Saving Server Space

[joshua johnson]

Okay, I don't know that much about server memory and space but here is an idea.

First, I am assuming that the forums run on the same server as the game.

Now, my suggestion is to automatically eliminate the forum posts on any topic where there has been no posts for a certain number of months (say three or six or something). Nobody should be harmed by this, that I can think of. A few people would have slight inconvenience, but if nobody adds to a post for that long, it is probably not needed.

Otherwise, if you don't do something like that...then the posts just keep growing and growing.

[mortaine]

Oh, dear lord, please don't do this.

New players are already completely lost. The forums give them some idea of what they're supposed to do. I mean, really really lost-- there are things that I don't even think are possible or "the right way to do it" or what-have-you, and yet someone will mention it in the forums and I'll look on the game and see "oh, look at that-- you can build foo without having a ready supply of raw bar." Basically, as a new player, I have no clue what to do or what I even *can* do; the forums help ground me and help me figure stuff out.

Things I've researched on the forums and got great information from months-old posts:
HTML in note titles (I could see many notes had it, but hadn't realized they were all from a specific date).
Romov
How to get iron (though that was a blatant CR issue that must have been posted long before certain CR-paranoid folks were modding the forums, though to be fair, I felt it might have been too much information, especially since one of my posts was modded for providing real-world information unrelated to the game on the same day I found that one).
What to do with wheat (i.e., a tool that you need for making wheat).

[The Sociologist]

Oh, dear lord, please don't do this.

*joins mortaine in beseeching the dear lord, pausing only to glare at joshua*

[rklenseth]

Things I've researched on the forums and got great information from months-old posts:
HTML in note titles (I could see many notes had it, but hadn't realized they were all from a specific date).
Romov
How to get iron (though that was a blatant CR issue that must have been posted long before certain CR-paranoid folks were modding the forums, though to be fair, I felt it might have been too much information, especially since one of my posts was modded for providing real-world information unrelated to the game on the same day I found that one).
What to do with wheat (i.e., a tool that you need for making wheat).

Just be careful. It is a Capital Rule Breach to use OOC information IC but it isn't an CR breach to discuss it but you will always have people who will use OOC info to their advantage in game so it more of who you are talking to and their trustworthiness.

So you as a player can know how to make iron but your character doesn't until he sees someone use the process in game, reads about in game, or epxeriments and figures it out him/herself in game. One of your characters could learn how to but that doesn't mean that your other characters suddenly know how.

That is how Cantr is suppose to work but there are always some players who don't do this and think their characters should know everything from the seconds they are spawned.

[The Industriallist]

Um, rklenseth, that just isn't accurate. I made an immense effort to get a consistent decision on knowing, in general terms, what certian machines can be used for. It was categorically denied. This is a topic that at last decision was deliberately left fuzzy and had (and has) player knowledge deeply involved.

For example, let me run a few things that ought to be either explicitly OK or CR breaches, but are neither.
-knowing bikes and other vehicles are used for faster movement.
-knowing that you can probably cook mean in firepits, on spits, in fireplaces and ovens, etc.
-having some basic idea of the function of every machine you know how to build.
-knowing what locks do, and how to use them.
-knowing what buildings are for.

Many of these are 'abused' on a universal basis. The middle one is the one that no one would actually make a ruling on. Explicitly wouldn't.

[Revanael]

Just a minor point: This topic itself is eating up more of that precious server space... =P

Disk space is not the problem with the server. Memory and processing power is, if I remember correctly.

[mortaine]

rklenseth:

Here's something that happened to me in the last week.

Wandering around, no idea what I should be doing and slowly starving to death, basically watching other people get pissed off at "thieves" and go beat them up. Food all over the ground, but if I touch any of it, someone's going to kill me, I'm sure.

Walked into a building and saw a spindle. A lightbulb went off in my (the player's) head. *I* know what to do with a spindle! It occured to me that there was something my character might do with a spindle.

Now, I'm sure that I was supposed to pick up the spindle (heaven help me-- I probably would have been accused of thievery for doing so) and attempt to use it, discover I needed some raw material for it, and then go out to look for the material. On the other hand, since I have at least two brain cells, I might have figured out that, hey, it's a spindle-- I can get some material and turn that material into something else with it!

If the game is really intended to be so opaque as to not have characters know anything at all, then don't call it a spindle. Call it a "whoosie" and leave it up to folks to figure out what to do with it.

Otherwise, I am going to use what little applicable out of character knowledge I have about the way the real world works and find out how well it applies to the game. If that means I break the CR every day, so be it. Kick me off if that's the case, because I don't really want to play in any game where I can't at least draw on the very basics.

Oh, and I do think the "how to get iron" post I referred to was a CR breach, even in the most liberal interpretation of the CR, in that it kind of took away the thrill of discovery. On the other hand, the process is so complicated, I would certainly never have figured it out before dying of starvation, exhaustion, or boar attacks, and therefore would never be able to get any iron (I still don't, but that's neither here nor there-- at least now I know of the possibility).

And Revanael-- the fact that storage space isn't an issue occurred to me, but since I don't know what the server issues are, I left that one alone.

[rklenseth]

Um, rklenseth, that just isn't accurate. I made an immense effort to get a consistent decision on knowing, in general terms, what certian machines can be used for. It was categorically denied. This is a topic that at last decision was deliberately left fuzzy and had (and has) player knowledge deeply involved.

