That’s a better idea. As much as it would be nice to allow players to put stuff in themselves it realllly runs the risk of lots of trashy/slashy stuff going in. I guess eventually really well known writers could have free reign to add stuff (and might be an awesome way for strictly non-coding people to help).
It would be a shame if journals took away development time for other awesome features, so making it community controlled makes a lot of sense. I don’t think a poll is the way to go though, as that would only add a few choice ones, meaning all journals could be quickly discovered in-game. A better approach would be that all journals that are good enough would be added, making it possible for everyone to contribute a bit of story that can be later found within the game.
Not sure how to set it up though. Perhaps a voting system, everything with at least this many votes gets put in where everyone has an unlimited amount of votes? Or a small committee (3 to 5 or something) of trustworthy volunteers that decide, whereas every story that all members agree on gets put in?
[quote=“Uneron, post:22, topic:5033”]I don’t think a poll is the way to go though, as that would only add a few choice ones, meaning all journals could be quickly discovered in-game. A better approach would be that all journals that are good enough would be added, making it possible for everyone to contribute a bit of story that can be later found within the game.
Not sure how to set it up though. Perhaps a voting system, everything with at least this many votes gets put in where everyone has an unlimited amount of votes? Or a small committee (3 to 5 or something) of trustworthy volunteers that decide, whereas every story that all members agree on gets put in?[/quote]
That kinda doesn’t make sense…like you said that poll wasn’t the way to go and then said a voting system should be put in place??
They’re the same thing aren’t they?
If there was a dedicated team to look after the journal entries then that’d be great, but I imagine there would be hundreds to go through and I doubt anyone would fancy trawling through pages and pages of rubbish ones (and people will undoubtedly get annoyed when theirs don’t get included) every week to add the best ones. Plus, those people selected for the committee would need to be trustworthy enough to do it which would make finding people difficult.
I’d suggest to start with small/one day diary entries (like max 200 words) which could be made and submitted to a site (or one could be made) which people could then vote for. The top 10 could be added and then a new round would start. This would make it a community decision, and be an ok decider of quality. I just imagine the biggest problem would be that some people would come out with like 5000 world journal entries which would take wayyyy too long to go through.
[quote=“Binky, post:23, topic:5033”]If there was a dedicated team to look after the journal entries then that’d be great, but I imagine there would be hundreds to go through and I doubt anyone would fancy trawling through pages and pages of rubbish ones (and people will undoubtedly get annoyed when theirs don’t get included) every week to add the best ones. Plus, those people selected for the committee would need to be trustworthy enough to do it which would make finding people difficult.
I’d suggest to start with small/one day diary entries (like max 200 words) which could be made and submitted to a site (or one could be made) which people could then vote for. The top 10 could be added and then a new round would start. This would make it a community decision, and be an ok decider of quality. I just imagine the biggest problem would be that some people would come out with like 5000 world journal entries which would take wayyyy too long to go through.[/quote]
I actually quite like the idea of regular polls. You see when i2amroy suggested a poll I got the impression of a one-time thing, to select a limited few once and call the whole thing over. The voting I suggested was to be continuous, but your version is much more detailed.
Yeah, there should be a length limit, about 500 words total or so, all entries together. Its not like any player would read journals much longer then that in-game.
Edit: Clarity
There is this strange japanese RL Elona ( http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=Elona ) that already does something like this (adding user generated data to server, and seeding it back ingame). You can create a player home, and other players can visit it. (No clue how it is implemented).
But I do like the idea of leaving notes for others.
Do worry about the troll factor. You need some sort of system to flag notes for review. (but that is implementable).
I think the start should be just to let you write longer notes. (Never actually used the magic markers… doh… will test those).
Wow, we totally didn’t know about Elona.
Sarcasm?
Yes.
No need for it.
As I say, this could be a really interesting mechanic, but I don’t think that it could be done without pretty heavy moderation really (like automatically submitting it to a server). One main problem I foresee is that I feel a lot of people would write it as fanfic and embellish heaving on the world, as it’s difficult to put drama without other characters/stuff going on. This is fine to a point, but it may be misleading/confusing unless there’s a guideline that you can’t mention things that just blatantly aren’t there (like other survivors, working aeroplanes and so on).
Note: This is only for survivor journals written in game, of course people could add ‘backstory’ journals with all that kinda stuff in, just not for ones that are written by in game survivors, as I feel that’d get massively confusing.
Hrm, I wasn’t aware of this, it might not be that hard to share map tiles between games. Once we jsonize them anyway.
I just want to make a logbook and have storage records.
Want to find out where shit is in those mountainous piles of shit? Make a logbook!
Want to find out just how many wool socks you have in this pile! Make a logbook!
Want to find out just how many ZOMBEARS you see each day? [size=18pt]MAKE A FUKKIN LOGBOOK![/size]
I like logbooks.
i got gtaguy a logbook. bitches love logbooks. 
On ‘related’ features in roguelikes. Tome has an intergrated IRC channel (iirc) nethack/slash’em has the bones files which can be distributed using an external application (hearse), stone soup has the online versions where you can chat and the memorial files are uploaded. All great features that create bigger community involvement imho.
(Cataclysm feels pretty lonely after the NPC’apocalypse).
Seriously.
I could die happy if I could write a logbook.
being able to write in an in-game journal/logbook is nothing new; a lot of games have this feature, if not in the main game then in a mod. i know Morrowind and Oblivion have mods like that, and other games as well. i can hardly wait till this idea gets added to CDDA.
Yes. Pls.
You can already write on the floor and on objects :D. Writing in logbooks will be a bit more work to implement I guess. esp to support multiple languages.
Yeah but I want to be a post-apocalyptic quartermaster.
I personally don’t see the point of writing messages on areas with a marker.
I use the map notes instead.
Can’t wait till a developer finds some time to make a LOGBOOOOOOOOOOOK!!!
I agree.