Droid Engineer Archive

Thread: barker droids

Envoy3113
Mon Mar 29, 2004 8:30 am
#1

I know it's early, but a few concerns that could probally use some discussion.


1. Are they going to be pets or installations?

It would be a double blade here, on one side it would poof everytime you log off or possibly even shuttle. On the other hand, I am personally fearfull of seeing Coronet starport littered with hundreds of droids, which leads to...


2. Placeable in Player Citys or Static Citys or both.

Again, a sheer volume of barkers camping the Starport doesn't seem like a good trade off compared to simply looking at your planetary map. The only bennie would be actual stock on hand, but, the starports already look like junkyards during high traffic with burning speeders all over the place, so adding dozens, and possibly dozens more of barker units would add to the confusion, lag, and all around distastefullness. BUT, planting them in Player Citys where most thought out zoning plans have all the vendors within close proximity of the shuttle is an exercise in rundancy.


3. Merchant only?

Can they be tied to certain players? Many people who have multiple master crafting professions would stand to benifit the most from these. If it isa merchant only certification, can a merchant set one up for another player? Could it be that the cert is placed in the master box of any crafting profession? Or, are they uncerted. Which could turn into the same situation as seen in #2 with barkers distributed all over, which are tied to vendors that are empty.


4. Crafter with multiple vendors.

Would more than one vendor be attatched to a barker? JoeJoe McJoe is looking at a barker on coronet to find that the planets vendor is out of brandy, the good stuff as JoeJoe is very particular about the year. He clicks on the radio button which querys his chef's Naboo vendor, and bam! He hops the next shuttle to Moenia, very happy as he knows he not only saved a bunch on his car insurance, but he'll be able to grab that brandy and head off to his AA meeting on Tat.



TK, I know you have your secrecy....


**looks around**


smile, or frown....



There comes a time in every mans life when 86 years is just too damn long...
penquin
Mon Mar 29, 2004 10:37 am
#2

Yea i would like to know alot of these answers also, wodering if I will even make these barking droids, spam is already bad enough



pugguh
Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:29 am
#3

its my hope that these barker droids are the devs fix for the spam problem in the starports....if they come with some kind of fix/nerf to limit starport spammers from spamming every 5 seconds and a good advertising system for the droids then this could be a good business for DE's everywhere..I hope they realize that droids that spam themselves will only increase a already bad problem...a colorable signto hover over the droid and a mail or conversation system to list stock /prices in your vendor would increase sales for all merchants that use them...and i personally would love to see alot of droids around starports......its like that in every star wars movie so why not SWG..........czar'rok





Czar'rok- medic (sig under construction....)
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 George W. Bush
pugguh
Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:30 am
#4


its my hope that these barker droids are the devs fix for the spam problem in the starports....if they come with some kind of fix/nerf to limit starport spammers from spamming every 5 seconds and a good advertising system for the droids then this could be a good business for DE's everywhere..I hope they realize that droids that spam themselves will only increase a already bad problem...a colorable signto hover over the droid and a mail or conversation system to list stock /prices in your vendor would increase sales for all merchants that use them...and i personally would love to see alot of droids around starports......its like that in every star wars movie so why not SWG..........czar'rok





Czar'rok- medic (sig under construction....)
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 George W. Bush
pugguh
Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:31 am
#5

sorry about the double post there.....forum newbie.......hehe dont ya hate um!!



Czar'rok- medic (sig under construction....)
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 George W. Bush
Envoy3113
Mon Mar 29, 2004 12:12 pm
#6

Mind you, I'm not against droids at the starport, rather I'm worried about having a droid for every vendor on planet, and a bunch of off planet vendors all set up in the front of the starport. In that 'terminator 2' apocolypse vision, we would be talking about hundreds of droids.



There comes a time in every mans life when 86 years is just too damn long...
Haruspex77
Mon Mar 29, 2004 2:40 pm
#7






Envoy3113 wrote:

I know it's early, but a few concerns that could probally use some discussion.




It isn't really early, the code should be almost finished and no details have been released to address your concerns or mine. This could be a great, game changing, feature, or it could be a bust depending on implementation. Perhaps TK has been shown something, but he hasn't dropped any hints.


My suspicion is that nobody has said anything because the coders haven't finished and they have been given no guidance as to how it should work. Meanwhile, they are coding away on the worst possible interpretation of the limited description of the module that was written.



