[crossfire] [Re]Player Owned Shops

[Nicolas Weeger]

>   Could a little more detail on this process be given?  Looking over the patch 
> to see how it works leaves me with a few questions.

Yeah, it's a pretty basic patch for now :)

>   It seems to me that the patch in question lets the owner set whatever price, 
> but doesn't actually pay the player who sold it anything?  Is the correct?  If 
> so, it then seems like something is missing.  Unless the idea is to somehow tie 
> it some field in the map itself (store room with all the money in it)?

Correct for price & no money.
I need to tweak the "buy.py" script to transfer money to some place in
the shop - thus money gets piled up, and owner will grab it simply.
Remember the idea is to have only one player own the shop - thus it's
easy to have an "owner" room where money is stored.

>   But this does lead me to an interesting idea - consignment shop.  Players go 
> in and say how much they want to sell stuff for, just like the sample code 
> provided.  However, as part of that, we also record the player selling the item. 
>   Then if anyone does buy it, the player gets the money (I seem to recall that 
> at some point, sending objects via the post office system was possible. 

You can still send items through post office (unless it was broken, but
i don't think so)

>   The shop should of course take a percentage off the top for the transaction. 
> Also, perhaps record when the object was sold, and objects that have been around 
> too long get sent back to the player.

My idea is to have a fee you'd need to pay regularly to maintain the
shop. Think of renting the space :) But of course you can stack the
percentage.
The think I have yet to decide is how to handle that fee - I think best
way is to hook to the global time event, and trace stores' status, then
claim money from player when shop has "negative" fees.

>   This has the interesting effect that the player trying to sell the objects 
> doesn't get anything until they are actually sold.  So he has incentive to set a 
> reasonable price.  Also, because of that, less reason to put them in the shop vs 
> taking the immediate price selling in a shop unless you are really getting 
> shafted on prices - thus, not likely to see people selling junk.

At term, we could really have player economy, if we want.

On my todo list is also letting a player sell in the shop, and the owner
define what to accept & at what price - so globally player owner shops
behave exactly like current shop.

Nicolas