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Announcements & Introductions / Re: Happy Birthday Okoa!
« Last post by Pulsen on March 24, 2023, 07:44:39 PM »Happy Birthday!!!
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Announcements & Introductions / Re: Happy Birthday Okoa!
« Last post by noirlax on March 24, 2023, 08:31:27 AM »Happy Birthday man!
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Bee Train Role Playing Game / Re: MAZE
« Last post by Kapenguin on March 23, 2023, 11:49:32 PM »"Oh, no you don't!!"
I charge in and put all my power into my next swings, aiming at every spot on its body that looks like it would be the most damaging: the eyes, the mouth, and/or the leg joints. I give it everything I have; for Tsukasa's sake, this thing has to go down for good.
I charge in and put all my power into my next swings, aiming at every spot on its body that looks like it would be the most damaging: the eyes, the mouth, and/or the leg joints. I give it everything I have; for Tsukasa's sake, this thing has to go down for good.
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Bee Train Role Playing Game / Re: MAZE
« Last post by Pulsen on March 22, 2023, 07:30:30 AM »Though a bit surprised at the transformation I suspected that she wasn't human. Nonhuman or not she can still bleed and take hits I just have to go all out; no holding back. I have to use every trick in the book if want to beat her even if I have to kill her to win. It does give me the chance to do some parkour. I summon what inner strength I can muster. Now let's see if you have a glass jaw.
"Pop! Pop! Pop!" I say mostly to psyche myself up.
I begin my attacks going for pressure points while trying to avoid those tentacles.
"Pop! Pop! Pop!" I say mostly to psyche myself up.
I begin my attacks going for pressure points while trying to avoid those tentacles.
5
Bee Train Role Playing Game / Re: MAZE
« Last post by MartAnimE on March 22, 2023, 01:22:37 AM »[Elenore]
The other Elenore raises an eyebrow, but she lets you do as you please. She prepares herself for hand to hand combat, but doesn't bother copying your gear.
She focus on defending, assessing your strength and speed. You seem to completely dominate the fight for the first few minutes, but then she counters.
You feel immediately overwhelmed by the strength of her blows. You manage to dodge and block, but you realize she might be stronger than you.
She hits you eventually, square in the chin. You taste blood in your mouth. But you can deal with a little pain. You keep going.
The entity has been able to easily mimic and master your techniques, but you still have the most fighting experience. You know you can use this to your advantage.
You get a bit creative and try deviating from your formal style, following your senses and your natural instincts. Your movements become much harder to predict.
The impostor's reaction time gets slower with each new blow. You keep increasing your speed. You feel you're gaining in on her. You manage to land a hit.
The creature stumbles back, surprised. She looks at you in disbelief but also a hint of admiration.
She chuckles and wipes the purple blood off the corner of her mouth. "Not bad.", she utters with some amusement.
"I admit, if I had to keep fighting you like a human you might have won.", she teases, "Unfortunately for you, I don't have to."
As she says this, several purple tentacles emerge from her back. The monster has assumed her true form. She's not holding back anymore.
The other Elenore raises an eyebrow, but she lets you do as you please. She prepares herself for hand to hand combat, but doesn't bother copying your gear.
She focus on defending, assessing your strength and speed. You seem to completely dominate the fight for the first few minutes, but then she counters.
You feel immediately overwhelmed by the strength of her blows. You manage to dodge and block, but you realize she might be stronger than you.
She hits you eventually, square in the chin. You taste blood in your mouth. But you can deal with a little pain. You keep going.
The entity has been able to easily mimic and master your techniques, but you still have the most fighting experience. You know you can use this to your advantage.
You get a bit creative and try deviating from your formal style, following your senses and your natural instincts. Your movements become much harder to predict.
The impostor's reaction time gets slower with each new blow. You keep increasing your speed. You feel you're gaining in on her. You manage to land a hit.
The creature stumbles back, surprised. She looks at you in disbelief but also a hint of admiration.
She chuckles and wipes the purple blood off the corner of her mouth. "Not bad.", she utters with some amusement.
"I admit, if I had to keep fighting you like a human you might have won.", she teases, "Unfortunately for you, I don't have to."
