Well, nothing lasts forever my friend... and to keep such a game balanced, item sinks are absolutely needed, otherwise it's only a matter of time before the economy gets flooded with super-uber-magic swords and instant invulnerability potions. The idea, though, is that many items will rot so slowly that you'll hardly notice. Food will perish quickly, within a few hours to days, things like paper will last for years, and stone and similar things will hardly rot at all.

Apparently, but:

Also, I just logged into cantr, and how should I put it, it doesn't feel the same. Even though it doesn't look any different.

Doesn't matter... Books are passed on so other people will likely read them later on in the game. So it doesn't matter if an individual will play the game for several years or not.

On my desk is an axe head I've been meaning to fit with a new handle. It's good as new. Better, even, as it's an old farmer's axe, manufactured to higher standards than today's disposable tools. It's from... honestly, I don't even know when, I can only guess that the last time it was sharpened was in the 19th century - and it still holds an edge like a bloody razor.
Most things do not rot. Very few things go bad just with age. Constant use will blunt any blade, but even after a few hundred years, a sharp edge will stay sharp. Dig up a flint axe and it's almost as lethal today as it was to its stone age makers thousands of years ago.

^ That. Regarding this one, there is the simple fact that if weapons last forever, the game will eventually be flooded with them, and even the best weapon will be abundant. Same for other branches of a tech tree.

Are you re-inventing the Federal Reserve?

He's a member of NORML.

My guys are all standing around, because I've been too busy to play lately.

>me goes and hops on<

Well, cantrII was back up for a while (not responding right now though), which kind of tied up the development team (ahem, me, that is). That, and a rather busy week for me, filled with all sorts of non-computery things as well as (paid) work.
And tbh, I was kind of under the impression the game was more or less dead, with cantr back up and practically no activity on my own characters. Apparently, it's not, which is great.

All good thoughts. I think eating (and thus food, which means lots and lots of resource types, tools, and projects to make and use them) is going to come first. Then injuries, hunger, maybe thirst, and other damage to the body, eventually causing death. Then probably weapons, buildings, vehicles, in that order.

I don't think money is going to be part of the game directly, but I plan to provide the means to produce items that could be used as money - signed notes could double as bank notes, as well as stamped notes (I'm not exactly clear on the implementation details though); a similar mechanism could be used to produce coins. In cantrII, there are only a handful of places that maintain a currency, and the coins are mainly of local value, used to pay workers. Actual trade uses valuable resources instead - oil, iron, steel, etc. Skills are another important thing to add, creating a bit more diversity among characters.

Another thing I would love to implement is faces - store a few parameters on the character, say, skin tone, colors of hair and eyes, hair structure, some metrics like eye distance, nose length and position, etc., and use those to generate a picture of the face. Any thoughts on this one? So far, mine are; on the pro side: it will provide a natural way of distinguishing between different unknown people, it will add parameters to a characters starting situation that influence how others see them, and it may make it easier to identify with your character, which is especially useful when you play a lot of characters, helps to get into character and such. On the con side, it destroys part of the text-based nature of the game, and it leaves less room to the player's imagination.

You're probably right. Actually, rot over time isn't mandatory, I can just set it to 0 for items or resources that don't perish by themselves. I'll just have to see how things go - if the world does get flooded with certain items (other than, say, pebbles), a sink will be needed, and I will implement one.

Also, I've been thinking I could use a little help. Mainly on the programming front for now, and later maybe for other things - finding a wider audience, hosting, thinking of a way to raise some money, that kind of things. If anyone is interested, let me know.

I don't think thats the case here, more like the author thought it would die, but didn't, and he was surprised!

Well, I bet more people will sign up if you have an option for it on the page.

Perhaps an invite system if you don't want people to flood in?

While I'm way too rusty on PHP to contribute (some extremely thankless admin duties pretty much made me ragequit web developing a couple of years ago), I would like to look at the source if that offer is still open.

Odd... the database upgrade script should have created it... it's there now though.

I kinda wish there was a way to have some auto-name feature so that if I see someone I haven't met before, I would see something that would hopefully uniquely identify them. (even if the way they're identified is different for one character then another, as a way to prevent this from allowing you know someone who met another one of your characters. At least until you ask their name.)