I'm a bit of a gamer, and I'm in a clan with a TeamSpeak server. Now, normally to see if anyone's around, I'd have to go and log into the server. However, my mad coder buddy in Australia recently built a status client into the website itself. Instead of logging in, I could just check out the website, and see who was online.

I think DL might benefit from such a system. So, from the main page, you could have a "who's playing now" section, which would basically just show the mortals/avatars/staff currently in game. Instead of the effort ( I realize it's not much of an effort, bear with me) to jump into my account and type 'who', I can just check out ye ole dl2.net, and see if my friends are on.

Bonus, if it could tell me who's currently Roleplaying, I might be more inclined to jump straight into rp, and have some fun!

I think it's a useful idea.

Dref

One possible way to implement this: a DL StaffBot. Basically, it'd just sit idle, and invisible, and run commands when needed, or when requested by a gopher application, which is run when the dl2 page is loaded.

There's probably a better way, but I'll leave that to the guys who write the code

Ok, I've made it so this information is now available to the web server, it is up to Vulsin at this point. Vulsin, you've got (mud)mail.

Best regards,

--Nezmar

I've created a new page to test out the code. Tell me what you all think:

http://www.dl2.net/index2.php

There is a box on the left under the menu that displays who is currently playing.

I absolutely love it.

One thing, though...

I see a (null) in there.

After comparing the game to the page, it seems to me it's showing (null) when people are in the process of logging in, rolling a new character, et cetera.

Hope this helps!

So far, so good!

Vulsin, you're my newest mad coder buddy!

Yeah I noticed the (null) when I first started working on it. It's ready to go live, unless there's some other tweaks that you guys would like to see.

Next, perhaps, is to work on the world uptime and other statistics on a separate page. Here is a template of what I want it to (basically) look like:

http://www.dl2.net/world.php

Keep in mind that the information there may not reflect current game statistics. I used the "who" and "world" commands when I made the page and just copied what was there at the time. The "who" part of it will probably be changed to remove the titles. Perhaps a lot of the things that are informational to the game (the "avatars" and "staff" lists maybe?) can be available to the site?

Vul'darling, you've got a bit of more work to do here.
I'm dead so I usually go to the forums.
Noticed a few glitchy things about your new addition.
In fact it provides a little too much information.
I'm able to tell that you and Jorlain are off somewhere upstairs babling, shouldn't be feeding a view of staff members should we?

Secondly I'm on the side bar of people who're playing, although you're not . Although on the same who list that both you and Jorlain appear atm, I'm not amongst the who's playing.
If anyone else were to get the same drift this is like a permenant monitor of who's dead and alive list, pluss online staff members. Not sure you wanted to be that discreet with this info.

Just my thoughts.
The ooze dripping out of your television sets.

I think his world page is more of an example, and he just used 'who' once to show how it would eventually look.

well I never did state I was quite intelligent, sucks when the same people keep on playing the next day or so eh?
My appologies, and if you'll excuse my previous post.
Hah.

I know about the (null) problem, it was already fixed in the latest code, I just haven't rebooted to put it in.

Regarding the "world.php" output, I'd rather give you raw names/numbers and let you do the formating on the web side. Let me know what stats should be output.

Is a 1 minute update interval good enough?

Best regards,

--Nezmar

I'd say the interval is fine.

Raw names and numbers would be plenty sufficient - the website code could do all of the necessary formatting. In fact, that's actually preferred so I don't have to chop apart the input.

Here's a format example that would be perfect:

game start time (the raw number should be OK)
total NPCs
unique NPCs
... etc

All that would really be needed is perhaps a "world" file with the raw data. I can use the existing staff, mortal and avatar files to extract the names.