by Seven Shikami » 30 Jan 2009, 21:36
Okeydoke. After talking with folks in-world, we came up with a totally different solution which may be better even than the hat.
For Team Fishing Contests, you start a team / join a team via the Contest Board itself. It wrangles teams, no crates, boats, or even hats required.
There are 12 team slots open (possibly 10 depending on performance issues). First person to claim a slot is the Captain of the team -- they can set the team Open Join (anyone can click the board and join the team) or Invite Only. They also can Kick people out of teams who are uncooperative.
Whenever a non-captain goes AFK for 2 minutes, or if a slot simply has no human player, an NPC steps in to fish similar to how was described before -- fishing alongside the captain, at a slight point penalty (no SURs). That way, if someone disconnects or simply walks away from the game, shortly after they get auto-NPC'd until they return and resume fishing. If the CAPTAIN goes AFK, nothing happens. (Otherwise we'd potentially end up with a team of 3 NPCs, which is silly.) If a captain quits the team, the team simply disbands. Captaining is a big responsibility!
Other possible options -- owner/admin settings to control who can claim a captain's role, anybody who clicks or only invited people.
The practical upshot of all this?
* Support for "enough" fishers (30-36) for a very large contest
* Simple to start a team or join a team without having to wear anything
* System automatically copes with disconnecting /AFK players
* Built right into the contest board -- no extra rezzing and no extra prims required
* Better plug-in support
The disadvantages?
* Since teams are wrangled by the board itself, you lack the 'identity' factor of wearing a hat that may track your stats from game to game (but we can still encourage people to wear uniforms, form leagues, etc)
* Team Motorboats are rendered less useful since they don't count as a team in this new approach; the price will likely be discounted or new features will be added to them to retain their appeal over Personal Motorboats
From the workshop of Seven Shikami, Official 7Seas Code Monkey.
For technical support please contact 7Seas Sass by IM in Second Life.