Coding Seminar I

On April 18th, the first coding seminar was offered. It was for beginners and is titled "Puppets and $ commands". Schmidt, one of the best coders on the net, was to be hosting, but was unable to attend, so Leto filled in quite expertly.


Leto says, "Hi everyone. Seems Schmidt is having some access trouble (or
something), so I've been called in from the bullpen."

Leto says, "Okay... you'er going to have to bear with me on this, since I
obviously have nothing prepared. And I'm no Schmidt. :)"

A murmer of agreement ripples across the audience.

Leto says, "Okay. I believe the topic tonight was puppets and $commands."

Leto says, "Okay, I know that alot of the people in this room know as much
or more about this than I do... so I'll have to ask that for the
people who know what I'm talking about, to please just pipe up when
asked, or when I'm wrong :)"

Leto says, "As I go along, feel free to ask any questions."

Leto says, "Let's get started."

Leto says, "Now, as you all probably know, a puppet is an object that its
owner can control. Usually, a puppet is used to add some spark to RP,
and are often things like Guards, servants... that sort of thing."

Siobhan raises his hand.

Leto says, "Siobhan?"

Siobhan rises.. "Better make the distinction between RP puppet and the flag
of the same name.. You can control any object you own to the same
degree.. it's the feedback that changes.

Siobhan sits.

Leto says, "Well, what we'll do tonight, since we can't do much, is just
talk about making a simple puppet, and we'll put some $commands on it.
We're talking about a puppet in the traditional sense... which
hopefully you'll understand as we go along."

Leto says, "Now, I'm not going to attempt to make the most secure puppet,
or the most code efficient puppet. What I want to do, is to cover the
basics. We can grow on those later."

Leto says, "Now, first and foremost, a puppet is an object. And you make
any object with the @create command. So I'll start by @creating our
sample puppet. And remember, if yu have ANY questions... ask me. :)"

Leto says, "Okay, to make that puppet, I just types @create Sample Guard
Puppet."

Leto says, "Now, right now, that puppet is about as useful as something
like a chair object. I can get it, I can probably give it to you...
but I can't do alot more."

Leto says, "I'd like you all to 'ex puppet'"

Leto says, "I've set the visual flag on it with the @set puppet=visual'
command, so you can all look at it."

Sample Guard Puppet(#5338Vn)
Type: Thing Flags: VISUAL NO_COMMAND
Owner: Duke Leto Key: *UNLOCKED* Coins: 1
Parent: *NOTHING*
Zone: *NOTHING*
Use Key: *UNLOCKED*
Enter Key: *UNLOCKED*
Powers:
Warnings checked: none
Created: Tue Apr 18 19:29:24 1995
Last Modification: Tue Apr 18 19:29:24 1995
Home: Auditorium(#2116Rnt)
Location: Auditorium(#2116Rnt)

Leto says, "At the top, you'll see that right now, the puppet has two
commands, VISUAL and NO_COMMAND. Visual lets anyone see the code of
the object, and NO_COMMAND means that the mush won't look at the
object's code to see if it has any commands on it. In this case, we're
going to want to put some commands on it though, so we'll remove the
NO_COMMAND flag by typing '@set puppet=!no_command'"

Leto says, "The '!' in front of the flag name means you want to remove the
flag."

Leto says, "If you are making an object and parenting it to something in
the parentables room, and find it doesn't work, usually the reason is
that you haven't removed that flag. I do it all the time myself."

Leto says, "Okay... now that we've done that... I am going to do a couple
of other common things that you would do with any object that you own."

Leto says, "I'm going to lock it so only I can pick it up, by typing '@lock
puppet=me'. This is actually really important, since right now any of
you could just pick it up and run off with it. :)"

Leto says, "We could easily spend a whole night on the various kinds of
locks in mushcode... but we won't. If any of you have any problems or
questions about locks... you can ask me or any of the other code type
people around here just about any time."

