PlaneShift
Gameplay => Guilds Forum => Topic started by: simm on March 28, 2003, 09:35:07 pm
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Hi all,
Well having recently found this game I am very impressed so far - was previously waiting for Horizons beta but my interest may have been swerved (especially since I wont have to either run wineX or even worse windoze to run this)
However for a while now I have been working on a multi guild, multi server (and in theory multi game) guild ware suite.
Basically its the usual collection of editable guild pages, message boards, guild calendar, event planning, invites and various other things.
However the main point behind it is that as many guilds as possible exist on the same system, allowing server wide annoucements to be included in any events, making guild alliances easier to maintain and basically putting all the guild related features that you can normally find across several places all in one place.
Its up and running at the moment however right now it only runs one test guild and would need a few days work for me to open it up for public use. Its designed originally for EQ, got shifted to horizons but with a little modulisation of the code (something I have been planning to do anyway) I can make it multi game now.
However before I spend my weeks holiday from work rushing to get this out I would like to know if there is enough interest for it to be worth me trying.
Couple of other things about it - there are no adds/popups and there will not be. It is set up so paying members get more functionality - however given that it is not finished I would not be charging membership (plus since planeshift is a free game I would not feel quite right charging for plane shift membership anyway) however it is currently hosted free on a friends server as its pretty trivial load/bandwidth wise. If that went up to the point where he would feel the need to charge for it I may ask for a donation system to cover costs (costs which I would announce and describe were that to happen)
I just wanted to put that last bit in just in case - I would not want to be accused of not warning people about that possibility.
So.... is there interest?
Is it worth me putting this system together?
I\'ll check back on this post as often as I can to answer any queries.
simm
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Hey simm..those are some really good ideas you have :D ...you leaders should look into it more, I know it\'s what I would want for my guild (if i had one that is)
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You seems to have a lot of good ideas and i am interested in this, too.
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Wow, sounds absolutely great if you can pull it off successfully.
Seems like just the sort of thing that would go hand in hand with a great guild meeting place...such as, say for instance, a tavern website... hehe ;)
Seriously though, I would be extremely interested in seeing such a platform in operation.
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edit...kada already said basicly what i had to say...
I really need to start reading more of the thread or atleast read the last post, before i post, . :D
but sounds like a great addition to a promising game,
onlything is i don\'t know how well the pay stuff would go over with the rest of the fans or the dev team
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Hey, that sounds like a great idea to me, too...8)
I belive that this server will get a pretty crowded place once its set up and running....
So I\'ve got a question about the hosting especially since I know that bandwidth and transfer costs can easily get high above what you expected...;) and donations sometimes are not enough to pay the bills.
Can you estimate what cost may come into being ?
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i think it would be a great system, I\'m very interested!
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I think it\'s a very promising project and one that could grow in popularity as Planeshift becomes more widespread. Usually server load for websites are not significant unless you do video serving or serve huge downloads (like for instance the Planeshift installation file itself).
Otherwise server load would usually be low, and very manageable. I\'m wondering whether it may be useful to adopt certain practices from phpNuke or Slashnews for something of this nature?
Nonetheless, the main bulk of the server load will probably be generated on the Planeshift server itself. Our logs here at Fragnetics show a dramatic increase in CPU usage and also bandwidth usage due to the increasing number of accounts. Sometimes I wonder whether the 11000 accounts around now are really in use, and how many of them are really active.
In some sense it\'s good that most of Planeshift\'s content is distributed across several servers instead of consolidating everything into one server and running up huge costs. Having another server to host community-run websites would work towards distributing the Planeshift load more evenly IMO.
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Sorry I haven\'t been back on this topic for 2 days, my wife had to go into hospital, so I am sure you will all understand.
