A Real-Time Desktop Tracker

That would be cool! Imagine the "Active Games" section, but right in your desktop !
Windows can use an HTML document like a wallpaper : so it's possible to use a Flash movie, which periodically retrieve games' information, to show new games, and even, for example, play a nice sound when somebody starts a new server (or enter in an empty game) !

And the best is that I could do it! I just need an API from a WinBolo.net's webmaster!

So, would it be a good idea?

Do you mean something like: http://tracker.winbolo.com:50000/?

The documentation for the format can be found in the Sample Code sub directory of the WinBolo distribution.

There are RSS feeds for news, game events and forum posts at http://rss.winbolo.net/ but not a list of games in XML format.

That would be an awesome idea! I have made one that appears in the irc client when you right click, you can check it out here: http://winbolo.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2354

What would be cool is to have a client that checks winbolo.us:50000 every 5 or so seconds, and when a strict starts you get a notification of a small popup window, naming the map, server and password.

Elvis wrote:

Do you mean something like: http://tracker.winbolo.com:50000/?

The documentation for the format can be found in the Sample Code sub directory of the WinBolo distribution.

There are RSS feeds for news, game events and forum posts at http://rss.winbolo.net/ but not a list of games in XML format.

Yep, that's nearly perfect! The only problem is that Flash needs "&" in order to separe variables.
So, it would be like replacing "new lines characters" by a "&" :

BRAINS=yesAdv&DELAY=-10060431361&LIMIT=-11&STARTTIME=11769299631&GAME001=ip-68-...

Can you build a little modification? For instance, if you introduce the argument "?type=Flash" in the adress, it does what said.
I could parse the current format, but it's very harder!
And the last solution, another PHP script wich could be hosted wherever you want, wich would be called by the Flash movie, and wich would parse by simply replacing "new lines" by "&".

If someone have an idea of the interface it could have, it would be cool; interfaces aren't my strong point.

harl91 wrote:

What would be cool is to have a client that checks winbolo.us:50000 every 5 or so seconds, and when a strict starts you get a notification of a small popup window, naming the map, server and password.

I think I tried doing something like this before. The downside is that even though it's a small bit of information you're retrieving each time, you're doing it 12x a minute, 720x an hour, 17280x a day, 518400x a month.

Say there's four games on the tracker. Each request will transfer about 1 kB (roughly 8 kb). Assuming that the client ran 24/7 for just one month, you would have effectively transferred over half a gig of information just from sending the requests. And that's just from one client!

Wow. It would still be interesting to make. The thing is, how would you get the password into the popup window? We would have to get a bot to pull the info from irc, and paist it onto a website. From there, the client would request the information.

The only thing is, is that what if someone was banned from irc? You would have to also ban them from requesting or something like that.

Both .com and .us trackers update a lot less frequently than what was suggested so checking the output every minute or so should stay as current as you can get.

The only thing is, is that what if someone was banned from irc? You would have to also ban them from requesting or something like that.

If someone were to build such a tool I would implement something that parses a rss feed out of the ban list ever few minutes or as needed. If the tool has widespread adoption we could start inputting bans manually into the tool itself or some other method.

The thing is, how would you get the password into the popup window? We would have to get a bot to pull the info from irc, and paist it onto a website.

That's sort of what winbolo.us/activegames does. Trivial to do in php.

t's possible to use a Flash movie, which periodically retrieve games' information, to show new games, and even, for example, play a nice sound when somebody starts a new server (or enter in an empty game)

You can do all that, but not from one source. I have winbolo.us/activegames parse 2 tracker outputs plus WBN to tell how many people are any particular game. I would also recommend using a ajax request rather than a flash file for Active Desktop rendering, or perhaps just a simple desktop/taskbar app daemon.

The traffic would be high, but it would be possible to set the refresh time, with a given minimum.

The Flash file would be more appealing than a simple Ajax script; additionally, you could continue using your wallpaper (showed by the Flash movie itself), and the information about games would "fly" over it.

But, I see it now, Flash have also a problem : if there's two "@PLAYERS=" in the file he checks, the last will override the others.
So, the parsin would be done manually into the Flash movie.

Jhood- I got an idea!

Im going to try to make myown website that could be used for the client with the popups and all.

Whenever a strict game is started, Harlbot will put all the information into a txt file. From there, abyss (webserver) will be pointed at the txt file as its home page. Then it will be put onto the internet. Thats all i got so far...

edit... only problem is, how will the games go away?