Feature Update (0.1.9)
We dive into the completed dynamic, player-driven group system of Untold Dawn in this blog post that outlines the latest developments in feature 0.1.9.
This week we have concluded what we had planned for the basics of groups and salaries.
To better understand this blog post, it might be helpful to see our feature updates on currencies and blogs.
On March 23, we unveiled our QC chip which had a very basic balance command that was a work-in-progress.
We also made a lore dump on the QCN in this blog post:
On March 31, we released a feature update which included the fully fledged currency system and the basics of the group system:
Last week, we released a feature update in which we unveiled the expanded commands for group management, including role creating:
Today, we're going to show the community how recruiting, firing, setting salaries, group wallets & getting paid works!
Recruiting for Groups
This week, we implemented logic for hiring people into group roles. It's important to keep in mind that you can hire someone into multiple roles in a group. However, you cannot hire someone twice into a role:
However, if everything is okay, this is how it will look:
Keep in mind that you do not need confirmation to hire someone into a role; they can leave the role if they need to, but in general you can just assign someone a role into a faction if you want. Ultimately, it's your group.
Removing People From Roles
First of all, we needed a way to expose a membership id to a player planning to fire a character. This is because you should be able to fire people that are not there in the same room as you.
So, we have updated the role view for this purpose.
And here is a side-to-side timeline of a person being fired from a group:
Take note of the fact that the target is not informed when they are removed from a group. This should allow for some intrigue where someone's access has been revoked but they have not noticed yet (such as in the case of ambushes).
Salaries
You can now assign salaries to roles. Here you can see a new role that gets assigned a salary:
Then, when you type qc role, you will see this if you have a salary above 0:
And this if you have a salary at 0:
Here is the process in which someone opens a wallet and gets paid in a job they just got hired for:
If the group does not have the funds to pay you, you will receive the following message:
And here is a person getting paid for their hard work:
To begin with, we will have salaries getting paid out every 24 hours from your last collection. This is very likely to be expanded post pre-alpha launch to allow options for collecting backpay (pay you haven't collected) and setting different salary variations (such as weekly or monthly). For now, we've spent nearly a month on this system, so we wanted to move on.
When we start to expand on corporations and big groups, we will likely start to implement this kind of salaries.
Group Wallets
Using our wallets system, you are able to assign what wallet is used for all group transactions by the group.
We have created two new permission types to support this:
- view_wallets - manages who can view the wallet currently assigned to the group.
- manage_wallets - manages who can change which wallet is assigned for group transactions.
Here is a screenshot of someonesetting a wallet and then being able to view it (which uses both permission types). Note that anyone with the SuperAdmin permission type on their role can bypass this:
We've been debating if we should also have a way to read-only view transaction history (which could be useful for people in manager positions or sale positions). Let us know in the forums what you think!
Group Improvements
We spent some time improving the readability of the QC commands code. Originally, we didn't expect it to get as extense as it got; it was starting to get hard to know where to find certain things just within that file, since it had thousands and thousands of lines of code. We've separated it, cleaned it up and made it fun to work with.
There was a bug in a specific query we had for group memberships; group memberships were showing up even if you didn't have them. This was reported as soon as update 0.1.8 went live and was fixed early in the week.
There was also an issue with role names when you were creating them; they did not allow more than one word. Now, you can name roles however you want.
We also made it so that the role view shows you the sdesc of members rather than their names.
What's next? How can I help?
In the next versions, we will start to look at our attributes & skills systems and how to best code them in game. If you have thoughts or suggestions on how best to represent that in our game, feel free to let us know in the forums or Discord!
If you enjoy our vision and progress and would like to help us field the costs of our growing list of services, please consider becoming our Patreon. It helps us infinitely to be able to develop this project without worrying about server costs!
Untold Dawn