Suggestions:Miscellaneous

Suggestions for Shartak are always welcome, although there's no guarantee that anything will be added. Comments on or modifications for any of the suggestions below can be added by editing this page. Please be considerate and don't just remove ideas that you don't like.

Bug reports should go on the Bugs page.

This is the suggestions page for "other" ideas that don't fit into an easy category. See also the Suggestions page for other suggestions.

Example

To use the template, enter the following, but remove emboldened text:

===Suggestion Name===
{{suggestion|
suggest_type=Skill, balance change, improvement, etc|
suggest_scope=Who or what it applies to|
suggest_description=Full description. Check spelling and be descriptive.|
suggest_time=~~~~~|
suggest_author=~~~|
suggest_comments=
<!-- COMMENT **BELOW** THIS LINE - DO NOT DELETE THIS LINE -->
Comment here
<!-- COMMENT **ABOVE** THIS LINE - DO NOT DELETE THIS LINE -->
}}

Other

Supplies in settlements

Could there perhaps be some kind of a more reliable way to get things in villages, apart from randomly finding them? Coming across abandoned items in jungles, evaquated police departments and such makes sense, but going on an epic quest for a machete under someone's carpet in an active village just seems a bit out of place.

So, if it's not too much of a hassle, which it most likely is, I suggest there to perhaps be put some kind of trader characters in settlements, who could exchange all kindsa things for random junk you've found lying around in other places, or maybe you could get these fellas to make items for you free of charge, which you could go and pick up after a period of time?

..probably too complicated for something that's rather useless. Oh well. --Ismo Kuikka

Comments

There's a trading post in one of the huts in Dalpok, can't get anything there though. Perhaps a sign of things to come? --Snarf 10:33, 17 February 2006 (GMT)

there is,in one of the outsider villages, an ammo cache where you can find ammo reliably in the native villages in the trading posts you can find barely anything(or nothing like my reward for 30AP of searching) -- Daylan 00:01, 10 March 2006 (GMT)

Tunnels

Tunnels underneath the island lead to interesting places.

Comments

How do you know they don't exist? :) Dr. J

Treasure to capture

"Capture the flag" type objective, in this case the flags are treasure from each village. Bonus points in the form of XP or gold coins to be awarded to the holder of the treasure at certain intervals.

Comments

I would like to modify this slightly Mystery Suggester. Please see the Unique Item Hunt suggestion. --Lint 08:40, 5 March 2006 (GMT)

Informational messages

You should be able to see what other people have done since your past turn. Much like the skill above, except for most actions that take place. Such as '[09:34]Joe used a medkit on Roger' or '[05:23]Dan Attacked a Boar and missed'. If this is implemented, there should be a menu that you can use to toggle certain bits of information, to reduce or stop spam. Durja 18:14, 6 February 2006 (GMT)

Comments

I don't want to see when people miss attacks, that's just too much information (unless it's me that they're attacking!) - Snarf

Would be useful to see when kills are made in the same location eg. Dan killed a boar or Joe killed Roger - Snarf

How about making a list of "informational messages" that might be required? - Snarf

• PlayerX killed PlayerY.
• PlayerX killed animal.
• PlayerY died from eating some poisonous berries. (self-inflicted death)

• Implemented to a certain degree, the first two anyway... if you kill yourself eating berries or from wounds then you just fade away quietly. --Simon 14:12, 27 March 2006 (BST)

Player VS Player Interaction

I would propoese a to hit % penalty for attacking members of same Home location. I believe this will promote exploration and perhaps offer a measure of protection of newly "birthed" population. As a recent victim of death by the hands of a warrior from my own villiage this has a bit of appeal to me ;). - Nan

Comments

Instead of a hit % penalty, what about reducing or eliminating XP earned for such attacks? It would be similar to the ZvZ penalty used in UrbanDead, and its easier to rationalize not getting as much experience fighting one of your own than to rationalize that its harder to hit your own people for some reason. --Jackel 19:52, 27 February 2006 (GMT)

The to hit penalty and the lack of XP should be combined to discourage intravillage conflicts but only on nonclan members(so clans from the same village can fight with each other to simulate a power struggle for leadership), extend this to shamans as well, as its not often the village shaman gets killed by an out-of-towner. --Daylan 00:27, 7 March 2006 (GMT)

I don't like this idea--especially with the inclusion of pirates in the game. It makes sense for pirates to trun on each other now and then, or to turn to pillaging from one of the outsider towns. All of a sudden, for our good RPing we get a reduced chance to hit and no XP?--Wifey 07:30, 29 March 2006 (BST)

Spirit Movement

A couple thoughts on this topic.--Jackel 02:29, 6 March 2006 (GMT)

• My character has the "trekking" skill, but as a spirit, actually moves slower (1 AP per square) than when he's alive! Spirits should move at least as fast as someone skilled at traversing terrain.

