A text Myst Online project

[Pavitra]

To see your database key, type "/playstate". (This is exactly analogous to a Ki number, only it's 24 digits of hex.)

Oooh, nifty.

Why are "World", "Instance", and "Scope" three separate things? Isn't there at most one instance for a given combination of world and scope?

[Pavitra]

Further notes on Tworld: (by the way, is it pronounced "tee-world" or "twirled"?)

To log in as Admin, I first created a new user through the web interface, and then used mongo to copy the 'password' and 'pwsalt' properties from the new user to Admin. This is almost certainly not the best approach, and upon logging in, Admin seems to be stuck in a sort of mid-Link limbo (further investigations ongoing).

A little more detail on mongo:

From the command line, type:

Code: Select all

mongo tworld

('tworld' may be different depending on your tworld.conf settings.)

This opens a mongo shell:

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> db.players.find()
{ "_id" : ObjectId("51da6c1f7e06a455a670c108"), "admin" : true, "createtime" : ISODate("2013-07-08T07:37:03.597Z"), "desc" : "an ordinary explorer.", "email" : "you@example.com", "name" : "Admin", "namekey" : "admin", "password" : BinData(0,"eA=="), "pronoun" : "it", "pwsalt" : BinData(0,"YWQ5ODNkNTdhNzhkZTI1OA=="), "scid" : ObjectId("51da6c1f7e06a455a670c109") }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("51da6e207e06a456bfe031ff"), "createtime" : ISODate("2013-07-08T07:45:36.845Z"), "desc" : "an ordinary explorer.", "email" : "user@example.com", "name" : "User", "namekey" : "user", "password" : BinData(0,"ZWU5Y2Y5MGNjNzk5ZDEwZDBhYjI1OGMzNmRiMjdhNGM4YjE0OGQwYg=="), "plistid" : ObjectId("51da6e207e06a456bfe03202"), "pronoun" : "it", "pwsalt" : BinData(0,"ZGU3Nzc1NjM3NzYxZDIzYQ=="), "scid" : ObjectId("51da6e207e06a456bfe03200") }

Formatted for readability, and the key lines marked with arrows:

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> db.players.find()
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("51da6c1f7e06a455a670c108"),
    "admin" : true,
    "createtime" : ISODate("2013-07-08T07:37:03.597Z"),
    "desc" : "an ordinary explorer.",
    "email" : "you@example.com",
    "name" : "Admin",
    "namekey" : "admin",
    "password" : BinData(0,"eA=="),
    "pronoun" : "it",
    "pwsalt" : BinData(0,"YWQ5ODNkNTdhNzhkZTI1OA=="),
    "scid" : ObjectId("51da6c1f7e06a455a670c109")
}
{
    "_id" : ObjectId("51da6e207e06a456bfe031ff"),
    "createtime" : ISODate("2013-07-08T07:45:36.845Z"),
    "desc" : "an ordinary explorer.",
    "email" : "user@example.com",
->  "name" : "User",
    "namekey" : "user",
->  "password" : BinData(0,"ZWU5Y2Y5MGNjNzk5ZDEwZDBhYjI1OGMzNmRiMjdhNGM4YjE0OGQwYg=="),
    "plistid" : ObjectId("51da6e207e06a456bfe03202"),
    "pronoun" : "it",
->  "pwsalt" : BinData(0,"ZGU3Nzc1NjM3NzYxZDIzYQ=="),
    "scid" : ObjectId("51da6e207e06a456bfe03200")
}

The arrow-marked lines above yield the data to be written to admin:

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> db.players.update( {"name":"Admin"},
{ $set: {"pwsalt":BinData(0,"ZGU3Nzc1NjM3NzYxZDIzYQ==")} } )
> db.players.update( {"name":"Admin"},
{ $set: {"password":BinData(0,"ZWU5Y2Y5MGNjNzk5ZDEwZDBhYjI1OGMzNmRiMjdhNGM4YjE0OGQwYg==")} } )

These values allowed me to log in as Admin using the password 'mypass'. I'm not sure whether the same values will work for your installation, or if you'll have to do the whole create-User-and-copy-data process yourself; I suspect the latter.

[Mystler]

Hi belford,
I have to start with a confession: I have seen this thread for a months now, but I never visited it. I simply read "text Myst Online project", thought "meh, sounds like boring" and clicked "mark all read". Today, mainly because of some boredom in classes, I finally reached this thread and I was absolutely surprised - and definitely too blinded by prejudice before...

IMO, this project is a fantastic idea. I like how you showed me that you really spent a lot of thought on this project and I'm so glad to see it's not in vain because you actually realize it. Although, I do not have any experience with text adventures, I found your concept very cool and I appreciate how you want to make the old text adventure genre more contemporary.

So, I just signed up and took my first steps to see it for myself. The gameplay is very nice. I love the menu system, the basic story and the descriptions and I think it was quite easy to get into it. You're doing a great job here.

I'm not sure what the future will bring and I fear that the general interest in text adventures (still including myself) might be quite low, which will probably make most people play it alone without any others online at the same time. Still, I will follow this project with interest and I absolutely encourage you to keep up the good work.

[belford]

The same values will work for everyone, but then everyone will have the same administrator password, which is of course not ideal. :)

Thanks for going through this writeup.

Isn't there at most one instance for a given combination of world and scope?

Yes, but it's still a database object. Player location and instance properties are indexed by instance-id. I could have indexed by (world-id, scope-id) but this seemed easier.

Also, there's an event of instance creation, which is marked by creating this DB object. Eventually I will have a way to "reset" an instance, and this will delete the instance object (much as MOUL does).

[belford]

So, I just signed up and took my first steps to see it for myself. The gameplay is very nice. I love the menu system, the basic story and the descriptions and I think it was quite easy to get into it. You're doing a great job here.

Thanks!

I don't know where it will go, either. But I have some hope that it will attain a steady population.

I've been limiting the publicity of the server so far -- I've only posted the URL here, on the MOUL forums, and to a few private mailing lists. I would like the social tone to be guided by Myst/Uru fans, so I try to get you folks there first. :) As time goes on I will announce it more widely.

[Christopher]

I also discovered this thread some time ago and thought "meh text adventure... you never knew what you have to enter, so you can proceed..." but then Mystler told me a bit about it and I registered. I have to say I very much like the idea and I also like the idea of age creating. I also wanted to try to create an age but it seems I need permissions from you. It would be nice if I can get them
I planned an age for MOULa fopr a long time now, but never really found time to actually model it in 3ds Max. I would like to try to realize it (or small parts of it) in your project. (I hope this also helps me to sort my ideas about this age...) I am looking forward how this project continues

Christopher

[belford]

I've set the build flag on your account.

[Pavitra]

I'm not sure how feasible this is, but it would be nice if, wherever we can add and remove items from a list (booklet links, library shelves, location properties, etc.) we could also reorder the items within the list.

Also, when editing a library shelf, after adding or removing a book, if the interface automatically returned to the editing-mode focus rather than the nonediting-view-mode focus, that would make bulk operations much more convenient.

[belford]

Agreed on both counts.

[Pavitra]

I'm having some trouble with realm properties evaluating properly; for example, [[realm.foo]] prints the Text dict object; similarly, trying to call a realm Code property from a location Code property causes the realm property Code dict object to be printed as event text. Does anyone know anything about this?

P.S.: Is there a long-term plan for a community website of some sort -- webforum, subreddit, in-game resources? Presumably at some point we're going to want to get tech support from each other rather than from belford exclusively, and it would be nice to have a quasi-standard place to go for that.