Roster Master for Dragonfly Roster Master for Dragonfly


EverQuest II Guild Roster Manager for Dragonfly CMS

About RM4DF

Roster Master for Dragonfly (RM4DF) provides a method to integrate the Sony EverQuest II Guild Roster into your Dragonfly CMS site. Fully integrated into the site, you can manage and view your guild's data right from your portal. A block is also provided that displays guild statistical data similar to that found on the guild summary page on the EQ2Players.com website.

Roster Master for Dragonfly is part of the Roster Master Project, which is composed of a family of ports of the original Roster Master module originally written by Rex "SaintPeter" Schrader. Significant enhancements and exclusive features have been made for the Dragonfly CMS version, as well as to accomodate changes in Everquest II and the EQ2Players.com site.

The Roster Master development thread on EQ2Players.com is a highly active and community supported discussion focusing on debugging and introducing new features and ideas into the Roster Master project.

Notice

As you are probably aware by now, on November 12th, 2007, the SoE Web Platform team released a revised version of the EQ2 Players website. Titled "EQ2 Players RoK Release (3.4)", this new version brought new features, some bugfixes, but also introduced new problems, failed to address several long-standing problems (some of which have existed since the game's introduction in 2004, some three years ago), as well as removed existing features. This is similar to the situation that was created by changes to EQ2 Players on November 14th, 2006, on the occasion of the EoF release.

These changes had a marked impact on the Roster Master project (due to missing data and inconsistently formatted feeds that were the result of the changes), but more so had a marked impact on the community. Whether users of Roster Master, or just customers of SoE, players were left with unresolved problems ranging from being unable to use the data, data not being updated consistently or correctly, to the fee-based Advanced Services not working as advertised or being able to access services that were paid for, all the way up to reoccurring problems with billing for those services.

Fortunately, the Roster Master project had been able to recover partially from these changes through the efforts of Dark Grue (RM4DF dev) and Lantis (RMSA dev). By putting our heads together along with other members of the community, we managed, once more, to find ways to work around the data format problem, but still at the cost of reduced functionality.

So, what happened?

First, there is incompetence. Those feeds were broken at EoF release last year, and it took them six months to fix them. Six months later at the RoK release, they broke it AGAIN, making the exact same mistakes with the same results. Poor quality and responsiveness has been a consistent theme with EQ2 Players; however, failing to learn anything from in the course of a year stretches credibility, and is not acceptable in any industry.

In Logic of Empire, Robert Heinlein states: "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity." But in having the EQ2Players RoK release duplicate the circumstances of EoF, we have what appears to be forethought of malice, not incompetence. In short, the appearance that SoE set out to intentionally sabotage the community. A few months ago, a detailed report of various EQ2Players issues, and recommendations from the Roster Master community was sent by Dark Grue to a representative of the SOE QA team. No response was ever given. Months later, as part of the EQ2 Players RoK Release, we see SOE offering new Advanced Features services that replicate key Roster Master functionality; except they are charging for this service. Simultaneously, SoE also removed community access to roster data fields that have been openly available for community use and that Roster Master relied upon, and reserved them solely for their paid service. Draw your own conclusion.

[Further information is available in the Roster Master - EQ2Players Timeline.]

The Roster Master project is a very small group of developers that work, for no compensation, on the project in their spare time. We receive no compensation for our efforts (other than the thanks of the community and the knowledge of a job well-done). We receive no ad revenue, and garner no sponsorships. The work we do only brings value to the community, which in turn brings residual benefit to SoE. Such arrangements are common in today's marketplace, and are almost always win-win situations.

As both third-party developers, members of the EverQuest II community, and customers, the Roster Master Development Team are disgusted with the lack of communication, quality, and ethics we experience with EQ2 Players and the Web Platform team. Successful examples of collaboration between the EverQuest II developers and the community on projects such as EQ2Maps show that such interaction is not only possible, but benefits both parties. That specific example resulted in a completely seamless experience with the ROK launch. In contrast, the SOE Web Platform developers have been nothing but an obstacle to the Roster Master project and the community. They are not only ignoring us, but also changing things with no regard as to the consequences – even when it is in fact their own paying Advanced Services customers they are marginalizing.

Is it too much to ask that they stop ignoring the community, insulting it in the process by offering a broken and incomplete service? Using the Roster Master project as a stalking horse for market research and development of a product, only to plagiarize the efforts of community developers such as ourselves speaks volumes as to intent.

