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Option to SAVE stronghold layout


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  • 5 years later...
You don't need to deactivate your stronghold, you can have (i think) up to 10 active now, it may be more. It was changed ages ago.

 

Even with the current limit of 15 you may have to depending on multiples.

 

Anyway this one is for one of my guilds and guilds only have two : a flagship (if any) and a land-based one.

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We could keeop that clientside maybe ? Just like our hotbar settings are saved on our PCs.

Clientside is probably a bad idea, since it would be kept clientside on the PC of the person who saved it. That would be a pity if guild politics intervened and that person's legacy ended up being banned from the guild:

 

Guildie 1: I think it's time to switch back to Coruscant. Who saved the layout?

Guildie 2: BannedGuy, and you banned him.

Guildie 1: ...

 

or if the player's PC died:

 

Guildie 1: I think it's time to switch back to Coruscant. Who saved the layout?

Guildie 2: You did, on your PC that died.

Guildie 1: ...

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Except that, just the fact the person is banned or dead, doesn't mean the SH needs to be redecorated. 🙂

 

In any case, although it might be a nice idea, I doubt it would ever happen. Consider that, not only would you want to save the location of the decos, but you'd have to save the 'layout' of any hooks, like Starship, centerpiece, etc, that can be rearranged. Not to mention the X , Y, and rotation for each deco.

Edited by JediQuaker
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Except that, just the fact the person is banned or dead, doesn't mean the SH needs to be redecorated. 🙂

Duh. The original suggestion is obviously oriented at guilds that want to be able to switch around which *guild* stronghold they are using and immediately restore the decorations that were there before.

 

And it was the person's PC that died in my scenario, not the person.

In any case, although it might be a nice idea, I doubt it would ever happen. Consider that, not only would you want to save the location of the decos, but you'd have to save the 'layout' of any hooks, like Starship, centerpiece, etc, that can be rearranged. Not to mention the X , Y, and rotation for each deco.

Agreed. It would indeed be a way far big huge enormous chunk of data, and probably not small either.

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Clientside is probably a bad idea, since it would be kept clientside on the PC of the person who saved it. That would be a pity if guild politics intervened and that person's legacy ended up being banned from the guild:

 

Guildie 1: I think it's time to switch back to Coruscant. Who saved the layout?

Guildie 2: BannedGuy, and you banned him.

Guildie 1: ...

 

or if the player's PC died:

 

Guildie 1: I think it's time to switch back to Coruscant. Who saved the layout?

Guildie 2: You did, on your PC that died.

Guildie 1: ...

 

Dayum, you're right

 

But Steve, how does it happen in ESO then ? There's an architect's mod called Essential Housing Tools that lets you save housing settings (and many iterations of it, mind you, not unlike system restore points) and I don't know anything about it but it pretty much looks like it's stored clientside.

 

Still, in ESO you can visit a player's stronghold even if he's not online (set bonus crafting stations powerhouses FTW !!! ), and in fact guild strongholds are a designated player stronghold. Which, by the way, you don't risk ever losing unlike our dear Swtor.

 

You work in programming I believe so I'm really wondering what could be done here (not a rhetorical question)

Edited by BenduKundalini
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Keep in mind that all that all this only has to do with those somewhat rare instances when someone might want to redo a decorating scheme because an SH was disabled or whatever. I doubt that BW would want to spend the time (= money) and effort to create such a seldom needed but huge, database.

 

You might be thinking that's it's only one SH, but to implement the system would mean a database capable of saving layouts for "all" Strongholds. But maybe they could sell the storage as an expensive CM item, to reduce demand.

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Dayum, you're right

 

But Steve, how does it happen in ESO then ? There's an architect's mod called Essential Housing Tools that lets you save housing settings (and many iterations of it, mind you, not unlike system restore points) and I don't know anything about it but it pretty much looks like it's stored clientside.

If it's a mod, then yes, it probably is (and would have to be) stored clientside, since I doubt that ESO provides a way for mod-writers to store arbitrary data server-side, or at least not in the quantity required for storing layouts for houses / strongholds.

Still, in ESO you can visit a player's stronghold even if he's not online (set bonus crafting stations powerhouses FTW !!! ), and in fact guild strongholds are a designated player stronghold. Which, by the way, you don't risk ever losing unlike our dear Swtor.

If the player has marked his SWTOR stronghold "Public", then you can visit while the player is off-line.

You work in programming I believe so I'm really wondering what could be done here (not a rhetorical question)

The obstacle isn't, as such, technical. The things I described are common to all MMORPG systems that store information about the server-side state (where the decorations are, for example, but also e.g. chat settings, the preferences for showing alignment symbols in conversations(1), or whether the inventory panel closes automatically when you close your cargo hold or a vendor(1)) on the client.

