Important: Mr Tenk has poked us, and we need scripting help, which see.
In the recent Engineers’ Notes, Mr Pontecorvo observed a request for ‘expressions of interest’ regarding a proposed hunt. The unfortunate results can be beheld at the link below.
For those unable to translate lunatic, Mr Pontecorvo reverse engineered (from the work of a small equine) a novel variation on the hunt mechanic two years ago, which works as follows:
- Prizes are clearly displayed, but the vendors only take special tokens (in this case, amounts of toasted bread).
- The tokens can only be collected (by touching) while wearing a special device Mr. P. calls a ‘purse’ (in this example, a toaster.)
- Each token can only be collected once; if one runs out of tokens before one runs out of prizes to seize, one must attain a new purse.
- To claim a prize, one simply touches the prize vendor with purse worn. One’s balance is checked and adjusted accordingly.
As mentioned, at the time Mr. P. and I were not impressed with the usual low-tech hunt system, which encourages one-time flying visits, surely not conducive to steady commerce. Instead, this system encourages repeat visits, with accompanying repeat exposure to, say, an outfit that would complement the prize just perfectly. (The fact that people are used to such a system, and that it works quite well for the Steam and Twisted hunts, seems to have eluded him.)
With the power of a randomly chosen channel and a MD5 encrypted password, the system is effectively immune to cheating; however Mr. P. admits that there are logical flaws in the system, noted during its deployment in the Toast Bay City Hunt of 2012, to be addressed before use.
The Hunt of 2012 was for plain bread slices; after all, what ninny toasts toasted toast?
Mr. P. also wishes to stress that placing tokens in locations likely to cause duress to hunters is at the participants’ discretion and none of his concern, and that hunters these days have it too soft, and that being killed or seriously maimed is a small price to pay to save a few lindens.
Those who believe such a nonsense might be workable, tesla-coil-driven toasting forks notwithstanding, should correspond with Mr. Martien Pontecorvo.
my alt has seen the feeding frenzy that hunts create in his transaction history. not pretty.
is there a token limiter? what keeps people from clicking on the token 100 times to stock up for prizes? or is it like the caledon mushroom hunt where you have to wait for them to appear?
Each purse stores a list of UUIDs for tokens collected. When a token is touched, it reports its UUID and hunt ID string. if the hunt ID matches the purse’s, and the UUID isn’t in the list, then the purse’s count is updated.
That’s what I recall off the top of my head; I’d have to revisit the scripts to confirm. Actually, I have to. There’s a crucial point with vendors where exactly which vendor is being operated isn’t clear, so if two or more are too close together, you get more than one prize. I need to fix that.
my gut says step 3 needs more thought.
My mind doesn’t speak gut. Can you translate?
can you set up a demo up on the fells platform? let’s shake it out. i do think this has a lot of potential as a long duration hunt/system rather than the usual feeding frenzy that blows through
Oh! Of course – I’ll get Mr. P. to resurrect the old World of Toasters as an environment and find or kluge some full-perm tat as prizes. The big thing will be fixing the vendor scripts, but hopefully that will be done by Sunday at the latest.
just stick some boxes in it, then we try to break it.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and Residents of New Babbage, Mr Pontecorvo actually put on a spurt and has opened a demonstration hunt in the north-western corner of the Fells platform.
A picture of the site can be seen here.
For reasons of haste he has kept the toast motif, as he was more concerned with ensuring the scripts all work like they should.
We hope this demonstration is of some mild amusement and fervent bug detection and squishing.
i went up and tried to break it, and didn’t! harumble!
my feedback: i find the need to keep getting a new purse annoying, and i think *some* people will be miffed at not being able to replenish the purse to a useful value to buy things (yes, *those* people will show up, and they don’t want anyone to have nice things, do they now. and they *will* IM me constantly to fix the system so it is more “Fair” whatever that means in the twisted economics of their own heads). options i’m wondering about:
-make the tokens recognize when they are no longer in the purse so the purse can be replenished.
-make the tokens in the purse transferable to the fresh purse, somehow, so you don’t have useless remainders
-make tokens transferable to someone else’s purse, which could lead to interesting character interaction. (!!!! there is so much potential in this one. would the purses have to be detached and rezzed to talk to each other?)
the thought of a roleplay currency is rather appealing, and can be extended to so many other things.
is there a limit to the number of tokens the purse can hold? i suppose the easiest fix is just to make sure there’s enough token givers in place. uh-oh, now i’m counting prims…. can the token giver be set to give more than one token? easy finds give one, but particularly difficult ones to find give many?
I know this can be done; a simple matter of modifying the messages sent by the tokens. Of course one would need different designs for the tokens. It depends on what theme is to be used for this hunt, I suppose.
Excellent feedback sir!
