It'de be convientent for there to be some sort of machine/clock that tells you how long you have been working. h/m/s
But... since the SHI thread is started, I'm going to throw out an idea for something I plan to code in the near future as a quick sniplet. I'd appreciate thoughts and feedback on the ideas before I go ahead...
It's -always- been my feeling that SHI is sadly lacking. It's a neat concept, any easy way for newbs to make some chyen, but the implementation is bad. First we had the problem with people idling there 24/7, so we added the 'work' command and the floor manager, both of which have been recoded and changed a million times. Always the idea was to -prevent- people from idling in SHI, which I think is the wrong approach. SHI, by it's nature, encourages idling. Who wants to sit and watch the screen, typing 'work' every so often to see a mostly meaningless message? So, to rectify what I see as the problems I propose...
To limit the working week. (hold your horses, this is just the first half).
A daily and weekly limit would be put on SHI as to how many hours you can work. Probably 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week or something like that. It should be more than enough to keep all the usual SHI lowlifes in chyen while successfully preventing 24/7 idles. Once this limit is in place I'd remove the floor manager code, allowing you to happily idle the day away up until the end of your shift.
Then I propose...
To add proper 'work'.
The 'work' command would be altered to activate a little 'game'. I'm not usually for coded 'puzzles' and such in this type of game, but there is space for some where they serve a simple repetative purpose.) I've not figured out the form of the game as yet, but it'd basically be a 'work simulator'. It'd keep a tally of players average score for the week which would be ICly visible on a score chart in the guise of 'Worker Efficiency'. At the end of each week a small bonus would be issued to the most efficient worker and his/her name would be posted on the 'Be an efficient SHI worker' board as 'Worker of the week'. Cheesy, but hey, that's how factories work. Carrot and donkey style.
Players who don't type 'work' would still be assumed to be working, just that they'd be coasting along doing a bare minimum needed to get paid. People who 'work' are assumed to be 'going for the carrot.'
Thoughts?
Also... I'm vaguely considering altering the payments of SHI to be weekly. It'll keep a record of your time worked each week then pay packets would be available every saturday or something. Thoughts?
Will there be other places where one could get a different job at some point? I know its been in jest, but would someone be able to get a job stripping at the Orifice or even working at McChikken?
Yeah that sounds really cool,
Much better than staring at the screen.
Luc, jobs, etc: Jobs are coming. Hopefully we'll see a good number of player built jobs, players hiring players and such, but aside from that there will be a good number of coded and admin supported jobs. I don't want to create multiple SHI's on account of the fact SHI is supposed to be the very bottom of the tree and is essentially only meant for newbies before they find something better. Eventually, having any other job will prevent you from being able to scanin at SHI.
I think we plan to restructure the Bruce/delivery code and possibly add a couple of alternatives using the same base code. Rivals to Bruce and also suppliers for different kinds of materials and such. The way I envisage it, working for the delivery places will require you register as a courier with him. -Anyone- will be able to register as a courier, but registration will only be possible with one place.
I've just hired our first Withmore City Services - Sanitation player, responsible for cleanups and corpse removals. Keep an eye out for him on the SIC and give him a shout if there's dead bodies stinking up your neighborhood. The WJF and WHJ will eventually have other openings besides Judges. We have a player dispatcher working at the WJF now… there's scope for others. We're setting up a couple of people to work at the Fuller Med Clinic, which will be more profitable as/when various other bits of code are added (implants, blood transfusions to rectify bloodloss, limb loss, etc).
Vehicles (yes, I know... I keep talking about them) will bring about a quick recode of the taxi place and there'll be player openings there.
Then there's the matrix, that'll bring a whole slew of new possibilities, all of which will have to be implemented over time.
Dojo's and shooting ranges for weapon specialization -may- offer the option to charge people for you to train them your superior techniques, I'm not too sure on that yet. Combined with weapon specialization will be the ability to unjam guns (the jamming code is already in... so I guess I should write the code for unjamming...)
Tailors workshops for modifying/creating armor are planned, along with some work to make stores more usable. Player rentable stores and stocking, so you can always open your own little place.
Alot of these are already kinda coded, just the work in places is sloppy and renders it pretty useless until someone gets round to fixing. *mutters*
Anyhow... that enough to keep you going? Plus there's always scope for charging people for your information and knowledge. It often surprises me how people are so free with information that they could quite easily use for profit or blackmail. Christ, one player was making money just recently because he knew where to buy -coffee- while the 'trix was closed. I call that smart RP.
It also disturbs me that I see people blabbing valuable information about anything and everything -continuously- over the SIC and in the bars, but when a 50,000 chyen reward is offered by a player for some information, NO-ONE comes forward. Not even a sniff of interest or any attempts to bullshit for the reward.
It's a sorry state. 8/
[admin] I deleted your posts so it doesn't undermine the unity of the staff, not because I don't want you killing it. It's still open for discussion, but I'd like to explore a better solution than supporting 8hrs of idling.[/admin]
