Teaching Books

[Meethos]

I know I'm new here but I'm not new on UO and I've been to many shards and haven't found as good friends as I found here and that's why I'm interested in giving ideas to improve Sylvan Heart.

The teaching book would be a craftable item with 120.0 skill needed and some "no-so-easy-to-get" items which would depend on the book you would like to create... After the completion of the item you could give the book to another player to help him get his skill up to 100 or 90... I don't know, just a high degree... Or maybe even, each book could raise 20 of skill so you need 6 books to get to maximum... Something like that.

For example:

Skill You Need - Musicanship 120.0
Book/Stone Created - Music Book
Items needed - Logs, Book, One of each instrument, Elven Stone(Special Item to create just this book/stone)

After gathering everything you'll need a tool to create the book, I was thinking something like a Golden "pen and ink" nothing really difficult to get or buy... Once you give the book to someone and that person uses it, it increases Musicanship to a certain ammount.




It's just an idea... Hope you like it!

Cheers! 

[GM Feenix]

This is a great idea  however the concern / problem we are currently facing is we have No Scriptor. This would need to be hard coded and added in, inorder for it to work.

It sounds like a broken record but it is true unless we can successfully write it in the code, it cant be done at this moment.

[Skynar]

I thought we just had a scriptor? or did that one disappear also? WTH MATE!?

[Anagami]

I'm a professional programmer, but have not written anything for UO.  I'm willing to help with scripts, I just need to get started somehow.  Is there anything I could read to help familiarize me with how to deploy new code into a UO server?  I'm completing my grad degree in computer science this semester (if I pass my defense in 2 weeks :/), so I should have some free time to start coding in June.  I just need a primer on the UO environment, like what APIs are available and such.

[kpnce]

you can actually go to RunUO and if i am not mistaken there is a script like this that others have made that you can put into custom scripts folder for the server.

[Myrick]

The issue with most RunUO scripts is they are written for 2.0. We use 1.0 here which is not really supported so all of our cool stuff has to pretty much be coded "in house".

[Anagami]

I was looking through some of the tutorials on runuo.com and they seem helpful, but they are for 2.0. I guess I would need to see some of the existing script code to get an idea of how to extend things in 1.0.

[Cpt_Starfox]

I think teaching books are a neat idea, but for the time being, we do have various *somewhat* similar methods of raising skills:

Donation and Virtue Skull Rewards
http://www.sylvandreams.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3713.0
$25.00 or 50 VS - Set any skill to 120. You must have enough skill points left over to do this.

Veteran rewards
http://www.sylvandreams.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=894.0
15 months:
100 Point Skill Deed (increases skill to 100 if you have space for it)

18 months:
120 Point Skill Deed

bits of human ash, and vials of human soul
http://www.sylvandreams.co.uk/smf/index.php?topic=2390.0
10 Soul = +5 skill ball (will not take player over 120 skill cap)

Now, the donation/VS reward items don't come as deeds I'd imagine... but the Vet rewards give a deed I believe, and those can be sold to other players. Also, the vials of soul can be traded as well. If we did get teaching books, we might need to be careful... we might need to change some of these other rewards or balance the teaching books somehow with them... because we'd not want to "cancel out" any of our donation incentives or our "stick around and become a veteran" incentives hehe

[Stroem Safai]

hmmmm i can try to look up this code see if i can get it to run for runUo 1.0 and probly make some changes to it does anyone have the direct link to a forumn discussion about it?

[Cpt_Starfox]

A thought occurred to me! (yeah, every so often it happens... I'm still getting used to it but anyway hehe...) If we did get the ability to train others via a book made according to our own skill, we could have the book making tool be a vet reward! I'd think it only natural that people who have been around for a while and gained the wisdom of much experience would naturally be the ones able to create these books.

I also believe there has been a bit of discussion about what to do for those veterans who have been around for longer than two years. Well, this could be a wonderful reward: The ability to make skill books based on the skills you have!  Now, that's a worthy reward   partly because it is just cool and partly because it will open a whole new market on Sylvan - These books could be worth a great deal - therefore encouraging our veterans to help our newer players and increase interaction and also giving the veteran some reward of their own... other than the warm fuzzy feeling you might get from helping people lol 

Also considering that the 100 point Skillcap Increase comes at 24 months... past that point would be a good time to be able to make these books - when you are maxed on your skills! 

Also, for those who wanna become genius writers over night... it could be added as a donation item available for a generous amount   

[GM Feenix]

I'd think it only natural that people who have been around for a while and gained the wisdom of much experience would naturally be the ones able to create these books.

I also believe there has been a bit of discussion about what to do for those veterans who have been around for longer than two years. Well, this could be a wonderful reward: The ability to make skill books based on the skills you have! 

