Sleeping Description

Just like your @look_place, you can now set a @sleep_place message that will show up when you're disconnected. Use it to describe how your sleeping briefly.

Choose Your Own Adventure

In the real world, we can't get to the point where we're picking our baby's eye color. I guess that gives me hope that things aren't as bad as they seem some days. It's big crazy world outside our front door, especially these days.

Why is it seen as acceptable to screen for negative traits but not to pick the positive traits we want in our child too? Can I get my value meal with no onions and extra ketchup? Can my child be mellow and neat by default? Oh yeah, and green eyes for sure, find the little m'bryo back in the corner for the recessive eyes. We're man, why stop at diseases?

http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/bio/great-designer-baby-controversy-’09

Sindome Donation Drive

Yes, even the corpies have fallen on hard times.

As we approach the summer, we've been pondering the need to secure funding for our server and advertising costs moving forward. The idea has been batted around before of allowing players to pay for chyen, but I felt that that would send the wrong message and allow people too much freedom in how their characters can escape from the consequences of their in game actions. Instead, we've chosen a model of rewards based on the one thing in Sindome that is always in demand or a pressing concern: property.

With the exception of the $100 'big favor' donation, the rest are based around leasing arrangements or permanent residences that we will endeavor with you to make unique and fun. Everyone wins too, because you don't have to worry about rent, so your disposable chyen goes up and everyone eventually gets to enjoy numerous new locations in the game.

So far, the response has been outstanding and I'm really quite humbled by the gratitude and excitement people have shown when presented with the idea. Both admin and player alike are excited and I am relieved to know that I won't have to worry about SD when our September bills roll around. I can't thank everyone enough.

What will do we do with the money? Pay for our server, buy some ads on TMC to bring in more quality players and squirrel whats left away for next year.

If you haven't played in a while or our thinking of playing for the first time, I invite you to log in at moo.sindome.org:5555 using your favorite telnet client (I use VMOO on Windows, Atlantis on my Mac) and check out just how evolved our amazing little world is. And if you choose to make a donation, you have my most sincere appreciation.

Thanks for playing, contributing and hanging around all these years.

Three ways to die...

Looking for some variation on the typical 'split personality' and 'insanity' clauses to change the nature of your character, or the 'jump from the roof of NLM' method of self termination? Here are three great ways to die on Sindome, in case you should be thinking of terminating your oldbie character in favour of something new and exciting.

Hoisted by own petard.

So you have mastered the mix, or perhaps you now own the corporate boardroom, or maybe y0u just find yourself logging in and the only thing you can think to do is pickpocket random NPCs on the streets. What ever it is, perhaps it is time to get yourself dead or gone. If you've recognized your need to die, but want to go out in style, you can begin the process with careful plottery and arrange to get yourself hosed.

First thing you want to do is find your petard, that bailiwick you call yours. Once you've found it, you then need to identify the other key players in your area. If you are an oldbie, you probably already know. That or you are so old that the mix has moved beyond you, and you exist in your own boring bubble of uber stats and are whispered in ghost stories to scare newbies. Either way, you should be able to spot the chummers who are doing what you do. Once you've spotted them, select the one you want to get the best of you.

Once you have this person all picked out, you can just arange your death easy as pie. Pick a fight, and lose. Board room, back room mixer dealings, combat. Whatever. Just build out a plot with your character that ends in failure instead of success. Spend a few weeks or a few months building up to it, get everything really juicy, and then climax in your enivitable termination, let yourself get beat at your own game and herald your replacment.

Fast, Hard, Loud.
Everyone likes to take as many people out with them as they can, but usually that just seems to end up with the WJF stomping around and putting you on ice. Why not chose another path?

First find a reason. You really can't just go half cocked and nuts for no reason, and 'insanity' is so lame and passe these days in the mix. So find yourself a reason to get people mad at you. I suggest you dredge up those little mishaps from the past, and all those insults and injuries that you have overlooked. Maybe they add up to enough straws to break the camels back. What ever it is, once you have your reason, you go on to the next step.

Burn bridges. Burn them as fast and loud and nasty as you can. Start with someone you've got reason to grudge out on, and spiral from there. Take a good month to do this, until you've pissed off just about everyone.