As she says this, several purple tentacles emerge from her back. The monster has assumed her true form. She's not holding back anymore.
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Bee Train Role Playing Game / Re: MAZE
« Last post by Pulsen on March 16, 2023, 11:13:04 PM »I'm impressed with myself. I smile as she matches my moves but now our weapons are broken. "One moment please." I go where I hid a pair of actual hand wraps and put them on. Then I center myself and imagine wearing my Cobolt Soul Monk cosplay as I go to the kitchen. There I turn the cd play and play this song before going out to what's left of the living room.
"Time for some dope monk shit! Pop Pop Pop!" I attack with a flurry of blows.
"Time for some dope monk shit! Pop Pop Pop!" I attack with a flurry of blows.
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Bee Train Role Playing Game / Re: MAZE
« Last post by MartAnimE on March 16, 2023, 10:59:34 PM »[Elenore]
The impostor eyes you with contempt, but she seems impressed with your resourcefulness and tenacity. "Very well, if you insist.", she gets up slowly, trying not to wake Margaret.
Your surroundings change into a copy of Margaret's bedroom. The entity lays Margaret on the bed. "She'll be safe and undisturbed here." In a blink you're back in the living room.
The other Elenore studies your pose carefully. After a few seconds of intense staring she materializes a copy of your bo staff and launches a furious attack with her own weapon.
You quickly realize this space is unfit for fighting. Amidst the chaos, most of the furniture gets thrown across the room and destroyed. Soon, the room is completely trashed.
Her skills seem to mirror your own, you block each attack with great effort, waiting for a chance to counter attack, but as you do, you find she's just as competent at defending.
You go back and forth, relentlessly attacking and defending, never once landing a hit, until one clash breaks both your weapons. The impostor smirks, discarding her broken staff.
"What else you got?", the entity taunts you. She didn't even break a sweat, but you're not intimidated. It was a good warm up but you're nowhere near tired. She awaits your move.
The impostor eyes you with contempt, but she seems impressed with your resourcefulness and tenacity. "Very well, if you insist.", she gets up slowly, trying not to wake Margaret.
Your surroundings change into a copy of Margaret's bedroom. The entity lays Margaret on the bed. "She'll be safe and undisturbed here." In a blink you're back in the living room.
The other Elenore studies your pose carefully. After a few seconds of intense staring she materializes a copy of your bo staff and launches a furious attack with her own weapon.
You quickly realize this space is unfit for fighting. Amidst the chaos, most of the furniture gets thrown across the room and destroyed. Soon, the room is completely trashed.
Her skills seem to mirror your own, you block each attack with great effort, waiting for a chance to counter attack, but as you do, you find she's just as competent at defending.
You go back and forth, relentlessly attacking and defending, never once landing a hit, until one clash breaks both your weapons. The impostor smirks, discarding her broken staff.
"What else you got?", the entity taunts you. She didn't even break a sweat, but you're not intimidated. It was a good warm up but you're nowhere near tired. She awaits your move.
8
Announcements & Introductions / Re: The time has come...
« Last post by Fellini 8.5 on March 15, 2023, 04:20:09 PM »Wow I'm as lazy and non-responsive as ever. Sorry 'bout that.
Yeah I will transfer the domain to you. It's about to expire in May, but I see I have a free domain renewal credit I haven't used, so I'll up it for another year for you before transferring. It looks like all I'll need to do is generate an authorization code, but I'll research a bit to make sure it doesn't reset the expiration date.
In terms of issues, maintenance activities, and the like... I'm extremely lazy and haven't done much of anything in years. Every now and then the admin portal for this SMF install will indicate that I need to upgrade, though I rarely check on it. Usually I can tell something needs upgrading if I suddenly have a lot of new user requests coming in to soldats@beetrainfan.org. There's also a "clean up" script that can be run as well, hasn't broken anything.
Currently hosted on Dreamhost. Which is ancient and not the cheapest, though they have free SSL certificates which isn't common. They use their own management control panel instead of the common CPanel elsewhere, but it's not terrible. For backups, it has a full "site backup" function that grabs the contents off the file system, the full DB, and probably some other misc stuff. The wiki was breached a long time ago (had to change all the DB passwords), and the gallery didn't survive a php upgrade, but both could be restored/recreated with some effort. Beyond that I do squat for maintenance. It might be worth porting the whole thing to a newer/different platform, as SMF is a bit long in the tooth, as they say.