 

From a technical point of view, if we, as players, don't mind the limitation implied by "stored on your PC so it can be lost in a variety of ways that are entirely the player's problem", there's no reason it couldn't be done. The code for mass-pushing a series of blocks of data (each one describing a hook's layout and its contents) into an empty stronghold isn't *conceptually* hard, and as long as it is correctly governed by appropriate permissions (e.g. only I can upload a layout for my stronghold, and only authorised guild decorators can do it for a guild stronghold), there's no real problem.

 

(1) I don't get why either of these things is stored client-side, but they are.

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I didn't get it all and I'm very sleepy, but how does ESO keep player strongholds public/ offline then ?

I don't know for sure, but probably approximately the same way that SWTOR does, with a status stored on the server that says, "This stronghold / house is available for other players to visit when the owner is off-line."

 

It shouldn't be a surprise that the game's own systems can store a simple "available for visitors when the player is offline" state on the servers, and, indeed, it can't be stored anywhere else, since the player is self-evidently *offline* (and his PC might not even be *on*) when the game needs to check.

 

For the "save layout" feature, storing a honkin' big ol' block o'data about decoration object positions, hook layouts, etc. etc. etc. is another matter, because that block *is* honkin' big. (That is, the problem isn't what the data is about, but that there's a *lot* of data.) It would probably be better, for OP's request, to have the game remember what the hook and decoration layout *was* in deactivated guild strongholds, and restore that information when the stronghold is reactivated. There are some unanswered questions about what happens in certain conditions, of which the most bothersome is this:

 

The guild places RareDecoration27, of which they have *one* copy, in Coruscant. They then deactivate Coruscant in favour of Alderaan, but they decide that RareDecoration27 doesn't fit Alderaan, and place it in their flagship instead. Now they decide to switch back to Coruscant. What happens when the game restores the saved layout and can't place RareDecoration27 because it's on the flagship?

 

Yes, of course they could keep the decorations "committed" while Coruscant is deactivated, so the guild couldn't place it on the flagship, but that conflicts with the scenario where they want to place it on Alderaan.

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If it's a mod, then yes, it probably is (and would have to be) stored clientside, since I doubt that ESO provides a way for mod-writers to store arbitrary data server-side, or at least not in the quantity required for storing layouts for houses / strongholds.

 

What quantity? If this was done the layout more than likely would be stored in an ASCII text file. For example:

 

Hook X,Y,Z

Layout #

Hook #

Decoration Unique ID, X,Y,Rotation

Hook #

Decoration Unique ID, X,Y,Rotation

 

Hook X,Y,Z

Layout #

Hook #

Decoration Unique ID, X,Y,Rotation

 

etc. for each hook in the layout

 

Even if there were 10,000 to 20,000 characters that would not be a very large file. I could be larger if Unicode depending upon the encoding, but still not very large. Now, admittedly, if there are hundreds of thousands of stored layouts that could start getting into a substantial amount of data, but the layout itself should not be a very large file. If they did allow us to save layouts server side they would likely limit us to just one or two.

 

 

If the player has marked his SWTOR stronghold "Public", then you can visit while the player is off-line.

 

That is incorrect. A player's public strongholds are only available when they are online. If they go offline whilst you are standing at a stronghold terminal viewing the public listings you will see their stronghold change to show that the player is now offline. The only way to access a player's strongholds when they are offline is to have a key that allows offline access.

 

 

The obstacle isn't, as such, technical. The things I described are common to all MMORPG systems that store information about the server-side state (where the decorations are, for example, but also e.g. chat settings, the preferences for showing alignment symbols in conversations(1), or whether the inventory panel closes automatically when you close your cargo hold or a vendor(1)) on the client.

 

(1) I don't get why either of these things is stored client-side, but they are.

 

As you mention, those settings are stored client-side in the preferences file, which leads me to believe that if such a system of storing layouts were added that file would also be stored client-side. On a side note, I have played other games where such things are stored client-side. I do not know why they would not be. These are setting for the client program, not the server. In the case of SWTOR, if the UI layout files were not stored locally I would not have been able to fix a problem when I accidentally moved a UI element into a position from which I could not move it.

 

 

From a technical point of view, if we, as players, don't mind the limitation implied by "stored on your PC so it can be lost in a variety of ways that are entirely the player's problem", there's no reason it couldn't be done. The code for mass-pushing a series of blocks of data (each one describing a hook's layout and its contents) into an empty stronghold isn't *conceptually* hard, and as long as it is correctly governed by appropriate permissions (e.g. only I can upload a layout for my stronghold, and only authorised guild decorators can do it for a guild stronghold), there's no real problem.

 

We are already responsible for saving our game preferences, our UI layouts, our keybind layouts, for single-player games we are responsible for backing up save files, occasionally we are responsible for backing up the game itself. I do not know why a stronghold layout file would be an onerous addition to the many things we are responsible for on our computers.

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