Calling All Event Leaders

So I'm a leader in our Dynamis LS, and I think we all feel overwhelmed at times trying to calculate points on a bi-weekly basis and keep track of drops, lot changes, and any other thing your lotting system/event requires you to keep track of. (These are just things our lotting system requires)

While I lead just Dynamis, it's not hard to modify the scripts to fit other events such as sky or salvage.

I have a background in website design, so over the past few months I've put together multiple online scripts to manage our LS. It tallies up points (You just check whether they were there or not), subtracts the points for relic they obtain, (Tell the website which player and which relic they got and it will subtract the appropriate points) it keeps track of and removes inactive players, how much currency we obtain, how many reraise items we give out, we can run reports on a player and their activity levels or relic they've obtained, run reports on our average earning per dynamis, average earnings over all, average earning per specific zone... we can do anything you put your mind to.

Prior to me joining our LS, they used to do everything by hand. I imagine that is how a lot of the LS leaders do their work.

So my questions are:

- How do you keep track of your LS attendance or other significant data?
- Would you be interested in using a website for all your LS needs?

My scripts are far from being complete or fully functional... but who knows, maybe I'll start an FFXI business and sell my scripts for gil! :P

I think this would be pretty cool for budding LS leaders, even to help develop their systems of how to distribute/lot their items. I know when a past LS was doing everything via text files and forum posts, we were all desperate to update the methods to make things much smoother and efficient. Have a publicly viewable example?

Wow...You gotta be RMT to be able to do all of that <.<
and how? use my handydandy...NOTEBOOK!

I thought Joe does it now.

Ah, I gotta do some traveling... I'll come back and post more details in a couple hours.

Good old handwritten logs work best, but if you were willing to use the windower you could make a screenshot with timestamp which makes things significantly easier.

Another would be to make a template for various events in MS Excel.

Could I see your site? <.<''

I've used these methods, but in general the more automated the process, the easier. It's fine for occassional entry, but for daily events, multiple times all the manual entry before, during and after events becomes really unwieldy. Mainly because it all has to be visible to people as the updates come in.

The best method I found to keep a record of changes and have proof of events was to take screens of /sea all linkshell and then using those screens to update a google docs spreadsheet that automatically exported itself to our forums for public access. With my limited tools that was the best resolution I could come up with, but anything further would be neeeeat.

You guys don't know about: EQdkp? It's a management program originally made for EQ. It's been highly developed for WOW and other games. FFXI is a little lacking. I've modified mine to fit my needs. http://botdls.com/botdpoints/listmembers.php?s=

Basically you list an event and how many points you get for it. Then you add the people on the event and it does the rest. Here are some SS.




Here is what it looks like when I click on my name. It shows all of the events I've attended. All of the Items that I have won.

DEAR LAWD that looks cool. Is the source open?

It's an open download from their site. You can modify it as you feel fit but you have to keep the copyright in the footer. There are some addons that are pretty cool. I never got some of them to work since they are really for wow. For example, Raid planner: in wow some things require steps. Kinda like dynamis access. Raid planner lets you keep track of which step you are on. There is also a tooltip plugin so when you highlight an item, it shows what it is, kinda like the tooltip from ffxiah.com.

Well in my ls, where the RDMs know what is needed to be a good rdm unlike some people, we use dkp.system to keep track of Ein, dyna, sky and limbus points as well as drops, members in the shell and people who are currently on vent. Works pretty well.

I must be tired because that makes absolutely no sense to me.

Hmmm, an interesting program. Offers a lot of the things mine can offer. However it's all pretty much leader specific no? And it's limited in what it can do, like running reports or having other features like finding inactive members. And it's pretty specific in it's point system, wouldn't go very well with say, ZNM.

