TerraNovaGaming.Community Forums

"Fancy a game of...?" is what I'm calling a new little plugin for the forums that I've written which, before potentially adding to the site, I'd like to get some feedback on from you folks.

The basic idea is this:

Sometimes, you just want to play a game. If it's one of our Divisions' games then the chances are that you'll fairly easily find other members to play with, and thats great. But what if it isn't an active Division game? Battlefield-2 for instance...?

If you'd knew you were going to want a game of BF2 a week in advance, you could've organized it through the forums, but thats generally not the case and anyway, those sorts of forum-planned one-off game situations don't always work out - people forget what they agreed to a week ago in some forum thread.

You could hop on Xfire and start spamming everyone one by one and asking them if they want a game. Not very convenient, and in any case far from everyone has Xfire running all the time anyway. For many of our members the Forums here are really their only point of contact outside of goings on in their chosen game.

So, the idea was was to add something to the forums that'd hopefully make it a bit easier to find other TNGC members for "pick up" games.

This isn't about Divisions really, since they generally play regularly. It isn't about Events as such, or things that are planned long in advance. This is about when you decide that you are going to go play some Counterstrike, regardless of what anyone else might or might not be doing. What this gives you is a way to head off into the game and leave a really big flag waving on the forum saying "come and join me!".

The screenies below are running on my test copy of the Portal+PHPBB3 system here. The basic feature is a little insert on the Index page of the Forums (thats just the very top page - it won't show once you move into a forum or a topic).

This is what it looks like on subSilver:



And on proSilver:



The insert shows whether you're logged into the forums or not, although the Add button only shows once you're logged in.

You can see there are a string of little icons each representing a "Fancy a game...?" post that somebody has made. Hopefully, the specific game is fairly reconizable

If you hover your mouse over any of the little game buttons, you'll get a little hovering dialog pop up. It looks like this on subSilver:



And on proSilver:



You can set up one of these little buttons very easily, all you need is to be logged in to the forums. When you click the Add button, you'll get a little hovering dialog like this on subSilver:




And on proSilver:



The Add box lets you pick what game it is that you're about to jump into and select any/all of three methods by which folks should be able to get hold of you once you're playing.

You can give your Xfire ID, the name you're using on TeamSpeak and the name you'll be using in-game. You can also specify a server name, IP or any other useful game-specific information that others might need to find you.

Lastly, you select from a little dropdown box how long you're planning on playing. The game button will remain visible on the forums from the moment you press the Post button until the duration you've specified has passed.

All the fields in the Add dialog are remembered for you and filled back in every time you use the system. So, once you've entered your Xfire/Teamspeak ID or specified what your in-game nick is for a particular game, it'll automatically be filled in for you the next time you pull up the Add dialog for that specific game.

Welp, thats about it - any thoughts folks?

Alli

Awesome
Thats a really great way to make ppl play together more often.
And much easier to make a game on random if u are bored instead of planing and planing and then have very little or no one at all to show up *thinking back on the CSS days*

That looks really cool! However I doubt it will be used much. At least that's what I think. There's not a lot of "Hey, let's go play xxx at xxx" right now. Perhaps this feature will change that, maybe not, only time will tell.

It's candy goodness regardless.

On subSilver, it doesn't "stretch" the forum if too many games are added at one time, does it? That'd cause some annoyance if it became popular.

No stretching no and - as you say - it's unlikely that there'll ever be a whole bunch of icons on there at the same time really. ProSilver can display 9 and subSilver anywhere up to 18 depending on screen width.

I agree that it certainly won't be used constantly. The box will often be empty, but thats fine, most of our members are committed to Divisions and thats where they'll spend a lot of their time - they won't need this for that. Personally though, I don't have a huge amount of time for gaming these days but sometimes I've just gotta put aside an hour for UT3 or whatever. Having a little flag waving up there on the forum that might get someone else involved would be cool even if it only had an effect now and then.

Anything that encourages us as a community to meet up in-game more often and across a wider variety of games - even if only a little - is a good thing IMHO.

Alli

i think it's a pretty cool idea, outside mmo's gaming tends to be a little more haphazard, i know most of my TW gaming has been done by spamming xfire to anyone i know who's online but not everyone has it and some may have that i don;t know or just not be on xfire

nice idea

definitely a good one. it will get the core members playing outside of the divisions again, i for one will use it everytime i look at BF2 or Med2.

As I said in my PM before. Its a great idea. Allicorn is todays top banana

Brilliant Alli!

Seeing as there are no awards for innovation in the TNGC, I'm awarding you one anyway
Now what icon will you use for "Fancy a Game of" Solitaire?

Wahoo.. Alli sent me the changed files. We are all good to go just in time for some Total War tonight. Thanks Alli

Excellent!

Remember folks, this is not any kinda of appointments system. Set up a "fancy a...?" button only when you're ready to play right now then head into game or wait around on whatever communications system you ticked the box for (Xfire, TS, etc).

Obviously there's no guarantee that somebody else will fancy a game when you do, so don't be surprised if making a button doesn't result in floods of members following you onto the Daikatana game you've set up.

Oo, also, if you want another game added to the selection list, just PM me.

Alli

just tested it on pirates, got a mysql error?

What does it say? Copy and Paste please
EDIT: Nevermind I see it myself. Hmm

Ok think I know the problem. Looks like Alli and I have been overwriting each others edits in the config file for Alli's portal tools

Or maybe that isn't the reason. Hmm

'Sokay, I kinda expected we might have an "issue" or two the first time up. Leave it alone for the mo, I'll fix it.

Alli