Mailboxes

[Jammet]

I've always wanted an offline messaging system for players. Something that could be as simple as:

Mark: /mail Thomas hi!
Thomas: /read

But maybe it could be taken even further. To be a fun part of the game. I'm proposing a plugin that implements Player Mailboxes.

A chest that a player can place somewhere in the world, with a very specific command that must be written on a sign attached to the chest. And only the last one built is active. Also players can only use their own name on it.

Something like [MAILBOX] [name]

/mail Thomas I've put some more diamonds into your mailbox. Hope to see you tomorrow!
(Spawns a book with that text on the first page in Thomas' Mailbox)

/package name diamond 12
(Sends 12 diamonds to Thomas)

/retrieve
(Takes out first available content of your Mailbox chest and puts that in your hand.)

Of course making chests and putting written books inside it can be done today just manually, but Cuberite has bugs with writing into books, and a plugin like this is more of a playful, fun experience. Is anybody else interested in such a thing?

[Schwertspize]

AFAIK we can't modify nbt data as plugin, so we can't actually "write" a book.
But a simple /mail isn't hard, let's see. (maybe I'll do it AS PART OF Essentials this /mail should be part of Essentials like the bukkit /mail)

[xoft]

Reading mails through a book is really a great idea. I love it!
I've thought of an offline-messaging plugin for quite some time, but never got around to it, mainly because of the limits of the chat line length. But with books it'd be a piece of cake.

How about a different approach:
Sender starts writing by using a command; it opens up a book editor and lets them write any message. The message is stored by the plugin (DB?), and has no physical representation in the world.
Receiver gets a message that they have new mail, and they can use commands to navigate new messages. Once they open the message, a book-reader UI is displayed, with the contents of the message.
I'm not too fond of sending items this way, it's "too secure"

[Jammet]

=^_^= That would be really cool too! The mailboxes were a fun little idea I had a long time ago, when my server was running an older world. Players did put books into each others mailboxes by hand, and there was even a lever next to a mailbox that you could raise or lower to indicate that there is new mail. Was a cute thing, but the entire time I was thinking how cool it would be if there was a real "post" system, or something, anything that would use these books and chests as mailboxes.

So even when it's just books and no mailboxes at all, that's still an amazingly fun thing and I'd just *adore* to have players on my server use that.

(I still have a chest full of old mails, love it!)

[LogicParrot]

The manual mail system is creative and sounds cooler than a command to me

[Jammet]

It's very, very fun! With a tiny bit of automation though, this could work like a real post system . (I don't think it'd work if we had real post men delivery services).
In all variants it's just a cute and fun thing to do <3.

[Schwertspize]

OK, I do, but do we have a possibility of setting a players ui as plugin?

[xoft]

I'm not sure about the book editting ui, but generally plugins should be able to open any kind of ui window on the client.

Heh, just thought of a really "fun" plugin - keep opening a ui window for a player whenever there's a creeper near, so that they can't really fight Do we have some kind of a "admin's revenge" plugin where this could be added?

[Jammet]

Heh, just thought of a really "fun" plugin - keep opening a ui window for a player whenever there's a creeper near, so that they can't really fight Do we have some kind of a "admin's revenge" plugin where this could be added?

I can already hear the screams.