0.18 scene edge case bug and a few observations

[Altair]

@Faraday thanks for all the work on Ares so far. Just upgraded to 0.18 on my sandbox and we are testing it out, and it is amazing! 0.18 actually fixed a few things I had been recording before I could even post about them.

Scene Bug

• Today we observed, and I was able to reproduce, a situation where someone creates a new character from the MUSH login, uses the information to login to the web portal, goes through chargen, is approved, and then creates a new scene via the web portal, all within one session (without logging out). In this situation we saw that the scene we created wouldn’t have the input box on the bottom, nor any of the buttons to manage the scene or add comments.
  It’s fixed by logging out of the web portal and logging back in, so I assume it is an edge case related specifically to the continuous session that includes a period while the character was unapproved.

Screenshot showing nothing before the footer:

UX Stuff

• I’ve now had a couple people not realize that they need to hit a Submit button in order to submit their app. I’m not sure what about the process (or perhaps MUSHing culture) suggests to them that they should just wait without hitting any kind of +apply thing, but perhaps the Submit button for applying could be made more prominent on the web portal.

On the MUSH:

• It doesn’t seem possible/is not obvious how to delete hooks via the on-game cg. Same with traits, though I know that is just a plugin.

On the web portal:

• Can set birthdate mm/dd/yyyy OR age on MUSH, but can only set age on site. I couldn’t find a similar ‘birthdate mm/dd/yyyy’ functionality on the portal.

• After approval: Attempts to save edits to character page fail silently if any required field on ANY tab is left blank.
  The error is visible only in console:
  ares-webportal-88c0dc3f8dc333750fe648aad255f363.js:101 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of null at ares-webportal-88c0dc3f8dc333750fe648aad255f363.js:101 at Array.filter (<anonymous>) at o.save (ares-webportal-88c0dc3f8dc333750fe648aad255f363.js:101) at o.send (vendor-37ee8504bb665beb137c0f8bf8668a35.js:3321) at vendor-37ee8504bb665beb137c0f8bf8668a35.js:2296 at e.flaggedInstrument (vendor-37ee8504bb665beb137c0f8bf8668a35.js:2726) at vendor-37ee8504bb665beb137c0f8bf8668a35.js:2296 at e.run (vendor-37ee8504bb665beb137c0f8bf8668a35.js:1738) at it (vendor-37ee8504bb665beb137c0f8bf8668a35.js:2744) at e.handler (vendor-37ee8504bb665beb137c0f8bf8668a35.js:2295)

Thanks for reading my blabs and for all your hard work.

[Altair]

Some additional things:

Editing a pose in an active scene via the web portal seems to leave a ghost copy of the edited pose (XYZ has edited their pose:, in grey italics) in the log, for every single time you edit it. I edited one of my poses and it spawned one grey-italics copy of the pose, edited it again and it spawned another copy. Though perhaps this is intended?

Attempting to scene/join on the MUSH to use scene/undo on the pose (it happened to be my last one in the log) yielded an error:

%% Sorry! The code lost its mind while executing a command. Not your fault.
Please send this error information to the admins and tell them what you were doing at the time:
Description: “scene/undo”
Error: “undefined local variable or method `cene’ for #AresMUSH::Scenes::SceneUndoCmd:0x0000000676a0d8
Did you mean? scene”

[Faraday]

Thanks for the feedback!

an edge case related specifically to the continuous session that includes a period while the character was unapproved.

Your login roles are locked in until you reload the page, log out, or your session expires. This is pretty standard web practice. You wouldn’t want to do the login exchange on every single query; it would be inefficient. The back-end has security in case someone loses a role in mid-session, but there’s nothing on the UI side to get notified if they get a role mid-session. They’ll just have to reload the page or log out/log in.

You must have a pretty fast app staff if the person can go through CG, get approved, and start a scene all before their token expires

perhaps the Submit button for applying could be made more prominent on the web portal.

Do you have any suggestions as to how? I mean … it’s already a big green button that you get to from a big green panel. I’m open to ideas but it seems pretty prominent…

It doesn’t seem possible/is not obvious how to delete hooks via the on-game cg. Same with traits, though I know that is just a plugin.

Hooks are set as a single block of text, so there are no add/delete commands. Is there some way I can make the help file more clear?

Traits… yeah, that help file is bad. Will fix.

I couldn’t find a similar ‘birthdate mm/dd/yyyy’ functionality on the portal.

Yeah it’s not there. Is that a big deal? I was just lazy

Attempts to save edits to character page fail silently if any required field on ANY tab is left blank.

Sounds like a bug. I’ll take a look.

Editing a pose in an active scene via the web portal seems to leave a ghost copy of the edited pose … Though perhaps this is intended?

Yes. Because without that - how would you know that somebody had fixed their pose? It’s the web equivalent of the in-game message: “So-and-so has edited their pose…”

Attempting to scene/join on the MUSH to use scene/undo on the pose

Sounds like a bug! Will check it out.

[Altair]

@Faraday

Your login roles are locked in until you reload the page, log out, or your session expires. This is pretty standard web practice. You wouldn’t want to do the login exchange on every single query; it would be inefficient. The back-end has security in case someone loses a role in mid-session, but there’s nothing on the UI side to get notified if they get a role mid-session. They’ll just have to reload the page or log out/log in.

