I Love Places.

I really enjoy them a lot.

But programming is often times really, really hard, and can be off-putting to some players.

So Lea and I were chatting when we devised a kind of solution to this problem and also CMJ's wallet.

Programmers Toolkit

•Build and test Programs from scratch!
°Unlimited access to all C&C's while making a demo program
°Row-by-Row plain english translation of the logic to help people understand how programming works
°Store your own programming parts in the Toolkit weightlessly and access them while in your place and while using the Toolkit
°Buy the parts you're missing directly from the Toolkit (At a discounted price from without the Toolkit)
°Save a program you're working on as a work in progress within the Toolkit
°Export the program as a single item (as opposed to just a pile of parts) from the Toolkit (For a price that would be the export cost + cost of parts you needed to buy)
°Make notes on your programs
°Access to Global Banter while working on a program in the Toolkit to ask people for advice!
•Build or Buy common pre-made Programs!
°Automatically renders basic programs like "Show Door Via Password" or "Show Page in Specific Weather"
°Populates these templates with your own C&C's or gives you the option to buy them completed
•Organize your C&Cs!
°Sort your C&Cs in the Toolkit by what they relate to, or how they can be used.
°Get detailed descriptions on the function of each C&C

The thinking here was that you can purchase this toolkit for one pretty big sum of money, which would be rad for CMJ, but then get a discounted price on the purchase of programming elements via the Toolkit, which would encourage folks to buy 'em continually over time which would be good for CMJ.

This would obviously be a Really Big Thing and require a great deal of effort, but it may make things so much easier for people who love their place but don't know how to program or don't want to sink money into C&C's without knowing if their ideas will even work.

The nice thing about this is it could be shared after purchased, so someone who has no SP could borrow this from a friend and test things out for free and then get the C&Cs the old-fashioned way.

Anyway, that's the idea. I would buy this thing in a heart beat. I think many others would too, I think it would be neat.

This is an awesome idea.

This, plus a 'Math' C&C. I can think of many server actions that could be curtailed by one operation over several.

Yes Dirk so true. And maybe a contraption that is just an RNG. Just a simple little RNG. I thought that's what the Roll contraption would be but it wasn't!

ROLL THOUGHT is exactly what you need it to be. It will roll any number in any range you please, including negative numbers.

Good to know!

I totally, totally loves this.
So much.
I'd totally be able to get into Programming with this!

What if, though, it opened up like the Colour Code Testing Tool? (Linked because everyone should know about it.)
You could, like, design a Program in one tab, test it, find it works perfectly, save it, switch tabs to the game, head into your Programs page and just straight up purchase it from some saved thing.

That's exactly what I thought of when I read this. I think it would almost have to be its own thing, but it would need test pages and test rooms to verify when a program does what you want it to, so maybe it's more complicated than it seems. Maybe something automatically generated with the ol' Lorem Ipsum doo-dad?

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Something something unintelligible gibberish something.

I didn't know how badly I needed this until you made this post

I really like this idea of Genevieve's, especially the part about having off the peg pre-made programs for sale. Perhaps have people be able to build templates and put them in some sort of store somewhere, where people could buy copies from.

Trowa's got a point. How exactly will this work? Programs don't exist in isolation, all but the very simplest interact with a Place and depend on the doors/rooms/pages being what they are. Often one gadget is actually a whole suite of interlocking programs. To test a program properly, it needs to be in the Place for which it's intended. So the kit will have to essentially make the places run differently for the kit user - they'll run according to new programs. How does this fit in with the Run Program contraption? Your new program may well be plumbed in by having one of these point to it. This Run Program won't make any sense in the old Place, the one without the program to which it's meant to be pointing.

What would be needed I think would be essentially a copy of your place, with the changes that you're experimenting with added on.

The real problems would come I think with the "Buy pre-made programs" part. How I envision this working would be, you import an off-the-peg peogram into your toolkit, and here you set up all the various parameters for it. The doors etc. pointed to, any pass words, etc. Here is where you can make it work properly. Once you've seen that it behaves, then you can buy it.

I would also note that as things stand, a Place can look quite different to a key-holder than it does to a casual visitor. Key-holders can't see locked doors for example. I often send an alt through a Place to check that things look as they should. When checking that your program works, it would be nice to be able to go through as a guest rather than a key-holder.