_bug0ut

_bug0ut, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

If you’ve never tried a MUD, there are still a few out there that are alive and kickin’. Funny enough, I’ve been scratching that itch over the last few days and seeing whats out there. They’re something like a pre-cursor to MMOs - online, text-based games. If you get really deep into stuff like PVP, you’ll like wind up writing scripts that trigger actions based on what’s happening since its quicker than typing out commands when things get hot and heavy.

If I had to guess, I’d say Aardwolf is probably the most populated and has the most users online at any given time. I have an old char on there that I occasionally log into and run some quests on:

Aardwolf

I just created a character in Alter Aeon and it’s alright so far, but I haven’t spent more than about an hour logged in:

Alter Aeon

I don’t know how people generally feel about Iron Realms Entertainment. Some or all of their MUDs end up with you kind of having to spend some money if you get super engaged, but I’m pretty sure most of their games are perfectly fine without paying for casual players. They have a handful of MUDs that cover different themes (classic fantasy, vampire stuff, etc). I actually tried out Starmourn recently which is a sci-fi themed one, but I think they’re no longer developing it actively - the servers remain up (for now, at least, I guess). Regardless, all of their games seem pretty polished and thoughtfully made.

Iron Realms Entertainment main site

Starmourn

The cool thing about IRE is that their games are all playable in a browser and the browser-based apps include some QoL UI stuff like maps and stuff. The others generally require a (free) MUD client like Mudlet. Aardwolf has a highly customized version of Mudlet that has frames/windows within the client that show you your characters stats, maps, a chat window, and some other stuff.

_bug0ut, 10 months ago

Same, back when I played a lot more. There was a period of time where I felt completely unfulfilled and unappreciated at work. I was a Linux admin at the time so I spent 90% of my time in a text environment. One day, I installed TinTin++ which has a non-GUI version and I’d just keep one ssh connection opened to a VPS I pay for and would just MUD throughout the day (mainly just running quests over and over). This was years before “quiet quitting” was cool lol

_bug0ut, 10 months ago

Yeah, they all definitely seem quite polished. Sometimes I get the itch to play a MUD, find one or return to one I’ve played before, and get hooked for a few months. Other times, I’m done after a few days… they’ll always be an option for me though. IRE games are just fine for my purposes in that regard.

_bug0ut, 10 months ago

exactly this right here. we saw the same phenomenon with threads and mastodon before it inre twitter annoying its userbase. depending on how engaged each wave of incoming users ends up, i’d guess you could expect it to look something like:

• spike
• drop off
• plateau
• spike
• drop off
• plateau above the last plateau
• etc etc

sometimes the drop off is really bad. sometimes its just people getting bored with the initial hype while others stay. rinse and repeat until the platform succeeds or dies.

_bug0ut, 10 months ago

I think there are a combination of factors intermingling, situations like the API backlash just jostle things a little harder and that’s when you see big spikes. Once a platform like Lemmy begins to see more and more traffic and, in turn, content, it starts to become a viable alternative.

Lemmy existed for at least a couple years before I joined, for instance, and I came with what I would guess was the biggest wave so far (June 2023). Provided the userbase can keep up a respectable momentum generating discussion and content, the next wave could be bigger or it could be more resistant to leaving because there’s enough content here to consume and interact with.

Reddit could take years to lose substantial portions of its userbase or it may shed some and stay solid, but Im not one of these people who obsesses over it’s ruin. If they survive long term, God bless, whatever, who cares. What’s interesting to me is seeing an alternative sprout up and actually generate traffic and start building a community, whether that’s Lemmy or something else built on ActivityPub or something else built on a different federated framework or even something else entirely that’s centralized… I think Lemmy is one permutation of this and it has undoubtedly got some traction.

I sometimes wonder if/when I’ll start getting random Lemmy links from people instead of ones to Reddit.

edit: I should also add that considering reddit is trying hard to get value on paper and probably still hoping to ipo, we probably shouldn’t put it past them be shitty once again at some point in the future.

_bug0ut, 10 months ago

Peter Santanello’s videos are usually really enjoyable and pleasant. He has a calm, respectful demeanor and he just goes to random places you usually don’t think about and just kind of shoots the shit with people. He did a couple videos a while back where he went to a couple of native reservations in like one of the Dakotas, I think, and they were an intensely interesting look into that life and culture.

His titles can feel kind of click-baity sometimes and I don’t always agree with his take on things, but I find him a really likeable and honest-seeming guy.

_bug0ut, 10 months ago

I think i have the 13-year badge. I visit maybe a few times a week when there’s nothing left to doomscroll on Lemmy. I was never really a huge contributor, in posts or comments, but now I’m purely a lurker and I spend maybe 15 or 30 minutes in a single sitting on the site instead of a few hours cumulatively throughout a given day.

With that said, the overall quality of content and discussion had been going downhill for years at this point, I just didn’t have anywhere else to go that provided the same dopamine hit. Lemmy doesn’t do it quite as well, but once the Reddit API controversy kicked up and a ton of people started actually using Lemmy, that helped give me a good reason to spend time with it since there was activity. I’m honestly not sure if Lemmy is the future but I’m willing to stay if it’s a road to the future… and I’m willing to try out new platforms and communities before I find something that I feel fits me as well as Reddit did for so long.

I kind of miss 2010-2013ish era Reddit (minus the bacon/narwahls stuff which kind of felt forced to me), but hoping something like that comes along would probably be along the same lines as wishing I could get the same near magical feel and interaction out of IRC as I did in the mid to late 90s/early 2000s. These are one-and-done things. The next thing that elicits that kind of homey feeling will probably be something entirely new and not a clone of the OG thing.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I might do some light gaming on it, but that’s really what my Steam Deck is for. I’d personally consider the added GPU power a road into maybe learning 3d modeling/rendering or animation or something down the road for fun, so really just hobbyist level stuff.

