[Discussion] Town Showcase and Visibility

I love the idea of a GUI. Do we even need the portal room if there's a GUI?

I think it would be great to eventually have all warps on the GUI. You could require applicants to categorize their warp at the time of application/payment for the warp.

 

What if my town consists of multiple types?

 

Love the ideas! I agree with @Zedoker that maybe a 5x5 or 7x7 might be better, that way we can possibly get more in there.

Also, I prob missed it, but are we supposed to apply or would staff manually check it out?

 

I assume you have to decide which one applies more for you. That is what I made out of the wording because you have to apply for it and decide which category it is.

I really like the town warp place which is based on categories.

 

Absolutely love the idea! I vote for organization; the first concept with floors dedicated to certain types of towns. I also agree with what a few others have said, perhaps a 5x5 or 7x7 would be better; 10x10 feels too large for just what is really just a decorated warp space.

I think the GUI would be a cool added experience too, would love to hear a little more information on that, or maybe a video example if possible

 

To get players to come to your city, you need to place something important for them, a store or a place that will be important for further play on your server

 

What about the physical plots?

 

Big -1 on 10x10 or any even number for that matter, OCD will kill me if the warp sign doesn't sit central, 9x9, 7x7, 5x5 etc are all good. Odd numbers only please <3

Other than that all ideas sound good, I like the idea of splitting up towns to what type they are. In regards to people trying cheat the activity rule by classing their town as a epic build rather than a farm, I think the fairest way to tackle that is just some pure common sense, I think all staff are capable of determining if something is a build or a farm etc

 

Sorry for the lack of communication on this matter as I have been heavily involved in coming up with a method of simplifying the process of writing the script to submit when @andrewkm does server maintenance. I'll provide you guys with what I've got so far, provided this is still not final (but mostly finished), and also respond to some people that have replied to this thread.

First, I have spent the past few days working on a chart that lists all town warps per server and includes the town's original creation date as of pre-migration. @ClarinetPhoenix and my idea is that we sort the towns listed on the GUI in order of creation date of the town (not the warp) so there is no fighting over who gets priority on the list - think of it as a historic chart for towns on the server.



After we decided the order was going to be by creation date, the idea came to me of "What if an old town that didn't have a warp applies for a warp? Then I have to rewrite the config to fit them in to the correct time." So I spent the past 12 hours writing a script that pulls more data from this chart that I have so that I could simply copy/paste the code into a config to send to @andrewkm. Essentially all I need to do to add a town is get the name, the date it was created and put it in a category. Then all I have to do is re-sort the chart by date and copy the code.

Sorry, but due to my method of sorting by creation date we won't be having a "town of the month." I have, however been able to implement a category system for towns that we are going to use

Stuck with my original idea and made it work As for the frequency of how often we can update the GUI depends on how often I can get @andrewkm to update the config files once I send them his way.

As you said previously, a 1-2 week timeframe sounds reasonable for the changes to apply.

So here's where I go into @ClarinetPhoenix and my next idea for the GUI. When applying for a town warp, you'll have the choice of categorizing the warp. We will also offer Warp Type Modifications in the form of a new application that will allow players to change their category. Any town warps that get created I'll ask staff to tag me so that I can update my charts. Any towns that currently have warps have been noted on my chart and we will be offering free modifications for their appearance on the GUI once this all launches.

Again, this isn't final but hear me out - so far I've come up with 6 categories for towns.



Default/Unspecified - The default warp type or for those that haven't specified a type yet
Farm
Plots
Scenic Builds
Shops
Town Hubs - This is for towns that consist of multiple types.

Another idea that can be added to applications is a custom message that will display under the town name when hovering over it in the GUI. This will give towns that have multiple types the chance to list what their towns offer.



My thoughts are 2 lines of custom messages to offer, short and simple.

Hopefully the pictures above are enough to get you excited. I sure am excited to launch this.



tl:dr

We categorize all towns in a GUI. New player looking for a plot town? Just tell them to do /townwarps and click a Magenta Concrete block.
GUI order is based on town creation pre-migration.
We add warp categories to town warp apps and offer a warp modification app to let people customize the GUI.
Updates to the GUI would be 1-2 weeks as I have to go through @andrewkm to update the configs.
All current warps get 1 free warp modification.
Custom messages are offered but try to keep it short and simple (more for towns that consist of multiple types)




Categories and what they appear as on the GUI are not final. I am completely open to suggestions for what to use.
Fun Fact: There are currently 73 warps in Main, and only TWO in MainNorth.

 

So you essentially have to have a warp to be on this GUI?

Although most aesthetically pleasing towns have a warp to showcase them, not all do.
Are you essentially saying to be included in this you have to pay for individual warps for every town you want to be included in?

How does this also work for large project towns that say are 2+ towns big but may only have 1 warp? Can you include features that say the warp town does not have but the town next to it that is part of the build does?


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Was just curious why the script was pulling certain information about said town because of a warp app? Surely you could simply add warps as a filter like you are doing with all the other things such as Scenic Build (Which again I'm not entirely sure who/what the criteria classifies a build to be scenic). Then you could simply include every town that has been made. Just cause you don't have a warp doesn't mean your town doesn't look good or have potential valuable things to provide the said community.

Don't get me wrong I love the potential idea of it. But a town showcase should be for all towns? Not just towns with warps?

 

I like the idea of the priority for listing the towns. I was just wondering if the priority will still show if you search by town type?

 

Instead of sorting by town creation date, why not offer multiple sorting styles that can be toggled through? If you have already cached the data, implementing different sorting styles should be rather straightforward.
I would recommend alphabetical sorting by default and you can come up with other sorting orders:
- reverse alphabetical
- by date (oldest -> newest)
- by date (newest -> oldest)
- anything else?

No, keep it as mandatory. If a player puts a warp into their town, thats basically them consenting to having people enter their town and it will be auto placed into the GUI

 

is it possible to automate some of the GUI charts by scraping data off the forums for whenever a thread related to town warps is approved and locked?

 

I'd say just integrate it into the admin /warp creation command ingame

 

alphabetical order would be nice. And maybe if it is possible also alphabetical and reverse alphabetical on the official order.

maybe it is possible to create favorites. Although this requires more changes than just the gui.

Also if possible I think it would be nice to see the official owner of the town.

 

Would it be possible to have a search function? Like, you heard about the town Blaz and you wanna know more about it, so you can type in the town name and look it up?

 

i would be against the favourite town suggestion. It may require too much storage on the server and also could be used as an alternative to the multi home feature.

also for the official owner situation, it might just make things messy later on when the official owner sells it off or a tycoon takes a town. Keeping the UI as simple as possible is the best path I’d say. Also, if you wanted people to know who built the town, just write it in the 2 custom lines we are allowed (as seen from Videos demo picture)

 

I'd say make it automatic. If you bought a warp, you'd probably want it to be in the GUI. I can't see why you wouldn't.