A nice idea for a mod (code name Postbox)

[Azura]

Here's a nice idea that came to mind recently. Basically, it's a sort of postbox where people can leave messages addressed to other players. The message appears as soon as a player with a specific name enters the server.

It could be used to say at what time players should meet up for example. It could also be used by admins to leave warning messages to any problematic players.

What do you think of the idea ?

[Matthew]

This was actually something I was planning to implement in ASC but of course that won't happen now. However I do know someone who might be interested in the idea and I'll pass it along.

[Azura]

Even the designers of the swiss knife had to stop somewhere . Anyway nice to see that someone else came up with the idea as it confirms it's potential usefulness.

[nogginBasher]

Along similar lines of leaving stuff for other players, I was thinking of maybe doing some crazy stuff with the Screen mutator: letting players set the text on a Screen, or the webpage a Screen points to, or the server IP a Screen displays and its portal send you to, or the URL of a Teleporter so that other players can just walk into that Teleporter to get redirected to a download or IRC channel or website.

Well I didn't take this idea it anywhere yet, since nobody used my last server portal map. :^P But at least I thought of it!

Aren't we a bunch of hacks?!

[TommyDOU]

Originally Posted by nogginBasher

Well I didn't take this idea it anywhere yet, since nobody used my last server portal map. :^P But at least I thought of it!

Aren't we a bunch of hacks?!

Server portal map? Sounds interesting. A map with portals where depending on the one you go through you are stuffed to another server?

If so, I've seen this done in Quake 2, but never UT99. I'd like to check it out if possible.

Thanks,

Tommy

[~V~]

A friend of mine has done this. From one server you can teleport to another server. I'm not sure if he has made it available as a separate mod but I can find out.

[TheWatcher]

Originally Posted by TommyDOU

If so, I've seen this done in Quake 2, but never UT99. I'd like to check it out if possible.

The server of 3 use a portal. The ip is 86.13.140.139.

[UnrealD]

You can make a Door portal, that goes in any map. Or the regular teleporter, the blue swirl lines, its done in maps, you can even send people to websites. I used it when i had a new ip, and i made it a default map, so peeps can connect to my new sevrer!

[nogginBasher]

Yes, teleporters in UT maps can be set to any URL, e.g. unreal://another.server.ip.address:port/ to send the player to another server, or http:// URLs will open the user's web-browser or start a download, and irc:// URLs might open their IRC client. No special mod is required.

I have seen a couple of other portal maps around. Truff's was quite smart-looking. You can try mine at unreal://213.121.244.94/ - just vote for CTF-ThornsPortal, and take one of the teleporters on the side of the map's midfield. The map also has a jukebox of my favourite UT umxs.

Unfortunately, the Screens (separate mod now, realeased as part of JailBreak) which are supposed to show the players on other servers do not work when the map is played "online", although they work fine when the map is loaded locally. I got round this by using a webserver to provide the player/server information instead. The map is also quite good at crashing UT.

One other problem is, a couple of the server IPs on this map are now out-of-date, so I should release an updated version... That was what originally got me thinking ... maybe I could let players themselves set what the screens display, and where the teleporters will send them. But as I say, I made no progress on that yet.

In theory it could act a bit like a postbox, in that you could leave messages on screens, and URLs in portals, e.g.: "I have gone to this server, come join me there" - by walking through the teleporter; or "check out this funny webpage" - again by touching a teleporter. It would require some Unrealscript to change the settings of the Screen Actors, and the Teleporter Actors, to save and retrieve the settings from an ini file, and to detect edits messages given by players on the map.

Well, it's fun to talk about. I wonder if I'll ever code it. ;p

[nogginBasher]

Made a little progress on PostBox (and my ScreenEditor) this weekend.
http://hwi.ath.cx/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cg...ses/PostBox.uc

At the moment, to post a message for your friend, you must say "mail <nick> <message>". To read any messages left for you, you must type just "mail". (You can alternatively type "mutate mail ..." in the console.)

One problem is how to match up the recipient <nick> against real players, since some players' nicks are hard to type in the console/say? At the moment it strips all non-alphanumeric characters, then capitalises, before comparing the posted nick against each player's nick. So to send a mail to "F0X|nogginBasher" you could type "mail f0xnogginbasher hi" or "mail =f0x~!~Noggin.Basher+ hello", but "mail nogginBasher " will not work. Any thoughts on improving this approach?

Another todo, is to lookout for when a player joins the server, and when they do, inform them if they have new mail in their postbox. At the moment, they must say "mail" before any checking is done.

There is also the "privacy" issue of players with similar nicks accidentally reading (or just clearing) each others postboxes! But to fix that would require logins and other such complications.

Another simple mutator I just finished, publishes the game's teamscore and time remaining in the server's title. (I saw that on an AS server, and stole the idea.) You can see it in action on 213.121.244.94, once a game has started.

http://hwi.ath.cx/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cg...liciseScore.uc

The ScreenEditor is going to be my favourite little mutator when it's finished. So far, I tested it by walking around the map, and setting the health of my bots to -5. xD But I did also successfully change the URLs of some of the ScreensSlidePage actors. (I used SetTextProperty().) Now I just need to store those changes, and have them auto-apply the next time the map loads...

