From - Wed Sep 30 18:01:01 1998
From: Ragnar Fyri <ragnar.fyri@daf.no>
To: Fuzzy Logic Mailing List <fuzzylogic@mudservices.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 16:31:15 +0100
Subject: Some notes on morphing and stuff

*grumble grumble*
So it's going to be one of those days huh?
Sorry, but I just wrote this long article or whatever you'd call it, and when
I was finished and tried to save it the system crashed and all got lost.
And I guess I'm still a bit grumpy after last night when someone I've been
waiting to meet again for some time (no names mentioned [fur now at least],
but if he reads this he'll know who I'm talking about!) finally turned up
and then just started ignoring me when I wanted to talk about something
important. Hey, I can understand if someone chooses other friends and
activities over me, but at least they should have the decency to say so and
disconnect from the places that don't interest them right then. Then I can
get offline too (assuming there's nothing else to do there right then)
instead of just hanging around to see if someone's going to answer that 
important question in a minute... or two... or three...
I pay for connection time, you know... Maybe I should start charging people
who keep me waiting? :P And no, I'm not talking of lag victims here, but
people who get so bored with one place that they start multimucking. Don't
do it, folks. Sure, it looks like a good idea from your viewpoint but you
start responding more slowly and boring others so maybe _they_ start
multimucking and won't respond when you get back to them... I did it a bit
in the beginning, but the only times I run two sessions (and never more
than two) in parallell these days is when I am working on something that
requires a third person perspective - then I use a guest or an alt to look
at the character I'm working on. (It's easier than letting other players
look and tell me what they see!) Or some times when I get hit by a full
save on Furry. Haven't timed one of those in a while, but i think the last
one took about 13 minutes...

But anyway, I had some things to say about morphing. As I said I have
experimented with the different programs we have on FL, and have the
following advice to others who want to try the different ones:
Be very, very careful about mixing them. They work in different ways, and
data you wanted to keep may get completely wiped out. So the first thing
you should do is to use the global "Morph Hammer" to store your original
identity as a traditional morph. Then - and this is the important part -
do NOT store anything under that name again! This is your backup copy of
your original self, so do not let anything happen to it. Just to make sure,
you may want to copy it to another object. There is a boring but useful
command called cp that can do this. After morphing, @create an object (call
it "backup" for instance) then type "cp" followed by "me", "morph#/",
"backup" (or whatever you call edit) and "morph#" again (hit the up arrow
twice if your client has a command buffer). To get the data back if you
get messed up, just swap "me" and "backup".
This method can also be used to transfer a morph to another player or puppet,
just remember to change the ownership so the other player can access the
data. In the case of a puppet you can of course transfer the data directly
to it, and in both cases you must remember to let the target store a dummy
morph under the same name first - this is to get the morph list set up
correctly so the new user can use the morph afterwards.

Talking of how morphs and how they are stored, the global morph "hammer"
seems to have a little problems with erasing morphs. Like, it doesn't really
erase them, it just deletes them from the list of availabe morphs! If you
ex me=morph#/ after "deleting" you can verify that the subdirectory is still
there. Let's say you have a fennec morph you used to access with "morph
fennec". The data is stored in morph#/fennec#/, as you can see if you type
that after "ex me=".To get permanently rid of it (after "erasing" the morph
using the program) just type "@set me=morph#/fennec#:".

to return to the cp command fora moment, it can also be called as mv,in
which case it will move the specified data and erase the original. (Useful
if you want to give away a morph and get permanently rid of it for instance)
You are supposed to be able to move or copy data by typing just mv or cp on
one line followed by various prameters too, but that variant has not worked
for me yet. (the local version seems to be different from the one they have
on Furry, had on TF&F and probably will have on the new muck rising from its
ashes. Another difference is that 'our' version does not accept the *
wildcard, which would be useful for moving several pieces of data from one
root to another...)

-- 
We'll be right back after these messages.



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