Why not store books and msgboards in human-readly file text format to allow viewing and editing?
Actually, there are saved in sort of binary format and are non-viewable and non-editable. It is a real problem for a runing shard.
If a player write junk messages in a msgboards, you cannot delete or edit them. You must delete all the board with all players messages.
You cannot leave junk messages, and you cannot delete all the board, in all case, players will be dissatisfied.
As for books, when you want, to correct a misstake in a book in the game, you must go to it, then edit it in the game. It is not really easy, and impossible for a board's message.
It is also usefull to have a complete view of all boards' messages and books on your shard, and the possibility to modify them quickly.
Books and msgboards
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giwo
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Binary has many advantages over ASCII files, one of which being ease of use when sending packets.
The messageboard posts would be deletable in-game if OSI had designed the client to allow it, there is a packet, along with full support, to delete the posts. Because they did not make this possible with normal clients, we will have to write some form of msgboard maintenance gump whereby a GM can remove posts.
As for viewing/editing externally, that function would be best suited to a tool, rather than making the files ASCII format (which would still not be entirely user-friendly).
The messageboard posts would be deletable in-game if OSI had designed the client to allow it, there is a packet, along with full support, to delete the posts. Because they did not make this possible with normal clients, we will have to write some form of msgboard maintenance gump whereby a GM can remove posts.
As for viewing/editing externally, that function would be best suited to a tool, rather than making the files ASCII format (which would still not be entirely user-friendly).
Scott