Forums » Suggestions

In game browser + others

Mar 10, 2007 trav link
I'm not sure whether this has already been suggested or not, but even if it has its probs worth doing again, just to get the awareness raised.

Going through the game as a newbie (which I am) I'm often seeing websites and urls being posted which I have no way of visiting while I'm playing the game. In fact, if I ever want to visit these sites, I need to write the sites down and visit them later, if I remember.

So how about some sort of in game browser? I would have thought adapting lynx or even perhaps links (for them that wants images) would be a really useful and reasonably easy way to do it.

Also, something a bit more long range perhaps, at http://www.tgft.org/store/broma/ there is a way of ordering ores to be delivered.

Wouldn't it be awesome (if the crafting system is on its way) if within the game, you could use your in game browser to create a mission at some far off system and have stuff delivered to wherever you might happen to need it? Entering the order into the form would create a mission at whichever stations had the objects in question. When someone accepts the mission it is removed from the other stations mission boards and price is worked out according to the market price of the object + an accepted scale for the cost of the transport.

Successful completion of the mission would increase standing within factions of the game but perhaps even more crucially, would help to further stimulate an already thriving community. Piracy would become more interesting, escort missions would have more meaning and general realism of the game would be increased. After all, real missions are being created by real people for real purposes.

Whaddya think?

trav
Mar 10, 2007 upper case link
you can run the game in window mode and use a real web browser for the job.

you can paste into vo (control-v, regardless of platform). what would be nice would be copying, or perhaps automatic detection of urls: double-click on it in a chat view and it would fire up a browser if you're in window mode.
Mar 10, 2007 MSKanaka link
I believe that something similar to this will eventually be used for the Guild info tab in the PDA, located at PDA -> Comm -> Guild.
Mar 10, 2007 Cunjo link
in the meantime, just open your errors.log in Firefox with google toolbar or equiv after playing and search for your URLs.
Mar 10, 2007 trav link
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person with the following problem:

Running VO on a laptop.
Running VO on a laptop with linux.
Running VO on a laptop with linux with a miserable 16MB NVidia Video Card

Ok so I might be, but my point is, I'm probs not the only one running with a low spec machine. The idea of running something like firefox in the background is just awful. I can see its uses, but urgh.

Checking the error.log after playing is cumbersome but would work I guess. The perfect solution though would be a small text only browser within the game though.

Any feedback on the user created missions?
Mar 11, 2007 Cunjo link
I'll do you one better:

Running VO on a laptop.
Running VO on a laptop with winblows.
Running VO on a laptop with winblows with a miserable 10MB onboard Intel video card


Yea, running crap in the background can be a pain. I personally just check the errors.log, alt-tab out for a moment to check it in a browser before returning to the game, or go over to my other machine (an even MORE pathetic Linux box, that woudln't have the guts to run VO even in its dreams) and check it out in Konqueror, since the thing is always watching #vrelay on slashnet.
Mar 11, 2007 trav link
hmm. /me thinks on the merits of linux's virtual desktops and the use of xchat on a separate desktop to the one VO is running on.

Damn good idea that one.

and yes, windows does blow.
Mar 11, 2007 firsm link
I guess the mozilla license would allow them to use the gecko engine.
Mar 12, 2007 Antz link
Alternatively a compositing window manager could be implemented within VO, which would enable any app already present on the parent system to be run within VO. Forget GNOME and KDE!
Mar 12, 2007 trav link
Well the beautiful thing about using something like lynx or Links is that they are open source already. Even with the strictest open source licence, if the devs decided to use one of those they would only need to release the source of the browser if it was altered.

In any case, they wouldn't really need to use either of them if they didn't want to, since its fairly easy to write a web browser in C++.

The idea of a compositing window manager is a good one, but would be slightly scary when it comes to memory use.

The browser is really the easy part. The bit I am most interested in is the possibility of creating missions while in game. That would be seriously cool.