For example, let me run a few things that ought to be either explicitly OK or CR breaches, but are neither.
-knowing bikes and other vehicles are used for faster movement.
-knowing that you can probably cook mean in firepits, on spits, in fireplaces and ovens, etc.
-having some basic idea of the function of every machine you know how to build.
-knowing what locks do, and how to use them.
-knowing what buildings are for.

Many of these are 'abused' on a universal basis. The middle one is the one that no one would actually make a ruling on. Explicitly wouldn't.

So you are saying that it isn't accurate that it isn't a Capital Rule breach if you as a player use OOC knowledge to better advantage your characters in game?

How does your character know if a bike isn't faster than a car if they have never experimented or learned in one way or another in game? When the first car was built in the real world I would imagine that a bike would have been a whole lot faster.

How would your character know how to cook meat if he has never seen it done or experimented to get that result? Did caveman suddenly know how to cook meat when they killed their first deer or learned about fire?

How do you know a function of a machine if your character has never seen one not mentioning they never seen one used? This especially goes for societies that haven't even built one or heard of one. Just because it is listed in the build menu doesn't mean that your characters know how to build it or what it is used for.

How do you know what a lock does until you run into a door that has one? This brings me to the point about crowbars. For the longest time no one could figure out what a crowbar was used for until a player's character figured it out in game and then that player posted it in the old Yahoo! Board. Within a month, production of the crowbat went up by more than a 100% and almost every character that has steel built one. You see, things can be figured out in game so now that a character had figured it out other characters could find out by either seeing it being used or by spreading the word either by mouth or literature which in my opinion is the way things should be done.

How do you know what a building is used for? In fact the real life purpose of buildings isn't even programmed in yet which is to provide shelter to people from the elements. Later in real life society specific purposes were given to buildings like buildings for people to live in, buildings for people to work, building for people to store things in, etc...

And to your final comment. Just because other players abuse this doesn't mean that you or I have to. I do think that the Player's Department should thin the line a bit more. I do understand that perhaps abusing the system in the beginning of the game would have been necessary but now that we have a well established game and well established societies I do not believe that this abuse should be tolerated anymore by anyone.

[The Industriallist]

Ok. In principle I agree (if you found the thread in question, that was one of my two proposed solutions, and both were tidier and tighter than what we have now). There are two problems with it though.

One, that it would probably hurt cantr's popularity/ability to attract new players, again.

The other is that in that thread it was said that things like that (in just about any degree) would not be addressed by the PD. That means that unless that stance is changed, your ideas are cut down at the source.

I do think you take it a little far, though. I mean, why not say that your character shouldn't know that having food was the solution to being hungry? Let alone reallize that stone probably isn't the best choice to try to feed themselves with. What I'd like to see is a list of what is and what isn't appropriate for a newspawn to know (or 'guess') about machine and tool functions. That was absolutely refused also.

How do you know a function of a machine if your character has never seen one not mentioning they never seen one used? This especially goes for societies that haven't even built one or heard of one. Just because it is listed in the build menu doesn't mean that your characters know how to build it or what it is used for

Well, because otherwise no item that hadn't been made before could ever be made anywhere in the entire game. Also, the idea that you don't know how to build things that you evidently do (since you can do it, and are told you can by the game directly) is absurd. If that were the intent it ought to be explicitly stated.

Here's the previous...http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3018&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[Nick]

no one could figure out what a crowbar was used for until a player's character figured it out in game and then that player posted it in the old Yahoo! Board. Within a month, production of the crowbat went up by more than a 100%

There was one crowbar, and then it went up to two, then?

[N-Aldwitch]

Hahahaha, funny, but sorry about bringing all these old posts up, it's interesting to go through and read how Cantr history panned out IG and OOG.

[Just A Bill]

One thing everybody needs to understand is that we interact with the game in the english language (or other language). Implicit in the words we use is a definition of the objects or ideas represented by those words. Hunger is condition arising from a lack of food. An oven is a device to cook food. A smelter is a machine used to refine metal. So to insist that a newspawn who is hungry is breaching the capitol rule by gathering potatoes instead of stone is absurd. Or that someone wanting to refine iron should have to first waste resources on a loom, then an oven ect is just as crazy.

Given the existence of the Wici, I think it can be assumed that the information there is known to all cantrarians. If this is not the case, the Wici should never have been created.

[Sho]

Before it was necro'ed, the discussion here was all prior to the change in the "find out in game rule." Back in the day (about a year ago, that is) it was expected of newspawns that they would ask other characters or experiment blindly to find out how to make iron. I think some hardcore RPers still choose to run their characters that way.

[Marian]

OMG, people were seriously expected to RP things like learning what a spindle did? So all the orginal players were blatant CRBers? Whoever made the first bone knife was banned, or what?

I don't know how the game ever got off the ground in that case, I thought it was kind of steep for newbies now. Did you have to RP learning how to walk and speak and read and write, too?

So I guess the 'perfect char' would just kind of flop around on the ground a little and make a few monkey noises until they finally starved?

[goitre]

In my opinion, characters knowledge should match their surrounds, and who they are.

I have an expert tailor, and I believe she's smart enough to figure out all by herself what she needs to make certain clothing items - after all she has a natural talent for these things. To me, this seems totally in character. On the other hand, I feel that she shouldn't know how to actually build a loom, etc..

A few weeks ago someone entered a bone-spear-technology-level town and begun asking about where he could get iron and limestone. Needless to say, this felt very out of place.