I made purses non-replenishable simply because it was easier that way, as well as challenging people to consider what they wanted to ‘buy’ as opposed to simply snarfing every prize in sight.
When it comes to ‘replenishing’ tokens, I have a couple of ideas:
Obviously I’m not sure what’s the best way to handle this, which is why I forsook it last time.
The purse is the key to everything. They perform the following:
With regards to transferring funds, I’d have to work out a good method for so doing that’s easy to do. At first glance, it seems simple enough:
This could take a while to work out, but I think you are right. The possibilities for a roleplay currency are far wider than one single hunt. Although… it could make traversing parcels where damage is enabled rather fraught with all that ‘money or your life’ business.
There was a pick-pocket game under development at one time in NB, not sure of it’s current status, but long term this might be a link in?
It could be; perhaps instead of a visibly worn object, a HUD of some kind. Hmm…
curiouser and curiouser. perhaps test it as a 30 day hunt system, with intent to transition into something longer and wider in scope.
Watson has wanted to host a rooftop hunt for a while, so here’s my proposal:
let the purse be an egg basket, and the hunt object be a nest, each nest contains a variable amount of token eggs. the person who places the nest (i’m assuming ownership is not an issue?) can set the amount of token eggs that his nests will give when found.
The eggs can be spent in shops that wish to host a special hunt vendor, list to be given with hunt instructions.
So the customer can browse the list of shops, tour each, decide which prizes he wants, and know how many eggs he needs to find. Or beg/borrow from other hunters’ baskets.
There will have to be a story about why the eggs are valuable, of course. The birds leave the last unhatched clutch behind when the weather turns, and then the chimney sweeps find them when they are brushing out in time for winter to prevent fires, of course, and the eggs of this, er, something-bird…. ummmm, are valuable becuase…. ummmmmmm……. QUESTION GAME!
What a clever idea! There could be a variety of different egg types, ranging from fresh-laid to mature to well past their hatch-by date – with appropriate values as determined by the Eggs-Ray Machine.
I know Mr. P. has a basket kit in his copious inventory, and I can certainly do some nest shopping. Currently it looks like a nest could be at least 4 prims weight (bearing up to 3 eggs); more if I incorporate a nesting bird that appears to replenish a looted nest. (Where does it come from? Where does it go? Perhaps it is the famed Oozlum Bird.)
But for now, methinks Mr. P. would be best retiring to Notepad++ to strangle some LSL in order to incorporate in-game transactions, both consensual and non, and to allow eggs/bread/tokens to be ‘rediscovered’ (most likely via the queue method mentioned.) Once that’s worked out, then we can look at making nests and other fun things.
4 might be too heavy these days. let’s try to mesh it and hope the script doesn’t make it go up (anyone?). the bird has gone, either due to migration or kraken food chain. simplicity for this round!
(sees the bird appearing on a random temp rezzer to replenish, and the eggs disappearing and reappearing as they are taken and laid….. gah, getting too complicated for first go!)
I’d have to agree on that. Mr. P. has Mesh Studio, so creating a solid unit of nest and eggs shouldn’t be all that hard. Particularly if they’re small enough that you need to search for them.
overthinking as usual-
with an egg rezzer, it becomes similiar to the caledon mushroom hunt (temp rezzers are not nearly the trouble they used to be… if they still work). that way every new egg (nest is rezzer) has a unique identity so can constantly be collected into the basket. i do remember making a few friends on the mushroom hunt while we were all sitting around waiting for mushrooms (years later, 2 of them went to dinner with me and Rip Wirefly at the infamous Casa Bonita!)
i was bored enough on that hunt to observe certain mushrooms only appeared at local sim night, so there’s some interesting parameters if you want to go with the different species route.
I’ve just had a horrid thought regarding egg-based transactions. What is there to stop hunters selling eggs for Lindens? Would we get into trouble if people did? Should we even try? And if so, how?
The reason for this angst is the question of how valuable a single egg should be in terms of Linden dollars, so that participating vendors can determine what to ask for their prizes.
Also, there is another cause for angst on my part: eggs, unlike Lindens, aren’t fungible.
Let’s say I have eleven eggs: ten eggs worth one unit each, and one egg worth ten. I select a prize worth ten units. How do I ‘pay’ for that prize? Large denominations first?
Or, conversely, I have a ten-unit egg, and I desire a five-unit prize. How the devil does one get change out of an egg? And if the diabolical Eggs-Ray machines can perform such a feat, how would it do so? What sort of ‘change’ should it produce?
Yours from the Home for the Excessively Worrying.
if egg value is to complex, can the nests give out a variable number of eggs? does the nest rez eggs when touched (like, 0 to 9 on temp rez) so the hunting party can gather them? that might reduce the static land impact.
people selling eggs – you can’t stop people from being jerks. you can sell whatever you want for lindens. the real question is.. would people PAY for them? i doubt this would be a wide scale issue, as the perpetrators would be quickly targeted for being dickwads. were there any incidents of hunter bots on the mushroom hunt?
and let’s make the eggs spherical. i’m feeling the need to go underground with this to give me incentive to work on the sewers.
