Month: November 2023

Moo! LambdaMoo.

Re the lispygopher chat, just a few thoughts longer than a toot.

I played the hell out of MOO back in the '90s, as well as ran my CircleMUD (D&D-like combat-oriented) for a while, and my own CloudMUD system which was a Java chatter with rooms you could put images in. I have my more recent in-development-maybe VRMicro project which reduces it to sprites walking around reading files in a 2D memory palace.

Terms:

  • MUD: Multi-User Dungeon. A server runs a virtual world, you connect with a chat client, interact with it like interactive fiction but with other people. These vary from MUSH/MUCK chatters, to MUD which was adventure-oriented.
  • MOO: MUD Object-Oriented. Users can create their own objects, script them with a fairly powerful LISP-inspired system.

I'd love to have one back, and I've even recompiled LambdaMoo locally and it works, BUT.

Moderation then was awful, and on the Internet now it'd be disaster. See My Tiny Life but imagine millions of cybercriminals and trolls.

MOOs require you to moderate objects, rooms, & scripts as well as people. You need several staff 24/7, who are calm, serene, at least competent hackers, with the wisdom of Solomon, and the righteous fury of Judge Isaac "Hanging Judge" Parker. It's an impossible task to make safe.

The technical side is also tough. Nobody really wants telnet anymore. In theory you could make a distributed one with Spritely Goblins or something else, but I haven't seen a practical example of:

  1. Shared server state,
  2. Someone owns their own developments,
  3. Multiple clients contributing,
  4. With moderation.

All those parts are important.

What I'm Watching: Monarch Legacy of Monsters

Eagerly awaited, because we have a long tradition of great Godzilla TV shows

It alternates between a 1950s origin story, and 2010s post-G-Day. Somewhere in between is Kong Skull Island.

SPOILERS

In 2010s:

"San Francisco was a hoax. I have a podcast." is the most realistic reaction here. Love the Godzilla evacuation plans & defenses, missile turrets on overpasses. Tokyo's taking it seriously.

First ep is setup and family drama. Cate (Anna Sawai from Pachinko) is kind of stiff and useless, except when she's freaking out at her PTSD, flashbacks of Godzilla from the trailer.

Her half-brother Kentaro (Ren Watabe) is a jackass, emotionally closed jerk with no useful skills. May (Kiersey Clemons) the expat haxxor is the only modern character who has their shit together.

Monarch starts to show up, with slightly implausible network access. Why are all the secret files blacked-out redacted? Actual secret files are not blacked out, you only get that in publicly-released versions.

In 1950s:

Leland Shaw (Wyatt & later Kurt Russell) really needs to carry heavier weapons, a pistol does not cut it. Wyatt's not one of nature's good actors, but he's adequate and carries "I am my father but softer". The black eye he starts with tries to butch him up some, but he'd never be Snake Plissken.

Dr Miura's (Mari Yamamoto, also from Pachinko) not super plausible, woman doin' it for herself 20 years early, clearly writer ignoring setting. Weird how two people with completely different maps line up exactly right. What are the odds the scale is the same‽

Bill Randa (Anders Holm, later John Goodman!) as proto-Monarch is sus. Creepy guy in the jungle with impossible backstory. Miura should avoid him but as we know does not. The romance here is incredibly weird, fake, and gross, mainly because Anders is one of the most unfuckable humanoids I've ever seen. Shaw looks away like it's skeeving him out, too, but I think it's supposed to be romantic tension.

By ep 2 we finally see a new kaiju!

In 2010s:

Cate really needs to learn the first thing you do when a creepy dude stalks you, is stay in a public area and scream for police, not throw away all your stuff and get kidnapped. But Monarch creep Tim & his French ninja assistant Duvall really suck at investigation, interrogation, and extraction.

The hero party find the wise old mentor and join the main quest. At this point in a JRPG the title screen rolls.

Monarch does not come off well in this, they have resources and yet are utterly incompetent.

I like the two monsters we see, even if they're very bad CGI composed into the scenes like Roger Rabbit. The enclosed space monster attack looks better; less ambitious is better when you're not skilled. Maybe it'll ramp up the monster visibility & quality later? I'm OK with it if they lean into bad FX.

I've definitely seen worse season starts, but I expected more, since Matt Fraction's supposedly writing for it. Well, turns out these first 2 eps are by Chris Black (Desperate Housewives), and Matt's only writing one ep later.

★★★☆☆