The rest of this week is going to keep me busy tangling with the fools and sc bags of the Real World, to my great agitation and disappointment. I will log on for early morning (my time) games on Thu and on Sat, but I'm not keen on bots. Friday may be totally wiped out. No promises, but it'd be nice to get a good run of four-tops going one of these next three (3) evenings if possible. Hope to see a bunch of you playing!

This'll be my last avails post, as the "trend" hasn't taken off, and so it doesn't seem to be worth continuing. If, in the future, I'm part of a group that wants to set up a game, of course we'll post details here in the event we need more players. I guess the extremely low engagements with these posts are grim evidence of the way that social media (perspiration) has destroyed forum culture (information). Sad!

Semper Games

Early (before noon my time) and late (after 2 P.M. my time) but all subject to change depending on building maintenance issues where I live/work. We'll see.

Unable to play in the morning (West Coast Best Coast US&A time) and might not be free until later in the afternoon. This last couple weeks have been a real downer and a waste of time, so might just sit things out for a while.

Busy weekend. Might try to play in the early morning games (my time -- 7.A.M West Coast Best Coast U.S. and A. time) each day, but not sure about anything thereafter on Sat. No dice on Sun after 9 A.M. my time, though late late night shift is a possibility.

As things stand, given the motherf ings I've been dealt by this stupid game all week, the juice probably ain't worth the squeeze -- it so rarely is on weekend mornings -- so we'll see what's doing.

Sorry to be late with my avails:

Today (Fri 28 Jan 2022) I expect to be on from 5 P.M. Elvis Time through closing.

Week end bay bee!

And maybe (MAYBE) I'll check in for the early Sat morning start tomorrow (~9 A.M. Elvis), ditto for Sunday.

Your opinion is noted, and not new, as far as the incidents you obliquely refer to are concerned. IMO your response belongs in another discussion, as it is off-topic (player availabilities).

Perhaps you'd care to post your own treatise about different play styles?

I'll be on from 2 P.M. Elvis Time (U.S. Central Time) until closing. We need more players! Things get boring with the same little crowd playing over and over again.

I'll be on from 3 P.M. Elvis Time until closing, unless the game decides to play rude and kick me square in the nuts again, in which case I'll bugger off and play chess the rest of the week.

I'll be on from about 5 P.M. Elvis Time (U.S. Central Time) Tuesday 25 Jan. 2022 until closing time.

See you then and Semper Games!

Hi Alex, and welcome to planet mule.

First, I see you were able to play in a tournament game just today, so it looks like you've jumped into the pool without any need for encouragement -- well done!

Second, there isn't a lot of traffic for gameplay outside of a few hours at the end of each day. Things pick up on weekends, with more action during morning and afternoon hours than there is during the week.

For reference, my timezone is UTC-8, and the most action tends to begin around 3 P.M. my time on weekdays and last until about 9-10 P.M. On weekends, things are better, with games generally starting around 7 A.M. my time with more regular play thoughout the late morning into the late evening, sometimes past midnight.

We'd love to get more visits from folks in Europe and around the world like it was back in 2010 when I first started playing. There were games around the clock!

My apologies if this isn't the correct area in which to post this, but as there are topics in this area that deal with issues running both the Linux AppImage and, separately, running on a modern-ish macOS system, I thought that my experiences might be useful for those who have had issues with either (or both) of these approaches.

My system is a Mac Mini that runs OS 10.14.6 (Mojave). Since Apple long ago made native Java support an headache, I don't try running the macOS flavor of the M.U.L.E. program. Instead, I decided to try the Linux AppImage running inside a Linux Virtual Machine (VM), and it has worked very well with only one recurring issue that is, in general, easily avoided.

My Virtual Machine program is Parallels Desktop for Mac. The VM I set up is a Kali Linux instance that is given modest hardware parameters: 2 CPUs, 2 GB RAM, and 128 MB graphics RAM. In order for the VM to act as an host for games, I had to assign the VM the ethernet MAC address of my Mac's ethernet port and configure port forwarding on my router, as would have been necessary for any other setup. Parallels makes setting these hardware parameters very simple. The final setting that needed tweaking was the graphical resolution of the Kali Linux VM, which is set to 1400x1050 and looks great.

The one recurring issue I have to be cautious about avoiding is an occasional video "glitch" that can completely lock up the whole Kali Linux VM and is 95% likely to be unrecoverable when it occurs. Of the two-dozen or so times I've encountered it, I managed to fully recover the VM system once. Almost all other occurrences required a complete rebuilding of the VM from scratch, which stinks, or deletion and replacement with a copy from a backup drive.

I try to prevent this problem from occurring by carefully limiting the times at which I switch from the full-screen view to the chat-screen view. Every time the problem has occurred, it's been triggered by switching out of full-screen mode while a player is moving around the map or inside the store during a deployment phase. When I switch to/from full-screen mode while everything is relatively still, I don't trigger the system lockup.

If anyone would like help duplicating this setup on their own Mac, please feel free to ask for assistance in this thread.

BTW: The Kali Linux version I installed is the (now outdated and hard-to-find) 2021.1 release. However, I've tested out this same approach on later versions of Kali as recent as the 2021.4 release and everything worked just as well. The only difference is that the older .1 release builds a much smaller VM file, whereas the .4 release (with identical installation options in the Kali system configurator) winds up being about three times the size as the .1 VM. My VM requires about 8 GB of disk space to begin with and has now grown to about 12 GB. In order to keep the VM file as small as possible, and to make sure the AppImage will run correctly, I don't do any updates within the Kali Linux environment. This VM's single purpose is to run M.U.L.E.

Semper Games!

I need to clear my head after a very dramatic and nerve-shattering week here on Planet Mule. Seems to me that when I play intensively for extended periods I get a sort of strategic tunnel-vision and start doing poorly. Tangling with other players in the chat, while momentarily exhilarating, also tends to put me on tilt for some time afterward. "They tells me not to, but I does it anyways."

But the main issue is I really feel terrible following my COVID vaccine booster shot yesterday (Tues.) and should just take it easy for a bit before things get worse. Gub'mint medicos are out ta get me...

That rotten, cheap little joystick did me no favors, either, and so it has joined the realm of the nonexistent.

Better days ahead. Have fun, everyone, and Semper Games.

Sorry, not going to play tomorrow (Wed. 19 Jan. 2022). Effects of COVID vaccine booster. I'll live. Should be right again for Thursday.

Hello everyone, I just got my COVID-19 booster (free of charge -- I can't resist a good deal) and so anticipate feeling like dog sh_t tomorrow (Wednesday), so no promises. It's also a busy Wednesday at Buzzy Acres so if I'm on at all it'll be from 5 P.M. Elvis Time (U.S. Central Time) at the earliest. Or I might just slack off and not play at all, so who knows?

Hi everyone, I'll be on from about 3 P.M. Elvis Time (U.S. Central Time Zone) tomorrow, Tuesday 18 January 2022, if anyone's interested in playing some games. No creeps, no trolls, nice normal people only, please. k c u then and Semper Games!