faction horn ideas

I was thinking while the faction horn work ok now perhaps there is a better way to implement them. Maybe a way to allow the enemy to interact with the opposing factions horn as well in some manner? I feel like with some thought we could perhaps make the horns a bit more dynamic. I was thinking maybe if opposing factions could hear your horn but not know exactly which signal you were giving. So they would see "An Axfell horn is heard in the Grand Forest South" while Axfell would see Enemies spotted. Though this may make people not want to use horns at all so my idea doesnt seem so great. Does anyone have any good ideas regarding this?

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How about some toilets? It's simple and it's useful.
I can't say that about this.



Seriously though...What?!

How about adding a gnome magus to the Ranzington Arena, one who'll cast "send image" for you for a fee.

So you can give him a message, he'll send his image to the recipient and be all "Howdy, duel me, love Hundie xoxo"

(He's an awesome diviner and happens to know everyone on the island as well)

That way you don't have to pretend that the fort captains are trying to win the war with one on one battles!

Does it have to be a GNOME?



-TheMothMan

Also the way horns work now they are far superior to using a bird to carry a msg about troop movements per say. I think the msg system J put it is really neat and wish we could make it so that it was more practical and used more. As it is now hardly anyone uses it.

Of course it has to be a gnome! All gnomes are illusionists!


What about having the factions horns only heard in the area they're used in, they're very meta-gamey as-is.

If so, with that said the alarms should just be for the fort and areas they're raised in too!

As a whole I think people are spoilt for fairly OOC information (I mean you -can- rationalise it but it's not all that convincing), I for one would love to wander into an assault on the way back from somewhere with no info about what's going on! Or say, keep a noted heroic figure busy in Ranzington with idle chit-chat, knowing full well my buddy's are on their way to grab them a relic.

Maybe it's a case of less is more?

Oh wow! I like that idea a ton Plum! So if in the GF and blowing the horn it would only be heard by allies in the GF or everyone in the GF? That way msgs from bird would have their uses.

A signal in the GF would be, say, heard by everyone in the grand forest, plains, Cleaven gates and Cleaven fort.

The same sort of thing for the plains alarm, minus the grand forest.

And a similar approach for Axfelly areas.

Yeah that would be cool. Making it to where horns can only be heard up to like two maps away. Could definately add some fun dynamics. ^^

Moth could something like this be done or would it be a lot of effort?

Also I dont want to ignore you Hundie. I am sorry but I am not fond of your idea.

Well, each and every area would need to have one waypoint in them to identify them - for the purpose of knowing the adjecent areas.
Then the script that fires when the horn is blown would have to find out which area its in by this waypoint and subsecently which the adjecent areas are, by local variables manually stored into each and every waypoint.

Another way would be to make a script that checks for the areas tag and then finds the adjecent areas there, which someone would have to code into a list.

Which ever way its done, its a lot of work.
The strain on the server could be noticeable each time the script fires aswell, because it would have to scan the adjecent areas for all objects, exclude everything that is not a PC of a certain faction, and then send them the message.

In shorts, its a totally different beast than to send a message to all PC's or all PC's of a certain Faction.


-TheMothMan

Darn. Such a shame because I really liked this idea.

..

Yea those are two draw backs of the birds and likely why most dont use them. If J ever comes back I am sure he would fix them up for us.

Why not just limit it to the area the horn-blower is in?

It's easier to justify IC than every recruit being given a super powerful magical item that can send sound only your faction can hear an infinite number of times a day with an infinite range. The transitions represent a fair bit of time down the road after all.

I guess that is an option but it seems to be too limited. Also how would we handle PvP death msgs?

Area wide?

Again it's OOC information. Either you see the guy die or you shouldn't really know about it.

I agree that it adds to the fun when you're actively PVP'ing, but when a new player is walking about and gets a bunch of messages about people being murdered, it doesn't reflect too kindly on the module not being an Arena!

Well certainly Ranzington has more than a hand full of people living there but due to game limitation we cant have a ton of NPCs. Also news of who won and lost battles would spread from soldier to civilian ect. Besides the fact that news like this could and should travel its fun to know about who won and lost in a battle. Do you see any other less of an OOC way to still get the same effect of news traveling?

Well, yeh.

Players who were there, talking about it IC...