Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Thoughts from a consumer's point of view, of what I would want a droid to be able to do.
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Quackers
Mon Sep 08, 2003 3:36 pm
#1
The following thoughts, are from a consumer's point of view of what I seek in a droid. More specifically a merchant. These are thoughts I had, in which I wanted a droid to be able to do.
I have a friend who is an aspiring Droid Engineer. Every few days, he lets me know he can now build another type of droid and I always ask... what does it do? And always get the same answers.... not much, it can have storage, a mobile craft station, and mobile "hospital". That's it. As a consumer, I'm not interested in any of those things. But been the imaginative person that I am, I started to think of ways of using droids in more creative ways... in methods I originally thought would be completely feasible... but a alas I was proven wrong, by the non-existant droid features in the game.
Thought #1: Use seeker droids as security cameras. Result: Pass!
I had my friend craft me a couple of seekers, named Security cameras. I have one on each side of my bulky terminal vendor. They animate and look very sleek
Thought #2: Having an R2 droid as a furniture piece in my shop, shooting a small lighting bolt at a piece of furniture, appearing to fix it (Like the one in Tatooine Starport. Result: Failed!
Apperantly there is no command for setting a droid to repeat an animation in a cycle.
Thought #3: Have a mouse droid run around my shop. Result: Failed!
Apperantly, you need to be near your droid, otherwise it stores itself automatically.
Thought #4: Have droid automatically use battery charges from it's storage. Result: Failed!
Droid doesn't use batteries automatically from it's storage.
Thought #5: Have a droid patrol a 100 meter square area. Result: Failed!
Turns out, that if two consecutive waypoints aren't within at least ~60 meters of each other, then the droid will fail to store/execute those waypoints.
Thought #6: Call out a droid and have him patrol immediatly. Result: Failed!
Turns out that a droid's waypoint path gets cleared when you store the droid back in your datapad.
Thought #7: Have a protocol-droid stand in a busy area, were players can interact with it through a converse-radial menu of options. Allowing the player to learn of my wares and other information, by choosing different converse options that I have programmed into the protocol-droid. - Result: Failed!
No such option to program a protocol-droid. I original thought that such a game feature existed, because when I move my mouse cursor over player owned 3P0 droids, I get the converse option. But it did nothing when I tried it.
Thought #8: Have a protocol-droid stand in a busy area and simply announce/advertise the location of my shop through /say messages. Result: Failed!
Can't program a droid to say a line of text.
Thought #9: Name a droid with a descriptive sentence on the location of my shop, and simply having it stand in a busy area. Result: Failed!
I learned the following with this idea... I tried:
"Gorgun's Powerups and Junk Shop at waypoint -110 -5570"
But you can't have spaces in droid names. So I tried:
"Gorgun's_Powerups_and_Junk_Shop_at_waypoint_-110_-5570"
...by using the color black on the underscores. But you can't have color text in droid names. So I tried:
"Gorgun'sPowerupsAndJunkShopAtWaypoint-110-5570".
But you can't have numbers. So I ended up trying:
"Gorgun'sPowerupsAndJunkShopAtWaypointNegativeOneHundredTenAndFiveThousandFiveHundredSenventy".
But... You can't use more than 32 characters in a droid command, for the droid to learn it. Weeee!
Thought #10: Been very persistant about using a droid to advertise, I finally got my droid to be called "Visit-Gorgun's-Powerups-Shop" and had it patrol a 10-waypoint area around Coronet starport on Kauri. Unfortounetly, the ad doesn't tell other players the location of the shop (I was hopping someone would /tell and ask for it.) and I had to be in the vacinity, because as soon as I was ~1000 meters away from my droid, it would automatically store into my datapad. Other than that, it was indeed cool to see my little R4 droid make it's rounds around the area Result: Mild Success
Overall Success Rating: %20
Everything that I mention above, should've been possible from my point of view. Some of those ideas should be trivial to implement, some of them are bugs, and a few would take a bit of work (i.e. protocol-droid converse programming.)
And what's up with not been able to have more than one droid out at a time? Players can have 3 pets out but only one droid? I didn't see Luke taking turns calling out C-3PO and R2D2 from his datapad. Come on devs, droids need love! I love the economy game in SWG and the stuff I wrote above, I would love to see be implemented.
Mad Hatter
I have a friend who is an aspiring Droid Engineer. Every few days, he lets me know he can now build another type of droid and I always ask... what does it do? And always get the same answers.... not much, it can have storage, a mobile craft station, and mobile "hospital". That's it. As a consumer, I'm not interested in any of those things. But been the imaginative person that I am, I started to think of ways of using droids in more creative ways... in methods I originally thought would be completely feasible... but a alas I was proven wrong, by the non-existant droid features in the game.
Thought #1: Use seeker droids as security cameras. Result: Pass!
I had my friend craft me a couple of seekers, named Security cameras. I have one on each side of my bulky terminal vendor. They animate and look very sleek
Thought #2: Having an R2 droid as a furniture piece in my shop, shooting a small lighting bolt at a piece of furniture, appearing to fix it (Like the one in Tatooine Starport. Result: Failed!
Apperantly there is no command for setting a droid to repeat an animation in a cycle.
