Server List Widget

[b00n]

I had an idea of how to go about querying our game servers for a game server list on the site, so today I had a poke around to see how to turn it into a vbulletin widget.

First up, the vbulletin documentation is pretty inadequate. The vbulletin forum, the best place to get details on the nooks and crannies of the system, strips out all code snippets which have been posted unless you have an account which is associated with a registered vbulletin license.  If I didn't know better I'd assume they really didn't want people developing features for vbulletin.

However with a bit of digging, I managed to piece together enough info to get a 'proof of concept' working with a few of our servers:



So now I'm open to suggestions for how the server list should be styled.

Some ideas:

• Green/Red traffic light next to server name to show online/offline
• Click on server name to expand server details?
• What details to show?
• Game type?
• Current/Max players?
• Map name?

[T-Bag]

Really good work. The way I've imagined it looking is very simple. Highlight a server if it is the game time for that game or a match is on eg 7-10pm Monday would mean CoD 4 server would be highlighted to remind people to join (in a similar way to the forum threads).

The only details I'd expect to see are server name and number of players. If I see people playing a game when I want to I'll join no matter the map/game type. If possible a game logo instead of the game type tag section, might make it easier to glance at.

If the server is empty it should be out of the way, so it draws focus to a game being played, which should hopefully lure people in.

That's my two cents. By the looks of it this widget could be the single biggest improvement the forum software upgrade could bring, very much looking forward to seeing more.

[TeaLeaf]

Boon, if there's particular bits of code you want then shout at me and I'll try to copy paste them, they do restrict access to vB4 owners for whatever reason.

[b00n]

Really good work. The way I've imagined it looking is very simple. Highlight a server if it is the game time for that game or a match is on eg 7-10pm Monday would mean CoD 4 server would be highlighted to remind people to join (in a similar way to the forum threads).

The only details I'd expect to see are server name and number of players. If I see people playing a game when I want to I'll join no matter the map/game type. If possible a game logo instead of the game type tag section, might make it easier to glance at.

If the server is empty it should be out of the way, so it draws focus to a game being played, which should hopefully lure people in.

That's my two cents. By the looks of it this widget could be the single biggest improvement the forum software upgrade could bring, very much looking forward to seeing more.

How about this for a mock up then?



Rather than server details, clicking a server could expand to a player list.  Today's game highlighted yellow (in this example), empty/offline servers grey.
To make it smaller you could make whole game sections collapsible.

Obviously it would look nicer than I can do in Paint.

Boon, if there's particular bits of code you want then shout at me and I'll try to copy paste them, they do restrict access to vB4 owners for whatever reason.

Will do. :thumbup:

[TeaLeaf]

Looks nice!

[b00n]

Work in progress:



Edit: Giving some thought to icons for game type, any issues with me nicking the little icons they have on gametracker?

[T-Bag]

Yup, those icons would work fine, or nick larger ones from the actual shortcuts. It'll be immediately recognisable that way to anyone visiting which games we play if they own them.

[b00n]

BFBC2 support added:

[Penfold]

Damn that's impressive :yahoo:

I think it looks great. Deffo agree on the need for icons or something to differentiate between the game types but it's clean, uncluttered and looks superb.

[Whitey]

Make sure there are no copyright issues before using icons from another site.  We could end up in trouble if we use copyright material without permision.

[TeaLeaf]

I think the game icons are all issued as part of the media pack for each game, so I suspect we'd be ok on icon use, but worth checking.

[b00n]

Added some game icons (not stolen from gametracker):



Still need an icon for BFBC2 and L4D2 (possibly just recolour the red one to yellow/gold?).

Aside from that, does the serverlist need to be much more than this? I'm quite liking the cleanliness of its look just now.

[Lexander]

Aside from that, does the serverlist need to be much more than this? I'm quite liking the cleanliness of its look just now.

Thats just perfect in my opinion. That is how I always wanted it to be, great job b00n!

[b00n]

TL, to assist with packaging this into something that can be installed easily, could you grab me a copy of this vbulletin mod?:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=231154

Required as vbulletin can currently import/export products and plugins, but not widgets.  You'll need it for the dMw site too.

Cheers :thumbup:

[TeaLeaf]

Attached.