Note: Dreamhost has historically been a bit "libertarian" and may or may not be still hosting some of the less savory bits of the web; I've been too lazy to check but I remember seeing a mention or three over the years. If I weren't so lazy, I'd probably switch away 'cus it's likely not compatible with our users' ethics at all. Then again, they went all corporate some years ago so all that crap might have been chased away already.
We've been on the "Shared Unlimited" plan, which oddly is currently on sale if you commit to 1 year @ $3 USD/month -- https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/ (change the monthly/1 yr/3 yr to see the differences. Advantage is that the email server is free and you don't have to worry about bandwidth spikes or storage - until you do... You also get a free domain, and a bunch of "one-click" installs if you want to futz with Wordpress or something. And can manage as many domains and subdomains as you want -- gotta buy the domains though (not subs, those are free). The domain tools are pretty flexible, and I've been able to do anything I needed with the MX & other records and such for managing my other 2 domains.
But, "since they know how to maintain us" ? Nah, they DGAF. They'll contact you if they spot a breach, or if you're abusing the "free" storage and bandwidth. I haven't used much of the tech support but it's probably not as responsive as they were back when they were smaller and more laid-back.
We can do a walkthrough q&a live at some point. I'm not quite up on the discord stuff but whatever you'd prefer. No big hurry yet.
A lot of other "shared hosting" is pretty similar, and some may be cheaper. Basically it'll need to support PHP and MySql and you'll want to compare the features to see if there are any other add-on charges for stuff I take for granted. Feel free to send me links to anything you want my opinion on, but I've been out of the market for these sorts of things for a long time, and have had my head in the "cloud" lately, as it were.
Since I keep forgetting to check back here, ping me on the facespace if you have a question or made a choice.
Yeah I will transfer the domain to you. It's about to expire in May, but I see I have a free domain renewal credit I haven't used, so I'll up it for another year for you before transferring. It looks like all I'll need to do is generate an authorization code, but I'll research a bit to make sure it doesn't reset the expiration date.
In terms of issues, maintenance activities, and the like... I'm extremely lazy and haven't done much of anything in years. Every now and then the admin portal for this SMF install will indicate that I need to upgrade, though I rarely check on it. Usually I can tell something needs upgrading if I suddenly have a lot of new user requests coming in to soldats@beetrainfan.org. There's also a "clean up" script that can be run as well, hasn't broken anything.
Currently hosted on Dreamhost. Which is ancient and not the cheapest, though they have free SSL certificates which isn't common. They use their own management control panel instead of the common CPanel elsewhere, but it's not terrible. For backups, it has a full "site backup" function that grabs the contents off the file system, the full DB, and probably some other misc stuff. The wiki was breached a long time ago (had to change all the DB passwords), and the gallery didn't survive a php upgrade, but both could be restored/recreated with some effort. Beyond that I do squat for maintenance. It might be worth porting the whole thing to a newer/different platform, as SMF is a bit long in the tooth, as they say.
Note: Dreamhost has historically been a bit "libertarian" and may or may not be still hosting some of the less savory bits of the web; I've been too lazy to check but I remember seeing a mention or three over the years. If I weren't so lazy, I'd probably switch away 'cus it's likely not compatible with our users' ethics at all. Then again, they went all corporate some years ago so all that crap might have been chased away already.
We've been on the "Shared Unlimited" plan, which oddly is currently on sale if you commit to 1 year @ $3 USD/month -- https://www.dreamhost.com/hosting/shared/ (change the monthly/1 yr/3 yr to see the differences. Advantage is that the email server is free and you don't have to worry about bandwidth spikes or storage - until you do... You also get a free domain, and a bunch of "one-click" installs if you want to futz with Wordpress or something. And can manage as many domains and subdomains as you want -- gotta buy the domains though (not subs, those are free). The domain tools are pretty flexible, and I've been able to do anything I needed with the MX & other records and such for managing my other 2 domains.
