Here is an instructions page for MyDungeonRunner
Last year I would have ranted about how retarded it is that game data is either entirely inaccessible to the web, or only accessible to an “official” website.
I would say:
Entirely inaccessible is horrible, but the other is even worse because with much less effort than was required to force me to create a “game blog” somewhere that I don’t want to, they could have just given me an XML feed so that I could display my game blog info on my blog.
And then I might paint the entire game industry (meaning MMO publishers, but not saying that) with a big broad brush, the color stupid. Plus maybe make a joke about MySpace or something.
This year, however, is all about the positive. Rather than rant about no one providing such a feed, this is an un-rant about someone providing such a feed.
Dungeon Runners!
I found this via a news post about character sheets being viewable online at 3rd-party sites, making the assumption this meant an XML feed was available, and then digging through the forums until I found the post with a link.
The short version: you can see the raw data for Anson (http://www.dungeonrunners.com/characters/Anson) and every other active character now (replace “Anson” with the character you are curious about).
You can find the icons referred to in the XML file at http://www.dungeonrunners.com/images/icons/ (where you can also download a zip file of all of them, to use on your own website).
No front-page news announcement? No “XML API” link at the bottom of every page? No suggestion as to the use of this beyond viewing character data (and then just on a third-party site? Goodness!).
This is really cool, I should tell you, just in case you don’t get that.
Don’t take my word for it, though. I’ll make some things this weekend and show you.
Bottom line? The game industry is entirely brilliant, as is clearly shown by the XML character feed for Dungeon Runners.
No, no… wait.
I also wanted to stop making those sweeping sorts of accusations based on singular events. More specifically:
Dungeon Runners developers are brilliant.
Now I can’t wait for a guild system to be implemented, and for a guild XML feed to be quietly released.
†
I know, I know… an MMO with no guild system… but they are brilliant… but… no guild system… but…
No doubt you are experience cognitive dissonance and are highly distracted by its demand for resolution.
No sense my continuing this post while you’re in that state.
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23 Comments
I’m going to hit you, since a game I’m somewhat familiar with implemented this back in 2002. Which is, like, a long time ago.
I hear the guy who implemented it is a real ass, though.
Are you serial?
Heh. I had no idea.
There’s an XML feed with that data? I don’t see it…
There was an XML-RPC generator you could query, but it broke after I left and hasn’t been fixed.
The straight XML files are all guild-centric because the intent was to enable guild site automation:
http://www.camelotherald.com/guilds/Lamorak/358.xml
http://www.camelotherald.com/article.php?id=63
To clarify: Having game data web accessible was fantastic in 2002, but now I want to be able to fetch an XML file with that data in it - so as to make widgets, gadgets, etc. for display on my own site.
DR’s implementation is that. Much simpler than what you did (and in 2002 there wasn’t any use for XML feeds), but AFAIK they’re the only one’s doing it.
(Well, other than a couple other doodads a person could use to generate an XML feed from web pages like that one - but I’m too lazy for that).
Still, that’s pretty excellent stuff. Almost too far ahead of its time.
If I had written a rant, this would just make it worse. Not only are most games using game-data as a sort of lure to their own private MyGame sort of website, not offering the XML feeds I want, but now it turns out they didn’t even have to invent the idea on their own but could have copied you back in double-naught two.
DR devs are still brilliant - for doing what you did in ‘02 if not for doing it for the first time ever.
‘Cause, I mean, really… everything is available in XML format these days. Someone working on games was bound to notice sooner or later.
Anyway, sorry for overlooking you. I wasn’t into this stuff in ‘02, widgets and gadgets hadn’t been invented yet anyway… It’s sort of like inventing the scope way before there was a rifle, too. How was I supposed to know?
All your fault, really.
I had a pretty long response I was typing out, thanking you for your kind words… but my fingers hit the wrong key combination and it went away. So…
1- Thanks!
2- Yep, we were influenced by Scott’s work with DAoC (although I wasn’t aware of the availability of the data in XML form), but also just motivated by our idea of what the right design is.
3- We’ll be more broadly announcing the availability of the XML after the upcoming patch, which also happens to fix a few bugs in it. We are still trying to figure out how to provide real character sheets on our site, but as such a small team we don’t have the web developer resources to move as quickly as the community.
And finally… I’m actually working on guilds right now, and they’re slated for February. Since we already have the infrastructure in place to get data out on the web, XML feeds for the guilds should happen at pretty much the same time as guilds are made available. We’ll try to make it a bit more public when it comes out, too.
For me, the XML access is the really exciting thing - and particularly at the character-level. In the time it’s taken DAoC’s level of web-access to game data to become more or less standard-fare, we’ve gone from not many folk having their own website, through mostly just guilds having websites, to every individual having multiple websites, blogs, profile-pages, and so on whether they like it or not.
And sometimes it’s still left off the menu altogether, but it seems like when it is offered - WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, etc. - it’s done well. Maybe DAoC set the standard and now everyone either matches that, or else doesn’t bother to make game-data viewable on the web at all.
