Architect Archive
Thread: PROPOSAL: Data Terminals That Actually Store Data
HoloNet Proposal
At first, I thought, "Wouldn't it be neat if the Data Terminals in SWG could actually store owner-edited data? Then they could be used to hold guild bylaws, city news, merchant information, and all sorts of interesting player-generated content." Then I thought about the storage requirements if some 200,000 players all started storing thousands of bytes of stuff on the SWG servers.
So I thought, "Well, they could limit the amount of data stored per terminal per player, maybe even add a limited number of Data Terminal control devices into the DataPad like they do for droid, pets and vehicles."
+Blind+
Then a blinding flash of the obvious hit me: "Why should they have to store any of the text on their servers at all? The 'HoloNet' is alreadyout there, and they aren't paying a dime for it. Add a rudimentary Web browser to the Datapad, then just have the Data Terminals store URLs!"
Naturally, you would want to keep it simple, for having the Datapad support complex Web pages makes it a security risk and adds to the programming burden and overhead of the game. But even if all it handled was HTML, TITLE, BODY, H1, H2, P, the in-game font and HTML text color codes (since they already support those codes in chat, in-game e-mail, /notepad, Seller Descriptions of vendor and Bazaar sold items, personal biographies, and AFK messages), it would be a vast improvement in the depth of the game. It could even feed a web page through the profanity filter client-side. Support for anchors and graphics would be great, but that could be added later, if at all.
How It Could Work
Player A develops a simple web page, buys a Data Terminal from an Architect, opens its radial menu, selects Set Address. and types in the URL, then drops the terminal in a building to which he has Admin rights.
Player B comes along and sees the terminal and double-clicks it or opens its radial menu and selects Read. His Datapad opens straight to the Holonet tab and displays that page at the URL stored in the Data Terminal. The Holonet tab also would have a button (not on the displayed page, but on the "Holonet browser" interface itself) that would allow it to be saved to a favorites list stored client-side in the character profile folder.
The Holonet News terminals that are scattered near the major starports could be linked into the system, too.
Not only would this add to the depth of the game, it might actually reduce some of the server load. Right now, the only way that mayors and guild leaders can disseminate large amounts of news is through the in-game e-mail, which adds to the game storage overhead. By offloading this to player-run web sites, not only is this easier for players, it saves money for SOE's storage and bandwidth, since their servers wouldn't be supplying anything but a single URL from a Data Terminal--everything else would be on the client-side or another web server. If they wanted to further reduce the storage load, they could simply do a DNS lookup of the URL when the player owning it types it in and save the four-byte IP address to the Data Terminal instead, using the name of the Data Terminal as the shortcut name.
SOE can't very well worry about the information distributed. Anything in-game is covered by the EULA already. The Law of Unintended Consequences is always a problem, but the downside of doing this should be very minor compared to the gain.
Message Edited by Retiarius on 05-07-2005 06:04 AM
