Re: [DM-dev] web site overhaul?

[Stephan B. <ste...@ei...>]

On Friday 31 August 2001 02:27, you wrote:
> I had by coincidence just visited your new QUB website and was very
> impressed. That looks way cool. I even voted (I think it is properly
> pronounced Kju Ju Bee). Thanks for making the offer.

The pronounciation results have surprised me. I'm the only one who pronounces 
it "kub". That's not the "official" pronounciation - that's just the way I 
saw it. I put up the poll to try to determine what the "official" 
pronounciation should be.

> Right now I think the DungeonMaker does not really warrant that type of
> website, there's just not enough interest to keep it lively. However, when

I also thought that about QUB (it's not much more lively than DM), but the 
site has helped liven it up. People are starting to interact, and we've 
gotten 20x more bug reports and feature requests since I set it up (perhaps 
that's coincidence, I don't know). Perhaps it could do the same for DM. It 
provides the users with an easy way to provide feedback, so they do it more.

> we are further along and have things of interest to gamers (and not just to
> developers as is the case now) I think it would be cool to get a site like
> that. I'm planning to write my demo game such that scores can be verified,
> and it would be possible to post a ranking of the worldwide best
> MazeRunners to the net. That would be so cool.

I've had SO much fun adding stuff to the QUB site. I've been up until 1 or 2 
every morning the past week toying with it. I've written (or ported) several 
PHP apps for that framework already (see the Generic Wargaming Maps link on 
the QUB site, left side of the page), and I've started rewriting lots of the 
internals for the phpNuke software. It's been a real blast. I've already 
started sketching out the plan for adding a dungeonmaker front-end app for 
phpNuke, too. I don't yet know if I can exec() arbitrary apps from the SF 
server's PHP installation (this is an PHP installation-specific configuration 
option, which may be turned off). If I can then I can easily write an app 
which takes the existing dungeonmaker binary (with one small change - do not 
wait for user input) and feed it info based on selections the user makes in a 
form. In fact... that would be useful for QUB, too (because it can import the 
dungeonmaker output), so I'll probably start on that tonight. Finally... 
after 7 years (my GOD, it's been that long already!) of pidding around with 
HTML I'm finally creating my first REAL web sites.


> But until then (or until you have an interactive design frontend that would
> make the program interesting to pen and paper gamers) let's just stick with
> the simple site.

No problem. Just say the word, though, and I'll be more than happy to set up 
a nuke-powered site. You could pick up PHP really quickly. It's a lot like C. 
I had it basically mastered inside of 3 days, honestly. There is no NEED to 
know PHP to set it up and maintain it, however - it's just needed if you want 
to write add-ons for it (which I do). The maintenance of the site (except for 
installation of new modules) is all done via the web interface and all but 
the basic configuration data is stored in a MySQL database.

----- stephan
Generic Universal Computer Guy
st...@ei... - http://www.einsurance.de
Office: +49 (89)  552 92 862
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