On reflection, what’s likely to happen is that the nests will occasionally spawn rare collectable (transfer only) eggs, which can be hoarded for bragging rights or souvenirs; otherwise they’re just boring old bird eggs you can stick in an Eggs-Ray Machine and get prizes.
Doing so makes preliminary work relatively simple, and the collectable eggs can be bartered for regular eggs like trading cards.
Speaking of which, regular eggs can be swapped from purse to purse (or person) via chat command. Or they will be if the recipient is within five metres.
Baskets will be able to be pilfered from if you’re within five metres of the quarry. Pilferers had best be sure their marks have sufficient eggs; the chances of being caught rise if the pogue’s light.
As for the underground, well… I’m dead certain I heard something quack under a manhole cover. In any case making an ootheca shouldn’t be too hard. (Currently I am attempting to mesh a nest; unfortunately, as we all know, mesh hates curved surfaces.)
definitely the underground. i talked with Holmes & Watson, i hadn’t realised Holmes had been quiet because he is in thesis mode, and i don’t want to usurp on the plot they had been working on for the rooftop hunt. they called it so they get it. the birds were all excellent, i will have my archivist move them in to the annals of ornithology for the sake of science and posterity, and i’m sure we will see them all again.
we can still go with eggs. more animals to create, harumble!
as for the eggs-ray machine, if some eggs are worth more than others, maybe you have to turn your eggs in to an “exchange” who “buys” the eggs in return for tokens which can be redeemed for prizes. would that solve anything? an exchange booth can be set up on public land, which can also dispense the participating merchant list.
If there’s something nesting in the sewers, it’ll either be penguins of some sort, or black swans. I prefer penguins, as the little sods would probably give a wiggyfish a run for its money, and of course there’s the whole At the Mountains of Madness subterannean business.
Oh – something just occurred to me – if I recall, the larger species lay only one egg, and the smaller at most two. Depending on the nature of a New Babbage Penguin (i.e. whether we’re speaking of an Aptenodytes novababbagae or maybe Megadyptes novababbagae) that could make fabrication of nests a little easier…
how ’bout turtles? everyone likes turtles. bonus that they have spherical eggs.
Turtles… actually make more sense. Their armour-plated shells and crushing beaks would certainly be a better aid to controlling the wiggyfish population.
So… egg mounds then…
Turtles are good, only dinner as comes with it’s own bowl……. errrr……
But, me uncle Remus told me, back when i were a cub in the den, bout a bird called the OoohhArrgggg Bird from the sound it made when layin it’s eggs. Cus they’s sort of squarish as it tends ter lay in odd places where a round or egg shaped egg might roll off. whereas this birds eggs just sort of sit solid on one side…… But it’s a bit of a trial fer the poor mother bird, hence the name….
Wot yer mean, he were just havin me on?
penguins, black swans, turtles, the occasional deep one
I’d like to offer a bit of random and thoughtful opinion on this entire project.
FIRST: This is making me so happy. Seeing Babbage Engineers working on a complex, interesting challenge that, when the bugs are worked out (or the bugs are featured, heh), could set a standard of excellenct for the rest of the grid to admire.
And that’s meaningful. Steampunk, at it’s finest, celebrates the Makers, highlights ingeniuity and cleverness and imagination.
Mainland-mentality insists on hunts that can be hacked, blasted through, freebies grabbed, stockpiled in inventory and quite often never even opened. The ‘win’ comes from the bragging of ‘oh goodness, my inventory is over 80,000 and I haven’t even unpacked things from the last three years of hunts.’ For whatever reasons, that makes you cool. Bah.
Reimagine hunts and the hunting mentality, just as Steampunks have reimagined their worlds. Don’t stoop to meet everyday standards. Rise well above them.
That’s how I came to find Babbage in the first place back in 2007 (A Babbager visited the vamp club I was running with a friend. It was situated 6 feet below a graveyard, in a rather large crypt. I still think it was amazing.) He was impeccable dressed in fine Victorian garb, elequoent, and seated in a sumptous chair propelled by a mechanical man. I felt a grab in my heart as I suddenly realized my dreams did exist in SL. We chatted a long time. I learned of Babbage, and visited at first chance. The city was glorious. I met builders who had taken the time to build interesting stree-level workshops to build IN. The immersion into a past that never was, was total.
And I am rambling but now and then I feel the urge to remind what makes Babbage unique and timeless. It’s not the zombies. It’s not weekly dances. It’s not horror scenarios. You’ll glare at me for this but it’s not the roleplay. There’s all that times a hundred elsewhere.
