[AMA] TalkTakesTime

TalkTakesTime

as shallow as a plate of cereal
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus

This Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread is a resource provided to you by the Smogon Mentorship Program. In it, feel free to ask this mentor about anything you'd like. They're most prepared to answer Smogon-related questions, but don't be afraid to ask them about their personality and life outside of this site. Have some patience when you post a question in this thread; it will likely take the mentor a few days to reply. If you're looking for our up-to-date list of mentors, check out our Mentor Profiles onsite. Read through their relevant information below, and enjoy!


Timezone: GMT+12

Language: English

Areas of Expertise: Pokemon Showdown!, Other Metagames

Background: I first came to Smogon back in early 2012 looking at analyses, even though I didn't play any Pokemon. I then heard about PS! somewhere, and decided to go check it out for myself. I lurked and laddered (mainly UU) for a couple of months before I made friends with a certain Canadian moogle, who dragged me to his server, where I stayed for several months, forsaking main. I rose through the ranks pretty quickly there, and taught myself JavaScript in July 2013 so I could contribute some code to the server.

While on TBT, I befriended several other mods from the Smogon server and allowed myself to be convinced to head back there, where I quickly got voice thanks to some Spanish admin (leader at the time iirc). I then got drivers 4 weeks later, and mods in another 3 weeks, giving me the record for fastest promotion from nothing to mod (at the time anyway; I'm not sure if 7 weeks has been broken or not. I think Royalty might have beaten me? not sure though). I then began a project that was to become the first iteration of the /dexsearch command, initially adding it to some side servers before working up the courage to pull request it to main. Despite its terrible algorithm and overall bad code, Zarel accepted it and some of my code was on main.

From there I coded a few more things and modded PS for a while, before getting properly involved in coding for PS again in January this year. Other than coding I also tested a bunch of fixes, so my contributions ended up getting me added to the PS credits. These days I mostly code OMs and the occasional feature or bugfix. I'm working on the last stages of offline messaging currently, as well as adding features to my PS bot (called, imaginatively, boTTT).

/end walloftext

Hobbies: I spend a lot of time listening to and really enjoy music, although I have no musical talent myself. I'll listen to pretty much any genre, although I have yet to find much rap that I enjoy. It's pretty rare for me to be seen without some kind of music-playing-device, be it my phone or computer.

I'm a second year university student doing a double degree, so I don't really have a huge amount of spare time. When I have some, I use it to ski, rock climb, tramp (hike for you American heathens), play squash, and partake in various other outdoors activities. Other than that I do a bit of programming in my spare time, and procrastinate any possible way.

Good Questions To Ask Me: Anything about PS, from how it works to how to get involved. You can ask me anything and I'll try and direct you to the right place if I'm not the person to ask.

I should make this shorter but I suck at being concise so you can all suffer through it >:D
 
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TalkTakesTime

as shallow as a plate of cereal
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
I should start by saying that I never really meant for boTTT to get to this scale. It is modding I think around 16 rooms currently, when I originally made it just to act as a Jeopardy bot for Academics after it was requested by the room owners there.

Currently boTTT doesn't actually do much; its most well known feature is obviously its muting ability, which will probably be made obsolete soon when the in-built PS throttle gets modified. Other than that, it has a couple of commands like .choose [choice 1], [choice 2], ... and .usage, and a few secret ones that you need higher auth to use. It also acts as a buzzer in Academics, which will be made obsolete when I actually implement all of Jeopardy (who knows when that'll be). It currently doesn't have a help feature either, which is in the works, along with different punishments depending on both what was done and any previous punishments.

The source code for it can be found at https://github.com/TalkTakesTime/Pokemon-Showdown-Bot (credits go to Quinella for creating the base for it, which can be found at https://github.com/Quinella/Pokemon-Showdown-Bot).

If anyone has sensible suggestions for features to add to it, just PM/VM me here, on PS, or on IRC!
 
You say you are interested in music, eh? Do you like any of AC/DC, Alanis Morissette, or Metallica? And do you have the epic "Safety Dance" on your music playing device?
 