But back to the XML thing: it’s just way over-due, and as a standard feature (and really, one or three games doing it still leaves it way over-due, even if one of ‘em been doing it for six years, now).
IMO, these days raw data in XML format is the right design.
…or at least I thought so ’til I noticed you were also offering image’s and even in a convenient little zip-file. Now I think XML plus that is the right stuff.
You don’t need to provide character sheets on your own site. From the perspective of a player, the ability to view my character on someone else’s webpage (as opposed to my own web page) is the same functionality whether that page is hosted by the company or by random folk on the internet.
In fact, by not having one on your site, you now have two sites (already) doing it. I suspect if you were doing it, you’d be the only one doing it, even with XML being available.
On the one hand it’d mean you get all the traffic involved, but on the other hand, it means you get all the traffic involved.
That’d be limiting potential exposure of DR to non-players, and unless you have something to advertise to DR players that they don’t already have, probably at a cost rather than a profit.
But my excitement isn’t really about that anyway. As I said, the functionality there is the same as every other game is offering (unless they just, you know, aren’t).
What’s moderately thrilling is that a player can display his character data anywhere that he wants to: on his myspace or facebook page, in a blog sidebar, on iGoogle or MyYahoo start pages, in his forum sig (and not just on the official forums, but on the forums that he actually enjoys using).
Further, it’s better for the game company, too - essentially as an advertisement for the game that isn’t restricted to the one site where advertising the game is pointless.
Beyond that, the guild XML in conjunction with character XML provides a much more “complete” data feed of guild news.
To me, a whole lot of what constitutes “guild data” is in fact the members’ character data, what with guilds being comprised of characters and all.
The ultimate guild data feed for me would be composed of news regarding members’ individual achievements. Leveling-up, acquiring rare items, defeating epic critters, and that sort of thing are every bit as important to me as “guild data” in a more strict sense.
Just being provided with the raw data enables me to compile that in the manner I think most appropriate.
Conversely, take EQ2 as an example (as of years ago, anyway - I haven’t kept up with what they’re doing now). Their web-support for guilds is completely kick-ass. I’d probably not do anywhere near as great a job as that… but it’s not what I want. I’d rather have a less-exceptional implementation of what I want, than perfect delivery of the next best thing.
As with providing character sheets on the official site: it might even be counterproductive to provide that level of support these days.
Offering nothing but the raw data, there’ll be lots of choices in terms of what others have made that I could use (or use as a starting-point for my own implementation, which then becomes yet another choice for everyone else).
Offering nothing but an official site, and there’s just that one choice…
I think even if offering data in XML, the existence of an official site implementation has a negative impact on the creation of user-implementations. A personal desire for this or that bit of custom functionality is just part of what motivates a user to create and share their custom game-data web-app, I’m pretty sure… and another part of it is that pseudo-fame “thing” you get from making the thing that “everyone” uses.
If there’s a thing like it on the official game site, then it will be the one “everyone” uses, so anyone who’d have been more motivated by that prospect than by having their app itself is less likely to bother with it.
Instead, my recommendation would be to make a Yahoo widget, a Google gadget, a WordPress theme/plugin/template, a Blogger template, etc. which incorporate utilization of the XML data.
This is different from providing an official-site implementation, because while they will start as “the ones everyone uses”, their impact as examples and starting-points from which others can more easily work on custom implementations will far out-weigh any negative.
Providing them in the spirit of open source development, they seed that sort of activity and discourage folk keeping their work private and proprietary.
Cases in point: anyone wishing to make their own character sheet display currently must begin from scratch, despite there already being two of them out there.
Competition to make the best thing would be better than competition to have the best thing, though either of those are better than competition being with the official site (and so more or less impossible).
So instead of making character sheets on your site, just offer the php script that you would use for others to put on their sites.
on XML for characters
That is an enormous amount of text to respond to!
Wait ’til you see the rest of the stuff going into the fansite kit… As requested by the players, we’ll be providing more in-game UI images to design the character sheets around.
I still think we should, but the way to do it right (i.e., without stifling the community’s efforts) is to (as you mention) provide the source for that freely so that players can use it as a starting point. Incidentally, I’ve tried to provide enough information to turn building a character sheet into a web design problem. Plus, so far one of the players has provided source to their character sheet, so anyone coming in now has a few options and a bit of a head start.
We’re working on this. We won’t have it available as quickly as basic guild data, but it’s definitely in the plans.
Stay tuned
This stuff is actually higher priority for us than having a character sheet on the official site, and again the plan is to provide the source so that anyone can expand it, add support for other social networking sites, etc.
So… yeah, I think we’re going in an exciting direction, and we’re doing everything we can with the manpower we can devote. Naturally, actually making the in-game experience better and richer is taking the bulk of our time, but ignoring these kinds of out-of-game community-building opportunities would be stupid. And we’re not stupid, we’re brilliant.
Have you considered generating character XML client-side?
I don’t care about the in-game experience if no one else does… seriously.
This is ultimately open source social networking, and other web 2.0 buzzwords, which will serve to ensure someone else does care.