So the heat/throttling is really coming from/caused by heat generated by the GPU and not the CPU cores, then?

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

With this take, you (and others, from my research) are really making me lean towards putting on my big boy pants and maybe just ordering a 14" with an M2 Pro and 32GB RAM (the 32GB makes it a non-default build and jumps the wait time to about 3 weeks). I really wish there was a 14" Pro chip variant with 32GB as a default.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I think music production is really more about the processor itself and the available memory (I don’t bounce SHIT to audio because there’s always room for last minute tweaks to the 20 synthesizer patches I have open at one time lol) - so from what I’m seeing, you might be right. Now its a matter of deciding to splurge a bit and going with the Max which I can go pick up any time or being a patient person and ordering a Pro with 32GB.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I dont disagree with this fully, but the default 14" Max build has 32GB and that’s what i’d consider a sweet spot for having a DAW open with a bunch of synthesizers in there and a browser with a bunch of tabs open. The era of 16GB being more than enough is over.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

If I was solely interested in using it to write code, I might just say screw it and buy an Air or the 10-core M2. My goals here are pretty much: writing code, music production, lots of browser tabs, and a laptop that will last me a MINIMUM of 5 years. The last point is why I’m looking to the higher end vs. the lower/sensible/reasonable end. Oh, and the possibility of doing graphical stuff for fun, but it won’t be rendering hour long 8k videos.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I’m arriving at basically the same conclusion. Thanks for the feedback!

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I sit here in my ivory tower, casting judgment on 16GB weaklings… while typing all of this from my old gaming desktop which has just 16GB. hahaha (all my gaming happens on a Steam Deck now which also only has 16… but all it does it run steam and video games, so it suffices)

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

Interesting… I’ll google that build up and take a peek at it. Like I mentioned in my OP, bone spear build has been great for me - bosses or otherwise - since the beginning of the game on WT2. It’s just this one fight specifically where he spawns endless waves of enemies while I’m just trying to get my minions back up and lay a few points of damage on him that I’m having issues. Thanks!

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

So the way I have it configured is I have auto-targeting enabled in the options as this lets me avoid having to click R3 to initially target a mob. I rarely use the targeting feature explicitly, but it’s helped on a number of occasions as a sort of crutch. I may just shut that off and try to go without targeting at all since that’s primarily how I’ve actually been playing (I’ll move away from the fight and let my minions pick up the slack while I reposition and then point myself where i want to attack; auto-targeting mostly picks up what I’m after).

The controls on the Deck are being recognized as a standard gamepad to my knowledge, so that shouldn’t be the issue, but I suppose you never know.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I think I’m mostly set on corpse generation, the issue lies more in being able to keep my summons up (and subsequently, reliable “targeting” of the spawned waves of mobs). The amount of raw damage that the Executioner mobs do, and their ability to close a gap so quickly with their leap attack, also forces me to keep moving so I spend a lot of the fight running in circles, trying to pull summons up out of nearby corpses, then trying to regen mana (by either exploding corpses or spamming Bone Shards - the latter generates corpses because I’ve maxed Hewed Flesh) so I can let off some bone spears.

My summons get melted incredibly fast.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I should add I think sometimes, there’s just an insane disparity between WT1 and WT2. I melted him with almost ZERO effort after switching to WT1. It wasn’t even a challenge. Easiest boss fight I’ve ever done and that’s disappointing. He wasn’t spamming mob waves in WT1 so aggressively and I had more breathing room than I would ever need.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

Will do! Definitely gave me something to think about and try, so thanks!

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

Hah - noted. I rekt him on WT1 so I could just get past it and continue plowing through the story (I want my goddamn horse lol). Would definitely like to revisit that fight in the future with various different builds and see if I can get some traction, though. In any case, thanks for the responsess. :)

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

So it seems. Guess I’m going to be forced out of solo play one way or another. I suppose I should be glad I have at least a couple of friends who are also enjoying the game. haha

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I’m actually starting to look at other classes for when I wrap the main story (so I can just skip it with subsequent characters) - sorc looks really interesting, but I’m not sure how well it’ll play with the controller. Or, rather, how happy I’ll be personally with it on controller.

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I ended up just flipping to T1 to get past it so I could finish the story (and then flipped back immediately after and never had an issue again). Since then, I’ve gotten some legendary gear that would have probably carried me (specifically, a piece that gives me a pretty big barrier as soon as I hit an elite or higher that lasts 10s and can pop every 30s - its gotten me out of a few scrapes already; got another piece that bumps my skeletal mages by 2 and they freeze shit near instantly if they actually focus on one target)

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

The endless scrolling communities are the easiest to move. They’re low hanging fruit. One of the other replies to you here nailed it… without a massive community of millions, the future of Lemmy rests on the more modestly sized community here willing to actually come out of their lurk and not just respond to posts, but to start posts on their own and actually drive the content.

I feel the same way about music production-related communities here. I just don’t have much to ask and I suck pretty badly at it so I don’t feel like I’m good enough to drive content/discussions lol

_bug0ut, 11 months ago

I’m one of the unwashed, ignorant music production hobbyists who can’t play a lick of anything on an actual instrument, and certainly can’t read sheet music (I figured out tablature a long time ago when I was trying to teach myself guitar and have forgotten since). I can noodle around on a 25-key MIDI keyboard well enough - like I have a good handle on the patterns for different keys and scales on the keyboard, but I can’t actually play. I’d take you up on the invite, otherwise.

_bug0ut, 1 year ago

Funny, I just came off a 2-week task and it took 6 months. Just started a 3 day task… get back to me at the end of July.