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Army list submission App. HELP WANTED.


Ben

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Hi all.

I want to create an army list submission app for the The Grand Alliance Community.  

I have a page on the Bad Dice website with an archive of tournament army lists.  This is the single most visited page on baddice.co.uk.   You can find it at baddice.co.uk/lists

Players love seeing army lists.  TO's hate sorting through army lists.

The idea behind this app is that a tournament organiser can tell all his players that the app must be used to submit lists.

the process would be simple but very effective.  

1.  player uses a web app and fills out their list.  

2. The website sends an email to the tournament organiser and the player to confirm the receipt of the list

3. The TO has a document that  contains a well formatted version of all the lists of the event that he can publish before or after the event.  

This will be a super useful resource for the gaming community.  

I am more that happy to pay for the development of this application.  

What I need is a developer who can make it happen.

Is anyone in the community a developer that can do this.  Or does anyone know a developer that would be willing to quote for this project?  

 

  

 

 

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Thre are plenty of list building tools out there. Battlescribe's AoS one is up to date, Scrollbuilder is popular, and as TerrorPenguin said, BCP has ways to submit lists now. The rule of development is - unless what you're doing is way better than what already exists, or has other tools that aren't marketed elsewhere, making something that already exists is often an exercise in futility. 

Do you think there's a hook that will make your list tool better, more accessible, or more convenient for players and TOs? If so, go for it, but make sure you're not just reinventing the wheel.

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Why not contact gw and ask them if they'd consider doing some sort of official partnership?

They're going hard into covering the tournament stuff perhaps they can sort some sort professional help out so it works for them also,  financing the project might also be a possibility if they like it enough 

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To be clear, I'm not interested in an army creator tool.  

I want a way to standardise army list submission for events and make a super easy way for event organisers to take in lists and publish them.  As a TO this is a real time sink.

This might be done by letting players copy and paste from any existing system.  

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23 minutes ago, Ben said:

To be clear, I'm not interested in an army creator tool.  

I want a way to standardise army list submission for events and make a super easy way for event organisers to take in lists and publish them.  As a TO this is a real time sink.

This might be done by letting players copy and paste from any existing system.  

Ah, that makes sense. You're really just looking for a repository and a way to do lookups and organizing based on users/events/TOs. That's pretty doable with minimal investment, though you'd need to do some setup to make it work and have some standards for archiving/retention. Lists don't take up a lot of space and you can store a lot, but it's worth it to look forward when making something new.

I agree that it would be best to work with something already existing, though. GW said on the LVO stream (or at least Rob did, so don't shoot the messenger) that there was going to be some sort of tool from them in the future, but that could mean anything. 

However, Best Coast Pairings already has a way for TOs to set up their event and let people put their lists up, I was just flipping through the LVO armies this morning. A lot of people are already using that for their events.

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@Turragor thanks for the message.  I have replied.

@Requizen I envision some sort of form filling as step 1.  this then loads all the details onto a database of some sort.  at the back end the TO's can request a compilation of their event. 

As admin I can get access to any kind of customisable exports.  (i.e. all Stormcast lists for the lifetime of the app, or all Destruction lists in july, or all lists that contain a Mournful....) 

 

Down the line this could combine to include game results tracking.

It could also be closely tied into TGA events section to help TO's run events. 

 

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2 minutes ago, Ben said:

@Turragor thanks for the message.  I have replied.

@Requizen I envision some sort of form filling as step 1.  this then loads all the details onto a database of some sort.  at the back end the TO's can request a compilation of their event. 

As admin I can get access to any kind of customisable exports.  (i.e. all Stormcast lists for the lifetime of the app, or all Destruction lists in july, or all lists that contain a Mournful....) 

 

Down the line this could combine to include game results tracking.

It could also be closely tied into TGA events section to help TO's run events. 

 

I've not had a huge amount of experience with file repositories and storage, but I think something like this with a singular purpose should be fairly well doable for someone with the time. I wouldn't mind helping (been a dev for around 10 years now) but the time part is an issue for me haha.

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I think I can see what you're after, it sounds like a basic database model with a web based input. Then you can easily extract exactly what list information you want for analysis after the tournament?

it's not that complicated to build it's just time consuming, I learnt how to do it years ago but it's not something I've kept up to date with, and certainly wouldn't know how to integrate with an app. 

I don't think it would really work that easily with existing army builders as the format of the lists likely wouldnt be database ready. You'd have to have it built from scratch, although don't quote me on that!

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Could it be as simple as:

A dropdown to select the tournament you're submitting for. 

A drop down for your Name, Email Address, Twitter Handle (why not!)

And a Wysiwyg Editor to copy and paste your army list into?

I feel like the minimum viable product for this is very simple, as the formatting provided by other systems is already pretty darn good for a copy and paste. 

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I can certainly see ways to achieve this, and by publishing a standard import file definition, other site developers (e.g. scrollbuilder et al) can deliver updates to their sites to support this.

I can help with data structures, bare bones project management and testing/debuging but my coding is very rusty and really runs to 10 year out of date PHP.

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A form that compiles the data into simpel xml format would help to put it nicely into a database which can be easily queried for specific data. But as a Software Tester I'm not very well versed in coding.. Though I could help in thinking out stuff (working on my t-shape towards functional architect (or what ever the correct term in english is nowadays)

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I'll offer assistance with any coding (PHP) or back end.

You're going to need the following:

Tournament management
(id, name, startDate, endDate, location, organizer, comp)

Player management 
(id, name, email, salt, password)

Units
(id, name, cost, min, max, faction, alliance)

Army List Header
(id, playerId)

Army List Detail
(id, armyId,unitId,quantity)

Tournament-Player-Army associations
(tournamentId, playerId, armyId)

Battalion Requirements (assuming you want automated validation)
(id, name, unitId, quantity

Tournament Comp changes
(tournamentId,unitId,cost)

If you wanted to take it a step further you could log results into another table.  You'll need at least adequate security to keep the proper hands in the right pot.

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Hi Ben

I was linked here by a fellow Dane. What i have on offer is http://tourneykeeper.net/, it's made by me as a labor of love for the board game community and it's free to use. What does it do? Well, you can always just try it out or read the manual: http://tourneykeeper.net/TourneyKeeper.pdf. A few bullets:

  • Made as a tool to take the heavy lifting so organizers can have time to play
  • Players can enter results, so no more sitting on your ass and entering data the entire weekend...
  • Create tournaments in all major game systems (40k, AoS, 9th age, x-wing and a few others)
  • Supports scoring in a multitude of ways
  • Random or swiss draw
  • The players maintains (TO can of course override) which codex/list they play (simple text format)
  • Has a "show-by-date", so that lists are hidden in the system until game day (of course visible to TO)
  • It's tested and works (was used by 6-700 players at ETC 2016 on wonky greek internet)
  • Lots of other stuff...

It's browser based as of right now, but looking at making an app to support it as we speak. Give it a look if you want and poke me by email if you have questions, suggestions or otherwise.

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My opinion is that an XML export from something like Scrollbuilder.

And then a new site which imports those XML files 

Would be a good solution.

As long as a. Scrollbuilder sticks around and is updated consistently - this is asking a lot of @scrollbuilderdude. Also the XML schema would probably need to be made public so that others could build alternative tools. 

If you want this to happen, and @scrollbuilderdude thinks it's possible, then we should probably donate to him, if you haven't already done so.

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