Player Vendors (To decide what best fits into CA)

[perk31]

I've looked at two systems so far.  One really stands out but will require a lot of customization for the server.

The first is a system using a broker to sell player goods.  It is a little cumbersome but relatively simple.  To sell the item a player places it in a table and "speaks" answers to the broker setting a price.  In order to buy an item a player will have to "speak" a string to search for.  If you wanted to see all the swords for sell you would speak .Sword. (both periods needed)  The broker will show you a list of swords to choose from and you can examine and buy the one of your choice.  He will then return the gold to the seller upon his/her next visit minus his commission.  The nicest part of this system is that brokers are not tied together so each inventory is unique and the broker will hawk his items to players within his perception range.  The largest negative is that is uses the bioware db and is somewhat clunky.


The second is very slick system.  The player will hire a merchant to act as his personal broker selling his items.  The broker requires a one time fee, a daily salary, and a commission from each sale.  The brokers uses a store to manage and present inventory and stores the inventory and other information in the sql database we already use, which is a huge plus.  The configuration of the store is handled through a conversation with the merchant and the merchant can be placed anywhere.  The negatives are:
1.  A direct price can not be set.  Sale price is a markup percentage of the cost of the item and is limited to 100%
2.  The system was designed for the merchant to always be active and I'm assuming for the store to always be active as well.  Should a large number of people decide to hire merchants and start filling up inventories the lag on the server will definitely increase

Using this system I believe it would be necessary to modify it so that we can spawn the merchants into predetermined places, which means there will be limited availability to have a merchant working for you.  Or if all of the modifications can be achieved it may be possible to have an unlimited number of merchants in the mod, since they will only spawn when players are in the area, but their locations will still be fixed.  I don't have a problem with that.

At the moment I would prefer to use the second system if we can make them spawn like we need so that system resources are not used up.

I will post on the third tomorrow after I try it out.

Which system sounds the most appealing?

[Podilarius]

I like the 2nd system you mentioned ... however I will wait till hear about the 3rd to make a final judgment.

Thanks

[Combatbob]

yea, that second one sounds nice, but only if we set the vendors to spawn onplayer enter of areas or ya, terrible lag.

[Kepuli]

I like the second one too. Is there a way to limit the maximum amount of items one can have on sale? Could help in reducing lag.

[Podilarius]

I like the second one too. Is there a way to limit the maximum amount of items one can have on sale? Could help in reducing lag.

should just be a count of your items in the DB when you modify the store ... and then do a check when you try to put something in ... is there a reason other than lag that we would do this ...
if we do it right the store will only be active when there is a player in the area and using it. This alone will cut the lag by multiples ...

either way ... just some script changes ...

[perk31]

I like the second one too. Is there a way to limit the maximum amount of items one can have on sale? Could help in reducing lag.

should just be a count of your items in the DB when you modify the store ... and then do a check when you try to put something in ... is there a reason other than lag that we would do this ...
if we do it right the store will only be active when there is a player in the area and using it. This alone will cut the lag by multiples ...

either way ... just some script changes ...

Lag is created by stores with large inventories because the "merchant" has to index with each access, one of the reasons why our merchants clean out so quickly.  I don't know how you will get around that since I don't think you can limit how large a store can grow.  I don't think it will be too bad since they store will spawn in.

[perk31]

The third vendor isn't going to work but it is neat.  Basically the player purchases a merchant contract and a merchant bag, which is a bag of holding.  The player executes the contract where he wants his vendor to appear.  Then anything the player wants to sell he adds to the merchant bag which is maintained in his inventory.  If the player is not online, his merchant can not sell anything.

[Kepuli]

The third vendor isn't going to work but it is neat.  Basically the player purchases a merchant contract and a merchant bag, which is a bag of holding.  The player executes the contract where he wants his vendor to appear.  Then anything the player wants to sell he adds to the merchant bag which is maintained in his inventory.  If the player is not online, his merchant can not sell anything.

That's exactly what they used in Tarala!  :lol:

[perk31]

The third vendor isn't going to work but it is neat.  Basically the player purchases a merchant contract and a merchant bag, which is a bag of holding.  The player executes the contract where he wants his vendor to appear.  Then anything the player wants to sell he adds to the merchant bag which is maintained in his inventory.  If the player is not online, his merchant can not sell anything.

That's exactly what they used in Tarala!  :lol:

So how did you like it and how well did the other players seem to like it?

I would think that having a merchant able to sell at any time is important and with this method we still have the issue of trying to figure out how to spawn the merchant instead of leaving them active all the time.

[Kepuli]

Well, at the time, those vendors were ok I guess, but that was propably because I hadn't seen any other vendors, and most of the other players either (I've seen better ones afterwards). The biggest drawback was that everything needed to do with conversations. It was slow and difficult. When someone wanted to buy something, the vendor just said "Green leather belt", for example, but the customer couldn't see the item and didn't know what attributes the item had, so the only option was to send a tell to the crafter and ask, or just buy it without knowing what it is. The system did its job, but it could have been better.

So now I would not recommend that vendor system to be used in CA.

[perk31]

I think we should add two or three of the 1st merchants into ca now and remove them later if/when we get the second option to work the way we need it too.