Points of interest

"Three players walked past the body. The one with First Aid found the needle mark." — Continuity Clerk Vosh Aldenn
Verified

A point of interest is a hidden note attached to a spot in the world, readable only by characters who have earned the right stat.

You need community admin. On the shipped server configuration /poi also locks to the active director while a scene is running. See director mode.

What it does

You place a marker at your crosshair and attach a message to it. The marker is a small coloured exclamation mark. A player sees it when their character's rank in the gating stat reaches the point's lowest written level and they are inside the marker's range. Everyone else sees nothing at all.

Each point carries up to 4 messages, one per level from 0 to 3. A character with a higher rank in the gating stat reads a deeper version of the same detail. Every reading is reported privately to the directors, so you can pace a scene around what people have found.

Placing a point of interest

The gate decides who can read it. force gates on Force Sense, tech on the Tech skill, and regular on nothing at all, so anybody can read it.

To gate on any other skill, use the skill form and name the skill. Skill names come from skills, and an unambiguous shortening of a name is accepted.

Level 0 means everyone who can see the marker can read it. No gate goes above level 3, and a skill gate stops at the skill's own maximum where that is lower, so a Blasters point stops at level 2. A regular point is level 0 only.

Placing every level at once

/poi create builds a full point in one command, with the range and the one-shot flag set at the same time. The messages are separated by a vertical bar, in level order, and a lone hyphen leaves a level empty. Pass - for the skill name unless the gate is skill.

Set the once argument to 1 and the point is consumed by whoever reads it first.

Listing, editing and removing

A one-shot point is marked with an asterisk after its levels.

move picks up the point and drops it wherever your crosshair is pointing.

range sets how far away the marker is visible, from 100 to 8,192 units. default puts it back to 1,500.

/poi remove takes an id, or all to clear the map.

What the player sees

A qualifying player who runs /inspect (with nobody under their crosshair) within 100 units of your point gets the highest level message their character can read:

One gap exists between seeing and reading. Academia at level 1 shows a character Artisan, First Aid, Tech and Mechanics markers one level before it lets them read one. A player in that gap is told something is there, without being told what:

A player who can see your marker and qualifies to read it, but is standing too far away, is told so on screen rather than being left guessing:

With nothing in range at all, the answer is flat: You see nothing of interest here. Every successful reading is reported to every other active director, and a one-shot read adds consumed to the line:

The player-side mechanics, including the points players attach to their own characters, are on FYI and POI.

Things to note

  • /poi remove all has no confirmation. It clears every point on the map the instant you press enter, and there is no undo.
  • No gate goes above level 3. A message written for level 4 or 5 is refused, and nothing is placed. A skill gate can cap lower still, at the skill's own maximum.
  • Messages hold 127 characters. Write the detail, not the scene.
  • A map holds 256 points. The pool is shared with points attached to NPCs and players.
  • The message text stays on the server until a reveal. A modified client can learn that a point exists, never what it says.
  • The reveal radius is 100 units and is not the same as the marker range. A player can see a marker from 1,500 units away and still be too far off to read it — they are told You need to get closer rather than being left to wonder. A point attached to a person is more generous at 200 units.
  • A one-shot point is gone for everyone once the first qualifying player reads it, not only for that player.
  • Reading a point needs the player to be alive. A dead or spectating player cannot read anything.
  • Changing the gate can be refused. If the point carries a message above the new gate's cap, clear that message first with msg <level> none.
  • Points are cleared on a map change and never saved with the map. Save them in a scene file. See running a scene.

Next