So, where does that leave Roster Master specifically? Version 3.5.0 of RMSA and Version 6.2.0 of RM4DF have been engineered to work around those issues, but at a loss of functionality, since many of the data fields on which we were dependent are no longer accessible. The Web Services team has shown an inability and unwillingness to listen to or communicate with the community, and after soliciting the Roster Master team's input, only to use that as a roadmap to implement their own pay service and harm the community project, they have shown a tremendous breach of faith and trust. Using a free open-source community project that had made every good-faith effort to reach back to SoE and collaborate in order to bolster their own commercial pay product which they are unable to deliver as complete and consistently working service is not the behavior you would expect from professionals.

The Roster Master team is committed to continue working on Roster Master in its various forms for as long it will remain possible, and enjoyable. But the recent experience has left us all with a bitter taste that only seems to intensify with each passing day that the service continues to accrue complains and problems that remain unaddressed and unresolved.

As a community member, all we can do is suggest that you make your opinion heard by them. The history of EQ2 Players and the Advance Features service does not demonstrate that its purpose is to provide a useful service for a nominal extra fee. Rather, it is to generate a reoccurring source of income for SoE - much in the way that the banner ads have been added to the site do (a feature which takes away value from the customers to generate revenue for SoE). Bearing that in mind, EQ2 Players is "working as intended" as long as it is generating income, there is no reason whatsoever for SoE to fix what is already working.

People in SoE you should consider writing to:

John Smedley, President (jsmedley@soe.sony.com)
Russell Shanks, Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer (
rshanks@soe.sony.com)
Torrie Dorrell, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Sales and International
George Scotto, Vice President, Global Customer Service and Quality Assurance
Mike Lustenberger, Vice President, Marketing
 
Sony Online Entertainment
8928 Terman Court
San Diego, CA 92121

Businesses do not hear your wallet voting - that just helps you. Businesses listen when you write to them and tell them (in a clear, calm, and concise manner) why you are not willing to continue buying their services.

Sincerely,

Lantis, Roster Master Stand Alone Developer
Dark Grue, Roster Master for Dragonfly Developer

General Features:

Roster Master: Guild Roster Manager
  • Edit ClaimAllow your CMS users to "Claim" his or her characters
  • Character "Type" Tracking
    • Compliments and expands upon the "Guild Rank" feature
    • Users may specify if their character is Primary, Secondary, or Utility
    • Option to list Primary characters only
  • Guild Roster Single and Double Column Sorting
    • Sort by clicking on a column header, or select two columns from a drop-down (i.e. Class, then Level)
    • Reversible Sorting for both sort modes
    • Optional column sort indicators displayed in table headings
  • Optional Grouped Listing
   Roster Master
Quest Master: Quest Tracker and Query (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)
  • Track Heritage, Access, and Timeline Quest progress for your claimed characters
  • Links quests and rewards to online walkthroughs and data
  • Query quests to list characters at each quest step
  • Features an exclusive scrolling/resizable JavaScript Table
  • The table can be resized by dragging the horizontal rule between the bottom of the table and the table footer up and down
   Heritage Master
Signature Master: Dynamic Signature Generator (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)
  • Dynamically create graphical signature blocks automatically from information stored in the roster database
  • Features a unique caching system to reduce wasted server resources and poor client performance issues
   Signature Master
Automatic Instantiation (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)
  • Multiple instances of this module can be created by making a copy of the module directory and adding an underscore followed by an integer to the name of the directory (e.g. "Roster_Master_2"). The module will detect this and automagically configure itself
  • Blocks follow the same pattern
Guild Wall of Fame Block (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)
  • Display guild statistics and information in your Dragonfly CMS blocks
  • Many display configuration options
Guild Summary Information (Dragonfly Port Exclusive!)
  • Guild Level displayed in Roster
  • Statistics and other information available in block
   Guild Wall of Fame
SQL Backend Cache
  • Fast display since you don't have to hit Sony's site every time
  • Configurable cache refresh time
Update Logging
  • Have a record of changes in all fields, every user add, and every user deletion
  • Log data update failures and retries
  • Configurable, log as much or as little as you wish
   Log File
Error Messages
  • Explanatory error messages for common failures
  • Clean exits
Fully Documented, Clean Code
  • All functions completely commented
  • Advanced users have access to more advanced options and configuration within the code source
  • Open-source, released under the GNU General Public License

