Cantr II Discussion Forum

This would need ProgD input... so it's pretty much backburnered for the moment.

I've been thinking very hard about this recently, since I think it would really help increase the recording of history in Cantr. And, at this stage, Cantr has alot of history which is an appealing part of the game. How many of use have had librarians with a library that just consists of notes and envelopes all over the floor? Published books might make things a little bit more realistic... and I know for a fact that Lupus Black had 3 or 4 times the information put in the map, but the other parts of his work are probably stuffed in an envelope somewhere named "trash". Frustrating indeed.


The way I would like books to be implemented is as follows (please feel free to develop my ideas below):

1) Be required to make a cover. 100g of leather/hemp cloth/hide... whatever. Not much material though, and not more than .25 or .5 days to build.

2) An item would be created, along the lines of "Book type" Book titled "Book name" where "Book type" would be hemp-bound, leather-bound etc. and "Book name" would be editable. The item would have the following button options: Drop/Give/Edit/Read

3) Replace the "Use" button on notes with "Bind" or similar. This would, similarly to envelopes, put the note into the book.

Editing a book

Like the envelope sub-screen, there should be a book editing subscreen. Once the notes are placed into the book, they should show up on this screen with the options: Remove/Edit/Read. There would need to be a way to define the order of the notes, although the "last in, last read" option would work as a bodge job. It may be necessary to limit the number of notes which can be put in a book.

This screen should have an editable bar at the top to alter the name of the book, "book name" as above.

The sub-screen would need the buttons "Back to inventory screen", "Update order" and "Publish/bind".

Viewing a book

Once a book is "Published/bound" as above, it needs to be able to view the book. Viewing a book should not be possible until the book is bound, and post-binding the edit sub-screen should not be accessible again.

All I suggest for viewing is the same as viewing an ordinary note, but with the option at the bottom of the note to "View previous"/"Return to inventory"/"View next".


Programming required: Initially it wasn't going to be much, however I seem to have got carried away abit...

Thoughts, anyone? Especially ideas that would reduce the programming required.

Can we not just have notes with multiple pages and an option to merge notes? Everything you want to put in a book can be put into a note too. The difference ist that it doesn't feel like a book.

Alternatively, an option to sort and browse notes in envelopes would give a sufficiently bookish feel, too.

I can see the attractiveness in keeping is simple, but the idea of putting a cover on the book holds a lot of attractiveness as well. There's something about the feel of a book in your hands, and bound notes would be in a way special, because someone put effort into binding them. Multi paged notes would eliminate the need for books, but they'd always be multipaged notes, not books.

I think a good representation of a book would be as follows:

1. write or collect notes to be included
2. put them in an envelope
3. click a 'make book' button on the envelope
4. add hide, leather, wood, or cloth to project
5. work on it for an hour
6. click the 'read' button
7. choose the page (note) you'd like to view

They would be copyable (just add cover). A "published" date would be included automatically, as well as the name of the publisher. Also, they would not be editable, but you could copy individual pages and make your own book.

Great idea Rob

So basically a book would be an evelope, set to uneditable by using some resources. (Provided that a way to browse envelopes is added first.)

Piscator wrote:So basically a book would be an evelope, set to uneditable by using some resources. (Provided that a way to browse envelopes is added first.)

Basically. Except that envelopes already can be browsed (sort of). Almost like emptying the envelope, but instead of clicking a checkbox to remove a note, you click on the note's name to read it.

The envelope idea is a cool one since it simplifies things, but I would also like to see the option to put the pages in a certain order and currently notes are probably sorted by their id...

Yes, they are sorted by ID. I'd like the ability to turn pages within the note. I don't want to have to back out and go to the next page.

So I guess we have to do the following things.

1.) Devise a way of reading notes without taking them out of the envelope.

2.) Add buttons for switching to the next/previous note in an envelope

3.) Add the option to sort notes in an envelope.

4.) Implement a mechanism to turn an envelope into a book.

I +1 this.


Also, maybe it should take string or some sort of glue?
Has anyone here read the book Inkheart?
Would they be repairable objects?

Let me see if I understood the idea...
So basically the book is like an envelope with the option to read notes directly without having to take the notes out, there will be also an option to turn page/note/whatever and there will be a maximum number of notes allowed per book and also a maximum number of characters/lines per note(because a single page can only have one sentence, but could also be full of words, in order to make the book readable and somewhat realistic it should have a limit of lines or characters, that would be the maximum number of characters/lines writable before reaching the end of the page)

Oh, and you will need resources to make the book...

Have I got the proposed idea?

Now this, I like!

Along with adding something more substantial to the literary world of Cantr, it could open the door to other tech tree projects for the sim players.

For example:
Clasps, to lock books.
Bookshelves.
Pedestals, for the religious types to put their holy tomes on.
Chained books, as in rare libraries, to ensure they will not be stolen.

Just to name a few.