MarMOTS update: still alive!

SpindleyQ's picture

Now that the Pirate Kart II is finally out in the world, I've been able to find time once again for MarMOTS; the greatest telnet-based collaborative ANSI art editor and game engine EVER WRITTEN!

I'm still super-excited about MarMOTS even though there are so few people using it (basically me and qrleon, and I don't ever draw anything). And I've decided it's high time to start letting people make stuff besides pictures. Thus I have begun the implementation and design of the scripting language* and its editor! No screenshots yet, unfortunately, but rest assured I'm plugging away. If you have any ideas for textmode games that you might be interested in building in MarMOTS, please feel free to talk about them in the comments and I can make sure that the language comfortably supports your use.

In the meantime, I've deployed a new version of MarMOTS that features line wrapping in more places, like text entry, and "buttons". No more typing off the edge of the screen when chatting, or worrying about making a picture whose name is too long!

* possible names for the scripting language (please vote or supply more suggestions in the comments):

  1. MarMOTScript (tm)
  2. Marmota (the proper name of the genus of Marmots)
  3. Groundhog (the groundhog being a type of marmot, also makes me think of the movie Groundhog Day, which is a plus)
  4. Monax (the groundhog's proper name is Marmota Monax, kind of sounds like "monad", but way more metal -- maybe "Monäx"?)

Comments

snapman's picture

My vote is for Marmota.

My vote is for Marmota.

snapman's picture

RE: Text mode games: I

RE: Text mode games: I think it would be cool to make a pac man maze like game, where everybody is running away from monsters, and they have to work together to lay traps. Traps can only be made by bringing together half-traps scattered around the level, but carrying a half-trap slows you down. This would mean players would have to work together to distract the monsters while others collect the trap parts, and then lead the monsters toward the trap and then set it up after the "bait" player ran by.

But that might be difficult to do without better communication than text chatting...

qrleon's picture

Seems to lock up when I save

Seems to lock up when I save a picture to the gallery.

SpindleyQ's picture

Shit! I'm on it!

Shit! I'm on it!

EDIT: Fixed! Refactoring gone awry, sorry.

snapman's picture

I still can't seem to make a

I still can't seem to make a new image. At the main screen, I hit RIGHT ARROW to highlight the black box, and I can either type a name here and hit enter, or type a name and select the "New Drawing" option below it, but either action freezes my window on the main menu. I never get to the new image, and it doesn't show up when I close it and log back in.

SpindleyQ's picture

Arrrgh! Also refactoring

Arrrgh! Also refactoring gone awry. When I picked MarMOTS up again after months of inactivity, I'd forgotten what I was doing, and decided to just get the thing back into a working state. Clearly not working enough! Fixin' it.

SpindleyQ's picture

Alright, fixed! Finished my

Alright, fixed! Finished my silly refactoring, which turned out to have the unfortunate side effect of dropping the chat messages once everyone has left the room. Sorry about that. I might try to bring it back. It's useful for me to see if anyone ever looks at MarMOTS, if nothing else.

Zecks's picture

man i was supposed to try

man i was supposed to try this thing ages ago, but i completely forgot about it :(

i drew a pic now, it owns, but is it my comp or the program that causes the jerkiness?

SpindleyQ's picture

The jerkiness is totally my

The jerkiness is totally my fault. When I started building MarMOTS initially, I decided to make my job as simple as possible; no synchronization, no custom clients, just SyncTerm sending keystrokes to my server and my server sending ANSI back to SyncTerm. This works, and is very simple to implement, but it also means that there's an unavoidable delay between pressing a key and seeing the response.

Someday in the glorious distant future I may turn MarMOTS into a web app that lets you draw without latency in your browser, and maybe even let you use the mouse. I have some thoughts on how I'll get there, but it's not very high on my priority list at the moment, compared to adding features that will let you make sweet ANSI games with it.

Your picture is awesome, btw.

Super-Dot's picture

I like MarMOTScript™ the

I like MarMOTScript™ the best, it is intuitive and whimsical!

I'm too tired to tell if any of these are any good:

  • Squeak, or Trill, because they are both marmot language
  • MarBLES, MarMALADE, MarACAS, MarKER, MarQUEE, MarQUISE, MarKET, MarKUP, MarVIN, MarTYR, MarINE, MarSH (is there a MarMOTS shell?), MarTIAN, MarXIST
  • PHIL (S-S-Something Language?)
  • MAGPie, for MarMOTS ANSI Game Pièce-de-Scriptinglanguage
  • MAGNet, for MarMOTS ANSI Game Networkscriptinglanguage
  • FinAGL: Fine ANSI Game Language
    FinAGLE: Euh…
    FinAGLER: En Route?
    FinAGLING: In… N… G?