Leto says, "Okay, so right now, we have a locked, visual, !no_command, very
very boring object. :)"

Leto says, "Now the first thing you'd do with the puppet is @describe
it... remember that people don't know what an object is except for its
name, how it looks, and how it acts... so the description is very
important."

Leto says, "Since I dont' know what this thing is going to be for, I'll
give it a really simple description."

Leto says, "Now, we can put most of the same things on a puppet that you
can put on yourself, like ADESCRIBEs, OMOVEs, etc., but I think Loki
is going to be covering that sort of thing in her seminar, so I won't
go into them."

Leto says, "Especially since this thing isn't even a puppet yet :)"

Takezo raises his hand.

Leto says, "Sure Takezo... go ahead"

Takezo says, "ex still shows no command?"

Sample Guard Puppet(#5338Vn)
Type: Thing Flags: VISUAL NO_COMMAND
Owner: Duke Leto Key: Duke Leto(#5POWXenACMcJ) Coins: 1
Parent: *NOTHING*
Zone: *NOTHING*
Use Key: *UNLOCKED*
Enter Key: *UNLOCKED*
Powers:
Warnings checked: none
Created: Tue Apr 18 19:29:24 1995
Last Modification: Tue Apr 18 19:40:04 1995
Home: Auditorium(#2116Rnt)
Location: Auditorium(#2116Rnt)

Loki beams:)

Leto says, "It seems I'm all talk and no action :) I'll take it off now :)"

Shibboleth pulls up a chair, and sits down

Leto says, "Okay... let's make this thing a real puppet."

Leto says, "To do this, you simple set a flag on it, called puppet. The
command to do this is '@set puppet=puppet'"

Sample Guard Puppet is now listening.

Leto says, "Okay.... I've done it. Here's what it means."

Leto says, "From now on, this puppet is like an extra pair of eyes and ears
for me."

Leto says, "Right now, it doesn't really make any difference to me... since
I'm in the same room. But if I were to leave, anything that was said
or posed in this room would be relayed to me by the puppet, prefixed
by its name."

Leto says, "I'll demonstrate. Once I'm gone... I want someone to say
something."

You step into a glass elevator and are going down....

Sample Guard Puppet> Duke Leto has left.

OOC Room(#47RtF)

***The center of all out of character life!***

Helpful rooms surround you! Check out, in particular, the Newbie Room to
the south and the Recruiting Lounge to the west! Both have important
information on channels in them!
Contents:
Notice board(#5278n)
Obvious exits:
Elevator Up <UP> leads to Auditorium.
Northwest <NW> leads to Oleo's OOC Sauna Room.
North <N> leads to Admin Lounge.
South <S> leads to Newbie Room.
East <E> leads to Parentables Room.
West <W> leads to Recruiting Lounge.

Back IC

Sample Guard Puppet> Loki tells you all good storeis.

Sample Guard Puppet> Loki says, "er stories too:)"

You step into the glass elevator and head up, up, and away...

Sample Guard Puppet> Duke Leto steps out of the elevator.

Auditorium(#2116Rnt)

A large auditorium with circular tiers of seats leading down to a podium.
Chairs with swing up arms that serve as desks ring the auditorium.
Contents:
Shibboleth(#5179PenAc?)
Sample Guard Puppet(#5338Vp)
Loki(#883Pec)
Siobhan(#906PIOeACcm)
Leander(#791PUentAcx)
Takezo(#3701PIUnNc)
Taolo(#4765POenAc)
Rudolfo(#2865PUenANc)
Fezzad(#2749POenANc)
Ulrika(#77POenrACMc)
Obvious exits:
Elevator Down <DOWN> leads to OOC Room.

Loki says, "he's alush:)"

Loki eeps.

Duke Leto smiles.

Leto says, "What I saw was: Sample Guard Puppet> Loki tells you all good
storeis."

