Periodic Dose of Crazy Ideas...

[Faldred]

Standard disclaimer: I have no idea how easy or complicated any of these suggestions are, just throwing them out there for discussion.  At this stage, these types of ideas are probably more appropriate for the NWN2 upgrade.  1) Crafter's Mark -- Add an ability to the crafter's badge (unlimited uses) that allows its owner to set a string of text.  Any "finished product" crafted by the badge's owner would get this string added to its description page, e.g: "Maker's Mark: Zug make this" or "Maker's Mark: Another Fine Product from the Raven Trade Company".  This would give extra "character" and "history" to the items and make them more unique.  2) Automated Shops -- Create shops where crafters can "deposit" items, such as in a bank, and others can come buy the items from an NPC shopkeeper.  To make PC-to-PC interaction the preferred model, the seller would typically get less from an automated sale than from a fair market value sale face-to-face.  This could follow a tiered model, such as:

a) Consignment Shop: Any character may deposit up to "N" items in a bank-like persistent chest.  The NPC shopkeeper would have an "inventory" of everything deposited by everybody.  Prices would be set by the pricing lens (+/- appraise checks).  The oldest item of each type would be sold first.  The money, minus a fee of, say 20-25%, is put into the persistent chest for the seller to claim later.  An advanced version of this would have the price vary by scarcity -- if only 1 exists in the "shop", it may be priced higher than lens price, if a few dozen are there, the price may be lowered to "move inventory"... there would be a maximum mark-up/mark-down range.  b) Storefront: Purchased like a house, only the owner(s) have access to add inventory, but the store is open to the general public for purchases.  The capacity of the store's inventory could be increased by buying shop upgrades (other upgrades could include exterior and interior decorating to increase the attractiveness of the shop).  The owner would be able to set the price for each item.  The gold would be put into the persistent chest, with a smaller fee, say 5% or so, for "taxes" or "shop upkeep", or even maintenance of a Gnomish vending machine used instead of an NPC salesman.  c) Chain Store: Essentially an upgrade to the "Storefront" level, the owner would have stores in multiple locations, sharing a common inventory system.  The same fee structure as the regular "Storefront" would apply.
[/list] In cases "b" and "c", the shop is a real building -- the owner could sell things himself or herself, and not have to pay the fee, or could accept trade goods in lieu of gold, etc.  Advanced ideas here could include setting shop policies for banning certain races, classes, or followers of specified dieties from using the shop ("We Don't Sell to Drow") or offering discounts or price increases instead ("All Dwarves Receive 10% Off!").

[Leanthar]

"....1) Crafter's Mark -- Add an ability to the crafter's badge (unlimited uses) that allows its owner to set a string of text.
Any "finished product" crafted by the badge's owner would get this string added to its description page,
e.g: "Maker's Mark: Zug make this" or "Maker's Mark: Another Fine Product from the Raven Trade Company".
This would give extra "character" and "history" to the items and make them more unique....."

This can already be done using the in-game writing system (with the quill). The limitation we have (and it is an nwn limitation) is that the new description can not be any longer than the current description on an item. So for instance, if the description was 24 characters long the new one can not be more than 24 characters. If the old description was 64 characters then the new one (with the quill) could not be longer than 64.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Oh, so that works now for all items?

I happen to love the Crafter's Mark idea, and the other one... That's just PC vendors, which we've tried, and which generated a HUGE amount of lag. Right?

[darkstorme]

As a possible solution to the Crafter's Mark description length problem, why not pad the descriptions of the items?  It'd be a one-time project, and wouldn't be TOO hard to implement - just put in some invisible character via its ASCII code, and you have plenty of additional room without overwriting the existing description.  The change I'd have is with the new SetName functions, musical instruments should REALLY bear the name of their creator in the title, let alone in the description.  It's not a Violin (made by Antonio Stradivari), it's a Stradivarius!

[Talan Va'lash]

Leanthar - 6/16/2006  9:38 PM

"....1) Crafter's Mark -- Add an ability to the crafter's badge (unlimited uses) that allows its owner to set a string of text.
Any "finished product" crafted by the badge's owner would get this string added to its description page,
e.g: "Maker's Mark: Zug make this" or "Maker's Mark: Another Fine Product from the Raven Trade Company".
This would give extra "character" and "history" to the items and make them more unique....."

This can already be done using the in-game writing system (with the quill). The limitation we have (and it is an nwn limitation) is that the new description can not be any longer than the current description on an item. So for instance, if the description was 24 characters long the new one can not be more than 24 characters. If the old description was 64 characters then the new one (with the quill) could not be longer than 64.

I think 1.67 solved this issue via the SetName() function.

[Weeblie]

The system seems to be configurated so you can only write on papers/bags for the moment...

Oh, and Talan. The item name doesn't seem to have any limitation, but the description has.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Yes, I can't write on anything but papers and containers, either.

[darkstorme]

I think it could conceivably add a lot of flavour to introduce the "crafter's mark", even if it were an automated server script run on the description upon successful completion of an item, rather than using the quill, if indeed the quill doesn't work on any items other than papers and bags.

[Dorganath]

darkstorme - 6/17/2006  4:41 PM  As a possible solution to the Crafter's Mark description length problem, why not pad the descriptions of the items?  It'd be a one-time project, and wouldn't be TOO hard to implement - just put in some invisible character via its ASCII code, and you have plenty of additional room without overwriting the existing description.  The change I'd have is with the new SetName functions, musical instruments should REALLY bear the name of their creator in the title, let alone in the description.  It's not a Violin (made by Antonio Stradivari), it's a Stradivarius!

 Oh sure...it's not hard...just extremely time-consuming. We have hundreds of craftable items, granted not all of them would need padding (food, for example) but that's not a trivial undertaking.
  One thing I just thought of would be to store the identity of the crafter into a variable on the item itself and then one could use the Lens of Pricing to see who made it.
  Oh, and currently only GMs can use the quill to change an item's name or description. The description length issue turned out to be a source of some seriously bad memory leaks, which led to crashes. As no good solution was found to actually fix this problem, the problem was avoided by clamping the description length to whatever the original length happens to be.
  Looking forward, this is probably not an idea that will see the light of day until we switch over to NWN2, just given what other things we have to work on at the moment. Having said that, suggestions are always good, especially if it's something we can build in from the beginning rather than try to retrofit later.

[darkstorme]

I'll have to take a good look at the CNR system.  It might be possible to write a batch XSML script that could deal with them all at once.  Regardless, thanks for your quick response, Dorgananth.

[Ne'er]

Would it be possible to have a certain item's description requested to be changed? For example, Jet has a suit of armor that signifies his (ex)membership in a group. I don't mind at all RP'ing the uniform as is, however I just think it wuld be nifty to change the name from Iron Full Plate into Crimson Blade Uniform.

Just a suggestion.

[darkstorme]

Well, using the new SetName() function, that should be fairly straightforward - a "Wand of Naming" from a GM, really.  But the description, as discussed, is limited by its original length.

[Faldred]

Dorganath - 6/22/2006  9:59 AM

One thing I just thought of would be to store the identity of the crafter into a variable on the item itself and then one could use the Lens of Pricing to see who made it.

I don't know how I missed reading this earlier... that would be a great idea if it's not too hard add in!