Video Game theory, split from RPG theory.

[Requia ☣]

Django is just a python framework. You can upload (or checkout if they have svn) it to your user directory and use it from there. Just like you'd use, for instance, Smarty in PHP.

Low cost hosts specifically forbid it, something about persistent processes and minimizing server load.  Dedicated hosting is different, but its an order of magnitude more expensive.

Python is definatley available without django though.

[Triple Zero]

forbid what? Smarty or Django? either way is retarded but what kind of hosts are these?

and what do they expect people to use Python for, on a webserver, without Django?

btw I will look for a server with Django support soon enough as my current freelance project nears completion. I hope it won't prove as difficult as you make it sound, but this is 2009, right?

[Arafelis]

It's not that I hated the essay, it was that you were starting more Or Kill Me threads than everyone else combined.

I was trying to post a piece of kopylefted work each day.  I kind of got distracted taking care of my gf, who got her wisdom teeth taken out a couple of days ago, but meh.

btw I will look for a server with Django support soon enough as my current freelance project nears completion.

They're not that hard to find -- just google "django hosting" -- but a lot of the major "brands" don't have it as part of a shared package solution.  I haven't done a price point analysis of the relative cost increase to go with a django host, but there do seem to be some advantages to going with php/apache... it seems to more fill the niche of standard animal.  Looking at a comparison of the two, the advantages to Python mostly are things that I would care a lot more about if I were using it not as a web language.  (Hooray threading?)

I do, however, feel that the discussion may be moving away from video game design theory.  =P

[Requia ☣]

Back on topic then

How would you structure a multi-player games economy?

[Arafelis]

I'm working on destructuring the idea of economy, actually.  I think WoW has a pretty good version of the standard solution, or at least did at launch (I've not kept up with some of its recent additions).  City of Heroes recently-ish added in the ability for players to choose any given 'item' in the game by accumulating what amount to quest tokens.  I'm slightly more interested by that because I feel like the model was largely abandoned in the midlife crisis of multiplayer online games (between text and graphics).

But I feel like the imposed models have inherent limits to what they can explore.  I'm trying to come up with ways to trivialize the idea of game currency and offer players tools to manage secure and convenient service-based exchanges. 

A loose example: A small clan builds a castle.  The castle is near a mine, which gives it access to those resources, but means it is constantly under attack by respawning groups of goblins.  The individual attacks, even when successful, do little damage, but accumulate to be a more serious issue.  Rather than trying to have members online at all times, the clan posts an open contract: anyone who repels one of the goblin attacks is given a voucher good for a use of the clan's repair smithy.

This is completely untested, but it doesn't contain anything I couldn't code.  Generalizing it is difficult, but possible.  One of my interests here is to make a viable inflation-less economy... not because I think inflation is a bad thing, when handled properly, but because I find it an interesting challenge.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm working on destructuring the idea of economy, actually.

Nobody cares.

[Requia ☣]

There's a reason we stopped using cashless economies 3000 years ago.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

There's a reason we stopped using cashless economies 3000 years ago.

Easier to code.

Croesus was one fuck of a programmer.

[Arafelis]

There's a reason we stopped using cashless economies 3000 years ago.

Lots of reasons.  But games offer us opportunities not available in real life.  For instance, we can ensure all exchanges are guaranteed to be as represented.  We also have advertising and distribution solutions that weren't available when goods were phased out for fluid currency.  Availability isn't the issue it used to be.

Plenty of existing games already run on goods bartering, and do quite well thanks to what I've mentioned above.  Travian and UK, again -- they have no currency (or I suppose you could take the view that everything in the game is currency, but the difference seems academic to me).  I'm simply extending this idea to explore service bartering.

[Requia ☣]

I didn't play travian long enough, but its got a very similar resource set to UK, in which case I can be pretty sure the economy there is useless.  You have 4 different kinds of money, and since everything takes all types of the resources, trade doesn't accomplish anything.  You might be short on a resource right now, but in the 12 hours it takes to do a trade in UK, you usually end up being short on something else.  It might work better with a less time oriented system though.    Hmm

[Telarus]

Some interesting stuff in here.

Anyway, those of you who remember playing the early NES/SNES and that era of games may want to check out this article:

http://kidicarus222.blogspot.com/2009/06/its-secret-to-everybody.html

A very interesting look at how many of the early game characters got the names that they carried, and how hilarious Japanese->English mistranslations stuck in the meta-narrative of many of the titles. [WARNING: LONG]