Libraries and item limit

There are crippling limits throughout the whole book distribution chain:
The 8,000 characters per book limit means the Yellow Pages now comes in six volumes.
The item limit in non-public vendors means we'll soon be stocking only a single copy of each title.
The limit of two vendors for a village lot and three for a town lot means that eventually the majority of titles will have to be placed on order.

...and of course as noted by others if customers reach their display item limit they may be less inclined to buy more books.

 

Thankyou so much for taking the time to post this Scottie.

 

Thanks for the reply! Your thoughts on it (and news on eagerly awaited Artifice) made my Monday much more bearable

At least for me, since we still have the empty bookshelves which can be stacked with books individually (if the half/three-quarter/whatever-filled additional models are not feasible for some reason), having the visual and actual content of the pre-deco'ed bookshelf differ is not a problem at all. I also like the "books important for consideration" explanation, works nicely.

*fingers crossed that it appears on the schedule soon*

 

Look for more announcements soon... We announce in the WTS Player Marketplace forum and on Twitter.

I want to reiterate what Womby said in that we are quickly running into substantial limitations on multiple fronts:

 

I know Lum hates me when I reveal stuff that only translators know, but there are actually 381 entries in the "books" catalog of strings to be translated.

 

I would love to see bookshelves that are book-only containers that change their appearance based on a count of books in the container. 0 books = empties. 1-10 = sparse. 11-30 = half. 31+ = full. Numbers subjective examples, adjust by reasonability.

 

That would be nice but I suspect it might be too complicated for them to implement.

 

Really depends on how their code is set up. It could be anywhere between an hour of programmer time plus whatever artist time is needed to create the various iterations to basically impossible without an ill-advised rewrite of the systems. Without knowing the code, it is impossible for me to tell.

I am *imagining* that all game objects have properties stating "I am Thing. Located at (X,Y,Z) with a facing vector of (X,Y,Z)", that some high level system queries the properties and feeds them to the renderer. IF 'Thing' is a property, it would be super easy to have game object return a different value based upon another property. In this case it would be item count. Other games use methods like these with properties like health to do texture swapping for showing damage. If 'Thing' is simply an object's Type derived from its class, then it would be quite difficult indeed without some pretty awful hackery.

 

Well,....we already have different object "states" for the same object based on level of damage done and such... It's essentially an "if situation 'X' then show object state version '1', but if situation 'Y' then show object state version '2',...etc..." We do this for the mine wall sections that can be dug through, and for the mineshaft debris "plugs" you can break your way through... Hopefully the bookshelves will merely be a variant on that same use-code...

Scottie ^_^

 

Excellent news! I love when flexible systems continue to pay-off. The only difficulty I can imagine now would be collision \ manual placement of items on shelves. People will still want to add their own items. If someone puts a small item on the shelf and then also adds extra books to the container, we could suddenly find books in the updated object state wanting to be in the same space as a manually placed object. It may require "Bookshelf" and "Container Bookshelf" to be separate objects where one you self decorate and the other is automated. Edit: Looks like you addressed that in a previous post.

Either way, I'm sure this goes pretty low in the art department queue to build up new bookshelf object states. But good to hear it isn't that rough to do!

 

Time for a Time Lord post...




...all the way back to a strange time in a stranger reality.
2014

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...em-limit-for-housing.16041/page-2#post-257870

Spoiler: Spoon back in 2014 wrote

Lets start with books.
In some cases you want to place single books someplace because that special book looks nice and you want to show it of.
But mostly what you are looking for is a bookshelf which A) looks like its filled with books and B) that can store books.
So my solution would be a "filled bookshelf" storage item. Most of the space would be pre-filled with a book container which looks like books, and a small empty end of the shelf for a 'real' rare book or two.
Then I'd have the same with a "filled bookcabinet" storage item. The top and lower shelves would be pre-filled with a book container which looks like books, and the middle shelf would be empty for costumization.
The book container part opens like a chest where I can place a bunch of books, but not other items.
Add a couple of variations for looks.

What this does is allow for optimization of the graphics while still allowing for some user sandbox.
So when my "dining library" hits the storage limit I start switching my individual books on a shelf to these "filled bookshelves" to save some storage limit for other stuff. While allowing the devs to optimize performance on the pre-filled items.

You could do the same with fruitbowls, breadbaskets, snack plates, etc for instance. Have three set of graphics for each Empty, <5, >5. Then you can fill them with whatever small food items you want.
A small hit to immersion but a huge optimization of storage limit and graphic performance.

Have most of them craftable but with a cap on items in them, but some nicer looking/bigger ones in the Add-On store and you can buy "storage limit" without actually buying "storage limit increases".

Nah, better stop rambling now.

 

I had a really old one alone the same vein but i can't find it :'(

 

As curator of the Jaanaford Public Library, I really am looking forward to this

 

Since last release I have begun to notice that some of the "newer" areas (Aerie Castle for example) have what are called "collection of books" placed on bookshelves and they look great. Will these ever become an option for us to buy/craft in game or on the add-on store possibly?

 

Why not introduce a bookshelf with books already in them which can only be made by a craftsman? The books would be static but they would at least look good and we could have at least the looks of a library.

 

I don't expect any item to not have an ornate version, rendering the crafted version nearly worthless.

 

I may just be oldstyle, but I put a higher value on crafted goods. Ornate is just mass production for the"fancy" tastes.

 

You're one of a kind, Tahru.

 

2014
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...em-limit-for-housing.16041/page-2#post-257870
2015
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...es-and-probably-containers.35130/#post-404066

Scottie liking the idea in 2016
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...s/libraries-and-item-limit.66742/#post-676973
Scottie giving the reason why this isn't implemented in 2017. (Which I don't agree with).
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...e-a-work-in-progress.45733/page-5#post-553182

But what Cordelayne was refering to was that they have already added such book fillers to the scenes now. So either Richard will veto it or he has changed his mind.