This file will try to sum up the ideas about FAME in the Musicians'
Guild. (with reservations of typos)
An idea we had for the Musicians' Guild was a system based on
how large a crowd an individual performer could entertain,
and here's a suggestion ho it can be done.
In this case, the jukeboxes have a major part, and it might involve
a problem which I'll come to laters.
What I'm thinking about can be called a "musician's FAME ratio".
This is value that can increase and decrease, and it's dependent
(calculated) primarily how popular the musician's SONGS are; and
some (not as much) on the musician's average skill in music.
How popular a musician is, can be done by either checking on how
often their songs are choosen on the jukeboxes (by the other
players).
The higher their song is on the chart (which also is calculated
by the choice from the jukeboxes) the higher is their popularity-
ratio. When/if the song(s) get pushed down from the list, the
ratio would decrease.
OR, it can be calculated by a simple voting system at the jukeboxes.
The choice from the players are stored somewhere and then the
musician's ratio is calulated from them, perhaps once a week
(rl time).
Some random fluxation can be implemented as well.
NPC's could perhaps do _some_ voting in a smaller extent.
This is something a player in the Musicians' Guild could strive
for, too keep beeing famous.
It makes some sense if the ratio is MORE calculated on their
popularity than their skill, as lousy musicians can be much
more famous with good/popular songs, than vice verca.
Then the ratio can be diveded into certain areas, like you can
be very famous in Ankh-Morpork, quite famous in Klatch, not
famous at all in Sto-lat.
So when you do "score" it could look like :
You have 5552 (5552) hit points, 908 (908) guild points,
175 (543) quest points and 50 (50) social points.
Your current experience is 3519 and you are level 102 in
the Musicians' Guild; your overall rating is 32872.
You have died 3 times and can die 7 times before you are
completely dead.
Your wimpy is set to 50%.
You are unburdened.
You are evil, worshipping no god.
*You are very famous in Ankh-Morpork.
*You are quite famous in Klatch.
You are 76 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes and 33 seconds old and have
logged in 150 times.
I'm not sure about it being listed on "score", as there's already
quite a lot of information there. That information could be available
from the guild or some other source, though.
You need to "break" the market in the other areas by getting your
songs on the jukeboxes in each specific area, and hope that they
get played and famous.
The more famous you are, the more money you make when "busking" and
when playing gigs, as you can fill larger venues. If some musicians
get together for a gig, their ratio together is summed up
and will set how large crowd they'll get.
There's also lists in the guild that tells how famous you are
which can be the guild's high table.
The problem (well, one atleast) I mentioned above, is: would
players use the jukeboxes enough so a calculation can be made
and would the popular songs get played more than the others ?
I guess there's no way to tell except to try it out, really.
It was suggested to have a system of copywrite laws so that the
writer of a song gets royalties when other people perform it..
and the performers have to pay a percentage to the guild (some of
which goes to the writer of the song) every time they perform.
I have no idea how this can be done, code-wise though.
Here's how it can look like when a player registers a song on the
jukeboxes.
This is done in the guild branch for each specific area. If I want my
song to be listed on the jukeboxes in Ankh-Morpork, I simply go to the
city's guild branch to do it.
This requires that the player is a member of the Musicians' Guild
ofcourse.
Something in the lines of:
This is the section of Musicians' Guild where you can make your songs
heard in Ankh-Morpork. A man is sitting behind a desk and there's a
sign hanging on the wall.
>read sign
Welcome to Baltazar's jukebox sercive. To sign a song to the jukeboxes
(damn, can't think of a better word) you must have the song written
down on a piece of note-paper and pay a fee of 30 dollars, which
will cover food and lodging for the hard working imps.
Then leave the training and the rest for us. Please allow some days
for the imps to learn your song.
You read a sign.
>give Gold Song to man
You give a piece of paper to the man behind the counter.
The man closely examines the paper.
(Here's a check to see that the song isn't too long, and it has
its syntax, as explained in the song composing bit, correct.)
The man says: Well, your song seems to be ok.
The man says: That will be 30 dollars then, sir.
>give 25 dollars to man
The man says: Oh no, my friend. The fee for this service is 30 dollars.
The man gives 25 dollars to you.
>give 30 dollars to man
You give the man 30 dollars.
The man says: Thank you very much. The Gold Song will be taught to
every jukebox-imp in the city, it will be a big hit, I'm sure!
The man grins.
The man files a note-paper in a box.
---
Then the song file gets passed on to a file that the jukeboxes
inherits. The "title" of the song get passed to the jukebox's list
(every jukebox will have the same songs) and when the song is played,
it will follow the pattern the song got when it was made, with all
information between the verses, etc.
The fee is an interesting thing I think. A musician must get some money
first, to get his songs "published". Either by busking, or loaning from
players or why not from the guild or another institute?
Anyway, that's another thing for the musician to do.
The fee could be calculated on how long the song is too, the shorter
song the cheaper fee. But that might get an "uncreative back-effect".
There can be a time limit on how long the song can be on the jukebox
but that is something that can be decided when we see how quickly the
slots fills up in the jukeboxes. There must be a number of songs on
them all the time.
Problem: What if a player hands in a song that another player
has written but not registrated to the jukeboxes before ?
It's just possible for a player to change a couple of lines
of a song and it's then impossible to filter out.
Well, one possibility is that before the song is accepted --- the
A$30 has to be paid, as a processing fee, of course :) --- copies
of it get sent to a number of referees (maybe people who've already
had their songs published) and they have to validate it. That way,
there'll be some checks on plagiarism.
