The Mana World Forums

Do you think maybe we could have an in-game library or something of the sort to read fan fiction? It'd be an invaluable world-building tool and it could encourage the community to get more active if we had like a voting system to add stories.
Like, maybe had a forum where people could post the first couple chapters or paragraphs of one of their stories and people could vote whether or not they'd like to read the rest in-game. Or they could email them to volunteers and the volunteers could have monthly polls/competitions to see what stories could make it in!
I theorized a more complex idea at DoD a while back where books could be bought and sold depending on length and w/e, but that might be too much of a hassle.

I have noticed a lot of information seems to be stored offline, so would this be possible to be stored on the server? If it couldn't be, I could maybe make a simple encryption thingy using php for the volunteers to run the stories through so they could be stored offline in plain-text documents and released through each new version of the game. Of course, you'd have to add the translator to the code yourself but I'd give you the key.

What do you all think?

I like the idea of in-game litarature... but I think it's best to have a team working on it instead of any random user.
This team knows the background of the entire world and makes less errors.
Also it's easier

There should be a list in the libraries of books that have just been added to the collection. Also I think there should be region specific books. Or history books that mainly tell about the bad deeds of other regions, but say nothing about the crimes of the local authoraties. Like the history books in Japan about WWII.
One region could be more extreme in this then other regions and this could be reflected by the local NPC's. I think this would add a lot to the realness of the world.

Modanung wrote:I like the idea of in-game litarature... but I think it's best to have a team working on it instead of any random user.
This team knows the background of the entire world and makes less errors.
Also it's easier

Well, if volunteers were writing and sent them to be approved, I think that'd be best because I am sure the programmers wouldn't have the time to write several dozen 5-10 pagers. Besides, they did mention they needed help with world-building... I think. I can't remember where the topic is.

Modanung wrote:There should be a list in the libraries of books that have just been added to the collection. Also I think there should be region specific books. Or history books that mainly tell about the bad deeds of other regions, but say nothing about the crimes of the local authoraties. Like the history books in Japan about WWII.
One region could be more extreme in this then other regions and this could be reflected by the local NPC's. I think this would add a lot to the realness of the world.

Great idea! In an age where transportation isn't the easiest thing in the world, there is bound to be a lot less restrictions on speech... In that aspect anyway.

Crush wrote:http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?t=977

Um... Sorry. I heard about a library but I didn't think it would actually be... Interactive. I thought it'd be just like a setting...

To add some... worth to rare books, they may also give away clues as of drops or the like, how about that?
I'm thinking like maybe:

"[...] after struggling against those awful snakes for three nights and three days, I was tired and wounded to death. Fortunatelly, I found in one of these snakes' body a red pill, which I ate and my strenght and health were fully recovered [...]"

Of course, clues for finding equipment should be more... hidden in the text, but that's what I was thinking of .

Techsetsu wrote:Well, if volunteers were writing and sent them to be approved, I think that'd be best because I am sure the programmers wouldn't have the time to write several dozen 5-10 pagers.

If anyone can send stuff in there will be a lot of junk that needs to be filtered out. Players can put their own fiction on their fan sites. Maybe if a teammember spots a good story that fits in the world it could be added to the game with permission of the author.
I didn't say programmers though, I meant a (sub-)team/person/department that works on world building. It's history, the timeline, myths, folklore and stuff like that.

Modanung wrote:

Techsetsu wrote:Well, if volunteers were writing and sent them to be approved, I think that'd be best because I am sure the programmers wouldn't have the time to write several dozen 5-10 pagers.

If anyone can send stuff in there will be a lot of junk that needs to be filtered out. Players can put their own fiction on their fan sites. Maybe if a teammember spots a good story that fits in the world it could be added to the game with permission of the author.

This is sorta what I was going for. If we had it spread over fansites, it might become complicated so maybe we could have several stories or w/e posted on the forums and we could have people vote on them.
Like, say we have a monthly contest or something. People send their whole story to designated volunteers who then post excerpts of each one on a topic and people vote for which story they'd like to finish reading in-game.

Modanung wrote:I didn't say programmers though, I meant a (sub-)team/person/department that works on world building. It's history, the timeline, myths, folklore and stuff like that.

Just think of it as volunteer workers.

Techsetsu wrote:This is sorta what I was going for. If we had it spread over fansites, it might become complicated so maybe we could have several stories or w/e posted on the forums and we could have people vote on them.
Like, say we have a monthly contest or something. People send their whole story to designated volunteers who then post excerpts of each one on a topic and people vote for which story they'd like to finish reading in-game.

Yea, I know what you mean alright... I just don't think it's a good idea.

Modanung wrote:Yea, I know what you mean alright... I just don't think it's a good idea.

lol, well I can't blame you for that.