I've setup some scripts for the public to play around with, copy and pastes of the coding we use, all with real time data. However I've obviously disabled the submit process, I've removed all the queries.

http://www.intotheunknownls.com/ffxiah.php
http://www.intotheunknownls.com/ffxiah2.php
http://www.intotheunknownls.com/ffxiah3.php

There are two things I had in mind... The original idea was to start a public website with multiple scripts for each event that anyone can use for their own LS. It'd be free and open to the public. However that'd cost money and a lot of time and work maintaining the website. The other idea was to simply sell the scripts to whoever wants to buy em, helping them setup their own website of course. But I don't think too many people would pay $$$ or gil for that...

Either way, my scripts are far from "ready" so I have plenty of time to ponder what I should do, if I decide to do anything at all.

You give members permissions. Like I have certain sacks that I trust. They are able to update the site. This is very important because it only allows certain ppl access. Otherwise anyone can mess up your system.

It does a lot of stuff. You create events as you see fit. I use this for dynamis, limbus, salvage, einherjar and our main ls. For my main ls, I keep track of points for everything from helping members get af to bahamut II fights. There are also spin-off programs like eqdkpplus that incorporate portal systems and forums so you can have a 1 site fits all.

I'm not trying to deter you but it just seems like reinventing the wheel. Some things to think about while writing scripts.
1. SQL injection attacks
2. Writing it so that the system creates the database tables for people.
3. User admin and authorizations.
4. Ability to be changed to fit other people's needs. Looking at the couple of pages you have listed, it's pretty specific to an event.

{edit}As for ZNM, you can use Raid planner to keep track of what triggers ppl have towards completing a path. I'm at work and most of the sites are blocked for me so I can't pull you up an example.

Yea having a public website would be a pain in the ***.. I'm not so cocky as to say my coding abilities can overcome that obstacle. I do feel that my scripts could offer more then the program though, given time to actually think and create them. But to maintain a public website and to secure it properly... that would be a feat that I don't think I'd be willing to take on.

The scripts I have are Dynamis specific, it wouldn't be too hard to incorporate other events into the scripts. Each lotting system is different for each event, some LS's have different lotting systems then others, so a universal one wouldn't be any good. I'd havta create multiple scripts just for a single event.

Bleh. Ok so we've established that creating a public website would probably be a bad idea. So all that's left is to sell my scripts to others. :P

You know what I did was make some add ons. I use Coldfusion for my programming and did a quick little app for Einherjar. I use the main points page to keep track of points and attendance. Then I switch to: Priorities before an event. This little program has a back-end that allows ppl to pick what they want. I coded the SQL to pull the points from the EQdkp onto this page so I can see them all in one spot. Then I can sort it and see who is winning. Unfortunately, most of the people that were doing Einherjar have stopped so we suspended doing runs till later.

Unfortunately not everyone can program, so unless you make your add-ons public, there's still a problem with people not being able to do certain things, even with the program.

Private websites are nice though, gives people a place to come together and talk, post pictures, apply for the LS, etc. Program can't do that either.

That's what I like about eqdkp. It has a lot of downloadable add-ons that use scripts to add stuff. There isn't really any programing knowledge needed. www.eqdkp-plus.com/ has a decent demo that let's you see a lot of the stuff it can do.

Inevitably, even with add-ons there are certain things that can't be done.

I suppose a website can be considered the +1 version of eqdkp... Woo for white borders!

Some guy on Seraph supposedly spear-headed ffdkp (http://www.catwho.net/yamato/ffdkp/listmembers.php) which looks like another instance of the same project. I'd asked an LS leader about the chance of implementing it since it seems so much easier to manage, but they said it had too many security holes. ?_? No longer have need for any of this, but very interested anyhow. D;

Ya it's the same program. He just added the trigger tracker and the wish list stuff.

Looking at the stuff that Lui wrote, I think the main reason he doesn't like it is because he uses a tiered point system. i.e. you get a point for showing up on time, a point for the run, a point for staying the whole time, etc. you can do that in eqdkp but it lists them as seperate events.