"The Last Days Radio"

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Greetings to all!

I’m a noob at this forum, but I’ve been an active forum lurker and playing the game for about a year. Right now, I’m representing a little “dwarf in a strange mood”(see Dwarf Fortress XD) who works as an IT architect in e-commerce.

The main concept:

  1. There is a implemented diary functionality, something like a simple blog, which the player may, or may not use.
    1.1 It is simple, but may keep the date, the text, voice messages, and, maybe, sketches and screenshots. Making sketches, screenshots, notes, requires ingame sheets of papers and writing tools like pens, pencils, etc. Voice messages require live dictophone, or camera( videos, transferred from the blog(vlog via youtube) ). Text information requires papers.

          Message broadcasting could also become available, if the player is living in a live radiostation, which was recently repaired by the survivor :)

    1.2 Sketching could be implemented with the aid of game-integrated HTML browser(i’m not sure abuot this point), which uses some kind of cloud sketching apps(i’m not sure, but this seems kind of plausible idea).

    1.3 Finished post transfers to the site immediately.

    1.4 The diary item can be crafted, using a file.

  2. The in-game diary periodically connects to web mirror of this blog, and uploads news from the player.

  3. This “Survivor Radio” becomes open to other followers, or site lurkers. Likes, comments, ratings now become the yummiest part of this contraption.

  4. ???

  5. PROFIT!!!
    [hr]
    I think, that this idea could increase the immersion of playing, and also attract some additional interest from interested outsiders. The idea is quite simple(if game engine structure allows it to be so), and not so technically hard to implement, IMHO. Though, it could come out quite laborous.

Happy trails!
Alex Uprise, the Hardened Survivor.

2

Many of these ideas have been discussed but what you seem to propose is online connectivity. I have no idea how hard that would be to implement. Would all this info be stored in a server or just in game?

3

Local diary should be mirrored in a master->master relation with a storage on a web server. We may look at Evernote, or Mobile Social Apps as a reference to this kind of data dependancy.

4

Things is, we will have to figure a way for the game to work even if there is no online connection. Maybe disable the features when offline or have an offline folder storage that syncs with the online storage when back online.

5

This feature as a whole doesn’t really fit to me, and on top of that, a lot of the ideas suggested probably couldn’t be made to work in curses mode at all.

6

As for me, an offline storage is a nice suggestion. I think, an SQLite storage would provide an organized, lightweight and simple way to do this. While playing, the game continuously saves log data, but, when the game discovers an opportunity to synchronize, it is simply performed in background.

When synchronizing, the game makes an HTTP request to specially designed web service of the blog. The service gets the data, process it, authorizes the uploader user, and finally makes a post to the blog.

Btw., I’ve made a mistake about master->master, it is more of master->slave relation type.

7

If I correctly got what you mean, there is probably a way to implement some diary functionality as an auxilliary satellite application, or as another layer of abstraction in game app scope. Or just keep things simpler and more stupid :).

I feel not sure about my thoughts right now, and, please, explain things to me, since I’m more familiar with web technologies :slight_smile: