I've thought of an idea of doing player to player mail that also generates miniquests.
A normal mail system allows players to send stuff to alts, friends. guild colleges etc. They don't have to be on line if you have a mail server. A player in a remote area can receive vital items without running the length of a virtual world to get it from a friend.
Generally in most MMORPG's this includes an address, A main message and a goods box allowing you to send money, resources, gifts, armour etc.
If we add two more text boxes and a location drop down and co-ordinates we can create a quest.

• The first box would be the 'challenge'. The player would see that immediately. Next is a location. Zone x and y.
• When the player gets to within 50 m of the x/y position message two pops up. This is the 'story'.
• Then a second later the goods arrive in your hud loot box followed by the final 'punch line' message. It may have an Out of Character component. 

The delivery is passive. The three messages create a story. An explanation for why you suddenly have a pile of new treasure in your loot box.  The 50 m leeway is to deal with the risk that the location itself may be inaccessible or  populated with the meanest of monsters.
The loot/gift is passive so that its simple software and so you are free to concentrate on the threats in the area.
Some messages will be easy with no loot, I E general guild announcements.
I call this Quest mail. I cooked this up for another game but can't write the code. I'm not a programmer. it should be an easy menu task the only challenge is the need for a mail server as part of the existing servers or as a new server. However being a free game that poses both a challenge and a simplification. The challenge as always is paying for reliable servers and the good news is being a free game we can avoid the cost of securing the server too much from gold merchants etc.
What do you think?    It should be easy but I can't write C++ code to save my life.
The beauty of this is that the GM's can add lots of seasonal mini-quests by simply sending everyone Christmas mail.

 

ok that worked. thanks. Now I have another problem. The menu is giggling up and down I cant select or hit any button particularly the up date menu that comes up. There is a settings menu but it giggles to and I cant select full screen. Singing in is also impossible for the obvious reason.

did you actually download the thing and put it in your home? also check case. in any case any instruction on running commercial game and out of the distro repo binary packages is proper here at the same way, except we don't have a qt interface for the installer so if using kde without gtk libraries installed you'll need to use the textual interface.

Part of the problem seems to be that I get wobbly@wobbly-desktop ~$ uname -r
2.6.31-16-generic-pae

Not either of the expected replies.
How do I get from desktop to home to see what's there?
I'm in danger of abandoning linux and going back to windows. its all in code. I need a translator.

Can we have an updated set of instructions for Planshift- v0.5.0 on karmic koala? I.e. the latest version on the lates ubuntu flavors.
I have a 64 bit processor but have had trouble with that and am inclined to go 32 bit just in case.  Interpolating the instructions from  version 4 to 5 adds an additional level of confusion and risk of error. I'm still learning to drive this computer thingy. 

Adding a sign with the word North on it and oriented in a fixed direction would help players. We don't have a compass yet and its hard to make one work. With one sign in each major zone; people can then give others directions and make better maps.