Indie-Resource.com

hey boys girls and outaspace beings of indie-resource

ok so i had an idea a while back to 'expand' my website (despite not having it completly finished yet but meh lol)

anyway, here is my idea and i would like to know if there is any interest in its use & aid in its development.

as everyone knows, Facebook has an API which you can use to develope apps etc with. (i'm sure by now you know where i am going with this ) I haven't personally used it myself, but by what i hear, it can be complicated and a pain in the backside to get wotking right (feel free to corrct me :p). And there was also some reports on the fact some app owners had managed to pull emails from the database and other personal information (uh oh ).

I have spent some time working on my forum, customising and installing a ton of add on's... and its not being used :p lol

so i decided that maybe there might be an opertunity to develope a simple access module into the forums database to pull a small amount of information (username, username colour, language, timezone etc) which will be stored in a seperate table/database which is then updated accordingly.

The bonuses about this idea are the following:-

• A player can keep the same username throughout, remaining the same person accross various games. Which also means that they dont have to sign up 1000 times and remember 1000 different login credentials.
• The forum is effectivly one big community, all friends stay together (I will be looking into using groups and tying them into guilds, so accross games if compatable, a player will remain with the same guild / team / alliance etc throughout)
• All games will be advertised and accessed via the forum, therefor as word of mouth spreads from one game, other games have the chance to be noticed at the same time.
• If you create more than one game, there is only need to advertise one site.
• Developers wont need to worry about creating a community section, private messaging etc as it will be controlled on the forum.

So in theory it wil benefit both player and developer.

Along with the access module, i plan on writing out several tutorials which will aid you and help you benefit from the module. This will include the basics of gaining access to developing your game and keeping it open for multilingual future development.

anyways, i think thats enough for now :p

Please feel free to scrutinise, ask questions yada yada. I look forward to your responses ^^ xxx

There's several platforms that attempt to accomplish that goal already. OpenID, Facebook Connect, Twitter Connect, etc.

EDIT: Didn't mean to come off rude. But I would have to ask what makes your system different than those I mentioned?

well having never used any of the formentioned systems, i cant really say what would be different, or whether this would would even scratch the surface of what they can do.

so currently i wouldnt even attempt to compare it. I have ideas on what i would like to happen with it, what would be included. But currently thats all they are lol.

I like the idea that this is for PBBG's specifically. Then all you need is an API for developers to implement this connection system. Then you're site, let's call it a portal for PBBG's, would grab the URL and extract some data, maybe just keywords and the description, similar to google search, and list them on your site. Only sites using your API would be listed, that way users can come to your site and connect to other PBBG's quickly and easily. And then to add to the fun of it, you could have a rating system and things like that.

Is that something along the lines of what you meant? If that is the case, this sounds like it could be really useful, and with a good number of PBBG devs here on IR, I would say that it actually has the potential to grow.

Something similar to that yes. I wasn't soley aiming this at PBBG's, but i woould imagine that it would be the bulk of it yes. But if any other kind of game was able to access mysql to grab user data and suchlike, then there is always that option aswell.

My forum currently is run using PHPBB, and i have spent in recent months quite a few hours learning how it works and how to create new pages run off of the phpbb system and allowing full user integration. I never thought of using keywords to generate a listing, but i had thought of allowing all TAP'T In users to build their own dynamic page which would be loaded when viewing details of the game, which would be done either via a CMS style wysiwyg page builder, or if they have the time, build a fresh html page which would be screened by myself (the team) and uploaded for a more personalised touch to the overview.

I just think that whether it becomes a huge thing or not, it would be a usful option to cut out alot of the user chat and community features a developer would have to make in addition to their game. They would have their own forum section which they will mod and admin and if there is one user being a pain in the ass and being abusive and what not, they can be banned from everything and not just one game if need be.

in addition i will develope a ticket system which will hone in on the developer(s) of the games, which is just one less thing for a developer to worry about.

so you can see there are a few ideas i have to make this work nicly and benefit a developer in more ways than one.