Recently I’ve been working on a dear project of mine: boardgame club stats service. It’s in Finnish, unfortunately. Still, go see it and try clicking the link “Lista peleistä, for example to see how it works. That’s the list of games. “Lista pelaajista” is a list of players.
It began with the very basics: a web interface for game results. Since then, I’ve integrated other stuff in it: two other web sites and some Excel worksheets I’ve had. So, besides showing the games played, you can find the reviews people have given for the games, you can get recommendations of games based on the reviews you’ve done, and there are tons of different little statistics about games and players. There are also descriptions of most games.
Next I’m planning to add a feature so that each club member can mark which games they own. Then anyone could go and browse the lists, perhaps use the recommendation service and the descriptions to find an interesting game, then click a link and a notification would be sent out to the owners of the game so they’d know to bring it with them to the next meeting of the club.
Now I’ll just have to get people to use the system… But I like it and I think the stats and the recommendations and all that is fun, that’s the most important thing. I’ve also learned a lot about PHP programming while I’ve been doing it, that might prove to be valuable some day. Or even if it doesn’t, it has been entertaining.
7 responses to “My own Boardgamegeek”
I don’t speak Finnish, but it’s a great idea. Particularly the statistics area. I would love to be able to generate a League Table for my gaming group. It would inject an edge to every game.. Especially if it credited people for coming second or third etc.
The Devil Points system is good for this:
http://russcon.place.org/RussCon/devilpoints.html
I had an English version of the scripts earlier, but that’s not up to date anymore and it doesn’t feature any of the more advanced options. I could do it again, I suppose, if I had a bit more time to dedicate for it.
The actually uses the Devil Point system to count the points (the RCMP column), it’s by far the best system I’ve come across. It’s just blanked out for most people as the stats meta game isn’t so popular — people dislike the extra edge you talk about. I like it, but I understand those who don’t.
Wow. That would be great. My friends are a ruthlessly competetive bunch and would love something like that.
If you find the time to do it and need any help, please ask. I used to be a professional software tester, so I know how to give useful feedback. I would offer to help with your English, except that it’s already perfect.
:o)
I’ll see what I can do. It’s basically about replacing every hardcoded string in the code with a reference to an array of strings… Thus, the array contents can be in Finnish or in English, and the program doesn’t have to know which language is it… So, I’ll start working on it and if I get it done, I’ll let you know and set it up for you.
Ouch. Sounds like a horrible tedious job. Isn’t there an easier way of doing it? Is it possible to configure it so it can accept some kind of language file, so that it’s easy to switch between and create new languages?
It would be nice though. I think it would be popular among the Spielfrieks.
My email address is myfirstname@cheyne.net
Well, yes. That’s what I’m doing: all the text is hardcoded in, so I’ll have to replace the hardcoded texts with variable references… That way translating it to just about any language becomes very easy. It’s just this phase that is tedious and it really can’t be helped. Should’ve done it better from the start.
Last time I tried, two people were interested on the Spielfrieks list. They haven’t set it up, however… For you, I’d thought I’d host it on my server. It’s easier that way. But, I’ll contact you with more details when I have it done.
Cool. Thanks Mikko.
My own website — cheyne.net. Maybe I could set it up on that server, if it’s not too difficult? I don’t know much about this stuff. My limit is my crappy personal FrontPage website. (WHEN am I going to get around to removing those ugly FrontPage templates?)