So on my residence, I have built a dj booth into my ballroom. I want to make music discs available for the community to use, but I don't want to have to keep replacing them. I have had a few different ideas on this, but I am wondering what you all think. 1. I can charge a deposit on discs. I would set up a shop chest that buys and sells discs at the same price. I would need to figure a price for this, I could either: A. Find a price which would allow most players to afford to access to them, but for which they would want to retrieve their deposit and I would be able to replace missing records. ( Maybe 100r) B. I can use a very low price, only for the purpose of tracking deposits (1r?) and explicitly post that discs are not for sale, only for use. 2. I could charge a very low price and use a record-return mechanism. I would post that records are single use price. But then I risk them walking off at a low price. 3. I could just sell the discs out-right to be owned by the user. But then I feel the community would not want to buy them for one use, and would miss out on the experience. So what do you all think?
Sell them at a higher price, like 50% more than normal shops and buy for the same price or 1r less. Write that everyone is welcome to replace the missing discs. You can put indicator lamps to show if all discs are there, if the chest if full with discs (I'd put 3 or more inside) and dirt-blocked slots, and write "please replace (sell) discs if the lamp is unlit." If people take discs with them you've sold them at a good price, so you or someone else will replace and make profit.
I'm not very familiar with how disc players work as a container. Could it be set up using an access button that shuffles discs through using some sort of hopper/dropper set up?
Thanks M4nic for the input! Sadly, there is no way to put a disc into a jukebox except manually that I am aware of.
Not sure if this would work or fit your booth: Couldn't you set up a jukebox for each disc and visitors would just activate it without the need to change discs?
Unfortunately the jukebox can only be monitored by a redstone comparator (the redstone power level indicates which disk is playing) and not controlled by hoppers or other blocks. So the only option you have, the way I see it, is indeed manual control. It's the only thing in Minecraft which puzzles me; one of the first things I tried when playing with this was to try and get discs to play again by sending in a redstone signal (I was hoping you could 'reset' them) but nothing; all you can do is remove the disk and re-insert it. By the way; do take care with selling/buying disks at a very high price. Because some discs are pretty common and it wouldn't surprise me if some people would use those signs merely to sell their discs and not so much to use your jukebox. My advice would be to give players easy access to that room and suggest that they bring their own discs with them. Although it may be a little less fun I do think it's the safest setup.
Thanks for the info and advice. That confirms what I believed about jukebox capabilities. I still have not decided which method I will use, but I appreciate everyone's feedback on the matter.
There is nothing to worry about: if you fill and cap the chest you can lose nothing. People can sell to it only if someone has bought from it before, so that person who took the dics and did not return it pays the "penalty" of 50% of the disc price if you price them 50% above normal as suggested.
I agree with M4nic_M1ner. If you put your disks in a chest and cap it off with dirt people can buy the disks at extremely high prices to listen to and return for the same amount. If someone does not return the disk then someone else can sell you a that disk for that high price. Just to add onto what he said... Using this way of doing the loan a record you will need a chest for each type of record. One pitfall I can see in this plan though is that if someone "rents" a record to use and someone else sell you a record before the renter returns it... That could be an issue when they want to return the record and no spots are open.
M4nic_M1ner's idea is great, I think, that would definitely work. What BreezyMan said is indeed true, but I don't think it would pose as much of a problem.
Wonderful feedback everyone, thank you! This is exactly the information I needed to hear (all of the posts) to help me make my decision. Thank you all for helping me decide the best course of action. Tomorrow is Wednesday, which means I will be posting another update to my Party Garden build thread. Hopefully I can squeeze this in tonight, and Ill post a link here to the update.
