Feature Update (v.0.1.8)
The staff of upcoming RPI Untold Dawn continues to work on their flexible, player-driven groups system.
This week, we've continued our work on groups and so version 0.1.8 builds upon the shoulders of 0.1.7.
Group Creation
We've explored numerous systems of clanning and group structures across various MUDs, ranging from basic setups enabling regular payments to slightly more sophisticated arrangements where member presence is visible when logged in. However, we sought a system that could adapt to all the potential applications of this aspect. We envisaged a dynamic framework that not only facilitated employment within a group or corporation created by staff, but allows players to create groups and for the game to be really player-driven, enabling members to draw pay and access various permissions, but also to be flexibly utilized to establish familial bonds with shared finances, for example.
Group Creating Costs
The system now charges you 1,000 credits for creating a group. This is our first example of our currency system at work for making purchases.
Let's preface by saying that the price in that screenshot is entirely made up. We don't know yet how much groups will cost (although by the publishing of this blog post, perhaps that has been defined).
As you can see, it charges you based on your open wallet. The screenshot ended with us trying to create a group while not having funds.
What happens if you do not have a wallet? It will simply tell you to open one:
Group Permissions
We have added an option to view your permissions within a group. This should help you understand your privileges within a group better.
Group Deletion
As we get into the gritty details of how to manage groups both through players and admin, we enabled group IDs to be visible in QC GROUP.
First of all, to delete a group you need to have a role that has SuperAdmin or Delete privileges. Otherwise, you would see the following:
However, if you have the right permissions, you will see the following screen (sans the staff alert):
Leaving Groups
You can have multiple memberships (and roles) in a group, letting group owners create flexible group structures where different roles give various privileges within the group.
This requires a flexible way to leave roles. We've exposed the membership ID and made the command to leave work like this:
We're aware that these screens might be getting too bloated and we've received some interesting feedback on how to deal with this, including physical terminals. Please feel free to participate in the discussion regarding this in our forums!
Group Role List
You can also now view all the roles in a group if you have the right permissions. We have created a new permission type that lets you view roles.
You can also check out individual roles and see more details on them!
Creating Roles
When you create a new role, it will automatically set its order to 0. Here is an example where we take The New Hope group and create an employee role for it.
Deleting Roles
Similarly, you can easily delete roles like this:
As you can see, your permission to delete a role depends on your maximum order in the group. So you can only delete roles below yours.
Editing Roles
Let's say you are creating a simple company. You create three roles:
We need to set orders and set the role name properly. Let's look at an example on how to do that using the set role sub-command.
Toggling Permissions
As we've detailed in the past, there's several permission types available.
You can toggle these permissions on each role dynamically.
QC Chip Helpfiles
Some of the feedback our team had regarding the QC chip was that the helpfiles needed to get divided for better readability and we've gone ahead and done so.
Keep in mind these screenshots were taken on April 24, 2024, so these helpfiles have likely changed (especially the group one), but the idea behind the separation remains.
Message Queue Improvements
We implemented a new message queue in the last month; we have a legacy method of sending messages which has always worked in every scenario, and this new method which has several utilities and makes it quite easy to call it from everywhere.
The new message queue was not working to send messages to connections that had no character; this has been fixed and it should now work as expected.
Staff Messaging For Group Creation
We have made a staff alert when someone creates a group. There's still code debt surrounding staff tools to access and handle groups that we'll need to narrow down!
What's next? How can I help?
We're likely going to continue our work into the group system, but ideally with the feedback of our community to guide our north. Most of what we've published here shows where we're going, but we could use with the opinion and thoughts of our readers to know how to best present the various group functions in game.
If you haven't, take a look at the forum discusssions we have going on right now:
Oracle
OracleruneWe would appreciate any opinions on the group system (and any other system for that matter), so feel free to join the discussion!
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!
