Mahz's Dev Journal

[Cyrania]

Would it be possible to be able to see what a user is viewing while online?

[Phantomlink959]

I know that was a feature of the old guild, not sure why they remove it. probably privacy or some-such.

[Ellri]

Nah, @Phantomlink959. It wasn't removed. The whole guild software was rebuilt from scratch following the guildfall. The reason it doesn't exist yet is that the code for it has yet to be written.

We have no doubts that such a system will eventually be added in, though it may take some time, as other features (like full-fledged search and more advanced PM controls) take priority.

[Phantomlink959]

I'm curious, I was absent during the transition, so I'm not sure what exactly happened with the old guild. why the change?

[NuttsnBolts]

I'm curious, I was absent during the transition, so I'm not sure what exactly happened with the old guild. why the change?

@Phantomlink959

I believe it's so mahz can rebuild it from the ground up with a custom site, rather than modify something like vBulletin

[Ellri]

There was a bit of money trouble back then and the host suddenly deleted the whole database without any warning. While Mahz could've written a new guild based on the same type of forum software as it had had before, he had for a long while needed to ask, upon planning features, "Can this feature work on this framework?" rather than "Can I manage to code this feature?". Too many times, the answer to that question was "no".

Thus, when the guildfall happened and he had to choose between doing the quick and not quite satisfactory solution with restricted options for change and the not-so-quick method that had virtually no limits, he chose the latter.

Does that answer your question, @Phantomlink959?

[Phantomlink959]

Quite thoroughly. Thanks for humoring me on that.

[Ellri]

No problem.

[Mahz]

Currently wrapping up a quick rankings/stats system for the Arena forum:

http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/2830887

[Mahz]

Latest Changes:

- Added basic ranking and win/loss/draw stat-tracking for Arena roleplays
- More info can be found around my announcement post in Arena's Chat Thread: roleplayerguild.com/posts/28..
- Added new usergroup: Arena Mods. See the updated staff list: roleplayerguild.com/staff
- Started automatically detecting and linking URLs in posts so you don't need to manually surround them with URL tags
- Let me know if this has any unexpected effects or conflicts with your posts/BBCode
- Improved the "Latest Statuses" page (roleplayerguild.com/statuses) so that you can cast and view likes from that page.

Ranking/Stat-tracking for Arena

Arena has never been our most active subcommunity, but it's a tight-knit one that never fully dies over the years. It's always coming back.

Within the past year, its community has self-organized its own ad-hoc ranking and tournament system.

Three months ago, Rilla sent me a PM proposing some enhancements for the Arena. In particular, he asked if there was any way to bake some ranking support into the forum. I didn't see his proposal until he nudged me last week when I returned to the guild, but I drafted up a simple system that I could get done in a day or two.

So far it works like this:

When creating a new Arena roleplay, you can now choose between Ranked and Unranked.



Ranked fights show up clearly when viewing the Arena:



Once a fight is judged, you can see who awarded each outcome:



Arena Mods can promote unranked fights into ranked fights and manage the outcomes for the fight:



Win/loss/draw outcomes affect your Arena points and your stats:



You can opt-in to displaying your Arena stats in your posts by visiting the bottom of your edit-profile page:



I've opted-in just to stir up some curiosity.

As the system improves, maybe the increased structure, gamification, and official support will entice more people to check the Arena out. At the very least, I hope it grows more interesting for the users that already fight there.

More to come. Belted this out in a day and it looks it. Feedback always welcome.

[NuttsnBolts]

Very nice! It'll be sure to create a stir with people wanting to perfect their writing skills.

How do the points work though?

[Celaira]

@Mahz There seems to be an issue with the stats not showing up for some people. There's only one documented instance right now with @yoshua171. When he heard about the change he immediately went to put the stats up on his postbit, but they aren't showing up for some reason.

[Mahz]

@Celaira Hmm, I've only got one idea of what that issue could be.

The Arena stats only show up in the postbit in vertical mode:



Haven't yet implemented it in horizontal mode (slim width):



Maybe that's their problem. I'll update the slim width soon.

Other Things:

I added a Feedback Form to the homepage so that I can ask the community questions and get a breadth of responses from people who I otherwise never bump into. Basically, the form will stay on your homepage until you either send me a short response or click the ignore button.

Also, the Arena stats box in the postbit is pretty large, especially jarring since nobody has any stats. I'll consolidate it down to a single hover-button similar to the status button in the postbit.

[Ellri]

We had to test that feature, @Mahz.

Oh and one small irritation... could you fix that [@mention] button's nasty habit of erasing all whitespaces before it when it is clicked?
It'd be a boon if it could also end up where the pointer is, but its the former stuff that is irritating.

[SilverRain]

I wanted to reply to the survey on my phone, but ended up accidentally tapping 'Send feedback' before i could type anything. My response would have been (and still is 'Autosave'). :)

Also, loving the Arena stats! Makes me want go go into dueling again just to score some points! Though its strange in that I can see it fine in the public threads, but it doesn't appear on PMs? Same goes for Title, Post Count and the Bio plus Status buttons. Is it something planned for later?

[Agent B52]

$%^# I just accidentally pressed enter on my feedback thingmajigger without entering something. In my opinion the guild could really do with an integrated dice roller of some description, so I am letting people know this way.

[Mahz]

Oh and one small irritation... could you fix that [@mention] button's nasty habit of erasing all whitespaces before it when it is clicked?
It'd be a boon if it could also end up where the pointer is, but its the former stuff that is irritating.

@Ellri

Yeah I still need to fix this. I'll look to see if it's a simple fix in a min.

I wanted to reply to the survey on my phone, but ended up accidentally tapping 'Send feedback' before i could type anything. My response would have been (and still is 'Autosave'). :)

Also, loving the Arena stats! Makes me want go go into dueling again just to score some points! Though its strange in that I can see it fine in the public threads, but it doesn't appear on PMs? Same goes for Title, Post Count and the Bio plus Status buttons. Is it something planned for later?

@SilverRain

It's just an oversight. Early on I made a template for posts and a template for PMs. Never went through the effort of generalizing one template to just work with both posts and PMs, so instead I tend to update the post template and neglect the PM template. Someday.

@Agent B52 Thanks for the feedback!

[Ellri]

Excellent, Mahz. That laugh is infectious, y'know...

[SilverRain]

Okays, thanks Mahz. :).

*goes to teh arena*

[MelonHead]

Thanks for helping out the Arena, we appreciate the support Mahz