. . .
So, instead of doing a bunch of stuff in the game's database and teaching it how to track events, you all want to teach the game how to edit the wiki so the wiki's database can track events?
What?
Actually, I have an image for how little sense this is making to me:
Anyways, I did talk to Anaris about newspapers being moved in game on IRC, and it sounds like it's approved as a CONCEPT for them to be moved in game assuming someone is willing to do the work to add them. Which lines up nicely, because I'm going to start reworking M&F's own publications system soon, and I'm not a fan of re-inventing wheels.
In regards to database storage issues, it's not so much that you can't add things to the game, it's that you need to add them in a way that keeps them from just taking up extra space.
Say you added newspapers or books, or just in general: publications, right? How do you add them in such a way that they take up the least amount of space for the least amount of time.
That same principle applies to the game as well. Storing things in the game, will take up less space.
Let me give you an example. Say you edit the realm page of Perdan (they're still a realm, right?) with a new description. The wiki will log who edited, what they changed, and the new page, all to it's database. If you want to edit the realm description in game, the game will just track new description, and not care about the old one or log who did it.
The advantage of in-game content is also that it's IN the game. Players are more likely to interact with it, and it automatically makes it IC info.
Sorry but you've completely misunderstood what I was saying.
I initially suggested that things like the Realm History, Realm Summary, character descriptions, estate descriptions, newspapers, etc. should be included as in-game things that players can view and edit in-game.
I was told that issues with this might be that it could a) give players even less reason to visit the wiki, b) cause problems in terms of database storage and c) mean that earlier versions of things like realm histories get lost.
Now I don't know what the database situation is or how it's structured but one way around these problems would be to use the wiki API so that when something like a character description is written, the wiki API is used to automatically create that as a page on the wiki at the same time. When a player goes to view a character description in game, the API is used to pull the content from the wiki to display in game. When a player edits the description then the wiki page could be updated.
This would solve the problems that other people have raised. So yes, it would involve teaching the game to edit the wiki. But if people are concerned about keeping records of past versions of things and making sure they're not just temporary things which can only seen by a limited number of players in game then that's the most logical solution.
However, I would equally be happy if these things were added solely in game and were, just like the realm council bulletins, overwriteable at any time and lost when the realm dies/character dies/estate is deleted/newspaper goes inactive/etc.
I don't really care which approach was followed as long as the content is made available in game for players to see and interact with it instead of being hidden away on the wiki.
And, as I've already mentioned, I would be happy to do the coding involved to implement these changes, including the newspapers, if that's something that the dev team would be comfortable with. I don't like to just suggest a solution when I'm not prepared to do something to make it happenFor what it's worth, I think that one advantage of teaching the game to edit the wiki is that, provided the code was done as a 'black box' and properly encapsulated, it could be re-used in lots of places. I think the best way to start would be with something already existing in the game (like region descriptions) and then, once that was working, it would be fairly trivial to use the same functionality for lots of other bits of in-game fluff.
But if the preference is just for the simple, in-game solution, then I really wouldn't object to that either.
