I hate console commands, and it feels just unnatural to have to type commands to commander a ship or use a magic carpet. Plugin support for dialogs is coming eventually (I guess?), but in the meantime why not have one for the interface between players and plugins? I see a lot of web admin plugins, something in those line but accessible by the players would be amazing! A simple way to do it would be to have a web UI that expect a "transaction number", and display an UI based on the requested transaction. This number could be issued permanently or on a temporary basis, issued based on plugins events in the game, and could be using as a system of "challenge", so that player don't need to log in the interface. A player would be presented with a transaction number that he is the only one to see in game, and enter it in the browser to see the dialog. Permanent numbers could allow things like a shop plugin to distribute IDs to shops, and when the player enter that "shop ID" (it could even be a string) he would be presented with the inventory, and would be able to do transactions. A secret ID could be issued to the shop owner to administer it. Temporary numbers could be used for special crafting blocks. Hitting the Workbench with a feather could prompt the player with a transaction number, which would be passed through the client interface to request some special recipe. The UI would present the player's inventory, and a drag and drop interface for the recipe, etc. When the player press "Send", the change would be reflected in the game. IMHO, any plugins that expect console commands could be wrapped in a simple interface, even through text files, so that admins don't always have to bug plugin devs.
Plugins GUI (Graphical User Interface) would require both server and client side modding. Its inconvenient but possible. That said, I hope that plugin developpers never switch to GUI Standards. Command lines are much faster then browsing a GUI. If you don't like to write commands, you should create macro keys. For other mods such as recepies, its already possible without client side modding since items are processed server side and the client only displays the server data. But yea, I hope that plugins developer that starts using GUIs will also keep command support for their mods.
This is not entirely true. Client-side modification is necessary if you want to put the GUI within the client. If the gui exists outside the client - say, on a webpage - this is entirely possible. You would only need for your web server to have access to whatever database you are using within the plugin. PHP with SQL, for example, would be able to do this. Alternatively, you could have the command line read in from a unix pipe and write to another pipe and have the web server talk to it that way, but that would be more of a PITA. Agreed entirely. This isn't true for ease-of-use, though. That all said, I don't think the effort here is really worth the incremental benefit, at least for me.
That's why it's a "web admin", the UI wouldn't be in the game, but in a separate browser. It would be served by the plugin and interface with the server. And command lines suck, they just do. The reliance of plugin developer on them is just sad IMHO. iEconomy's shops just suck because they are all command lines for example. It also break any attemps at role playing (for RP'ing servers) If I wanted to play a bbs door game, I'd play Trade Wars 2000, not Minecraft.
