The Code Cache

Released! GlitterWorld Prime 2.2

Posted 2018-04-01 ‐ 5 min read

GlitterWorld Prime just got

not one,

not two

but FOUR new, major features!

Features

Over the last few months we’ve been really busy overhauling the internal logic of the mod and the server-side API, future-proofing the code and preparing it for some additional features we have on the road map a little down the line.

Here is what we’ve been working on in this iteration:

Order persistence

This was a huge change for GWP. There was no client side or server side code for this feature but it was something we had always known was going to be needed.

Originally we were going to store order data locally in the game save client side but we determined that this would have too many restrictions and would prevent us from adding some additional features that we have on our road map such as Buy/Sell orders and colony-to-colony item transfers.

Here is how it works:

  1. Colonist places an order with GWP
  2. The list of items of items bought/sold is sent to the server.
  3. Server confirms if the order was successful and stores it.
  4. The client will poll the server for the time left until the order should be delivered.
  5. When the time is reached, the colony receives the goods and then marks the order as completed.

With this change, other changes in the future can include:

  • Contracts, You can exchange your goods with other colonies and use GWP as the escrow party until both parties have fulfilled their side of the contract.
  • Web orders, Use the GWP Website to buy directly from the market and have them delivered to your colony the next time you play.
  • Buy/Sell orders, Create purchase orders to buy goods/sell at a desired price with other players.
Unlimited orders

You can now have unlimited pending orders rather than just a single order.

Variable Buy/Sell prices

We all love a good sale right? We’ve made just adjustments to the code so that we can now set individual values for the buy and sell prices.

And we’re currently testing a new algorithm that will:

  • Lower buying/selling prices for “flooded” items on the market.
    Excess supply causes the price to fall.
  • Give progressively lower selling prices for colonies that repeatedly sell the same goods to the market.
Discounts/In-Demand items, Daily Sales!

A new duty for GlitterBot will be to randomly select products and offer discount prices and increased selling prices for 24 hours!

Changes:

Market manipulation safe guards

In order to prevent people repeatedly selling things to the Marketplace, we have implemented some safe guards.

One of which is Anti-timewarp. GWP will be able to detect if time has gone backwards for a Colony, i.e. reloaded a saved game from earlier.

For example:

  • Load a colony.
  • Play for a minute.
  • Sell goods to GWP. GWP Stock counters have increased.
  • Go back to the save from earlier.
  • You have the items back but the market will also have those same items.

If you do this, any orders placed that are in the future of the current game time will be cancelled and any items sold to GWP will be removed from the market.

New algorithms for detecting market manipulation are also currently being tested against daily copies of the live data, any user found manipulating the market will be banned from using GWP.

Collection charges

There is already a flat 300 silver per Quadrum fee to access GWP, however, in a future version, GWP will now also be a collection charge (of an undecided amount as of yet, but relative to the quantity being sold) for each order that only contains goods being sold to GWP to deter people from just offloading items continuously along with the “diminishing returns” algorithm for colonies that constantly sell the same type of goods in large quantities.

Item value profiles

Certain items will now have “profiles” attached to them that tells GlitterBot how to adjust the prices of those items within certain parameters to stop things becoming unbalanced, e.g. Raw materials vs. Manufactured goods should be handled differently.

And just so we’re clear on terminology when I refer to buy and selling:

  • The Buying price is the cost of an item that the Colony buys from GWP.
  • The Selling price is the value of an item that GWP will buy from a Colony.

I hope you all have found this interesting and are as excited as we are!

Downloads!

Links to our distributions can be found here

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