Thought #3: Have a mouse droid run around my shop. Result: Failed!
Apperantly, you need to be near your droid, otherwise it stores itself automatically.
Thought #4: Have droid automatically use battery charges from it's storage. Result: Failed!
Droid doesn't use batteries automatically from it's storage.
Thought #5: Have a droid patrol a 100 meter square area. Result: Failed!
Turns out, that if two consecutive waypoints aren't within at least ~60 meters of each other, then the droid will fail to store/execute those waypoints.
Thought #6: Call out a droid and have him patrol immediatly. Result: Failed!
Turns out that a droid's waypoint path gets cleared when you store the droid back in your datapad.
Thought #7: Have a protocol-droid stand in a busy area, were players can interact with it through a converse-radial menu of options. Allowing the player to learn of my wares and other information, by choosing different converse options that I have programmed into the protocol-droid. - Result: Failed!
No such option to program a protocol-droid. I original thought that such a game feature existed, because when I move my mouse cursor over player owned 3P0 droids, I get the converse option. But it did nothing when I tried it.
Thought #8: Have a protocol-droid stand in a busy area and simply announce/advertise the location of my shop through /say messages. Result: Failed!
Can't program a droid to say a line of text.
Thought #9: Name a droid with a descriptive sentence on the location of my shop, and simply having it stand in a busy area. Result: Failed!
I learned the following with this idea... I tried:
"Gorgun's Powerups and Junk Shop at waypoint -110 -5570"
But you can't have spaces in droid names. So I tried:
"Gorgun's_Powerups_and_Junk_Shop_at_waypoint_-110_-5570"
...by using the color black on the underscores. But you can't have color text in droid names. So I tried:
"Gorgun'sPowerupsAndJunkShopAtWaypoint-110-5570".
But you can't have numbers. So I ended up trying:
"Gorgun'sPowerupsAndJunkShopAtWaypointNegativeOneHundredTenAndFiveThousandFiveHundredSenventy".
But... You can't use more than 32 characters in a droid command, for the droid to learn it. Weeee!
Thought #10: Been very persistant about using a droid to advertise, I finally got my droid to be called "Visit-Gorgun's-Powerups-Shop" and had it patrol a 10-waypoint area around Coronet starport on Kauri. Unfortounetly, the ad doesn't tell other players the location of the shop (I was hopping someone would /tell and ask for it.) and I had to be in the vacinity, because as soon as I was ~1000 meters away from my droid, it would automatically store into my datapad. Other than that, it was indeed cool to see my little R4 droid make it's rounds around the area
Result: Mild SuccessOverall Success Rating: %20
Everything that I mention above, should've been possible from my point of view. Some of those ideas should be trivial to implement, some of them are bugs, and a few would take a bit of work (i.e. protocol-droid converse programming.)
And what's up with not been able to have more than one droid out at a time? Players can have 3 pets out but only one droid? I didn't see Luke taking turns calling out C-3PO and R2D2 from his datapad. Come on devs, droids need love! I love the economy game in SWG and the stuff I wrote above, I would love to see be implemented.
Mad Hatter
Sunfire1
Mon Sep 08, 2003 4:25 pm
#2
Actually the reason the advert for pet name failed is you tried to use numbers in the name. Pet names have the same restrictions as player names. As to the others, yes droids need tons of work. But I have given my binary load lifter waypoints close together, and he had no problem following the patrol route around my house and factory. And he continued to patrol until i took a shuttle, then auto-stored, otherwise he was out there even when I was KMs away. So im not sure why your mouse did not patrol for you.
Jerupsy
Mon Sep 08, 2003 7:05 pm
#3
Hey you have really cool ideas on this keep up this i luve reading ur ideas as i am a droid eng myself 8)
Quackers
Tue Sep 09, 2003 6:31 am
#4
Sunfire1 wrote:
Actually the reason the advert for pet name failed is you tried to use numbers in the name. Pet names have the same restrictions as player names. As to the others, yes droids need tons of work. But I have given my binary load lifter waypoints close together, and he had no problem following the patrol route around my house and factory. And he continued to patrol until i took a shuttle, then auto-stored, otherwise he was out there even when I was KMs away. So im not sure why your mouse did not patrol for you.
Nope, putting in color codes, numbers, underscores, or a length of 32+ characters will all cause the name to fail. That, however was not my point. My point was that no matter how creative I was about trying to use my droid as an advertisment tool, I would fail beause of the lack of droid features SWG has.
As far as the patrol feature goes, I already said that you can be about 1km away from your droid before it stores itself. Check it and you will find out the same.
Mad Hatter
Droid_Engineer_Rho
Mon Sep 15, 2003 11:07 am
#5
Hmmm...
It sounds like your 'friend' is a pretty lousy maker of droids! 
Note to those getting ticked off. I AM the 'friend' in question.
ArdenStarmariner
Mon Sep 15, 2003 1:31 pm
#6
Good post! You did forget one thing. Deliveries. It would be useful if I could put an item into the storage module of a protocol droid ADV and have it go to a particular waypoint on a specific planet and delivery the contents of his storage module to a specified player. Or post it as an offer on a player's vendor. At least it would give a protocol droid at least one use instead of being pure novelity.
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