News on BBS

[Catty]

Looking through the Lua modules, I found a Newspaper generator. That said, it looks like it should work, but I've never seen it on the BBS. Never. Not once. Is it broken somehow? Was it purposely deactivated? I know I'd really like to see a newspaper implemented, as it would add a lot of flavor to the game universe.

[bszlrd]

It's active, and rarely (by design) generates an entry when you enter a system. It creates an event influencing the market in a neighbouring system.

[Catty]

I set it to have a minimum time of zero, and a 100% of creating an article on system entry. It was nice having it, but there was a problem; they never got deleted. There was an article from Jan 1 still up in May. Any way to fix this? Also, why is it set to only start creating news half a year into the game, and even then, only every thirty jumps? Are there plans to expand upon the newspaper and get it creating more entries by default?

[impaktor]

There was an article from Jan 1 still up in May. Any way to fix this?

News events are not missions. A news will be reported while it is still in effect, so you have time to see it, and go there. This is typically around 3 months. A bit depending on the distance to the system. It is a feature.

Also, why is it set to only start creating news half a year into the game, and even then, only every thirty jumps?

I did it like that because I don't want the player to start the game and feel: "Ok, there are three missions, Assassin, Deliver and Taxi, and nothing more". I want the player who spent some time to go "wow something new happened!" and be surprised, and wonder what more things are hiding in the game.

Are there plans to expand upon the newspaper and get it creating more entries by default?

Yes, I started last week on an expansion for newspaper modules. It will not have anything to do with commodities or trading. It will use the same icon and framework but do something different.

[Catty]

Good stuff! I totally get where you're coming from with wanting people to see new things, but it seems way too rare. I got over two years into the game and never saw a single entry. Also, I may not be a coder, but I could write articles, along with other stuff, like why people want a package to go somewhere, or why they don't want to be found. Is there a way I could contribute these kind of things?

[cakjohnston]

The standard way to contribute is on github: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer

There are notes on how to do this on the wiki: http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Using_git_and_GitHub

It can seem a bit complicated but learning git is very useful and tens of thousands of projects use the same workflow. If you have questions feel free to ask here or on IRC.

[impaktor]

Good stuff! I totally get where you're coming from with wanting people to see new things, but it seems way too rare. I got over two years into the game and never saw a single entry.

I'll crank up the news reporting some, maybe 1/15 instead of 1/30. I'm currently restructuring that module so I'll fix it there. Might take a month or two until it's done.

Also, I may not be a coder, but I could write articles, along with other stuff, like why people want a package to go somewhere, or why they don't want to be found. Is there a way I could contribute these kind of things?

We don't need any more News affecting commodity prices, but any other contribution or idea would be good to hear about; however, please start a separate thread for this purpose (unless it's related to the News module). If you're not very motivated to learn git (which I think one must be to learn it, since it is quite a lot to take in) we would be happy to help you open pull requests on github, just give us the modified file, for instance a data/lang/module-name/en.json file and we do the rest.

Come by IRC if you have any questions.

[Catty]

A while back, I asked about the news Lua module, and was told it was receiving an overhaul. I was also informed that if I wanted to incorporate new articles unrelated to commodity prices, it would be appreciated. The only thing I have to do is supply the JSON file. Unfortunately, I was unable to make any edits to the en.json work. If I were to simply supply a bunch of plain text news articles, would someone be able to get them into the game? One thing I find makes a universe more alive is reading about random news events, even if they don't mean anything for the game world.

As an example of what I'm talking about, I think it would be nice to read an article on that BBS that looks like this:

---

Just in! Worst space crash since 3175!

It was reported this morning that a large space liner crashed in the [system] system. Although it was initially difficult to confirm, we now know that a Malabar Transport crashed during reentry to the planet [planet]. The operator of the craft, Light Speed International, has announced that there were a total of 7 crew and 352 passengers on board. The last time a crash of this scale happened was back in 3175, during the famous Saturn Incident. In that accident, two space liners collided, killing 642. Since then, improvements in safety technology have prevented all but the most minor incidents. The exact cause of the accident is being investigated. Light Speed International issued a statement saying that they believe the cause to be faulty atmospheric shielding. The manufacturer of the equipment, a new start-up called Brighter Than Most Tech, is denying this. As the ship was owned by a Federal company, the government of Sol will be heading the investigation, with help from local [system] authorities.

