The vehicle dealership

In short. The dealership sells vehicles for game money. The amount is debited from the character in the game database, and the vehicle is written into their garage. Nothing to install on the game server. (Real money through PayPal is an option, off by default, set in Administration → Configuration → Dealership with a warning to read in full; your server's Tebex shop plugs in there too: see The dealership's Tebex catalogue.)

Before opening the shop #

• The game database is connected, and the MySQL user can write to the vehicle table and the player table.
• At the top of Moderation → Dealership, the Game server database box must find the vehicle table and player money. Otherwise purchases cannot work.

Fill the catalogue #

Moderation → Dealership (administrators):

• Import takes the vehicles from the game database (complete if a vehicles table exists, otherwise deduced from owned vehicles). A vehicle with no price comes in disabled.
• Add vehicles: pick from the list of suggested spawn names (including add-on vehicles the panel finds on the server), or add one by hand: spawn name, display name, category, price, stock (empty = unlimited), photo, YouTube link, background behind the photo, note, For sale.
• The price accepts a decimal comma (12500,50) but refuses 0: a free vehicle uses the Free box. An unreadable stock is refused (a whole number, 0 or more, or empty for unlimited).
• Find photos looks up the public thumbnails of the models.
• A vehicle's photo is an http or https address of 2,048 characters at most, or an embedded image (data:image/…) of 200,000 characters at most: beyond that, saving is refused. This also applies to the photo of a vehicle in a Dealership department's catalogue.

The catalogue search (player side as well as administration) ignores accents and case: "electrique" finds "Électrique".

Settings #

Administration → Configuration → Dealership:

Buying, on the player's side #

1. The player opens the Dealership (Dealership block of the home page, one block per dealer) and picks a vehicle.
2. They pick their character if they have several.
3. They pay from the bank or cash.
4. They read the plate and garage: the vehicle waits there at their next connection.

Offline only. Frameworks keep a connected player's money in memory and rewrite the database: a debit written while they play would be wiped. So Agora refuses the purchase (and the refund) while the player is connected to the server: "This character is in game right now".

Sales and refunds #

The Sales tab lists purchases, most recent first, 100 at most; when the list is cut, a message says so ("Only the 100 most recent sales are listed: older ones stay in the database but do not show here"). For a Tebex purchase delivered by Agora, the sale also shows the delivered model. Refund removes the vehicle from the garage and gives the money back (once per sale). If the vehicle is gone, the money is given back anyway. A sale flagged "Incident" (delivery never confirmed, money never debited) is closed with Resolve (nothing to refund). On a refund, stock is only given back if the delivery had really counted one unit.

Sales paid in real money (direct PayPal) or through a Tebex purchase delivered by Agora have their own actions (recheck the payment, redeliver, take the vehicle back, mark refunded), described in Redeliver, refund, take a vehicle back. PayPal carts that were never paid are deleted automatically after 90 days.

Dealers #

A Dealership-type service (Configure the MDT) has its own vehicle catalogue, managed in the Catalogue section of its MDT: what each person can do (add, edit, change prices or photos, remove) depends on their rank's Dealership permissions.

Common refusals #