SWEET shop interface.  Do they have roll-over tool-tips?  That would be the best.

roll-over tool tips require mouse input. It might look better (and more functional) if prices were written below/under item. Any other info, i agree, can go to tooltip.
different background maybe, to see items better.
other than that, great interface 

Sorry, a madness took me. When I sai the tooltip idea was good, I actually meant not necessary.

It's already handled in a way that is also keyboard-friendly (and mousers don't have annoying tooltips obscuring everything), that extension to the GUI I mentioned. Here's a new pic:

ehmm, thread split?
This looks good, though I dont think stacked items like i see them now will work. On every purchase you should be asked how many you want, this way you can buy 1000 arrows without spending 1h on clicking.
I see background is changed, but what I meant was to get rid of background in favor of solid neutral colour.
What about 'selling' interface?

Here' the latest and an interesting problem:



The problem is that shopkeepers having 'real' stocks is quite difficult in a mp game, particularly wiith a client-side interface like this.

For example, Karamor has a stock of 1000 athames.

Player A waddles up to him and says '/talk buy' to open the above GUI. He then spends a while browsing.

Meanwhile, Player B prances in and also does '/talk buy'.

For both players the GUI says 1000 athames for sale, which at the time is correct.

Now A has decided to buy athames. He buys 500. So Karamor has 500 left. B's GUI still says 1000 though. So when B tries to buy 800 of them, Karamor says he doesn't have that many any more.

In itself this seems OKish, but B tries again. he reopens the GUI, which now says Karamor has a stock of 500. So B tries to buy 500.

But C has shot in and bought 200. So again B's attempt fails.

And perhaps this sequence of events continues with D, E, F, and G...

While on the one hand this is maybe not unreasonable (it is a MP   environment), OTOH it is bound to lead to confusion and frustration.

The poblem is the GUI represents, on the client, a snapshot of the state on the server at a particular moment. As soon as it is opened, it is out of date. There is no sensible, efficient way to keep the GUI updated.

With limitless stocks, as we have ATM, this problem does not manifest itself.

Another benefit of limitless stocks is that it should then be possible to cache particular interface strings client-side. So the server would not need to continually remake and resend the string every time a particular player reopened the shop. He'd have a local string cached.

Yup, that's what happens here. It seems the only way, although less than perfect.

Another solution would be to NOT check if the item was still in stock (infinite stock, but removed from shop window when one sells- for future players).  Meaning technically several could be bought provided they were requested at the same time.  As soon as one is sold, no more would come up in GUI for future players.

Possible exploit could be though the item does not show up in GUI, player's may still purchase it if they remember the cmd.

To extend TPK's idea, (which I think this also relates to story) is that as there are many different cultures, there are many different shops that may operate differently. We can have shops that only sell limited amounts to certain players. There can also be shops that only sell to selected rich players (this can be done by players who own luxurious apartments) like Gurkha’s His Majesty’s Reserve for example. Just saying that the shop interface can vary with different shops.

that only serves to piss people off if someone with 10 mith comes and buys out a shop.

Initially this would be the case. With some balancing strategy this can be avoided. For example by having multiple shops, ranging from different sizes, items, targeted levels, classes, etc. It can work. Any further in that and I go off-topic.