Leto says, "So you know who said it, just like I was in the room. I also
know the name of the puppet. Sometimes you have more thanb one puppet,
so the name is pretty important. If I had 6 puppets all named "Sample
Guard Puppet", I'd get mightily confused."

Leto says, "Of course a puppet that just stands there is no fun at all."

Leto says, "An interesting puppet does things. "

Leto says, "Here's how you make a puppet "do your bidding". You use the
@force command."

Leto says, "To make the puppet dance, simply type something like this:
'@force puppet=:dances around.'"

Duke Leto demonstrates.

Sample Guard Puppet dances around.

Leto says, "You'll notice that by putting a colon there, the puppet acted
just like I would have if I started a line of type with a colon."

Leto says, "That's the key to the force command. What you're doing, in
effect, is forcing it to type whatever you put after the '=' in the
@force command."

Leto says, "So now, I can make the puppet talk, or pose... or even type in
other mush commands. And whatever it sees will be relayed back to me."

Sample Guard Puppet says, "So now I can teach the class through the
puppet.""

Sample Guard Puppet says, "Now, a puppet doesn't have to be in the same
room as me to do it's thing when it comes to listening, as you've
seen... but there is a slight problem when it comes to making a puppet
DO things from a distance.""

Leto says, "See, when I type @force <whatever>, the mush tries to find that
<whatever> in the same room that I'm in, or in my inventory. If I am
in another room, as you would often be, you have to tell the mush
where to look."

Leto says, "To do this, you tell the mush the exact database number for the
puppet. "

Huh? (Type "help" for help.)

Sample Guard Puppet(#5338Vp)
This is my sample puppet object.

Leto says, "If you 'ex' the puppet, you'll see that its number is #5338...
so if I want to control the puppet from afar, I'll have to @force
#5338, instead of just typing @force puppet."

Leto says, "If you're like me, remembering that pesky number will be your
number one beef when it comes to puppets. :)"

Leto says, "So, an easy thing to do is to make a command to remember it for
you, in effect."

test steps out of the elevator.

test has arrived.

Leto says, "Now, I could put this command on myself, but that's not very
secure... so I'm going to make a special puppet "remote control" to do
it for me."

Leto says, "Okay... so following the priciples discussed earlier... I'm
going to whip up a remote control right now."

Leto says, "Okay, to make your remote control the puppet... you have to
give it a special flag of its own... called INHERIT"

Leto says, "The INHERIT command give your remote the ability to @force
YOU... which is admittedly a confusing concept."

Leto says, "The easy way to look at this is that you're putting a complex
command on the remote, and giving it a simple name. When you type that
simple name, you trigger the remote to make you do the complex
command... that way , you can forget about the complex command. "

Leto says, "That didn't make much sense, even to me... so feel free to ask
a question :)"

Leander says, "Do we have to @set the remote control !no_command too?"

Leto says, "In this case... the command we're going to put on the remove is
the '@force #5388=' that I always forget :)"

test says, "What are the limits on what puppets can do?"

Leto says, "Do you mean codewise? Or in RP terms?"

Leto says, "For RP terms, see 'rules puppets'"

test says, "in RP terms."

Leto says, "Okay... back to the remote. "

Leto says, "The remote is already set to go.... so let's add the command."

Leto says, "The command that we want, in english, is 'find out what leto
wants to do, then make him make the puppet do that."

Leto says, "In mush terms, that translates into:"

A drum roll is heard...

Leto says, "&force_puppet remote=$fp *:@fo [owner(me)]=@fo #5338=%0"

Rudolfo yuck

Leto says, "Okay... let's walk through that... since it's scary looking
even to me... and I typed it :)"

Leto says, "The '&force_puppet' is the name of the attribute that we'll be
storing the command on. An attribute is used to stare commands or data
on an object. Your description is an attribute for example, as is your
&email and more."

Leto says, "The 'remote' is the name of the object that you're putting that
attribute on. In this case, it's the remote control, as you know."

