Online multiplayer marketplace for C:S resources

[markhank 0]

Hello modders of C:S.

I am new to modding CS but pretty experienced in building web applications and APIs. I had an idea for a CS mod which would allow for an online marketplace for CS resources between players. So for instance, if your city generates excess power or water or wood or fish or whatever you could offer it for sale through the marketplace and other players could "purchase" it in exchange for cash into your city budget.

I will have no issue building the server side of this to effect the marketplace, but I'd be really interested in perspectives on how best to implement this in game.

I've found a few scripts on github which expose the game api and deliver json through a local port, which is very helpful, but there's all c5 years old which makes me nervous.

My ideal solution would be to create an asset in game (ie a building called "Trading Terminal" or something similar) which generates/consumes power/water/cash depending on the variables passed to it by the API and which can store resources in a warehouse style fashion (again, the contents programmatically determined by inputs from the api).

I would be really interested for any pointers on assets which do anything close to this which I could reverse engineer as a starter. Any good examples of assets which pass/accept data from outside the game world?

If anybody with a CS modding background would be interested in collaborating with me on this then please let me know. Equally, if you think this is just something that's dumb/not useful/not fun then I'd be keen to hear that feedback as well.