Midnight Coding

[thistlechaser]

Nothing like breaking your MUSH after bedtime. On worknights, I try to be in bed by 11, asleep by 12. Not being very tired last night, at 11:30 I sat down to try to fix a little glitch which had been bugging me for a while.

At 11:45, the biggest and most oft-used programs on the MUSH failed. Totally and utterly. Oh god. This bit of code had literally taken me *weeks* to write. It's giant. I'm afraid of it now, I hardly understand how I did it all. At nearly midnight it stopped working. Since people were online and needing it, I stayed up to try to fix it. I couldn't, but I got a workaround in place to let people continue overnight. This morning I got up and with help from the TinyMUSH list got it working again... at least to the point where it had been before I touched it last night.

So the glitch is still there. I'm poking at it now.

Carefully.

Comments

[tersa.livejournal.com]

That's why you *always* make decompiles of your global code before you fuck with it.

Words to live by. :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I picked that up from you long ago. :)

The program failed indirectly. I was trying to change how the MUSH handled certain attributes, and suddenly everything (even god) stopped being able to see or set them. This program needed to set them, so of course it started failing left and right. I edited an old copy to use replacement attributes (not a good or long term solution, but it let me get to bed), and this morning got things mostly straightened out.

[tersa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, okay, that would do it. :)

Hrm. There *is* a file somewhere in the MUSH code which you can manually set this in, rather than doing it via God. You could make the changes there, backing up the entire file so if it breaks it, you can *fwoop* fix it. Or something.

Or get Mark to bring up an alternative version of PokeMUSH on another port so you can test things there.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

The config file? Yeah, I tried that for a while, but I had to keep @restarting each time I changed it, and with players on I didn't want to interrupt the RP more than I had to.

From what the TinyMUSH list says, I can't make it do what I want it to do. I'm going to let it sit for now, and later go back to it. I have that itch in the back of my head which says there's a way around this that I'm not seeing. It'll come, and I'll go back to this then. I'll just be more round about than I want to, but so long as it works I'll be happy. :)

I've always meant to thank you, by the way. I learned to code by looking at your work (and the help files), then just doing it myself. My work isn't neat and I suspect would make a "real" coder twitch, but I've been the only coder since you left, and have put some spiffy stuff into place. :) Heck, the messiness is probably moot anyway, since now I'm all possessive of my code and wouldn't hire on a new coder if someone came asking to work for me.

[tersa.livejournal.com]

So, what is it you're trying to do?

Heh, and you're welcome. I'm just mildly guilty some days that I bailed on you. I'm glad you managed to prove I'm not indispensible, though ;), and, when I remember, I'm still really proud about the pokeball system.

I know about possessiveness in code, though. Thought about it yesterday, in fact. I used to be that way, but I've realized now that I've been gone from it for so long, I'm just glad it's in use and that people *want* to use it. :)

Re:

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

The short version of what I was trying to do is make a pair of attributes invisible to HSers (royalty). I thought setting them hidden would keep HSers from seeing them, so pulled my hair out when it failed to work. Turns out that only works in the later? latest? version of TinyMUSH. It's not an overly big deal, but it keeps everything from being /perfect/, so it's enough to annoy me. :)

Yeah, you should be proud of the pokeball/pokemon system. Though there are few Pokemon MU*s left out there, it's the best coded system of every game that was ever around.

The code is definately still in use, and even gets compliments now and then. Knock on wood, our MUSH is surviving where other Pokemon places have long since closed. We tend to get 45-55 folks on a night, which is not bad at all!

And no one believed a /Pokemon/ place with typing/grammar/RP standards would work. Heh heh heh. :)