But, "since they know how to maintain us" ? Nah, they DGAF. They'll contact you if they spot a breach, or if you're abusing the "free" storage and bandwidth. I haven't used much of the tech support but it's probably not as responsive as they were back when they were smaller and more laid-back.
We can do a walkthrough q&a live at some point. I'm not quite up on the discord stuff but whatever you'd prefer. No big hurry yet.
A lot of other "shared hosting" is pretty similar, and some may be cheaper. Basically it'll need to support PHP and MySql and you'll want to compare the features to see if there are any other add-on charges for stuff I take for granted. Feel free to send me links to anything you want my opinion on, but I've been out of the market for these sorts of things for a long time, and have had my head in the "cloud" lately, as it were.
Since I keep forgetting to check back here, ping me on the facespace if you have a question or made a choice.
9
Bee Train Role Playing Game / Re: MAZE
« Last post by Pulsen on March 07, 2023, 07:31:56 AM »[Elenore]
You are not deterred, however. As you bravely move forward, you feel your surroundings slowly changing. You glance around you, trying to make sense of it.
The maze has been transformed, at least this portion of the maze. You find yourself back at your home in Nafrece. In your living room, specifically.
The entity senses your approach and sighs, deeply frustrated, but not exactly surprised. "Why did you come back?", she smiles condescendingly, as she continues to pet Margaret.
"I wasn't lying, you know? You really were so close to the exit...", she tries to entice you, "You don't have to worry about Margaret anymore. I'll take good care of her, I promise you."
"This home I created for her is a flawless reproduction. She'll be very happy here. And, in time, she'll even grow to love me, just like she loves you. She won't be able to tell the difference."
"You must hate me, but I'm thankful I met you!", she continues her monologue, "When I first came to, I was but the product of Doon's fear, existing only to bring terror and pain. How very sad."
"Meeting you, I became aware of my true self, my true purpose. Your love for Margaret was just a concept to me, but I didn't care, I was glad to assist you. It was enough for me."
"But then, you actually brought her to me. You let me see her. You let me peer into her heart. I was so happy! I knew then, I could no longer be without her. I loved her!"
"And that's why...", she seems to conclude, "I can't let you take her. She's mine.", she states matter-of-factly, "She asked me not to hurt you, so please, just go home."
"Each time one of you sees me I grow stronger. I'm the most powerful entity in this maze right now, thanks to Doon, and you, and Margaret. You really don't want to fight me."
"Flawless you say." I smile as I grab a bo staff I have hidden in case of intruders. I know I have other martial arts weapons hidden in our home so if this imposter recreated my home perfectly they should be where I put them.
"I will take her back to our real home and you will not stop me. You see, my fear was I would never get to see Margaret again but, that already came to pass when I died. I don't fear death nor not seeing her again because unlike you I will see her again one way or another." I get into a fighting stance ready to block and attack.
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Bee Train Role Playing Game / Re: MAZE
« Last post by MartAnimE on March 07, 2023, 02:44:41 AM »[Mimiru]
The spider ferociously attacks, its fangs menacingly threatening to chomp your head off. If that were to happen, at least you'd have a quick death. Tsukasa might not be so lucky.
Thanks to your quick thinking, and your resolve to protect your friend, you are able to summon the sword right on time to intercept the bite. The creature screeches in pain.
The monster is badly injured from biting unto your sharp sword. Purple blood oozes from its wounds, one of its fangs got half severed and has now completely fallen off.
Unable to keep fighting, the spider starts retreating. You have already won, but it might be unwise to let the spider leave. It could come back, stronger than before.
The spider ferociously attacks, its fangs menacingly threatening to chomp your head off. If that were to happen, at least you'd have a quick death. Tsukasa might not be so lucky.
Thanks to your quick thinking, and your resolve to protect your friend, you are able to summon the sword right on time to intercept the bite. The creature screeches in pain.
The monster is badly injured from biting unto your sharp sword. Purple blood oozes from its wounds, one of its fangs got half severed and has now completely fallen off.
Unable to keep fighting, the spider starts retreating. You have already won, but it might be unwise to let the spider leave. It could come back, stronger than before.