High scores and such are stored in the hub world rather than in the game itself, or the hub streams them or something.
Item System
Note: It's VITALLY important that items can both have amts or be unique. These have both been issues in NIFE and Shatterloop.
The Hub World has an items system, separated into several broad categories (which have different colors identifying them):
Basic items -- as a player in the hub world you can create items or machines that clone them for other players and distribute them around. Nothing really special about them because anyone can make them, however in the description it'll show who made them and when so some might be more valuable than others as time goes on.
Hub Items -- the hub world will offer various items in its own way. These are green. Their supply might also be kinda limited as the world changes.
Achievements -- Achievements in various games (including trophies for winning high scores or whatever) are gold. These can again be traded around.
Game items -- Items can be transferred out of games and into the hub world. These are purple. Generally they might tie into some kind of game API as well so they're usable with that engine, for example books pulled from the Babel Bookstore or Eldritch Library. Game items can variously be cloned from the game engine or removed from that world completely, depending on the point of the project.
Items that are received in some way can be distributed to other players in various ways:
By trading. Both players have to agree to a potential trade.
By adding and removing items from a container that only certain players are whitelisted to access.
Items can be attached to anything social whatsoever and specified that they can be picked up, such as a post or stickied chatroom message or private message or path.
Players can allow for specific trades via shop-type mechanisms. These can exist in their base or a designated Market space or their profile or as part of the social apparatus that they post with in long-form scenarios (like how they can display Medals or other items).
They can be dropped at various areas in the Hub World or inside games (if the engine allows it), in which case they can be picked up via Pouch.
They can be gifted to players and/or friends directly depending on the receiving player's settings.
They can be placed in a base and set up so they're removable by other players.
Links to single-use item drops can be shared off-platform. Same deal with clonable items. In the hub world these sort of exist in the Void.
Players can create Bases in either text or 2d format that are accessible to other players. There are definitely some limits in the beginning. Possibly expandable as players interact with the universe more. I'm not sure what the actual tools look like yet, this post just covers their overall scope.
Bases operate on a "Claims" format -- you can claim exactly one area and once claimed no other user can have a base there. Some areas may be unclaimable for whatever reason. Real estate can be claimed on the hub world or potentially within games and sandboxes.
On the hub world, base entrances will always be visible directly. Inside games it's usually something dedicated to Pouch instead, particularly games created by other people and hosted elsewhere (though they can totally display them directly if they want).
Entering a base will save the game and exit it and then teleport the hub character to the base.
Bases can also be linked to in a variety of ways. With the hub world engine you can create a one-way portal to a base from your base, but only if the other player agrees or has their base set to public in that capacity. Two-way portals are also viable but take more planning. You can also have links in posts, in tradeable Journal entry items or Notebooks, paths, as part of a wiki, etc. The privacy settings of all of this will be explored in detail. Links can also be posted off-platform.
You can definitely link your text base and your 2D base together. If you have multiple base rooms you can also link them in a variety of ways. Idk what the starting limits are exactly, I want it to be unlimited but that presents problems with abuse and maybe also scaling.
Towns are Designated Spaces that can have multiple Bases arranged in some kind of skein format. Real estate is limited and fixed, but you can't claim the entire space. Game-based towns will probably contain hub towns of their own.
While you can only own a single spot in a Town, you can own separate spots in every town and link them together as well as link them with your main base. They provide good navigable entry points for players to explore other user-generated content.
Markets
Similarly, Markets are Designated Spaces where you can set up automatic trades.
Designated Space Ownership + Check-ins
Designated spaces are definitely gonna have more valuable real estate. To get around this problem:
Anyone interested in a spot can enter into a lottery where after some set time a player is chosen randomly to get it.
Players have to check in once a month or week or whatever and specify that yes they want to continue owning that spot. If they don't, the base still exists, it just isn't publicly accessible anymore and that slot is freed up for other players to lottery themselves into.
One potential way of getting people on GTX0 is advertising it to music creators. For the hub game I'm looking for ambient music, so I should reach out to the makers of that on various platforms. My thinking on how this works:
As mentioned, the music should be ambient. It should be relatively clean, and the artists should be pretty obscure so they're more likely to join the project. I want a pretty limited list starting out and existing creators should be extensively consulted before upscaling.
Playlists are assigned to areas in various ways. More on that in a different section. The actual shuffle heuristic might be a date-based procedural thing.
If a player likes a particular song, they can grab it from the list as a CD item. This then has items logic, but you can also do specific stuff with it.
Each room has a jukebox and you can put a CD in there in a particular slot to play that song for everyone else instead of what would've been played procedurally. It's basically a claim thing but more time-based. You can then retrieve the CD later.
You can play the CD yourself in whatever GTX0 content you want via Pouch.
You can of course also mute music from all sources -- you can't pause or stop it however because the different content is loaded on a timer.
Content creators still retain the rights to the song and can pull it from the engine, in which case the item still exists but just doesn't have any functionality anymore.
Movement and playlists
Since music is room-specific but I don't want every movement to jankily change the music, I propose something like this:
You still continue playing the current song until it ends.
When you switch rooms, it'll indicate the song that should be playing on the music screen. You can switch over if you want.
When the song ends, you'll have silence until the next song, or you can switch to what should be playing. You'll get some kind of not too intrusive notification about this.
Creator claiming
Creator music has to be explicitly approved by the Council of Musical Aesthetics, which for the time being consists of me, though I'd like to expand it. The CMA can also approve entire artists. Again, ambient music (and relatively clean) is kinda important for the atmosphere of this website.
Creators can lay claim to different areas of the hub site to distribute their music how they wish. I'm not quite sure how this works yet, though I think there should be a lot of mutual participation with other creators so I'll need to make some kind of pouch space for those discussions.
Similarly, they should be able to lay claim to games, unless there's some specific theme I (or the game creator) is going for. Allowing for independent music (and them being super selective) is going to be pretty attractive to game content creators. Because of how pouch works they should be able to lay claim to specific regions or states in the game as well. Again, this idea hasn't fully crystallized yet.
TV Idea
TV's work similarly -- essentially they're videos that play on procedural playlists at designated times. You should also be able to turn them into DVD items which allows you to do various things with them. Rather than having channels, there are just different TVs and you can sit on a couch or easy chair or whatever and tune into whatever's in the room. DVDs could also be played in pouch in games while you're waiting for some kind of timer in some capacity.
What's vitally important here is the content that's chosen -- I again want to focus on relatively obscure content that's also pretty interesting, and it's also vitally important that it's on theme, so text adventures, ascii games (such as MUDs or nethack or dwarf fortress), etc. In the Gutenberg Library the content would instead focus on books or maybe even whatever subject is explored therein. I also want the content to be largely relaxing rather than stimulating.
Like with music, it's vitally important that the selection committees can be expanded to something other than just me. And that content creators are extensively consulted, given platform rights and area privileges, etc.
As for HOW this content gets distributed, I have no idea. It'll probably involve embeds and/or APIs, so I'll need to poke around on different websites and see what kind of drivers I can come up with. Having procedural date-based playlists definitely simplifies the hell out of everything, however. Good stuff.