Completely Dragonfly Compliant:

  • Roster Master has been ported to Dragonfly with an expanded feature set
  • Easy to Setup and Install
    • FTP, configure, set permissions and go
    • No .sql file to import, just run the installer
    • Install, backup, uninstall, and upgrade right from the Dragonfly control panel
  • CMS Username to Character Name Mapping
  • Includes Dragonfly's localization support (English and French language files included)
  • Leverages the CMS' features and security
   Dragonfly CMS


Availability

Roster Master for Dragonfly is available free of charge from the Clenched Fist Guild download site, as well as from the Dragonfly CMS community site:

Download from Clenched Fist
Download from Dragonfly CMS community site

Current released version is: Roster Master for Dragonfly 6.3.1 (2008-04-22)

Previous version is: Roster Master for Dragonfly 6.3.0 (2008-01-02)


Requirements

In addition, it is useful to have a working knowledge of a good FTP program as well as a basic understanding on how to edit a PHP file in order to change the configuration options.

NOTE1: This module requires outbound HTTP connectivity to the eq2players.com Website on TCP Port 80. Make sure your server can connect outbound, or the module will be unable to function (characterized by "FATAL: Gave up trying to contact the guild summary page." and "FATAL Gave up trying to contact the roster page." messages in the logfile). Fedora Core users (possibly others) will need to edit the /etc/selinux/targeted/booleans.local file and add "httpd_can_network_connect=1" (without the quotes). Other systems may need similiar changes. Read the httpd_selinux(8) man page for more information on this if your system uses this feature.


Installation

The most up-to-date installation instructions are always included in the distribution release in the INSTALL.txt file. Be sure to read the INSTALL.txt file before proceeding with installation or before requesting support! Additional notes and comments on new features and changes also appear in the CHANGELOG.txt file.

Angela "Seagoat" Taylor has developed an excellent and detailed guide to using Signature Master and its advanced features.

NOTE2: Do not use Dreamweaver to edit the Roster Master or Dragonfly PHP files, there are known issues with Dreamweaver that can cause file corruption and complicate troubleshooting. Use a plain-text editor (such as Notepad or WordPad), or a programming editor, such as jEdit.

NOTE3: The Guild Wall of Fame block stores a copy of its output in the "content" field of the "{prefix}_blocks" table, and pulls from there rather than re-run all the queries (until the block needs to be updated). This works perfectly well until the stored block exceeds the TEXT field type it's stored in which has a maximum length of 65,535 (2^16 - 1) characters. This condition would pretty much only exists if $config['breakdown_shownames'] = 1, since the block stays a constant length that's within the limits of the TEXT field. Also, people with very small guilds, can possibly duck under the limit, even with it enabled. To work around this, the Roster Master installer will change the field type of the table from TEXT to MEDIUMTEXT. This should have no impact on the operation of the Dragonfly CMS core, or to database efficiency. However, please note that if you subsequently upgrade the Dragonfly CMS core, there is a good chance that the CMS installer will revert the field type back to TEXT, in which case it would have to be remedied once again by hand (using whatever SQL management interface that you are comfortable with).

NOTE4: To parse XML with PHP, you must configure PHP with the --with-xml argument prior to make and make install. If you compile PHP as a module for Apache 1.3.9 or later, PHP will automatically use the bundled expat library from Apache.

The relevant command is (make appropriate substitutions):
ALTER TABLE {prefix}_blocks CHANGE content content MEDIUMTEXT


Support

If you have problems with Roster Master for Dragonfly, please first read the article "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way" by Rick Moen and Eric Steven Raymond. Once you have identifies the issue and framed your question, then choose your best path of support.

If you believe that your problem lies with Roster Master for Dragonfly, you best method of support is the Roster Master Development Thread (archive prior to February 05, 2007, is located here). This is also the best place to inquire about ports of Roster Master that are not for Dragonfly CMS. As an alternative, you may contact the author directly regarding questions or comments for Roster Master for Dragonfly. The author of Roster Master for Dragonfly cannot assist with ports for other content management systems.

If you have a general Dragonfly CMS question, or believe you have discovered a problem with Dragonfly, your best support option is the official Dragonfly CMS site


Copyright and Distribution Permissions

Roster Master for Dragonfly is Copyright © 2005-2008, David "Dark Grue" Hesprich.

CC-GNU GPL   This software is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL.


Roster Master for Dragonfly logo created by Ronja.
EverQuest is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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