Library

[Superlagg]

Shamelessly ripped from IRC, but I think the crew should be able to write books and newspapers.

These books and newspapers could be stored in an on-station library, where they would of course persist from round to round for other shifts to read. Write our own history for later generations!

To cut down on certain jackasses making a million books only with the word "fart" in them, maybe there could be a maximum amount of books you could have on display at any one time. Or, if that persistent bank thing goes through, maybe it could cost some of those bucks to save a book.

At any rate, you'd be able to edit your books at any time.

[Noah Buttes]

To cut down on certain jackasses making a million books only with the word "fart" in them, maybe there could be a maximum amount of books you could have on display at any one time. Or, if that persistent bank thing goes through, maybe it could cost some of those bucks to save a book.

What if I wrote a single book with the word fart written in it a million times?

Joking aside, I like the idea of tying book publishing into the persistent bank.

[Cirrial]

Persistent bank! Books! Buy books at round start!

There's nowhere in cogmap2 to put a library, though.

and there is definitely no reason to have someone whose job is to look after it because who the fuck needs a librarian in space

[Superlagg]

Persistent bank! Books! Buy books at round start!

There's nowhere in cogmap2 to put a library, though.

and there is definitely no reason to have someone whose job is to look after it because who the fuck needs a librarian in space

It could just be a computer and a chute. Browse the online Discount Decimal System, pick your book, and have it spat out at you. Or dump your books in, fill out its info, and have your fartfiction saved until the end of time.

And you could just give some glasses and a tight bun to one of the Buddies. One of them's bound to have a degree in library sciences.

[Noah Buttes]

Persistent bank! Books! Buy books at round start!

There's nowhere in cogmap2 to put a library, though.

and there is definitely no reason to have someone whose job is to look after it because who the fuck needs a librarian in space

Just repurpose one of those pointless bedroom things in southern maintenance.

Alternatively, just tack it on as an expansion to the DnD room.

[Mordent]

I'd be a huge fan of this for a different purpose: making pointless, needlessly complicated forms on #1. I have a few saved as text files that I can just copy/paste from to do handwritten forms, but they lack the real feel of bureaucracy by not being printed in a monospace font (which means they need to be saved as a file on a computer).

I've not really worked out printers in Term OS/DWAINE yet, but give me WizWrite and I'll make some lovely forms.

Maybe have one of the things you can "buy" to start with be a disk with whatever files you manage to put on it, or have your PDA loaded with a single file instead of Robustris?

[aft2001]

Mordent, I'm with you. I love making forms and stuff. Sadly, no one ever fills them out painstakingly. Sadly...

And yeah, I'd love to be able to save files to disks between rounds. But, anything except text documents have a chance of becoming corrupted, to prevent just creating a super-annoying script that does some stupid shit to piss people off.

[Burrito Justice]

Going with the mention of newspapers, and perhaps this is a little bit off topic, I think it'd be neat if they would deliver to the library automatically with some generated story, or maybe even newspapers that report on key events in the round and give their (scripted) two cents about the outcome and how the crew did. Maybe the news stand would start out with newspapers regarding the events of last round and all the silly things that happened including some random quote that's picked.
I dunno.

[Vitatroll]

To cut down on certain jackasses making a million books only with the word "fart" in them, cont...

What if I wrote a single book with the word fart written in it a million times? cont...

[Mordent]

Mordent, I'm with you. I love making forms and stuff. Sadly, no one ever fills them out painstakingly. Sadly...

And yeah, I'd love to be able to save files to disks between rounds. But, anything except text documents have a chance of becoming corrupted, to prevent just creating a super-annoying script that does some stupid shit to piss people off.

Hell, actually, why not just build it straight into this library idea? Books withdrawn from the library could be paperback and/or digital.

Paperback ones are just that; it prints out the book right in front of your eyes (maybe have it require an entire tree log per book, because what is the environment?); digital ones are loaded onto an e-reader PDA cartridge (that you get from the PDA vending machine). If you want to go through the effort of putting a persistent script on them you have numerous steps to actually getting it somewhere useful:

• Get PDA cartridge
  
• Get script loaded onto PDA cartridge
  
• Build a computer with the cartridge reader module
  
• Load it somewhere useful
  

Which is roughly comparable to the other ways, time/effort-wise to get pre-round scripts into a machine somewhere.

Paperback books should have multiple pages (see stapled booklets for example - should probably just treat them as booklets with a different sprite). Also, I can't remember if this is a thing already but you should be able to rip pages out of books/booklets. This would a) let you remove the final page from amazing novels, and b) let you make books of forms (e.g. "NanoTransen Bureaucracy Hardcopies, Volume IX: Material (Construction Grade) Requisition Forms").

Submitting novels would be done via placing a booklet into some sort of receptacle, with a new console letting you edit its metadata as well as request books from the library.

The library would be a randomly generated from all submitted books in a stochastic (i.e. weighted) fashion. Each round each crewmember can vote up any books they withdraw from the library (linked to ID, so if you want to get your book to the top then go steal a bunch of IDs), giving it 5 points. Books all lose one point at the end of each shift. Books that have a zero vote by the end of the shift are removed from the library.

Numbers need messing with, but you get the idea. Alternatively, allow players to buy book "slots" using that persistent currency system people are talking about and let others rate the books 1 to 5 stars (on a player-by-player basis, players can change their vote on a certain book at any point by going to the console). The average rating is the weighting factor on whether that book is available at the start of the round.

Allow QMs to order crates of a random selection of books/have a book merchant (he may even buy books, encouraging mass felling of trees to make books to sell).

You know, my thoughts kind of got away from me here, so my summarised preference would be:

• New console, which can print books/"publish" inserted books/load e-books to a PDA cartridge (new type of cartridge, or just any old RAM?).
  
• Publishing book requires metadata (title, author, optional blurb)
  
• Printed books require wood to make, starts loaded with, say, 10 wood and can be loaded with more.
  
• Players give books 1-to-5 star ratings. Mean score is used to derive final stars.
  
• Players can buy book "slots" using GoonBucks or whatever. Alternatively, one book per player until that's implemented.
  
• Books available at round start are drawn from book pool using stars as random weighting.
  
• More books can be ordered from QM/traders/random loot crates (specific titles?)
  

[Sov]

Would books be strictly for rp purposes? Or could they maybe give you some kind of minor bonuses too?

Like buy and read about surgery and you could earn the medical training trait (medics spawn with this already, makes them mess up surgery less)

Or other small fun things like learning an accent, or speaking martian

[Crazyabe]

Perhaps we could have the game dedicate 1-2 pre-generated books to simply hide a few hints for more obscure/Secret game mechanics, for example one book might list several explosive chems then have a confusingly encoded riddle for one of the ingredients of Nitro, or list several types of bee and have a riddle for one of the introbee chem components spread over all the pages. Another book might be a how to for basic PDA Hacking or a wiring manual for various devices spread around the station.

[Vitatroll]

Before going all complex and shit, could we start off by stapling a 2+ pages together to form a book?

I'd like to see how fast interest in player-books die out once they're in game.

[Mordent]

Before going all complex and shit, could we start off by stapling a 2+ pages together to form a book?

I'd like to see how fast interest in player-books die out once they're in game.

That's a thing.

[Vitatroll]

Huh. I think that answers my second point.

Who knows. Maybe giving it a book sprite will make it super popular or something.