You must have a pretty fast app staff if the person can go through CG, get approved, and start a scene all before their token expires

True! I think I was thinking in pretty generalized terms of other types of logged-in portals when I was clicking around, though if I think about it those cases do indeed involve hard page reloads when someone transitions.

The secret is also that it’s just a sandbox, so the CG is really just token.

@Faraday

Do you have any suggestions as to how? I mean … it’s already a big green button that you get to from a big green panel. I’m open to ideas but it seems pretty prominent…

Hmm. The best I can think of is ‘Review and Submit’ or some similar verbiage on the big green Review button, or some phrasing nearby to that effect, though we can certainly just see how much of this is just ‘users being confused about a new system!’

@Faraday

Hooks are set as a single block of text, so there are no add/delete commands. Is there some way I can make the help file more clear?

I think the scenario I’m thinking of is when hooks are not a required field. They aren’t in my current setup, so if I had set something whether purposefully or on accident, and then later wanted to remove it and just keep hooks blank for the time being, there would be no delete.

@Faraday

Yeah it’s not there. Is that a big deal? I was just lazy

I imagine it’s not since it can be set on the MUSH. It did take me a while to figure out that was how to specifically set a certain birthday instead of getting the randomly-assigned one from using ‘age,’ though that’s likely because I approached chargen from the webportal end first.

@Faraday

Yes. Because without that - how would you know that somebody had fixed their pose? It’s the web equivalent of the in-game message: “So-and-so has edited their pose…”

Hmmm, I might need to tell serial pose editors to just wait to make all their 500 edits until the scene is actually finished and shared, then, because they will spam themselves to death!

[Faraday]

The best I can think of is ‘Review and Submit’ or some similar verbiage on the big green Review button

I can make it say Review/Submit if you think that’ll help, sure.

later wanted to remove it and just keep hooks blank for the time being, there would be no delete.

Ah - then you just do ‘hooks/set’ with nothing after it. That’s a pretty standard thing on Ares commands. Blank clears it. I’ll make a note of that in the help file.

I might need to tell serial pose editors to just wait to make all their 500 edits until the scene is actually finished and shared, then, because they will spam themselves to death!

Yeah in my experience that tends to be pretty self-correcting on the MUSH side as well, because folks don’t want to be needlessly spamming other people with their edits. There’s a silent version on the MUSH side for teensy typos - I could make a silent version on the web side as well.

[Altair]

Thanks!

A silent version for the web, to account for small typos, would be great! I’m actually okay with self-correcting for the most part, when people are correcting their poses all the time it’s a bit strange to me, but sometimes you just spelled something silly wrong.

[Tat]

@Faraday

I couldn’t find a similar ‘birthdate mm/dd/yyyy’ functionality on the portal.

Yeah it’s not there. Is that a big deal? I was just lazy

It’s not a BIG deal, but it’d be pretty nice to have it on web side. We’re not planning to do any CG via the MUSH, and uh. I know a lot of people who are pretty specific on their birthdays. They can always correct it MUSH-side, but it does kind of defeat the purpose of being able to put all CG on the web portal.

[Faraday]

Okaaaaay (sound of mock arm-twisting )… I can put it on the web CG.

[Faraday]

@Altair

After approval: Attempts to save edits to character page fail silently if any required field on ANY tab is left blank.
The error is visible only in console:
ares-webportal-88c0dc3f8dc333750fe648aad255f363.js:101 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of null at ares-webportal-

The only way I can reproduce this one is if you add a blank/new profile or relationship field but then don’t fill it in. If you’re just editing existing fields it doesn’t seem to occur. Can you confirm that - or let me know if there’s some other way you get this to happen?

[Altair]

@Faraday It is an oddly particular behavior. The steps where it happens are:

I go onto my character page. I hit Edit, and then go to Profile, and add a new Profile.
I don’t give the Profile a title, fill in text in the actual box for content, and then I try to hit Save. Either while still on the Profile tab, or while on other tabs.

There is no error in this situation.

If I do type some text into the Profile title box, but then erase the text and try to save with an empty title box, then I do get the ‘Profile Names cannot be blank’ error.

[Faraday]

OK - yeah that’s what I was referring to. Thanks for confirming! Will have a fix for that in the next patch.

[Altair]

Something else I noticed that doesn’t really break/impede anything in particular, but which does happen – I have FS3 disabled on my sandbox since it’s just a sandbox, but app/review does still seem to check for something related to FS3 when used (probably sheet?). There is a ‘%% Huh? Unrecognized command.’ message at the very end of the output for app/review.

[Faraday]

Oh yeah… app/review is actually just a shortcut for other commands … app, profile, bg and sheet. I kind of assumed that any game with approvals would have some character sheet, even if it wasn’t FS3’s.

If you’re just using the basic traits plugin without any other skills system, I’d suggest creating a shortcut in the traits plugin to alias “sheet” to “traits”. I think a lot of people expect a ‘sheet’ command to view their stuff.

[Altair]

Ah okay, so it is the sheet command! Yeah, I will figure out a way around that, it’s not a big detriment.

[Faraday]

Easiest way is to add a shortcut to custom.yml:

---
custom:
  shortcuts:
      sheet: traits

[Altair]

Sounds good, thanks!