[~V~]

One idea to stop people reading other peoples mail is to have a window pop up that asks users to set a mail name and pass. You would need pass only to read mail same as regular email. That could force people to use only regular alphanumeric characters for their mail name.

Of course, you would also need a way of checking that a name doesn't exist already.

That way people can pick any mail address just like real email.

[nogginBasher]

When you put it that way, it doesn't seem so complicated.

But creating a separate nick for message

[nogginBasher]

When you put it that way, it doesn't seem so complicated. Each player could set a password for their mailbox the first time they use it.

Another advantage of passwording nicks, is that when someone posts, the system can confirm whether the recipient's nick already exists in the database.

But I haven't done any GUI programming for Unreal yet. At the moment I'm just working with "say" or "mutate" commands. (I'm actually optionally swallowing "say" messages, for privacy, and also because in the chat-window the spoken command always appears *below* any ClientMessage responses from the system, which just looks wrong. How can I delay the processing of the user's command until after what they said has been displayed? Presumably I must put the sender+command in a queue, drop out of MutatorTeamMessage(), and wait for a Timer to process the queue. )

I still think creating a separate postbox name for messages seems too much - their friends might know their playing name but not their postbox name. So I would still prefer to base
their postbox name on their playing nick. On the other hand, the untypeable characters in many players' nicks make this complicated. But if players must register a separate postname, they will need to distribute it to their friends, by which time they might just resort to standard e-mail or MSN.

Maybe friends could be encouraged to *share* a postbox (where the postbox/forum name *is* the password). That would cut down on the number of accounts that need to be registered and remembered. <-- My favourite solution number 2

Or maybe we should open it up entirely. Instead of making private postboxes for player to player communication, we could instead make a public "forum" on the server, where anyone can post a public message, see the last 5 messages, or search the message history for posts from their friends.

Or we could keep it dirty and simple. "mail noggin come to XOL at 19:30" could store a message which would get to delivered to the first player joining the server with "noggin" anywhere in their nick, regardless of clantag, and privacy be damned! I think this may the easiest way to use the system. And it still leaves the option of passwording the "noggin" account later, if desired. <-- My favourite solution number 1

I thought it might be cute to store messages at particular points on a map, but realistically the chances of coming across your message, at a time when it's convenient to read it, are remote.

[nogginBasher]

Here you go Azura: http://www.neuralyte.org/~joey/ut/PostBox0.1.zip

It's a small and simple system; I hope it will be easy to use. Matching for delivery is now done on partial-nicks (so you can simply "!mail noggin ..."). Passwording a PostBox account is optional.

And if anyone is interested: http://www.neuralyte.org/~joey/ut/ActorEditor0.1.zip

Both of these are running on nzp server (in my sig).

To see the results of the ActorEditor mutator, you must vote for CTF-ThornsPortal, then take one of the teleporters at the side of the map. You can leave messages on the screens, or set a screen+teleporter to point at a UT server of your choice. At the moment any changes will be reset when the map switches, unless an admin logs in and decides to save them. SetPropertyText() ftw!

[adminthis]

Originally Posted by nogginBasher

Here you go Azura: http://www.neuralyte.org/~joey/ut/PostBox0.1.zip

It's a small and simple system; I hope it will be easy to use. Matching for delivery is now done on partial-nicks (so you can simply "!mail noggin ..."). Passwording a PostBox account is optional.

Running this little gem now. First suggestion: the welcome message disappears too quickly. Perhaps it's possible to raise the message timeout value (as seen in BDBMapVote)?

Second suggestion: use postbox as spectator. If I log in as spectator I get the welcome message and if applicable, the !read message, yet it doesn't process my commands when typed as a spectator

[nogginBasher]

I have not yet worked out how to raise the message timeout, but I have fixed the problem with spectators not being able to send commands to PostBox: http://www.neuralyte.org/~joey/ut/PostBox0.2.zip

Well at least I think I fixed it, I didn't test it yet.

[adminthis]

Originally Posted by nogginBasher

I have not yet worked out how to raise the message timeout, but I have fixed the problem with spectators not being able to send commands to PostBox: http://www.neuralyte.org/~joey/ut/PostBox0.2.zip

Well at least I think I fixed it, I didn't test it yet.

Then I certainly will. Also running the updated TB.

Update: PostBox 0.2 still doesn't take spectator commands. Tried !help and !mail.

[SoNY_scarface]

ill test it three

[nogginBasher]

Whoops sorry! When I got round to testing it, I found a little bug with the spectator code. Now it really is working, honest!

http://www.neuralyte.org/~joey/ut/PostBox0.3.zip

Btw, players and spectators can also use mutate commands to call the mutator, for example: "mutate mail ..." and "mutate read ...".

[g0sbv]

A nice idea I have installed it and it works fine except for the spec mode cant read mail..also