Merchant Archive
Thread: Float an idea for Special Orders
Hello my fellow merchants, and supporters.
I know that there has been alot of chatter about "Special Orders" feature needed. Well I wanted to offer my thoughts, and solutions that we are more likly to get pushed.
As I see it, and correct me if I am wrong... When a user of a vendor, opens the vendor window, I suspect a query is run that looks kinda like this
Select * from All_stuff where location="Vendor Name"
Now here is the part that will make the "Special Orders" (SO)thing get a lot of resistance. In order to to make SO work 2 things would have to happen. One, add2 field in the DB for the Name that the item is for, and a flag that it is a SO, that is easy, here is the hard part. When someone clicks on the vendor, 2 things would have to happen now. A routine would have to be run, to capture the person who clicks on the vendor, then that would have to be passes to a new query
Select * from All_stuff where location="Vendor Name" and "Char_Name" = Null or "CHAR_NAME_FROM_ROUTINE"
It is the whole Find out who is clicking thing that will kill this idea, that doesn't even take into account more than one person looking in a vendor, and so on. That is a lot of stress for a database.
Here is my thought, for us to get what we want, for the most part, just a diffrent route.
We have the 2 fields added to the database, one is a flag that it is a SO, and the other is for a password.
When the item is placed in the vendor, an option to make it a password sale is there, if clicked, it will show 2 fields, for you to enter the password twice (simple to code). You can send this password to the person whom wanted the item.
When they come to buy it, they click buy, in that window we get right now (price and so forth), they just add the password field. Because there is already a routine at this point (Checks to see if you have the money and so on) it can also compare the password entered by the buyer, to the one you entered, and is they match, the sale happens, if not, an error message says, wrong password.
This would also allow merchants to set up guild vendors (They all have the password) and so on. I see this way of pushing this forward much easier to code, less stressful on the database, and therefor, more likly to happen.
Please share your thoughs. Thanks
Actually, if you want to look at the coding that way, instead of adding a password variable, you just add a CharName variable. When looking in the SO category and attempting to purchase an item, instead of asking for a PW, that item checks the purchasing cust's CharName and attempts to match it to the name you stored. Same process you suggested, no passwords (passwords are a bad idea...too many possible problems).
But the devs have even more clever ways to do this. This was just a slight variation on your idea.
The big problem I have with coding this to recognize a player's name is the same beef I have with the Entry list for a structure.
If you have a large guild, how do you add everybody's name to it? Unless I missed something, there's not a way to entire the entire guild at once is there? I would love to have some of the admin/entry/ban, and in this case, SO options able to be keyed to a player's PA.
aldack, that is why I think the PASSWORD system works better over a NAME system. Because if this were to ever come onto being, I know it would be a one item to one name. With the password, you can give that password to the WHOLE guild, and could have a guild vendor. So anyone in the guild could buy anything.
Aldack wrote:
The big problem I have with coding this to recognize a player's name is the same beef I have with the Entry list for a structure.
If you have a large guild, how do you add everybody's name to it? Unless I missed something, there's not a way to entire the entire guild at once is there? I would love to have some of the admin/entry/ban, and in this case, SO options able to be keyed to a player's PA.
You can add an enitre guild to your entry list by inputing them like this;The tag for my guild is <JUG> so on the entry list I put Guild:JUG, and it puts everyone from your guild on the entry list to your house. So if your tag were say <momma> you would put Guild:Momma on the entry list. I do not think it is case sensitive. It does not work with ADMIN, but it does work with Entry and Ban.
As for the SO there has to be a way to do it that will not be stressful on the DB, and for Guild Vendors adding permissions to the vendor would work I think.