room floods).

There *really* needs to be a way to run arbitrary code when players enter or leave a room, or link in or out. This is next on my feature list, except I had to scrub the bathtub today. Now I have to mop the kitchen floor. Later I will have to play board games and fall down. Today is kind of a washout, really. :/

[Christopher]

Thanks for the help. I am also looking forward to the possibility to change propertys when players link in or out. That would be really helpful.

Christopher

EDIT: Just had an idea: Is it possible to start a timer when I link to my age with ... let's say 0.1 seconds and change the property with the timer?

[Acorn]

I've not visited for a while and I see there have been a lot of changes! Including the balloons and more jellybean flavours (and, as you threatened, a dose limit ).

A bit of feedback: I didn't find the link to the new "fan" ages intuitive - why would I click on a link to add my own age when I was looking for other people's ages?

I visited Kath's age, having met Kath in Seltani. Can't wait for the eclipse! But as I said, I will need a reminder, I'm afraid, Kath - I don't want to miss it and have to wait 200 days.

I too saw Mystler apparently logged on. But I've also seen belford apparently logged on in the past but not responding - I assumed you'd just gone away from your computer.

[KathAveara]

The eclipse in Elahto will last from 5pm GMT Saturday until 5pm GMT Sunday, so don't worry about missing it. I more than likely will be unable to post here after Wednesday, due to my holiday to Australia. For the same reason, I will more than likely miss it, and have to wait until October 21st, as eclipses are only every 100 days. Don't worry. That said, any instance of the Age will have an eclipse 4 days after you first exit the linking cave, so you can do that to get earlier eclipses. When I get back, I will hopefully have a lot more of the Age ready to be written, including stars during the eclipse.

[Pavitra]

To work around the current lack of on-enter-location triggers: control the entrances to the location (that is, don't give out links leading to that location directly, but rather create an adjacent linking hut or some such) and include events on all the ways in.

[Pavitra]

I've updated Tsani-Tsina. This update includes a retcon of information that was previously released as journal entries. (This is not the kind of retcon where I try to explain away earlier publications with an unreliable narrator, but rather the kind where I pretend that the earlier publications never happened.)

[KathAveara]

This is almost certainly too late to be of any use to me, but I might as welk say anyway that I cannot use Seltani with my tablet. That is, upon trying to actually enter the game, it gets stuck mid-link, and claims that I am not connected to the server. I can, however, access all other parts of the site.

Any idea what the problem is?