Hopefully she will be better soon, when she is I will do some work on this (hopefully this week)
To answer a couple of questions:
Hosting costs: As I said at the moment I dont pay anything - I am hosted on a comercial websever that will also be doing pay as you go game server hosting. The machie is reasonably high spec (dual xeon) and my friend is charged in the 98 percentile for bandwidth use - I think the pricing is somewhere around ?300 per MBit/s (around $450 US - dont know the exchange rate to euro\'s offhand) If opening this site up to public dramically increases his hosting costs then I will post how much it is costing and hope that that amount is forthcoming.
As many have said it is unlikely to add to much bandwidth - I code my pages to be small - since I hate long loading times. The sites themselves are perl code which (for those not too familiar with web servers) is compiled into memory and stays there until the server needs to page it out - so very little disk access is involved - except for the DB access.
The site was originally coded for the comercial game market (EG, Horizons etc) so it has built into to it the pay/non paying member system. This does not mean there are any banners on the site - it just means for non paying members I have the option of limiting functionallity (posts/hour, being able to host events, inbox size etc) however like was mentioned planeshift being a non paying game I would not intend to charge for the planeshift areas - unless I have to (since I cant afford to finance such hosting myself) I dont think this will happen - I just want to be open about the possibility from the start.
Most of the basic features are already up and running however it needs 3 areas writing to allow me to open it up
1. Public area sign up
2. Guild creation and management area
3. Guild sign up altering (currently it is coded for a single guild only for test reasons)
Also I need to modulise the code both for maintenance reasons and to allow it to be used in different games.
This should not be too much work - though I will remind everyone - this will be pretty much untested stuff - especially under stress - so treat it like you do the horizons code and report any bugs found.
Lastly there will eventually be areas for organisations, such as role play taverns, raiding societies etc, though at first there will only be support for guilds (until I figure out how I want to implement such organisations - I have a few ideas - just narrowing it down) However I do not want to make areas for server/game message boards - 2 reasons - every other one I have ever seen has been mainly used for trolling, flamewars, etc and I dont want to have to moderate that nonsense, also the bandwidth involved with the above. only the community boards give useful purpose and that is what I intend to create a good environment for. (server wide/game wide boards can easily be hosted with such as ezboard.
Right time for me to get some food - I\'ll try to keep you updated.
if anyone is curious about the current suite they can find some of it on http://shadowrogues.shinystudios.com
I say some of it as it is password protected to members so you cant really access the best bits (and it is for one single guild right now - and that on horizons) give me some time and I\'ll give you a link to the full one - once it is there :)
simm
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Hey,
Originally posted by simm
if anyone is curious about the current suite they can find some of it on http://shadowrogues.shineystudios.com
sorry to say so, but if I use the webaddress above I don\'t get a coonection....:(
It says: \"shadowrogues.shineystudios.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again.\"
Is it a problem on my site, or may the address be somehow different ?
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Sorry, no problem with the site - just with my spelling on this board
There is no e in shiny - the link should be right now
simm
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how possible is it that it could be intergrated with the guild creation part of p.s. so when you have a certain number of members, in game, your account gets activated and then you get access to the system.
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That would be quite possible - for now I\'d just like to get it running but it is deffinatly something which can be done.
if we can come up with some form of authentication between the PL server and the site (not too difficult) an interface could be provided to do creations at that point.
Let me get the system online - see what people think to it then we can discuss adding this feature.
(decided to skip modualising the code - too many problems with variables losing scope - serves me right for using global variables I guess - will keep things updated)
simm
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and when your done, dont forget to go talk to someone on the dev team.
;)
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If we had a planeshift guild page, there would be a link to all the guilds, and all there info...
Join the Herbal Magic Guild!!!!!
Mazkin
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Progress update:
Unfortunatly none so far :(
Between looking after my wife and the fact I have been getting a headache every time I sat infront of the screen I have made no progress towards getting this online.