Therefore the resulting, completely useless, module will be:



  • A utility module that can be inserted in any droid. The resulting droid can be used by anyone, no certs are required.

  • The module will allow two new commands bark and info to the owner, and a new radial based command "view info" for others.

  • Bark will have sub-menus of edit bark, and start barking. The only way to stop barking will be to store the droid.

  • Edit bark will open an edit control on the bark string which will have name filter rules for acceptability; many common, non-obscene, words will be restricted making entry of a valid bark difficult. There will, however, be no upper bound on the length of the string.

  • Start barking will ask for a frequency in seconds and have no lower limit, the default will be once per second.

  • Ignore will not work for droid barks.

  • Edit info will open an edit control on the info page. This will also go through a name filter like the bark. However, it will have a length limit of 32 characters.

  • View info will open a display of the info string in a window that fills most of the screen at open. Resizing it will only persist for that instance, the next one you open will go back to default.

  • The view info screen option will only appear, and the window only stay open if you are within 5m of the droid. Since many will be set to patrol, this will make the window impossible to open, or keep open.

  • The presence of the module will insure that the droid auto-stores instantly if you disconnect, take a shuttle or cross a server boundry.

Note that this is only a nightmare in the absence of information, not what I or anybody else wants!


Kilarny
Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:00 pm
#8

Haruspex77


Good one...like many things in life we laugh because it's funny and we laugh because it's true.


TheOrb
Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:41 pm
#9

Should the "barking" droids have a cert?


If they don't, we might have a problem with spam.


If they do, we will not sell many.


/shrug


What if the advertisement only shows once, when the player gets near it. And what if ONLY that player see's it (and just that one time...maybe have it reset after 5 minutes or if you get 128m away)? I am against the droid sending personal /tells, but how about something like a /tell....without the sound? Maybe a different color?




- Kosa Tek Droids - KTD|/ ggg g\
Master Droid Engineer |\gg/
2892, -5427 in Serenity, Naboo in the Lowca Galaxy

Haruspex77
Mon Mar 29, 2004 4:11 pm
#10






TheOrb wrote:

Should the "barking" droids have a cert?


If they don't, we might have a problem with spam.


If they do, we will not sell many.


/shrug


What if the advertisement only shows once, when the player gets near it. And what if ONLY that player see's it (and just that one time...maybe have it reset after 5 minutes or if you get 128m away)? I am against the droid sending personal /tells, but how about something like a /tell....without the sound? Maybe a different color?





Merchants will be really offended if there was no cert. Abarking mob was supposed to be the skill in Ad 4 at release, but it was never implemented and eventually dropped. It is clearly appropriate as a merchant skill, and there aren't many usefull ones today.


Your idea for the barking looks good. However, nothing works that way now, vendor barks are in spatial and everybody in earshot hears when you get in range of one. In a busy location, that might be once every few seconds.


What I suggested is almost the same, a sign that the barker would hold up. Only appears in view, not in chat at all. But nobody shows signs of listening, and we certainly have not been told what the planned solution for that issue is. I have no reason to belive that the nightmare solution won't be implemented.
Arcid
Mon Mar 29, 2004 4:31 pm
#11

The thing about Certifications is that you can argue it reasonably both ways


For Certs:


A Barking droid can give the co-ordinates of a shop, and is something that was implied and promised in th Merchant Tree


Against Certs:


A barking Droid could be set up to convey information that could equate to a player made POI. For example, my guild has set up 2 imperial bases and 2 rebel bases to form a pseudo battlfield, and a barker droid would be very useful to tell people not to try to destroy the bases, etc


overbyte
Tue Mar 30, 2004 2:44 am
#12

are barking droids actually going to spam their ads? Vendors only speak when someone walks into close proximity - i'd have guessed that ad barker droids would do the same.

just a thought



Ullunt Bik'El - Jack of All Trades, Master of None
(-DxD-) :: Yavin :: Chalistra
Commando :: TKA :: Pistoleer :: Imperial Pilot [>O<] :: Forum Grinder

Ye though I walk throught the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil
For I am the meanest mutha in the valley, and I carry a big flamer


Magic013
Tue Mar 30, 2004 6:36 am
#13

The best thing it think is to stop the spam is make the barker droids only spam whena personselects it. The person who selects the droid will get the message only on his screen. It will still be a usefull thing because if your geting buffed at the Coronet starport and have nothing to do you can check outt the droids.



MagicC Tirith
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Ashnominor

- I support something....
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