2017-05-08 03:26:32

I played this game for quite some time and enjoyed it immensely, although I never got in to the deeper game in terms of crafting and min-maxing my character.

I'm going to be extremely frank with you. If this game is getting on your nerves in the single player, then don't bother with the mud itself. It is a safe space for people to be able to rp adult situations in a collaborative environment that is judgment free. If you have trouble keeping your own preconceived notions to yourself, then don't even bother trying the multiplayer game.

Mechanically, you are able to play without the map. If you change the preference, you are able to get a list of places available on the map and go directly to the location.

Not every game is for every person. I have played on these types of games for a long time. If you believe that this isn't going to be for you due to its content, then pass this one by.

2017-05-08 07:05:37

@zaiko as people have said you need  if interpreter to play the game. Please! go and read the db entry before starting so you know what your getting into, you will also find links to if interpreters there.

@Niclas, if you check the blog or the wiki you'll see the single  game updates.
I don't believe the game will give you any notifications or similar about when it's updated since it has no online capability,  you can always go and check the blog and download a fresh copy of the story file with the updates.

@danC I'd forgotten there was  addon for Winglulx and NvdaI'll have to give it a try since I will admit something to have Nvda automatically read incoming text would be nice.

@mektastic, good that you don't need the map in the mud.
Any ideas what Arnold said earlier about combat spam?
I gathered from the wiki that participating in rp was not required in the mud, though actually it seemed to have far more by way of actual character creation for rp purposes than most rp heavy muds I've seen, including use of rp related stats which could also be used in jobs and none rp situations such as doing missions, actually I'll say that a lot of the custom generation content like pregenerated missions, jobs  and encounters and such did look rather attractive from a purely mechanical perspective as an rpg game.

I suspect like the single player game if I could get heavily into the game itself I could take the graphic stuff with it, though I'd want to check first that there was enough straight off activities and combat to keep busy with.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-08 17:10:35

I see a lot of people who want to try out the multiplayer but are afraid of the extreme content it can provide. You can turn off the automated givings of this with merits right out of the gate. Take 'Self Control' and 'Graceful in Defeat' and you will NEVER see a post-combat message. Enjoy your suddenly far less extreme game.

2017-05-08 18:38:36

eHi Dms silver and welcome to the forum.
Good to know about the perks, I'll add details of them to the Flexible survival database entry.


I was also wondering whether the mud had a way of reducing the amount of combat text, since as  Arnold 18 said, lots of text in a real time situation can make life difficult with a screen reader.
I probably ought to give the mud a complete go myself, particularly since while I'm not the biggest rp fan, ---- I'm not against it but it's not my primary interest, but some of the missions, quests, jobs, crafting  and massive customization in the game look really awesome in rpg terms.

I also wonder in terms of the single player game what has happened to the "givein" command since I would rather have liked to see more the mutation endings.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-08 18:40:43

I'll have to hack at the text output. We have a screenreader mode you can turn on. I could perhaps look for that?

2017-05-08 18:50:22

Well screen reader mode in muds usually means firstly removing ascii, maps and decorations, and secondly making long messages a wee bit shorter.

Often it's a case of giving people some tools to play with to shorten things and seeing what works, though having never played a game with the type of combat that flexible survival has I can't say for certain.
We have a couple of players who are familiar with the mud,  who might be able to come up with suggestions for possible filters other output changes since generally accessibility is more a matter of looking at something and seeing what needs a bit of modifying than making hard and fast rules, especially with a game that functions in such a unique way.

Unfortunately I won't be able to try the mud completely myself until next Thursday at the earliest since I'm going to visit my father for his 70th birthday.

Btw, on another topic, I was wondering about the single player games, firstly why the "givein" command did not work in the single  flexible survival, and secondly if there was any news about Flexible societies, ---- indeed that looked a great idea for a game (accept I didn't seem to be able to assign any researchers without first researching researchers).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-08 19:12:29

Flexible Society never drew that heavy of an interest, and since this is a paid gig, we go where people are willing to put a few dollars. So it got quietly set aside. You can get research points without researchers, it's just slow and awkward.

2017-05-08 23:42:03

Ah fare enough. Sad about flexible society, it struck me as a really nice idea for a game.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-25 00:54:59

I've now tried the single player game.
I have a question about this version, how do I find out my creds at a glance? I seem to only be able to look at creds after a fight. They don't show up in inventoryor score, and I'd love a way of even jus typing something like creds to just make it say "you have <number of cred< freecreds."
Can something like this be added?

2017-05-25 01:39:19

It says right at the top in the status bar.

2017-05-25 07:09:41

Unfortunately, checking status bar info is a miner pest with a screen reader since it means leaving the bit of the screen where actual game text is and reading the top then finding your way back to the bottom again.

I do believe number of credits is shown with the status command along with player stats, though I could be remembering incorrectly on that one.

Actually, I never seemed to be able  to rack up enough credits to buy anything for some reason, since I think you lose some credits if you lose a fight and I kept on losing fights which was not good.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-25 07:11:54

Focus on dexterity, take it as your starting stat, and always raise it. Go for martial arts, don't wield a weapon. Enjoy winning more often. If you don't yet have martial arts, go ahead and use that knife.