If the weather is bad this weekend maybe something will get done - and maybe over the next 24 hours (paracetamol is your friend)
That and I want to switch my linux version to debian asap since my current kernel is too old to run the nvidia 3D drivers, and the CDs arrived this morning (modem install would really be slow)
I\'ll try get something done but will keep you updated
simm
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Oooops
That last post was me writing under my wife\'s ID (forgot to check who was logged in last)
Same applies - just read as if it were from me
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Originally posted by Mazrim
If we had a planeshift guild page, there would be a link to all the guilds, and all there info...
You can use this guild page (http://www.gaboby.plus.com/guilds.html) for now if you want to check out some guilds. I have only listed guilds with web sites so far - I find that guilds without a site tend to be the first to disappear into obscurity.
simm - please give our best wishes to Mehallie, let her know we are thinking about her.
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he-he :) , the k\'s will rule you all??
lol
thats funny, the only guild i know of even fit for planeshift domination is scope :)
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Right, we are both feeling a lot better now and I am finally getting a chance to sit down and do some serious coding on this.
Hopefully I will make some decent progress today!
One other thing - whether I am involved in a guild or not - this suite will be totally guild neutral - ie it will provide hosting for as many guilds that want and site creation tools (it is not quite giving you a strait HTML page - however I think you will like what it offers)
In fact it will work better with more guilds on it (if not all guilds on it) simple by the interation it offers by using a common database.
Ok enough of the concept of it and down to writing the rest of it.
Then I just need to get a domain for it.
Any suggestions? (bear in mind this will be a multi game suite and so the game name should not be in this domain - the game name will be a subdomain eg horizons.domain.com or planeshift.domain.com)
simm
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Ok well good news
I got pretty much all of what is needed to get the suite online done today.
the only thing missing is a guild creation area, however until I decide what system I want to use for people setting up guilds I will put up a forum, in which a guild leader cna post their guild details and chater - I will note that these will have to be of a reasonable length (not just one liners) and then get 5 other people to sign under you to say they also want to be in the guild.
This will eventually change to an automated system when I get change to write it.
Also for now once you are in a guild there will not be a way to leave it until again I get time to add it, so I dont recomend making joke guilds \"to see what happens\".
Lastly I will note that to start off with at least all planeshift members will count as \"paying\" status. Doesn\'t really mean that much in effect as I have no payment system implemented (and as I have said probably wont be using one for planeshift) - however the game requires members to be paying or non paying.
For those that are curious the differences as they stand right now are:
Paying members Non paying
Unlimited chars Only 1 char
Inbox for 100 message Inbox for 5 messages
Able to host or join open events only able to join open - or to host guild events (if an officer)
A couple of other things that may get added to limit non paying members are fequency/number of message board posts. Number of picutures allowed in character/user profiles. or limited use of other advanced features as I release them (such as only being able to be a buyer when the forsale advert area comes out)
For now my plan is for planeshift members to count as paying - unless hosting costs force me to switch to non paying (since the limitations on them will limit bandwidth and those that do prefer to pay would cover hosting costs)
If I can get this released for a couple of games (as is my plan) planeshift accounts should be covered for by revenue from the other games.
If the worst did come to the worst I will note the figure I was looking at is around $10US per year for an account - but as I said, non paying members will still have access anyway.
Dont worry about this too much, things are still up in the air, and a good portion on what I want is not finished yet anyway.
(I hate dragging this out but I would feel really guilty if I didn\'t mention it and then asked for donations to help host it down the line, as I am not in a situation to be able to cover web hosting costs. right now I get it for free and as long as bandwidth does not rocket it will hopefully stay that way)
So over the next day or 2 I\'ll be setting up a domain for the site and opening up the signups.
things may look a touch crude on the sign up pages, but I hope you will bear with me.
simm
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Ok its nearly ready.
There are a couple of small bugs I want to iron out before I open it - I would do them tonight but I am a bit too tired to think cohorantly (and I want to test out the basics just to make sure you can atleast sign up and then complain that the rest of it doesn\'t work in the message boards!.)
I will hopefully be posting the link to it on here tommorrow or wednesday at the latest (as long as the real world does not interupt)
Simon