Leto says, "The '$fp' is the name of the command you are making. I called
it 'fp' as a short form for 'force puppet'."

Leto says, "The * in the '$fp *' means that you want to get some sort of
input for the command. Let me explain."

Leto says, "I could make a command that doesn't require anything from me
other than me triggering it. Like a "puppet sit down" command. In that
case, I'd just have something like '$sit down', to which the puppet
would do something like ':sits down'."

Leto says, "By putting the '*' there, the remote will listen for
anything I type after the 'fp', allowing you to use that
input later in the command."

Leto says, "In this case, the remote will be listening for what you want to
force the puppet to do."

Leto says, "The command again, is:
&force_puppet remote=$fp *:@fo [owner(me)]=@fo #5338=%0"

Rudolfo raises his hand.

Leto says, "You see right there at the end of it, is a %0. THAT is where
the input that is caught by the * is passed to the puppet."

Leto says, "Rudolfo?"

Rudolfo says, "Won't the white space you type after tf get shoved into the
rest of the -varialbles ?"

Rudolfo meant ...after fp...

Leto says, "I'm not sure I know what you mean by -variables"

Rudolfo says, "Sorry, forgot my formating rules. %-variables."

Leto says, "People are using my remote :)"

Leto says, "At least the code works. :)"

Leto says, "Okay... I'm sorry Rudolpho, I think I still don't
understand.... sorry."

Rudolfo says, "I'm know about the range of input variables (%0...%9), and
they've gotten me confused about how the puppet will know how many
variables to assign the input string to."

Leto says, "Ahhhh."

Rudolfo smiles.

Leto says, "That's a good question... though it could actually confuse
people who have never dealt with variables before."

Leto says, "The short story is that unless you have more than one '*', all
the stuff you type, no matter how many words, will get stuffed into
%0"

Rudolfo says, "I'm more used to straight C than to Unix-style commands with
a variable number of parameters."

Rudolfo lowers his hand.

Leto says, "Okay... "

Leto says, "Let's play with the puppet a little. I want you all to make the
puppet say things or pose things. "

Leto says, "Just don't make it leave the room. :)"

Sample Guard Puppet smiles and waits.

Leto says, "If you are unsure of the syntax... just 'ex' the remote."

Leto says, "That was good... anyone else want to try?"

Sample Guard Puppet bats its lashes at Loki.

Sample Guard Puppet does a jig.

Sample Guard Puppet bows and spins

Sample Guard Puppet says, "Leto wears pink socks"

Leto says, "Okay. Now that we've done that... I'm going to lock the puppet
so only I can use it. I do this by typing '@ulock puppet=me'"

Leto says, "Sorry, @ulock remote=me"

Takezo raises hand

Leto says, "The reason being, you generally don't want other people
slandering your socks with your own puppet. :)"

Leto says, "Takezo?"

Takezo says, "remote works by forcing you?"

Takezo says, "what locks on you?"

Leto says, "The remote forces the puppet by forcing me to force the puppet,
yes. "

Leto says, "You don't usually have to do that though. For other things...
you can have the remote itself do actions."

Takezo says, "is inherit the key to forcing you?"

Leto says, "Now, as to the 'what locks on you', I don't know what you mean
for sure."

Leto says, "Ahhh. INHERIT is the flag that allows the remote to force me,
yes."

Takezo says, "if remote can force you can i?"

Takezo nods and shuts up

Leto says, "No you can't, but that's a good question."

Leto says, "The only things that you can @force, are your own objects. The
only things that can @force YOU are yourown objects that are set
INHERIT, and wizards."

Takezo nods thanks

Leto says, "Okay. Let's do another command on the remote to show you that
you dn't need all that forcing in there to have fun :)"

Leto says, "Something that would be really useful on a REAL remote would be
a way to keep it from getting lost."

