Player Registry / Campaign Invitations Enhancements

[Farcaster]

A couple weeks ago we added a major enhancement to the Campaign Invitations forum (http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4587) that made it much easier to search, and geocoded the campaign so that it could be found in a radius search from an address. As the natural extension of that, we have now added the campaigns to the Player Registry (http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/memberlist.php) display as well. Whenever you do a search on the registry, any campaigns that are also in the search area will be added to the Google map display. To keep things sorted, there are now a few different types of markers, as you can see below:

http://www.penandpapergames.com/images/googlemap_example_122307.PNG

Players now appear on the map as silhouetted human figures. Players who are currently marked as "LFP" (Looking for Players) or as "GM" show up in red. And any campaign that is currently accepting players is added as a standard blue marker. Although the campaign is not listed in the registry, you can click on the blue icon and you will see the name of the campaign, the genre, and the weekdays the game is planned to be played on. The title links back to the campaign posting, so you can go directly to the invitation and make a reply.

http://www.penandpapergames.com/images/googlemap_example_122307_2.PNG

There are a couple of known limitations to the new integration. If there are no players in the search area, the map is not shown even if there are campaigns in the search radius. Also, if there are two campaigns posted at exactly the same address, the system will try to bump them in a random direction to prevent them from being overlapped. So, the campaign marker might not be in the exact location as it is displayed on the campaign invitation.

Enjoy!

[Maelstrom]

Very good feature. One comment... it might be better to separate the color by LFP/LFG rather than DM/Player/Either... Like many others looking for players, I'm listed as Either for the 2nd one, so my person icon is white instead of red.

[Farcaster]

The markers are colored red in either case. If the player is marked as a GM or if they are set to LFP. I wanted to mark players who were more likely to be willing to run a game in red so that they were easily distinguishable on the map.

[Maelstrom]

Thanks! Looks good!

[Mulsiphix]

Excellent work! Its nice to be able to get a better idea of what is available around me without having to moving my mouse over every single dot on the map.

[Farcaster]

One more change. Members who joined within the last week or so are now highlighted in yellow, as so http://www.penandpapergames.com/images/map/man-new.png, so you can easily spot new profiles.

[Mulsiphix]

Delicious. Do you have any other plans for enhancing the map in the future? Any ideas you've been tinkering with or evaluating?

[Farcaster]

I have lots and lots of ideas. It's only a matter of finding the time to do them. The next thing I was planning to enhance is the Campaign Invitations area. I would like to add a feature that shows compatible players to the DM that posted the campaign so that s/he can more easily identify and contact potential players. There will also be some changes to the member profiles coming soon, and some more social-networking type functionality that should be excellent for creating private or public gaming groups, PBP areas, local meeting groups, etc.

[nijineko]

awesome! any chance of mouseovers to include the systems that a person plays?

[Mulsiphix]

Seriously awesome! So do you program this stuff yourself or? I know it uses googlemap but not quite sure how your able to change stuff. If you don't want to go into details is there any chance you could link me to a page where I can learn more about the googlemap modification process?

[ffclubhero]

Looks really nice. Thanks for the time you put in to run such an excellent site. :)