Finally pick one person and push their buttons until they snap. Like really go at making their day in the mix a steaming pile of crap. Ruin their biz deals, talk smack, hack their grid page and turn it into adverts for weird kink sex. Just push. And push. And push. By this point you are probably in occasional fights, or running the risk of death. When you are ready, and the moment is ripe for your exit, stop updating and getting clones. Then pick a fight you know you can't win, because you plan to lose. Go out in a big nasty blaze of glory, having taken as many others with you in the process as you can. Become hated for all time in the mix!

Take the long walk.
There are ways out of the dome. Take some time and set your affiars in order. Pass on gear to chummers. Pass on paydata to those who can use it. Close up shop. Then send out invites to everyone for a going away party at your favourite club. Party it up like mad, then at the climax of the party announce you are taking the long walk. You are heading out into the ( badlands, orbital, asteroid belts ) and won't be coming back. Then leave, and never come back.

Mad Johnny: Beyond TwitterDome

The universe must have collapsed in on itself, because I've finally gone back to our old Text Browser object and resolved some long standing bugs (7 years, probably) that I just never bothered to fix up. They were issues with stuff we didn't really need to use, so just kinda ignored them. Since the issues predated the current bug tracking system, they were forgotten and since we didn't depend on the broken features, they were lost in the digital dust that makes up a sizable portion of our multi-gigabyte experience.

As of day, those bugs no longer exist, base64 encoding is compatible with the rest of the world *ahem*, we support URL encoding and finally, at long last, HTTP POST in addition to our established support of HTTP GET. I know, 2009, POST, novel F-ing concept, Johnny.

The first such use of this is in our new @twitter command. You can use this to make a post to your twitter account from directly within Sindome (appended with the #sd twittag). Your twit user/pass is stored within SD in an encoded format, so feel free to completely not trust it, but its there for you to use if you like. I'm working on the OAuth method so we don't have to keep user/pass data around but the REST api is more approachable at first blush (plus it let me get our HTTP POST up!).

I'm toying with encouraging players to signup for In Character Twitter accounts (Thanks to @Aikao for the idea!) and then pulling that into the grid. The idea would be that you could update your status from a device (maybe a progia-11 or quickterm) and since it would be an In Character account, it would be stealable and abusable and such. Would make for an interesting angle on the game, blending IC with OOC in a strangely mindbending way. Your thoughts on this idea will guide it of course.

Grab the MOO source for the Text Browser and the tiny Twitter Status Updater here.

In The Company of Ghosts

Who the hell are you people?!

We abide by @rules and dance along the virtual dystopia that is Sindome but as a player and now as a GM I've noticed significantly that the rules are followed much like I obey the law. When it suits me or seems practical to do so. However, as in the real world the players police themselves forming would-be alliances with those who suit their reflective style and judgement. Outcasting those who are cancerous for their respective circle.

And therein lies the conflict.

Then there is also another variety of crime. That which garners the attention of a GM. Honestly, most of the time if I notice a rulebreaker I'm more likely to take note of what they've done and take it out on them IC rather then chew them out over xhelp.

Why?
Because I have better and more constructive things to do with my time then be your mother.

However, time and time again it has been taken upon GM's to dole out the most sinister of punishments to frequent offenders. Which has always driven me back to one of the most interesting articles on Massive Multiplayer Worlds and perhaps one of the oldest.

A Rape In Cyberspace by Jillian Dibbell

Enjoy the read,
O.

Skin Screens On the Way

Once again, reality is catching up to the CP dream in leaps and bounds. We've had the cybernetic eyes, we've seen brain interfaces controlling exoskeletons and now we're looking at flexible displays embedded in the skin. Is there anything nanotubes isn't going to give us?

How soon until Apple gives us the touch sensitive (wonder if you'll feel yourself touching the screen, bizarre thought) skinPhone implantable @ a RipperDoc Bar in your local Apple Store? Do I just stick my index finger in my ear and my pinky at my mouth to talk? Will my hand vibrate when I get a call?

The tattoo angle is fascinating too. Lots of people are already comfortable getting permanent tattoos for fleeting moments like cartoons, fairies and the latest girlfriend. Can you imagine what people will do with their bodies when the art can be changed on a whim? Trent Reznor will have a field day with this, using flash mobs loaded with flash tattoos to be the art instead of just experiencing the art. Hack the planet is tired and old, hack me instead.

Found through /.