Perhaps spirits have less impetus than live characters --Dr. J 18:55, 7 March 2006 (GMT)

• Spirits move effortlessly through the thickest jungle, water, swamp--as it should be. Why should mountains be an impediment?

Perhaps there's some kind of mineral in the mountain that prevents the spirit from passing through it.. could be mined later on to spirit-proof huts or something (clutching at straws here, can you tell) ?

They also can't move through the deepest water, but that is the boundary of the game I'm guessing.

Player Titles

To supplement the explored/killed statistics, give players rank titles based on percentiles. For example, if Jack is in the bottom 10% of explorers and the 30th percentile of hunters, his profile would show him as "Greenhorn Jack the Good Shot", if Sheila is in the top 10% killers and middle 50 explorer, she would be "The Adventurous Sheila, Grandmaster Hunter", and Murk would simply be "Demigod Murk". The titles would be determined once a day like the stats, only apply to active players, and only take active players into consideration when determining percentile. This will help statistics be more relevant to all players, as once time goes on and new players start, the top 100 may be quite a distant goal. --Frisco 04:15, 10 March 2006 (GMT)

Comments

I like it. It adds flavor to the game. I also agree that this system should be based on dynamic percentiles to allow for new players to compete with some of the more established ranking players. A static listing would be incredibly difficult for newcomers to break into. --Lint 22:12, 11 March 2006 (GMT)

Ability to use the 'Back' button

Just logged on to find my character had been killed. He had been attacked by two different natives. Naturally, I was curious, and looked at the first native's profile. I then tried to go back and view the second native's profile, but the combat messages with his name were gone. It would be nice to have the ability to back up one screen and check the other profiles and information on a screen. --Meatiershower 17:17, 10 March 2006 (GMT)

Comments

• If using firefox or safari, you can probably middle click (if you have a 3 button mouse), or right click and then "Open in new tab/window". That way the profiles open in other windows and you don't lose the messages. --Simon 18:46, 10 March 2006 (GMT)
  • Yep, that one works with firefox on a right-click.MorkaisChosen 16:11, 16 March 2006 (GMT)
• I don't think there's any way to accomplish this functionality because you are technically reloading the game.cgi page by traveling from it and back to it. The game.cgi is a dynamic page so it won't retain the information if you refresh the page like that. Making all the movement pages static would just become a storage problem when handling static pages for thousands of players. Consider opening profile links in new tabs or new windows as Simon has suggested. (As a side note, in my experience with Firefox, if you stay on the game.cgi page, you can use the back and forward histories to a certain degree.) --Lint 21:46, 10 March 2006 (GMT)

Inventory Limit

I think I would like to have an indication of how much of my inventory limit is being used up. :D --Lint 22:12, 11 March 2006 (GMT)

In-game Rankings

I was noticing recently that one of my characters seemed to have killed a lot of parrots lately. I realizing that such information is tracked on the game stats page, but not necessarily everyone looks at it, and I thought it might be fun to have something in-game to acknowledge the player who has killed the most creatures of each type. Maybe a line is added to the player's description page, or the color of their name is different, or a mysterious "crown of the fallen parrots" appears in their inventory--no real impact, just bragging rights. It should be easy enough to implement, and might add a little intrigue.--Jackel 01:03, 16 March 2006 (GMT)

Comments

Ditch the AP cost of dropping something.

I have noticed that when I drop something I lose 1 AP. Could that be changed so that I don't lose any AP when I drop somthing. --MeatPie 07:32, 23 March 2006 (GMT)

Comments

• It does not take AP to drop stuff. --Grigoriy 17:47, 2 April 2006 (BST)
• Sort of implemented. It was actually a bug that was created and then fixed, originally it didn't cost anything to drop an item, and then it did, and now it doesn't again. --Simon 01:45, 9 April 2006 (BST)

Wiki: table CSS

It would be nice if there were a class set up in the wiki's CSS file so that we could make attractive tables (see my ugly, hackish one on Tips and Tricks). I tried to edit WikiMedia:Common.css but it's edit-locked. --VTBassMatt 16:14, 23 March 2006 (GMT)

• I don't know that WikiMedia:Common.css is the right thing to edit - That link takes me off to an external site! --Simon 18:09, 23 March 2006 (GMT)
  • What the heck! Ha, sorry. Now I can't find the page on either this wiki or the WikiMedia page. Weird. Well anyhow, it would be nice to have a useful table class. Thanks, Simon.
    • What kind of table class? Do you mean something to give a particular title bar, and row colours? Similar to the one on the front page. Got an example of what you'd put in the css file? --Simon 11:58, 3 April 2006 (BST)

