Virtual Aquarium

[Timebomb007]

Would it be possible to have a virtual aquarium plugin that uses the Monetary System plugin to buy fish, tanks, decor, food, and have the aquarium in the signature section or user's profile, with the ability to add fish, decor, feed fish, etc? Thanks in advance.

[Former Member]

This would be reaaally cool

[Ace Of Charts]

I think this would be pretty awesome and interesting.

[Brian]

I swear, these plugin requests are starting to sound more and more like Gaia Online every time I visit this board...

[Former Member]

I dunno what Gaia Online is but it sounds interesting if it encompasses this stuff! xD

[Jaguar]

I want a kitten or puppy plugin like this. Snow Leopards would be good too, just ask Virgil Sovereign

[Former Member]

There have been a ton of requests (at least a ton in my opinion) for an "animal" plugin lately. Basically the synopsis has been the ability to add animals to the plugin, prices, lifespans, etc., make them buyable/sellable, add accessory stuff that you can make required to "maintain" your pet, things like that. Aquariums, horses, all animals, I've seen a few like this. I really hope someone indeed takes it on soon because it's in high demand and I think it'd be really fun for a lot of forums =3 Though I imagine it'd be a huge undertaking haha like the Gold Shop but almost worse if you really do factor in lifespans and mandatory maintaining care stuff (i.e. buying them food, grooming them, whatever)

[Boy_Wonder]

I know that I'd asked Pastuleleo for similar but I also know they're less interested in creating a plugin they wouldn't use

[Former Member]

If I could code, I'd do it. Unfortunately every time I try to learn, it just doesn't click. HTML? Yep. CSS? Yep. JavaScript? Just doesn't connect. Plus, once I grasp the javascript, figuring out how to translate that to something useful for ProBoards is the really hard part for me. (sorry to mini-ramble here). Like... I figured out how to do math, for example, functions, if statements, things like that, but HOW to use that knowledge to make a Plugin was the part that left me entirely stumped and why I eventually gave up. =/ (okay the mini-ramble is over now)

[Boy_Wonder]

Mar 6, 2014 0:06:51 GMT -8 ₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪ said:

If I could code, I'd do it. Unfortunately every time I try to learn, it just doesn't click. HTML? Yep. CSS? Yep. JavaScript? Just doesn't connect. Plus, once I grasp the javascript, figuring out how to translate that to something useful for ProBoards is the really hard part for me. (sorry to mini-ramble here). Like... I figured out how to do math, for example, functions, if statements, things like that, but HOW to use that knowledge to make a Plugin was the part that left me entirely stumped and why I eventually gave up. =/ (okay the mini-ramble is over now)

I entirely know that feeling! I felt achieved at doing a very small code that's not in plugin form to work out what the total active members are on a site!

[Wormopolis]

Mar 5, 2014 21:22:05 GMT -8 ₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪ said:

There have been a ton of requests (at least a ton in my opinion) for an "animal" plugin lately. Basically the synopsis has been the ability to add animals to the plugin, prices, lifespans, etc., make them buyable/sellable, add accessory stuff that you can make required to "maintain" your pet, things like that. Aquariums, horses, all animals, I've seen a few like this. I really hope someone indeed takes it on soon because it's in high demand and I think it'd be really fun for a lot of forums =3 Though I imagine it'd be a huge undertaking haha like the Gold Shop but almost worse if you really do factor in lifespans and mandatory maintaining care stuff (i.e. buying them food, grooming them, whatever)

part of the issue is people seem to be under the impression that time works differently on a forum.  like there is a clock that ticks away in the background and does stuff at certain times.  there isnt anything like that though.  everything that is date related looks at whatever the current time of the observer is to know how long time has passed.  if you have an animal that dies if you dont feed it for 5 days, it would still basically be alive until the next observer looked at it more then 5 days later.  in the case of storing things, if the storage is setup so only the owner can affect the data, the animal would essentially be alive until the owner logged in next time.  you could potentially store a "last feeding" date along with the animal though, so anyone else looking would see the animal was dead, but if you looked into the key itself the animal would be alive until the owner logged in and the key could be updated.  its all relative and VERY similar to schrodinger's cat.

another obstacle is writing something that can already utilize the money code already written, or it has to ALSO write in a money code to deal with purchase/sales of animals and accessories.. and along with that something that can work with one of the shop codes already written, or it has to ALSO write in a shop code as well.  these things can prove to be heavy dissuasions  when deciding to take on the task.

if a single code was written encompassing all 3, then it would have to store the money values, the accessories, and each animal in a single super key for each member.  which doesnt sound like a lot at first, but look at an example potential:

horse stable plugin
key holds:  each horse (age, cost, last fed, accessories for this horse, etc data for this horse), money (current money, transaction history if needed), each accessory item not attached to a horse (item, cost, details, etc).

