Re: [CF:1345] What about a post office?

[Mark Wedel <mwedel@scruznet.com>]

Johannes Prix wrote:
> 
> Communication with players not online is difficult.
> If i could somehow deposit a letter for someone else
> from within the game it would be nice. Perhaps a
> Postoffice of some sort would be an interesting idea.
> Although i have no idea how this could be created.
> Perhaps the server could also forward some of the
> comments, bug-reports or ideas reportet that way to
> the mailing-list or to a separate archive or into books
> apearing in shops or somewhere else in the game so
> that the game would be expanded and enriches just by
> players playing it.                     Johannes Prix.

 It depends on what you are asking here.

 It would not be hard to create post office type thing using the unique maps and
some form of key or something (some code expansion would be needed so that
letters get to the right place).  But with the code as it is right now, you
could easily set up a map where players can leave public messages to other
players.

 Be able to send real e-mail from within the game is a questionable feature -
first, additions would need to be done for players to set their e-mail address
for their characters (and I could potentially see some players not really
wanting to do that), it requires calling an external program (sendmail), which I
could see some server admins not wanting to do (and may also run into
portability issues with regards to NT servers)

 A simpler method of course would be to create that registry so that players
from within the game can let other know what their e-mail address if for their
characters and those other people can get it even when the   first person is not
logged in.  Presumably crossfire won't be getting so popular anytime soon that
spammers will cull those lists.

 Being able to read real unix mail and other stuff from within muds, while a
nice idea, its time has probably passed.  I would tend to venture that only a
small fraction of game players actually have local accounts/mailboxes on the
machine that is actually running the game server.