In light of Charr week not providing much in the way of inspiration for writing (I’m no Tigerfeet after all), I figured it was time for another project update.  I’m requesting reader help with an aspect of this project that I’m working on but that’ll come later in the post.  Don’t get excited. The prizes are crappy.

Recently on the site I’ve been focussing on some basic functionality.  In my last post I explained how forum software is going to provide the backbone for the site, and that involves using its methods for registration, signing in and signing out.  As of now that’s what I have working across areas of the site.  Users can log in on the web portion of the site and have the session carry across to the forum and visa versa, as well as register outside the forum environment.  This is important as I want to allow applicants to fill in the application form and register for the site all in one go.

I’ve also had to migrate my testing site.  I was using a virtual machine on my desktop, but after having sworn at it repeatedly for being tricky to use I’ve moved the development platform to my laptop.  Much better.

In the not so distant future I’ll be switching attention to the next core item on my list – how to keep track of all our members across the various games we play.  MYST currently has around 50 active members spread across a variety of games so being able to track who is playing what is pretty crucial for us going forward.  At the moment this is done through forum threads which are poorly maintained.  In addition every month or so a new game will come along that a few people start playing so the system needs to grow and change as people start playing new things – and users can’t wait on admins to configure the site for them (one of my golden rules for this website).

The outline for the solution I’m working on currently asks 3 main questions about a game

  1. Does the game act as a single or multiple servers?
    Single server games include Heroes of Newerth and Guild Wars.  You may actually be picking a different server for each game or be in a specific district, but you don’t choose your server on login.  Multiple server games would be things like Minecraft or World of Warcraft.  This question aims to highlight if we need to take server connection details (eg we play on server X).
  2. Does the game allow players to have multiple permanent characters?
    This differentiates games with account names (eg Minecraft or Heroes of Newerth) to those where the player has multiple characters (eg Guild Wars or World of Warcraft).
  3. Does the game have multiple playable sides?
    This is mostly there for those games that insist on splitting their player base by making them choose which side of the coin to sit on.  World of Warcraft and Rift fit this bill but Guild Wars 2 does not.

There are a raft of other questions that hang under these depending on the responses and a couple of assumptions too.  The main assumption is that if a game allows multiple permanent characters, the game has different professions or classes – otherwise why have 3 characters when you can have 1.  There are also questions asking about terminology to word text in a more relevant manner, such as the use of legions or clans instead of guilds.

After this information is filled in, all site users can select the game as one they are playing in their profiles and will be prompted to fill in relevant information such as server details, character name and profession.  This can then be used to generate a roster for each game in the database.  It also powers additional features such as event organisation, but that’s quite a way away and a topic for another day.

Back to the plea for assistance at the top of this post – can you think of any multiplayer games that would break this model?  So far I’ve been able to make the following games we play regularly fit: Guild Wars, Unreal Tournament, Heroes of Newerth, World of Warcraft, Rift, Minecraft, Steam (yes I know its not a game in itself, we play Left 4 Dead & Team Fortress 2 though).  Are any of my assumptions way off base and need to be configurable?  Comment below and if your post leads me to redesign the system I’ll credit you in the software.

See I said the prize was crappy.