Oh yeh:
Don’t feel obligated or anything. You could just reply to anything you’d like to argue about, and I’ll assume you were thinking, “DUH! GUESS WHO ELSE HAS THOUGHT ABOUT THIS FOR A MINUTE!” for anything else.
That’s with a user-defined background image (and charName, of course).
Oh man there’s too many stats. Heh.
working link
No idea why Google’s embedded link to it doesn’t actually work… but meh.
Thinking about putting stats under the title there, and adding tabs for equipment and skills…
I’m not sure what you mean. Are you talking about a client-generated RSS feed of character events? Regardless of where it’s generated, there’s the question of where it goes, and there’s the question of how it’s made available… can you explain what you mean more?
Also, nice job on the Google gadget! Mind if I show it off to Dungeon Runners players?
Right. Player’s would have to deal with that extra step of ftp’ing the xml file to a server (though that could be automated as well, I guess), but the advantage of it would be the potential for a more detailed listing of events than you’d ever want the server to even track.
And yeh, feel free to share that. Maybe someone with more talent for formatting the output can actually finish it. It’s using this really cool xml2array() function that makes all the data easily accessible like this:
charData['Name']
charData['Title']
charData['Attributes']['Endurance']['Innate']
charData['Attributes']['Endurance']['Effective']
…etc.
I just get so sidetracked messing with font-sizes and such that it takes me forever to get anywhere with it.
http://mythicalblog.com/index.php/blogging/mydungeonrunner/
Well, late to the party, but just wanted to say
I’m lately finding myself unwilling to spend time to ‘do’ such stuff as search for ‘custom gadgets’, ‘player-run forums’, ‘player UI mods’ and such. I’m finding that sooner or later all this custom-made player stuff tends to break (because of game change, author losing interest, etc.) — hence nowadays I’m a big proponent of ‘official’ stuff — I’d like my (MMO) games to have an official site with *official* forums (Tabula Rasa I’m looking at you), with official out-of-the-game character data & tools (if the data/API is available at all), and I’d much rather have the usable/acceptable standard UI than ‘ability to customize UI’ a la WoW.
Call me lazy or whatever, but I don’t think keeping all the random (often) poorly-written mods & stuff up to date (and hoping author doesn’t abandon it and I’ll have to fix it myself) is worth my while anymore.
So yeah, just wanted to comment on your opinion that having no official stuff might be ‘better’
Incidentally I also use Opera (and not Firefox) because out-of-the-box Opera does what I need (unlike FF that would need a ton of plugins apparently). And I’d like to mention that Google gadget displays nothing but blank rectangle for me for whatever reason
“more detailed listing of events than you’d ever want the server to even track”
I don’t think such a thing is actually possible ;).
The recurringly tricky parts of providing this stuff are implementing the probes that gather the data, and (for events) storing the XML data “forever”, i.e. a storage problem - the rest is all relatively easy, and technically solved.
So … if you’re tracking anything, it might as well be tracked on the server…
I was thinking of the client-side generation as a solution to the storage problem, mostly.
When you think about the things somewhat like that which are typically stored client-side - screenshots, chat logs, combat-spam, etc. - I think it establishes a category of “wouldn’t want to track that server-side” data.
Maybe though, it’s just data that is generated client-side. In terms of a character’s notable achievements perhaps not really - but then a localized description of an event might very well be.
Solf: That’s by design. It’s a zen thing. Firefox and IE users see a character sheet there, but Opera users get an empty box which they can look at and think about how much they love Opera.
as a guy who has proposed a microformat for avatars, this absolutely gets my blood pumping.
http://www.getsemantic.com/wiki/Non-human_profiles
http://m3mnoch.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/avatars-microformats-and-openid/
woot!
m3mnoch.
The WoW Armory is XML under the hood; if you supply Firefox as the User-Agent when hitting Armory pages, you get XML back. (Firefox uses XSLT to format and display the XML.)
The Dungeon Runners stuff is cooler, because they’re explicitly supporting it and making it easy to do, mind you.
Yeh, I didn’t realize that about the WoW Armory ’til after posting this… (and to be honest, it’s not as if I did the slightest bit of research prior to posting it, either).
But there are various methods of milking XML from any of the out-of-game web-pages displaying web-data.
The contest rules are very clear, however: No points are awarded for a particular implementation of web-accessible game data making it easier to hack-out a solution.
Or at least they would be clear on that point, if there were contest rules. Or even points.
In that case another rule might be that you have to enter to win it, so keeping mum on the subject of your XML availability is the same as not showing up for the contest at all.
On a related note, WoW’s UI user-mod support lead to the perfect example of how client-side data generation can be put to good use - even before it was out of beta: Thotbot is built from data accumulated client-side.
That’s the sort of thing that is wildly popular, and added-value (good for the developer as well as the player).
Ironically, it’s also the sort of thing that developers are very unlikely to provide - even if they recognize the value of it - for various silly reasons.
But developer conceit is a topic for another rant, I think.
This is just another step towards the semantic web, and I like it.
Now we just need to design intelligent agents who can scour that data to determine character development trends, then use that data to further enhance the game itself by offering more options to the players who play most often…
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