---

If I were to just put together a text file with lots of things like that, would someone be kind enough to incorporate them into the JSON file? I don't know how to make it work, nor would I know how to write a Lua module to actually display them in game (though I imagine this would just be a modified version of the existing news module).

Thanks!

[impaktor]

I was also informed that if I wanted to incorporate new articles unrelated to commodity prices, it would be appreciated. The only thing I have to do is supply the JSON file.

Wasn't the JSON statement an answer regarding your wish to add more reasons to package / taxi missions? "I need to get to X before my husband comes back" Those can just be copy-pasted into the right place and we're done.
OK re-reading what I wrote in my previous post, can see how you understood it that way

For the News event you need to put in some actual code if you want to write something that does something different than the news commodity event.

If I were to simply supply a bunch of plain text news articles, would someone be able to get them into the game?

But what will they do? There is currently very many flavors of the "news event commodity" (I was a bit too ambitious when I wrote them I suspect) and we don't need more of those, as I previously said, and they are the only ones that can easily be extended with more flavours through editing JSON, but as I said it's not needed.

One thing I find makes a universe more alive is reading about random news events, even if they don't mean anything for the game world.

Adding code for that wouldn't bee too hard. Question is if we want "dead news" that doesn't actually reflect a change in the game world. This is something I think needs to be discussed here by the community. If we have them, I think it would have to be clear that they're not doing anything, so they can't mention a place or coordinates or planet, or anything like that, since that would give the player the impression to go to system X to see if something is happening there, and we end up with a mad player posting bug reports to us.

Just in! Worst space crash since 3175!

It was reported this morning that a large space liner crashed...

Maybe it's just me, but slightly too long, and mentioning of places is, as I said, maybe not something we want. Let's see what others here have to say about it.

I tell you what, I'm going to code more news event (when I have time) that would do the following:

1. "Scavenger event": reports of a lot of debris / floating cargo in orbit around a planet X in system Y from various events, for example: giant space battle, failed atmo shield, failed mutiny, failed ship-ship docking. The event would place a lot of cargo (of different things, some flavours of this event could be expensive things, maybe battle weapons if it was some contraband operation) and maybe I'll place some ships in orbit, and other scavengers.

2. "Bounty mission": pirates are bountiful in system X and they need help upholding the law, bounty reward tripled for each pirate eliminated. I'm not sure how I would implement this nicely though since we have code that does half of this in another place.

So if you write news for those I could make use of them sometime in the future.

Also, I merged the discussion to this thread, since no need to discuss the same thing at two different places, even though I actually in this thread suggested to open a new thread. Sorry for not being able to make up my mind.

[FluffyFreak]

One thing I find makes a universe more alive is reading about random news events, even if they don't mean anything for the game world.

Adding code for that wouldn't bee too hard. Question is if we want "dead news" that doesn't actually reflect a change in the game world. This is something I think needs to be discussed here by the community. If we have them, I think it would have to be clear that they're not doing anything, so they can't mention a place or coordinates or planet, or anything like that, since that would give the player the impression to go to system X to see if something is happening there, and we end up with a mad player posting bug reports to us.

Maybe instead of having dead news we need to have a list of suggestions for things that could happen in the game. Then all news will really be news and we can act on it?

Take your space liner crash, that's going to involve a lot of escape pods, also the system it happens in will suddenly find it's medical resources stretched so the value of them will go up for a while afterwards.
Is there a simple system that we can add that can model and apply that so that if the player decides to buy some medical supplies, equip a cabin(/medical bay?) and then jump to that system they can sell the supplies then go around picking up survivors until their cabins are full and receive credits/reputation for doing so?

@impaktor I like your suggestions too.