if you have, say, 10 horses, and each horse is an average of 200 characters, you max out the key at 20 horses.  and that is just horses.  so back down to 9 horses so you have room to store money and a small transaction history, then back down to 8 or 7 for the storage of all extra accessories.  that might not be a deal breaker for some, but it might be for others so it is something that has to be considered in development and storage space has to be compacted as much as possible.

now you get more room if you can get the plugin to just work with existing money/shop plugins.  that way you can use their existing key space for their own data.  but it also means you are needing more keys.  and it also means you have to make sure you use whatever API is available for those plugins or be in contact with their authors to make sure you can access their keys.

just listing out some of the things that authors have to consider before taking on a project like this, and possibly giving an explanation as to why no one has jumped on it yet.  or maybe it will inspire someone to do it.. then everyone wins..    

[Virgil Sovereign]

if you have, say, 10 horses, and each horse is an average of 200 characters, you max out the key at 20 horses. and that is just horses.

Yikes. 200 characters is one hungry horse.

If anyone runs up against this problem, I've written a low-footprint API for compressing a structure to a base-64 string and converting back that might be of assistance.

For a decent pet, suppose we have a max 24-character name (192 bits), data timestamp (32 bits), birth date (32 bits), seed for random events (32 bits), colour 1 (4 bits), colour 2 (4 bits), breed (8 bits), decal 1 (4 bits), decal 2 (4 bits), food left (8 bits), happiness (8 bits), accessory count (6 bits), accessories (8 bits per).

For a pet decked out with 6 accessories, you'd be looking at 60 characters. If you cut back to a max 12-character name and a maximum of 4 accessories, your average pet would comprise 40 characters on average.

Regarding the state paradox, a single timestamp and RNG seed should suffice. The seed would uniquely determine a sequence of random events. The timestamp would reflect the last time the owner took any action on behalf of the pet. Once any action is taken, the state of the pet is fully determined for all time until the next action is taken. Each client machine computes the sequence of events for each pet (food eaten, food runs out, animal dies, pet grows by 1, etc., etc.) by simply extrapolating forward from the last intervention timestamp, assuming no further interventions were made by the owner. And of course no further interventions were made by the owner, since the data (and timestamp) would update as soon as such an intervention occurred.

In other words, just because client machines have to (deterministically) extrapolate forward from a marked state to obtain the current state doesn't mean that the current state isn't well-defined.

The only potential problem would be a synchronicity issue. That is: if an event occurred that was prevented/changed by an owner intervention after a viewer loaded a page. But presumably events would be infrequent, owner intervention that changed event outcomes would be even more infrequent, and the probability of both occurring in the space of a minute or two during a page view would be acceptably low. The only penalty would be that a viewer might see a pet dead, etc. until s/he loaded a new page.

Having addressed both issues, I hereby elect Wormopolis to write the plugin. Proboards has gone far too long without colourful beasties eating and pooping their way across its message boards, and Wormo is clearly the man for the job.

Just look at the man's enthusiasm.

[Wormopolis]

Im already working on a collab project with woop in between fixing bugs in previous plugins. AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FO THAT!

[Virgil Sovereign]

Mar 6, 2014 8:50:41 GMT -8 Wormopolis said:

Im already working on a collab project with woop in between fixing bugs in previous plugins. AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FO THAT!

Pfft. So just write plugins with no bugs in them. And code faster. And forsake sleep.

Speaking of which... why do I have 'Edit' buttons next to all the posts on the Reply page?

[Brian]

Mar 5, 2014 21:01:30 GMT -8 ₪» ⅀ ƪ Ƒ «₪ said:

I dunno what Gaia Online is but it sounds interesting if it encompasses this stuff! xD

Gaia started out as an anime roleplay site, but later expanded to include a shop system with a ton of items for your avatar (the inventory is still expanding today) as well as a community hub where you can walk around and chat with people as your avatar in a 2D landscape, an aquarium, your own customizable house you can buy items for, and even a very minimal MMO.

Here's my avatar from the last time I was ever online there.



The difference between them running their own site and a developer trying to create the same thing for ProBoards in the form of a plugin is that their site is built very specifically around their concept. Their entire database and all of their servers revolve around one forum with a hard-coded system for obtaining gold and items. Also, their aquarium, community hub, houses, etc. are all programmed in Flash.

It would be a lot to ask for from a free, remotely hosted forum solution like us to do this on an individual basis for each forum while still demanding that we remain the same free service we've been all these years. That's why there's limitations like the ones mentioned in the previous posts.