Staff Server Feed Thing.

[TopHatPenguin]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):So in a staff area of the forums add in a live feed
of the server, what i mean by this is that it should state how many players are on the server currently and how
many staff are on as well.


Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): Benefits would be that Staff would:
1) Be able to know if they need to head on the server.
2) Rahl might be able to tell what timezones they need more staff in, if he keeps track of it or..
makes a program to do it for him. (I know Rahl does some data collecting things for cm so i kind of presumed this)


Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
Just something in the staff area that states how many players are on the server currently and how many staff.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): Coding.

[Lostmixup]

Why not, it'd be a nice feature.

[UnknownMurder]

This was similarly suggested by me during my staff times. I've suggested an IRC Channel. No one liked the suggestion, and it was turned down.

[apophis775]

I could do this, but it wouldn't be pretty. It would basically be a bot that reads updates from a special log as they are made and posts them into an IRC.

[TopHatPenguin]

As long as it works and people can understand it, I think it would be quite useful.

[coolsurf6]

Maybe something that looks like game tracker in a way, but it would be nice if it was for all players as well.

[Jeser]

I could do this, but it wouldn't be pretty. It would basically be a bot that reads updates from a special log as they are made and posts them into an IRC.

Well, if it would work, does it matter if it is pretty? And I guess, TS wrote good reasons for making this "bot" or something.

[TopHatPenguin]

Perhaps also have it state if a staff member is afk or not? ( Or just make it so if they are afk it appears as if nobody is on the server with the bot?)

[apophis775]

Really, I don't think there's a very effective way to do this, or at least, none one I can think of.

As staff, you should just log ONTO the server and check, that's why your staff. If it's too difficult to log on to the server and run a who check that takes maybe 30 seconds, maybe you should re-consider if you actually want to be part of staff or not.

[SkyeAuroline]

Really, I don't think there's a very effective way to do this, or at least, none one I can think of.

As staff, you should just log ONTO the server and check, that's why your staff. If it's too difficult to log on to the server and run a who check that takes maybe 30 seconds, maybe you should re-consider if you actually want to be part of staff or not.

We'd need to have a lot of staff reconsidering that, then...

Anyway, I assume the staffwho verb has some code behind it that fetches the list of who's online, right? Is it impossible to use that as a basis, count how many entries there are, and use that as the number? I don't know if you can go between the in-game version to the out-of-game version, honestly, but I'd imagine that'd be the fastest way to do it. Don't know enough about coding to be sure.

[Necrofallen]

Really, I don't think there's a very effective way to do this, or at least, none one I can think of.

As staff, you should just log ONTO the server and check, that's why your staff. If it's too difficult to log on to the server and run a who check that takes maybe 30 seconds, maybe you should re-consider if you actually want to be part of staff or not.

I'm pretty sure SS13 has MySQL & Database queries and all that. I'm 99.9% sure that there are many (Javascript included) methods of actively extracting simple data like "Staff online: x", "Admin: FunAdmin" or even forwarding admin helps from the SQL and simply updating the forums with that; Getting the SQL & forums to communicate is as simple as making a database query every 5 minutes or so to update dialogue on the forums. (I have little to no experience with SQL, so I'm just assuming how things are done. But it's certainly possible)

The easiest way is probably just to let people make their own database queries. E.G. search for key word "staff" : find list of staff, number of staff, etc.

(Unless SQL isn't set up. I know it's a very big pain to set up. But it's a very helpful tool.)

[TopHatPenguin]

Really, I don't think there's a very effective way to do this, or at least, none one I can think of.

As staff, you should just log ONTO the server and check, that's why your staff. If it's too difficult to log on to the server and run a who check that takes maybe 30 seconds, maybe you should re-consider if you actually want to be part of staff or not.

It's more for the fact that if you aren't able to log onto the server this would allow you to check who is on at said time or if nobody is on prompt someone to get on.

If you wanted to go wild as well ya could always add in a server status area to see if the server has crashed and needs a restart or not.

[apophis775]

Baystation does not have SQL or database easily setup or used, otherwise this would be literal cake with an SQL Query.

[Necrofallen]

Eh well all I know is that if you hop onto the baystation forums, you can see the collective number of players across their three servers or whatever; If you jump onto one of their IRC's, adminhelps, bug reports and all that are shown. So it's got to be possible, in one way shape or form, even if it's not hidden in the misleading folder named "SQL"