Wesnoth news

[Zlodzei]

Looking at how organising of TOC 4 went I realized that Wesnoth needs its in-game news.

Scope:
Currently there is no way to inform active part of community about upcoming events / news in short terms. Wesnoth site and forum are not visited often enough to make it work. The aim is to provide an efficient way to inform any active wesnoth player about latest news.

Requirements:
1. Need to show a latest piece of news to user when he joins lobby (first time after connecting to server).
2. Need to allow user to suppress the piece of news once he saw it.
3. (optional) If there will be possible to have several news (alternate to having single piece of news that rewrites older one) it would be handy to have a way to look through entire list of news.
4. (optional) Need to allow user to suppress news.

Use Case:
1. User connects to multiplayer server.
2. There appears a box with:

• text (news itself)
• checkbox "Do not show me this word again"
• button "OK"

3. User presses the button
4. User joins lobby

I believe that such a functionality is kinda cheap and efficient way to make it easier to organise mini-events and to keep community informed.
Samples of mini-events: Gobs Don't Die! (Weekend competition in 3p survival with goblins only); Challenge of Hodor (mini-tourney (best-of-one) with short timer where 1 of players gets random and 2nd gets 125 gold, have rogue leader and recruits outlaws) etc.

[TheMasterOfBattle]

That sounds like an interesting idea. I don't know anything about WML, but that sounds like it should not be too hard to implement.

[JW]

Isn't there a MOTD (message of the day) feature? Couldn't that be used for these purposes?

[TheMasterOfBattle]

hmm... I thought the MOTD was for the IRC channel though?

[Zlodzei]

Isn't there a MOTD (message of the day) feature? Couldn't that be used for these purposes?

I have never ever seen any MOTD in-game. It means nothing tho. But does it actually exist?

[zookeeper]

Go on the server and you'll see a MOTD.

[Zlodzei]

Hm, now i recall that MOTD is placed on top of chatting area. Somehow I tend to never notice it
As for me it is too unnotisable.

[zookeeper]

Hm, now i recall that MOTD is placed on top of chatting area. Somehow I tend to never notice it
As for me it is too unnotisable.

Probably just because it's always the same message. If it'd have some extra lines in it I'm sure you'd notice.

[Noy]

Your post rests on a false premise about the TOC; I didn't want that many people to join, just enough to make it viable, but not to many so I had to devote myself full time. I made sure I didn't advertise it widely, and I was happy with the number of people that applied for the TOC.

[Lizard]

I would rather have it as another tab on the server, because you cold read them when you want and not only on the beginning. for example a News(n/m) button where n are the new news and m are the all ones that are stored. You could announce the Things that are normally on the wesnoth.org front page. It would be somehow highlighted when there are News.

Well, I actually doubt that this feature would be very useful.

[Weeksy]

Now that the TOC is taking place, would advertising that fact really have any negative effect? All I can see it doing would be to give some people the information that tournaments do occasionally happen, and perhaps add a few observers to the TOC games.