The Arena

What can I say? Things are shaping up on the website now. I’ve spent the last few days trying to fix things that are just broken about EQDKP Plus. Ya know, I really love the software and all that, but some of its strengths are also its weakness. For example, it is very plugin-friendly. It arrives with about 40 plugins made by about 15 different people. You can email them directly from the plugin page which is really cool too. Unfortunately there are some big shortcomings of the system itself, and they won’t release an entirely new EQDKP Plus package without updating every little thing about it, so that makes new versions take forever. To remedy some of my problems I’ve taken it upon myself to learn a little php. I am no pro, that’s for sure, but I have an understanding of it having known some C from back in my MUD days.

Some of the projects I’ve undertaken include adding surveys to the website, updating class and race icons (and then actually figuring out how to display them) on the DKP, figuring out how my proposed EP/GP multipool simpleDKP/ZeroSum hybrid system would even function (I figured this one out, much to my amusement), organizing a linkshel meeting (which was a big success imo), and just generally trying to keep the ball rolling with 30 days left to go before launch.

I really wanted to get some kind of customizable application thing going for reasons other than screening applicants. I found some free survey software over at limesurvey.com which I can use kinda like an application for leadership positions. While this isn’t really my MO on how to handle leadership applications, because I feel those interested should know what I am looking for and I want to hear what they have to say rather than respond to some scripted questions, but I see some value in being able to use it for temporary positions. I also may use it for evaluation purposes–such as the end-of-year assessments I asked Karasu players to write for the leadership over the years. A survey form would make it much easier to gather the information that I want, rather than sifting through badly formatted private messages which clutter my inbox and require filing.

Last night I tackled those DKP icons. It was a breeze mostly, but required a lot of resizing of images down to 25x25px, which let me tell you is not a fun thing to do when you’re talking 20 images. It takes like 20s each, but it’s tedious as hell! There was also a lot of redundancy in displaying pictures. Next to the member name is would show Class Icon > Race Icon > Member Name, and then in the Class column it would show Race Icon > Class Icon (so reverse order, without name). Talk about dumb. Luckily I found the calls for both icon types and was able to modify how the DKP listed members so each icon would only show up once and in the appropriate place. Sometimes I wonder what those crazy German dudes over at EQDKP Plus are thinking when they’re coding these things. I am just thankful they made the code easy to read and understand, even for a layman like myself.

As for the rest of the DKP, I figured out just how we’d implement an EP/GP system. Firstly, you have to add all the events to a pool, like say Dynamis. In there, you tie all the Dynamis events to the pool as normal. Then you just work that as a ZeroSum. However, that isn’t giving points for the event on the EP side of things, just shifting points in the GP columns. They way you add the EP is to make individual adjustments (you can make one adjustment to as many people as you want), and comment which event it is for, then put in the value. The nice thing about this is you can delete one of those adjustments and all the ones tied to it go away (much like deleting an event also deletes all items from that event and readjusts points accordingly). The other advantage to this since adding EP this way does not input a raid on the DKP, it just keeps the GP events (the stuff people want to view anyway) uncluttered. This way when you’re checking out what events people did today, you’ll see just the ZeroSum events, and the individuals adjustments are all kept in member pages. I really think it’s great, just have to convince others it can work, or let myself be influenced by other people as or more crazy than I am.

Ah, the linkshell meeting. Not as many showed as I would have liked, but it was the first, and I know of at least two others that listened to it in its entirety, so I cannot complain even a little bit. We spent a lot of time on recruitment, because that’s really all we have at this point. Some other small topics were touched upon and we did not tackle DKP anymore than we already have on the forums. That’s fine though–I think we’ve said enough on the subject and that topic is just about as far advanced as we can get it at this stage. As a direct result of the meeting we now have an official senior/recruitment leader (Ruok), and we revamped the recruitment process completely. I feel like we fixed all or most of the problems people were running into with that stuff. It’s still a little clunky having to move things over from the DKP’s application section to the forums, but it’s only work for 1-2 people now as opposed to the near-35 the linkshell is looking at right now. Efficiency is a factor high on my list as a leader and it’s something I am always looking to squeeze out of everything, even if its minor.

With school just around the corner again (and it just ended last month), I am doing my best to keep things moving in a positive direction. I just PM’d Celestein today about the PR position and I am hoping he’s got some additional ideas. I am trying really hard to wrap up old things and move onto fresh topics with these guys but I fear we may hit a wall just short of launch date. I have to maintain their motivation and encourage them to start mingling a bit more. I don’t know how exactly to do that, but I know where I am going to start. There are two people I definitely need to talk to in the next 48h before things slip away any further. Oh but now I sound paranoid. It’s really not all that bad; I just don’t have anything else to think about for the next two weeks. I’ll be much better once school starts and my mind is working on other things outside of this game.

Honestly I love leading. It’s such a thrill. I wonder if I’ll even care if the game sucks.