Well, ive had another fantastic day off of doing nothing. I love it!!! 馃榾
So decided id do a little more work with the Xbox API. There is stacks of user information available on there and you just need to go through and takes the bits you need.
We have not started logging mottos and locations aswell as user bios just so we can customise xBonx to your personal needs. You can see some of the new features modelled on @Cadab’s page.
Today i have been feeling under the weather (Head cold, achy body, general man flu). So with xBonx having a few errors on the site i thought id try and fix them.
Well, i didnt really start fixing them, instead, i started adding a few new features.
The logic has been on the backend script for a while to check out gamerscores but never been put into use as i didnt want to much running on the script until it was fairly stable.
But as of today i have enabled it. Basically at the moment when a user creates a new log (Just by playing any xbox game) it will now get there Xbox Live gamerscore. The system will then work out if it has changed since the last time it was logged, and if so update the new count. Also, there are new badges to win for the bigger achievements you unlock.
Also, the new xBonx points system will be included in this new feature.
With points coming very soon, hopefully before new year, points will be awarded for new games added, new game streaks, achievements unlocked, badges award, leaderships gained, pretty much anything you do can get you points.
Points will just, for the time being, be a novelty on your profile to show off to your friends. But who knows what the future might bring for points on xBonx.
Stay tuned for more updates and of course, have a merry christmas!
Ive been playing with xBonx quite a bit today thinking of and adding some new features to the service.
Today i have finished off adding some logic that is going to start timing a user online sessions.
I already have some logic that updates a users profile to see if there online or offline and then posts it on there profile.
So i implemented logic to log into a table when a user comes online and then it wont update the end time until the user turns there xbox off.
Now i have got the logic recording the time some starts playing a game and the time someone finishes i can write some logic to work out the time the user has been online and hopefully sort it into online times per day and then make some nice graphs and charts.
The whole idea behind xBonx was to collect and create the most stats we can for user and ther xbox.
I had a bit of spare time today so i decided i would work on some more of the back end control for xBonx.com.
Games are added automatically. When the system adds a users log it checks to see if the game they are playing is in the database. If the game is not it is added.
The system will then send an email to a xBonx admin member who will be able to review a game the added game and add more information like game image and descriptions and anything else that applys. Other than doing this in the PHP MyAdmin there was no other way you could edit a game.
So i decided id make a quick way to manage games and edit there details in the admin section of the website.
It was really simple to do and has worked quite nice. Using the same ammended code as i wrote for the award manager i came up with something like this.
This will tell me what new games have been added and if they need reviewing or extra details adding.
I want to make it (In the near future) get the information it needs automatically at the time the game is added using an xbox RSS or API but for the mean time, this does the job nicely.
The first letter after the forward slash is the ‘type’. For instance, G means Game. So upon clicking this link you will get something like the below page.
Other links that will look like the above, but they are infact all different will be;
– http://x.bonxy.net/LGMo0R – As this one starts with an L it means its a Log entry. IE, The system has logged someone playing a game.
– http://x.bonxy.net/AwnhHQ – This one starts with an A which means it will link to an Achievement. IE, BobTheBuilder has unlocked this something.
You can also view a persons profile page by just going to the same above URL (http://x.bonxy.net/) and after the forward slash type a persons xbox live gamertag.
Kings Reigns
Like said in my first post about this project, this was going to be like a foursquare but for your xBox. So, one of the famous things about foursquare is mayorships. When you check into a place so many times, you become the mayor. Then you battle with other users to have the more check-ins of that place. If someone checks in more than you, you will lose the mayorship.
I have tried to import this system directly into xbox achievements. I want to make it so the more a user plays a game, the higher there count goes. (I have limited it this so it only counts 1 log per day per play. We dont want users cheating by turning on and off there xbox and make the logs get higher.)
A user has to have played the game a minimum of 3 non consecutive days before they become King. (I didnt want to take Mayor’s and mayorships so i changed it slightly.) The more a user plays the game, when there king, the longer there reign will get. Another user can only get hold of the reign by beating the amount of plays by 1.
Once the new user has aquired the reign the system will tweet the new king, and the previous king the news.
The system seems to be working well at the moment, with already 12 reigns issued out of 23 games.
Other People Playing
Another really simple, but effective feature i quickly added was the chance to see which other users are playing the same game as you. When you click on a games itself, for instance Battlefield 3 you can see at the below what i am talking about.
Future Plans
This weekend i am hopefully going to be incorporating more features into the system. Im going to be changing the way logs and game counts are added to the database, im also going to hopefully integrate a points system, giving points for more consecutive days and other mini challenges that will be available through the site.