2017-05-25 15:08:07

Hi,
Is there a status command? I someimes get I don't recognize the command or something similar. If I type x me, after my description it shows my stats but it does not show creds for some reason. I'm using release 57, if that helps.

2017-05-25 16:19:51

Apologies, Aaron, I was  thinking of the "stats" command when I said status.
this gives most information, but not your amount of credits, though if amount of credits could perhaps be added to stats in a future update that would be very helpful.

See The commands page on The Flexible survival wiki for some information.

As to dexterity for improving fight chances I'll have to try that.
I've not yet seen where to get the martial arts feat, but then again I haven't explored all locations in the game which might also explain why I'm losing more fights.

I still need to check out the mud as well, particularly as regards combat commands and screen readers, though I will say the crafting, jobs, exploring and quests do  very much my type of thing.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-25 16:29:15

New version uploaded.

2017-05-25 17:55:36

@dms.silver: can I just download the story file from the website again, or will I have to go to the github repo to get this version? Also, I recently discovered the flexible survival blog which is really cool, will there be a post abotut his new version on blog?

2017-05-26 03:03:02

What's particularly funny is that when I first started the MUD, my first encounter was not combat, it was sex. I was exploring the starting faction area and found this girl, well, hirm, named Alex. I'm not sure if the encounter with her, or should I say hir,  gives any benefits mechanically, however I did get a nice badge for getting a nice wall of text describing what I'd amount to a "normal" sex scene compared to some of the stuff I see in singleplayer.

Is there a wiki page containing how I might get some other badges?

Also, why are there "web only" missions? The web interface is pretty inaccessible with screen readers, and someone advised that I set up a bot rutine on the website. I couldn't figure it out.

2017-05-26 05:36:12

You can run web missions from in the game, because we love you. See web #help.

2017-05-26 16:55:39

aaron wrote:

@dms.silver: can I just download the story file from the website again, or will I have to go to the github repo to get this version? Also, I recently discovered the flexible survival blog which is really cool, will there be a post abotut his new version on blog?

I upload each version right up where people can get it easily. The github is only needed by programmers.

2017-05-26 17:10:09

@Dms.Silver, thanks for the fix to the stats command to show freecreds.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-05-27 04:36:18

What's the best way to play this game? As in, what is the best intreperater to use?

2017-05-27 11:03:41

@Orin, I am not sure about "best" I use Winglulks myself and it's no trouble to read the output window with nvda or Supernova.

Winglulks does have a mode which directly outputs incoming text to Sapi which saves need to actually read the window, but since there is no speech  or ability to read punctuation (which is necessary for some of the in game menus like the help system), I prefer to just read the window manually myself.

I've also heard people mention filfre is good with jaws, though I always found the screen a little more cluttered with that one myself, still feel free to check the db entries for Filfre and Winglulks for more info.

Btw,  whichever interpreter you use, remember that you need to rename the file extention from .html to .blorb in order to get it to run.

I did notice on the downloads page for Flexible survival a full installation version which installed the game plus an interpreter, though for some reason or other that version didn't have any screen reader friendly text at all.

Of course, if you want to miss all of this entirely you could try the "playin browser" version, though for me those pages loaded very slowly so it was more convenient to run the file directly in Winglulks, plus of course, I'm used to Win Glulks for running games like Kerkerkruip.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-06-10 01:53:19

Hi,
Does anyone know where I can get the new version that shows freecreds? I have just re-downloaded it from the flexible survival website but the stats command still doesn't show freecreds.
The URL I used was:
http://www.scworlds.net/FI/Flexible%20Survival.gblorb
But in my stats, there's no freecreds, and as a screen reader user it's annoying to keep scrolling up to the status bar to see them.

2017-06-10 02:35:28

Have you tried to use the installer and then using the gblorb it comes with?

2017-06-10 03:49:17

Aah, I haven't tried that. I usually just download the story file directly as it's an if game. If the installer is more up to date then I may try it, however on the database entry Dark seems to think the installer version isn't as friendly, so I think most blind folks just download the story file.
IN my latest game session, I noticed the status bar acting up a lot, the screen reader kept on repeating things in the game even though they weren't seemingly on screen, it wasn't reading properly. I made sure the window was maximized. which is why sometimes status bars are a nightmare, which now makes me realize something, and I'm sorry to sound like a pain in the neck here.
I'm wondering, please could the evac also be added to the status command for the next upload? The only issue I can see with all these status additions is, well I don't want to end up annoying sighted players. I am not really too sure what to suggest. Could my WinGlulkse version possibly be out of date?
edit: tried installing the latest glulkse version, it doesn't seem to make a difference to the status bar issues. This really means that the status command is the best way to get game status for screen reader users. I'm wondering if some more commands might need to be added. For instance, status full could show what the status bar shows, including location, time, score, evac, hunger etc.  Just status could show stats, including freecreds, and then maybe something like status world could just show the time, location, score and evac.
The alternate way would require a bit more work, and that's separate commands for the greaterthan prompt. hp, lobedo, xp, hunger, evac, time, etc. But could be a quick way to check something, but there should be a command that shows all of it as well.
I understand that the second way would be more work, although I'd be willing to donate, as long as the direct story file also got updated.