Posted by Heavy on 21 Apr : 21:14 in Site News
Well, things at work have been pretty unbearable here as of late with the workload. The good news is that work is FINALLY letting up some. Also applied for a new position so lets hope that goes well
All things said, I'm ready to hop back into development land, 1 plugin at a time. First, I want to talk about Character Manager, the up-and-coming replacement to WCM. There have been a lot of questions and I've even had people find me in-game (good luck with that the past week tho... bah... work...) and ask me about it, so figured I would 'spill the beans' so-to-speak on what it is, what the purpose is, etc.
First and foremost, CM is short for "Character Manager" and you'll hear me refer to 'CM' more and more in this post. CM is the natural progression of a REAL character manager for e107. I've had a TON of requests to support other games in WCM, but WCM simply wasn't setup to play well with other games. I'm trying to correct that first and foremost with CM.
As one can expect, you will be able to add your characters from different games to an e107-based website. Why would someone want to do this is probably the next question
For simplicity sake, the ability to store an organize characters and then extend that data model has always interested me. It's always "what about adding this?" or "what about adding that?" when I look at "mapping" data from a character perspective. Ultimate, I have a pretty extensive MMO background extending back from the EQ days of old. Because of this, I know it's inevitable that I will play a different MMO then World of Warcraft, so that's why I'm working on CM
The other thing that I want to clarify is what CM "is not" to people. It will NOT be a place to store trade-skill information. Although I can see a use for a plugin that could 'interface' with CM and provide that data
It's also not out of the question that I myself will code something to 'compliment' CM after things have settled down, as I can see the usefulness of having that detailed information available to members. Also, CM will NOT, by default, connect to ANY outside data sources (ie. Blizzard's Armory, MyLotro, EQ Players, etc). I will be writing 'import' and 'update' plugins seperately for games where I can find information readily available. I see this as a VERY POSITIVE change in the plugin development. What it means at the most basic level is that other import sources can be specified as long as someone wants to write a plugin template for it basically. I don't know 100% how this is going to work for people, but I want to use standard return codes, and function names to pull the data. The import plugins will be up to whoever to write (I see myself writing the first revision of most to get people started).
That also opens the question of how multiple import sources will work... I have thrown the first revision of the static XML config file for CM up on this site so people have have a look. You can find it here:
http://e107.codexscape.com/dev/cm_static.xmlThere is a function that runs in the plugin that will convert the entire XML structure into a multi-dimensional array and store it in a global variable called $CMXML. For those that aren't technical, it basically means that ANY of the data you see in that file is loaded directly from the XML as a datasource, not a DB, so it's faster. The other thing people will probably notice is that as long as you have the right components defined, you can specify other games in the file
My hope is that other games can be added quickly by simply adding the required data into the XML file.
Now, when the plugin is released there is going to be some adjustment for some. I hope to include as many options as possible so people can 'tailor' CM to be used with 1 game or another. Also, REM WILL BE BROKEN WHEN CM IS RELEASED. I don't want to do a simultaneous release with CM, so a new release of REM will follow shortly after CM.
Now to speak a little bit about the next Raid Event Manager
I'm REALLY thinking of moving towards a 3.x release for REM at this point. There is a LOT that really needs to be done with REM, I simply haven't had the time to do it. Here is a 'short-list' of the things I would like to change with the next release of REM:
* Re-do the UI completely. There was a lot that made sense, and even more that didn't make sense with the UI that is REM 2 right now. I want the plugin to be as user-friendly as possible. Both to users, and admins. The more feedback and help that I get here, the better. I do plan on doing some 'mock-ups' of the design prior to release to get feedback
* Re-do time calculation. Quite simply, it's too damn confusing to understand for a LOT of people. I need to find a way to make this easier on everyone... lol - users, admins, and myself included. If anyone has php experiance and has delt with time calculation, give me a shout on the forums
* Re-work the event system. REM is going to support MORE then just WOW, it just HAS to be done this way to fall in-line with CM and the work going into that project. With that said, I need to start gathering information on how events are done in other games and see what options we will have to work with.
* CM integration. This one is a no-brainer, and some integration will be done with CM on the fly as I'm cross-referencing data between CM and REM to see what all has to be done.
As I said... a short-list eh?
I'm also going to copy this news post into the general forums as I REALLY want to get some feedback on what people would like to see with the next generation of the plugins as a whole. I know some have some radical ideas out there, but plz, TRY to be realistic in terms of what 1 man can accomplish
hehehehe