Leto says, "So let's put a command on it that will make it beep whenever I
can't find it."

Leto says, "Here's a simple one:"

Leto says, "&beep remote=$beep:@emit BEEP! BEEP!"

Leto says, "So, what I've done is created an attribute on the object called
"beep", that has a command called "beep", and whenever I type "beep",
the remote will... well... beep :)"

Duke Leto demonstrates

BEEP! BEEP!

Leto says, "So you see... it's a scary looking command ... but once you
break the whole thing down into parts... it's pretty simple."

Leto says, "Now, let's do one other fun thing before we wrap this up."

Leto says, "Let's make the remote work like that item that I know you all
love... The Clapper (tm)"

Shibboleth says, "the clapper?"

Leto says, "Now, using what we've talked about so far, we could simply make
a command called "clap" that would make the remote beep... but let's
do something more tricky."

Leto says, "The clapper... it's a device from Ktel or Ronco or something...
it listens for someone clapping and turns tvs or lights on and off. "

Shibboleth says, "ahh..."

Shibboleth nods in understanding/

Leto says, "The nice thing about mushcode is that you can make objects
respond to commands, or just plain listen for things that people say
or do."

Leto says, "What I'm talking about is what's called a listen command."

Leto says, "Here's what it looks like:"

Leto says, "&clapon remote=^*claps on.:@emit The remote goes, "BEEP BEEP!""

Fenring hangs from the banners and croons, "Shake your groove thing, shave
your groove thing, yeah yeah, show them how we do it now!"

Leto says, "That's basically like a $command... but instead of a $, you
have a ^, which means that the remote is going to listen for something
that someone says or does instead of a command that someone types."

Leto says, "Now, if I do this: "

Duke Leto claps on

Leto says, "Nothing happens :)"

Leto says, "Because I forgot the period :)"

Duke Leto claps on.

Leto says, "No.. that wasn't it either... hold on :)"

Duke Leto feels like the chemistry teacher who can't get the bunsen burner
going :)

Loki grins.

Leto says, "Ahhh."

Duke Leto claps on

Duke Leto claps on.

The remote goes, "BEEP BEEP!"

Leto says, "There we go :)"

Shibboleth cheers

Loki claps on

Shibboleth claps on.

Leto says, "The problem was that I didn't tell the remote that I wanted it
to listen for things. To do that, you need ANOTHER FLAG, called
MONITOR."

Leto says, "I'll turn off the usage lock. Then yo ucan all clap on. :)"

Leto says, "Go ahead. "

Rudolfo covers his ears.

Takezo claps on.

The remote goes, "BEEP BEEP!"

Shibboleth claps on.

The remote goes, "BEEP BEEP!"

Leto says, "Funny thing was, I was about to warn you all that I had to do
that :)"

Loki smiles.

Leto says, "Okay... the only other thing I ought to say, is that the '*' in
the clapon command works a little differently from the * in the other
command."

Leto says, "In our previous command, the '*' passed a variable, which was
%0. In this case, it really only functioned as a wildcard, saying that
the remote should listen for <anything>claps on."

Duke Leto demonstrates:

Duke Leto does a back flip, combs his hair and eats a microwave burrito,
then after much pomp and circumstance, claps on.

The remote goes, "BEEP BEEP!"

Leto says, "And with that... I think I'll wrap up this seminar so Loki and
Paul will have something left to teach later in the week. "

Duke Leto steps out of the elevator.

Duke Leto has arrived.

Leto says, "Does anyone have any questions?"

Loki hmms.

Rudolfo raises his hand, again.

Loki raises her hand.

Shibboleth puzzles.

Duke Leto says, "AS you can see, puppets can be really helpful."

Leto says, "Rudolpho?"

there is a flash of lightning and the thunderclaps on.

The remote goes, "BEEP BEEP!"

Rudolfo says, "Exactly how do the wildcards in the two versions of the
command differ? Is it because of $ and ^?"