It’s a group of bright minds taking the time and effort to build a Hunt as it has never been imagined before. Set your standards high. Babbagers can do it.
One of those future hunters will feel what I felt when I met that gent in the Crypt Club. That inner resonance that says ‘yes. My tribe.’
Be the best. Be Babbage.
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*mutter* MadPeas *mutter* You’ve made a fair point, though. Imagination is what gave us our canon works such as ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea’. ‘War of the Worlds’, and ‘The Time Machine’ – no, perhaps not that last one, since time travel is EVIL.
The builds are the foundation for me, though without activity they’d be merely beautiful and dead. This Hunt looks to be ingenious, and a good reason for Babbagers to be engaged, even if they don’t take part in much else just now.
Methinks I owe Babbagers an apology; I have been rather stymied by the scope of the hunt as it stands.
As I understand it, the hunt will now take place in the sewers, and probably on the edges of the canals, where the somewhat feisty New Babbage snapping turtle population choose to lay their eggs. Thus evidently, instead of aerial nests, we need more prosaic mounds of that unholy muck turtles make their nests out of, and animations suitable for the adventurous to go egg-collecting. So be that.
(Mr P. informs me that while there is a rather nice looking sculpted mound, he is hesitant to patronise a chap whose shop is named after some lunatic conspiracy theory viz. a recently vanished Malaysian airship. It was air kraken of course. And recommendations of alternatives?)
We also, however, need something more active. I suspect that the turtles of New Babbage will not take nest-robbing lightly, and anyone who’s seen a snapper eating… well, simply put, there must be a full-perm snapper (an entire animal, mind) that can be animated and instructed to attack anyone who loiters about nearby nests too long.
And that’s to say nothing of Old Maud. (Well, actually, much is said. Urchins say you’re on the menu if you don’t watch out. Their betters say even if such a dangerous chelonian exists, you’d see and hear her coming first. I say something bit that poor wretch in two.)
We would like to keep the hunt simple, and I fear that talk of laying groundwork for a roleplay currency rather rendered Mr. P. vulnerable to a bad case of Realis Vita. I wish him well, and for that matter sufficient doses of Pink’s Medicinal Compound and that most invigourating of invalid foods, Bloodnok’s Curried Gunpowder. Under such a regime, rest assured that Mr P. will be making great strides, or buried, or perhaps the neighbours on the windward side will be, whichever comes first.
And for the Builder’s sake, if you’re down in the canals, watch out for those damnable turtles!
the script, man! focus on the script that fixes whatever bothered you about the toast hunt. the fancy turtles and nests and basket things will appear when they are needed, because that’s just how things seem to work when you got a lot of builders eavesdropping on your conversation.
The script has been coming along slowly, since I have been diligently heading up a blind alley.
Certain extra functionality will now be via chat command instead.
Another function will… probably need some other method of operation, blast it.
Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, another complication arises. In this case, the command /8steal <this many tokens> <from this wretch>. (I think I have worked out how to parlay avatar names into keys.)
The easiest way to buzz a mark, whether you’re a swell, a flimp or a dipper, is:
I had another idea, but this method is quick to code, and encourages a little daring. It all comes down to two rounds of r < s-cx where x and s are constants.
Besides, a real swell wouldn’t follow the mark around, daintily plucking coins out one at a time. It’s the whole pogue in one go.
Seriously, however, I cannot help noticing the vibrations from the approaching winter, dainty as an overweight elephant. I may be better off settling for consolidation functionality (i.e. being able to combine tokens from many purses into one) for this hunt – and making purses, and their contents, transferable.
And be careful roaming the sewers. The turtles like to winter over inside them.
After goodness knows how much tweaking, sneaking time at work to faff with Notepad++, and more fabricating functions than I really enjoy, it appears that the purse script is almost working.
Currently, it succeeds in:
However the rest of the functionality still needs work.
Just to add to the fun, I need to make the tokens and redeemers whisper as well. There’s no point in being able to operate them from across the room. Or sewer tunnel. Or from within Old Maud’s stomach.
It seems that, for every advance I make, there is another significant step back. While the code for extracting funds from an unneeded purse seems to work, I seem to have broken code somewhere else.
Unfortunately, the hunt is probably going to have to be postponed until spring, when the little birdies come flittering back, delighting the New Babbage ear as they cough their lungs out, or something. Sigh… mock-turtle soup for Christmas dinner again…
Be encoraged! From what i’ve read an seen, yer doing something wonderful and us as couldn’t even begin to start something like this are appreciating your efforts. Thank you!
As Mr P. & Co. Ltd (which is to say, myself) were approached by Mr Tenk to, well, get a bloody move-on with this system, I therefore place a ‘Help Wanted’ sign. What needs be done is beyond my limits as a scripter, and here is why:
If anyone wishes to hammer on this LSL piglet, please leave a comment, as I will be notified.