Also considering that the 100 point Skillcap Increase comes at 24 months... past that point would be a good time to be able to make these books - when you are maxed on your skills! 

This is a great addition to the Teaching book idea... A veteran knows how to work the skill up, down, and sideways. I wonder if the Soulstone could be incorporated into the mix.  Here is my though. A veteran wants to give the gift of knowledge. The veteran would craft the book and would put XX amount of skill into it. They would then need to retrain themselves before writing another book.

Example:  Link wishes to write a book on Using a Sword. He decides to put in 50% of his knowledge. The book is then sold/given to a lower level player to read and "learn" the skill swordsmanship. The player completes the book and learns  50 points in swords, up to 120 total. "Skill Cap"
Link now has options.... he can use his leftover points to make other various books of different skill levels..... or retrain current level back to cap before writing his next book.

[Cpt_Starfox]

Nifty - not sure it is really *natural* to lose skill by writing a book... but it certainly raises the value of the books even more!    I like this.

Also though, here is a perhaps more "natural" method which I also like: instead of lowering the skill as you write, maybe you can only impart so much experience from any one skill into a book per day or per week or whatever... I dunno if we'd do it to where you could only put so much ever into any one book.... Or if you could just keep pouring knowledge into the same book up to 120 points... could also have a limit on how much you could put into a book per time limit... or just have the time limit be longer depending on how much you put into the book. Also, dunno if the timer would apply to one skill or to all skills, like you can only write one book at all per time limit or only write one book per skill per time limit. Anyway... here's an example because I just wanted to write an example lol...

Example:
*Feenix writes a book* - hehe
*Feenix tries immediately afterwards to write another book on the same skill*
Message: You are tired of writing about monster spawning... you may be more inspired in a few days.
Feenix now has some options... he can use his gm abilities to reset his timer and continue writing about monster spawning or he can write about bee keeping or the art of using the [explode macro!

LOL - ok sorry about that one Feenix lol - couldn't resist 

[Meethos]

Wow! I really didn't expect so much commotion for "my" idea hehe

Well I think I agree with Starfox in more ways then I agree with Feenix ( and please don't explode me for that ). Losing skill is really something unnatural, and it would probably destroy the book idea, since no one would like to lose skill around here unless they have the purest heart of all. hehe

We could have a limit for skills to be written, 120 for a week, or something like this and the message is a really good idea, also.

Eg.:

*Link writes a book of magery with 50 skill*
*Meethos gets that book and uses it to get his skill of magery up to 50 and now he needs help AGAIN with mining*
*Link writes a book of mining with 70 skill because Link has all skills of course*
*Meethos uses the book of mining but still needs other 30 points on mining to cap it*
*Link tries to make another book and get a message saiying he can't and so he won't be able to write it until next week*
*Meethos cries and logs off*

[Abbadon]

Hate to be negative, but there would be some huge balancing issues especially in cases like Animal Taming, where it will take a very long time to hit from 0-120, but if you could just "learn" that in a matter of seconds, I hardly think its fair (unless the books would cost ridiculous amounts of VS/gold like most vet rewards/donation rewards do, in which case I think its entirely unfair to charge our new players such large sums of money).

Perhaps it would be fairer and more balanced to "accelerate" the leveling experience, which brings to mind a feature from another game I used to play, called "Mentoring." Basically you have an apprentice and a mentor, where by "mentoring" that person, the apprentice gets certain benefits and the mentor gets his gold/atones or whatever else he or she may wish to charge. I think with the book system, the great thing about doing this is that it can be less coding and more role-play (something I think should be encouraged), where the mentor can look after his/her apprentice and help him/her to greatness (not to mention there are certain tips and tricks in different areas of expertise that can only really be taught through experience and teaching).

Anyway good discussion going on here, but whether or not this will be implimented is another question all together(Alders probably busy as he is with RL and other coding matters. I feel that certain bugs like the ninjutsu skills should be fixed first before implimenting any sort of new and nifty addons). However I think role-play wise, the "mentor-apprentice" system is something we as players can do.

[Cpt_Starfox]

I'd think it would not only be new players who would want the books, but older players (2yrs and down) needing books for their alts... and they should be able to afford it. I'd also think the value of the book would partly depend on the level of the vet reward of course... but also the amount of uses per book making tool... which hasn't even been discussed yet... and is perhaps somewhat pointless at this point to get into.

Still though... the mentor-apprentice system sounds good. I do that anyway to accelerate new player's training using tricks and tips I've learned. But, I don't charge for it... and on top of that, it isn't really a coded system yet... so the acceleration is just from whatever tip and tricks I use and not from any mentor-apprentice coded system. Also though, even with this system, I think the ability to mentor (or RP-wise: Licence or certificate of mentoring) might need to be a vet reward or a donation/vs reward.