TalkTakesTime

as shallow as a plate of cereal
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
You say you are interested in music, eh? Do you like any of AC/DC, Alanis Morissette, or Metallica? And do you have the epic "Safety Dance" on your music playing device?
in order: yes but I haven't listened to them much recently, same again, I think they're overrated, and I'm not familiar with it. Link on IRC?

edit: oh I know this song, just not by name
 
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scorpdestroyer

it's a skorupi egg
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnus
Are there any plans to expand boTTT's use? Could you for instance make it do .tell or .calc like TIBot / CDXCIV can do

How did you get interested in coding? What's so fun about it?

Do you play official tiers?
 

TalkTakesTime

as shallow as a plate of cereal
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Are there any plans to expand boTTT's use? Could you for instance make it do .tell or .calc like TIBot / CDXCIV can do

How did you get interested in coding? What's so fun about it?

Do you play official tiers?
Yes, although I'm not going to implement .tell because I'm actually working on incorporating tells directly into PS, as seen here: https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown-Client/pull/132 and https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown/pull/671
However, I do plan on adding more features. I've had .randstats requested a bit, so that's up there I guess. I definitely need to add a .help or .commands soon too. Any other suggestions are always welcome.

I first did a little coding with my father when I was just a kid; we made blackjack in Visual Basic. I didn't really do much more until high school, where I did computer science, but I found that pretty tedious since a lot of it was things like HTML/CSS (both of which I dislike), Microsoft Access, and using formulae etc in Microsoft Excel. The only "real" programming we did was in a useless language called Delphi, which was fun but didn't really have any applications. I actually got properly interested in coding in my first year at university, when I had to take a COSC paper in Python. I discovered that I picked it up pretty quickly and understood pretty much everything they taught us very quickly, so I dabbled a bit more. From there I decided to teach myself JavaScript to try add some stuff to PS, and the rest is history. I think a lot of the reason I stayed interested in programming is that I was good at it (relative to most of my peers at uni anyway), and that I was contributing to something useful.
I think the things I find most enjoyable about coding are the fact that you can accomplish so many things with it, and it gives you a practical product at the end. Plus there's the fact that if you start working on a group project it feels great to be able to contribute something useful, not just suggest things for other people to do.

I do a little, but it's mostly dabbling. I have played in the past BW UU/NU/Ubers, none particularly well, and I dabble somewhat in most official tiers in XY, although I haven't gotten into any yet. I'm looking forward to XY NU, since NU was the tier I played most in BW, so hopefully I'll enjoy the XY equivalent.
 

TalkTakesTime

as shallow as a plate of cereal
is a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Where did your name come from? Any special meanings?
Haha actually it's literally just a string of words I stuck together that sort of made sense. My ex wanted me to try LoL with her but someone had taken my standard screenname so I just threw together some words and then ended up using it elsewhere too. There's no real meaning to it since it's really just a statement of fact.
 
Um hello, I've just recently joined smogon and only started playing PS about a month ago. I'm not sure if you can help me, but I was just banned today under the username "Bedapto" by an unknown server while I was offline. I don't use chat too often, while playing PS so I don't think I could have have said anything offensive to another player. My friend who's played PS longer than I have suspects someone got annoyed when I forfeited, or they might have found my name offensive. Even so that doesn't seem even close to a justified reason for banning me. I hope you can help me or at least direct me to someone who can, thank you.
 

Xylen

Perfect Harmony.
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Um hello, I've just recently joined smogon and only started playing PS about a month ago. I'm not sure if you can help me, but I was just banned today under the username "Bedapto" by an unknown server while I was offline. I don't use chat too often, while playing PS so I don't think I could have have said anything offensive to another player. My friend who's played PS longer than I have suspects someone got annoyed when I forfeited, or they might have found my name offensive. Even so that doesn't seem even close to a justified reason for banning me. I hope you can help me or at least direct me to someone who can, thank you.
You can appeal here, if you think your ban was not deserved Be sure to read the rules first though.
 
Where is boTTT when I need him? 1/2 the time i see a spammer, he's not around to mute them. Or sometimes the mute isn't triggered for whatever reason if he is there.
 

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