Changes to the Statistics Page

The "Statistics on Kills" page is a nice feature, and I think that it could be improved by the addition of two new lists: 1) A list of the "top Native-killers" among Outsiders, and 2) A list of the "top Outsider-killers" among Natives. The lists would rank the top 25 (or however many) of each group by how many of the other group they've killed. These are the most significant statistics in the game after all... as it is now we mainly see which players have killed the most animals, which is almost meaningless. Another idea could be lists of the "Top 25 turncoats" or "top 25 traitors" for each group, which would list the top 25 players that kill their own (e.g. if a Native has killed 15 Natives he would likely be #1 on the Native turncoat list right now). Since the latter list would show everyone who the "PKers" are, it would have the added benefit of discouraging PKing. -Arminius 21:11, 24 March 2006 (GMT)

• Instead of showing 'natives killed' or 'outsiders killed' perhaps it could show which village the victms have come from. Blood fudes between native villages or fierce rivallry between outsider groups are quite common through history.
• Quick job... http://www.shartak.com/statpkills.html - not quite what was requested I think. This is a one-off and will not be updated regularly. Send me feedback! --Simon 02:07, 9 April 2006 (BST)

Pets

as the name reades, simply have "pets" as a survivor living in the jungle, my first instinct would be to find support, in this case we could add a "tame animal" button, which would be clicked to tame an animal, the starting catching % would be something like 10% and could be improved the more the animal is damaged, like at 1hp, if full health was 10hp then you'd have 55% of catching it, (i added 5% for every 10% missing from the creature's health) this could also be improved with new skills such as

+Amateur Catching Skills (adds 10%)
 +Catching Skills (adds 15%, doesnt stack)
  +Taming Skills (adds 30%)

+Net (adds 10%, does stack)

certain animals could be ridden, other would do funny things or find objects for you, ex: Mr. Bobo the monkey finds a bottle of rum in your pocket "gee i didnt know i had that"

elephants, large stags, and tigers could be ridden, small stags would haveto grow up before being ridden, after like, 10 days, or 20 kills they would mature, its all just theory...

parrots could become like flares, ex: Mr. TweetTweet flies towards you and drops a message "help, im at X, Y and there's a native village!"

the parrot could also say messages randomly, players (upon catching a parrot) would be given 10 slots and would type things into them, the parrots would randomly say one, ex: you attack elephant, Mr. TweetTweet says "polly want a cracker"

animals could also act like extra space, like a backpack, if you will. animals are named upon capture.

Comments

• The unique animal skill ideas are interesting. If you don't mind, I will append this information to the existing Pet System suggestion. --Lint 07:21, 25 March 2006 (GMT)

ruins

the ruins in the game are mostly for show, and that can be aggravating at times, as i would love to "explore" ruins more if there was something there. i am suggesting several things such as:

• unique, ruin only monsters
• special items found only in ruins
• if quests are implemented, a quest location

this is a very vague suggestion, but i feel that alot of the ruins on the map are just too bland. i camped out at ruins with my character "Richard Rose" and i stayed there for a week (in real time) because there was nothing better to do. and nothing and i mean NOTHING passed by, no game, no fruit trees, no players. it was completely desolate, and i am just suggesting several "interesting" components for ruins.

Accessibility For Visually Impaired Players

There are a few issues for players using screen reading software that are linked to the information on the map on the main page. The colour of each square is not identified by any text so all the screen reader will say is 'Jungle' etc. Also, the icons indicating things like Huts are not readable so limiting you to knowing what is in each square solely by entering the square and reading the description. Could it be possible to indicate what is seen in each square using text that would help VI players, some games use hidden text that doesn't interfere with what sighted players see but is echoed by screen readers - comments like 'Jungle 5' for example would be great, whilst the icons could just say what they are. ----Gubbins 16:46, 2 April 2006 (BST)

• Is this what you're suggesting? --Grigoriy 17:43, 2 April 2006 (BST)
• Sounds like something that could be done, except I'm not entirely sure how. The icons are done using CSS, is there a specific media type for screen readers? For hidden text, would something in a class that sets the font-size to 1pt and background/foreground colours the same, do the job? --Simon 18:21, 2 April 2006 (BST)
• I'm afraid that I don't have much experience with this. Perhaps we could add 'title' attributes inside each table cell that specified the status of the block. So we can add to each table cell something like 'title=jungle density 5 hut' and 'title=water density 2'. w3 specs --Lint 21:52, 2 April 2006 (BST)
• My HTML knowledge is very basic but I have had a look at some VI web sites for some pointers. It seems that screen readers don't always pick up on the Title attributes on certain elements, the one I use (JAWS) can pick up Title text on Links with a settings change. As for small font size hidden text, I don't know if there is a minimal size required, I'll have a look to try and find out. ----Gubbins 01:15, 6 April 2006 (BST)
• The h4 tags around map block names have been replaced with span tags, and extra headings have been added on the right instead of just using bold tags. Unfortunately this has broken the greasemonkey scripts that handle mapping etc. Sorry! --Simon 01:49, 9 April 2006 (BST)