Wyrdysm Games

I feel like one of the biggest problems with the current meta resides in the massive amount of work required to keep it running.

This does two things. First, it makes it utterly impractical to have turns more frequently than we have them now, which leads to a slow progression of events, which leads to diminishing interest among involved parties.

Second, it limits the complexity of involved systems. Every extra diceroll, every extra check adds more time to the administration process, which we've already established as being detrimental overall.

The fix? I think it lies in a rather ambitious project. What if, instead of maintaining massive spreadsheets, incrementing a turn was as simple as ticking a few checkboxes, manipulating some dropdowns, and pressing "go?" Obviously, battles would still have to be run by hand, but I think such an application would be pretty handy. Nothing fancy: plain text and a few images.

I envision a three part system. The first part would essentially be an encyclopedia. Detailed ship statistics could be stored and recalled (in tabular form), a starmap with clickable systems could summon up all related information on corps, mercs, factions, in that system, and so on.

The second part would be for the players. Admirality, faction leaders, corp leaders, etc. It would essentially be a turn order filing system. You log into your account and depending on your role within the game, you are given different options. Play with dropdowns and click save.

The third part would be for admin(s). Arc could log in and approve turn orders submitted by others with the press of a button, progress the turn counter, edit scenarios, etc.

I'd like to know two things. First, would something like this be worth the work? This question is posed primarily at Arcalane as he bears the brunt (read: all) of the administrative responsibilities for the current game.

Second, and just as importantly, does anyone else besides myself have any experience with PHP and database technologies and an interest in making something like this happen? It's been a long time since I've worked with PHP, but the vast, vast majority of a project like this is being able to manipulate a database. My free time is quite limited, and so doing this by myself is out of the question. If we could get a small team together, though, I think we could bring this together within a reasonable time frame.

Any thoughts?

Sponge wrote:The fix? I think it lies in a rather ambitious project. What if, instead of maintaining massive spreadsheets, incrementing a turn was as simple as ticking a few checkboxes, manipulating some dropdowns, and pressing "go?" Obviously, battles would still have to be run by hand, but I think such an application would be pretty handy. Nothing fancy: plain text and a few images.

That would be very helpful, and I wish we had it.

But if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak.

Sponge wrote:I envision a three part system. The first part would essentially be an encyclopedia. Detailed ship statistics could be stored and recalled (in tabular form), a starmap with clickable systems could summon up all related information on corps, mercs, factions, in that system, and so on.

There would have to be some sort of login-based system that could hide the stats of planets you don't know about, and possibly hide information on ships you haven't encountered yet. I want to make the element of surprise and using intelligence-like features more important.

Sponge wrote:The second part would be for the players. Admirality, faction leaders, corp leaders, etc. It would essentially be a turn order filing system. You log into your account and depending on your role within the game, you are given different options. Play with dropdowns and click save.

There won't be any admiralty (unless you're an admiral in the service of a faction leader) and corps are unlikely for the time being (though you could run your faction like a megacorp) so it's only really faction leaders, but yes.

Sponge wrote:I'd like to know two things. First, would something like this be worth the work? This question is posed primarily at Arcalane as he bears the brunt (read: all) of the administrative responsibilities for the current game.

If it could be made, was relatively easy to use, and could be easily customized, then I'm sure it would be.

Any thoughts to what language it could be coded in?

Maybe ask some of the blokes on irc.lolipower.org channel #SRL if its possible, they might be able to help, though i'd doublecheck the code if they want to help, as about 1/2 in there where/are scriptkiddies.

Most of the people there have scripted various things, though the forum focusses on RS scripting, its probably worth checking out.

Well for languages you would need a large database, ie SQL or something similar.
Then if you had a login system for a website, done in PHP calling only the vessels your aloud to see set by the game master. That would be enough for the encyclopedia.
System maps could be drawn with GD Commands in PHP so entire maps could be made easily and fast for individual users.
Maybe a whiteboard like program, with one page for each user, for the maps.
And something similar to the forums for communications.

A program to do the turns wouldn't be all that difficult, so long as Arca comes up with exact standard formulas for each individual event, like moral, and ship movement, research and stuff.
Not that he shouldn't already be doing that for this, but this would mean that the person who coded it would have an intimate knowledge of how turns would work, and would have to be excluded from the game.