Leto says, "Right. The mush sees a ^ and says, This is what I am supposed
to look for to trigger the command. In that case, * is used as a
wildcard for matching purposes. "

Rudolfo says, "Anything triggering the command?"

Rudolfo says, "Excuse me, the wildcard applies specifically to the trigger
of the command?"

Leto says, "When it sees a $ it says, "whatever comes after the $ is the
command that people type in to trigger whatever is after the : in the
attribute, and it treats * as wildcard user input markers."

Rudolfo says, "Riiight..."

Leto says, "The wildcard in the case of the ^ applies to whatever the
remote is listening to in order to trigger whatever comes after the :"
in the same attribute."

Rudolfo says, "Got it, thank you very much for the lesson."

Leto says, "Just like we didn't need the * in the $ command, we didn't need
one in the ^ command. "

Leto says, "The * in the $ command allows the user to enter additional
information for the command to use. The * in the ^ command makes the
object listen to variable things... treating the * as a wildcard."

Leto says, "Okay... Loki?"

Loki says, "ok...'member when you were making the controller...you said it
was for 'security' thats why you couldnt do it on yerself.."

Loki doesnt get that.

Leto says, "Ahhh. Okay. That's a good question."

Loki beams:)

Leto says, "Now, with the remote in the middle of the room here... any of
you can type the beep command, or any command on the remote. Usually
though, the remote would be in my inventory, so nobody but me could
'get at it'."

Loki nods.

Leto says, "If the command was on me, anyone could activate it... and that
isn't a good thing."

Leto says, "Let me give you an example."

Leto says, "Back on Dune I, I was Tuek, the pseudo fremen smuggler. I used
to occasionally speak the fremen language, but I always hated typing
"speak fremen" before everything I wanted to say. So I created a
command, called '$sf *' that would take whatever I typed after 'sf'
and make me say it in fremen."

Leto says, "It worked great :) "

Leto says, "Then one day, I was roleplaying with Stilgar, the Fremen Naib,
and it just so happened, that Stilgar ALSO had a command, coded on
himself, called 'sf' that did exactly the same thing."

Leto says, "A coincidence... but not an unreasonable one. :)"

Loki nods..

Leto says, "So what happened was, I typed 'sf Greetings old friend', and
both Stilgar and I said, at exactly the same time, in Fremen,
"Greetings old friend"."

Leto says, "Then Stilgar typed something, and I said it at the same time he
did... "

Loki sees.

Leto says, "In that case.... it wasn't really a security problem... just
humourous :)"

Takezo raises hand

Leto says, "Now, if I had a command on me to make me punch someone whenever
anyone typed 'sf', and they had one on them to speak fremen... it
would have gotten ugly, fast :)"

Leto says, "Takezo?"

Takezo says, "similar problem on remote solved by use lock- what about on
you?"

Leto says, "Well, the idea is good in principle, but in the crazy world of
mushcode, it wouldn't work, because the @ulock of a player is used to
set page locks - so people can't page you."

Takezo says, "what about internal test on cmd?"

Leto says, "I know... it's confusing, because it's very different from what
a @ulock does on an object, but that's the way it is :)"

Takezo nods

Takezo says, "thank you."

Leto says, "Ahhh, so make the command check to see who the person who typed
the command was? Yes, you can do that... though generally, it's easier
to just put it on an object you carry - so you can avoid all the
@switches etc."

Takezo nods.

Leto says, "Okay... well... I'd like to thank you all for being so patient
with me as I fumbled about trying to figure out what to say. :)"

Takezo applauds the speaker

Leto says, "And if you have any other code questions, I'd urge you all to
go to the other code seminars... see events upcoming. You can also
always get help on the +code channel ,or just asking people."

Last Modified: Thu Mar 1 23:59:48 EST 2001
Created and Maintained by: Christian Gilmore
Comments and Questions: curator@fremen.org

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